#I know they're all the same age but it's so fun to draw mikey as a baby... just a tiny lil baby guy...

[theblorboscalledtheturtles]

Follow up

[purpleturtle9000]

Stares at you from the dark corner of the ceiling and a holographic turtle sticker floats down

Hey so. How do the Reds and Oranges feel about the hoard of blues? Are any of them particularly attached to one or more/do they do activities with them?

Also, are there any *whole* family outings? Like as one giant group all together? My first guess would be a birthday. Which also raises the question of how do they handle the blue/purple birthday with so many of them?

Last question (for now), I promised. Do missions still happen? Do the villains just suddenly have to deal with a rotating cast of turtles or is there just a select group that goes out to fight/mess around?

Parting thought. Leonardo in his Batman arc now. I’m giving him a cape to hide the maximum amount of children in

Slowly dissolves into the corner, taking the spiderweb that was up here with me

STICKER *puts it directly on my forehead*

This is the most ridiculous nonsense Angelo has ever seen. He knows good and well that Leonardo had zero ideas in all this beyond Obtain Horde and that the future is probably going to have a lot of mistakes in it. Some of these children are getting lost their first time away from home. He knows it. But any thoughts he might have about holy shit you moron are promptly wiped out by the fact that Unicorn adopts him immediately, because Orange was her favourite brother, and therefore so is Angelo. He then adopts all the rest of the little blues because it's like seeing a bunch of puppies, they're adorable and he can't resist loving them all.

His favourite is Unicorn, though, and nobody pretends otherwise. He also gets along great with Heiwa, who's a bonsai artist and likes having someone to talk to about it. (Also Jihi lets him pet them and Angelo is lowkey jealous about Heiwa having a pet crab.) He also has some Gender Conversations with Spruce, cause they're genderfluid and it's fun for them to talk about how their genders are similar and different.

Mikey, upon seeing, his big brother come back with fourteen mini blues, knows that that turtle is having a mental break of some kind. He's briefly worried he's going to have to step in and do something about this to help Leonardo stabilise, but Angelo reassures him that he doesn't have to do anything, and then Mikey's just immensely curious about all his new siblings. He updates the family drawing to include them all. That gets him adopted into the blueberries in return and he has a great time getting several new BFFs.

He and Lee are the same age, at fifteen, and they get along great, which means that by extension, Mikey and Echo are also friends. Some of the younger blues also ask Mikey for advice about how to find their place in a family. Not all of his advice is applicable, because his family was much smaller, but they have plenty of things to talk about regardless.

Red is laughing hysterically at all this. She's very nervous around some of the smaller ones though, like Baby Blue and Pep, because she's pretty sure they would never recover if she accidentally stepped on one of them. They're all awestruck by how tall and spiky she is, and several of them have nicknamed her 'kaiju' because of course Tello insisted on them all watching Pacific Rim on their first family movie night. It wasn't a unanimous vote but they have teeth and quite possibly rabies so.

If you try to take Baby Blue from her, she will tail-whip you all the way to Jersey. Her baby now, fuck you. Same thing applies to Pep, who is not above texting Tello for a 'rescue' while he's being cuddled by her just to see the unfolding carnage. He's a feral little bastard. She also gets roped into tea parties by the dozen with Unicorn and River, and teaches them how to paint their nails like Leo once taught her.

Raph is a little stressed at first because they're family and that means that it's his job to help protect them. He's also vaguely weirded out by there now being several more Leos that are older than him. But then he sees that Hamato, Alpha, and Vanilla are all helping to wrangle the Child Horde and is slightly less stressed about it. There's no way that the Horde are going to be kept safe without other people, takes a village and all that, and he's relieved that the older blues are a built-in support system.

That's part of the reason that he gets along with Vanilla so well! He's the most businesslike blue out of all of them, and Raph respects that and appreciates how it makes it easier. And to the surprise of pretty much everyone including him, he also gets along with Alpha pretty well. Alpha doesn't have to worry about much hurting Raph with how tall and strong he is, but not so tall and strong as to be intimidating like Red is.

There are family outings, and half the future family is wheezing with laughter at the sight of Leonardo with over a dozen children trailing behind him like a bunch of ducklings. The blueberries have organised three teams in case of emergency, with Hamato, Alpha, and Vanilla being team leaders. They manage to wrangle their mini-hordes fairly well, but random children keep disappearing to tail after Leonardo instead (or Tello, in Pep's case).

Leonardo also takes them all to the Hidden City to show them that there's other non-humans out there, besides Krang. They're all very fascinated with it, and of course they have to be warned away from Big Mama and Draxum, and introduced to Hueso. The look on Hueso's face when 16 Leonardos walk into his pizza place is literally priceless. Tello remembers it fondly.

Most of the blueberries have their own birthdays already. For those that didn't, or don't remember, they get to choose new ones! Their family calendar suddenly gets flooded with blue dates and Leonardo finds it hilarious. He's also very soft for the fact that Leon and Don also share a birthday as twins.

Blueberry birthdays are special events! Generally speaking, Leonardo takes the blueberry out for lunch and then they do whatever the little one wants for the afternoon until meeting with the whole family at Hueso's for dinner. Hueso appreciates the money, but at what cost?

(Some blueberries, like Alpha, do not care for outings. They stay at home and finds things to do there instead, like video games and movies, or sometimes board games. He let Monopoly happen once and it did not end well.

Missions still happen! Some of the smaller blueberries are banned from going on missions because they are Baby and nobody wants a twelve-year-old getting suckerpunched by Meat Sweats or some shit. On occasion, they are allowed to come along and sit in the turtle tank for a safe view from the sidelines.

Generally speaking, children under fifteen are not allowed on missions where weapons and villains are in play. Cobalt thoroughly ignores this whenever Alpha is out because he'd be safe in a war zone with Alpha there to maul anyone who comes near him. Alpha is rather stressed by this but nobody can get Cobalt to behave including him.

Hamato, Alpha, Vanilla, Heiwa, and Echo and Lee are the usual ones who are added to patrol teams. There was mass confusion on the villains' part when seven blue turtles showed up because clearly they had missed something. All the old-enough turtles (and Cobalt) go out sometimes but not all of them are interested in doing so regularly.

Occasionally younger turtles end up on missions because a day off gets gate-crashed by some asshole who wants to cause trouble. Leonardo always fusses over them when they're anywhere near any kind of danger, which they find hilarious. Pep flings himself toward danger with the reckless disregard of a hedgehog on a highway, content in the knowledge that Tello is right behind them.

Leonardo would love a cape, Batman arc or not. He does have a habit of wearing large blankets across his shoulders, during movie nights and such, so that he can blanket-burrito whatever child cuddles up to him. There's always a cuddler at hand. Usually four or five. He loves being in cuddle piles so it works out great. Sometimes when the littler blueberries get nervous about something, they'll hide in the blanket and he's gotta remember not to knock them over when he starts walking again, which is... shall we say unsuccessful a couple times.

[sushi-rat]

Fourth and fifth on the list, Mikey and Leo! They are the youngest of all the turtles at age 14, and they both are Diamondback Terrapins; they're twins and even come from the same hatchling batch! As well as the youngest, they are the shortest at 4' 10". They have light grey skin with black markings, (signature for the species), with Leo's markings being more spot like and Mikey's markings being elongated and stripe-like; their markings have earned them special nicknames, Leo's being Spot and Mikey's being Stripes. Leo has black thigh-high and upper arm length wrappings, a black belt with a blue bag, a brown scarf, grey metal knee pads and forearm guards with blue straps, and his signature blue mask. Mikey has similar gear with the black thigh-high and upper arm length wrappings except the arm wrappings start at the wrist instead at the hands, a black belt with an orange bag, grey metal knuckles with orange straps, orange strap accents on the legs and his upper left arm, a brown chest compression vest that ties to the sides of his belt, and his signature orange mask (I didn't put it in the drawing, but I like the idea of Mikey decorating his vest with stickers). In their bags, they like to carry around fidget/stim toys; Leo likes carrying his orange tangle and blue rotating rings fidget, and Mikey likes carrying his orange fidget spinner and blue marble mesh fidget. They both have brown eyes with Leo's being a lighter brown and Mikey's being dark brown.

Mikey and Leo are both ADHD (combined) and autistic, which is why Mikey has a compression vest for comfort. Leo has special interests in space and Japanese culture/history, and Mikey has special interests in superheroes and mythology, while both share a sci-fi interest. They are curious about anything and everything, though, and like to ask questions/analyze. They are the type of people that you either really like watching movies with because of all the fascinating discussions, or hate watching movies with because they are almost always interrupting and having asides to themselves. They love horror, Leo a bit more than Mikey, and love spending hours or even days binging horror movies/series, and playing or watching video games. They are the closest out of everyone in the family, which no one is surprised by considering they have always been with each other since birth. They are so close, in fact, that most everyone believes they have a "twin-psychic link" as they are able to finish each other's sentences, know where the other one is if they focus, and just seem to be on the same "wavelength" all the time.

Their behaviour is often seen as childish by people who don't know them well, but they know when to be serious; they just like to have fun, learn, and live a little. Everyone's at least a little bit childish! They are far from incompetent or simple-minded children. Leo enjoys focusing on his training and getting stronger, and Mikey takes up a serious hobby as a writer and posts his works online (he started as a fanfiction author for a superhero comic he loved). They both like practicing meditation to hone in on their psychic ability so that they can always find each other and understand one another in case of bad times. They both are also seemingly so empathic that they can tell when someone is distressed and always seem to be able to make the person feel better, which is greatly appreciated by their family and friends. It's to the point that their older siblings joke that it's their 'superpower'; no one rejects a hug from Mikey and Leo. They are like the little Healers in the family!

(The looks were very heavily based on the Foot Leo design on the IDW comics. I gave them both attributes from that outfit so that they wouldn't look so different from each other, nor would it look like they were associated with Shredder)

So, I'm deciding to do my own turtle designs because I can and my life is overrun by teenage terrapins. I'm gonna reblog this post whenever I post a character design (not in any specific order, just what character ideas come to me first).

First, Raph! Except they also go by Elisabetta and Rei. They are genderfluid and use sweatband bracelets to indicate if it's a fem, masc, or neutral day. Fem/pink bracelet = Elisabetta (Liz, Lizzy, Betty), Masc/blue bracelet = Raphael (Raph, Raphie), Neutral/yellow bracelet = Rei. They chose Elisabetta themselves and Rei is a name given to them by their brother, Mikey. They have a shawl that has the Hamato crest on it that also ties up on the sides with a ribbon. The crest is in yellow while the rest of the shawl is muted pink. Sometimes they wear this on days when dysphoria hits a little harder; they like wearing the cloth in general, however, and sometimes just wear it to wear it. There are some days when they'll tie their bandana up into a bow in the back as just a touch of femininity, but they don't always do this on every fem day.

They are the second oldest out of their siblings at age 15. They're the tallest at 6' 9" because they are a Leatherback Turtle (I'm not sure if they'll be the only saltwater turtle out of the family yet); due to their species, their skin is a lot more turquoise then it is green. The back of their shell also has ridges due to their species, but the ridges are not spikes. Their eye color is yellow, and they still wear the signature red mask. They wear black knee and elbow pads with a turtle shell design painted in red on the pads. Their wrappings on the hands and feet are black while the belt around their waist is a dark brown.

Rei is the strongest swimmer and, aside from drawing/painting, swimming is their favorite past time; they often sneak off to the docks to swim, though their mutation makes it so that freshwater is a lot more tolerable than it would be for a normal sea animal, so they are okay swimming in the sewers with their brothers. Rei has less of a temper, but is rather just a passionate and bombastic person which makes them come across as aggressive. They are a bit of an introvert in the family and like to be alone, but they will often hang out with their brothers for a couple hours a day, generally watching TV, playing video games, or doing some light and fun extra training.