#aka spec really fuckin love supernatural stuff and HAD to do multiple aus for that

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to market, to market.

rottmnt gen fic, word count 2,618. contains early morning family routines, mentions of organic foods, nonsense magic, the author’s attempt at vague worldbuilding, and cute teens being semi-responsible.

presenting an rottmnt au i’ve been toying with the past few months and finally started to really figure out! i love human aus that include magic, so... have one for the boys + gal. <3

there’s notes after the ending about the au, and here’s the AO3 Version.

Saturday morning is farmer's market day. That’s been a staple in their home since forever. It’s the best place to buy not just cooking ingredients, but more specialized ingredients, too. From the stalls that are placed between others stalls in hairsbreadth spaces, stalls that no one else but their family and others like them can see.

Raph has always loved walking up to those impossible and amazing market stalls, from the time he was little. They fascinated him, even though their strangeness is commonplace in his life.

His brothers love them, too. They would all clamor at dad to hurry up with the boring shopping so they could go pick out their treats of the day. Curiosities in jars, paints that have brighter pigments than any other, sweets made with the soul essence of a sunny summer day or a cold winter’s eve- all those and a hundred other odds and bobs they can’t ever get enough of, even now.

Of course, this doesn’t make it any easier to get everyone going on a lazy Saturday morning.

Since their pops has made it very clear he’s not moving for love or good groceries today, no one even bothers to try dragging him out of bed. Instead, Mikey, who is always the first up unless Donnie just straight up didn’t sleep the whole night, shuffles into Raph’s bedroom shortly after his alarm clock goes off.

“Ged’up,” Mikey says blearily, leaning his weight on Raph’s stomach. Raph in turn groans tiredly, unwilling to move even though he knows they have to. All the good shit will be gone before noon, probably before eleven to be honest.

“What if we just… not eat for a few days?” Raph asks, not opening his eyes just yet. He just wants to sleep, just a few more hours…

“You’d probs eat one’a us if we didn’t get groceries,” Mikey replies. He yawns, and then says, “C’mon. We gotta get more meat n’ veggies an’ you were the one who made the dumb list for ‘em anyway. You want the good steaks to already be sold out by the time we get there?”

“…No. Hhhn… ‘kay, I’m comin’.”

“Good. I’m gonna go get the waffles goin’. You get the other two.”

After Mikey’s left, Raph sits up slowly, sighing as his bones shift and creak. His eyes sting with sleepiness, and as he rubs at them, Raph feels the slide of an extra eyelid opening and closing. He feels around inside himself, finding the remnants of a feline being enticing him back to sleep, complaining that he should be sleeping much, much longer than this, he’d been out most of the night and now it was nap time right now until it was time to hunt again…

Raph shakes himself, realizing he forgot to tuck that spirit back into his core all the way. He’d tired himself out last night, giving into how the late spring evening tugged at his therianthropy magic and having an adventure in the darkness, alive with the senses and joy of creatures that were at home there.

Breathing in, breathing out, Raph dispels the effects of that animal and feels less like he needs to curl up in his bed to sleep again.

It still sucks to get out from under his warm blankets and leave his bedroom to meet the day.

Leo’s room is the closest, so Raph wanders into his second brother’s bedroom first. He steps around the piles of clothes and stacks of books and an old spell circle carved into the floor, taking a seat on the end of Leo’s bed and shaking his brother by the leg.

“Leo. Dude. Up and at ‘em, we got grocery shopping to do.”

Leo groans pitifully, rolling onto his other side and scrunching himself against his silk pillow. “No… I don’t wanna go. You an’ Mike go, you don’t need… me…”

“It’s a group trip, Leon. No take-backsies for agreeing to it yesterday.”

Leo cracks one eye open, dark irises showing reluctance at waking fully. He then smiles, speaking as he does. “Raph… I don’t have to go to the farmer’s market… you and Mikey can handle it just fine without me… and you’ll bring back my favorite honey cookies, too…”

The warm lilt and tune of Leo’s voice almost gets to Raph, coaxing the suggestions to take over and erase his original purpose to being here. Except, Raph knows this feeling, knows he doesn’t have to listen and how to stop listening, and he pulls on a creature he rarely does. Pupils shifting, teeth molding together into three points, and a malleability to his skin spreading across it. He focuses the changes on his ears, the world’s volume lowering and Leo’s voice becoming fainter and fainter until it’s gone.

Raph waits for Leo to notice the change. His brother keeps trying to spell him a while longer, silent mouth rambling who knows what at Raph to get him to go away. It’s only when Leo opens his eyes again that he notes the gently glowing patterns emerging over Raph’s dark skin.

He scowls, saying something Raph can’t hear. Raph grins with his beak-teeth.

“Can’t hear you,” he says, not sure how clear his speech is right now, but he doesn’t really care. “Just get up and get downstairs before we eat all the eggos.”

He doesn’t have to hear his brother to know Leo mumbles a (non-magical) curse and puts his face into his pillow. Raph rolls his eyes and stands up, patting Leo’s back before he leaves. Raph rescinds the cephalopod spirit that’s made his bones less than solid, moving onto the next sibling he has to wake as his humanity takes full hold again.

The room is a disaster of Donnie-organization as usual, projects scattered everywhere with scrap notes in code taped to the wall haphazardly. Plus, Donnie is sleeping weird again. He’s ended up the wrong way around on his bed, feet on his pillow and head under the covers. Going by the nearby still open laptops with their sleep mode lights blinking, Donnie stumbled into bed after doing something or other far longer than he should have.

Raph peels the blankets off the second eldest of their family. Donnie’s lost his shirt at some point, revealing the spiralling seals on his back that keep his strength-sapping blood curse at bay. Thankfully, when they visit city pools, no one but other inhumans can see the tattoos. Otherwise, they’d probably get stopped every five seconds by some concerned parent who’s freaked out that a fourteen year old has them.

“Donnie,” Raph says, bending down and putting himself at eyelevel with his brother’s sleeping face. “Hey, hey Donnie. Wake up, dude. We’re going to the farmer’s market today, ‘member?”

Donnie doesn’t open his eyes, instead mumbling out, “01000110 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101001 01101110 01110101 01110100 01100101 01110011.”

It’s always weird to hear that- how Donnie will say codes aloud but without actually sounding out how the numbers should be pronounced. Like it’s being beamed right into your brain or something. Raph is used to it enough he ignores the oddity of Donnie’s mix-up, reaching over to shake him. “Don, you know none’a us speak binary. Human languages only, please.”

With arduous effort, Donnie slurs out, “Ffffffive more minutesss…”

“I’ll give you ten seconds.”

“Noooo…”

Raph gets Donnie upright on his bed before he leaves. It takes shoving his brother’s favorite iPad into his hands and turning it on, letting the sentience Donnie has nurtured into existence in it finish waking its creator up.

Downstairs, Raph wanders into the kitchen with a yawn, having put on jeans that are mostly clean and an old t-shirt that smells like their home. He has to pull up short before he gets to the fridge, waiting for tiny flying dragons to finish carrying the butter from the counter. Following their path, a pair of large butterflies carries the syrup with their little feet towards the table.

There’s… also a child sized bipedal cat with three eyes and cowboy boots collecting the freshly popped eggos onto a plate. It glances at Raph briefly, nodding with a respectful but mysterious cat’s smile.

Raph blinks slowly, and lets it slide. Whatever Mikey has been conjuring lately, he never asks how his littlest brother came up with the ideas.

However, he can’t let slide him opening the fridge and getting a flurry of sparrow sized winged shrimp to the face.

“Fff- Mikey!” Raph snaps, turning to glare at his brother in the dining room on the other side of the counter. He shoos the remaining shrimp away from his head, feeling a tinge of the feline from earlier wanting to swat and bite them.

“Oops,” Mikey says sheepishly, holding out his arms for his creations to alight on him. They flap their wings and nuzzle their illustrare witch with their long antennae. “I was kinda wonderin’ where these guys got to last night. Guess they wanted to hang out with the real shrimp or something?”

Raph has been awake for all of fifteen minutes, and he feels tired again.

“…Please put them away, at least for breakfast.”

“Can do.”

Mikey’s sketchbook of the day, left on the far end of the table away from the syrup, flies open, pages flapping wildly. The shimpbirds become blurred and flat, losing their solidness and whisking through the air in streams of color. The sketchbook sucks them all back onto its pages, and then snaps shut again as Mikey’s magic fades.

Raph opens the fridge again, this time able to grab the apple juice without assault by flying decapods.

Leo and Donnie come into the kitchen not long after, dressed and slightly more awake. They take their share of the eggos from the plate Mikey’s conjured cat offers them, unbothered by the puss-in-boots knock off serving them, or by it turning into a stream of color to return to its sketchbook right after.

As they’re eating the first half of their breakfast- the next will be bought at the market, giving into the temptation of fresh baked goods sold there- Donnie’s phone gets a text.

“01000001 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101100 0010000001110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 01110011 0010000001110100 01101111 0010000001110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100001,” it cheers at the top of its speakers, and everyone but Donnie covers their ears.

“They said April wants to meet us,” Donnie clarifies for all the non-technopaths in the room.

Leo rubs his temples, sighing at his twin. “That’s great, but Donnie, please tell your devices to stop doing that so early in the morning. Or at any time of the day?”

Donnie’s phone makes a screeching sound.

“They said ‘fuck off’,” Donnie translates, sipping his coffee.

Leo gives the little device a confusedly miffed look.

“Guys, guys,” Mikey says, making calming gestures, “we got places to be, newts and cabbages to buy. We don’t got time for breakfast fights with technology.”

Raph takes over the peacemaking, reinforcing it by saying, “Donnie, if you wanna talk with your tech, use headphones. Leo, get earplugs if you really gotta.”

The two middle children give each other a long look, before mutually and silently agreeing the fight isn’t one worth having and going back to being stalwart allies. Raph and Mikey exchange their own looks, silently thanking one another for helping defuse the situation before it became one.

Donnie arranges with April to meet them on the way to the market, and reminds their best friend to wear her enchanted choker so she can see what they do. She starts a group text to remind them in turn that she’s literally hasn’t taken it off since they gave it to her, and that she’s reminding them to not forget the spelled cloth bags they’ll need for the abnormal ingredients.

Raph sheepishly texts back a thank you for the reminder while Mikey hunts said bags down. They’re in Leo’s room this time around, having been left there after their family’s silvertongue witch went shopping for new spellwork inks.

They leave a plate of saran wrapped eggos with a note for their dad on the counter, since he’ll probably drag himself out of bed at some point close to noon. Better to have waiting food than to get a grumpy call from their hungry dad who wants someone to bring him home a complicated takeout meal.

April is waiting for them on a corner halfway to the market, leaning on a stop sign and scrolling through something her phone. Probably one of the chats on the supernatural enthusiast sites she follows. Sometimes they all have a good laugh over the ridiculous misconceptions people have about the inhuman members of society, and other times they get a heads up of which parts of the city to avoid for a while. It’s worth it to keep tabs on what the humans notice about NYC; there’s always the off chance someone really has seen a wayward rabid ghoul or a summons gone feral that’s entered the territory.

“Morning,” April greets pleasantly, perky as she pleases even though she probably slept less than all of them, excluding Donnie. Somehow- and they’re still trying to prove it is a supernatural gift- April is always, always energetic and awake, no matter how long or little she’s rested.

Leo eyes the half a bacon and eggs wrap she has in her hands, and he sidles up to her, grinning slyly. “April,” he says melodically, “that wrap looks like too much for you, you’re already too full to finish it, right? I can take it off your hands, don’t worry. I’ll do it as a favor to you.”

“Nice try, Leon,” April says, sneakily tugging on his long braids as revenge for the attempted charming. “You and I both know I can finish this and another three if I wanted.”

“One day,” Leo says with a pout as he yanks himself away from April’s light grip, “I’ll prove that you’re not completely human, because you are way too tiny to eat as much as you do.”

April smirks and bites into her breakfast wrap, ignoring the begging look Leo gives her.

“You’re both makin’ me hungry again,” Raph complains, and starts herding his family along the sidewalk. “C’mon, keep moving or I’ll pick you up and carry you.”

Mikey perks up. “Actually-”

He doesn’t even have to finish. Raph bends without a word, and his little brother hops onto him for a piggyback to the market. The sharpie scarabs he doodled onto his arms yesterday flutter their wings and take flight as they go, buzzing around their group swiftly and quietly, shining iridescently black in the morning sun and invisible to humans passing by. Leo whistles a brief tune at a few and convinces them to land on his hands, petting their carapace gently as possible. Donnie ignores them and shakes them off when they land on his short hair, while April sputters as one flies at her glasses out of curiosity for their reflectiveness.

Raph feels something slithery and cool slide into his ponytail of thin dreadlocks, and just sighs and lets it happen. Apparently, Mikey drew another collection of snakes somewhere on himself, too.

The market is bustling as they get there, the human community intermingling with the supernatural community without noticing. Early morning shoppers are walking around with bags bursting with produce and homemade creations- ranging from organically grown carrots to knitted summoning dolls, the faces of unspeakable beings peering out along with stalks of celery.

An average Saturday shopping crowd, then.

Raph and his family aren’t noticed in the least as they join it.

so i spent a long while poking at the idea of the brothers having magical abilities in a witch au (splinter too, but i haven’t learned enough about him in canon yet to decide properly) and came up with these possible types that make sense to me! 

(disclaimer: spec is not the person to ever ask about real magic. i just do whatever the hell i want with it in my writing because yo, it’s magic!!!)

raph has shapeshifting magic, drawing on internal power and connections with creatures he’s interacted with to change his body to fit the abilities of animals. inspired thusly bc he has nice pointy teeth in canon and bc he reminds me (’cause he’s Big) of Jin from Ran and the Grey World.

donnie can communicate with and manipulate technology. unless he withholds it, any piece of machinery he works with will a) never break down again, b) mysteriously always seem like new after you’ve taken it to him for repairs, and c) might potentially develop something of a sentience if he gets really invested in the projects. most of his personal computers have sassy little personalities now.

leo, so long as he believes wholeheartedly in what he’s saying, can change bits of reality just by talking it into doing so. if he recites poetry he made himself with enough intention to a stick, he could convince it to become a sword, or tell an alleyway to become a dead end to someone. mostly though, he just uses his magic to convince people of little things, like giving him a discount at the store, or letting him copy off someone’s homework.

mikey can give temporary life to artwork, be it sketches or paintings or murals or pottery or etc. by drawing on the devotion and emotion the artists put into the pieces. he mostly uses his own art, but since he’s got more magical juice/potential in him than all his brothers combined, if he’s pushed to it he could bring life to one of those massive murals on the sides of apartment complexes. mostly he just likes making little friends, though, haha.

april is purely human, but can and has gone toe to toe with supernatural beings and kicked their asses. she’s never had any trouble keeping up with her witch buddies, and they, of course, love their semi-adopted big sister being around as much as she loves them being with her.

uhhhhh... more to come of this at some point? zshrug, i hope other people here love witches too.

(also... pls consider buying me a kofi.... i promise i shall reward the gift with frequent fics...)