Therese Turtle

**Therese Turtle** is a diamondback terrapin who works as a bookkeeper in Westward Springs, Saint Belle Isle. Coming from a modest family, her life was upended when her parents, among many others, were rounded up and shipped off to be sold into slavery by the mayor under the excuse of boosting the economy. Knowing what they were being sold for, and refusing to stand for it, she becomes a rogue, stealing the plans of traders, exposing them to the government, and reuniting the victims with their families. The mayor of Westward Springs hired Touché Turtle to capture her and bring her in “dead or alive”, only the plan to backfire when they discovered their relation. They then team up to rescue their father from his exile and put an end to their grandmother’s coup.

She is a secondary character in season 5 of Redux, and she and her son, Teensy, are minor recurring characters from season 6 onwards.

## Personality

"*Aw, we’re done already? I was hoping there’d be more of a challenge…*"

―Therese to Touché after finishing up a mission, Blazin’ Trails Redux, season 5, episode 16, Mask Off

Therese and her brother, Touché, could not be anymore different. While he is more coolheaded but tends to lose patience quickly, Therese is lively, impulsive and adventurous, and proudly refers to herself as a spitfire, yet can demonstrate what her husband calls a “saint’s level of patience” when needed. She’s a bit of a prankster, and especially loves to get under her older brother’s skin, but her jokes are all done in good fun. Though kind to people, she believes that truly heinous people, such as traders or murderers, shouldn’t be forgiven. She had a mild dislike for her grandmother for her role in Xiao Li’s covert operations, but when she learned everything she did to their family in order to gain power, that dislike turns to hatred, to the point where she snaps at a local for suggesting that she should let bygones be bygones, citing the murders of her siblings as one of the many reasons she shouldn’t be forgiven. She worries for her older brother as the case starts to get to him, especially after he confirms that his grandmother did murder all of his older siblings before they were hatched, and he works tirelessly to bring her down. After the case is over, she and Touché form a good brother-sister relationship.

## Trivia

* Therese is one of several characters from the *For Love and Glory* series that made their debut in *Blazin’ Trails Redux*.
* In the *Touché Turtle* cartoon *Hero on the Half-Shell*, it is mentioned that Touché has a sister who is Teensy’s mother, which would lead to Therese’s creation.
* Therese is a day younger than Touché. In later episodes, she mentions that he loves to bring it up.
* She was given a different scale coloration and hair color to make her appearance different from her older brother.
* Her rogue extraordinaire disguise was inspired by Kallen Kaslana’s Sixth Serenade battlesuit, and her debut chapter as the Rogue Extraordinaire is a play on this. While not as grandiose as Kallen, Therese does like to show off somewhat, a trait that she shares with her older brother.
	+ The above quote, which she says to Touché after they go on their first mission together, is inspired by Kallen’s second victory quote as Sixth Serenade (“Done already? Even though I wanted to play some more…”).