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Mikey feels himself falling.
The portal swirls him around and around, pulling his body apart, stretching it, shoving it left and right as its pink glow surrounded him. Mikey heard himself screaming, though he couldn’t tell if it was because he could feel everything or if he was screaming at all. Why did it hurt so much anyway?
He screams even more and he feels himself spinning and twisting and he doesn’t stop because no one was there to hear him. Where were his brothers even? Would they be right behind him? Did they even go in? Did they decide he deserved this for going into the portal? Are they okay? Mikey can barely get his thoughts to remain coherent as the portal took him to his friend.
He wants the pain to stop. He wants to ignore it and just let it end already. He feels like he’s about to split apart, split into tiny molecules, but then he feels as if they’re all forcibly shoved back together into a turtle shape. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
For Leatherhead, he keeps telling himself. Do it for Leatherhead. Do it for his best friend. He’ll find him, he’ll find him and bring him back to Earth and away from the things he knew his friend hated the most.
Mikey feels himself falling and falling and falling, and then a bright flash of white fills his eyes, and his vision blackens.
Mikey can barely remember what his name is before he slams onto a cold and hard surface head first, eyes closed. His head throbs in agony and Mikey can already tell he’s likely going to get a bruise just from that. He can already feel a headache coming on, too.
“Fucking fantastic.” Mikey mutters, deciding the floor wasn’t comfortable enough and already making an effort to stand on wobbly legs. He assumes that he’s probably still in the lab, ready for his brothers to chew him out for jumping into the portal and ignoring their calls. He honestly didn’t care, he wants Leatherhead back now.
Finally, he opens his eyes and he can’t tell if his mouth is gaping because of how fucking weird the entire place looked, or if it’s because he’s never seen something so fascinating, looking as if it was made inside his imagination.
Dimension X. He's in Dimension X. He did it.
The entire dimension was what Mikey can describe as a pink void with floating “islands” made of some sort of metal, like the one he stood on, filling the place with fun stuff like the strange aliens that seemed to defy the laws of gravity and was flying all around the place, the “trees” that were made of some sort of pink crystals working as the branches, and the giant eye that was shooting whatever was closest to it.
Yeah, Mikey thinks to himself, gulping but feeling some sort of excitement at the same time, this was going to be a fun place to go explore.
Before he can even leave the island he was in, Mikey wondered about where the hell his brothers went. He didn’t think of it then, but now he was pretty sure they would have gone after him, maybe slap him on the head if they were willing to ignore the fact that area of the head they plan to hit was probably going to start bruising sooner or later, and then just accept they were inside this place and that they are definitely not leaving without Leatherhead in tow.
‘Maybe they didn’t go after me?’ Mikey thinks to himself. Maybe Donnie thought it was too dangerous to go after him. This dimension is pretty different from their own dimension, and Mikey knew his brothers were far more cautious than he ever would be when it came to literally anything that was new, though Mikey can see the concern when it came to Dimension X. The Kraang do live here, after all, and if he wasn’t careful, he could pretty much be killed by anything in this dimension.
And that’s why Mikey panics and yelps when he realizes he’s walked far too close to the edge and falls of the island and he’s already thinking that he’s been here for what is pretty much five minutes and he was already going to die fuck he was so stupid-
And lands on the bottom of the island, standing upside down. He immediately looks left and right, hoping that none of the creatures heard him as he ran to hide behind one of the structures the floating island had.
Gravity here is weird, Mikey notes to himself as he bounces from island to island, floating mid air for a few seconds before reaching the next island. He falls down the first few times, but every area felt like it had its own orbit of gravity, letting him walk upside down and have more places to hide from the floating things and the Kraang. The con of that, unfortunately, was that if he goes way too far from the island he stood on, then he’d certainly fall for a long time before reaching another island. And, honestly, he wasn't in the mood to see how far he could fall before he died on impact.
Well, at least there were some pros to help balance out his fear of death.
The aliens here weren’t all so bad either. Some of them were somewhat friendly, floating past him as they giggled and tried to play with him, to which Mikey responded by trying to play with them, too. Some were hostile though, like the ones that could electrocute him if he found himself in their line of sight, and a huge one that screeched until his head hurt.
He barely made it to the next island when he noticed that there were crystal trees covering its ground. Mikey would have thought it was pretty neat until one of the branches snapped after another alien bumped into it. It blinked once, twice, thrice, and exploded right then and there. He didn’t even have time to react as the force of the explosion sent him flying out of the island along with the alien.
Seems like his new hobby is going to involve explosions and flying while he’s inside this dimension.
Mikey brought out his kusarigama chain and managed to get the it to wrap around a column-like structure on the island he was about to land on while the creature continued to fall, failing to reach the strange gravitational pull the islands had. Mikey shuddered at the thought of getting even more lost inside this dimension.
He doesn’t land gracefully, landing on his shell hard and cracking the floor beneath him . He groans before standing up again, and yelps as a shard nearly stabs him directly in the face, slicing his cheek instead. Mikey reaches up to touch his face and feels the wetness of blood on his face and realizes he had nothing to treat it. He sighs, and wipes it off until the bleeding stops by itself. If Donnie had seen him now, he would absolutely lose his mind over it and list infections he could get from open and unclean wounds.
Mikey shrugs. It’s not like he had disinfectants with him or whatever. Besides, it wasn’t that big. He’ll be alright.
Speaking of Donnie, Mikey wishes his brothers would already get here. He gets it, he shouldn’t have gone in without a warning, but he misses them already, even if he knows Raph would definitely kill him for this, Leo would give him the longest lecture in existence, and Donnie would be upset.
He begins to wonder if he’ll ever find Leatherhead, too. He didn’t have directions, he didn’t know where Leatherhead could even be in, he didn’t know anything about this dimension, he didn’t know anything at all. It’s only a matter of time before he gets killed here and all because he was so desperate to get to his friend.
Mikey doesn’t realize that he’s been spacing out the entire time until a laser nearly hits him and realizes who and where it came from.
‘The explosion must have brought them here.’ Mikey curses and he would have glared at the alien who bumped into the crystal if he didn’t feel bad for it, seeing as it’s hurtling to who knows where while Mikey was not hurtling to who knows where.
He turns around to see a few Kraang bots standing near him, guns at hand and aimed at his face. Everything here just really, really, wants to destroy his face, huh? Really can’t give a turtle a break, huh?
He readies his weapons once more, swinging his nunchucks and destroying the robots as fast as he could, but even with the speed he was going at, he realized that more and more were coming, and he was going to get buried in robots if he doesn’t get away now. He begins to run to the other side of the island, ready to jump and get the hell out of there, when a laser finally hits him.
He yelps and missteps, falling off the structure and being caught only because of Dimension X's messed up gravity rules. He sees that he is upside down and he winces in pain at the gash that is now on his shoulder, some blood already beginning to appear. He turns to see the Kraang begin to surround him.
“That which is known as turtle will come with Kraang.” He hears one of them say and he gives that one a glare, which apparently scared the Kraang enough to take a quick step back.
“Like hell I will.” He says, spitting at its face and beginning to spin his nunchucks around to fight again. Mikey wasn’t stupid though, he knew that he had no chance of defeating them now that there seemed to be even more than before. They probably called for some reinforcements.
He and his brothers were a big problem for these guys, and Mikey took pride in that. That didn’t matter right now though, because there is a gun pointed at him and is about to blast his brains out if he doesn’t move and right now being a big problem for these aliens was the exact reason they were hellbent on capturing him.
Mikey pauses for a split second, thinking that maybe if he gets captured, then maybe they’ll take him to where Leatherhead is, but he shakes that thought away immediately. Too risky, he tells himself, he’ll figure out how to get to him eventually.
He kicks the gun away, ignoring the sound of guns blasting and hitting his arms and legs and focuses on destroying them, wrapping his chain around a few and throwing them to the other side, stabbing them with the hidden blade of his nunchucks, smashing their heads in, grabbing their gun from their grasps and shooting them himself.
He keeps fighting, stalling them so he can figure out how to get out of here before he actually dies. Mikey curses. He wasn’t Donnie. He wasn’t a fast thinker and he didn’t see solutions the way Donnie did. He wasn’t as strong as Raph. Raph would have gotten himself out of this by now, and Leo would have gotten all of them out by now.
Mikey looks around, shoving away some of the robots to give himself space to run around and destroy them and just find a way out of here-
Mikey sees another one of those crystal “trees”, a ton of them across from him, and an idea pops into his head, even if it was rather risky. In one swift movement, he throws a nunchuck, and it hits his target.
The crystal “tree” shatters and he watches it blink, the sound of the Kraang immediately yelling for everyone to retreat. Mikey immediately starts running, and he hears the explosion before he can feel it.
He and the rest of the Kraang are sent flying and this time Mikey was just so tired. He was injured, he was tired from the fight, and he’s too weak to even try and reach for the nunchuck he threw to hit that crystal and he feels himself falling and falling and falling all over again and this is bad what if he doesn’t land somewhere and he gets killed and-
Mikey collides with another island shell first and even harder than he did not too long ago.
Mikey wonders how many fucking times he’s going to start flying here and just go smashing into random shit. That seemed to be some sort of running gag in his life right now.
He forces himself to move enough to make it to a sitting position, and he hisses from the pain he could feel from his wounds. Mikey unwraps some of his wrappings and tries to stop the bleeding with it, praying he doesn’t lose too much blood. If he doesn’t get help now, he was sure to be absolutely screwed.
He looks at his other wounds, some that would turn into scars after a while. His arm still had that gash and he hoped his wrappings would at least stop all that bleeding. There was a gash on his neck too close for comfort, too, and Mikey thanks whatever is up there for making sure his head is still on his shoulders.
He doesn’t realize how fast his breathing is until he reaches to touch his face to check for any new wounds and he realizes how fast his intake and outtake of air was. He sees his hands shaking, possibly from the adrenaline he felt, and the sudden tears falling from his face.
He…almost died, didn’t he? And this time, his brothers wouldn’t even know he did. He tries to slow his breathing down, like Donnie taught him when it came to something like this, and hugs himself, trying not to think too much of the fact that he was still exposed in the island.
Mikey doesn’t count how much time has passed (All he really had was his body clock anyway. Dimension X didn’t seem to have a concept of morning and night.) but he’s sure some time has passed by now, and that he was really tired.
He slowly stands up and sees that the island beside the one he was on has some sort of structure that looked like a small dome with an entrance he could fit into was there. He groans as he struggles to get enough speed to make it to the next island, and nearly misses it, choosing to cover himself as he rolled onto the surface, nearly deciding to just stay like that.
He crawls over to the dome, looks around to make sure the small area had nothing hidden in it that could get him killed, and finally lets himself sleep.
He was sure he was going to be in this dimension for a while, and deep down, he hopes his brothers come looking for him soon and that he finds Leatherhead soon enough.
Mikey looks around his surroundings and realizes that he’s at home inside the dojo. He wants to cry in relief, but he felt as if there was a weight on top of him, pushing him down so hard that he can barely move his legs forward.
He sees his brothers, their backs turned on him, and Mikey calls for them, ready for the possible lecture and ass kicking he was going to get from his brothers for disappearing for so long.
They don’t react and Mikey tilts his head in confusion. He thinks maybe they’re just trying to mess with him, so he laughs, walking closer to his brothers so he can get their attention.
They turn around. Mikey feels his stomach drop.
Blood. There’s so much blood. He can see blood dripping from their mouths, scars lining their arms and legs and bruises covering them and there is so much BLOOD.
“Mikey, where were you?” He sees Leo say, a sad expression on his face, and Mikey looks at him, confused.
“What are you-”
“You left us, Mikey.” Donnie says, and he looks furious, holding the orb Leatherhead used to contact them, “We-we went after you and we were so worried and-”
“Wait, Donnie, I don’t understa-”
“You let us fucking die.” Raph suddenly cuts in, and he looks even angrier than Donnie is, “Those Kraang droids inside the dimension KILLED us, and it’s all. Your. Fault.”
“If you hadn’t gone in, none of us would be in this mess.” Leo says, and this time, Mikey can see that he was so angry just like his other brothers.
“But-but I didn’t mean to let that happen! Leatherhead-he-I-we needed to go after him and you guys just wouldn’t listen to me-” Mikey stutters out, but he can feel so much guilt washing over him, and he wants to scream so loud.
Mikey hears the sound of Kraang droids walking up to him, but he doesn’t care anymore. He lets himself fall to his knees, closing his eyes, letting the weight that’s been pushing him down finally take over him.
If he let his brothers die because of this, then he deserves every single pain he feels and was about to feel.
He hears the laser guns load, and he hears it fire.
Mikey wakes up with a jolt, screaming and immediately slapping his mouth shut.
He looks around himself, feeling his harsh breathing on his hand, and tears starting to slip from behind his mask.
He wipes them away, and decides to leave the small dome. None of the aliens he saw before were appearing, and Mikey assumes they were probably asleep, meaning it might be “nighttime” for Dimension X.
‘Well, I got more time to chill before I gotta start moving again.’ Mikey says to himself. He turns around and away from the view of Dimension X, and pretends that he isn’t shaking.
Mikey estimates that about a week has passed since he had entered the dimension, and truth be told, Mikey was starting to hate how vast Dimension X is. He loved how in a game the world was so huge. There was so much to explore, so many new things to see, but here, it was huge, sure, but everything was the same. He couldn’t tell where point A starts and ends or if he even left it, not like how in New York he could distinguish point A from point B and point B from point C and so on and so forth.
He misses how small the lair was, too. As a mutant, and one he knew would never be accepted by the world above, Mikey had learned to enjoy the comfort of his home, even when he knew he and his brothers had yearned to see what it was like above the sewers back then. He could walk around the whole place with his eyes closed if he wanted to. His home gave off warmth that he would never experience anywhere else because his whole family was there, always waiting for him, always ready to let him back in even after a fight between any of them.
He even misses April and Casey, already recognizing those two as part of his family.
He misses everyone. He misses the way Leo could recite an episode of Space Heroes from heart, misses the way Donnie would happily talk about his latest invention with words that flew over Mikey’s head, misses the way Raph would laugh as he watched Mikey lose the game he was playing (even if Mikey knew Raph would definitely lose that level if he tried), misses his father.
Sometimes, he lets some memories play in his head. At least then he could hear his family and he wouldn’t be so alone inside this dimension.
He keeps wandering, holding a bug he found could work as a grappling hook and as a food source in hand, though he wasn’t sure how he even figured that out, all of it just making sense inside his head (or maybe he was just desperate), and hopes that it won’t be too long before he can go back home.
Another week passes, and Mikey learns just how sensitive Dimension X is to sound.
He passes by some crystals after looking around for an alien he could have sworn looked like some sort of cat passing by, making meowing noises as he continued walking. Mikey didn’t know just why he was following the alien, but he guessed it was because he was starting to feel lonely and badly wanted to have someone to be with while he was here.
Suddenly, Mikey heard something close to fluttering, and he turns his head to the crystals. He only notices now that there were small things stuck to the crystal and they looked like some sort of butterfly wing. A few of them were beginning to move, and some separated from the crystal altogether, floating over it.
Mikey suddenly felt himself becoming a little more curious than expected, and he walks over to it, slowly reaching out for the floating crystal and grabbing it once he was close enough to it.
He looks at the crystal on his hand, realizing that this could possibly function like the crystal trees but with much more smaller explosions. He turns to look back at the other crystals that stuck to the trees, refusing to move, and wonders why the rest didn’t move.
It hit him then. Was the noise he was making…the one that actually got them to move?
He carefully walks past the other crystal trees, and makes sure he’s close enough to the crystal before meowing again, and just like Mikey expected, the crystal began making fluttering noises, pulling itself out of the crystal tree as Mikey grabbed that one too.
A few minutes later, Mikey had gathered a handful of them and he placed them on his belt next to his breather. Alright, alright, Mikey says to himself, he’s onto something. He thinks of a name for them on the spot, Bang Rocks, and internally high fives himself for naming skills striking again.
He continues to explore, jumping farther and farther and landing a few islands closer to…what was he going closer to?
Mikey only saw a structure bigger than any of the structures he’s seen. It was some sort of tall building, a huge dome at the very top of it. There were two huge holes, and Mikey can only guess something huge was going to come out of it.
His suspicions were confirmed, when he saw two giants step out of the holes, recognizing one of them as the one Leatherhead had fought to save them (Traag, Mikey remembers it being called), and the other one as a complete opposite of the other, spitting ice instead of lava.
Mikey felt his fists clench in anger, and realizes that this is most likely where Leatherhead was being kept, seeing as it was far more protected than any other area he’s seen.
He lets his anger get the best of him, and hops directly onto that island, landing in front of the two rock giants.
’Granitor. ’ His mind immediately suggests upon seeing the one that breathed ice up close, and he would have given himself another internal high five if he wasn’t busy trying to prevent the two from crushing him on the spot he stood on. He tries to hit them at first, but immediately sees that his weapons are absolutely useless against those two, and quickly hurls the Bang Rocks on them, his theory working as they exploded and forced the two rock giants back.
After remembering what had happened with the Bang Rocks, an idea popped into his head and he began to throw more and more rocks until the giants reached the edge of the island. Quickly, he held his ground, took a deep breath, and screamed.
He screamed, and screamed, and screamed until his throat was sore, but he felt as if his voice was being split into more and more voices all screaming in unison. He felt the ground crack beneath him as he continued to scream, he saw the cracks made their way to where the rock giants were before the floor finally gave in under their combined weight, breaking and making them fall, the gravitational pull not fast enough to catch their heavy weight.
“Well,” Mikey said to himself, “I didn’t think that would work, but you know what? I’ll take it.”
He hears the sound of footsteps, hears the hum of energy a laser gun would make, and he realizes that he was definitely not getting Leatherhead out of there if he wanted to leave in one piece.
He turns around, a pool of guilt filling his gut as he felt that he was abandoning his friend, and runs away to the safety of another island.
Two weeks pass, and Mikey can tell that he’s already starting to get the hang of Dimension X.
He can move around freely now, using his Bang Rocks to distract oncoming aliens, making odd noises that allowed him to communicate with some of the other creatures, like this strange one who’s head had a small part of it that let out small noises before showing its full form (He named that one Rocktopus).
A few rocks, a kick, and some noises that disoriented the alien later, he sent it flying off to another part of the dimension.
He managed to make something like a costume for himself, too. After fighting off another fleet of Kraang that had come to capture him once more, he had let one of the creatures he recognized was a Kraathatrogon hit the robots, only realizing one of the robots was beside him when he let the blade of his kusarigama chain accidentally hit the Kraang inside it.
Mikey knew he should have felt bad for the poor Kraang that lay on his hands, should have cried maybe, should feel guilty over it. And yet, as Mikey wore its remains now, tentacles wrapping his arms and legs with its head as his own helmet, he couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad for these assholes. It scared some of the aliens inside the dimension and it scared some of the Kraang, too. Besides, he tried to convince himself, he needed it now, to survive, and to avoid getting eaten or just killed by the other aliens.
Some of the leather he had used to make an X on his chest came from a mysterious alien. It looked like a Kraathatrogon, but slightly more humanoid, and Mikey could see its sharp claws and its multiple eyes from far away. It was eating something, and Mikey could see it was the remains of what looked like a backpack.
Mikey had stolen it from the alien a little while later, leaving the thing howling and chasing after him before giving up eons later. He used the backpack’s long straps as some sort of thing he could use to wrap around his chest, small pockets that he could use to keep extra Bang Rocks lining the straps.
Of course, the thing tore at some parts since Mikey had to force it around him for it to fit and, together with his slightly different build and shell, that made it a lot harder.
Mikey lets himself relax on one of the higher areas of the island he was currently in, watching the aliens and bits of broken robots and laser guns float past him when they didn’t bump into the other islands. It was…kind of soothing, actually, especially since he now knew a lot about Dimension X by heart.
It’s probably been one month already, Mikey tells himself, and frankly he’s surprised he was already this used to the dimension. It felt unnaturally fast, and Mikey, while still proud of himself, wondered why it was so much easy for him to understand Dimension X in its entirety while still taking forever to get anything in Ninjutsu. He was so slow when he came to that, and Mikey pushes down his thought of self doubt before they can get any worse. He didn’t need any of that shit now. The self doubt is in the future but the Dimension X thing is now.
“In crazy backwards land,” Mikey tells himself, raising up one of the grappling hook bugs he had found to the air, “Crazy backwards dude is king.” He concludes, and squeezes the bug to get something to eat for the day.
Another month passes, and Mikey starts to lose hope that his brothers were even looking for him, and he hates himself for feeling that.
By now, Mikey has dealt with more than a dozen attempts on his life, and he had the wounds to prove it. And by now, Mikey has made more than a dozen attempts to rescue Leatherhead, each allowing him to further explore the area before more than a hundred Kraang droids attempt to blast his head off his shoulders, and, had Mikey not have the ability to hide his head into his shell, would have truly happened.
He staggers to his feet as he stares at the island he was in a few days ago, watching the blown up bits begin to float out of the boundaries of it and falling into the nothingness below.
He had tricked some of the Kraang after they shot him and had gotten them to stand on that island before he destroyed the crystal trees below it, possibly killing some of them and giving him more time to hide somewhere else. Back then, he had nearly died, but now he moved with ease, slipping past them before he could get hurt and avoiding any shards that came after.
As much as he loved being in this dimension because, sure, he wanted to save Leatherhead and here he was the genius and no one can say anything about it because they’re not the one who’s survived being in here for two months so they can shut the hell up- he was really starting to miss his room inside the lair. At least there would be nothing there to hurt him, save for himself when he falls off of his bed in the morning.
He’s also began to become even more concerned with his family, frustrated by how he didn’t know anything that was happening outside the dimension. Were his brothers okay? Who made breakfast for them? Was their father worried for him? Did any of them know if he was still alive? Did…did they give up on him?
No. No, they wouldn’t do that, would they? They promised that they would always be there for each other, and they would always make sure the other was okay, so where were they-
He needs to be patient, Mikey tries to remind himself, this dimension is so huge, so vast, so unforgiving when it came to knowing the difference between point A and point B.
Or maybe they just didn’t care? Maybe they decided to leave him there as some sort of punishment for scaring them and maybe they thought he could get Leatherhead alone. Mikey keeps shaking his head because he knows knows knows his brothers wouldn’t do that to him. He…he knows they wouldn’t. Or was that what he wanted to believe?
He tries to ignore those thoughts and focus on getting Leatherhead back home, but it makes him even more worried for the mutant. What if he thought they weren’t coming for him? What if he was so, so hurt? What if Mikey wasn’t able to get here on time and now Leatherhead is-
Mikey slaps himself before he can finish his own question and grabs his head.
He can’t do this again. He did this during the first few days he was here already and he just can’t do it again.
He puts both hands on his face and takes a few minutes to just breathe.
A few minutes later, he stands up again, makes sure none of the Kraang followed him if they even bothered too, and lets himself think of the music he played on the T-pod to pass the time as he ignored the throb of new wounds. He was starting to get used to that feeling anyway.
Another month passes. Mikey doesn’t (does) think about it.
Another month. Mikey was already starting to lose count of the passing days.
Another month. Mikey feels like the vastness of Dimension X Is getting to him and he screams for a while and watches some of the structures come falling down around him. He doesn’t stop screaming as he watches them fall and destroy other structures around him, doesn't stop as debris brings more scars, doesn't stop because he doesn't care and he's angry.
Then, he lays down, and sleeps, and dreams of tea and home.
Six months in, and Mikey can’t believe his eyes.
He almost wants to scream again, but this time out of pure happiness that he felt at the moment. He could recognize those masks and those weapons anywhere.
His brothers are standing on one of the islands, looking at Dimension X with the same awe Mikey had the first time he had gone in. That made him wonder. Did they really just get in here the first time, too? What stopped them from going in this whole time?
He tries to get to them as fast as possible, seeing as he was a couple islands far away, and he can’t help but laugh as he could already tell that Donnie was flipping his shit over how different the place was.
Before he can even get to them though, they’re already hopping from place to place, and Mikey has to speed up because he doesn’t want to lose them and he wasn’t ready to lose sight of them and go and be alone again. He’s had enough alone time to last a thousand years.
He feels bad, though, as he watches them bump into the exploding crystals and nearly get themselves killed. If he was fast enough, he could have warned them about it just before it became too late. They don’t seem to fully understand the dimension, too, but Mikey doesn’t mind. He had months, they had ten minutes.
Finally, when he does reach them, he has to save them from one of the Rocktopus that Leo tried to mess with, much to Raph’s dismay.
He saves them from it, using the noises he knew disoriented the alien and letting it fall off the island.
His brothers run up to him, concern and shock on their faces, and Mikey feels a part of himself feel bad for thinking his brothers wouldn’t even try to go after him and hopes they ignore the healed nicks and cuts and gashes that covered his body.
“Well, what took you guys so long?” Mikey asks, crossing his arms, and he can’t hide some of the accusation that they somehow left him (even if he knows it’s not true. It’s not true-) in his voice, but they don’t seem to notice it anyway, “I’ve been here for months.”
“Months?” Leo asks and Mikey wonders why he sounds so confused.
“Or maybe a few hours. I don’t have a watch.” Mikey quickly says, saying it more in a joking way because he knows for a fact he’s been here longer than that and he didn't want his brothers to feel bad for leaving him for that long. That would be pretty heavy on them if they let it bother them.
“But we went through the portal like fifteen seconds behind you!” Raph responds, and he almost sounds angry because of that. Mikey looks at him unconvinced.
“Obviously, time passes faster here than our own dimension. There’s a temporal differential.” Donnie says, and Mikey wants to tell him it wasn’t really obvious to him because fuck he's been so worried and maybe a little angry because he thought his brothers had left him or that they were hurt and Mikey wouldn't even know and they don't even know just how worried he was Donnie I thought you were dead-but he keeps that to himself, telling Donnie that he loves tempura instead and watches as his brother sighs.
Mikey yelps as he sees the Rocktopus climbing back up, about to mess with them again, and he makes another noise he knew it knew as a big “Fuck off”. It makes another noise, almost as if complaining and telling Mikey to fuck off as well before going away.
“Wait, how did you-” Donnie is about to ask him, but Mikey immediately cuts him off.
“Let’s get moving! That thing is gonna keep coming back and we gotta rescue Leatherhead!” He says, new conviction in his voice now that he knew his brothers were going to be okay and so was he and he finally had a chance.
A few minutes later and Mikey is able to show them how some things work in Dimension X, commenting that they seemed so obvious to him, which was true anyway, and Raph calls him a genius. Mikey has never felt so happy hearing that.
Some time later, they finally make it to the place he knew Leatherhead was in, and even when he tells them he can handle the new Traag and Granitor (Wow, he sure didn’t know what happened to the old ones.) on guard, his brothers ignore him, and it nearly costs them Leo’s life.
He wants to scold his brothers, but he decides that they didn’t need that right now.
They enter the facility, and Mikey is unfazed as he watches the Kraang mutate a tree. He’s seen it happen before, during one of the times he had managed to get inside the facility without getting a hundred Kraang droids thrown at him, but his brothers seem far more worried about it than him.
Finally, they make it to Leatherhead, and Mikey wants to cry in relief once he sees his friend, fussing over him the moment he saw him.
He gets crushed under his huge weight once Donnie gets the shackles off, but that doesn’t stop him from being worried about his friend.
Leatherhead thanks them and Mikey sees he’s gotten so much older since they last saw each other. Mikey’s gut twists even more when Leatherhead says he’s been trapped here for decades. He tries to wave that feeling off, and enjoys the fact that his friend is alive.
A little while after that, and Mikey can’t believe that they can already go home.
He had opened the portal himself, but he still couldn’t believe it. Months and months of being stuck here and just plain agony whenever he got hurt and having to deal with his own feelings and concerns…and now he can just go. Like nothing ever happened.
He kicks Leatherhead into the portal because they are not leaving him again. He sees his brothers hop in, too.
He turns back to look at the room they were all in and he has a sinking feeling in his gut as he realizes that once he goes back to Earth he’d pretty much be back to you-fuck-everything-up-Michelangelo. He can hear a small part of him saying he should stay so he can always be considered smart for once, but another tells him that he’s finished what he’s started and it's time to get the hell out of here. Besides, his father is there, waiting for him, and Mikey didn't want to break his heart.
“Welp…” He says, letting genuine sadness show through his voice now that he was alone, “Goodbye being smart.”
He feels himself hesitate for a moment, but he jumps through the closing portal, taking one hot second to grab a crystal from the tree that hung above them the whole fight using the grappling hook bug and tightly clutching in his hands, knowing well that that whole facility was going to explode and he got a power source for Donnie.
He still feels sad as he leaves the dimension, admitting to himself that he was going to miss having compliments be given to him just like that and he was worried that no matter what he does, the Kraang are still after them and he can only hold them back for so long before they could hurt him, his family, and his friends all over again, but as the portal closes and he takes a deep breath, Mikey feels relief as he falls and holds onto the building below him, looking forward to going home to his brothers and father.