One afternoon, Donnie had gone out on a limb and tried bringing Leo a salad, hoping that maybe the fresh, crisp vegetables would spark something in him and prompt him to start exercising and drop some of his massive girth. When Donnie offered the bowl of veggies to his brother, Leo didn’t even turn his gaze from the television. Instead, he directed an ear-splitting belch in Donnie’s direction while he scratched the side of his belly. Donnie could hardly believe that the amorphous mound of blubber before him was the same Leo he had known just a few months before, and though he wanted to get that brother back, in the back of his mind he knew at some point he and the others were going to have to accept the inevitable; this was Leo know. That old Leo was long gone and this new gluttonous reptile on the couch, with his wrist and ankle straps flawing, his belts snapping, and his elbow and knee pads tearing was Leo. This was their brother now. Though Donnie was worried about Leo, he was more concerned the growing number of take-out bags he spotted in Mikey’s room when walking by in the hallway or the soft pouch of fat that had recently appeared under Raph’s chin. Leo’s gluttony was starting to rub off on the rest of them, whether they were conscious of it or not. This fact became clear to Donnie as he tossed the salad into the trash and moseyed back to his lab, only now noticing the soft jiggle around his middle as he walked and his own mind thinking toward the sleeve of cookies he had waiting on his lab bench. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to follow in his brother’s footsteps. He was their leader, after all, maybe he was on to something.