Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

[Alt title by Azure Witch: Red, Rage and Raph meeting mama]

–❤️–

“They say ta keep yer friends close and yer enemies closer, but whateve’ schmuck started toting that line around aint never met my enemies. From dimension hopping demons to dragons to genius zombies and the secret service. A’ can't think of any of my enemies I’d want in the same continent as me. 

Though standing in the middle of some gladiator battle arena staring down something called kraken tom, A’ was really missing my enemies at that moment. Thing was fast, strong, and angrier than well… me.” 

It had been a normal night, but then again, when you’re a Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtle, normal ain’t exactly well… normal. Trouble is always hiding in the next corner, and boy could Raphael tell you stories. As he and his siblings were playing a game of Ninja tag, each of them had fallen through a portal. The next thing Raph knew he was falling down what seemed to be a gladiator arena with monsters. The crowd around him had a moment to gasp, surprised by the new appearance of the turtle, but that didn’t exactly stop the arena fight from happening, and from other fighters turning on him too, so Raph did what he did best. And with three fighters on the ground and one angry strange looking Kraken staring him down with his tentacles flailing around trying to hit him or destroy the arena, all Raph could think was one word really. “Shell.” 

Raph dodged and weaved through the tendrils, stabbing at the ones that got too close only to wince at how his weapons glanced off with every hit, thing just had to be fast too, smacking at Raph like he was an angry fly against a fly swatter machine or something like it. He let out a quick “Aw shell!” When a stream of fire almost singes the edges of his mask. Struggling to weave through tendrils as they fly back to smack him and his blood pressure rising with each almost hit. Mikey wouldn't be having this problem, the slippery little bastard, or Donnie with how he weaves around with his bo. Leo would have probably cut through the damn things with his katanas already and stabbed the beast in its stupid rotten eyes, why was Raph struggling so much to just get this fight over with? He could do better! 

His foot slips and he finds himself slammed into the other side of the arena, making a small crater where he landed before he peeled himself off the wall, cracking his back best he could with his shell before getting back into a defensive position, jaw clenched tightly as he glared up at the bug eyed pain in Raph's shell. How was he supposed to take the damn thing down? He’d been stabbing at it for what felt like hours!

Then again, Raph got the same feeling whenever him and Mikey were sparring, shell for brains seemed to think it was his solemn duty to annoy the crap outta Raph as much as possible when they were duking it out, and the worst part was he always won! No matter that Raph trained harder, no matter that he was strong as Leo who tossed Mikey around like a newborn baby. Somehow, someway, he always ended up on his shell blood pressure through the roof. 

No, no he couldn't afford to land shell first on the pavement, his siblings were probably in worse situations and he couldn't save their shells if they were dead. He honestly just hoped none of them were in the cretaceous period again, or too far away from wherever the shell he managed to land. Him Leo and Mickey had exchanged stories of where Ultimate Drako had landed them, all things considered he and Leo were let off easy when Mickey had to see Master Splinter being a mad man and Don going through a horrible future where all of them had died before his eyes to kill the Shredder. Don had had a lot of nightmares about that for months, the four of them -Mickey, Leo, himself and Master Splinter- took turns comforting him when the nightmares reared their ugly heads. When that happened  the next day Don would try to forget it by spending his time with one of his siblings, on days like those he never went to his lab.

Raphael shook his head, he didn't have time to be thinking about those kinda stuff. He  had to find a way to cut through that hide of the kraken or whatever it was. He glanced down at some of the cronies he conked out earlier, specifically their weapons and shrugged to himself. ‘Well I ain't got nothin ta lose.’ he thought before snatching up the weapons they had and started testing them against the kraken. 

First he grabbed an ax that shattered under the force he put in under when he slammed it into the nearest tendril, barely leaving a scratch before he moved onto another weapon, a spear that was about as useful as the ax even if it cut deeper. His heart raced as he kept tossing anything he can find at the thing looking for a way out or for it to slow down, panic fueling his fury as he dodges another round of tendrils lashing out at him. 

He was gonna die, he was gonna die and Mikey was gonna rub it in his face in the afterlife that he died to some dumb looking sack of tendrils in a nowhere arena in some nowhere dimension when everything else that got thrown at them rarely made a niche in his shell. He was going to die and never hear the end of it from Casey's ghost, or the annoyance in Leo’s tone when he gets all disappointed in him, or Donnie complaining about how he should have seen it coming because he was always the reckless jerk who didn't know when to quit. 

No, no no no he knew what was happening, it was just like when Mikey got in his head he was losing it, he had to calm the shell down and think. Where hasn't he hit it yet? What else did he get to work with? ‘Come on come on, think Raphael! This ain’t gonna just be solved by brute force for once. You got him in the big tendrils and the close to the body tendrils and nicked it in the armored head and it just ate the hammer you tossed at it. Even gave ya the that all ya got look smug frikken fish- wait! That's it! The eyes!’ Raph’s mind screamed, he grabbed his Sais again and began to run, dodging the fast tendrils, jumping over one of them and began to run closer, spinning his Sais in his hands he jumped up and aimed them at the Krakken before sending them with frightening accuracy to the monster’s eyes. The monster gave a blood curdling  scream as Raph’s Sais hit the bullseye, and it went down. 

Raphael panted as he walked closer to grab his Sais, spinning them around in his hands before tucking them back on his belt. The crowd around him were yelling, cheating and gearing, but Raphael couldn’t care less. Kicking himself over the fact he didn't think of doing that sooner ‘Shell Mickey probably would have. ’ Raph heaved a sigh and shook his head as if to wake up, he should focus on getting out, not get in his own head like usual. He thought that he was getting better damn it, when did he start thinking like that? Actively thinking like that?

The giant doors behind him creaked open and Raphael turned towards them quickly.  Four thugs in butler suits stepped out of the door tossing down a red carpet. Raphael stood there confused for a minute before a lady in a fluffy tailored coat with the pinkest skin he’d seen on someone supposedly human appeared being carried by two more oversized thugs in butler suits, the look on her face screaming at him with the same level of hostility as Donnie wearing a big bright smile with a hand on Raphs shoulder after Raph accidentally smashed a hole straight through Donnie's newest pet project giving him another all nighters worth of work. Ergo not friendly in the slightest, and entirely suspicious. 

“Well hello there my turtely-boo, you seem to have really stolen tonight’s shindig with your surprise entrance.” she cooed, tone sweet as honey mixed with sugar sticks.

“Yer the one in charge here I take it? Good,” Raph said, his tone hard, he wasn’t in the mood for any nonsense. “Then you might be able to shed some light on mah situation here. First, where the shell am I?! And Where are my siblings?!”

“Why, you’re in my battle nexus Reddy Roo, at the center of the hidden city. Though I don't know anything about any other Turtley-boos making quite as grand an entrance as this one. Come, why don't you and me talk over a little tea and scrumdidilyicolous desserts. “ 

Raph’s eyes narrowed at her, he looked around the arena, it didn’t look anything like the battle nexus he was familiar with, more the like Triceratons’ gladiator arena, not to mention he had no idea what the shell a “Hidden City” was. So his best option was to play along until he could find an exit. “A could eat,” he replied to the woman. “My name’s Raphael.” 

“Rapheal, ooh what a unique name. I am called Big Mama around these parts. Big mama’s a bit of the bee’s knees in the hidden city so I’m a little like the city’s ma. I take care of all the little issues the heads can't. Anyhoo! Let's get going Raphy roo!” She cooed before she was carried away by her butlers, Raph’s eye twitched at the nickname but he grit his teeth and stomped after her, counting to ten in his head repeatedly to keep his cool. 

 Raphael followed her outside of the arena, but never let his guard down, his ninja training honing in on everyone around him, the movements from the corner of his eyes in case of any inevitable double-cross, his hands started ready by his belt, placed there casually. “So, what exactly is a hidden city? What planet am I on, or dimension or wha’ ever I’m in this time?

“Hmm, You’re on earth silly, right under a place called New York City. The Hidden City is a place for Yokai like us to wander around away hidden from humans and whatever else that goes up on the surface. Honestly a noisy place not really big mamas style. I prefer to keep a low profile. So turtle boo, considering you didn’t know about the hidden city, I take it that you’re one of those what people up top have been calling mutants? How long have ya been like that?” 

“All ma life,” Raphael replied.

“Well my goodness. A mutant all your life? Wherever did you live before this if you weren't in the safety of the hidden city?,” Big Mama said with a sickeningly concerned tone. . 

“Lived with my siblings in the sewers.” Raph replied.

“Just you and your siblings all out on your own in the cruel harsh human world? No one to help you? I can't even imagine that. Humans can be such cruel creatures to those they don't understand. It must have been a hard life for you Turtely boos.” 

“We did just fine, and besides I'm pretty sure this ain’t even my dimension,” Raph replied with a shrug.

“Oh, why do you say that?” Big Mama asked, placing a finger on her chin and tilting her head in curiosity. 

“Cause the only hidden city my siblings and I ever went into was Atlantis, sides, things all around just seems… different.” 

“Atlantis? Oh ain't that the vacation destination! One of the more relaxing hidden cities you’ll even find yourself in.” 

“Not where a came from.” 

“Such a shame, well no reason you can't take a visit there while you’re visiting, Mama’s got a small business or two she’s got set up there you could help mama with while you relax under the waves hm?”

Raphael shook his head. “I gotta find my siblings, the four of us don’t like being separated for long, ‘specially when we don’t know where the other is." 

“Ah, right. Well, tell you what, why don't you tell mama about your missing bale-y boo and she can see if she can hear anything through the old grape vines about some lost looking turtles. What are they like?”

“Three of them, they look like me more or less, just different colors and different masks. Not sure how well ya'll be able ta find anythin' about 'em. If they ain’t fighting something they know how ta hide, we’re trained ninja, we stick to the shadows.” 

Raph almost missed it, but for the briefest of moments Big Mama’s gaze grew sharper, her eyes colder as one twitched before the saintly old lady act came back with a vengeance. “You don’t say? Hmm, finding several ninja brothers will be quite the challenge. Even for someone like myself, it might take me a little bit to find any news.” 

“Yeah we don’t exactly make ourselves easy ta find, it's why Don usually places tracking devices on us but, he says he ain’t sure if the trackers will work in different dimension, he never got to test it before.” 

“Sounds a little paranoid, huh?” Big Mama hummed, sipping her tea.

“Ya kidding? With how many times we lost our Sensei or went ta different timelines or something? We all agreed ta it.” 

“I see, what about the other two?” Bi Mama questioned, wanting to needle as much information as she could.

“Fearless Leader’s always on the lookout for ways to help everyone when we get our shells into this sorta thing. He’ll try ta look for our usual places ta hide and regroup, we have some of those but with whatever this New York is gonna be that might take forever.”

“I see, and what about the last one?”

“Mikey’s a complete goofball, but he can take care of himself too, he usually has some luck in these situations. He’ll probably be hunting down the local super heroes for autographs knowing him, or lookin' for food.”

Big Mama chuckled a little at that. “Sounds like a rambunctious young scamp. Must be hard to look out for so many younger brothers.” 

Raph looked at her strangely, eyes narrowing at her. 

“Did I say something wrong?” Big Mama asked innocently. 

“They ain’t my younger brothers, not all. What made ya think that?” Raph questioned her.

“Oh silly me, you just seemed so worried for them. I thought you were used to having to look after them.” 

“I’m the second oldest,” Raph replied. 

“I see, then  ‘Fearless Leader’ is the oldest? I can only imagine getting to Leonardo's head. Leader and oldest. What a world you come from Raphie taffy,” she said with a small snort, leaning back in her chair and shaking her head slightly.  

“Oh yeah, you bet, he's a pain in my shell 24\7,” Raphael replied, His hands squeezing his knees hard under the table, pulsing picking up, ready to spring into action in a split second. He never told her Leo’s name, never hinted at it, so the fact that she knew it means one of two things, either she has met his Leonardo, or she already knew about four other ninja turtles in this dimension. Another set of brothers belonging to this world.

“Anyhoo, it’s been a rather long day for you hasn't it? Why don't you stay a day in my nexus hotel? Freshen up a bit before starting the chase? Hm?”

“Uh, no thanks. I gotta head out as soon as possible. Thanks for the tea though lady.” 

Big Mama paused, giving Raphael the once over before a sharp smile slowly crawled up her face as she leaned on her hands, elbows on the table. “Hmm, what gave me away?”

Raph gave a snort. “Never told ya Leo’s name.” 

“Oh fiddlesticks. Nardy wardys going to snark at me over such a teensy slip up till the end of his days. Ah well, Big Mama can't help having favorites.” 

“Of course he’s the favorite,” Raph murmured rolling his eyes. “Whatever, I’m getting the shell outa here and finding my siblings.”

 Big Mama giggled before hitting her broach, in a swirl of purple light the old lady was gone, a giant eight legged spider from HELL taking her place. In the instant Raph stood there tensed up in shock she shot her webs around him, making him hit the floor with a grunt. His hands wrapped around his Sai tightly as he hit the floor, glaring up at her. ‘Don't lose it Raphael, wait for the right moment to strike.’

“Sorry Reddy Roo. Big Mama’s not in a hurry to have another reunion with her Turtely boos quite yet. Otherworldly or not. Besides, a business opportunity doesn't just fall into Big Mama’s web so easily these days.”

“What? Ya wanna make me yer gladiator champion in the battle Nexus or somethin?! 

“Battle nexus champion, personal assistant," She emphasized the options by raising each hand up. "Whichever I can get the tools for honestly. I should be able to find another one of those splendiferous little bobbles around here somewhere. If not I’ll just keep you tied up until I can find one.” 

“What the shell makes ya think I’ll go along with that lady?!” Raphael growled. 

“Oh that's the splendiferous thing about my little doo dads silly. You won't get the choice. Though if I happen to find one of your less troublesome brothers that might work as well as a bit of leverage. Depends on which of you fights better I suppose.” She giggled. A crowd of butlers gathering around her at some signal Raph didn't see. “Take him to one of the nicer dungeons. We wouldn't want my Cuddle Wopicous to think I’d treat one of his darling sons like a mere prisoner, hm? Keep an eye on him. These turtles can be widdedly tricksy. And this one is just a bit different from the lovable brute I know, and it’s not just the darling accent he seems to have.” 

Raph’s eyes narrowed at her as he was grabbed by the butlers and got hauled off to the prisons. Well, it wasn’t the first prison Raph was held in, him and his brothers had escaped many places before, and this won’t be any different, he used his Sais to to cut enough of the web to get his hands more free reign but not enough to cut all the web, to make it easier to steal anything he would need and start his newest prison break.

He took stock of the room, staring blankly all around him for a minute as he took in the fancy pants decorations dotting the place. Little decorative bobbles that would make escape a breeze. his teeth clenched. Did she really think he was incompetent, or was this a test? Some trap room of some kind to make him think she was underestimating him?

He used his Sais to finally cut the webs off of him. “She just had to be an 8 foot giant spider didn’t she? Man I hate bugs, this is making me hate them more!” he yelled before letting out an angry growl.

He was a ninja, he knew how to stick to the shadows and disappear, he needed to look around, any security measures, maybe hidden cameras somewhere. The Yokai or whatever they were in the hotel didn’t seem that strong, maybe big but Raph had dealt with bigger. He needed to get out of here, find his siblings and get the shell out of this dimension and back to his Father and friends.

First, like Master Splinter had taught them, be aware of their surroundings. Like his time with the Ninja Tribunal taught him, everything can be tested, even his own perception of reality can be a lie. The lady spider seemed the crafty type with a good poker face, but she wasn’t infallible, he needed to be careful, his brothers are strong warriors, they can be separated for a few hours or days and Raph was sure that they’ll be fine. Right now he had to make sure that he didn’t screw up. 

He couldn't screw up.

Chapter Text

[alt. title suggested by Pimono: It's All Fun in Death Mazes until Nobody Teaches You Stranger Danger]

–🧡–

Mikey screamed as he fell through yet another portal. No matter how many times he and his brothers go through them, they’re always the same scary ‘wooosh’ , and the next thing he knew he slammed down onto a table. He groaned as he slowly sat up, shell aching from the little bits and bobs he felt himself land on. The smells hit him first before he even opens his eyes. Perfectly molded dough, hot steaming sauces, sizzling pepperoni, and other toppings made the pizza lover in him shiver in delight. 

Opening his eyes he found himself surrounded by absolute heaven. Pizza… pizza everywhere. Being made right before his very eyes 

“ Pepino , what are you doing here?” Mikey heard someone say, and he was quick to try and hide before looking around and seeing a skeleton man looking at him. Therefore Mikey did the only logical thing he could do. He screamed. 

“Ahhh! SKELETON MAN!” He grabbed his nunchucks and began to wave them around, placing himself in a ready stance to fight. “I didn’t know this portal was gonna send me to the universe of the Evil Dead!”  

“ Pepino , please, I do not mean to startle you. I simply request you get out of the kitchen before you incur the wrath of the chefs. Or mine. Where is your brother Leonardo? Isn't he usually with one of you when you arrive at my doorstep?” 

“Huh?” Mikey asked in confusion before putting his nunchucks away. “How do you know Leo? We’ve never met before. I’m Mikey by the way, nice to meet ya skeleton man.”

The skeleton blinked before squinting at him for a moment. Humming to himself, “...ah, my apologies. I mistook you for another kappa who darkens my door quite frequently. But you are clearly not him.” 

“And his name is Leonardo?” Mikey asked. “Blue bandana? Has swords? Kinda a hot head even if he tries to act cool?”

“That is correct, yes.”

“Ahhh I get it, we’re in another turtle dimension,” Mikey said. “Shell, and my brothers are nowhere to be seen—I gotta find them! But first… any chance there's a dimensional traveler’s discount on the pizza?”

 The skeleton's expression soured, taking on a more deadpanned, tired look. “As I have told this dimension’s counterparts. No sort of portal business gets you any kind of discount at my pizzeria. There's only one way to get free pizza here but I will not have a repeat of that mishap anytime soon so no .”   

“Well, can you tell me about it? And about this place? Us turtles never really got to walk around people unless it was like 2105, and even then well… food wasn’t all that great,” Mikey said with a shiver at the memories. “How do I get the free pizza? Please tell me?” He gave the skeleton man his best puppy dog eyes. Which in fairness were under a mask that obscured his eyes.

The skeleton let out a world-weary sigh before waving at Mikey to follow him out of the kitchen and to an area with a red carpet and, even snazzier, a velvet rope guarding some kinda exclusive part of the restaurant.

“This is the maze of death, if you solve it you get your picture immortalized on the Hall of Champions and the pizza, when you cheat you get your picture on the Hall of Cheaters next to your cross-dimensional brothers.”

Mikey looked at the pictures of the other turtles. They looked different from him and his brothers, nothing like the other smaller versions of them or the Turtles Prime. It was kinda weird that turtle in blue mask and red markings—Mikey assumed it was this universe’s version of Leo—on the ground his tongue sticking out, while what seemed to be a younger turtle in orange raising his hand. The other two turtles having smug looks at the camera, the turtle in purple was the closest to the camera with an expression that he could never see on his own Don’s face, and the last was a huge turtle bigger than the rest in red—possibly the universe's Raphael who had a sharp snaggle tooth and a thumbs up. 

All in all? The dudes just seemed silly and happy to be eating pizza, the fact that this universe’s Leo was on the ground like that and with his brothers’ expression told Mikey that things and the hierarchy of these turtles was a little sideways, but he couldn’t possibly judge before meeting them, he knew his own Leo would never live down looking that undignified in his life.

 “What counts as cheating?” Mikey asked, he wanted to be clear on the rules. Nothing would ever stand against him and free pizza after all.

“The use of mystic powers of any kind is considered cheating, but beyond that? Usual maze rules apply, no climbing up the walls to the top of the maze to get to the middle without encountering any obstacles.” 

“Oh, so can I still use my nunchucks, fade into the shadows, and stick onto walls?”  

“As long as you are not using any sort of mystic ability that is not, as you say, a natural one like your shell? By all means.” 

“Awesome! Thanks Skeleton Man. Oh! Oooh~ can you time me?” 

The skeleton raised an eye ridge but shrugged. “Usually being timed is a strictly paid perk, however, I do not care to delay this madness any more than I have to. I have a busy schedule to keep.” 

“Thank you!” Mikey replied before jumping into the maze and went running inside.

Mikey came out of the maze with the pizza in hand. “Man! This is some good pizza!” 

“Well, I gotta say, this is a record. You're the first turtle to make it out of the maze of death without cheating . And in only an hour as well. Impressive.” 

“Well, the only time any of us used our mystic powers, we were fighting the Tengu Shredder and we never really thought of using them again. We’re just not used to using these powers where I came from, not our first instinct ya know. Also, how many times am I allowed to go into the maze?”

Hueso cocked his skull to the side, peering at the turtle curiously with empty eye sockets. Somehow . 

“Most people only try the maze once or twice, I suppose we don't have an official limit on visiting the maze….” the skeletons' eye ridges narrowed, “Why do you ask?”

‘Your face is bone, how are you doing that?’ Mikey had questions to answers he wasn't sure he'd be getting any time soon. ‘It totally reminds me even more of the special effects in the Evil Dead movies, with the animators making the skeletons’ bones move!’

“To see how many times I’m allowed to get the free pizza of course,” Mikey replied with a grin. “And my brothers are gonna want some too.” 

The Skeleton Man sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn't say that. But, ah well. You can only have your picture on the wall of champions once, but… you are free to try the maze as many times as you like.” 

“Thanks!”

Michelangelo’s picture was hung on the Wall of the Champions and he decided to find a place to sit down and enjoy the rest of his meal. The fact that he was in what the Skeleton Man—“ Senior Hueso” as he told Mikey—was running something called a ‘yōkai’ restaurant, which didn’t make sense because as far as Mikey knew yōkai were either evil spirits from Japan, or what the people of Japan called the Daimyo and his people long ago. Oh well, Mikey wasn’t gonna complain about that. He just took his seat at one of the tables, blending in just fine. 

“Oh my, you managed to get the coveted Minotaur Pizza from the maze? I’m impressed, not many people get to live to say that.”

The turtle turned to the owner of the voice, revealing a pig(?)-looking yōkai with a surprised yet curious look on his face, sitting a table over from Mikey’s.

“I've thought to try and see if the pizza is worth all the effort people say it takes to get to it. Is it as grandiose as the others make it out to be?”

“Oh dude, totally! It’s sooo good. Plus the maze is fun as shell! I wouldn't go in if you're not some kind of warrior though with some trapping experience, man. Almost got my shell boiled a few times there. Sooo going back for more though, that's for sure!” 

“I see… Usually, I have trouble bringing myself to go to another chef's restaurant like this but pizza has never been particularly my specialty. I was classically trained in the most fancy pants, high-dining delicacies. But sometimes”, the pig yōkai waved a gloved hand in the air, leaning back into his seat, “Sometimes you just need to sit down, relax, and enjoy a high-quality pizza from people who know what they're doing.” 

“Oooh, I've never had fancy restaurant food before! Honestly, this is my first time on the inside of a real pizza place without, like, three layers of clothes. It’s pretty great! Say, you wouldn't happen to have your own maze of death I could get through for some free fancy food would you?” 

The giant pig looked over at him with a considering look, humming to himself. “Tell you what, you follow me off to my food truck and I’ll see what I can make with you.”

Mikey perked up and gave the pigman a thumbs up, mind pointing out his tone was a little threatening but eh —If it was a trap he’d just bust outta it. He wasn't passing up the chance of free food and friendship, he might even get a chance to drag his brothers into eating some fancy dining like April and Casey would tell them all after their few successful date nights. They made the food sound really amazing! Besides, provided the option of having more food than what was strictly rationed out it was worth the risk of being shelled. 

So once Mikey finished up his pizza, offering a slice or two to his new pig friend, they made their way outta the restaurant 

"Name's Michaelangelo by the way," Mikey introduced himself.

The yōkai gave what he imagined to be a thoughtful hum. Except, how did that work? Pigs can hum?

This place is wild.

“Funny name for a turtle. What, were your parents big art fanatics or something?” 

"Sensei chose our names from a battered book he found in the sewers about Renaissance artists." 

“Hm, that's fair enough I suppose. Worse things to be named after than fancy-schmancy artists. I've met people around these parts named after colors!” 

“Ha! Wouldn’t wanna be those guys.”

“You may call me Meatsweats,” the pigman said.

‘Well, that’s just even sadder.’ 

“Alright,” Mikey replied. “So how do you even sell fancy food out of a food truck? Doesn’t it take, like, a lot of time and space to prepare or something?”

Meatsweats waved him off.

“Ah, you can cook something delicious under any sort of conditions if you're skilled enough.” He snorted. “A certain menace to my kitchen reminded me of that not too long ago. Come, come—I’ll show you around the kitchen.” 

“Awesome,” Mikey said, hopping up into the food van and taking a look around, letting out a whistle. The place looked more decked out than his kitchen at the lair that's for sure. Not as many high-tech modern appliances as you’d see on the cooking shows but Mikey guessed that's what Meatsweats meant by cooking under any conditions. He squinted at some of the cabinets when he heard hissing come from one of them before moving swiftly upfront to sit in the passenger seat. If there was one thing he learned in space it was that sometimes you didn’t wanna know what you were eating before you ate it. Though that mostly applied to prison food.

Meatsweats adjusts the rearview mirror before freezing suddenly, going almost sheet white as he slammed his hoof on the gas, making Mikey jerk back in his seat from the sudden speeds they were going at.

“WOAH DUDE! WHERE’S THE FIRE?!” 

“TRUST ME! WE’VE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE BEFORE WE GET OURSELVES POUNDED INTO OBLIVION.” Meatsweats yelled, sweat dripping from his forehead as he swerved in and out of oncoming traffic. The sound of large feet hitting the ground repeatedly behind them reaches Mikey unexpectedly, turning to see some giant red blur sprinting after them, towering over most of the cars around them and having an expression so angry it could curdle milk. It almost reminded him of Raph on a weekday. 

Shaking aggressively as the scene outside of the truck shifted, the vehicle was abruptly lifted into the air by some unseen force before the much too familiar sound of metal being ripped off its hinges filled the air. The entire top of the truck had been ripped away.

 “MIKEY!” it roared, making Mikey screech in terror as it quickly grabbed the seat he was in, and tore it clean out of the truck like wet paper. Bringing Mikey up close to its… chest? Revealing a slightly familiar-looking turtle in the middle of the mass, looking furious— no wait , it wasn't angry? It was terrified, chest heaving hard, and looking at Mikey with an expression full of worry.

“MICHAELANGELO, I SWEAR TO PIZZA SUPREME, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO REMIND YOU THAT MEATSWEATS DOESN'T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!? HE’S! TRYING! TO! EAT! YOU!”

“You know him?!” Meatsweats yelled.

Mikey looked back at the yōkai who remained within the remains of the food truck. “Wait—time out! WERE YOU ACTUALLY GOING TO EAT ME ?!” 

“I mean, if the opportunity presents itself? It's hard to get your hands on good mutant turtle around here for turtle soup.”

“You’ve got five seconds to run Meatsweats before I toss you across the horizon! GO! GO!” the larger turtle yelled, hugging Mikey close protectively to its glowing red chest as Meatsweats scrambled away for his life. Eventually, Mikey was put down, feet meeting asphalt,  as the projection slowly shrunk down in size and out of his form, and hey! He did recognize this turtle from the photo on the wall! 

Raph(?) blinked, looking at Mikey in confusion for a long moment before he hid his face half in his shell, looking embarrassed as shell. “Oh, uh… I am so, so sorry, it's just that, from far away, I mistook you for my brother and, well, it's kind of hard to see past the wave of panic I get when I think one of my brothers is in danger. Uhhh, I didn't hurt you right?” 

Mikey had to pause for a moment and take the other turtle in.

As the photo suggested, this one was huge, towering even, but unlike the smug grin of the photo, this Raph looked genuinely nervous and worried about the mix-up. He also seemed to have a mean protective streak and was seemingly on the sheepish side of the personality spectrum. He was so different from his Raph, shell , even the embarrassed look on his face was endearing! 

“Hey, no worries dude, you saved my shell from being eaten and all, so I owe ya. Kinda lucky though; out of everyone in New York, I run into one of you.”

“I guess? I’ve never met a mutant turtle with a mask that wasn’t my brothers before—”

“Wait, wait, lemme guess their names. Hmm, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and you, big guy, your full name’s Raphael. Right?” Mikey asked, smirking at the big guy's eyes and going wide in shock at his confident answer.

“How’d you know about Raph and Raph’s brothers?!”

“Well ‘cause, and get ready dude, this is gonna blow your mind,” Mikey paused for dramatic effect. “I’m Mikey, from another dimension.” 

There was a pause before Raph squinted suspiciously at Mikey, a weird smell filling the air around him that made Mikey cringe.

“Bro, dude, what the shell is that?”

“Raph’s suspicion stink, which you should know about if you're really an alternate dimension Mikey! What if this is a trick by Big Mama or something?!” Raph crossed his arms, staring him down, and Mikey was willing to concede that an alternate version of his brother cut quite the striking figure with the added inches. Seriously, how tall was this guy?!

“Yeah, well, my Raph isn’t your type  turtle and I don’t look like your Mikey do I? Who’s ‘Big Mama’?” 

“Big Mama is like, the crime boss of crime bosses, she makes lesser criminal gangs pay her after a heist because they're that scared of her. And she runs, like, half of the Hidden City! She wanted to turn Raph's shell into a weird rug!” Raph yelled, his weird emotional stink shifting and getting worse and worse. He gets why it's called stink now.

“Okay, okay, calm down dude, not with Big Mama or whatever,” Mikey said, hoping his words would calm the larger turtle. “Thing is, my brothers and I just got tossed into some weird portal— again —and next thing I know, I’m at a pizza restaurant for mutants\aliens\yōkai or whatever.” 

Raph still squinted at him for a few minutes before the stink went away, looking a little unsure before sighing. “If you’re not a Mikey I’m gonna kick your butt later for tricking me. Come on, let's go to the lair so Donnie can figure out how true your dimension-hopping story is.” 

“Oh cool! Maybe one Don can hack into our tracking devices. I tried the shell-phone but uhhh… it’s not working.” 

“Your Donnie puts tracking devices in you too?! I hate it when he does that! Raph doesn't need Donnie knowing Raph’s every move!” 

“You try losing your sensei a couple o’ times, getting tossed into alternative dimensions every other Thursday, and the possibility of being hunted down by the Foot or the government and keep that attitude, bro.” 

The stink was back in force, followed by the biggest worried puppy dog eyes he’d ever seen on a Raph. Oh no, he made him sad . “You guys went through what?!” he yelled, tone brimming with stress.

“Hey, hey it’s okay, we’re all good, big guy, it’s all in the past. Why don't we grab some pizza and head back down to the lair, ok buddy?”

Every turtle's greatest weakness: pizza. Mikey was 99.9% percent sure it would distract him. Hopefully. Maybe. Look he wasn't Donnie, okay?

Raph made a small noise in the back of his throat but nodded, following Mikey almost like a lost puppy.

‘Thank pizza supreme!’

Honestly, if the big guy kept this up Mikey might have to be the big brother for a change and make sure the dude’s not giving himself a panic attack. This Raph was breaking his heart, dang it!

“So you and your brothers got separated?” Raph asked. 

“Yeah it's not the first time—we’ll find each other eventually, I'm sure. So there's no need to panic, trust me, it never helps, I just gotta calm down and think of where my brothers would head to… Or where’s the worst possible place they could be. That’s usually how it works with our brand of luck.”

“And the first place you thought to go was with a crazy pig chef? Is he, like, a good guy in your dimension.”

“Nah I was just hungry, and he promised me fancy food, I wouldn’t exactly say no to that.”

Ralph stared down at him.

“Ok, look, consider this: Free. Food. ”

He continued staring. Mikey nearly threw his hands in the air.

“Free! Fancy ! Food! I'm not going to apologize for wanting to get a free meal! Even if I may or may not have almost gotten eaten for it…”

The sigh Raph let out was so utterly draining and world-weary that Mikey could feel the weight of it in his bones. 

“I… can't even with you right now ‘cause my Mikey does go crazy for fancy food.”

“Shell yeah,” Mikey said with a grin. “So do you have any money or should I go to the Pizza Maze and get us some pizza from there?” 

“No death mazes! Raph was gonna buy pizza from there before he saw you get taken by Meatsweats. Besides!—I got my wallet.” 

“Cool then, how many are we getting?” 

“Thirty; brothers can never just pick a pizza topping, plus we like to stack up the boxes and try to balance as many as we can while walking along the Golden Gate like a tightrope.” 

“That sounds like an absolute waste of food!”

“We eat the pizza first! Except for the top one—that’s victory pizza. If you drop it then it's defeat pizza. Still gotta eat it.” 

Mikey cackled. “You dudes sound fun! Okay, let's get the pizza and we can get your Donnie to help track my brothers.” 

Whatever stink remained disappeared as a toothy grin grew on Raph’s face and he started telling Mikey about his brothers and what they liked to do for fun around New York. They'd been bounding across the rooftops before Mikey caught himself on the ledge as he processed Raph's words.

“Back up— You used to be the leader until your Master Splinter just, outta the blue, said that Leo would be?”  

Raph stopped a couple of feet from the smaller turtle before facing him with a light wince. “I mean—It wasn't completely out of the blue? I knew Leo liked planning more than Raph. He was basically second-in-command without me around,” Raph gave a half-hearted shrug. “Guess Dad just saw more leader-y qualities in Leo than Raph had. But you know what? I don't blame him. When Leo’s taking this hero thing seriously it's incredible what we can do as a team, and he always keeps the team's spirits high nearly the whole time. I still lead when he’s being a dum dum though so it's not like it's that big of a deal.”

He sounded quite proud of him.

Mikey hummed, taking their pit stop for a moment to think.

“Can’t tell ya the difference. Our Leo's always been the leader. Big bro took all the responsibility on his shoulders so the three of us had a lot less to worry about. It's like I told my bros before; Raph was free not ta think, Don was free ta dream, and I was free ta take it easy. The problem is that when Leo takes responsibility, he tends to take all the responsibility; anything goes wrong? It’s ‘cause in his mind he wasn’t good enough not ta prevent it.” he sighed, beginning to feel some frustration creep in.

“He‘s always been the type to take it the harshest if things don’t go the right, bottling things up until they explode. He got better after his training with the Ancient One, but… he still tends ta shoulder more responsibilities than his shell can handle.”

For a moment, silence hung between them, and Mikey assumed that was the end of that. He’d been so caught up with the noise of traffic and the kaleidoscopic sights of the city around them he almost missed Raph speaking up.

Oh boy, was this what worried stink smelled like?

“....Say, uh, if you see my Leo can you keep an eye on him? I don’t—Raph’s the biggest brother, I don't want him to get all the responsibility shoved on him or him taking it without me realizing.” 

“Hey of course, we’re you from another dimension which means you’re also our bros; we’re family, we take care of each other.”

Raph paused at his words, taking them in before Mikey was unexpectedly picked up and placed on the back of Raph’s shell. Immediately he grabbed onto the spikes. “Well, if we’re all family that means I’m treating you like family too! Now come on, we're running out of daylight!” 

Mikey whooped, holding on for dear life, as Raph dove for the nearest manhole at top speeds.

“WOOHOO! COWABUNGA!!”

• ••

Beta reader(s):

Pimono: ✅

beta note(s):

Mikey's name misspelled: 22

Rose getting smacked 🗞: 01

Chapter Text

–💜–

Chapter Three: Donatello

[alt. title suggested by Avery: All's Fair in Time Travel and Cookies]

The first thing Donnie heard as he met the table shell-first was the collective scream of many high-pitched voices that his earslits hurt.

The next thing he registered was the sensation of being raised aloft only to be hurled against the wall by a small woman with a shaved head and livid, bordering murderous, expression on her face and wielding a hockey stick at him as a group of kids— girl scouts?— huddled behind her with makeshift weapons. One boy that looked around her age sat behind her, staring, the only one of the group not looking any flavor of enraged. He just looked baffled, More alarmed and confused if anything. That could be the incoming concussion speaking.

“INTRUDEEEEER!!” The woman yelled before pointing her finger at him. “GET HIIM!!”

Not given the chance to think or catch his breath, Donnie was suddenly besieged by an army of little girls who descended upon him with war cries.

So he acted on instinct.

Grabbing his bō staff, Donatello began to defend himself against the army of unsettlingly well-trained children. They were still little girls, after all, so he tried to avoid harming them as they attacked. Mostly sweeping their legs from beneath them, blocking their admittedly quick punches, and kicking them back with as little force as possible.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Donatello yelled as he blocked several punches using his staff. “— I’m not here to hurt you! ”

Donnie side-stepped one particularly vicious girl intent on stabbing him in the thigh. ‘Who's bright idea was to give this kid butterfly knives?!’

“Hey, uh , maybe-maybe we should hear him out?” The boy, who'd been quiet up until now, spoke up through the commotion. He’d done nothing but sit there and watch Donnie trip up little girls, redirecting their lunges toward each other, and effectively subduing them.

Talk about a memorable first impression. Just where the shell was he? Also, no one seemed to be reacting to him being a 5’3 Mutant Turtle.  

“Junior, we do not allow intruders into our lairs! CLEARLY , he is from a rival clan bent on STEALING OUR SECRET RECIPES from us!!” She emphasized her words by brandishing her hockey stick in his direction, shell bent on finishing what her apparent clan of tween girl scouts couldn’t do. Getting Donnie murked.

“And since my girls have lost, I shall take on the duty of ridding us of this NEW ENEMY!!” With that said, she slid a familiar-looking hockey mask over her face, raising her stick high, and brandishing a chainsaw from it out of nowhere as if this was the Looney Toons show. “PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DEMISE AT THE HAND OF CASSANDRA JONES THE FIRST, IMPOSTER TURTLE!!”

Donnie squeaked, missing a clean slice that would have no doubt gone through his bō like butter, bobbing and weaving around her with every calculated strike. ‘Junior’ still looked unsure however, he slid on a similar mask with red stripes and pulled out a— was that a chainsaw hockey stick?!

No point in trying to guess who they are, or where he was anymore, the answer was as subtle as a brick to the face— or hockey puck in this situation…

“ HA ! SEE THAT JUNIOR!?” If there was any doubt that this was a Casey Jones, that died the moment she swung forward and nearly decapitated Donnie. “Trying to lure us into a false sense of security! Trying to make us lower our guard just because he managed to HACK OUR SYSTEMS and TRIED TO DISGUISE HIMSELF AS THE TURTLES OF THE HAMATO CLAN! You are a fool if you think you'll be walking out ALIVE !”

Donnie sighed. Why was this his life? Better cut this short before ‘Junior’ jumped in.

“Alright, fine. Don't forget that you asked for it.”

Before she could react, Donnie had already moved behind her, kicking her down with a smooth sweep to her legs, knocking both her and her weaponry onto the floor. He kicked them aside before pinning her down with his staff. 

“Look, I might be the sensible one of my siblings, but that doesn't mean I won't kick your shell. Now, are you ready to hear me out, or should we go for round two?”

“Mo—Grandma CJ! No !”

Junior dropped his modified hockey stick and held his hands up to express his lack of violent intent. Donnie… wasn't buying it. Especially not with that mask he was wearing. Theories were already beginning to build up inside of his mind and honestly, he wasn't sure which he preferred least .

Truly, was it too much to ask for one normal day for them?

Signs pointed to yes .

“Look Case’—I'm going to step back and you're not going to attack because, like I said before, I don't want to hurt you .”

“Right, and I'm the Queen of England.” Cassandra replied sarcastically.

“You attacked me first! You and your little army of girl scouts! Was I not supposed to defend myself?!”

His siblings would have a field day if they ever caught wind of this.

“I mean… he sort of has a point?” Junior suggested.

“Not now Junior!” Casey growled but held her silence to think, only acquiescing with a sharp nod. And only when Donnie drew back, withdrawing his staff, did Junior scurry over to her side and fret while Casey glared daggers at him. Yeesh, if looks could kill…

Good to know some things never change.

“Let's start from the top—my name is Hamato Donatello. I'm not from any rival clan, I'm from well… an alternate dimension. I know how hard that is to believe, but it’s the truth. My siblings and I fell into these portals that came out of nowhere, landing me here in… where from my guess, it’s another Turtle alternative dimension.” Donnie gestured around them. Were they in New York though? Possibly, but why was it so eye-wateringly bright? It's as if a glow stick puked all over the place. Kind of like 2105. Hmm, alternate futuristic dimension? Wait, he was getting sidetracked.

“Yes, I know this sounds far-fetched but—”

“Did you say you're from an alternate dimension ? We live in a multiverse ?! ” The boy. ‘Junior was it?’

Junior finally pulled back his mask and looked up at Donnie, eyes wide with… something . Something about that look in his eyes struck him familiar.

“We live in a multiverse. We live. In. A multiverse . Of course, we live in a multiverse—Master Donatello- h-he had theories- he had entire boards built up from- the universe is big and infinite, it stands to reason that if aliens can exist, why not other dimensions? And how does one begin to communicate with— wait .” Junior examined him. “How are you even here?”

 Donnie sighed.“ Honestly, random portals opening up and getting us into new dimensions or time periods is not new, but they usually have someone behind them, and I’ve only met you guys so far so…” Donnie trailed off.

“I see,” Junior said, looking away in thought.

“So… Introductions?” Donnie asked. “I can pretty much guess she's Casey Jones, but you're new. Although… going by the mask, I'm guessing you're a Jones as well?” A brother perhaps? Except that didn't seem right…  They didn't look enough alike for them to be related, but human genetics is a messy thing. For all he knows, they could be half or step-siblings. He's not one to judge.

“Oh, I'm—well, it may sound hard to believe but I'm also Casey Jones.”

“ You’re also a Casey Jones? Are you from another dimension or something? Or a genetically engineered clone? Can this time period clone people? ”

Casey Jones Junior cringed and Casey Jones Senior snorted beside him.

“Actually, I'm from an alternate timeline?”

“ Huh? ” Donnie asked, tilting his head.

Casey Junior slowly got up to his feet, Senior following close behind. “Yeah, I'm from the future? An alternate timeline branch born from a single event, as Mas—our Donnie described it, that originated from this timeline. It was awful. It was the end of everything as you know it.” Junior took a deep breath and let it out. “But I—We fixed it!” He insisted immediately afterward noticing the disturbed look on Donnie's face. “We fixed it. And then, well… Mom recruited me into Grandma CJ’s girls’ scouts so nowadays we work on new recipes and mass-producing cookies in general.”

“Oh, okay.” Donatello nodded to himself, while cloning and genetic manipulation weren't anything new to him, a person from an alternative future made more sense, and  was reasonably more ethical. 

“You… don’t seem all that surprised about the, erm , time travel,” Junior said awkwardly. 

Donnie shrugged in response. “Not my first rodeo with those; I’ve been to a few alternate dimensions, not to mention that I’ve been tossed into an apocalyptic future, the medieval times, the cretaceous period, and 100 years into the future.”  

Casey Senior’s eyes glittered, looking at him with a calculating gleam, as if he were the final piece to an unsolved puzzle, before she suddenly appeared in his space, nearly head-butting him.

“ARE YOU SAYING YOU’VE SAMPLED CONFECTIONARIES ACROSS SPACE-TIME ?!”

“Wha—No? No. We were—”

“This. Is. PERFECT !!” Senior cut Donatello off without a care in the world. Well, with naught but one care in the world. “With the purple one’s knowledge, our OPERATION will rise through the ranks and  become INFAMOUS for our addicting baked goods ACROSS SPACE, TIME, AND THE UNIVERSE ! ”

“Well… you’re enthusiastic,” Donnie murmured, gently pushing her aside while shaking his head. “I’m gonna try to locate my siblings.” He searched for his duffle bag, only to groan when he couldn't find it. “Aw, man—must’ve dropped it before the portal swallowed me.”

“Your brothers are SECONDARY PRIORITY!” Senior exclaimed with a feral grin splitting her face. “FIRST! We must finish the rest of our designated work hours BEFORE disclosing all—AND I DO MEAN ALL —of your culinary secrets! AND ONLY THEN WILL JUNIOR DELIVER YOU TO THE HAMATO LAIR!”

Before Donnie could rebuff her, something else caught his attention.

“Hamato… lair?”

“It's where the turtles live! The one's in our dimension, I mean; Mom and the rest of us just call it that, Master Donatello.” Junior helpfully explains.

“Thanks, uh , Casey, but you can just call me Donnie,” he replied with a soft smile. “What with there being two of us now I'm sure things are going to get confusing real fast.”

“Sorry—It’s pretty hard to break the habit of calling you all from who I knew you as. I will try to do better.” His demeanor was so much like Cody’s that it eased the tension within Donatello.

“Considering the Hamato turtles make no effort to stop you from that habit, I say they are NOT! HELPING!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Donnie said. Nothing like the Casey of his universe, if anything, made him wonder if he was meant to be the Cody of this universe. “But fine, let’s hurry this up, and then you guys can take me to the Lair.”  

“You came at a good time! It's almost the end of the day and the last of the scouts should be coming back from their missions. Should only take an hour to two at most.” 

“That's good to hear, Junior.” Before Donnie could say anything more he was grabbed by the edge of his shell and pulled down, face to face with Senior who looked a hair's breadth from ballistic.

“ HE IS NOBODY’S JUNIOR BUT MINE! ” Senior howled into Donnie’s ear slits, making him flinch. “You will refer to him as Scout Recruit, Cass, Cassie, or Superior Officer! And I shall be referred to as Grandma CJ, CJ, or Commander Cassandra!! IS THAT CLEAR HAMATO PURPLE?! ” She yelled, shaking Donatello wildly for emphasis and punctuation. Junior winced—or maybe he cringed from embarrassment–and sent Donnie an apologetic look over his past mother's shoulder.

“Right, okaay… Commander Cassandra—I understand. Sorry for unintentionally patronizing you, Casey.”

“It’s okay, Mom can be very… intense sometimes,” Junior rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish smile.  “I feel like that’s the understatement of the century,” Don replied with his own smile, crossing his arms.

“Junior! You're in charge of extracting every ounce of information from the recruit!” Senior made her way over to her scouts, checking them over before sending them on their way. “We're burning daylight and Grandma CJ’s empire won't build itself in a day!” The younger teen gave a salute and the duo watched the rest of the group vacate the area, leaving behind the time-displaced teenager and interdimensional mutant turtle.

“I have two questions.”

“She trained them herself.”

“...Yeah, I figured as much,” Donnie chuckled. “Secondly, do you think she'll notice if we just sneak out the back door and go to the lair,” Donnie leaned closer to Casey and whispered.

“Yes, yes she will.”

“Ah well, worth a shot ... so, uh, why Master Donatello? Did your version of me teach you anything in your timeline?” Casey perked up. “Oh yes! Everybody referred to him as Professor Donatello and he was the most intelligent and innovative mind of his era. Everything I know—technology, chemistry, botany; although that one focused on theoretical—is due thanks to his lessons.”

“That's pretty cool… So, did you ever meet Professor Donatello’s brothers?” 

“Yeah! All of them taught me something important; Master Leonardo was my Sensei”

Donnie snickered. “There’s something ironic about the fact we taught a Casey Jones in the multiverse.” The time-displaced teenager shook his head, however. “I think any Casey Jones out there would be privileged to be able to learn something from one of you, Mas— ahem , Donnie. Whether it be  working on anger issues or learning to deal with loss.”

‘He's a good kid,’ Donnie thought. The turtle placed his hand on the younger teen's shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. Casey tensed, his face turning unreadable, before smoothing out the crease between his brows. A shaky breath escaped him. “Umm, ev-even in the past they continue teaching me things; or at least, willing to train with me as they learn and share what they learned. Master Donatello took me to a library last week.” Donnie smiled kindly, pretending not to notice the stutter. “I do love being in a library. You’re a good kid, Casey. I’m glad that you’re getting a second chance.” 

“Heh, this version of you currently disagrees—I almost broke library rule number one by trying to use a page from a book as a tissue. Master Donatello freaked out . But in my defense, it was a geology book! Nobody likes geology!” 

“Clearly, your Donnie has neglected to teach you the wonders—and horrors!—of geological science. I can remedy that while we get to work.” 

Casey laughed. “You’re so different from Master Donatello.” 

“I can only imagine,” Donnie replied before he began to look around to find something to fiddle with.

Casey examined him.  “Are you … worried about your brothers?”

“Yeah, a bit. We don’t like to be separated for long, especially when we’re in strange and new territory, but we can all take care of ourselves. I’m kinda the least skilled out of my brothers Ninjutsu-wise,” Donatello rubbed the back of his head here, “so I know that after everything we went through, there’s not much that can stand in our way.”

Casey hummed for a bit, looking thoughtful.  “Maybe you and Master Donatello can spar against each other once you meet! Though… I will warn you he tends to cheat with his mystic tech to win.” 

“Mystic tech?”

“You know—the Hamato Ninpō. The mystical connection that's passed down generation after generation? Even adopted members can learn to cultivate although it takes longer.”

Donnie stared at him blankly.

“The Hamato essence? Mystic ninjutsu?”

“Never heard of it,” Donatello said, shaking his head. “My siblings and I did have some training in the Mystic Arts, but it was never complete. We’ve never heard about Hamato Ninpō before.” 

“I'm sure Master Donatello or Sensei could be able to teach you about it, they've been trying to help me develop my own but… so far it's been a bit of a lost cause.” 

“I’m sure that you’ll eventually get it, Casey,” Donnie smiled at him, and then he hummed thoughtfully. “I do wonder though, how widespread are the mystic powers in this dimension if our counterparts could use it so easily?”  

“I’m… not sure I understand the question.” 

“Well, mystic and magical powers around the world originate from something called ley lines—they’re part of the universe's very life and breath; spread around invisible to the naked eye, and each universe has its own set of ley lines. The more ley lines there are in an area, the easier it becomes to connect with one's mystic powers.” Casey turned thoughtful at Donatello’s explanation. “Well, I've never really thought about it… oh ! How common are portals in your world? Like, how hard are they to make?” 

“Basically only other dimensional beings have been able to make magical portals—like Rennet’s Time scepter or the Daimyo.”

“Then it is much, much more abundant in our world than it is in yours. Portals are very commonplace, to the point portal piracy exists. Master Michelangelo was even the one to open the portal to send me back in time with his bare hands, except… except it cost him his life.” Casey mumbled the last part to himself.

He what . Donatello did not like where this was going. He frowned, putting his brain to work. “I wonder… Last time we needed amulets to channel our mystic powers—it was more of a shortcut because time was of the essence—so if magic is more easily accessible here…” The turtle closed his eyes and began to focus, calling upon his old training with the Ninja tribunal and his fights with the Tengu Shredder. A very familiar energy easily rose to his grasp, his arms and legs developing marks that shone with a purple aura. Coming at his command with ease unfamiliar to the turtle in higher abundance.  “ Woah… ” 

Casey tilted his head, putting his hand near Donatello without touching him, and with a start Donnie felt his mystic aura being drawn towards Casey, curling around the boy’s hand.

“Your powers feel different from Master Donatello, more… wild I guess. Spiritual.” 

“Spiritual?” Donnie questioned. “In what way?” 

“Master Donatello’s ninpō allows him to manifest modern weaponry and tools made from solid energy with concentration— buuut only stuff he’s familiar with making himself.”  

“Fascinating,” Donatello said with a grin. “I’d love to study the differences, and the way mystic energies differ between the two of us.” Casey beamed at him. “I'm sure he will want to as well!” He returned the grin. “Do you think that your brothers can also summon their ninpō like you did?” 

“Yes, we’ve all learned under the Ninja Tribunal and we’re familiar with our mystic energy. We couldn’t summon them back home unless we truly concentrated harder than we did before, and by that point, it would just be easier to punch or hit someone with a bō staff.” The turtle hugged. “So we never bothered to try again until we reached a higher rank in our ninja training.”

Casey crossed his arms, considering the turtle’s words. He brightened immediately as an idea came to him. “Maybe there are some training aids in the Hidden City or New York, everyone’s so rich here there's bound to be something out there!” 

“That might be helpful, thank you, Casey!” 

“No problem Master Donetello,” Casey replied with a big smile, not noticing the slip of tongue. Donnie didn't bother to call him out. He figured it’d be a fruitless endeavor.

Donnie let his powers go, relaxing his hold. He marveled at the ease with which he could summon and release his mystic power. He couldn't wait to share this discovery with his siblings! This might be able to make it easier to channel their powers back home! Or learn a secret to mastering them!

“I can’t wait to start.”

— • —

Beta reader(s):

Pimono: ✅

Beta note(s):

Casey's name misspelled: 09

Junior and Senior confused for each other: 01

Times I've forced Vry into a break 🏏: 01

days this fic has kept Vry up late writing: 11 (?)

times I've had to use the spritz gif on Vry: 01

Donatello's named misspelled: 09

The Casey Jones Conundrum: Hello, yes, Pimono here to keep things simple for myself and the readers—Cassandra I and Cassandra II will be referred to as Senior and Junior when sharing the same space. However, when one leaves, the narrative will change to address them as CJ and Casey.

Chapter Text

–💙–

Chapter Four: Leonardo

[Alt. title suggested by Vry: By Design or Circumstance? ]

It was safe to say Leo has had his fill of mystic portals randomly appearing in the lair. Or activating while he and his siblings were on the rooftops. Or being dragged kicking and screaming across time and space! They never expect it, they never see it coming, and it has been happening for the better part of the last three years of his life. Portals to parallel dimensions, teleporting onto other planets, traveling through time, sometimes… sometimes it was fun… when they’re not actively fighting for their lives from evil wizards, magicians, and draconic abominations, but mostly… it was exhausting and infuriating. What was worse… this time, his siblings did not land with him. 

Leo looked carefully all around him at the street he had landed in. A wide variety of different creatures Leo vaguely recognized as different kinds of yōkai he’d heard of in myths and legends—and some monsters that came straight out of storybooks! The turtle wasn't very familiar with all the legends, but he knew enough to be certain that this town he was in was riddled with danger, as per usual. He walked through the streets slowly. Leo was grateful that the people who saw him fall from the portal didn't bat an eye at the event and carried on their day.

He’d heard shouting from somewhere behind him, some type of pink person with goat ears wearing a terrible blonde wig and sunglasses waving in the direction of where he was walking. Leo tensed, taking a step back as he disappeared into the shadows of an alleyway, waiting for the stranger to pass so he could continue his search for an escape route. Thus, he began to climb the walls and waited patiently. The shadows—every ninja’s greatest ally obscured him from sight. He kept his silence, eyes narrowing as he observed the yōkai step into the alleyway with a clop .

Leonardo watched him examine the alleyway carefully, followed by a smaller green person dressed in an orange baseball cap, sunglasses, and an orange sweatshirt. The little one looked around as well with a much less careful gaze.

The larger yōkai put a halt to his search and folded his arms.

“A portal opened up in the middle of the street, and a green and blue blur fell out, almost landing on its face. I figured it was a certain leader of yours that needed a reminder to stop being so careless with his abilities, but now I'm beginning to suspect it was something else. The mystic energy in this alley…”, he trailed off, clicking his tongue. “Almost nothing like your brother’s. This is sharper, like a well-honed blade.”

Leonardo remained stone-faced, focusing on keeping his breathing even. Clearly, he'd been spotted—in a fully populated town, the better question was who hadn't? —but just for a moment, this guy clearly had some familiarity with the mystic if he could sense Leo’s dormant powers. 

“What have we talked about Draxum?” the little one's voice intoned with a warning.

‘Draxum’ released a put-upon sigh. “That ‘Blue’ will never learn to trust me if I don't learn to trust him a little... It still sounds like nonsense.” he grumbled the last part under his breath.

Leo wasn’t entirely sure what the two were talking about, but glaring down at the man. Unable to help himself, he wondered if this ‘Draxum’ was the one who created the portals and separated him from his siblings. 

“Draxum, I don’t see anything,” the little one insisted, but Draxum only hummed. “Yes, it appears that whoever this is, is quite proficient at hiding, but I can still sense his presence, if only faintly.”

That was not good—Leo was left with no other option than to confront the yōkai who wouldn’t leave and was determined to follow him. With narrowed eyes, Leonardo leaped down behind the two of them silently, swords aimed at the larger yōkai’s back, his threat clear in his action. Whether he froze in place from shock or fear, Leo wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care.   

“ Incredible ”, he breathed, “You snuck up behind me without a sound or the assistance of mystic powers.”

“Who are you? Why are you following me, and are you the reason I’m in this place?” Leo barked with a small growl, focusing on keeping his voice even.

A small, almost faint, squeak from beside the man drew his attention, Leo turned and finally got a better look at who was beside him. A turtle… A small turtle wearing an orange bandana behind his glasses.

“Michelangelo?” Leo’s voice softened, his katanas lowered slightly.

From his peripherals, the yōkai turned slightly, and couldn’t help putting himself between this ‘Draxum’ and this smaller, squeakier version of his younger brother. He did not like the feeling that that man elicited in him. It was reminiscent almost like Baxter Stockman or Bishop, he didn’t know how to describe it properly. 

“How do you know my name?” Michelangelo questioned, tilting his head at the still-hidden stranger in the shadow.

“Isn't it obvious? This is your brother—or at least, a different version of your brother in blue. Most likely portalled in from somewhere else.” Draxum stroked his chin. “Nevertheless, my initial assumption was correct, if not our version of Leonardo. It is fascinating how much more skilled this one seems compared to our dimension counterpart. I would love to go over your universe's Draxum's work and compare notes.”

“Leo?” Michelangelo questioned hesitantly. 

Leonardo slowly stepped out of the shadows. He still refused to sheath his katanas, distrustful of this ‘Draxum’ character. Draxum was either immune or ignorant to Leo’s wariness, whose glare would burn holes into anyone else. Instead, the yōkai was more focused on studying him thoroughly. He hated the way this man was talking about him. All of his senses screamed danger in the face of Draxum—the type to be hostile even while pretending not to be, patiently waiting for the opportunity to strike.

“Are you okay Mikey?” Leo asked. He did not trust this Draxum as far as Angel could throw Casey.

His brother—smaller, spotted and so much softer— looked terribly confused at the situation at hand.

“Me? Yeah man, I’m fine. Are you okay though? You look like you're gonna stab Draxum in the neck.” A nervous laugh escaped Mikey at his own words. Leo grimaced. He shouldn't be worrying about his little brother like this—no, no . Remember the ancient one’s words. They were allowed to worry for him as he worried for them.

“I’m fine,” he paused, mulling over his next words carefully, “He just reminds me of a few people I decidedly don’t like,” Leo replied kindly.

“ Yeeaaah , he has that effect on people—it’s the ‘redeemed villain vibes’.” Mikey chuckled sheepishly. Draxum took the opportunity to cut in. “Anyways… What species of turtle are you? From what I can see, your shell suggests some form of a slider, but you lack the eponymous red markings to be certain. You're not a box turtle—”

“Dad! Dad, you're freaking him out! Chill it with the ‘mad scientist’ act for a bit? Please?” Mikey begged. Leo’s whole body twitched at his brother calling this-this thing that was clearly NOT Master Splinter ‘father’. Absolutely not.

“And Leo, could you please sheath your swords already; you’re gonna poke someone’s eye out, or slash them.”

“Hmm, fascinating… What happened to your shell?” Draxum asked. In the split second Leo took his eyes off him, he felt the yōkai’s hand press against his shell; instinctively, he swung a lightning-fast kick that sent Draxum flying straight into the wall. 

“ DON’T TOUCH ME!! ” Leo growled.

“Enough! Let Mikey and I talk more before I decide whether to justify your interrogation over every aspect of my existence! I’ve never met any being who’s supposed to be your counterpart.” 

“Your shell?” Mikey murmured. Leo whirled to find his interdimensional brother taking a closer look at him, eyes widening with shock and concern seeing the cracked, missing pieces of his shell. “Wh-what happened? What did this?” His voice sounded so soft and full of fear that it nearly broke Leo’s heart.

“Long story, little brother, you don't need to worry about it.” He hoped that sounded comforting, and that he wouldn't push the issue, placing a hand on the smaller turtle. Gosh, why was he so small?

Typical of a Mikey, he pressed onward.

“There is a giant CHUNK taken out of a version of my brother’s scoots and you're tryna tell me to not worry ?! What if you saw a version of me like that?! You just gonna take ‘no comment’ for an answer? But no, I forgot; I'm talking to a Leo . It's ALWAYS different when it comes to your health, huh?” 

Leonardo did flinch at that. “I just-I just don’t feel like talking about it in the middle of an alleyway street in a place I don’t know with strangers around, Mikey.” 

Mikey took a deep breath, pressing his hands together, still looking a little cross before raising his arms wide—as if he was asking for a hug. Leo hesitantly gave it to him after a moment.

“You’re right, you’re right—this isn't the time or place. I just-it's been too many things at once; I don't wanna lose my big brother, mine or not.” Mikey admitted, voice full of awkwardness as he fidgeted on the spot. Like he wasn't sure how to talk to him. Leo patted him gently on the head.

“It’s okay, I understand. We went through a lot of things ourselves, it’s hard not to worry about family,” Leo admitted,” Especially when you know that they’re not okay, but trying to hide it. I’m guilty of that myself too. So how about you just take me to your lair so your Don can track the rest of my siblings?” He asked. “More than one portal opened in my world and hopefully they all lead here… wherever here is.”

Mikey looked up at him with the biggest, watery eyes Leo had ever seen and it was like he was purposely trying to break Leo's heart. “Promise not to disappear on us? No matter how annoying Draxum gets for you?”

He swallowed.  “I promise,” Leo nodded at him with a smile, letting him feel the sincerity in his words. As if a switch had been flipped, the puppy dog eyes instantly vanished into a smug freckled grin as soon as Mikey let go of him. Did he just get played like a fiddle? Who taught this kid to act?

“Truly, a touching moment between brothers. It'd be a shame if someone were to rudely interrupt such a commemorative moment.”

Mikey let out a small ‘whoops’ as they looked over to Draxum who picked himself out of the wall Leo had kicked him into. “Ugh, that was one powerful kick.” The elder yōkai groaned as he popped his neck, brushing the debris off his shoulder. “I salute whoever trained you.”

“Man, you didn’t have to kick him that hard.” 

“It was instinct,” Leo replied with a shrug. “Perhaps you should consider self-reflection in the future and not grab the back of the person you've just met, and examine their scars. It’s not proper manners.”

Draxum crossed his arms. “Of course, my mistake. Please accept my apology,” He replied curtly. 

“And the Bishop feeling continues,” Leo murmured with a sigh.  Mikey looked up at him with confusion in his eyes. God, how old was he? He looked so young . “The overworked government agent that drinks more coffee than Donnie that Leo—uh… my Leo added to his father-figure collection?”

“...No?” He may have sounded a little blank there, but he was genuinely unsure of how else to respond to such a statement. “Anyway, the lair?” 

“Well, we were in the middle of getting some ingredients we’d be needing for some ‘very important’ artifacts we were going to make for the family.” Mikey rocked himself on the balls of his feet. “We're on a bit of a timetable to get these ingredients so… why don’t you join us?” 

“What’s the… ‘Hidden City’?”

Mikey gasped, “You've never been to the Hidden City! Oooh~! You're gonna love it down here—also, you promised not to run off! So you've gotta stick around to shop with us, right? You wouldn't break a promise to me right, Leo?”

It's always nice to know that even across universes, all Mikeys were little shits at their core. If only everything else was as consistent as his siblings.

“I don't like breaking my promises—not very honorable—especially not to my little siblings,” Leo admitted. The box turtle seemed to glow at his words. “Great! Maybe we can introduce you to our favorite pizza place while we're here—Oh! Oh! Or go to Witch Town—yeah, Donnie and April are banned from there but we’re not yet! It'll be so much fun—”

“Wait, wait, wait—Donnie? Donnie ? Just how different is your Donnie from mine?”

Draxum snorted from behind them as they stepped out of the alleyway and onto the streets; Leo couldn't stop the involuntary twitch at the yōkai, feeling irritation rise from within. “He attempted to accelerate some worms’ growth needed for an important ritual involving science and, predictably, it went horribly, horribly wrong. It wrecked a peace festival or something.” Draxum waved a hand dismissively. “I think they overreacted.” 

“... Messin’ with biology and playing God? Yeah, seems pretty different.” 

“Woohoo! I've been meaning to make you or Donnie come with us shopping. I’ll take what I can get!” Mikey cheered, dragging Leo by his elbow out into the middle of the moving crowd. Leo tensed, staying on guard. He might have walked around people before in special circumstances, but a crowd that big, in an unfamiliar place? He really didn’t like the idea. 

After a minute in the crowd, he felt a hat that was a little too small for his head placed on him. He looks down at Mikey just in time to catch him winking like he's in on a joke before pointing out someplace he thinks seems entertaining. Leo feels a little more relaxed with a hat covering him, even if it wasn't much of a disguise, but in a world full of yōkai it was more than enough.

“Thank you, little brother.”

“Anytime!” 

Mikey was having one of those days. You know, where a day just keeps getting more and more exciting; it's not necessarily a bad kind of exciting, but your heart’s still pounding in your chest and you feel like you're vibrating out of your skin? Yep, that's kind of exciting. And who could blame him? This was like, his second or third father-son hidden city trip with Draxum in, like, EVER! Draxum was slowly rising up the leaderboard for ‘most time spent with his kids’ in the unofficial parent-off Mikey had set up in his head. He loved it especially when he got the opportunity to goad Papa Splinter with that fact into spending more time with him and his brothers. Dr. Feelings has been really crushing it lately!

Well, outside of getting his brothers to talk about their feelings after the whole… everything , honestly. Or talk to Draxum. Honestly, it was a struggle to even go check on Draxum when he first started rehabilitating him without some comment from Leo or Donnie about what he was up to. Overprotective jerks that his brothers loved to be.

Donnie, at the very least, could easily be pried open with a crowbar. Maybe it was the shared anguish from Leo and Raph babying them being their own special flavors of annoying. Maybe it was Mikey’s confession to getting it a little bit when Donnie struggled with expressing himself and his emotions, and how certain textures and junk made him want to curl up and die. He refused to work with seafood for the same reason, the texture was just… no , yeah no. Not for Mikey, no sir . Maybe it was making turtle sign language with Donnie and forcing their dum dum brothers to learn it too. He didn't know when exactly he’d earned Donnie’s trust when it came to dealing with his eldest brothers’ feelings, but he did appreciate the vote of confidence. Helping his brothers work through it was also a nice benefit.

Especially after the Krang invasion; the day Donnie began to remove his battle shell in the safety of his lab again, Mikey baked a cake because he was so damn happy he nearly cried.  April was next as the most emotionally honest with him—though she was also the most emotionally stable of Mikey’s family, even if she was still a huge magnet for weirdness. It was easy talking to April, soothing even, when they were bouncing off the walls together.

Dad was next to be any kind of emotionally vulnerable with Mikey, usually when Mikey caught him in the kitchen after dinner and listened to him quietly talk about old times. Or grumbling out his worries for Mikey and his brothers with sharp words full of worry from a man with no idea how to connect to his sons. Dad, however, began seeing a yōkai therapist after Mikey hunted one down because Mikey was NOT ready to handle talking with his dad about his regrets when raising them. Nope . That was out of box shell’s expertise. Especially when it came to Splinter's blunt and kinda harsh way of talking involving… anything and everything . Mikey knew his limits and his limits were that. Specifically.

Raph and Leo, however, seemed to make it a fucking sport to see which one could be the most emotionally constipated person in the house. Mikey was going to personally and violently throw them at a therapist himself if they didn't sit down and have a talk with Dr. Feelings soon. He just knew there was some bullshit involving ‘protecting him’, or being ‘too tough to be affected by anything’ they go through, or having to be the big strong leader person keeping everyone safe. Fuck if Mikey wasn't sick of it!

Especially when their ways of taking care of the team clashed.

Raph and Leo would argue without end about plans, resulting in Raph seizing the leader role mid-mission when he thought Leo got himself in trouble or looked in trouble, despite their dum-dum brother's freakish ability to get all of their enemies underestimating the portal guy with sharp, pointy blades. Mikey was in agony. They were putting him through agony, ok?! There had to be a therapist in the Hidden City that could keep two ninjas with superpowers from escaping right? Right?! If not talking to him, then talking to SOMEBODY might help, right?

And then…

Destiny just decided to skateboard into Mikey’s life and high-five him while doing a triple flip, dropping an interdimensional Leonardo along the way.

This was it, this was exactly what Mikey was looking for. Someone who could keep up with his brothers' avoidance tactics and almost seemed to have his shit together. Someone who was trying to connect to Mikey on an emotional level and check in with him when he seemed down, who didn't try some shitty excuse to not talk about what he went through and admitted when he wasn't comfortable with something instead of bottling it up behind snark or anger like Raph or Leo. And it was a Leo! Leo’s were great with dealing with Raph’s right? Usually? Hopefully? He had a good feeling about this one anyway! He just had to find a way to GET this Leo to meet his Leo and Raph, and let this guy's big brother instincts take over from there.

His plan was genius. Mikey was a genius. His dum-dums were gonna get bullied into THERAPY, BABY!!

(If Mikey wasn't targeted first.)

“So, Mikey… How are things in the lair? Do you know about a rat named Splinter?” Leo asked quietly as Draxum examined something “Sure, he’s our dad,” Mikey replied. “Why do you ask?”

Leonardo sagged with relief.

“It’s just that you called this Draxum guy ‘dad’, and I was worried you didn’t have a Master Splinter. I know how some things in alternate dimensions can be a little different.” 

“Oooh yeah, no, I just have two dads. I’m not like trying to replace him, or anything. He’s alive and we're not fighting or anything bad like that.”

“That's good, that's good… So your Splinter decided to marry a pink goat-man?” Leo asked tentatively. Mikey stared up at him unblinkingly for a few moments, mind processing the statement before he doubling over with laughter. Wheezing hard as he wiped tears from his eyes.

Leo crossed his arms giving Mikey a glare, which, with the white eyes felt waaay more intense than anything the box turtle had felt before. “Did I say something wrong?” Leonardo asked slowly.

“Dude, dude—You don't get the context, ok, I’m just-I thought I was the only one getting ‘divorced gay’ vibes from the two of them but no, no I'm pretty sure my dads barely tolerate being in the same room as each other right now. They’ve only just started becoming friends.” 

“So why are you calling them both ‘dad’?” Leonardo asked, raising the ridge of his eye

“He created us—me and my brothers. So like, back when dad wasn't a rat, when he was Hamato Yoshi, he got like waaaay too close to a crime boss and got tricked into fighting for his life in her death arena called the Battle Nexus for, like, years .”

“Wait, hold on, your Splinter is Master Yoshi?” Leo questioned.

“Yours isn't? Wait, who's your Splinter then?”

“Ours was Master Yoshi’s pet rat Splinter. He got mutated with us when we were hit with the mutagen ooze 17 years ago.” 

“Woah, dimension stuff’s confusing.”

“It really can be. So how did your Splinter escape this version of the Battle Nexus?” Leo asked gently

“Okay, well, see Draxum wanted to protect the yōkai because of some prophecy and he thought the humans would be the danger. So he wanted to create some kind of mutant super soldiers, and when he saw pop’s awesome ninja moves in the arena he kidnapped him to use his DNA and the Hamato’s super powers to mutate me and my brothers into, like, evil super soldiers.”

Leo took in a sharp breath before letting it out slowly. Mikey couldn't blame him. It could be a lot to take in especially at first. His bro’s helped him keep his mind off of it in the moment, focusing on the ‘Lou-Jitsu’s-is-their-dad’ part more than the ‘made-to-destroy-humanity’ part. Probably made it harder to trust Mikey, honestly—

“I’m sorry,” Leo said softly.

“Huh?” 

“I’m sorry for the fact you had to learn that. And bear the burden of what you were built to do. However, I do want to remind you that no one can decide your purpose for you. No matter what you were born or raised to do, it is the choices you make in life and the actions you take that define who you are— not what others demand of you.”

“I, uhhh , I don’t really know what to say… that was pretty profound ya know,” Mikey said with a shaky smile, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“I’ve met many people over the years Mikey; even humans can be made into monsters, or can choose to be monsters.” Leo wanted to make a face but he didn't want to risk worrying Mikey even more. He focused on him for now. “The choices that they made affected their lives, and honestly? From what I’ve seen, you’re a pretty sweet and happy kid. I’m glad for that at least. I wouldn’t want any version of my siblings to suffer not growing up in a loving family and a home.” 

Mikey stood there, arms crossed in a manner not so dissimilar to hugging himself in the way.

Leo liked to do that when he needed to ground himself and wow . What the heck? Is this how his bro’s felt when he suddenly hit them with Dr. Feelings?

He suddenly got it. A little.

The reason why they try to hide what was bugging them so much. It felt like his shell just got cracked open and he was scrambling to keep from spilling his guts all over the floor over something he didn't know he needed to hear.

To tell them what was going on with him. 

“You seem quite wise beyond your years, Leonardo,” Draxum said suddenly. 

Leonardo spared a glare at Draxum. “We’ve been through a lot—my family has suffered much, and we all learned many things, went through many hardships; you tend to learn a lesson or two.” 

“Oh, really? What sort of foes—”

“HEYLOOKGUYSICECREAM!” Mikey yelled, dragging Draxum away from shoving his hoof in his mouth again . He thought the goat was smarter than this! 

Leo smiled and ushered Mikey to the ice cream truck. The three of them bought some ice cream before Mikey grabbed Draxum by the elbow, hauling him away for a minute. “What is wrong with you?!”  Mikey whisper-yelled, grabbing Draxum’s collar and pulling him down, staring at the goat-man in the eye. “Don’t you know that there is a time and place to ask a turtle personal questions?! Might I add, one who had punted you into a wall on pure instinct and put a sword to your back without either of us noticing!” 

“Please, increased hostility is just par for the course. Especially when you consider the fact he sees me as a stranger near the youngest member of his bale. It is quite natural for him to be overprotective and agitated easily.” 

“Boy, we are gonna have a talk later. But right now? Just try not to agitate my already agitated, clearly highly-trained, brother, ok? Please? You owe me.” Mikey hissed. Draxum gave a heavy sigh.

“ Fine . I shall acquiesce my curiosity for a later date and there will be a later, mark my words.”

“You done reprimanding him?” Leo’s voice made Mikey jump… straight into Leo’s arms. How?! He didn’t even hear him or sense him coming closer! Leo snorted, seemingly coming to some conclusion, and the next thing Mikey knows he’s being lifted onto Leo's shoulders in a way his Leo hasn't tried to do in, like, at least a few months. Though Leo and Donnie honestly left the carrying-Mikey-stuff to Raph more often than not. April wasn't the only one riding around on the twins’ shoulders, especially if Leo and him were roughhousing, and Leo and Donnie were tossing him back and forth like he was a rag doll and — huh… When was the last time they played Toss The Mikey?

“You’re a lot lighter than my Mikey, you do seem younger too, how old are you?” Leo asked, breaking the younger teen from his train of thought.

“I’m not a little kid—I’m fifteen as of this year, thank you .”

“I never called you a kid, I just asked how old you were.” Leo chuckled. “My own family’s fights and troubles all began when we were fifteen too.” 

“This would actually be Michelangelo's second year of actively being in, what I would consider, active combat. He’s battled mutants, the Shredder, Big Mama herself, and heck, myself and my minions at one point. He shows promise as a fighter—as bumbling as the group can be.” The last bit was grumbled under the yōkai’s breath.

“Bumbling or not, fighting all these dangers and protecting their family still makes them pretty great warriors.” 

Mikey blinked, looking down at Leo with stars in his eyes. “You really think we can be great heroes?” 

“Of course I do. Draxum already said that you guys saved the city and possibly the world from villains multiple times, it already makes you heroes. Besides, wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making your own mistakes. You gotta live your lives and see what the world offers in order to grow. Nothing comes that easily to anyone.” 

“Comes easy to my big brothers”, Mikey mumbled into Leo’s hat, “They always act like they know how to do everything. And the worst part is they usually can. Sometimes it feels like that's why they baby me. Cuz they think I suck at everything...”

“I don’t think that that’s true at all Mikey. Big brothers just tend to be protective, even when they trust you to handle yourself. I could tell you stories about the times I worried about my own siblings, they’re strong warriors and all of them talented in their own way; when you’re oldest, when you’re the leader, it falls on your shoulders to make sure that your family survives. If they’re hurt, if they fail in any way, it always feels like it’s because I could have been better, done better. But… I always gotta remember that we’re a team. That when push comes to shove, you can only do the best that you can, there’s no point in regretting what you can’t change.” 

Well, shit. That one got to him.

Mikey bit back a wail and he fought back tears. It is way too much of a relief to hear that. Even if this Leo wasn’t TECHNICALLY any of his big brothers that—The way he said it reminded him of the times his older brothers would fret over him, but also the times they’d trust him to take care of something. From distracting the Shredder, to holding a villain at bay, to helping paint a piece of tech, just—It meant a lot to the teen to hear it wasn’t some kinda doubt on his abilities, just them being the overprotective dum-dums he knew and loved.

Leonardo also just ended Raph and his Leo’s whole hard-as-nails no-therapy-needers career.

He is SO using that the next time he’s booking them a session with Dr. Feelings. Perfectionist sons of a rat . Mikey’s got their number now. The box turtle slid down from Leo’s shell before giving him the tightest, warmest hug he could muster. 

“Thank you—This really means a lot to me, Leo. Just… thank you .” 

“You’re welcome, Mikey,” Leo smiled softly at him.

Mikey shuffled in place, taking a moment to think of his next words. He's already gotten this far, he figured there'd be no harm asking. “Well, since I got that off my shell, can I ask you a question?”

“I suppose.” 

“Is one of your siblings trans? Or gender fluid? Or is there like a secret sister I should know about?” Mikey asked a bit bluntly. There were probably hundreds of better ways of going about it, but Mikey just had a bit of an emotional revelation so forgive him for going for the throat.

“What. What are you talking about?” Draxum questioned. 

“Big Blue hasn't used ‘brothers’ anytime he’s talked about his siblings. Like, at all . So I thought I’d ask since he doesn't seem to have a talking quirk like my brothers.” 

“Oh…” Leo said. “Well, it’s not that I fully understand it but my Mikey said that he doesn’t always feel like he’s our brother all the time, so we just started calling him our sibling. He seems happy with that.” 

Mikey's brain needed a minute to process that. He wanted to know if he had to try to help his brothers with gender stuff. He hadn't really felt bad about his gender or really, care. Did that make him cis?  Gonna put that under ‘stuff to think about’.

“Huh, that's cool! I’m happy for your Mikey. I can't wait for us to meet! Imagine the chaos two Mikeys can cause? Hmmm, we should probably have, like, code names while we’re together. Calling you Leo when with my Leo might get confusing, or your Raph with my Raph.”

“You can call us by our full names if it’ll make it less confusing.”  

“Nah, Hamato Leonardo is a mouthful to say all the time.” 

“I mean just call me Leonardo, but what else would you suggest?”

“Hmm… maybe one of us can go by our bandana colors while the other goes by our actual names? Besides, it will get really, really confusing after a while. I'm calling you Leonardo and my brother Leo cuz it's a name that's, like, used a LOT so you’d both respond.” 

“I… Why our bandana colors of all things?”

“Duh, cuz dad calls us by our colors all the time—wait, does yours not?” 

“No?” Leo said, raising his eyeridge. “He just uses our names?”

“Oh, that makes it easier to decide then! Just call us Mad Dogz, or our colors while we call you guys by names! I’ll text my brothers that we're going by our colors from now on.” Mikey said happily, texting his brothers the news—oh, and about the fact he found an alternate version of Leo. Man, Donnie was gonna have a fit once he learns about this! With a picture of course just to be on the safe side. Donnie, as predicted, sent him back a gif of a cat screaming bloody murder and demanded for him to return to the lair with said turtle immediately. Classic Donnie, alright.

“What is that?” Leo asked, watching Orange hold some kind of rectangular device.

“What? You mean my phone?”

“That’s a phone?” Leo questioned. “Doesn’t look like any other phone I’ve seen.” 

“Whaaat? What year is it in your universe?” 

“It was 2005 in our dimension.”

Orange did a double-take.

“ DUDE!!! It's halfway through 2020 in this dimension! You haven't seen so many movies or memes, ohmigosh!!!” 

“Yes, not every dimension works in the same time zones and laws.” Leo grinned. “A friend of mine lives in what would be the equivalent of Feudal Japan.”

“A friend? Do we know him? Does he have an equivalent here? And more importantly, have you introduced him to the most glorious invention known as pizza yet?” 

“Not unless you know a amurai rabbit called Miyamoto Usagi—trust me, his dimension is nothing like ours.” 

“A rabbit that's a samurai? Woah, you know some cool people!” 

“Yeah, he is a dear friend,” Leo said with a soft smile on his face, remembering his friend fondly. “I had to travel to his world after our fight with the Tengu Shredder. I wasn’t in a good place the last time he saw me, and I was incredibly  rude when he left, but he didn’t hold it against me though and I’m grateful for that.” 

Mikey blinked. “Wait, you just easily traveled into his world? To Feudal Japan? How? ”

“There are ways to create portals into other worlds, you just need to know the right ritual.” 

“Show me the ritual you use sometime soon then! I wanna learn to make portals to whatever dimension I've been too!” Mikey said happily, hopping from one foot to another. It sounded so much easier than ripping a hole into the fabric of reality with your bare hands in his opinion.

“As long as you get one of your brothers with you. We don’t want you to be stranded or attacked in a world you know nothing about like what's happened to us… several times over.” 

“Aw, I’ll be fine. Besides, if you don't teach me I’ll just keep ripping open dimension portals with my bare hands.” Mikey said smugly. 

“Ripping open…?”

“Orange!” Draxum barked, “No, we discussed this, and you are not to use that as leverage or a threat,” Draxum scowled. “May I remind you of the consequences of using mystic energy more than your body could proportionally handle?” 

“I’m sorry, and I’ll do it again if any of them are being dum-dums again.” Orange stated bluntly. 

“Well then don’t be a ‘dum-dum’ yourself, and put your life at risk to spite someone.”

“But if I knew how to make portals the right way then I wouldn't need to be a dum-dum to save them next time.” 

“And Leonardo never said that he wouldn’t teach you, he simply desired you have someone supervise your back in strange and new settings. Which is the smart and logical thing to do.” 

“You know what, I think I liked it better when you guys didn't agree on anything,” Orange pouted as he crossed his arms with a huff.

“Don’t be too prideful little warrior,” Leo said, placing a hand on Orange’s shoulder. “Some places are just not safe, no matter how prepared and strong you are. You never know when you'll be caught off guard. Just take heed, that’s all I’m asking for, okay?” 

Mikey grumbled under his breath a little more, but he nodded in the end.

“Good, I’m proud of you,” Leo said with a smile.  

• ··

Leo didn't know what to make of Orange’s family, or the Blue of this world allowing Orange to associate with someone who made them as weapons of war, and seemed nearly, totally unapologetic for his past actions as their enemy. Did they have a choice? Orange didn't seem like he was in danger with him but nothing he’d seen of the man so far had really given Leo confidence that he truly just wanted to be part of the turtle’s family. Though perhaps he was being a bit overly cautious. Shouldn't he trust in his little brother's judgment? He’d just have to wait and see, wouldn't he?

“So, if we’re done with the shopping trip, how about we finally head back to the lair? As much as I know my brothers can handle themselves, I'd rather know where they are, so we can get back home.”

“Yes, I believe that we've gathered all we need. Mic- Orange , lead the way.” 

“Woe upon ye! Mikey’s in charge now! And as a new Fearless Leader, I say—”

“Orange.” 

“Michelangelo.” 

“Home is this way, party poopers.” Orange blew raspberries at them.

— • —

Beta reader(s):

Pimono: ✅

Beta note(s):

Mikey's name misspelled: 13

Draxum's name misspelled: 04

Times they made the beta cry: 01

Food crimes perpetrated whilst writing this: 02

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Seeing the future through the present

[ alt. title suggest by Pimono: You Will Respect the Evil Mad Scientist Aesthetic or Face the Laser Roomba]

–💜–

When Donatello imagined what a board meeting would be like in the past, he always imagined them as nerve-wracking, maybe a little boring, and involving a whole lot more numbers.

What he didn’t expect was being tied to a chair with a light shining on his face as Casey Jones—the Second—held a script awkwardly in his hands, looking a little sheepish. A projector had been set up in front of him, showing a blue screen reading, “Cookie Perfection and You—Road to The Perfect Cookie.” 

“I know you don’t want to disappoint your mom, but… isn’t this a little extreme?” Donatello asked patiently. He wasn't too mad, he had just let the kid tie him up after all, but still. Donnie was seriously starting to question Grandma CJ’s business practices if interrogation-style board meetings were so commonplace. 

Casey cringed, fiddling with the papers in his hands in silence before scratching his head. “Sorry. Last time I skipped this step, Mom said she would fire me if I did it again.”

“And you don’t want that... Why do you work for her, can’t you find another job elsewhere?”

“Well, yeah but…” Casey sighed in the end, taking a seat on the chair placed beside Donnie, wearing a lost expression. “I don’t know how else to connect with her. I don’t know how to play hockey properly, most of my time is spent with her former enemies, and it’s just, things are super awkward without something to focus on, like selling cookies or discussing battle tactics. I'm still waaay behind on all the in-jokes of this timeline. The movies and food; everything is so new to me and I just–I want to get to know the woman who named me.”

“The woman who named you?” Donnie inquired.

“Yeah, I–Commander O’Neil and Mom found me in a Kraang labor camp they were instrumental in destroying. She'd gone around trying to find out whose baby I was and accidentally got attached while doing so. Sensei used to say she’d talk to me all the time, saying how once the world was saved, she was gonna conquer it so she could give it to me,” Casey huffed, muffled laughter escaping, and then turned to Donnie with a bittersweet smile.

“ God , I’ve heard so many embarrassing stories about me as a kid from my turtles growing up. Apparently—”, and here Casey laughed softly to himself, “Apparently Master Raphael and Master Michelangelo used to fight over who’d get to babysit me; it’d gotten so bad, that Sensei just started carrying me around to war councils and training just to force them back to their work.”

At that, Donnie couldn't stop the chuckles from escaping him.

That sounded like something his siblings would do if they'd gotten attached to someone like that. Although he can't imagine a science lab would be an acceptable place for a baby, he understands why Donatello never tried to get babysitting rights. 

“So, you were raised mostly by turtles, this version of April and her, right?”

Casey nodded.

“Yeah—Honestly, most of my memories with my mother were in the dojo training or throwing stuff at targets. Commander O’Neil spent most of her time arranging scavenger parties while working alongside Master Donatello. And nobody spoke to me about her missions because they didn’t want me to worry. I just,” the teen looked away from Donnie. “I don’t remember a lot about her and I want to know what she was like, be this version of her’s friend, you know?” He said with a shy tilt to his smile.

“I think I can understand.” Donnie hummed while slipping an arm out of one of his restraints to rub the back of his neck before placing it back in place. Casey looked neither surprised nor worried at all so Donnie figured they were still good to talk.

“So… I’ve noticed you use ‘Master’ when talking about Raph, Mikey, and your version of me, but ‘Sensei’ for Leonardo; was he the one who taught you how to fight?” 

Casey looked at him, a little confused, before shrugging. “I learned a little bit from all the turtles and Mom; Master Raphael taught me how to throw a proper punch and climb, Master Michelangelo taught me how to use a grappling hook, Master Donatello taught me everything I know about technology with a few bō-staff techniques, and Mom taught me the most effective way to weaponize a hockey stick.” His voice slowly took on a more melancholic tone around the end.

Donnie didn't want to force him to relive his memories, but… “And what did your Sensei teach you?” 

Casey looked down.

“Sensei taught me how to not be a child soldier.”

He closed his eyes, leaned back, and took a deep breath.

“He taught me that Master Raphael couldn’t stay mad at someone if they seemed deeply upset. He taught me how to find food in the apocalypse while Master Michelangelo taught me how to cook it. He helped me learn to not be afraid of heights, he’d let me sit in the war meetings and listen to war strategy until I fell asleep at night.” His voice began to choke up. “He taught me caution, and how to remain hopeful even when everything was dire, he was always the one who patched me up, made living in the apocalypse bearable, gave me hope for a better future. He was the greatest ninja the world has ever seen… and the best sensei ever. ”

“So, he was your father?” Donnie's question nearly knocked Casey off his feet.

“ WHAT?! Who told you that? What have you heard?!” Casey frantically shoved his hockey stick in Donnie’s face, chainsaw not yet activated. Donnie simply chuckled this response.

“Casey, Senseis are people who teach you—usually how to defend yourself and good morals, but they aren’t the people who watch over and take care of you. They don’t give you a home, food, and shelter, or let you come to them with your problems… Unless your Sensei also happens to be your parental figure. Like mine was for my siblings and myself, and how it seems Leonardo was for you.” 

Casey still looked stressed, however.

“You can’t tell Leo that! My Leo—he already feels like he’s obligated to let me live in the lair and help me learn how to live in the past–present– whatever ! I don’t want to burden him or the turtles any more than I have to! Or make him feel at all obligated to have me in their lives. I want to earn my place among them no–not guilt trip them.”

“Casey Jones, you’re a bit of an idiot you know that?” Donnie said not unkindly. “If these turtles are anything like my brothers—and deep down I know they are—then you’re already family to them. And family is never a burden. We stick together no matter what, and look after each other. I think you should talk to your turtles about this, Casey. You can’t just live in fear of rejection like that. That’s not our way. Do you truly believe the people who raised you would be heartless or selfish enough to reject you?” 

Casey leaned back, looking away and seemingly still uncertain. “I just… I already messed up during the invasion. I don't want to mess up again.” He replied in a soft voice.

The turtle shook his head. “Messing up is part of life, Casey. Listen, I know we annoyed the shell out of April a lot of the time, even cost her too much with our feud with the Shredder; her home was burnt down, and it almost cost her her life, but she never once thought about abandoning us. We messed up a lot, we got battered and bruised and we fought, but that’s what families do—they stick together always . I’m sure your Sensei would want you to face your fears and face them head-on.”  

Casey looked at the floor for a long moment before getting a determined look and nodding to Donnie, before untying him.

“I’m–I’m gonna try to talk to them about it. One at a time, so it's not overwhelming, but—I’ll talk to them, and I’ll take you to them now. I think I can get Mom to let us go early if I say I'm gonna finally talk to the turtles about the apocalypse.” 

“Good, and thank you,” Donnie smiled at him with a nod before re-untying himself and standing up. “If you need any help doing so I’ll be there to encourage you, ok?”

Casey nodded, a nervous, if somewhat eager, smile on his face. 

“Let's get to work then.” 

–🧡–

Mikey was guided home to this universe's version of their lair. The turtle couldn't help but let out a low appreciative whistle at the sight of the abandoned train station—they’d really decked it out in neon lights and turtle-themed graffiti, while also reinforcing the foundations with bits of metal and doodads that looked like something a Donnie would make. A crater in the ground had been smoothed out into an almost turtle-like pipe leading in and out of it, making a sick-looking pool with several color-coded floaties sitting in it. A long bar had been stripped of its beer and wine barrels and had multiple music players piled on top of the back wall.

“Gnarly lair dudes! You decked this place OUT!” Mikey whistled appreciatively. Hopping off of Raph’s shoulders only to blink at suddenly having an arsenal of guns in his face, barrels popping out of every other crack in the walls.

“ 𝚅𝙾𝙸𝙲𝙴 𝚂𝙰𝙼𝙿𝙻𝙴: 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝚁𝙴𝙲𝙾𝙶𝙽𝙸𝚉𝙴𝙳. 𝙶𝙴𝙽𝙴𝚃𝙸𝙲 𝚂𝙲𝙰𝙽: 𝚄𝙽𝚁𝙴𝙲𝙾𝙶𝙽𝙸𝚉𝙴𝙳. 𝙿𝚁𝙴𝙿𝙰𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚃𝙷𝚁𝙴𝙰𝚃 𝙽𝙴𝚄𝚃𝚁𝙸𝙻𝙸𝚉𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝙿𝚁𝙾𝚃𝙾𝙲𝙰𝙻 𝙳𝙰𝚂𝙷 𝙺𝚁𝟷𝟼. ” A synthetic voice suddenly spoke as the guns began to charge. Raph waved his arms wildly and hugged Mikey, looking at the guns above them.

“ Wait, wait! It's a guest! We're fine—Nobody’s in danger.”

“𝚅𝙾𝙸𝙲𝙴 𝚂𝙰𝙼𝙿𝙻𝙴: 𝚁𝙴𝙲𝙾𝙶𝙽𝙸𝚉𝙴; 𝚁𝙰𝙿𝙷𝙰𝙴𝙻 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙶𝚄𝙴𝚂𝚃. 𝚆𝙴𝙰𝙿𝙾𝙽𝚂 𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙴𝙽𝙶𝙰𝙶𝙴𝙳,” the pleasant voice said. 

“Sorry about that,” Raphael said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “Our Donnie gets… paranoid, and previous events kinda made things worse.”

Mikey let out a laugh and waved Raph’s concerns off. “No worries bro, I get it. That was so cool, and a little scary, but awesome! Maybe our Don should place a security system like that in our lair.”

Raph groaned. “It does keep us safe and makes us feel less worried about intruders, but it makes it harder to have new friends over at the lair.” Raph warns before a voice echoed through the comms.

“ PURPLE BISHOP TO RED KNIGHT; REQUESTING YOU GET YOU AND DIMENSION-HOPPING MICHELANGELO’S SHELLS TO THE LAB IMMEDIATELY . ” Donnie's voice spoke with an edge of urgency, though not enough to bother Raph it seemed.

“We should probably hurry over before Donnie sends the laser roomba out to get us,” Raph grumbled, before leading Mikey to the lab without explaining at all what the SHELL a laser roomba even was.  Mikey slowed a step to simply take in the scale and shininess of all the equipment in the lab. He's sure if his Donnie were here, he’d be wanting to go over it all and gush over every little detail.

After a few paces, something scurried across the ceiling and landed in front of Mikei with four metal legs, startling a scream out of him. The thing had a hideous green monstrosity strapped to its middle with a purple mask—Oh, it was this world’s version of Donatello. This Donnie, without any shame or any hint of personal space, gets in Mikey’s face and circles around him, a manic grin adorning his face.

“ Fascinating ! Leonardo was not kidding, your mutations are almost identical. I doubt someone not familiar with your scale, tones, and voices would even be able to tell the difference between you two without your masks! We will need to conduct scans on you, as well to see if your internal structures match, and if you're giving off any kind of dimensional frequency or particles. Ooooh~! I can't WAIT, I never get a good excuse to rip open the fabric of reality!”

“Okay, two things; one, I never knew Donnie could have the ‘mad-scientist-vibe’—kudos for the theatrics and the mad grin,” he said, clapping his hands. “How many times have you tried to take over the world already?”

Donnie gasped, hand placed on his plastron, and a big smile to his face  while wiping away a single tear. “You know, I try so hard for my mad genius image—I am just so glad to hear people other than my immediate family appreciate my efforts to rock the aesthetic. Also, my world domination plans are none of your concern at the moment–”

“ Thirteen ,” Raph deadpanned. “This month.”

“Raphala, you should know better; those were not world-domination attempts, they were Bishop-assassination-attempts.” Raph’s response was a long-suffering sigh.

“Leave the poor man alone, Dee. You’re really gonna give him a heart attack one of these days.”  

“ BISHOP?! Are we talking Evil-Clone-Super-Soldier-bodies Bishop? Or ‘President of the Pan Galactic Alliance’ Bishop?” 

“Uhh… Overworked government office worker in charge of our health and safety?” Raph said hesitantly. “Or at least the paperwork involving us, I guess.” 

“ …ehhh , I dunno. Bishop is, like, responsible for at least 30% of our trauma. He tried to dissect us once.”

Donnie puffs up with pride, a big grin on his face. “I can attest to that in our universe. I am responsible for a solid 62% of Agent Bishop's trauma. 20% of it is from Leo, 15% from Mikey, 3% from Raph...” 

“ Ahh , inter-universal karma,” Mikey said with a razor grin. “How nice.” 

“Mikey!” a voice called before Mikey felt a hand on his shoulder, turning his head he saw his Leo, giving him a relieved-looking smile. “It’s good to see you, little brother.”

“Leo! Man, am I glad to see you! This is great! Do you think that means the others fell into this universe too?” 

“Thankfully yes, but we have no idea where Raph and Don are, Donnie–uh, Purple is trying to use the tracking device we have but it’s not working. Something about the technology not being compatible or something.”

Before Mikey could respond to that, he’s knocked back a few steps as a tiny weight slams into his chest and wraps its arms around him. The turtle looked down, spotting an orange mask, and couldn’t help but let out a laugh, pulling mini-him into a big hug.

“Nice way to meet you, mini-me! Maybe next time I’ll try that on the next alternate I meet. You nearly knocked the shell off me.” Mikey laughed, patting the tinier Mikey on the head as he grinned up at him.

“Mikey, please ,” Leo sighed. “You remember the way the Turtles Prime reacted to us, you want them to punch you into a wall or something?”

“Oh, come on Leo—Not all other versions of us are sourpusses, look at these guys! They’re happy and friendly, just like the other mini-us’s!” 

Mini-Mikey grinned up at Leo with the same impish grin he’d given him before. “Yeah Leo, it’s the easiest way to figure out how evil an alternate version of yourself is! Whether the Mikey’s are cool with attack hugs!” 

“Orange, don’t encourage him,” Leo replied with a sigh behind his facepalm.

“What's with the color coding?” Mikey questioned. 

“Your Leonardo and our Michelangelo discovered a difference in our dimensions big enough to help us all identify who we are talking to whenever an alternative version of us is in the room,” Don–‘Purple’ explained. “Our Papa tends to call us by the color of our bandanas more than our actual names, therefore we decided it would be easier to differentiate between groups if we went by our bandana colors while you used the atypical nicknames.” 

“Wh–Why does he call you guys by your mask color?” Mikey questioned, terribly confused.

“I’m fairly confident that dear old dad has mild to severe memory issues. Which has led him to mess up our names and our colors in the past. I believe the colors are simply easier for him to remember nowadays.” D–Purple replied with a shrug. 

“I can roll with that,” Mikey replied with a big grin and a shrug.

“Oh! So I gotta ask before I forget,” Orange turned to his counterpart. “Leo told me that you’re kinda genderfluid or non-binary, do you have preferred pronouns that you’d like us to call you by?”

“ Um . I’m not actually sure what you just called me now, little dude.”

“He means when you don't always feel like a boy, Mikey. Do you want us to refer to you by something other than ‘he’? Like how we’ve been calling you our sibling.” Mikey looked startled for a moment, before looking away and scratching the back of his head with one hand, feeling a bit thrown off by his whole… ‘thing’ being brought up out of the blue.

“Uh, I mean…” Mikey mumbled a bit to himself. Leo hummed.

“It's okay if you do Mikey; you know we don’t tease you about the girl clothes thing, we won’t tease you about something that’s actually important to you like that.”

“I know you don't… ehhh… I like it when I'm undercover and when someone uses girl pronouns on me, but I also like it when people just don't gender me at all? Like–you know a group of people's pronouns? I dunno, I guess I'm not picky.” Mikey said slowly. “...and the girl clothes thing is kinda important to me; skirts are rad man, don’t disrespect me.” 

“Amen to that sibling—You should try granny clothes, they're so comfortable. ” Purple cheered

“Oh, I have!” Mikey replied. “Totally agree.” 

“Alright, I’ll make sure to tell the others when we’re back together,” he said, patting Mikey’s head affectionately. 

“Thanks, Leo.” 

“Well, now that everyone is up to date with Michelangelo’s pronouns, I think it’s time I got my scans. Do not worry, I have appropriate compensation for you to sit still for the next ten minutes.” Purple stated casually. He hit a button on his wrist and had a drone pop up out of nowhere with an orange t-shirt that had the words ‘I Don't Even Know What A Binary Is’ on it in Comic Sans.

“Hey, it's true! I don’t know what a binary is,” Mikey said with a big grin on his face. One of Purple’s metal hands patted Mikey on the head before he went over to a computer and started typing. 

“Have you gotten any texts from Blue about any lost turtle sightings?” Red asked Orange and Purple.

“Yeah, still nothing so far but don’t worry! Leo can be anywhere in the city in the snap of a finger. If anyone has a chance of spotting Raph or Donnie, it’ll be him.” Orange told the group in a reassuring tone. 

“Or myself and my ‘hack into every camera in the city’ app.” Purple deadpanned. 

“How many cameras are there in your New York?” Leo asked.

“Roughly 20,000 security cameras at any given time, not accounting for every camera phone in the city.” 

“That sounds like an absolute ninja nightmare!” Mikey yelled.

“It's actually not that hard. You’d be amazed at how much CGI has advanced in the last fifteen years, let alone digital art. You can make it look like anything is in New York and with the Jupiter Jim franchise having turtle aliens as a prominent villain in them, it’s easy to pretend we're avid cosplayers and nerds.” Purple explained. 

“I’ve never heard of Jupiter Jim before. Oh my gosh ! This is an entirely new reality! I need to be updated on pop culture, the comic books, the local superheroes, and and and the TV Shows!!” 

Orange gasped, grabbing Mikey's shoulders. “HAVE YOU MET SUPERHEROES IN YOUR WORLD?! NO FAIR! BISHOP WON'T SET UP MEETINGS FOR ME AND MY BROTHERS TO MEET SUPERHEROES!” 

“Have I met superheroes?! Bro, I’m like a super famous superhero and part of the Justice Force!” Mikey met his eagerness by grabbing back.

“ OMIGOSH!!! ” Orange shrieked 

Purple turned to Leo, letting the Mikey’s freak out together. “Is that true?”

“Technically yes.” 

“No superheroes in my lab, it ruins my villain aesthetic— Out .” 

“But I thought you wanted to scan me or something.” 

“I got them while we were talking. What, you think I don't attach scanners to everything and anything?”

“Our Don doesn’t, but okay—Respect the ‘evil scientist’ vibe from you, Purple,” Mikey said, pointing at Purple with finger guns before turning to leave the lab, carrying Orange with him. “Now, you must show me the nearest comic book collection so that I may educate myself!” 

“Okay, but our comic book collections took MASSIVE casualties to it recently so were a little low…” 

The rest of their conversation petered out as the two of them left the lab, leaving Leo, Red and Purple behind. 

“So what exactly did you learn from the scans?” Leo questioned.

“That neither dimension has dimensional radiation or that you’ve been in about thirty distinct dimensions and timelines so it's impossible to decipher which one is your home dimension.” Purples' tone veered into fascination near the end.

“Oh we have,” Leo replied. “We’ve at least been through five portals to different dimensions every month in the last two years—Some to several periods in time.”

“ Lucky~ ” Purple grumbled under his breath.

“We had to survive fighting evil monsters in most of those, also dinosaurs.”

“YOU GUYS WENT TO SEE THE DINOSAURS!” Purple yelled, tears in his eyes. “I WANNA SEE REAL DINOSAURS!!”

“We were trapped there for three months,” Leo said matter of fact.  

“YOU GOT TO HANG OUT WITH DINOSAURS FOR THREE MONTHS?! I knew that justice was a social construct! When will our dinosaur adventure finally come?!” Purple wept mournfully.

“They don't have wifi in the past, y’know?” 

“Mourning retracted—I'll just bring dinosaurs to the future.”

“You can bring dinosaurs back to life?” Red asked, his tone filled with awe. 

“I can do anything with the power of mystic science on my side,” Purple said smugly. 

“Donatello, no ,” Leo replied firmly, crossing his arms and giving Purple a withering look. Purple actually felt the intensity of that one. Something about this Leo in front of him struck him as more… mature . Experienced, this is someone with actual power and authority behind him. It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling. He did not need his Leo learning to weaponize that kind of look at people whenever he was angry. 

“I hope Blue learns nothing from you,” Purple groused, turning back to his work. 

“So, uh, Leo,” Red said a little awkwardly. “Until my Donnie finishes looking for your brother, what would you like to do?” 

“Hm, do you have a dojo? Doing my katas or meditating usually helps clear my head.” 

“You train regularly?” Red said with a bit of awe. “Like, on schedule ? Without anyone dragging you into it?”

“Usually my siblings drag me out of training,” Leo replied. 

“My Leo never trains or practices! He almost always ditches us to goof off in some other part of the city whenever it was training time before the Kraang! And he still acts like he doesn't want to be there!”

“Well, can you tell me about your training methods? I’d love to learn.” There was a thoughtful look in his eyes.

Red’s, however, seemed to sparkle, eyes getting big and shining with happiness before he grabbed Leonardo and picked him up while leading him out of the lab. They ran down the hall until they reached a living room with a projector, this world's Splinter snoring in the chair.

“Ok, ok–So usually whenever Pop is having an off day, we copy what we can see off of old Lou Jitsu movies until we get the moves juuust right. It can be kinda hard with moves where there are a lot of action cuts, so you can't really see how Dad is moving in the films, but he’s started showing us what he’s really doing during the scenes so we can practice better. Then we usually spar for a couple of hours, or play Capture the Bandana, or go out running around the city practicing parkour, or try new moves with our weapons from videos online.” 

“I see…” Leo hummed. 

“Yeah, it’s not like we're doing anything too hard, or boring like meditating or waving our weapons in the air… Uh, no offense,” Red said awkwardly.

“So you guys didn’t have actual ninja training did you?” 

“Hey, Dad trained us! I just said that!” Red said, sounding a little defensive. 

“Yes, but you don't know the basics—not the traditional way. Tell me something, if the two of us sparred right now–no mystic powers–which of us do you think would win?” 

“I mean, I’ve never lost a wrestling match to Leo before so I'm pretty sure I could beat you.” 

“Are you willing to bet on that?” 

“ Uhhh , what are we betting?”

–💙–

Red looked like he'd just been handed a Christmas present early, already getting the sparring mat prepared by the time Leo looked over. “Uh, yes! Raph hasn’t had a good fight in ages!” 

“No mystic powers, alright? Everything else is fair game.” 

Red deflated a bit at that, but looked no less confident. Orange popped his head into the room soon after with Mikey behind him.

“ Our Leo’s not afraid of Raph’s mystic powers. They spar all the time with Raph using them.”

“Mystic powers aren’t the point, it’s the fighting.”

“I don't need ‘em, Mikey. Ready when you are,” Red said, taking a wrestler's fighting stance as the Mikey’s let out an ‘Oooo ’ at Red’s comment. 

Leo bowed before taking his own fighting stance. They began to circle each other around the mat.

“So, like, how well trained are you guys?” Mikey asked. 

“Well enough,” Orange replied. 

“Then your Raph doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Whaaat? Red’s twice Leo’s size and crazy strong! No way!”

“Yeah, but here’s the thing—“

Red struck out first, throwing a punch at Leo, only for Leo to swiftly move out of the way of the fist, turned and crouched slightly before throwing Red over his shoulder and slamming the snapping turtle mutant hard into the ground before backing up a few paces and resuming his stance.  Red sat there, blinking for a moment, before getting up and rushing forward again. This time aiming to punch Leo multiple times before he could dodge. However, Leo was unaffected, as he smoothly moved out of the way of Red’s fists with calm, fluid movements. He retaliated by delivering a precise and swift chop to one of the softer parts of Red’s shell where his arms were uncovered and part of Red’s neck, earning a cry of pain as Red took a few steps back and rubbed at the injured area. 

Leo waited patiently for Red to make another move. There was some brief hesitation on the larger turtle's part for a moment before running forward again with a yell, trying to kick Leo in the stomach. Leo crouched. The kick didn't even brush Leo’s head as it sailed over him before the smaller turtle struck  Red in the leg he was balancing with a swift kick causing Red to fall back on his shell.

Red groaned for a brief moment before looking over to where Leo stood calmly in his fighting stance. He rubbed the back of his head before putting his hands up. “ I give up—I lose.”  

“Leo’s the perfect ninja.” Mikey explained as the fight was concluded easily.

Orange stood beside Mikey with his jaw on the floor, not believing what he had just seen. 

“Champion and still undefeated, Hamato Leonardo~!” Mikey declared as if he was an announcer at an actual wrestling match.

Leo smiled at Red and walked over to him. “Good effort. I am glad you were willing to stop the fight before one of us was left unconscious. Our Raph tends to try and fight until he physically cannot anymore.”

“Yeaahhh, our Raphie boy still has issues–we’d send him to therapy like we did Leo, but I don't think the Ancient One is in Japan anymore.”  

“ Michelangelo .” Leo reprimanded. 

“What? It’s true. You know Raph still has a lot of things to work through, but none of us know where to start and we’d miss his hothead tendencies.”  

“Aw, you won't miss them that much, every Raph’s a hot head. Even when he’s doing his bestest.” Orange replied, patting Mikey on the shoulder.

““Yeah, but your Raph’s a teddy bear compared to ours,” Mikey said with a shrug. And that's when something clicked for him. With a snap of his fingers, and a lightbulb over his head, he made his offer, “Our Raph needs a self-discovery journey! You know, leave home for a while, let him work on himself, meet new people.”

“Michelangelo this isn’t a movie, we don’t have that option,” Leo said curtly. 

“Because you don’t think that it’ll actually work, or because you know we’ll all go mad worrying about him when he’s not home?” 

Leo gritted his teeth, hands balled into fists. His little siblings always had to be the observant ones, didn’t he? “Both.” He decidedly did not look in Mikey's direction.

“Probably fair. Raphs shouldn't be left alone for longer than like, twenty minutes without a mind meld set up.” Red said sheepishly. 

“You’ve been doing fantastic on that front lately though, big guy! You made it all the way to the pizza place we love without a mind meld today!” Orange said encouragingly. Red's head shrunk into his shell slightly. 

“...Red mind-melded with Blue and Purple halfway through the walk. I know I said I'd try Mikey, but it's really, really hard.” 

“Still! Its progress! The point is you're working on it and that we're here for you, big Red.” 

“You guys mind meld? On purpose? Why?” Mikey asked. “Like, no offense, but I would not want my brothers inside my head or getting free access to it.”

“We wouldn’t want that either, Mikey,” Leo replied.

“It doesn't work like that. It's not like a memory-diving spell, this is more like a family gathering, if you will, in a mental living room with mind versions of ourselves hanging out. We don't share anything we don't want to or give each other our nightmares when we have them. It's like texting but mystic, and you always get an answer. Though the mystic mind versions of ourselves are a little more,” Orange paused, searching for the right words to describe it. “I don't know if honest fits—Maybe genuine? Mind-Leo acts a lot like your Leo, but grumpier and wishing there was a mind-coffee maker. Donnie doesn't try to act like an emotionless bad boy mad scientist and sends us images of his plant room, giving us plant facts, and Mind-Raph is just like regular Raph, but is waaaay better at expressing himself. Like way, way, way better!”

“Ok, they get it! And Mind-Mikey ate three bags of sugar and cussed like a sailor,” Red grumbled. 

Mikey hummed in thought. “That… does kinda sound nice, and maybe this mind meld thingy would be helpful against other psychic attacks in the future.”

“Uhh, what do you mean other psychic attacks?” Red worried tone did not escape their notice. 

“Okay, so here’s the thing–”

“Mikey, if you can sit still and meditate for ten minutes, I might consider that. Otherwise, you’re too unfocused in regular training meditation, and no guarantee if Raph and Don would even be willing to do this.” 

“Leo, does the word 'codependent' mean anything to you, or do you keep forgetting that you’re not the only one who gets bothered when we’re separated for too long?”

Leo exhaled slowly through his nose, nostrils flaring.

“Donnie seems to handle it well. Raph cools off topside all the time. And even you have spent a lot of your time alone. I'm just… overprotective.” 

“Dude, Don’s the worst of us; he still has nightmares about that alternative future, he just doesn’t like to talk about it. And Raph? He missed you the most when you were gone, the guy’s just too stubborn to open up about it.”

“We’ll talk about this when we’re all home okay?”

“I can deal with that,” Mikey replied with a nod. 

“Anything from Blue, Orange?”

“Nope.”

“Have you checked with Mind-Leo?”

“Have you?”

Red winced before his eyes started glowing and he stood frozen there. Orange getting up and stretching. 

“Red’s gonna be a minute. Want me to make us some pizza?”

“ Home made pizza ? I can never say no to that!” Mikey happily followed Orange to the kitchen. “Come on Leo, I know that there’s a good chance you haven’t eaten yet.”

“True,” There was a small huff to the blue turtle's smile, but he followed the two Mikeys to the kitchen. 

–♥️–

When Mikey described it as a mental living room, he wasn't entirely joking.

It felt like he was walking into their old lair, though for Raph it was more like walking into Donnie’s garage all prepped for training. As he sat down on the mental training mat, he centered himself before reaching out to his younger brother.

It once took no effort for Raph to reach out to Leo; Leo was the first one he ever reached out to mentally, giddily whispering about their plans on the train, and hashing out the smaller details in a matter of seconds. It had been so exciting and Raph had loved the freedom the mind meld gave him to roam the world without dragging all his brothers out into the streets with him.

However, the more Raph tried to use it to get people to come to training; the more arguments were born over plans on how to deal with enemies, and everything that came with the responsibility of being a leader, the more Leo stopped mind-melding with them. He pushed them away when they reached out for him, or told them to say it to his face if they wanted to talk about something important.

Every denial, every askance for Leo to acknowledge him being ignored. The lack of being able to talk to his brother without a fight for months on end… it got to Raph, made him angrier, snappier, made him miss his little brother.

When his mind was… after he saved Leo and the key from the Kraang, Raph felt like he was lost, wandering alone in a pink jungle of flesh, one eye seeing the strange pink forest in front of him, the other straining to see what was happening outside in the real world. Mind-Raph was helpless to stop his body from attacking his brothers, helpless to watch his arms mutate and change. Unable to act from trying to kill Leo at the Kraang’s orders. 

Then, when all seemed lost and he could do naught but curl in on himself, he felt it. The connection was shaky, almost nonexistent, but he felt them. He felt his brothers . First, it was just Leo then all three of them reaching out for his mind, begging him to connect with them, to let them help him .

When he first reached back, he was flooded with memories, with Leo's perspective during missions. His frustrations at what he was expected to do, from people going off plan to his fears of his brothers getting hurt, and trying to mitigate it by taking it all by himself, keeping his brothers out of fights. He'd felt like Raph hadn't cared about what kind of leader Leo was, only that he wasn't the leader anymore and was angry. How Raph’s speeches about being scared of Leo, Donnie, and Mikey dying rang hollow until he was staring up at his big brother taking what was meant to be a killing blow. Raph gave up his safety for Leo's and how deeply terrified he was of losing him, of his plan to reach out to Raphael not being enough. 

“If this is it, I want you to know I finally understand… And I’m sorry.” 

And he clung to that connection, tried to reach out and say he got it, that he understood.

He wanted to say sorry for breaking Leo’s door and for not grabbing a slice of pizza with the three of them on that bridge, how scared he'd been of this thing in his head killing him— controlling him —forcing him to kill his brothers. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to lose them either. He was so sorry too–

And then Leo was pulling; pulling him out, pulling him away from the Kraang, and the rest of their brothers were quick to join, helping regain control of his limbs back, regaining the strength to rip the Kraang out of his eye. And as they desperately clung to that mental connection, to their family, they all felt that connecting sing and their powers roared to life once more.

And they. Kept. Clinging .

Wouldn’t– couldn’t let go throughout the fight against the Kraang. Clung as they all fought for their lives, for their home, and for their family.

Clung even as they lost, as Donnie and Mikey were falling through the skies, falling and Raph had to save them. Their hold tightened when they heard Leo’s plan, hearing Leo beg Casey to help him sacrifice himself for everything else. Held tighter still when the portal snapped shut, and they felt him fading, growing weaker by the second, felt him being pulled away, felt him letting go, felt him dying —

Mikey followed him.

He followed him until he could feel the divide between them and the prison, ripped and torn asunder, feeling it try to rend Mikey's very soul apart before Raph and Donnie helped hold him together. Helped him get their brother back.

Raph tried to center himself again. He didn't want to start thinking of that time they almost lost each other. Tried to stop his racing heart and calm his unsteady breath. This was always the hardest part of connecting with Leo, all the memories that connection reminded him of… 

It’s not long before Leo reaches back, the connection fastening, as if squeezing Raph’s hands between his own before he hears Leo. 

“Hey big guy, what do you need? I'm here, you're here, that thing isn’t here—It's okay. We’re safe right now.” Leo soothed him through the bond. The mind version of him gave him a calm, collected look he only shared in their minds, always given when he felt one of their brothers slipping into panic. 

“We’re… we're safe right now,” Raph repeated letting out a calming breath. Realistically, there was no need for them to breathe when mind melding, it was all in the mind after all–Donnie had simply used much fancier words for it.

“That’s right Raphael. Everyone is safe right now,” Leo repeated.

“I wish I could stop thinking about that time,” Raph said with a sigh.

“I wish it were that easy too. What did you need buddy?”

“Have you found them? The ones that are lost?” Raph questioned.

Leo shook his head. “Not yet, not yet. Want to see where I’ve searched?”

“Yeah.”

It was always weird how much calmer Leo was in his head–less snarky and more serious. It always worked to help calm the others down; in some strange way, if Leo wasn't panicking it was easier to keep themselves from panicking. To stay focused on the task in front of them… or as focused as their family could be on any single task.

Leo tugged at Raph’s mind, all he heard was the slice of a sword against the wind before they were walking through places Leo had searched and double searched—up top, down below, and back again since Mikey texted them all about finding the other Leo and his lost family. 

Leo kept a steadying hand on Raph’s shoulder as Raph hugged himself while they retraced the slider's footsteps, his heart slowing to a steadier beat after a few moments.

“I’ve looked everywhere in the city so far except Staten Island, the Crying Titan, the Central Hidden City, aaaand the Hidden City docks. I'm worried that he might not be in New York and we’ll have to start searching farther out, or have to ask for help from outside the lair.”

“Who do you think we should ask?”

Leo hummed, crossing his arms with a pensive look in his eye that he’d never openly have outside of a mind meld. Raph sometimes wondered why he acted so goofy in real life, why he couldn't act serious if he was capable of it. That's part of where the leadership mess started– no, not now Raph .

“Well, there's Big Mama who I’d rather us avoid if we can, buuut we can’t rule her out as an option if push comes to shove. She has connections to parts of the world we haven’t even heard much about so she’s a valid resource if we can think of something to cover the cost of working with her.”  Leo said, showing his older brother an image of the Battle Nexus Hotel before moving to a small office building crammed between two skyscrapers.

“Bishop is limited in how much he can help us, and I do not fully trust that the government is suddenly on our side and would rather us keep the number of favors we ask of them low since we don’t know what it will cost us.” 

The image switched again—this time he was presented with an image of Draxum’s apartment while he was in his worst-looking robe with his helmet on, looking utterly done with the world around him.

The sight of the image made Raph snort.

“We should probably ask Draxum to look up locator spells in the Hidden Library since our usual methods aren’t leading us any closer.” 

“Have you checked in with Grandma CJ and Casey?”

“Not yet,” Leo replied. “I don’t know how much information a Girl Scout cookie empire can collect, and don’t want to put a strain on their operations.” 

“Is that really why you haven’t checked in with them?”

“You know it isn’t,” Leo replied with a sigh. 

The image shifts to Grandma CJ’s base of operations, Leo sitting on the roof in front of it and checking the time—thirty minutes before the end of the day. Raph threw an arm over Leo, drawing him into a half hug, sending reassurance and amusement his way.

“You’re being silly–Case’ loves hanging out with you, little brother.”

“I know, I know, but what if mi guerrerito starts thinking I'm being overprotective or clingy seeing him outside the lair? I don’t want to stifle him, I’m already smothering him when he comes home.”

“If by smothering him you mean saving pizza for him and inviting him to family movie marathons, then you're smothering the whole family. Oh no, you lent him a comic; you're such an overbearing father figure.”

“I didn't say I was–”

“I know but you sound like a worried dad. Just relax, you even have a good excuse to and it will mostly be talking to CJ. He won't mind you there.” 

“And if he does?”

“ He won't . You led the effort to get him established as a citizen with Donnie, helped him catch up on memes and jokes he’ll need for school, and helped him get the courage to introduce himself to CJ. He appreciates you looking out for him. It will be okay.” 

Leo still looked a little unsure before he got up and nodded, dropping the connection down to a low hum in the back of snapping turtle’s mind as Raph blinked his eyes a few times.

Looking around he found the training room empty, only for the scent of cheese and assorted spices hit his nose, guiding him down to the kitchen where Orange, Mikey, and Leo waited beside the oven as a delicious-smelling pizza cooked. 

Raph sat down on his chair and relaxed into it.

“Blue hasn’t found anything yet. I convinced him to go ask CJ for help.”

“Good thinking Red! CJ’s tenacious! If anyone is stubborn enough to find one of them through sheer spite, it's her.” 

“CJ?” Mickey asked before a voice yelled in the lair.

“ HAMATO CLAN! WE HAVE ARRIVED!” 

Red jolted and looked over at the three who arrived, looking alarmed. “Wait, you’re here?! But-but the day hasn’t even ended yet!”

“Junior here found the courage to start telling everyone about our future selves, and I was NOT ABOUT TO WASTE THE OPPORTUNITY! Also, we’ve brought this turtle who invaded the base during a war meeting.” 

In the blink of an eye, two streaks of orange were tackling the purple bandana-wearing turtle. Twin cries of ‘DONNIE!’ echoed across the lair. 

“Mikey! And… other Mikey,” Donnie replied happily, even hugging the smaller of two back. 

“Hi!” Orange happily chirped.

“I’m glad to see you back safe Don,” Leo said, placing a hand on Donnie’s shoulder. It made Orange raise his eyebrows in confusion. Donatello looked at Leo and gave him a bright smile. “So glad to see you guys okay too…” he looked over their shoulders, scanning the area for something. “Raph isn’t here?”

Leo shook his head. “We haven’t found him yet—Currently, Purple and Blue are leading the search for him, we are likely going to go searching ourselves in the morning if nothing turns up.”

“Honestly it’s mostly these guys finding us,” Mikey shrugged. 

Red put his head in his arms and held back a scream. He JUST got his Leo to make an attempt at bonding with Casey outside the lair. He'd take this as a sign! He just knows it! Months of work down the drain!

“We’re color coding these guys?” Donnie asked with a small chuckle, raising an eye ridge. 

“It’s easier and we all agreed on it,” Leo replied.

“It’s also what their Splinter nicknames them,” Mikey added.

“I see—Does this Casey have a color code we should know about? It might make things easier.” Donnie pointed at Junior who shrinks like he’s trying to hide in a shell. Aw, he's turtling. They taught him well. 

“I didn't, um , Sensei just, uhh… he called me Torta ,” Casey muttered the last part under his breath looking like the awkward teenager he was instead of the veteran child soldier. 

“Like a tortoise?” Mikey asked with a raised eye ridge as the color-coded crew let out a collective ‘awww’.

“Leo called you ‘little cake’? That's adorable!” Donnie said. 

“Why does he keep giving you dorky nicknames? You should get nicknames of a WARRIOR, not a tiny dessert.” CJ grumbled.

“Wait, who’s she?” Mikey asked. “Don’t tell me she’s this universe’s April.”

“Uh, no,” Donnie chuckled. “She’s also Casey Jones.”

“What?! Casey's a girl in this universe?!”

Even Leonardo’s eyes widened in surprise. 

“CASEY’S COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES! ALSO FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF YOUR LIVES! WE’RE TWICE THE CASEY THAN WHAT YOU CAN HANDLE, HAMATOS OF THE OTHER DIMENSION!” CJ yelled, throwing an arm over Casey's shoulder while pointing her hockey stick at Mikey with the other. 

Mikey swallowed. “ Uh –understood ma’am. Indeed they do!” 

Casey shifted nervously, looking around the room. “Um, where is sensei?”

“Sensei?” Leo asked.

“He means their Leo–erm, Blue,” Donnie replied. 

“ Oh ,” Leo replied softly. 

Red sighed. “Blue went to your base to talk to you two. He was gonna ask for help finding, well, them .”

Casey grimaced. “So we ended up leaving him to look around an empty building for no reason? And probably are worrying him to death ‘cause we never close early?”

Red blinked 

“Guys, you have mind-melding powers and phones , just call the guy and tell him that you’re all here,” Mikey said. “Really wanna meet the guy, he seems so different from our Leo.” 

“You underestimate the speed at which a turtle can start to panic.” Red snapped back, Orange already having his phone out and spamming Leo’s phone, Orange paused before glowering at his phone, then holding it up to his ear while tapping his foot. 

“That's… not healthy," Donnie said. "I mean we worry about each other but at least we can handle not knowing where the other is for a few hours." 

"Unless they're gone more than like five hours, then we panic," Mikey commented. "After what happened with Leo and the Shredder the first time, we just started calling each other when we're out more than two hours at a time."

“You underestimate the speeds at which our family can find itself in life-or-death scenarios, then.”

Mikey opened his mouth as if to argue before Leo stopped him. “Let's not make this a competition, Michelangelo. Just make the call, it’d still be better even if he slightly panicked.” 

“Not everyone panics as fast as you Red, but yeah, I already texted him what happened. I'm calling because he said he was going to stay searching for your Raph when I told him to get his butt home!” Orange grumbled. 

“Alright then.”

“Raph is okay right?” Donnie asked softly. 

“Come on Don, you know how tough that hot head can be—Now how about some pizza? Bet you’re hungry~,” Mikey enticed. 

“Yeah,” Don gave him a shaky smile. It wasn’t okay for any of them, they were worried about Raph, each in their way, but they didn’t want to feed into each other's anxiety and cause even more panic. They needed to find ways to calm themselves—Raph was an excellent ninja, he could get himself to safety and hide until he was found, after all, no one bore them a grudge in this universe–not them specifically–so Raph would probably be okay for a few hours. 

Or at least, that was what all three of the siblings kept telling themselves.

– • –

Beta reader(s):

Pimono: ✅

Beta note(s):

Donnie's name misspelled: 02

Casey's name misspelled: 06

Mikey's name misspelled: 07

Raph's name misspelled: 01