Disclaimer: TMNT does not belong to me. (I mean, I'm thirteen!)

"Leo, this is all your fault! You surprised Mikey by opening the door so loudly!"

"MY fault?! How is this my fault? You were the one who told Mikey to help out Donnie, remember Raph?"

"That's cause he was bothering me!"

"Yeah, but Mikey bothering you is better than him spilling chemicals all over Donnie's laptop, like what happened around 30 seconds ago!"

Master Splinter sighed as he listened to Raphael and Leonardo argue yet AGAIN. Lately, many of these arguments had erupted, and although Raph usually came out on top because Donatello and Michelangelo frequently supported him, Splinter was beginning to see the strain on his eldest son.

As a sensei, he knew how the mind worked. When a person was born, there were many, many strings that the brain had. Not physically, but mentally. You see, every single time a stressful event happened to a person, a string, sometimes multiple, would snap. When all the strings snapped, the person would beginning to lose himself, starting to lose feeling for all of the people around him, and then eventually turn what most people would call evil. Luckily, people generally started out with many strings. However, Splinter was beginning to think that Leonardo was beginning to lose his own sanity. Was it possible?

"No," he murmured, "What am I thinking? No, it is impossible, Leo is too strong, too wise to break all his strings. Why am I to worry?" And then, fully reassured, the great ninjitsu master stood up and walked out of his room.

What none of them, even Leo himself, had realized was that the danger was already happening. Every single time stress had been felt by the leader, physical or mental, many of his strings had snapped.

Many months ago…

"You just let him go?!"

"He wasn't exactly a threat. They'd had enough."

"Wasn't a threat? Dude, he was beating up a blind guy! There's no enough. Now they're gonna think we were too weak to finish the job!"

Snap.

And later on…

"And the award for worst leader goes to-"

"How am I the worst leader?"

Snap.

And even later…

"What?! So you're not even going to beat this thing? You created it!"

"I'll let the heroes handle it."

"I TRUSTED YOU!"

"I know, that's messed up, right?"

Snappity-Snap-Snap.

And every other time in the past year: every time Raph refused to follow his orders, or when Karai was taken by Tigerclaw, when he was stabbed by Shredder, or when he was recovering back in the O'Neil farmhouse with the other turtles, April and Casey.

Snap. Snap. snap. Snappity-snap.

And finally, the true danger inside was that Leonardo only had three strings left.