Chapter Text
Night time descended quickly in early December, the city illuminated by a myriad of twinkling lights from warm apartments and hanging Christmas decorations, obscuring eight turtles from the late-night shoppers and taxi drivers who were gridlocked in the icy city streets below. Four of them were visitors from another dimension, and they had mystic powers.
“We did this all the time back home,” the other Leonardo said, his red markings almost completely covered by the black beanie he had pulled down over his head, his beak hidden by a tight blue scarf wrapped twice over. “It’ll be fine.”
“And if someone sees us, we’ll just bail,” the other Michelangelo added, shrugging as they made their way unseen past the gated perimeter of Central Park. Raph exchanged a glance with his Leo before shrugging and jumping down from the tree where they were perched.
“Rules are easy. We all stay within a fifty-foot radius. You’re out if you get hit with a snowball, unless you’re hit on the shell. We’ll divide into teams of two by drawing cards,” the other Leonardo explained as he pulled a deck of cards out of a pouch beneath his jacket, isolating eight cards after checking the faces. “We pair with whoever gets the matching suit of cards. So, if you pull a club, you get paired with whoever else has a club. We’ll go one at a time and then flip the cards. Got it?”
They all nodded. Raph waited his turn and reached out, deciding on one card in the middle, but Leonardo retracted it into his sleeve, saving it for himself. Raph glanced up and saw the easy grin on his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Go on, pick any card,” he said, almost as if to say just not that one. Sighing, Raph picked the card next to it and stood back. He flipped it over. Two of Hearts.
“Looks like it’s you and me, Raph,” said a voice over his shoulder. It was the other Donatello, the one with a high forehead and a dry sense of humour, displaying the ten of hearts between his fingers.
“Does Leon always carry a deck of cards with him?” he asked in a low voice, watching him show his Raphael, the large snapping alligator turtle, his card. The smile reached his eyes now.
“Yeah. He likes magic tricks,” Don replied.
“I think he also likes choosing his teammate,” Raph muttered under his breath. Whatever - he didn’t care who he was paired with. He found this Donatello funny, and maybe they’d have some fun before they all got too cold and wet to continue playing.
“Winner chooses pizza toppings,” Leonardo announced as he put his cards away.
Don whipped around and placed both hands on Raph’s shoulders. “We have to win.”
“Sure, but why the seriousness?” Raph asked.
“Because these dumb-dumbs think pineapple belongs on pizza.”
Raph didn’t feel strongly either way about the age-old question of whether pineapple belonged on pizza or not, but the risk involved in letting his Mikey choose some ungodly combination was too high to leave things to chance. He had to be eliminated. Immediately.
“Okay, in three… two… one… GO!” the other Michelangelo shouted, and Don grasped Raph’s bicep as he hauled him away to get some distance between them and the other turtles. He yanked him until they cleared a small mound, leaping over the top and sliding down into the powdered snow.
“We now have the advantage of shelter!” Don said triumphantly and pushed his jacket sleeve back to reveal some kind of wrist-mounted computer, the purple interface illuminating his face in the glimmering grey-dark. Raph started to gather snow at their feet, patting it into awkward shapes. His fingers burned from the cold, even though he wore oven mitts to keep his hands covered.
“No need for that menial labour, Raphael! Behold! We can make snowballs faster than they can!” With a few final taps on his wrist, two metal claws emerged from Don’s back, funnelling through the gap in the back of his coat, and began to rapidly make perfectly spherical snowballs next to where he knelt. Raph barked a laugh, picked a snowball up, and immediately flung it over the mound at his Leo, who yelped as he leapt out of range.
“Don, you’re now my favourite Donatello!” He raised his voice loud enough that his Donnie, bunkered down a few feet away to their right with his Mikey, would hear him.
“Being your favourite is hardly the compliment you think it is, Raph!” Donnie shot back, the irritation thick in his voice as it carried across the frozen ground.
“DUDE. He has roboclaws?” Mikey’s voice barrelled over Donnie’s. “Why don’t you have roboclaws? Man, you suck!”
While Donnie and Mikey started arguing about the logistics of roboclaws and the feasibility of building them ‘like, right away’, Raph hit them both square in the face with projectiles.
“You’re both out!” Raph shouted, his plan to distract his younger brothers going exactly as he had predicted. He lifted his hand for Don to high-three, and Don hit it awkwardly, their gloves dulling the satisfying smack.
“You also have a brother ranking?” Don asked, picking up one of the snowballs and flinging it without looking over the top in the general direction of his brothers. They hadn't found cover yet, Leonardo slipping and falling over himself as Raphael tried to hoist him up by his scarf.
“What? No, not really. Depends. You do?” Raph replied, throwing another snowball at Leonardo for that cheap card trick. Why he wanted to pair up with his Raphael didn’t make sense to him until he saw that he was using his bulk as a personal shield. Slippery bastard.
“Oh, absolutely, and we all know each other’s ranks. We all agree Mikey is our shared number one,” Don replied matter-of-factly.
“What?!” Raph heard his Mikey exclaim again from the side of the designated snowfield with a defeated Donnie. “Am I you guys’ favourite too?”
“No!” he and his Leo shouted in unison, whereas Donnie stuttered a diplomatic response about having no favourites within the family unit.
While Mikey started to fuss, the other A Team tried to make a temporary shelter by having Raphael squat down and retract his head into his shell to create cover for Leonardo.
“Is that allowed?” Raph asked Don as his roboclaws made another stock of perfectly snowballs.
“Huh?” he said, glancing over the top and seeing what they were doing. “Oh! Just aim for Raph’s anterior opening. The neck hole? Ever played bask-ey-ball?"
Raph laughed again at Don’s unexpected pronunciation and took a snowball, hauling it in a perfect arc over the mound and landing it inside Raphael’s shell, causing him to scream in surprise. He fell back, leaving the other Leonardo exposed. Before he could turn and sprint to the other side of the field, his Leo emerged from the darkness and nailed him in the face with a high-velocity snowball, making him trip and fall backwards, landing on his fallen brother.
“Oh snap, they’re out!” Mikey called from the side, taking on the duty of commentator without being asked.
His Leo advanced quickly with one armful of snowballs. In the chaos, he had time to arm himself, speeding down the middle for an aggressive finish. While Raph was too distracted fending off Leo’s rapid advances, flinging snowballs at one another—some crashing in midair—the other Mikey floated up and over them both with an upturned jacket full of snow.
“Hey, Dee. Look up!” he said, grinning wide at his slack-jawed older brother before dumping the full load down on him. Don screeched, the wet snow making contact with the back of his neck, causing Raph to glance back. Leo, seeing the opening, closed in for the kill and smashed a handful of snow directly into Raph’s mouth, ending the game. Defeated and pissed off, he spat and tackled his Leo, shovelling fistfuls of icy vengeance down Leo’s hoodie and coat.
“Do you have any idea where that snow has been?” Raph roared, Leo’s laughter ringing out beneath the trees as he tried to hold back Raph’s hands from stuffing more freezing ice into his hoodie pockets.
“Okay, okay. Wrap it up, you two,” Raphael said, lifting them both under the armpits and setting them upright. With the other Mikey and his Leo victorious, they all agreed to get back inside before they lost their fingers and toes.
“I trust Mikey to make the right choices,” Don said with a sigh, brushing off the last remnants of snow that still clung to his jacket.
“I’ve got some bad news for you, Don. My Leo loves pineapple,” Raph said, patting him on the shoulder as he dramatically sank to his knees.