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After the end, time splits down the middle: Before and After. This is Before—Day -199 or thereabouts—and they're gathered around the world's last instant ramen bowl in the morning light like it's a fallen comrade.
Mikey shouts, "Someone get water!" and they know he means the good kind, the bottled one, because when the Kraang first made their nest they’d dried up the river. Only the reservoir was left.
Raph starts a fire and puts their last 16.9 oz Aquafina water bottle to a boil. Donnie collects: forest mushrooms, chives, a daikon radish, a migraine, and an egg that Leo puts directly under the sun to scope for rot. It looks like an old one, but Mikey will make it work; he always makes things work. In goes the hot water. The scent of umami blooms around them, warm and giving, and the knot of noodles unfurls into ribbons. Leo wants to be able to transform like that: just add water. Instead, he goes around to distribute breakfast, because he's old enough to know some things are meant to stay wishes.
On Day -200, Donnie floats the idea of time travel. Imagine, Donnie says, burst blood vessels in the white of his left eye. What would you do if you could go back in time?
Mikey perches his chin on Donnie's shoulder and says, Get you to sleep more, Donathan.
Yeah, your growth's kind of seriously stunted, Raph agrees. Cassandra throws her freshly buzzed head back and howls. They share the same rugged grin, and both their left arms are broken in the same two places. Leo shivers in the draft the makeshift tent allows; they're morphing into the same person.
April fixes her own splint. I don't know, maybe tell my manager to suck it?
Ooh, good one, Raph says. Maybe I'll order more of those pizza biancas. Step out of my wheelhouse, you know?
If I were to go back in time, Splinter chimes in quietly, I would remind myself of what is most important.
The room goes mum. Then Donnie groans, begging them all to think bigger, people. Leo wishes his past self hoarded more sodium beef ramen bowls instead of that last sad shrimp bowl, because really? Shrimp? Now there's a tragedy.
It is not the first time Donnie brings up time travel. The first time, in fact, happens on Day -455, and they're shooting threes in the dead of night, human disguises pulled to a T. The Kraang are not yet here. The world is still beautiful, and Leo's brothers are alive. Raph grunts past April's reach for a pull-up step before going in for a sweet, sweet jump shot that has Leo crooning in two languages. By the bleachers, Donnie folds two points together on a napkin to explain the mechanics of tesseract time travel.
I think got it! Mikey lies. Donnie heaves a sigh, and will never know just how much his baby brother will, in fact, get it, years later, unlocking gates like unsnarling shoelaces.
The basketball thunks to the ground and spins wildly out of orbit. Time jerks forward. It is Day -13, a day for intense uphill cardio. Leo knows they only stand a chance against the Kraang together—stacking their mystic signatures around each other like fortified Matryoshka dolls—but then a stupid fight tips the harmony, and their shield breaks. They're fleeing on foot for the rest of the day.
Leo is too busy thinking about countermeasures, ground formations, wondering what Splinter would've done, that he doesn't notice Raph fall back to buy them time. When he turns, the sky blisters red. The blast is so absolute it scorches even sound, and then Leo is stutter-stepping through the divide into the new world.
Welcome to Day 1.
Time resets, and Raph is gone from here on out. They've only just finished preparing his ashes when Donnie brings up time travel again, and Leo slugs him across the face. Donnie's head cracks to the side; his lip is split badly in a way Leo knows will scar. Casey whimpers in his cot. Something in Leo's chest rapidly loses altitude.
He won't forget the look on Mikey's face as Leo shoulders past him, feeling brittle to the core, and all of a sudden he's ten years old again, misunderstood, trudging past the main storm drain to pull a prodigal son. It is Day -4015. Or Day -4016. Leo's not so sure; the fine details blur. Most of his childhood boggles him now, but the cold, dizzying tangle of the sewers beyond home still crawls behind his eyes. He imagines making a life here. He imagines his family, laughing without him, and his riotous heart thuds deafeningly in his chest like a small drum. He marches on.
And then Leo hears it—a voice singing. It wafts towards him, and just like that, he's found. Splinter carries him home all the way, singing a halting lullaby only Leo can hear. Says, sometimes I get lost too. His brothers crowd the entrance to welcome him, but it's Donnie that Leo remembers most: his face wrinkled like a raisin, ruddy with tears as he knocks their foreheads together in an entirely uncharacteristic way before rearing back to swat Leo on the chest.
If you ever do that again—Donnie cries, never finishes his sentence.
Or else what, Leo mumbles back, but now it's Day 4238. Donnie's in the Technodrome. Donnie's in the Technodrome, without Leo's permission. I'll be in and out, Donnie promises through the comms, to a steady backdrop of Mikey cussing him to hell and back and April's threats to mess with all of Donnie's shiny new tech if he doesn't get his shell out of there right fucking now, Donnie, nobody got time for this.
But time is all they have. Five minutes, to be precise. Leo knows what is about to happen in the next few minutes, because Leo was there when Donnie put the plan together. Donnie, always with the questions. What would you do if the Kraang couldn't fry your mystic powers?
I don't know. Leo twirled his sword lazily. Win?
I mean, theoretically—yes. But think smaller.
You always said to think big—
I know, but let's be realistic here. Humor me. If you had an hour—no. Thirty minutes. Ten.
Five, Leo amended, mirroring the reckless look in Donnie's eye. You said be realistic, right? I'll fuck all their shit up. I can do that in five.
Leo imagines Donnie wearing the same crazed, full-toothed grin through the comms, as Donnie announces the bioweapon disabling the Kraang's central unit is on the way. Mid-sprint, Leo looks up. Kraang battleships darken the sky like a fulminating storm.
Then, one by one, they start to fall.
Donnie rasps, you dumdums better make these five minutes count, because if I have to touch any more of this alien goop—and never finishes his sentence. Static detonates through the earpiece and flatlines.
Five minutes, Leo thinks, wild with grief. Mystic energy plinks behind his ears. Then: a waterfall. Donnie did it. Somewhere, Mikey is already baptizing the ground with fundo-fire, eyes wild and unseeing. Leo closes his eyes. Lets his swords lengthen the distance of his loss. How it goes on and on. And then he swings. Hulls split. The Kraang sing as they go down with their ship. Day 4238 kindles until it blackens in its grave.
And then it is Day 4239.
The sun is out. Blue for miles.
On Day 4240, cirrus clouds roll over the canyon.
Day 4241. Mikey disappears. Leo chases him—all the way to Day 4260, when it's clear Leo has lost another brother, too. Mikey's back never turns. Leo stands and hopes anyway. They part ways under a moon so brittle it is a gnawed-off bone.
On Day 4265, the base warms with summer.
On Day 4269, Leo learns the delicate art of becoming a fixture.
Day 4270. April sits beside him. Says nothing.
Day 4281. Leo threads a purple bandana through his sword’s grip tape.
Day 4282. Casey's first word is, to no one's surprise, Weo. Leo throws the kid in the air until he gurgles with laughter, says, there's our little late bloomer. Three years is a long time to go without words. Leo is so sure his heart will give out until Mikey returns on Day 4373 with a new cloak etched with spells.
Mikey pulls off his hood. Spar with me, he says.
This is not his brother, but the flickering shadow a flame throws on the wall, shapeshifting at every turn. Leo is glad to get it all out. He gets to be a monster out here, so Casey doesn't have to see this part of him.
Blow by blow, Mikey meets him. No matter how much the world changes Mikey will always be eight years old around the eyes, but there's a new weight in them today, and Leo hates Draxum for putting it there, hates him so much his teeth gnash and his focus slips.
Wrong move.
Leo’s blade snaps at the combined force of Mikey's chain-knot and twangs into the crags below. Now they're fist-fighting—no weapons, only breath and bone and the mystic blood-flood that gathers in the gut like a dangerous tide. Time wavers; Day -3801’s Splinter shooes his rowdy children off the sparring mat. Aggressive behavior in the dojo will not be tolerated—
Leo snaps to attention as Mikey's knuckles catch the corner of his face. Leo's lip bursts. It’s Day 1 again; time won’t stand still, and Mikey glares at Leo while Donnie's lip free-bleeds. Donnie's mouth is moving through the words time travel, and Raph is gone. Donnie’s cheeks are bright with tears. Leo doesn't remember that part.
Huh.
A silver hair catches the light and snatches Leo back to the present. Leo dreads the worst. Mikey, he tries, but something in Mikey's face closes up, and he kicks Leo with both feet into the sun-razed distance. Leo can't move when he tries to get up; his foot is stuck. And then he sees it: a thousand interlocking chains, mooring his ankle. Mikey's tracing the last of his spiderwork-spell into the air when Leo turns back and can’t help the laugh that brays out of him. Their baby brother, all grown up. Their baby brother, brilliant. Dying. Mikey's grin is a gash.
On Day 4376, Mikey leaves again. Leo lets him. It takes all of his bones and then some.
On Day 4377, Leo tries making miso soup. It's delicious.
Day 4377. Crickets thicken the night. An anthill grows on the side of the base.
Day 4380. Fifteen new recruits—all previously farmers—join the resistance and develop a stutter when Leo walks by. Later, Commander April asks him if he can try not to scare the rookies too much, yeah? Leo practices his smile in the mirror. Casey pulls his cheeks back and says, yeah, just like that!
On Day 4389, Leo wanders the base and accidentally locks himself inside one of the storerooms. This is ridiculous. Donnie left them a lair so smart, but Leo can't even open the emergency hatch. Leo needs Donnie here, so Donnie can explain things to him. He kicks and punches and dents the sliding door. Out of nowhere an AI voice comes chiming in with a, do you need any assistance?—and it’s Donnie’s voice under the tone, unbearably young—and Leo's heart freezes, full stop. He doesn’t remember how he gets out. Maybe he uses a portal. Maybe he talks not-Donnie’s ear off until the lair kicks him out once and for all.
Day 4410. Day 4422. Day 4433. Day 4444. The days keep unraveling, but Leo's heart is a gramophone stuck in a groove. It's an old beat he keeps dancing to, and he has bad knees. Funny, that. Once upon a time, Day -4849, he and Donnie win a dance competition and—scratch. Backtrack. Leo can’t keep doing this. It is Day 4467, he is here and nowhere else. Casey wants to go see the canyons. Sure, they can see the canyons.
They leave before sunset. Casey hangs off Leo's back, his feet in the grooves of his shell and knapsack. Leo wishes he brought something for the kid, like candy—scratch. It's Day -5600. Splinter drops a milk candy into Leo's hand like a pearl, says, for my good son. Leo aches like a cavity.
Casey is quiet. Earlier, the kid was screaming bloody murder, cooped up for too long in the base. Now his tiny body is vibrating like a bottled rocket, incapable of holding more than one emotion at once, and Leo wonders what that's like. Leo is everything at once; both thirteen and thirty-four, here and nowhere. He needs to focus, or they'll slip. It's a long trek. The sun splinters behind wind-battered crags. Tomorrow, Leo thinks he might leave the resistance, tell April he's been thinking of pulling a Mikey and maybe then things will finally be better without him in the picture. Tomorrow. He just has to hang on til tomorrow. Day 4468.
But Day 4467 lingers, refusing to skip to the next beat. An hour passes, and finally the ground levels. Leo finds a spot to rest and lets Casey poke around the ruins. The kid returns sometime later, calling Leo, Leo! and in his hands is an old rotor. Scratch; Day -5495, Donnie shows him a spark plug. His glasses keep sliding down his face, and Leo keeps pretending to be fascinated with all the strange things Donnie keeps bringing—Backtrack. Leo shakes it off. Casey brings him more things: an old stopwatch, a bottle cap, a small plastic dolphin that might've been part of a baby mobile once—and then the kid starts to hum a lullaby.
Leo's stomach drops.
"Where did you learn that?" he says, he's shaking, he's ten years old and lost in the sewers, he's a stupid punk who left home and can't even silence the way his heart ricochets, a desperate chant going find me find me oh please, someone find me
Casey shrugs. “I don't know! Somebody sang it to me, I think!” Scratch. Day -54, Raph rocks a swaddled Casey side to side, humming a strange, lilting tune. He catches Leo's gaze by the doorway and grins as if to say, know this song? Of course Leo knows this song. It's stitched into folds of his own brain. Backtrack. Casey drags him to the edge where the ground plummets into deep cascading valleys, where sunlight pools and stretches. Casey throws his song into the air, and the canyon catches it, throws it back. His voice breaks, and he giggles, embarrassed, tries again. Leo tries again. He was so afraid he'd forgotten, but it's been playing all this time; their voices echoing through that long dark journey, climbing the wind to find them here, the past singing back; time travel.