My first foray into the fandom of the TMNT. This is just a bit of fun... probably more serious sounding than I mean it as comedy is hella hard to achieve. Set nebulously somewhere in the middle of season three, after brain worm territory and before the invasion of the triceratons.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters portrayed in this story. They are the brain children of Eastman and Laird and the current money makers of Nickelodeon and Viacom.

Leo stood guard.

He had yet to resheath his swords for more than a minute or two. They gave him comfort, made him feel like he was actually doing something.

They distracted from the memory of earlier, when he'd rounded the ship behind Mikey, just in time to watch Raphael drop to his knees, an unguarded, curious cant to his head, alone and unarmed and small in the face of unknown entities. Leo had thought that was it. He'd only been in time to watch a brother die in front of his eyes. And when Raph rolled and fell and seized from the contact.

He would not be going through that again. Any of them.

Leo purposefully kept his back to his three brothers, two of them anxious and alert, the third still far from their calls. He was the protector right now. The danger behind him could be dealt with by his brothers… the danger ahead was his to face down. He wouldn't let it reach them again.

Raph's seizure had lasted only minutes but he came out of it into a lingering, ragdoll-like unconsciousness, which was almost as worrying. Once Donnie deemed him stable and safe to move, they'd contacted Casey and April to bring the party wagon, and started the slow trek to the closest road. The sun was beginning to rise by the time they got there and they hunkered in the ditch at the side, wary of any early bird pedestrians. Donatello and Mikey hovered around their fallen brother like moths over a flame, but there was honestly little they could do once the usual avenues of waking up Raph were exhausted to no effect.

Even Leo's healing hands mantra had failed him.

So now, Leo was staring down the remaining party in their strange group. They'd not really known what to do with it at the time… too panicked over what had just happened to Raph. Leo had known they couldn't really leave it alone to run amok in the forest and potentially summon down an armada of invaders on their unsuspecting asses, but he was equally unwilling to have it near them, near Raph, when they were so off balanced. He was longing to scream at it, to ask it what the other one had done to his brother and why, but it seemed deflated somehow, almost resigned to its fate. It crouched, unmoving, beside the dead form of its friend, although Leo noted with mounting concern that its focus was often intently drawn to Raph on the grass. Every so often it would flicker its silvered, pupil-less eyes in his direction and look away. Leo, try as he might, could not read the intent there, and so stood immobile.

It would not get a second chance at his family. Not while he still breathed.

It didn't take the party wagon long to arrive. April leapt from the passenger side before the van had rolled to a stop, her hands clenched around an object Leo had asked her to bring and her eyes wide with panic, which only increased when she saw how still Raph was. "Oh no. No, no, no!"

Leo reached out suddenly, realising too late what she must be thinking. "No. April no. It's not for Raph." He sheathed one of his swords and used his free hand to loosen her grip on the sheet.

"Then who…oh." She stood for a beat, staring in surprise and a stab of sympathy at the other two figures to the side. It was an abnormally normal reaction to a bizarre situation. Leo had to wonder sometimes if their presence in April's life was a good thing or a bad one. He didn't get long to wonder this however, as, her gaze still on the two very foreign bodies, she brought her formidable wrath down on Leo's head. "Bring a sheet, you said." April's hands clenched around the fabric like Leo knew she would do to his neck in a heartbeat. "Not blankets, not a throw. A sheet, Leo! What was I supposed to think? It's a damn shroud."

"It's not a…well technically yeah," he averted his eyes, a little ashamed of himself. "Yeah, it's a shroud."

"I could kill you right now." She whispered, her eyes on the smaller creature kneeling beside one that was obviously no longer alive.

"But you won't."

"No," she snatched the sheet back from him and shook it out gently, before folding the white fabric over her arm. "But only because I'd be a sheet short. Come and help me. And for Shell's sake, put that weapon away." She glanced at him, noting his tight grip and clenched jaw. Her hand covered his for an instant, a squeeze of reassurance, a 'try not to worry yourself too much, Raph will be fine.' "I don't think it's going to hurt us." And she was gone.

Leo cast a final glance behind him to where Donnie and Mikey, joined now by Casey, were quickly and carefully loading Raph into the back of the van. Their voices were a quiet murmur in the background. It's already hurt us, he thought. A moment of indecision, a whispered curse, and he sheathed his remaining sword and caught up to April. She was kneeling by the body, much like Raph had been a few hours ago, her body language calm and relaxed as she faced down the still living one, trying to reassure it that they weren't going to hurt it and it shouldn't be afraid.

Maybe it should be afraid. Leo fought down the sudden impulse to draw his katana again and… and do what? Chop off a limb or two perhaps? That sounded like a pretty good start right now. Then no one would be forcing anyone's brothers down to potentially suck the life out of them.

But no. They didn't know what had happened yet. Raph could be absolutely fine. He could be waking up right now for all Leo knew, embarrassed and being teased about his unconventional first kiss by his brothers. It was a hollow hope, as Leo moved to help April to wrap the body in the sheet, but nevertheless, it didn't stop him from wishing.

In the dawn light the strangeness of the dead creature became even more apparent. It was tall, taller than Donnie by a good six inches or so, and slender to boot. The figure was androgynous in shape, with no visible fat deposits… what little flesh on its bones was all muscle. Its skin was mostly a dusky red and scaled, but there were patches of lighter pink around the joints, the fingers, the eyelids. Large eyes, front facing… a predator. A sharper pointed face than their own and balanced on a long, flexible neck; it seemed more lizard or dog like than turtle, but not quite as flattened and squat as the Newtralizer. No tail either so not Salamandarian then. No visible ears, like himself, but he'd heard the smaller one vocalising during the night, he had no doubt they could hear and understand speech.

Whatever they had that passed for it, that was.

He leaned forward to place his hand firmly on the opposite shoulder and hip of the animal. This was the first time he'd handled it himself, allowing its companion to carry it from the ship to their current location, and it was with no small surprise that he felt a solidness to the thing's back when he turned the body to allow April to tuck the sheet underneath it. A shell of some sort? Not like theirs though, this was more like body-fitted armour, and only on the back. Any vestige of a plastron was missing, replaced by regular soft flesh. It moved when he pressed harder, visible plates overlapping each other with a slithering sound.

There were clothes, of a sort; a kind of tight fitted cloth that seemed to only wrap to the front of the torso, leaving the back free. The arms and legs were covered fully. Despite himself, Leo felt regret as he covered up the face and allowed himself a second of respite to close his eyes and wish the departed soul a good journey. After all, this one he no longer had to worry about.

Moment over, he stood, the body solid in his grasp. He nodded at the smaller one, jerking his head in the direction of the van. It needed no further prompting and scrambled for the open door only to freeze there, a crescendo of voices from inside cursing at it as it stood, uncertain of its welcome. He probably should have warned them first, he figured, unconcerned with the details.

"Get in." Leo said, letting his body language do most of the talking. It understood and clambered in first before Leo hefted himself and his cargo inside. Shell if he'd turn his back to it right now. He dumped the corpse against the far side of the van, physically as far away from Raph as he could get it.

Casey was remaining in the back, alert and pensive, hockey-stick in place as he crouched in a lean against the side of the vehicle. Leo spared a warm thought for him. Sometimes – rarely - he was a better friend than any of them really deserved. April slammed the doors shut and ran round to the driver's seat. An instant later and they were on the move.

By the time they got Raph back to the farmhouse it was full daylight. Donnie and Mikey vanished with him upstairs, only for Mikey to come trailing down despondently about ten minutes later. "Donnie says he's okay. They don't need me," he said, opening the freezer door. Ice Cream Kitty couldn't soothe his mind though it seemed, for he shut the door a second or two later, a large, pink stripe of ice cream on his cheek remaining un-licked, and sloped over to sit close to Leo at the kitchen table. Leo leaned over to bump a shoulder against Mikey's before returning to his solid duty of gouging a pattern into the kitchen table with the blunt saki of one of Raph's sai.

Mikey responded with a deflating sigh, drooping forward to lean his chin on his palm, elbow on the table. Leo focused on a particularly intricate part of his carving while he mulled over the past few hours in his head. Without Raphael awake to tell them answers it was a bit of a never-ending loop, but Leo kept coming back to one thing.

"Why did he do that?"

Mikey slouched a bit more, looking miserable. "What part of it?"

Leo kind of had to agree with that. The whole evening had been a clusterfuck from the instant Raph had called him Cooleo. He shrugged, screwing the sai deeper still into the old, soft wooden groove of the table top, abandoning his drawing for the sheer pleasure of hacking through the table completely. "Any of it. ALL of it. I don't know. Sometimes I think I get what goes on in his head but then…then he goes and…" strolls casually up to two unknown alien entities, with holstered weapons no less, and lets himself be taken advantage of. "Was that supposed to be protecting us or something?"

"I should have stayed with him." Mikey's voice was liquid misery. Leo slid his hand over to touch Mikey's arm, freezing when Mikey denied the touch, pulling in to himself to hug his chest. "I know what he's like. I know he has this Doolittle complex where he likes to 'talk to the animals'. I just didn't think he'd try it out with a ten-foot tall alien or two that's all. And he was all 'go get Donny, Mikey, they're gonna die, Mikey. They won't hurt us, Mikey' and it seemed legit, you know, but -"

"Doolittle?" Leo asked, putting a stop to the tirade the only way he knew how.

"Dude," Mikey glanced over, "You KNOW he'd like us better if we purred or barked. He was all Cutie McSoftypie with Spike, you know, before he did that Slash the Slasher thing and tried to off all of us, and half the time he's walking around with a pigeon or two stuffed in his shell."

"He what?" Leo didn't know that.

"You didn't know that?" Mikey was surprised enough to sit up straight. "How could you not know that! You're Leonardo – the All Knowing."

Leo shrugged a little. "The subject never came up." But now that it had, "so whereabouts does he keep them?"

"They're here somewhere, I think." Mikey gestured to his side, at the softer bridge they all had under their arms, connecting plastron to carapace. "I don't know. I don't see 'em much but they coo sometimes." He grinned broadly, "It makes Sensei's ears twitch like crazy during practice. He let me pet one once but it didn't like me much and pecked my finger. They stick their heads out when we watch movies and he feeds them popcorn."

"So that's why he gets that bland stuff without any salt or butter on it."

"…and then halfway through goes and pours marshmallow cream on it or put M&Ms in or something." Mikey nodded sagely. "Yep."

"Huh." Leo smiled, "you think you know a guy."

They sat for a while in companionable silence, Mikey watching Leo's path through the table cut ever deeper. "Okay," he said finally, "So here's the thing. About the thing." Leo gave the sai a twist and waited. Sometimes Mikey's thought process circled around a bit before finding a way out, like a guy in a revolving door in an old black and white comedy. "So, you know the first thing?"

Leo raised an eyebrow ridge, deadpan. "Would that be the thing with the stuff… or without?"

"Dude, I don't even want to talk about stuff right now, okay."

Leo huffed a small laugh. "Yeah, Mikey, I know the thing. It's right over there with April and Casey." He pointed towards the couch with the sai, where the tips of three heads could just be seen over the back. April, the elephant in the room, and Casey, sitting together, ducks in a row, like some kind of intergalactic, BFF support group.

"What's the deal with it, do you think? It's a lot smaller than the other one."

"Would that be the one that was ten-feet tall." Leo teased.

Mikey grumbled a little, "Dude, when you're my height, everything is ten feet tall. There's a reason shuko spikes are a fundamental part of my arsenal."

"I've seen you leap over buildings like they were cracks in the pavement."

"Well yeah," Mikey admitted, "But that's when I'm on the plane."

He was going to regret this but, "plane?"

"The horizontal one." Mikey rolled his eyes. A typical 'Donnie explained it to me in detail, get with the programme, Leo' look. Leo couldn't let it go unchallenged.

"What about the vertical plane?"

"Bro, there ain't no plane that can go vertical. You're thinking of helicoptors, or lear jets or something."

"Okay, okay." Leo grinned. "So back to the thing? Smaller, yes. I agree." He shrugged, not really caring about the whys and wherefores of it all. "Maybe it's a female. And no," he held up a hand to forestall the question he could so see coming in Mikey's eyes, "we are not giving it a name."

"…but thing is getting confusing."

"It probably already has a name, Mikey."

"Yeah, and good luck pronouncing it, Leo." Mikey looked back over to the couch, where April and Casey were steadfastly pretending they couldn't hear every word the two turtles were saying. "What's the deal over there anyway?" He asked in curiosity.

"Would you believe April and Casey are keeping it calm by letting it have control of the TV remote?" Leo was there for backup, of course, but so far, the soft and gentle approach seemed to be working.

"Dude, seriously?" Mikey glanced over wide eyed; a calculating look crept over his face slowly as he considered. "That might actually work." Leo gave him a hairy eyeball glance of Raphael proportions and Mikey hastened to continue. "It'd work on me, Dude, that's all I'm saying."

"Yeah, well, I seriously doubt it's come all this way just to sit here in the middle of nowhere and watch 'Real Housewives of Orange County'." He fought the urge to drop his head into his hands. The utter incongruousness of the situation hitting him suddenly with the subtlety of a two by four to the parietal lobe.

A metal one.

With spikes.

So what if they had a potential alien invader sitting on their couch. A binge watch marathon of 24 would fix everything. So what if his brother had gone catatonic after his first kiss, he had two others to pick up the slack. And for that matter, what was with the alien invasion deal at the moment… some sort of buy one, get the second half price or something?

This kind of thing never happened on Space Heroes.

"Okay," Mikey held up a finger, blissfully unaware of the thread of Leo's mind unravelling to roll under the couch in front of him. "First off, Housewives of Orange County, what the hell kind of show would that be?—"

"Er… a real one?" Leo said.

"—and second of all," the second finger came up so now Mikey was waving his palm in Leo's face, just in case he didn't get the point from words alone. "You don't watch daytime TV while there are movies in the house."

Leo smiled a little, "Anything but Pocahontas though, okay."

Mikey nodded, sobering. "And no Sleeping Beauty either." He stood, stretching a little, and smiled down at Leo. "Thanks, Bro. Leo nodded. Growing up so close together led to a lot of downsides, usually involving privacy, hot-headed tempers and Dr. Prankenstein in some form or other… but there were benefits too. He knew…no, they all knew each other better than the shells on their own backs. They knew how a dark mood manifested in each individual, and who was the best to blow that away.

Leo wasn't sure why Mikey was blaming himself, but he didn't need to know. He just needed to be there.

And if Mikey could do the same for him simultaneously, all the better.

"By the way, Leo." Mikey shot over his shoulder as he headed to the shelf unit where they kept the movies. "April's gonna kill you for doing that to her table."

Leo laughed. "I think she'll forgive me, little brother," he said, finishing off his final stroke with a flourish before getting up to follow him into the den area.

MIKEY WAS HERE.

Perfect.

They were well into the first Disney film making up the marathon to be, when the sound of footfalls on the stairs was heard. Leo shared a silent conversation with Mikey and they stood up, Leo holding a hand to April's shoulder to keep her down. The alien was still an unknown at this point and, while it was still seated and seemed calm, its eyes had also shot to the door, the movie no longer holding its attention. Leo hadn't forgotten how focused it had been on his brother earlier in the day.

More noises, loud for them… ninja trained… Donnie most definitely letting them know he was coming down. But was it Raph too?

Donnie's voice. "I'm just saying, let me go in first okay. It'll be easier."

It was Raph. It had to be.

The next few moments were forever jumbled in Leo's mind. He knew the door opened first and Donnie was there. There was a familiar form behind him, a red bandana firmly in place. Raph… standing, straight and alert. Mikey had taken a step at some point, when the creature wrenched itself from April's grip and lurched from the chair. Leo's hand came down hard on its shoulder and it screeched out a cry that shook him to the deepest parts of his mind.

A mad scramble and the creature ripped away from him, heading for Raph, making small keening cries deep in its throat. It was going to kill him! Right in front of them all, Leo knew it with a certainty that had his katana out and drawn in a time never before achieved. But not fast enough.

The creature hit. Its arms reached out and it grabbed Raph hard around the chest, its head coming up to butt at the underside of Raph's chin. The taller body was hunched awkwardly to maintain the position. And Leo could only stand there and stare, the sword forgotten in his hand as Raph's arms came up around the creature in turn, soothing it, shushing it, protecting it…from them.

Raph looked up at Leo and his eyes were hard and cold… and full of cobwebbed silver at the edges.

Donnie cleared his throat. "So, yeah, we kind of need to talk."