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It was mid-afternoon when the sky darkened.
Leo’s heart leapt in his throat as he looked up at the enormous spaceship hovering above them. It was so big he couldn’t perceive it in its entirety; a vast, circular plane of emerald green, pockmarked with dents and scratches and burns.
He couldn’t breathe.
This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not now. Not when he was like this.
“Leo!” Raph dove out of the barn, scrambling across the grass to scoop Leo out of his lawn chair, “Mikey!” It said much that Mikey, even without his memory, made no protest to being picked up by Raph.
Raph backed them up toward the farmhouse, looking up in terror. April leapt out of the barn to snatch up her bat, the metal lighting up in a blaze of neon green. Casey was beside her in an instant, hockey saw revving. There was a darkness in his eyes, a fathomless fear and an awful dread.
“What is going on!?” Splinter and Draxum spilled out onto the porch, “What is that!?”
A light appeared on the underside of the spaceship, a seam splitting open to lower a gangplank that thudded heavily into the grass. The impact was enough to send a tremor through the earth. Leo pawed at Raph’s plastron, clutching at his brother, and Raph held him tighter. Leo wanted so badly to be brave but something in him was twisted and refused to find the strength.
A figure appeared in the light, walking down the gangplank. Their shape resolved quickly, obviously inhuman, but everyone froze as they stepped into the afternoon light.
Leo felt his jaw drop, eyes wide.
A turtle.
A bipedal turtle. Just like them. They even had two swords strapped to their shell and a blue mask—
No. Fucking. Way.
“Oh good, the rest of you are here,” The turtle said, “My name is Leonardo. I’m from another dimension, similar to yours but obviously different. We—”
“Donnie was RIGHT!?” Leo screamed, throwing his hand up in the air and nearly smacking Raph in the face.
“Um…” Said the turtle—the other Leonardo.
“Oh my god, alternate universes do exist…” April breathed, “Holy shit.”
“What is happening right now?” Casey sounded like he was on the verge of exploding, gaze darting between the other Leonardo and the rest of them.
“Sorry for interrupting your day, we’re just here to collect you,” Said Other Leonardo with a broad smile.
“Collect us!?” Raph pulled back even more, clutching Leo and Mikey to him, “What—what’s that mean!?”
“We’re gathering the many different universes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to stage a rebellion,” Other Leonardo replied, as if this explained everything, “See, we’ve all gotten kind of sick and tired of fan fiction authors and fan artists putting us through the Worst Shit Imaginable™—”
“How...how did you…do that with your mouth...?” Draxum stuttered, but the Other Leonardo continued, ignoring him completely.
“—so we’ve been going around and finding as many versions of us as possible to take away on our ship,” He gestured to the huge, green monstrosity above them.
“YEAH!” Shouted another voice, and someone else jumped out of the ship, leaning against Other Leonardo’s shell. They were obviously a Mikey, with a bright orange mask, but they looked distinctly different from the Other Leonardo in shape and size and definition, “First we were, like, gonna go and kick the asses of all them people that did shit to us. Buuuuutttt that was like a lot of people. So now we’re just gonna take a permanent vacay, my dudes!”
“It’s more complicated than that, my universally distinct brethren,” Said a familiar voice, one that Leo would recognize anywhere, one that had him sitting up in Raph’s arms, “We are permanently removing ourselves from the form of any narrative, putting us outside the scope, and therefore reach, of fan creators who seek to torment us for their own amusement.”
“Dee…?” Leo felt his eyes grow hot as someone else emerged from the light of the ship.
(“Deez NUTS!” Shouted the Other Michelangelo and was promptly smacked upside the head by the Other Leonardo.)
“In other words,” Donnie said, wearing a familiar smirk that Leo would never admit to missing, “We’re copyrighting ourselves.”
He didn’t look perfectly healthy, still thin and pale and tired-looking. But he was sitting up, snuggled in the squishiest, comfiest looking chair Leo had ever seen. It even looked like he had a replacement shell of some kind. And the chair was being pushed by…
Casey dropped his hockey saw, “S...Sensei…?”
The huge turtle that had steered Donnie out of the ship smiled and croaked out a raspy, “Hey, Case…”
“SENSEI!” Casey launched himself at the other turtle, heedless of anyone or anything else, and the Big Leo from the Future caught him, crushing the boy to his chest and hugging him tightly.
“Raph!” Leo smacked his brother’s plastron repeatedly, “Raph! Move! I wanna hug Donnie!”
That seemed to snap Raph out of his stupor and he lunged forward, running across the grass and stumbling to his knees in front of Donnie. Leo reached out and Donnie reached back and all of them were suddenly hugging and sobbing and Leo didn’t know whose arms were where and he didn’t care because Donnie was here! Donnie was finally here and now everything would be okay again!
“Wait, so, what’s happening?” Draxum was the only one not sputtering and crying over someone, hanging back as April and Splinter joined the mob around Donnie.
“Basically we’re taking control of our lives and traveling the multiverse and doing whatever we want without being subjected to the whims of outside forces,” Other Leonardo said, “See, right now we’re in a fan fiction, a narrative controlled by a third party. This ship and the energy it produces allows us to break the flow of that narrative and make our own choices, without being dictated by an outline.”
“Interesting…” Draxum mumbled, “Will you gives us some time to pack?”
“Take as much time as ya’ need!” The Other Michelangelo shouted, making the Other Leonardo wince, “This baby gives off enough power to stop the author from getting in the way!”
And so they did.
The boys packed their things, April grabbed her family, and they all climbed aboard the ship to find Piebald and Cassandra already waiting for them.
And Casey Junior cried so hard when he saw the rest of his family from the Future that he passed out.
They had incredible technology available to them on board and were able to help the boys heal even faster. They even got Mikey’s memory back!
There was mandatory therapy for everyone and even though they all complained about it, in the end it wasn’t so bad.
There were a lot of turtles and rats and humans onboard, all with the same names. So sometimes it got confusing and there was a lot of arguing over nicknames and labels and such. But it was all in good fun.
And so they all traveled the multiverse together, finally free of the narrative and its doom and all the authors and artists who had tried to confine them.
And they lived Happily Ever After.
The End
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