Hey! I'm Leo, and a bunch of people asked us to start this blog so that my family could answer your questions. You'll usually get me, but my brothers or my... sister, I guess, might answer too. Probably not my dad -- technology's not really his thing -- though you never know. My dad's kind of overprotective, so we might not be able to answer your question. Don't take it personally, though! Family portrait by Kitten @ discosmackdown.tumblr.com Avatar by Lorna @ lorna-ka.tumblr.com
Growing up in a ninja family was definitely a lot of fun, but our holidays are a little bit different than the ones that TV and movies tend to focus on. For the most part, celebrations when we were younger were pretty low-key, since we didn't exactly grow up with the kind of resources Master Splinter had back in Japan.
Splinter's spiritual practices are mostly shinto, so Christmas was never really a thing for us. Back home in Japan it was more of a commercial thing, kind of like Valentine's Day; there might have been cake, which is usually this squishy sponge thing covered in cream with strawberries on top, but you don't come across much cake in the sewers of the junkyard, and that was mostly done between couples anyway. Without Tang Shen, he didn't really think about that much over here.
New Year's was really the big one for us. We'd start getting ready around the end of November, scrounging up any nice paper and trimmings that we could find in the tunnels so we could make cards for each other. For Ōmisoka -- the day before New Year's -- we would stay home and make sure the lair was clean, while Splinter would raid Central Park for the things we needed to put together the kadomatsu. When he got home, we'd help him make the mats and the rope and put both of them together. It was really good braiding practice! Sometimes, we'd add a touch or two of our own.
So after we'd gotten everything ready, we'd get to stay up as late as we could, trying to make it to midnight. Around an hour before midnight was time for... well, usually you eat noodles, but we didn't exactly have those, so we had to make do with a substitute...although worms really aren't that bad when you get used to them. Then at midnight, we'd mark as many firsts of the year as we could before we fell asleep. Our first offering to the kamidana in the dojo was a big one -- whoever could do the most flips that year usually earned the right to do it. Raph always took it so seriously when it was his turn.
The first laugh of the year was pretty much always Mikey, but he'd make sure it spread around pretty fast. By that point, we were usually pretty tired, so we'd get a few hours sleep. Then, Splinter would wake us up just before dawn so that we could sit under the grate in the dojo and greet the first sunrise together.
New Year's day, usually starts with the first training practice of the year -- very special! After that we'd eat the osechi, and we'd play games, and exchange the cards we'd made, and Splinter would give us otoshidama -- money in special envelopes that Splinter would decorate for us. Yeah, we didn't have anywhere to spend it, and it was usually Canadian quarters, but it was still special. I think Raph still has his stash somewhere.
So that was pretty much how we spent the holidays when we were kids. But then came the year that Donnie got the TV working and patched us into cable, and we were introduced to the wide, wide world of Holiday Specials. Which is kind of when it became all about --
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PRESENTS!!!! Christmas is sreiorsly the best time of yeor you guys! You should see how awseome I make the lair loook! Rudolfph is the best movie, but I lke the grinch a lot too because he's so much like Raph. Raph doesn't think so but he totlally is, and it's really funny when his heart grows at the end betauces that's soooo Raph, and enevery time Raph pretents that he's not crying---
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Yeeeeah, Mikey thought all that sparkly elf stuff was, like, the best thing ever, so all of a sudden we were bringing home every cracked ornament and shorted-out string of lights Mikey could find. And let me tell you, around the end of December, there's a lot of that junk getting washed down here.
So we'd still do the usual things we'd always done, but all this Christmas stuff kind of shoehorned its way in and started taking over, and not always all that well. The kitchen still has scorch marks on the ceiling from the great "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" fiasco of 2007.
To be honest, I kind of hated it, but I couldn't really say anything because Mikey -- and even Donnie and Raph, to an extent -- were so excited about all the things they were seeing on TV, and wanting to be a part of that.
And then.... then came last year. More specifically....
So April drops into our lives -- literally -- and last Christmas, she didn't have her dad to share her traditions with...so she brought them to us. And I couldn't exactly say no to that, so I went along with it.
She took us to a roof to watch the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, and brought us a tree and some decorations for the lair -- good ones, not the broken stuff Mikey had picked up before. She just kind of... straightened everything out, I guess. And for the first time, the Christmas stuff in our house didn't seem wrong. All our old traditions were there, but the new stuff... it just kind of gelled. It worked. So we hung out together, and watched those terrible specials, and laughed about how bad some of them were but enjoyed the sappy goodness at the same time. Mikey made cookies, and April got almost everybody singing carols at one point. It meant a lot to her, and for once, it was actually feeling special to me, too. On Christmas Day, we knew that April was going to be feeling pretty low without her dad, so we arranged for a special present just for her.
Then, on New Years Eve, she took us to see the fireworks, which I have to admit, were pretty spectacular. And after that, we brought her back here to show her how we celebrated. For the first time, we had someone outside of the family to exchange New Year's cards with -- cards we'd made with real paper that we hadn't gotten out of the trash. And we had noodles -- real, non-wormy noodles for the first time. And actual, honest-to-goodness osechi made with stuff from the Japanese supermarket....
Because of April.
I can honestly say that last year was the best holiday we've ever had. It was a combination of both parts of our lives -- our heritage that we got from our sensei, and the world we were born into here in New York. But it took April to really help us figure out how both of those aspects worked together.
In a way, April was the best present we could have asked for that year, and I'm really glad we got to share that with her.
Have you guys seen/talked to April since the BatDad incident?
Well we SAW her the other day when we wer pounding Donnies disgusting mutant pet into the pavement, but no. We havent TALKED to her.
The thing is — Aprils TICKED. And you cant blame her for that. She lost her dad again and I mean really LOST — nobody knows where he is. We had the rat king take our sensei for like an HOUR and I was ready to put my fist through a wall. And April loses it like I do. Once in a while she might cry like Leo or Mikey or go all quiet like Donnie but most of the time she just gets MAD. And THAT I get. When you get mad like that you just have to go away and work through it or hit stuff till you stop being mad.
Leos tried to get thru to her tphone once or twice and Donnies been — kinda creepy. But like I keep telling them, we just gotta back off and let April work through her stuff. When your the kind of mad that HURTS and closes your throat and makes you feel like youll explode if you don’t break something RIGHT NOW the last thing you need is to be reminded why your mad in the first place.
Aprils smart. Shes good people. Shell come round eventually. If it were anything else wed just go out and beat the snot out of whatever hurt her until its better, but this time the thing that hurt her is US and we get enough pounding from Splinter as it is. The best thing we can do for her right now is give her the space she needs and be ready to go when she needs us.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t seeing it, but you really are me from the other side of the Rift, aren’t you? Oh, sorry, it’s you me Donnie typing now. Leo’s not allowed to type at the moment because apparently your message gets him so excited that he hits the shift kxey too hard, which resulted in the upending of an entire can of soda on my good kxeyboard so now I’m stuckx with the one that types an ‘x’ every time you hit ‘kx’ and doesn’t have a functioning backxspace. I thsnnnnnnn… okay, Leo just hit me.
He’s pokxing me now and askxing me how this is possible…. I can only surmise that when he came backx through the Rift and the bridge closed behind him, his prolonged time on the other side of the Rift left some kxind of pan-dimensional energy tether connecting our two universes, just broad enough to allow these ‘crossed wires,’ so to speakx. It seems to be connected to Leo, which isn’t surprising, given that the Rift generator functions on a genetic kxey. It used our genetic sample to lockx onto our Leo’s particular genetic and dimensional signature, and the echo allowing this communication is following that lockx. So it looks likxe you’ve got a line of communication after all! This could come in handy for coordinating our efforts if you ever need to bring him backx, too, and
Okay, Leo’s hyperventilating now so we’re going to go make him breathe into a takxeout bag for a while. But he’s really happy. And… thankx you guys again for takxing care of him while he was stuckx AAAAGH I HATE THIS KXEYBOARD!
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[Edited 3:12 am]
Donnie again. Look, one last thing before I go… he remembers people. And certain things. But there’s a lot of gaps, particularly where events are concerned. He can’t explain a lot of the scars he came back with, and it hurts him to try. Like, scary intra-cranial pressure bordering on an aneurysm hurting. We just got him back, and I’d rather not have his brain liquefy and run out his ears when he’s just barely gotten his room back the way he likes it, so… Keep it simple, okay?
And he does miss you guys. Thank you for taking such good care of him.
Hi Leo! I have a question: Did Mr. O'Neil's Captain Ryan costume end up fitting you?
Ummmm…. yeah. It fit. I mean, we got me into it. April did say her dad was carrying a little extra weight when they wore those costumes, and I guess it doesn’t matter much if it’s a belly at the front or a shell at the back that the clothes are stretching to fit.
Except…. bellies are squishy and shells… well, they really aren’t. So I got into the Ryan costume just fine, but I may have… um…. stretched it out just a bit.
And by “a bit,” he means a wohhooolle lot!!! That thing was so fluppy by the time April got it off him again and his heakd kinda got stukc and maaaaan it was so funny! You are many things, Leo my man, but swelte ain’t one of them. And I know what that word means now! I looked it up1
Hey Leo how you holding up? I can't imagine finally getting home to your family only to lose one of them again...
I’m not going to lie and say that things are great right now. Nobody’s happy about what happened, and we’re all pretty much dealing with it in our own way.
We should have listened to Splinter. We let ourselves get cocky and we should have learned that lesson already. But the last time, it was against the Shredder. We learned that if we stop taking things seriously, we could get hurt. This time, it was worse. We knew we were fine. We can take on Kraang — even Kraang bio-droids — in our sleep. But we didn’t stop to think about the fact that if we get cocky, innocent people could get hurt. That was the difference this time. Innocent people did get hurt. People we care about. And I’m mad at myself for that; it was an accident, but maybe if we’d been more serious… more careful….
But Sensei’s right. There’s not time to sit around blaming myself and writing sad poetry… not that I’d ever do that. Because innocent people are still at risk, so until we account for all the missing mutagen, we have to be on task. Beating ourselves up can wait until the people our actions put at risk are out of danger.
And as for April….I’m sorriest of all that she and her Dad were the ones to come out of this the worst. If I were here, I wouldn’t be speaking to us, either. I’ve known for a while that getting her dad back was going to change things, but I never expected this. Never wanted it, either.
So the best thing we can do is give her space, carry on, and work toward fixing things as best we can. April’s stubborn, and she has a temper, and sometimes she reminds me so much of Raph, it’s scary. So if Raph says to back off and give her time to work stuff out, I’m going to listen to him.
That doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned her, though. We’ve got eyes all over the city, but they’re a lot thicker in her neighbourhood We’re not about to let anything else happen to her if we can help it. If she needs us, we’ll be there.
Hello, Leo! I have a question for your sister. I'm an only child- what's it like living with a bunch of rowdy boys?
…April was working on a response to this before… everything, and I found it in the drafts. I guess there’s no sense in keeping it around, now. So here’s what she had. ~Leo
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Great question! I was raised an only child too, and I was perfectly happy with that. Just me and Dad meant that I got all the attention I wanted (when I could tear him away from experiments or writing articles for journals), and I always felt really sorry for the kids in my school who had to share their parents with other siblings. But then, I met the guys.
So suddenly inheriting four teenage brothers (who are also ninjas) is a handful, and it did take a while for them to learn certain boundaries. Like, in a ninja house, a locked door is basically considered a challenge. When you factor in that the guys all run around in the buff all the time and never really learned the whole “privacy” thing, it can get awkward sometimes. Especially when the locked door is the bathroom. I’ve more or less trained them to knock before barging in to whatever room I happen to be staying in now, though. And it only took a few blunt objects to the head to get it through to them that when the bathroom door is locked, it stays that way.
Don’t get me started on the bathroom. Four teenage boys with questionable nutrition plus bathroom in a sewer? Consider yourself lucky, anon. Leo just happened to be the first one I ran across when I finally snapped, and Raph thought it was hilarious. He sent me this photo.
And sometimes they’re so crazy loud, it’s scary. Especially when I’m trying to study. Which is another thing they don’t quite understand. Sensei is pretty strict and all, but he doesn’t set assignments with deadlines like they do in school, so it was pretty tough explaining that no, I can’t do it later, because later is too late, no matter how interesting the monster movie of the week happens to be.
Brothers. Oy.
But… sometimes it’s pretty awesome, too. Mikey drew me some stuff when I had to stay over to make me a little more at home and make my walls seem a little less… sewer-y. Take a look.
I won’t bore you with detailed explanations of each picture, but this is pretty much what life with these four brothers is like. No matter what mood I’m in, I know there’s someone around who’ll be exactly what I need right then and there. If there’s one thing I haven’t been since acquiring all these brothers, it’s lonely. They’re pretty amazing, really. And despite the noise, and the treating me like a rag doll sometimes, and the bathroom thing, I wouldn’t trade them for the
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And that’s all she wrote. I hope this answers your question.
Leo woke to darkness, a chill sweat breaking out on his skin as he fought to bring his breathing and heart rate under control. It took a moment to remember where he was, what was happening, before it all came flooding back.
They’d finally managed to bring their giddy reunion under control, though no one relinquished a hold on Leo for very long. He found himself bombarded with questions, but his head ached, his mind a blur, and it wasn’t long before Donatello declared him exhausted and in need of rest. But no one had been able to tolerate the thought of being apart yet, so someone — Raph and Mikey, he suspected — had dragged an old futon into the middle of the pit, and Leo had been able to make it that far before he collapsed. He had a brief memory of Splinter sitting on the bench, watching over them until Leo had lost the fight with sleep.
He carefully took stock of the soft breathing in the darkness now. He lay on his side in the middle of the futon. April was closest, nestled against the shelter of his plastron with her head pillowed on his outstretched arm. He tightened his other arm very gently around her, and she murmured softly in her sleep. That much had been necessary; the solid wall of his shell was probably the only thing that was keeping her from being squashed by the others.
Donatello lay just behind her, his head on Leo’s hand, one of his hands locked around Leo’s wrist as though to stop him from going anywhere. That solid weight draped over top of him was Mikey — he kept making his way up there, no matter how many times Raph pulled him off. And Raph….
"Bad dream?" came the quiet voice from behind him, and Leo smiled. Of course Raph had his back.
"I think so," he whispered back.
There was a brief moment of silence. Then, “…the ice?”
Leo blinked, wishing desperately that he could see Raph’s face. “That really happened, didn’t it?”
"Yeah, I didn’t believe it either," Raph snorted. He was quiet again for another few breaths. "You don’t need to worry, Leo. If anyone not already in this pile even tries to touch you, weird ice demons included, I will personally punch them in the face.” He thought about that. “Unless it’s Sensei.”
Leo snickered. “Good call.”
"Whatever. Just shut up and sleep. I got your back."
"I know you do," Leo said softly into the dark. "…thanks, Raph."
Raph didn’t reply, but Leo felt the soft touch of a hand move briefly against his shell. It was an old gesture between them, familiar despite the fact that it had been years since Leo had last felt it. But it spoke as loudly as if Raph had shouted, and his smile widened as he began to drift back to sleep.
People started asking for this blog just under a year ago, and I wasn't really ready to run a second blog then. But things have changed, and I've been sitting on this URL for about 8 months, ever since I realized I wanted Leo to start a blog when he got back to Falling. It's taken me longer than anticipated -- leaderinblue was only supposed to last about a week -- but the timing of it, coinciding with the first anniversary of Falling, just seemed to work.
This is in no way attempt to compete with the other askblogs out there. I couldn't if I wanted to. They're fantastic. I'm half-convinced that ask-a-grate actually is run by the Hamato family and they just pretend to have human mods. But what I can give is a blog run by the Falling!Gang, as requested --so here it is. I hope you like it!
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