Chapter Text
“Hey, guys: watch this!”
It was such a common shout in the Hamato household that a reaction wasn’t always guaranteed. Especially if the shout came from Leo.
‘Show off’ had been a synonym for the red eared slider even before he’d learned to walk or talk. Leonardo had always had an insatiable need to be the centre of attention. He wasn’t happy unless all eyes were on him. ‘No attention is bad attention’ seemed to be the motto that he lived his life by.
Whether it was flaunting his ‘rad skills’, railing against authority, or just intentionally trolling his brothers, Leo always wanted to be in the centre of the spotlight. April suspected he’d learnt Spanish mostly for the bragging rights. Splinter recognised way too much of his younger self in the slider. If Raph had hair, he’d have gone grey already with how many times Leo had brazenly disobeyed orders with an ill-timed flex. And Donnie had long ago learned to make all his inventions ‘Leo-proof’.
Michelangelo was the only member of the family that still got starry-eyed over everything his big brother did. If Leo said ‘jump’, Mikey wouldn’t even ask; he’d have already launched himself off the nearest available precipice. Of course, Angelo had complete faith and trust in his entire family. It was one of his best qualities, but it could also be one of his worst. Especially when he worshipped the ground that Leo parkoured off of.
Forget Jupiter Jim, Lou Jitsu, Rupert Swaggert and Sydney Allen – Leonardo was his baby brother’s true hero. And yet, it would be wrong to say that Mikey was Leo’s shadow. He was more like the blazing trail of Nardo’s comet: whatever Big Bro did, Mikey had to be right behind him, sparks flying just as blindingly. If Leo was a firework, Mikey was the boom – echoing out across the sky to keep all eyes firmly on the show.
So, it really wasn’t a surprise when the youngest Hamato started copying everything Leonardo did. From subtly mimicking the way his older brother stood and spoke, to trying to pull off the same moves on a skateboard or out on a run. Mikey had even gone through a phase of ordering the exact same meals as Nardo – a fact that Leo had quickly exploited by choosing progressively spicier and more outlandish combinations. The shenanigans had only been put a stop to when both idiots had ended up with 48-hour food poisoning and only one bathroom to share between the whole lair.
Even that hadn’t diminished Mikey’s idolisation of the group’s Face Man. The two of them had just laughed it off and gone right back to being a pair of utter chaos gremlins (much to their family’s lament).
“Guys! Check it out!”
If it had been Leo’s shout, Mikey would have looked up eagerly, Raph would have looked up anxiously, and there was a 50/50 chance whether Donnie would have bothered to look at all.
But it wasn’t Leo. This time, the shout came from Mikey.
Everyone’s heads turned at the same moment. The youngest Hamato was perched on the edge of the rooftop, feet firmly planted on the parapet and a huge grin plastered on his impish cheeks. The moonlight glinted off Leo’s enormous ōdachi, proudly held aloft in Mikey’s hands. The blade was nearly as long as the box turtle was tall.
“Uh, big man?” Raph’s eyes widened as he tried (and failed) to keep his voice level, “What’re you doing with that very big, very sharp sword?”
Leo was momentarily taken aback to find that his ōdachi wasn’t still in its scabbard on his back. A quick check and… yeah, no. The only sword on this rooftop was definitely the one in his little brother’s hands. Huh. How had Mikey swiped it from him without Leo noticing? Normally the slider was the master of misdirection and sleight of hand in this family…
Oh, well. He wasn’t overly worried. Mike probably nabbed the sword while Leo was distracted trolling Donnie for the fifth time tonight. Whatever he had planned, it was either going to be sick to watch, or ample fuel to tease him with for at least a week. Either way, win-win.
“Relax, bro,” Leo’s tone was so laidback it was in need of its own beach lounger. “Mikey’s got this.”
“We don’t even know what ‘this’ is, yet,” Donnie pointed out, neutrally.
Mikey raised the mystic weapon higher. His unwavering grin reflected in the blade’s mirror-smooth metal; another crescent of milky white to rival the moon’s own glow. “I’m gonna make a portal, too!” he shouted, with all the confidence in the world.
Nardo’s lazy mask cracked. “Wait, what?”
Did he just hear that right? Was Mikey – youngest member of the family, primo ballerino, aspiring chef, artiste to rival his namesake, eats-(imitation: can’t be too careful with Raph’s allergies) peanut-butter-with-his-fingers, littlest, baby-est brother – really about to do what it sounded like he was about to do??
Raph certainly seemed to think so. He was on his feet in a blink. “Mikey, stop! You could get hurt!”
Donnie scrambled to stand beside their biggest brother. “Don’t you remember when Nardo tried to use Raph’s tonfas?” His blank ‘Bad Boy’ tone was quickly melting away in alarm.
Leo remembered. It had been yet another of his typical ‘look at me’ stunts. If he was being totally honest with himself – which, let’s face it, the slider never was – he would admit that he’d grabbed his brother’s weapons out of slight jealousy and a misplaced desperation to prove that anything his family could do, he could do better. The fact was, he could not. The back tooth he’d lost when he utterly failed to manifest the tonfas’ shields was lasting proof of that.
Leo was starting to sweat. His baby brother was perched on the edge of the roof. His stance was eerily similar to the pose Leo always struck when he opened a portal and leapt into it. If Mikey failed to open a portal of his own, there was every chance he’d end up losing a lot more than just a measly tooth.
“Uh, Miguel? It’s not as easy as it looks to use that, bud. I don’t think-”
Leo had never told Mikey – never told any of them – about all the long, gruelling hours that he’d spent out in the tunnels in the middle of the night practicing with and learning how to use his mystic ōdachi. About all the fails and the near misses and the times he’d almost gotten himself stuck in a solid wall. About all the private training he’d put in so that he’d look like a natural when he made his portals in front of his brothers.
About how much he wanted them to believe that it was effortless for him.
Because the truth was: it wasn’t effortless.
Mikey made his kusari fundo burst into flames without thinking. Raph didn’t even break a sweat when he created his mystic fists. And Donnie, although disparaging about the value of mystics, had worked out how to make his goggles compatible with the crystal he’d stolen from Draxum with the same ease that he made all his inventions with.
But Leo’s portals – though they felt as much a part of him as his own stripes – had taken trial and error to master. And even then, he still often messed them up: like sending his brothers to Tahiti or dropping himself on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris…
…Or like leading his baby brother to believe that making dangerous portals was as easy as child’s play.
Unfortunately, Michelangelo didn’t wait for Leo to talk him out of it, or for his brothers to reach out and grab him. He swung the heavy ōdachi over his head, struggling a little with the unfamiliar weight on his arms, but a determined grin on his face.
“Hachi!” he yelled, triumphantly, “MACHI!”
The blade sliced through the air. There was a harsh crackle, like lightning striking a building’s conductor rod, and a bright blue streak opened in front of him. It was less like a cut, and more like a tear. As if the fabric of space and time was being ripped apart along a weakened seam. It was much smaller than Leo’s portals, too – barely big enough for a hand to fit through. But the biggest difference wasn’t the size, or it’s jagged, irregular shape.
It was the burning orange core.
It hurt. It hurt to look at it. It hurt to listen to it. It hurt to even be near it. Something about the sun-bright core of his brother’s portal hurt Leo just to think about.
Sensations crashed into him like bursting glass, their razor edges tearing into his soul, drawing lifeblood to the surface. But it wasn’t visions or memories that glittered like so much lethal confetti in the night air. It was feelings.
Fear. Adrenaline. Chaos. Anger. Hope. Despair. Desperation.
But above all else: dread.
It was the kind of dread that reached into his gut with cursed claws, grasped a handful of bowel, and twisted. The kind of dread that froze the air in his throat before he had a chance to exhale, turning the contents of his lungs into a solid mass of ice that he couldn’t breathe around. The kind of dread that ripped his still beating heart from his chest and held it exposed, steaming with his own body heat in the frigid air.
Leo saw cracking glass. He saw sparking light. He saw an ethereal glow, and popping threads, and golden tracks that raced up jade scales. He saw tears. He saw Mikey’s grin and wink, and then Leo’s soul shattered.
He saw it all, and he saw none of it. He didn’t know what any of it meant.
All he knew was the dread.
“Mikey!!!”
Leo was moving before he was even aware of it. His feet pounded across the rooftop. Somehow, he outpaced Donnie and Raph to reach his little brother first. His outstretched fingers brushed Mikey’s shoulder, and he was shocked at how much his brother’s skin burned to the touch. Maybe if Leo had been thinking clearly, he would have leapt back, tried for a different angle. But he wasn’t. Every fibre of his being was acting on instinct. And that instinct was born of pure dread.
Leo surged forward, grabbing him from behind, hands locking around Mikey’s wrists. The terrible burning sensation only increased. Was this what it was like to plunge your hands into the sun itself? The light hurt. It hurt so much! An image of an old, weathered turtle – with eyes so very much like Michelangelo’s – flashed in front of Leo’s retinas before it exploded like untempered glass.
Only then did Leo register that Mikey was screaming. He squeezed his little brother’s wrists, ignoring the pain like shards stabbing up through his palms. Truthfully, he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe he could redirect the energy through his own hands, into Mikey’s, and up into the sword? Or maybe he was just trying to hold his sibling together as the vision of Michelangelo exploding into splintered light replayed over and over in front of his eyes.
Mikey’s grip faltered. The ōdachi fell from his hands, singing through the crisp night air as it plunged street-wards. The burning orange and cyan portal zipped shut. Leo clutched his brother to his chest as tight as he could and hurled the both of them backwards onto the rooftop. His shell slammed into the concrete, hard enough to knock the remaining air from his lungs.
“Mikey!!!”
The next moment, Raph and Donnie were at their side. Raph’s hands hovered shakily, afraid to touch lest he make things worse, but desperate to check his injured brother. Donnie had his goggles down over his eyes, vambrace lifted to type away furiously as he scanned.
“That was incredibly reckless! Are you hurt? Where does it hurt? Talk to me!”
“That rift was definitely mystic, but it only shared a 57% signature with Leo’s portals. And the energy output was immense! I thought only splitting an atom could generate that much power…”
“Guys.” Leo rolled over, finally releasing Mikey from his arms. His hands stung as if they were being submerged in hot water after an extended period in subzero temperatures. It felt like putting alcohol gel on a road rash. Hopefully, the tingling meant there wasn’t any lasting damage. But Leo wasn’t worried about himself.
Gently, he uncurled his little brother. Mikey had folded inwards, clutching his hands to his chest and wrapping his body around himself in a foetal position. It was a wonder he hadn’t just popped inside his shell. Leo realised why when he saw Mikey’s palms.
They were raw. 2nd degree burns, at least. With the intricate carvings on the ōdachi’s hilt branded into his skin. Bile rushed up Leo’s throat.
“Mikey…”
The poor kid whimpered as Leo ever so gently moved his seared hands to get a better look. No wonder he hadn’t pulled them inside his shell, if even turning them slightly hurt that much! Leo heard Raph suck in a sharp breath, heard Donnie gag and turn away quickly. But Mikey’s quiet sobs were the loudest of all.
Leo couldn’t tear his eyes off his little brother’s hands. The etched burns almost seemed to glow a slight gold, like the burning cores of embers that hadn’t yet snuffed out completely. His heart was a heavy rock in his ribcage.
“Leo. Move over.”
The next thing he knew, Raph’s large hand was not unkindly pushing him out of the way. A roll of bandages was in his other fist, and when Leo glanced down, he realised his big brother had taken it from one of the blue pouches on his own belt. By the time he looked back up, Raph had gently wrapped Mikey’s hands. The job was sloppy and inexperienced, but at least he’d done something. Instead of just freezing up like a loser…
“Let’s get you home.” Raph cradled his littlest brother in his arms as he rose to his feet. Mikey made no objection even though he was perfectly capable of walking, only hiding his face in his big sibling’s plastron with a sniffle. No one argued. Donnie quietly called up the Turtle Tank on his vambrace to meet them. Leo followed silently, as if on autopilot.
It was a significantly subdued party that pulled up back at the lair.