Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The air in the city was quiet, with only enough wind to shift the leaves on the taller trees. There was little traffic, each car smoothly reaching their destination without delay. With a practically non-existent temperature, and just enough noise to be heard, but not bother, New York was unremarkable that night.

Well, unless you count the inherent conspicuous nature of the four mutant turtles on the roof of an apartment complex.

“Still no unusual activity detected, and since it’s nearly one in the morning I imagine there won’t be anything noteworthy tonight.” Donnie checked the radars for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

“Really, again? This is like, the fifth boring patrol in a row.” Leo groaned as the other two sat on the edge of the building, dangling their legs over the side.

“Shouldn’t that be a good thing? I mean there’s no crime, no weird mystics, no foot clan, nothing to worry about.” Raph listed off on his fingers.

“I mean, yeah, but can’t there be, I dunno, a thief or something? Maybe those two ‘magic partners’ getting up to shenanigans.” Leo put air-quotes for emphasis.

“You know, you can quell your boredom with other activities, ‘Nardo. I, for one, would love to get back to my lab to finish working on my-”

“Yeah, no, listening to your monologue is somehow more boring than wandering aimlessly.” Donnie scoffed at his twin, who was taking his katanas out of their sheaths. “Although you have a point with the whole ‘other activities’ thing.”

“What are you implying?”

“Well, my dear brothers, I say we take a small vacation and test just how far my portals can take us.” Leo smirked, spinning his katanas in his hands.

“Ooh, can we go to Hawaii, or Japan! Or maybe Spain?” Mikey rapidly suggested.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Raph inquired, tapping his fingers on the wall.

“When have my portals ever let you down, Raphie?”

“Do you want the list chronologically or in order of severity?” Donnie looked up from his phone and raised an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t asking you Donnie.” He pointed one of his katanas vaguely in his twin’s direction, then rested it on his shoulders. “Anywho, I’m a fan of Mikey’s first suggestion. To Hawaii!”

Leo grabbed his twin by the arm and created a portal, pulling the two of them down, their brothers following shortly afterwards.

Through the other side of the portal, Donnie fell on top of Leo, knocking them both to the ground. The cold, rough concrete that made up the surface didn’t make for a very comfortable landing for either of them.

“I don’t think this is Hawaii, Leon.” Donnie looked up to see they were still in New York, although it seemed somehow duller than before. “In fact, it looks like your portal took us approximately ten blocks north of our initial location.”

Leo looked up to see what his twin brother was talking about, and noticed the same thing Donnie had. The city seemed duller, almost muted, compared to what he was used to. He hoped his science-enthusiast brother had some sort of explanation for it. He turned around to see if Raph and Mikey had noticed the same thing, just to be greeted with an empty street.

“Uh, Dee, where are Mikey and Raph?”

“Shouldn’t they be right behind-” Donnie turned around “oh. Great, not only did your portal not take us to the correct location, it has also separated us.”

“Well I’m sorry Mr. Perfect, why don’t you make a portal next time.” Leo pointed at him before picking up his katanas and attempting to reopen a new portal. The swords glowed briefly, sparking with a small amount of mystic energy, and then faded. He tried a couple more times, ultimately leading to the same result. “Shit… Donnie can you check the mystic stuff around with your goggles.”

“Uh… sure?” Donnie, who had been typing on his gauntlet about to open his trackers, turned his focus to Leo. He pulled down his goggles and attempted scanning for mystic energy, only to receive an error. “That’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“My scanners are sending me an error. There’s something interfering with our mystic technology here… which is strange because we are in New York, and they were working perfectly fine before. Have you tried portalling?” He looked down to Leo’s hands to see his swords, and then back up to his face.

“Yeah, just started sparking and then faded. That’s why I asked you to check.” Leo explained as Donnie reopened his tracker to try finding their brothers. The tracker seemed to be bugging out though, showing the purple and blue blinking trackers but no map or red and orange.

Donnie started troubleshooting, but made little progress as they heard footsteps and whispering behind them. The twins shared a look before turning around to check for danger. The empty street glowed with the light of the streetlamps, but there was nothing else to be seen. They heard more whispering though, and realised it was coming from one of the alleys nearby. Wordlessly, the two decided to follow the sound of the voices, careful not to be seen.

They climbed up onto the roof of one of the buildings and listened again for the whispering, making their way towards it. Donnie attempted to peek over the side of the building, but it was too dark to make out anything other than four figures standing in the alley.

“-only two of them. Shouldn’t there be four, y’know, like us?”

“You sure you looked?”

“Maybe they got separated?”

“Yes, I definitely looked, Raphael. Why don’t you check for yourself?”

“Don’t scare them off, I want to ask about his tech. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Yeah! I totally need to leave a good first impression.”

Leo was crouching next to Donnie now, listening to their conversation. After eavesdropping for a decent part of it, the two backed up and sat on the roof.

“You heard that too, right?”

“Yes, Leo. If I’m understanding correctly, you have somehow managed to portal us into an alternate universe, with alternate versions of ourselves who are aware of our existence, and have no way of getting us back home.” Donnie stated while inputting all the details and readings he could gather into his gauntlet.

“Okay, ignoring the ‘no way home’ part, isn’t this so cool? We get to meet another version of ourselves. That’s sick.”

“I feel like the ‘no way home’ part is the last thing we should be ignoring, but okay.” Donnie stood back up, rolling his eyes at his brother.

“Awe c’mon Dee loosen up. I’m sure with two of your nerd brains you’ll figure out a way back in no time.” Leo stood, walking over to the side of the building and climbing down. Donnie followed him down cautiously, staying a couple steps behind with his tech-bo on standby.

“Well hello fellow mutant ninja turtles.” Leo did a half-bow and smiled at the group. “I see we have… accidentally gotten ourselves stuck in your universe. Somehow.”

“Yeah, obviously.” One of the others, who Leo assumed was their Raphael, rolled his eyes at him. “What do you want us to do about it?”

“Uh… I was kinda hoping you could maybe help us figure out how to, y’know, leave?” He pointed vaguely with his thumb while Donnie walked up beside him.

“I’m sure we can help you figure it out. This isn’t our first rodeo.” Their Leonardo walked forward and spoke. “For now, you can stay with us. I’m assuming you’re Leonardo and Donatello?”

“You know it baby!” Leo smiled and winked, and Donnie nodded silently.

“Where are the other two?” Michelangelo asked.

“Unfortunately we seem to have gotten separated from them after someone messed up on his portal locations.” Donnie glared briefly at Leo.

“Hey! How was I supposed to know I could portal us to another dimension?! I was just trying to test if I could get us to Hawaii and back. If I’d known I could do that a year ago I wouldn’t have been in a coma for two weeks!” Leo retorted while the other four watched in surprise.

“Sorry, you can use portals just for fun? How? I mean I saw your technology seemed advanced but that’s a whole other level!” Donatello walked over, looking over Donnie’s tech in astonishment.

“Yeah Dee’s tech is cool or whatever but that’s nerd stuff. My portals are their own thing. We’ve got cool mystics abilities that let us use our weapons to focus it. I make portals and teleport, Raph can make a mystic ‘exoskeleton’ thing and clones of himself, Mikey can extend his nunchuks and he threw a train once, and Donnie can recreate mystic versions of his tech.” Leo gestured to emphasise his explanation.

“Mystic abilities which do not seem to work in your universe, might I add.”

“Woah, that’s so cool. I wish we could have cool magic powers.” Mikey was enthralled by the concept.

Leonardo and Raph shared a confused look over Leo’s animated personality, and Leonardo gestured for everyone to follow him back. The walk was reasonably short, but it left enough time for Leo and Mikey to start bonding, and for Donatello to ask Donnie every question he could think of about his tech.

They entered the lair, and Leo and Donnie looked at each other, silently communicating their thoughts on the place. It was too clean, it seemed like it hadn’t really been lived in. Everything was nicely placed where it should be, there was hardly any art or graffiti, and everything seemed too dark. They sat down on the couch with the rest of them, adjusting to their new surroundings.

“So… First thing, do you guys have something else we could refer to you as? Having two Leo’s and two Donnie’s will probably get confusing.” Leonardo asked the twins.

“You can call me Neon Leon.” Leo pointed at himself smirking, earning him a smack from Donnie, and he put his hands up defensively. “My bad, my bad. Leon is good though, shouldn’t be too hard to remember.”

“I suppose Dee is fine. That’s what Leon calls me half the time anyways.” Dee shrugged, bringing his legs up to sit criss-cross on the couch.

“Yeah, when I’m not calling you ‘nerd’ or ‘loser’.” Leon poked fun at his twin, who rolled his eyes in response.

“Leon and Dee. That’s fine. Now, since it’s late and I don’t need Donnie trying to pull another all-nighter, why don’t we get basic questions out of the way and whatnot.”

“Sounds good to me.” Mikey smiled “What’s your family like? Leon is soooo different from Leo, are the others just as different?”

“Raphael is definitely much taller in our universe, but-” Dee was abruptly cut off by Raph.

“What’s that supposed to mean!?”

“It means you are literally shorter in stature than our Raph. He is over 6 feet tall. You are shorter than both myself and Leon, and the shorter of us is 5 ‘6.”

Leo managed to get Raph to chill out after that, and the twins continued to explain their family dynamics.

“Mikey’s about the same to be honest, you guys would definitely get along.” Leon smiled, leaning back on the couch. He was starting to miss Mikey and Raph, and was wondering where they’d ended up. Hopefully not in another universe like them. “You can see for yourself how myself and Dee compare. Uh, what else? How old are you guys?”

“We’re 17 years old.” Leo responded.

“Like… all of you? You’re quadruplets or something?”

“Yeah pretty much. I’m technically the oldest, followed by Raph, Donnie and then Mikey’s the youngest. But really, we’re basically the same age.”

“Huh, weird…” Leon was met with confused looks from the rest of them, and Dee quickly spoke up to explain.

“We’re not quadruplets, and Leon is not the oldest. I think we’d all be dead if he was. Raph is 18, Leon and I are 17, and Mikey’s 16.”

The four of them seemed shocked by this information, but Donnie had another question about it.

“But you and Leon are twins?” He pointed between the two of them.

“Yes!” “No.” They responded at the same time, glaring at each other briefly over their constant disagreement.

“We’re not twins. It’s biologically impossible, since we’re completely different species of turtle.” Dee explained, much to Leon’s dismay. The two had been arguing about their status as twins since they were old enough to understand it.

“Oh, c’mon Dee, we’re basically twins. We shared a bedroom until we were twelve and literally share a birthday.”

“Wait… different species?” Leo questioned.

“Oh yeah, we’re all different. Raph’s an alligator snapping turtle, I’m a red-eared slider, Dee’s a spi-” Leon stopped mid-sentence when Dee started glaring at him. He’d forgotten that he hates when strangers, which despite being alternate versions of themselves, these people were strangers, knew about his shell. Leon sneezed to cover it up and then continued, “sorry, and Mikey’s an ornate box turtle.”

“Wouldn’t that not make you siblings then?” Raph asked a little harshly.

“We are still biologically related, since we were all mutated via the same human DNA, which would technically make us half-siblings.”

“From DNA tests I suspect we’re diamondback terrapins with some amount of box turtle and slider DNA mixed in, plus the obvious human part. But we’re all full siblings.” Donnie explained in return. “That would make us most closely related to Leon and maybe Mikey? Although I didn’t catch what species he said you were, Dee.”

“How unfortunate. Anyways, I think it’s time for Leon and I to go to bed, since it’s been a very long and stressful day.” Dee stood up abruptly, grabbing Leon by the arm. Leo stood up to show the two of them to the guest room, however Dee caught the suspicious stares he was receiving from Donnie and Raph.

The twins got settled in their new room, and Leo left shortly after making sure they both had everything they needed.

“You gonna take that off, Don-tron?” Leon noticed he was lying in the bed with his battle-shell still on, despite stripping the rest of his tech. After the shredder and Kraang, Dee had gone a couple weeks without taking it off and it destroyed his back and shoulders, and Leon didn’t particularly want to deal with that again. “You know it’s not good for you to wear it for more than like 10 hours at a time.”

Leon received a pointed glare in response and decided this was not the hill he wanted to die on. Plus, he kind of understood why he wouldn’t feel comfortable taking it off. It was the same reason he was keeping his katanas right next to his bed.

Chapter Text

Of course, neither of them got all that much sleep. The twins had always been insomniacs, and being in a completely new place wasn’t exactly helping either of them. They ended up spending most of the night talking to each other, brainstorming how they could possibly get back home. Leon spent a lot of it worrying about Raph and Mikey, and although Dee would never admit it, he was also concerned for their well-being.

Leon did finally end up getting some sleep later into the night, and Dee spent that time writing notes down and creating hypotheses to test.

“Dude… did you sleep at all?” Leon asked between a yawn, sitting up and stretching out.

“Totally… for sure…” Dee responded, attempting to sound convincing. Leon didn’t buy it for a second of course, his twin was the worst liar he’d ever met.

“If you don’t try sleeping tonight I’m going to knock you out.” He glared at his brother before standing up to hopefully get some sort of breakfast. Dee quickly finished what he was doing and followed.

The kitchen was fairly empty, the only people present being Leon and Mikey. Supposedly Donnie was in his lab, and Raph and Leo were busy training. Dee took a seat at the table and watched the two of them cook some pancakes while playing mindless games on his phone. Mikey claimed to be the chef of the family, which only made both of them concerned about the rest of their cooking skills.

“Oh yeah Dee, what’s up with the thing on your back?” Mikey innocently asked. Dee tensed slightly at the question before coming up with a response.

“This thing? It’s a… storage device! For all my tech… like a special backpack… basically.” He explained, not technically lying, but avoiding the real answer nonetheless. Fortunately, this Mikey was much more oblivious than their own, and gave an interested response before returning to his and Leon’s cooking.

When they were done, Mikey ran off to get all of his brothers, already amazed by Leon’s cooking abilities. Leon placed a plate in front of his twin and sat next to him.

“You know they’re gonna figure it out, right?” Leon mentioned between bites. It had already come up twice in the little time they’d been there, and with Donnie’s interest in science, it wasn’t going to stay under the radar for much longer.

“Doesn’t mean I have to tell them anything. They can figure it out on their own if they care that much.” Dee started picking at his food a bit, forcing himself to actually eat it.

“You okay?”

“What do you think, Leo? I don’t understand how you are okay.” He snapped at his brother.

Before they could continue their conversation, Mikey came back into the room with his brothers in tow. Leon shot his twin an apologetic look before standing up to serve the others some food. He and Mikey spent the time talking about skateboarding and video games, while Dee started discussing hypotheses and potentially tests with Donnie.

After eating, Dee and Leon were brought into Donnie’s lab to start working on how to get the two of them back home. The lab was different, it was dark and full of posters, and the equipment was all outdated by their standards, and half of it seemed to be made of scrapyard junk.

“For no reason in particular, do you happen to know what year it is?” Dee asked while carefully looking at some of the content on the shelves.

“Oh, uh, it’s 2014, why?” Donnie seemed caught off guard by the question, as it probably wasn’t something they were asked too often. The twins shared a look at the answer, since it was a full seven years earlier than their universe.

“No offense but your stuff is kind of outdated, at least by our standards.” Leon laughed a bit, elaborating. “Which is fair ‘cause it’s a full seven years earlier than our universe. It’s 2021 there. We would’ve been like ten in 2014.”

Donnie had a surprised look for a moment before asking a question of his own. “Wait, if you’re 17 and it’s 2021, does that mean you were born in 2004?”

“Yep. August 15th 2004.” Leon popped the ‘p’ and leaned against the doorframe. “Hold on, when were you… holy shit Dee they were born in ‘97!”

“Yes Leon, I know how to do basic math.” Dee scoffed, pacing around the room. “Now, if you’re both done learning how time works I’d appreciate it if we could start working on a way out of here.”

The twins followed Donnie over to a desk with a couple of chairs, where they would spend the next few hours coming up with blueprints and ideas. Unfortunately, the materials they would need for the more promising concepts were sparse, and they would need to get them from some sort of human lab.

Donnie got his brothers, and the six of them left the lair to retrieve the necessary materials. The building they approached was relatively large, and looked like a basic warehouse from the outside. They would need to sneak in undetected, fetch the materials without getting caught, and bring them back to the lair.

“Alright, Donnie, hack into their security systems and disable them, and then the four of us can sneak in, get what we need, and get out. You two… uh… stay here as backup?” Leo quickly formulated a plan, but Donnie realised he had left some of his important tech back at the lair and wouldn’t be able to get into their systems.

“Well, it sounds like it’s time to beat some people up.” Raph was about to run into the building when Leo stopped him.

“Too dangerous, we need a plan, if Donnie can’t get into their systems then we nee-”

“Wow, and I thought we talked a lot.” Leon mocked, and then pointed back at his twin. “Dee’s already taken down all their security and located the storage room for you guys. Should be easy peasy.”

“Wha- Huh? How did you-?”

“I’ve literally become a spaceship before, hacking into some old security tech is child’s play.”

Donnie stared at him briefly before looking down uncomfortably. Dee explained the layout of the building and the location of the materials to them, and then the four of them went into the place to retrieve them.

“They’re so… weird.” Leon commented, sitting on a nearby rock. “They take everything so seriously. Breaking into a lab is so easy compared to the stuff we’ve done.”

“Perhaps they don’t have the same enemies as we do. We’ve seen how different they are to us and our brothers, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if their enemies were different too.” Dee started pulling up one of the security cameras to see how they were doing, when the two of them were knocked over by an explosion coming directly from the lab.

The pair stood up and took out their weapons, only to be greeted with coughing and yelling from where the building had been.

“If I didn’t probably have a concussion right now I would beat the shit out of you Mikey.”

“Language, Raph!”

“Oh, ‘cause you’ve never sworn in your life, Leo.”

“Whatever, Donnie, why didn’t you tell anyone that it would explode?”

“HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?!”

Leon made his way through the remainder of the damaged building to the others, and Dee activated the flight on his battle-shell to avoid awkwardly climbing over debris. Donnie started apologising for not having the materials as they approached, but Dee cut him off.

“It’s fine, I can see where they are and they don’t seem too damaged. ‘Nardo, check them over for injuries while I pick up what we need.” Leon responded with a thumbs up and Dee flew off to where the materials were sitting. He went to check over Raph first because of his ‘probably a concussion’ comment.

Aside from a couple bruises he had no outward injuries, but after testing Leon was fairly certain he did in fact have a mild concussion. Donnie and Mikey both came out fairly unscathed, with only minor bruising and some surface-level scrapes. Leo, however, had a sprained wrist, which would take longer to heal than the rest of the injuries.

He used his own hand-wrap to create a make-shift brace for the meantime, and eventually convinced Raph to sit down and take it easy. Dee returned shortly after with whatever materials he could salvage and advised they move somewhere further away, since there was still explosive material in the rubble that could detonate.

Unfortunately, Raph was having a difficult time getting through the debris due to being dizzy, which was risking him becoming more injured. Leon suggested someone carry him, but he retorted against the idea immediately. He then suggested he could get a ride on Dee’s battle-shell, who only agreed for the sake of their safety. Raph reluctantly accepted the offer, and climbed on top.

This had the foreseen consequence of drawing attention to Dee’s battle-shell, which immediately piqued Donnie’s interest.

“What do you have that for, anyways? I feel like there’s more compact ways to design a flight pack.” He pointed out the obvious bulkiness of the shell, which he was correct about being unnecessary for a simple flight pack.

“He told me it was like a backpack for tech stuff.” Mikey responded before he had to, but his answer just led to more confusion on Donnie’s part.

“A backpack, where does it open then? You must have some sort of compartments in there, right? I can’t see anywhere that it would be able to store things.” He was looking at Dee’s battle-shell very intently, and all of the questioning over it was stressing him out. As much as he loved talking about his tech, he wasn’t a fan of exposing his greatest weakness. “Would you mind if I took a look at it back at my lab, you could take it off a-”

“No! No.” His audibly nervous response at the suggestion earned him confused looks from everyone but Leon. “Uh… it’s just… I don’t really like other people touching my tech… y’know…?”

His hesitant tone only served to make it more obvious there was something he was hiding, and Leon shot him a look of ‘just tell them’, to which he responded with an annoyed glare, and then a reluctant sigh.

“Fine. It’s not just a ‘tech backpack’ or flight pack. That doesn’t mean I have to tell you what it is though.” He crossed his arms and continued onwards.

“Dee, you’re just making it worse. Just tell them.” Leon pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Oh I’m sorry ‘Nardo, why don’t you expose your biggest weakness to strangers-” He pointed aggressively at his twin before realising what he said. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

“Biggest weakness?” Leo piped up from behind the two of them. “I mean I get if you don’t want to tell us about that but what does that have to do with a backpack?”

Dee sighed begrudgingly, shooting another glare at Leon before elaborating.

“As I was trying to avoid telling you, I am a spiny softshell turtle, meaning my shell is much more fragile than my brothers which puts me at a greater risk of injury, thus, I created this.” He pointed back at his battle-shell. “An artificial metal shell I can wear to protect myself from damage.”

“Dude, you built yourself armor? That’s even cooler!” Mikey exclaimed. “Donnie, you should make us some kind of armor.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, we’re fairly impact-resistant as is.”

“Aww…” Mikey pouted, and Donnie sighed and agreed to consider making armor for him. With the stressful part of the conversation out of the way, Dee spent the rest of the way back enthusiastically explaining the inner-workings of his battle-shell to Donnie.

When they returned to the lair, Leo and Mikey left to get Raph set up somewhere comfortable to recover from his concussion, and Donnie brought the materials to his lab, followed by the twins. They started organising what they had recovered from the lab, and Donnie left to get ‘someone else’s help’, leaving the two alone to sort through the materials.

“See, I told you it’d be cool. You have another nerd to talk to about your nerd stuff.” Leon teased, carelessly throwing metal scraps into piles based on material. “And we should be out of here soon enough.”

“I suppose. Honestly I would probably be more enthusiastic about my theories about the multiverse being correct if our brothers weren’t missing. For all we know, they could be in another, more dangerous universe.” Dee focused his attention downwards, towards the different electronics they’d collected.

“I mean, I doubt any version of us is that mean. They’ll probably just do what we did and find their counterparts and get back home.” Leon waved his hand in dismissal, turning back to his own work.

“Who’s to say they’re in a dimension with other, not evil versions of ourselves? What about Casey’s post-apocalyptic universe, or the prison dimension, or one where we didn’t escape Draxum, or-”

“Dee, slow down. They’re going to be okay. I know they will.” Leon put a reassuring hand on his brother’s shoulder. “For now, all we can do is focus on getting ourselves back home, and from there we can find Raph and Mikey. They might not have even left our own dimension, we have no idea.”

Dee sighed and continued working, knowing the sooner they got out of there, the sooner they’d find out where their brothers were. It didn’t take long to finish sorting everything, since there hadn’t been a ton of salvageable material leftover.

After a few minutes of questionably comfortable silence, Donnie returned to the lab, this time followed by a teenage redhead.

“Okay, guys, this is April.” He gestured at the girl standing next to him. “And April, this is Dee and Leon, A.K.A. the alternate versions of me and Leo that I mentioned on the way.”

She smiled and waved at the two, who waved back and then shared a look. Donnie and April both seemed confused at their silent conversation, so Leon spoke up to explain.

“Y’know how we talked about me and Leo being different, or our Raphs being different? Somehow she’s even more different from our April than either of those examples.” He gestured at her, and Dee nodded along.

“That is not important, however. What is important is how she can help us get back to our universe.” Dee changed the subject, mostly suspicious of how a teenage girl could be more helpful than any of Donnie’s brothers.

“Oh! Yeah, the closest thing we have to ‘mystic’ stuff is April. She has powers like telekinesis and telepathy, y’know, being a Kraang mutant and all.” Donnie explained. The twins both tensed at the last part, trying not to make their discomfort too obvious.

“A… Kraang mutant? Like, the aliens that tried to take over the world Kraang?” Leon questioned skeptically. He was starting to think his brother might be right about the enemies being different.

“I mean, it’s pretty heavy on the tried, they were pretty pathetic all in all. We fought their dumb robots like, everyday and pretty much always won.” April responded, mocking the alien species. They shared another look, and Dee spoke up next.

“We only had to fight ours once, but it traumatised all of us and nearly killed Lee. Hence the ‘coma for two weeks’ comment from yesterday.” His speaking was monotone, although he was tapping rhythmically on his leg.

Donnie and April stared at him for a minute, mostly processing the idea of the Kraang being a genuinely dangerous villain and not an inconvenience at worst. Knowing that information, however, they quickly moved on from the subject to discuss Donnie’s plans.

They worked late into the night, being more focused on the project than the clock. They probably would’ve pulled an all-nighter if Leo didn’t come in at midnight to force them to sleep. He practically dragged Donnie out of the lab, and the twins made their way to the guest room. The progress they’d made was simultaneously huge and practically insignificant. They discovered a lot of things that didn’t work, but didn’t seem to be getting much closer to what did work.

Leon lay down on his mattress, and Dee sat down on the other side of the room on his own mattress, writing something down on his tech gauntlet. After a couple minutes of that, and then switching to his phone, Leon sat up to talk to him.

“You need to sleep, Dee. I don’t want to deal with you passing out in the middle of a fight on top of being in another dimension.”

“Too much work to do. I’ll sleep later.” He waved his brother off without looking up from his device.

“At the very least, take the battle-shell off.” Leon practically pleaded, hoping he could get him to relax at all that night. Dee glared in response, an obvious ‘no’, and then returned to his phone. “Donnie, as your leader and older brother-”

“We’re the same age ‘Nardo”

“Technically I’m older.” Leon shot back. Draxum had told them their specific birth order after Leon had begged him for thirty minutes straight, and Dee was not happy to find out the answer. “Either way, as your leader, I’m telling you to take off your battle-shell.”

Dee sighed and reluctantly agreed, not having the energy to fight on the matter. He needed to use all of his energy to work. He unclasped the shoulders and let it fall back onto the floor with a clang. “You happy now?”

“Only a little. I’d be happier if you tried to get some sleep.” Leon pushed, desperately trying to get his twin to sleep. “You know how paranoid you get when you don’t.”

“I don’t get that paranoid-”

“Don, you literally spent ten hours straight searching the security camera footage because you were convinced someone had broken into the lair with no evidence once. You kicked me out of your lab because you thought I was going to ‘sabotage’ your work. You thought Mikey poisoned your food.”

“Okay, okay, I get the point.” Dee put his hands up defensively and put his phone down. “I’ll try to sleep.”

“Thank you.” Leon smiled with pretend innocence and lay back down. “Goodnight Deee”

Dee followed shortly after, lying down and closing his eyes in an attempt to sleep. “...’Night, loser.”

“Hey!”