#he just grew to like the hamato family

[risestarkiss]

Orange, Baby!

Rise Ramblings #316

When I think about Mikey, this scene always comes to mind.

As soon as they step foot in the library to save Mayhem, Angelo instantly disqualifies himself…hilariously.

On first watch, I found it interesting that he made this decision with no hesitation, especially given the stakes.

At the time I just resigned to him being a silly silly boy, but now I know better.

Yet, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s explore who Mikey is.

Michelangelo Hamato is the youngest turtle in the family, and it shows.

Consequently, he seems to possess a certain “youngest brother privilege" that his other brothers just can’t help but reinforce. This is the role that Mikey was born into. Therefore, he doesn’t have to push himself to be the smartest, or cleverest, or strongest turtle.

Instead, he decides to be the artist of the family. He’s a creative! He expresses himself everywhere, from stickers on his own shell, to tagging the lair, as well as on paper. The world is his canvas!

Michelangelo also expresses himself in virtually everything he does, so it’s easy to understand why he’s the most open, honest, caring, and emotionally expressive turtle of the bunch. To some it could be seen as a weakness, yet Mikey uses his emotional intelligence as a pillar of strength, of which he utilizes to uphold his brothers when they need support the most.

In the show, Michelangelo often takes on certain personas; Doctor Feelings and Doctor Delicate Touch. (For some reason, they are all doctors, but that’s beside the point.)

At first glance, the personas could be seen as silly bouts of make-believe. But I think that placing these roles upon himself for his brothers' sake is Michelangelo’s way of helping them cope with the world by offering them what they each individually lack.

For instance, Raph, Leo, and Donnie have trouble voicing their discomforts when someone does something they don’t like.

In other words, they have trouble putting their foot down.

But here is Mikey to the rescue!

Dr. Delicate Touch has no such hang-ups.

Similarly, when Donatello runs into trouble, as he is unable to recognize his own emotions, it’s up to Doctor Feelings to help his desperate client in need.

Through taking on these roles, Mikey is able to support his brothers and fill the emotional gaps in his teammates, which, inevitably makes them all stronger.

How is Mikey able to do this and how does he have the strength to take on these roles?

You could think that it’s just in his character, meaning, it’s just how he is. I don’t think so, though. He’s a free thinker, and a creative, but there’s something about these roles that is specifically catered to the needs of his family.

Then I realized, the only reason that Mikey is able to help his brothers in this way is because they first helped him.

Let me explain.

All four of the boys grew up in the same household. Although Splinter tried his very best (there is no Splinter hate here), a single depressed parent doth not a stable child make. Raphael struggled with the burden of his responsibilities as an ad hoc leader (see Being Big Red), Leo struggled with expressing his natural talents as a middle child (see Being Baby Blue), all while Donnie struggled with carving out his place on the team and his feelings of uselessness (see Being Purple Part One and Part Two).

Well, what does Mikey struggle with?

In my humble opinion, nothing.

The struggles of his brothers all related to each turtle coming to terms with themselves and coming to terms with their place on the team.

Yet, due to the love and support of his brothers and father, Michelangelo never had to ask himself if he belonged, struggle with his role on the team, or make huge life-changing decisions that could affect everyone.

Michelangelo is free to just be Michelangelo.

And as a free spirit who is completely in tune with his own emotions, he is able to do things like this:

and this,

and this.

Let’s get back to the scene in the library.

Angelo sees the high stakes of his friend’s pet disappearing forever if they fail but makes the decision to disqualify himself anyway. Why? Because he knows that no matter what he does, it will all be ok.

He has complete faith in his brothers and their ability to solve the problem at hand, so he might as well have some fun.

This not the first time he’s come to this conclusion.

Through out this entire scene, Michelangelo plays in the background.

It’s scenes like this that makes me believe that Mikey’s faith in his family knows no bounds.

Altogether, his brothers and his father were everything he needed to become who he is. Reciprocally, he is free to be everything that they need him to be and more. Over…

and over,

and over again

he trusts them completely.

And through this unwavering trust in his family, he is able to trust himself and his instincts. He knows that with everything they’ve poured into him, he can save them from, well, everything. Over…

and over…

and over again.

Hence, due to all of this evidence, I believe that through the collective love of his family, Michelangelo became the best version of the Hamato spirit, and thus, the best Mystic Warrior of all time.

All because, he’s Orange, baby!

○○○○

Previous | Being Big Red • Being Baby Blue • Being Purple ○ Part One • Being Purple ○ Part Two

Finale | Being Hamato Yoshi

[tblsomedoodles]

Here's an art/info dump about this stupidly cute idea that's been rotating in my brain for three day.

(the first comic here is just how they first met. they ended up in the same alley, pestering the same cat without noticing. Then the cat left and they notice they're not alone lol)

(Second is Donnie 'talking' with Mikey for the first time. He only uses Mind Mend to communicate and is just as surprised as Mikey to find it worked on him. (it has only worked with Leo before this))

I'll put the rest under a break b/c i will be going off about this and i don't want it to take up your entire feed.

I'm jokingly calling this "Mikey's Imaginary Friends" though that might change if i continue this.

Basically it's this, the twins grew up with Draxum while Raph and Mikey grew up with Splinter. Neither set knew about the other (b/c splinter though they were dead and didn't want his two remaining kids to worry about it, and Draxum was too focused on fixing his lab to pay much attention to the twins.) So, imagine Mikey's shock when, at age 8, he's out exploring topside (having snuck out) and runs into two more mutant turtles (who also snuck out and are exploring.) Thus begins an ongoing sneaking out to meet up thing between the three b/c Mikey's excited to have new friends and the twins are just as fascinated with Mikey as he is with them.

And before you ask, "hey, why doesn't Mikey tell his family about the two other turtles?" he does. Raph thinks he just made up some imaginary friends so he plays along but doesn't believe they're real. Splinter, on the other hand, thinks he's talking to Hamato ancestors due to some very big miscommunications (that i'll probably draw out at some point b/c it's silly)

Twins background wise, i'm still thinking through a lot of it, but i'll put my thoughts down anyways.

Draxum knew that training the twins at a young age would be counterproductive, so he doesn't train them beyond some basics a few times a week. Other than those sessions, he leaves them alone with their less-than-stellar caretaker, in favor of rebuilding his lab. The caretaker doesn't do much for them beyond give them food and very basic school like lessons. Beyond that the twins are left on their own.

they come to the conclusion that the only people that will care for them is themselves. They discover Mind Meld very early as a result of this and will not talk verbally b/c they found out early on with their caretaker, that if they tried to talk, they were just ignored anyways, so what's the point.

(I'm also thinking Donnie might be deaf or hard of hearing in this, with the pair of them using Mind Meld as a way for him to temporarily hear through Leo and thus keep Drax from finding out. but i'll have to do some more research before i decide for sure/figure out the specifics)

as for Meeting Mikey

That's why they became so fascinated with mikey. B/c mikey was the first person that treated them like a person and not a job or an incomplete experiment. (He's also so happy and bright, they can't avoid getting drawn to him lol)

Mikey's probably the only one they verbally start talking to, even after they teach him mind meld. (though Leo's the one to pick up on that more than Donnie. Donnie doesn't do much talking at all outside mind meld).

They also come out of their shells (hehe) a lot as they interact more with Mikey. Before they met him, they acted more like automatons, even when alone. The more they socialize with Mikey, the sillier these two get. Leo learns about puns and starts going mad with them, Donnie starts happy stimming about thing (which he has either been suppressing or just never had the urge to do before.) Basically they stop acting like little creepy statues and start acting like kids.

Honestly, it's just a cute idea with the kiddos meeting each other and Mikey inadvertently socializing his not-well-socialized brothers.

(also, the twins wear masks b/c Donnie doesn't like the smell of the city and he's worried about germs. Not for any ninja reasons, what so ever.)

Alright, that's it for my info dump. maybe more later? Maybe not? Depends on how much longer these kids keep my attentions (though right now, they're doing a pretty good job at it lol)

[bulbabutt]

okay. lets bite the bullet and talk about 2012. lets talk about child abuse, familial abuse, generational abuse, toxic family units, whatever you wanna call it. lets talk about it and whether it exists in this show. i actually encourage you to read this no matter what your take is, just to hear it out. let me be FUCKING clear: i love this show, but i get scared to talk about it seriously. everyone on every side is defensive all the time but i love every turtles show to no end.

this post is going to go over so well and not controversially at all.

precursor: every splinter is some level of shitty dad. he always has been. the fucking bare bones of the character is that he raised his children to kill the man who killed his own father. thats inherently fucked up. every splinter has some level of fucked up about him. maybe hes inattentive, or neglectful, or strict, or secretive, maybe hes just not very good at dealing with his kids. splinter is supposed to be far from perfect. thats what makes him splinter. maybe he grows over the course of a series, maybe he doesnt. maybe hes supposed to be shitty his whole life, maybe hes not. thats just splinter. each is adapted differently depending on the story being told.

and 2012 has a very interesting tone to its story.

lets start at the beginning, back in japan. this is season 3, was this story what they intended when they started writing the show back in season 1? probably not, theres probably things they would have written differently had they known this was where splinter's story started. thats kind of the way tv works, you add the details later. but for our sake of analyzing the character of splinter as a whole, it seems best to start here as if its all intentional.

hamato yoshi is a member of the hamato clan. theyre a very traditional old ninja clan in the modern world, they have old feuds and theyre trying to keep their culture alive. they're literally the last of a clan of ninjas like this, having (supposedly) defeated the foot clan (their generational enemies) back when yoshi was a baby. hes set out to lead next, and its very important to him. and yet hes married to a woman who works in the city, a modern woman who doesnt live the life he does. she even moved to be with him. i feel the need to compare this to how men in the real world who want traditional wives never go for women who are willing to be their housewives, always try to break down the independent ones. splinter seems unconcerned with how his wife wants to live. with how she wants their daughter to be raised.

im not necessarily saying this is how this comes off in the show, but i find it interesting to think about. this is absolutely the most rounded version of tang shen as a character (thus far) it stops her being just a name on a page "hamato yoshi's love and the object of his enemies affections who died" and turns her into a woman who has a stake in the story. gives her more agency.

its very interesting that this show implies an actual relationship between tang shen and oroku saki, albeit a one-sided one that didnt work out, but they do seem to have parted on equal ground. the pair of them discuss yoshi's inattentive duties as a husband and father, that he's too obsessed with the tradition and lineage of his clan. honestly, if this woman just took her baby and left no one would blame her! he has his priorities set, and it leaves no room for her and their newborn baby. if she ran away with saki at this point, the story would make just as much sense.

but then disaster strikes, saki learns the truth about his family, that he was actually a child of the foot clan (honestly i wish we saw this play out instead of jumping ahead in the story but thats not what this post is about) and he kills he and yoshi's father. revenge for him having killed his. cycles of abuse and revenge that never end. the pair of them were raised in this society that values lineage like this, that would kill for it. its no wonder they both grew up this way.

anyway, tang shen is killed by a blow meant for yoshi, and saki takes their child and raises her. based on splinter's lack of desire to be a father so far in the story, its honestly not one you can blame him for. its fucked up, but it makes sense. saki does to miwa exactly what his father did to him. cycles of abuse and revenge.

yoshi loses everything, and moves to america. he's turned into splinter the mutant rat, and gains four turtle sons.

so as established, he's not exactly grown up with a stable family life. he obviously, while human, wasnt acting as a stable father for the child he intended to have. so how good is he at this?

ive talked before about how the 2003 show treats the turtles as kind of one whole unit. they don't have individual relationship arcs, they dont have overarching storylines where they grow apart or closer, they're always in each other's corner.

2012 makes this more dynamic. here we see that 15 years seeing no one but each other, growing under this splinter has come with its own quirks. these brothers dont understand each other that well. they get jealous of each others treatment, some are left out, some are misunderstood. raph resents leo, none of them appreciate what donnie does, mikey bothers everyone else for attention, etc. it creates a really good starting place for this show.

(the issue i have with this show is more that they never really open or close any of these beats, at least not in ways that last. but boy does it make for some good dramatic scenes)

we see over the course of this first season that splinter treats his children just as he was, as little ninjas more so than sons. he raises them to follow his traditions, the ones tang shen never cared for. but this is all he knows how to be! you cant really blame him.

most people bring up mikey as the quintessential example when they talk about this, i dont want to do that cuz i know you've all heard it. while i think his father does disrespect him and i think it is paid forward and his brothers do too, i'd rather talk about raph for a change.

in one episode, raph loses his temper. to teach him a lesson, splinter makes his brothers pelt him in training while insulting him any way they can, and tells him to just... not lose his temper. this is a terrible lesson in general. instead of trying to coax out why he might be angry, it just plays up that if he loses his temper bad things happen.

splinter in this episode basically encourages bullying. this comes up a lot when it comes to raph. to compare, in 2003 when raph loses his temper, hes told to blow off steam which he does. his brothers don't blame him for having emotional outbursts, they know thats just how he is so they know how he needs to cope with it. he's given the physical space to let it out.

im not saying this show needs to be like that show, im just saying thats a version of this story where the outcome is better for raph as a whole. since this outcome is not as good for him emotionally, you can tell why he's still got these emotional issues. splinter never helps him more than that. thats more why this raph differs from that one, if that makes sense. one has his family in his corner more than the other.

speaking of. raph has a pet turtle. this turtle is the only one he can talk to about how he feels. why might that be? it's the only thing hes kind and gentle to, and he refuses to let his brothers make him feel weak for being kind to it. where did he learn to be ashamed of being kind and gentle? thats a learned behaviour. in a house full of other men... yeah, that would happen. but whos values start that?

when this turtle gets some mutagen spilled on it, it tries to get revenge on his family. there is such a resentment going on here, its extremely juicy. the show chalks this up to "post mutation insanity", but its just as easy to think that everything raph has experienced has made him seem angry and resentful and perhaps scared to his pet, and that former pet wants raph to himself so they can be free. the frustrated venting of a child complaining about how no one understands him in such a big way turns slash into a vengeful monster, cuz thats all he's ever heard. it makes sense, he went from a little turtle to a fully cognizant adult aged being in an instant. emotionally no one would handle that well, and definitely not someone whos only ever heard the worst about people.

he comes around later. notably by being on his own, away from the hamatos.

again, im not saying the show is writing this intentionally, but i think tonally its in the zone where you could see this analysis as being canon. that these little pieces of narrative fit the worldview of a toxic family unit that isnt dealing with its problems in a healthy way.

there's other small aspects. leo slaps mikey early on, having seen it on his favourite show be used as a way of getting someone to calm down. mikey questions this behaviour, leo seems to feel bad about it when questioned. if we know that that behaviour was bad, what other things might he emulate in a similar way?

there's things like donnie's predatory behaviour towards april. in a world where all they ever knew was splinter's stories of the outside world (and perhaps television from decades earlier), hearing splinter's story of his love for tang shen, his rivalry with his own brother over her, you could actually see why he would behave the way he does, why he claims her the way he does. not as an excuse, but as a reason he learned the behaviour. and there's multiple opportunities for his father to tell him off. he never does. why would he? he knows no better.

this splinter, unlike every other, is not old or disabled. he doesnt require a cane (at the start, but also was never a good cane) and its interesting that despite being like... a 40 year old man in the peak of his life he does not accompany his sons on missions. he sits around doing nothing and disproves of his sons heroic actions. april literally calls him out for this at one point. the show is actually telling us some of this man's behaviour is wrong.

one of the more upsetting things that happens in this household is a lot of physical hitting. "theyre training" you might say. understandable. but when you see a lot of hitting come from the father in this show, played for a laugh, when you see splinter play the "drunk master" bit it makes you think. is that okay? isnt that a bit much?

the end of the muckman episode is a freeze frame of splinter (after having knocked out all of his sons to punish them for leaving while grounded) turning his anger on april and her running away. idk thats just not funny to me. this is a bit of the dating of the show, 2012 was a time where character's in shows were meaner, less affectionate, more bullying in nature. that was the sense of humour at the time. that isnt me making a judgment, it's just kind of the era. a pre steven universe world, if that makes sense. so many of the jokes that end in a hit aren't funny in 2024. especially not when they come from a parent.

when this splinter speaks about his kids to their brothers he often ends up insulting them. "you should be like mikey, he never overthinks because he doesn't think", this would be a big reason the boys speak about each other the way they do to their faces. puts forward a bit more of that bullying thing i mentioned earlier. if their own father talks about them like this, of course their brothers do too. so of course they join in and give payback.

again. splinter wasnt raised in a normal family. he was raised in a ninja commune with a bunch of murderers. he wasn't great with his wife and baby daughter. its not surprising that he's bad at this.

so, ive just said a bunch of things about what's wrong with this household as a whole. i think ive explained why the family unit behaves the way it does: generational teachings of feuds and traditional values. i dont think this makes the show bad! i, in fact, wish there was more of it. i think theres so much low hanging fruit that the show kind of wants to play with, but cant fully bring itself to.

specific example: during the space arc on a planet thats driving all the characters emotions against each other we get this amazing scene where raph screams at leo for being splinter's favourite. leo responds by hugging him. its really well done!

however its never brought up again, never actually getting into the nitty gritty of why raph feels like that is exactly what i think makes this show resonate with so many people

its dark! it pulls at your heart strings! it makes people feel seen! we go in mikey's head at one point and see such splintered (lol) personalities in his head. he has a huge anger problem (much like raph) in there. he retreats into imagination land when stressed. the show kind of toys with "these kids are fucked up!" but never lets those character moments go anywhere. i love how fucked up this family is. its so complex, it feels real. at least real to me. i wish it went that little step further and let the characters talk about these things a little more.

maybe you have a different experience, and thats fine! but i wouldnt brush off people like me who look at 2012 and say "these dynamics make me uncomfortable". to excuse it by saying "my family is like that and we're fine" sometimes i just wanna say... <:/ are you? have you talked about that? and if that's your read on it is that its fine, thats great. but some people notice patterns and those patterns can make them uncomfortable. i hope ive explained the patterns here.

i think thats why the fandom is as big as it is. this show would lead to the most amazing deep introspective fan-works youve ever seen, it lays the pieces out so perfectly for you to draw your own conclusions about why they are this way. you cant really blame people for talking about it as if its got a way higher rating than it does. it feels like it does.

i should say, i dont even know if i blame the show on its own for leaving those pieces laying there, it was on nickelodeon. i sense studio meddling in the tone. i mean, given that the show wanted to end with the big mutant apocalypse storyline, and yet the network wanted to end it with the big 87 crossover..... yeah i think its safe to say nick would rather they keep it light.

which is funny, because i think the most controversial thing i can say is i personally love the finale arc as the mutant apocalypse. it so encapsulates my favorite part of this show. to end this show in the darkest timeline and say "even though these characters are so far removed from who they used to be and even though the entire world is over they still have each other in the end" and i find that so perfect.

so. i understand that this is always a touchy topic. i know people want to brush it off as "people say the 12 brothers are abusive to mikey but mikey is fine", and i think thats a really skewed version of it from both sides. first of all. mikey is not fine, look in that boys head. look how he copes. he's not. but also, mikey is not the only victim. they all are. these turtles are victims of their upbringing, victims of generational war. of men who didnt know how to be good fathers in the first place. and thats good writing! it feels deep! it connects!

for more context: any fucked up way you can think of karai being raised by shredder? its probably the same way here. splinter and shredder were raised the same way.

i guess i think about this a lot, cuz i always see things like "oh, rise fans write crossovers where the rise boys love each other and have to teach the 12 boys how to be nice cuz they dont like 2012!" and i just think to myself:

guys. do you understand why a person might do that? why would someone (likely a teenager) want 2012 mikey to be treated nicely by a kinder more openly affectionate version of his own family? do i need to spell that out for you? why do we connect with media at all, why do we write our own stories about it?

if you genuinely dont. i mean, im glad for you. but sometimes you wanna imagine a world in which your own family is more openly affectionate with you. where they hug and tell you theyre proud and love you and you never have to question it, never have to look elsewhere for that kind of approval. its less that they're idolizing rise, and more that they're looking at the two families and saying "this one is emotionally mature and in touch with their feelings more than that one. how would that play out?"

doctor feelings ass response.

look, im not saying everyone understands 2012, that everyone likes or needs to like it. im just trying to say that i think these fucked up parts of 2012 are all around my favourite parts of the show. its an inspiring story about this fucked up little family that has no one but each other, and they're not great about it. they try, but they don't always get it right. i just wish the show would have talked about that part more. but i think that since it doesnt people get to fill in those blanks themselves, and they do it so beautifully. and i really wish people on the internet would be more kind to one another when they wanted to discuss these darker themes they find in it.

these are the reasons i love this show. i think its so very interesting that splinter dies this fucked up father figure who never really apologized for his behaviour. i like that raph needs to be held to stop punching his brothers. that leo doesnt have a good grip on what it is to be a leader, that he tries bad ways of doing it. i like that no one copes well! i like that their relationships are so complex! this show is messy! its good! i wish it was more messy!

and id love if we could be more honest about these things and how they make us feel instead of just brushing each other off as "likes the show" or "doesnt like the show". the things that make me uncomfortable are why i love this show and i'm pretty sure i'm not alone there.

[paintedkinzy-88]

Let's take a step back (or rather, forward) and indulge my wandering mind. Behold! Bad Future Dragos!

I want it to be clear that these are at the... latest point in their lives (AKA, before they die) rather than all at the same time. The design choices are very deliberate in that case.

As always, off I ramble---

Raphael was often called the "Umbrella" of the Resistance, due to his habit of shielding those around him with his wings. He's always done this, ever since he was a dragonet, but the danger is much more real now, and he has a lot more people to protect. As it is, his wings are torn beyond repair. Unless he uses his Ninpo, flying is no longer an option. It's also because of this tendency to constantly throw himself into the front lines that he lost one of his legs. Lucky, Donnie was able to craft multiple prosthetics for him, as his size grew bigger and bigger each day, at a much faster rate than his brothers. Unfortunately, this also made him a bigger target, as he was the first Hamato casualty.

Speaking of Donnie, that serpent held the Resistance together, no doubt about it. He wasn't often put on the battlefield, as his skills were much more needed within their bases building defenses, weapons, armor, indoor gardens, and so much more. He was essential to their survival, working the hardest out of the group of engineers and construction workers they were able to recruit. However, after loosing his tail, back leg, and, temporarily, his voice to Krang hounds, he was kept strictly on base only, much to his dismay. With his focus so narrowed down to just build build build, Donnie created more and more pieces of tech to help him do so, like multiple Shelldon bodies and a constant supply of robot arms (that could of course be used as weapons in a pinch). In the end, keeping him so guarded didn't matter. When one of their hideouts was ransacked before they could escape, Donnie stayed behind to initiate a self destruct. He took out the sister Krang in the blast, as well as a sizable chunk of their army.

Leo was the seemingly fearless leader of the survivors, his way of words convincing countless people of all kinds to join their forces. He actually only took charge after Draxum's death, since the yokai had previous experiences in mass wars and lead them as well as he could prior to Leo. His fins have certainly seen better days, but swimming wasn't much of an option after a few years anyways, as the Krang eventually made the oceans far to toxic to be in. Eventually, with his fins so torn up, Donnie did make him prosthetic wings, as attacking from the air was such an incredible advantage. He also ended up taking one of Raph's old arms after a wound left them having to amputate, and resources to build a brand new one were slim pickings. Sadly, after Donnie's passing, there wasn't anyone with the same knowledge to fix and manage the wings, leading to them eventually just breaking off. Leo mostly uses them to stab aliens now.

Mikey gained a growing group of worshippers rather quickly. He hates it immensely, but his family finds it hilarious. With his mystic powers only gaining strength, and getting increasingly flashy as well, it wasn't too much of a surprise that people would see him as an angel, godlike figure, or deity. He was the heaviest hitter of the Resistance, even before Raph's passing, and spent any free time he had either speaking to their ancestors or helping people nurture the little remaining hope in their base. Despite being almost constantly on the frontlines of the worst battles, Mikey has the fewest scars.

AND, FINALLY: Heights. With a quickly added April to help out. Again, these are at the latest stage of their lives, because Raph would definitely have been Much Bigger Than That had he lived to be Leo's old man age.

(And Donnie has always been the taller twin. It's not his fault Leo had more time to gain a few inches on him.)

[goodlucktai]

a bigger heart grew back

rise of the tmnt post-movie characters: leo & splinter, raph & splinter word count: 5k title borrowed from no hell by cloud cult

read on ao3

x

Splinter thought he had lived through all of life’s worsts already.

Losing his mother, estranging himself from what was left of his family, moving to the States as an orphan of his own making, falling in what he thought was love and losing his freedom as a direct result—

Years spent underground where he was forced to fight like a dog, an unwanted mutation that guaranteed his exile from society, that first bleak night in the sewers with nothing but the clothes on his back and four infants who depended upon him entirely and the utter conviction that he was going to fail them—

The resurrection of the Shredder, the collapse of Splinter’s home and the exodus of his children, the fear he had become unfortunately intimate with in those fraught hours—that his boys would become orphans, too—

Raphael’s escape pod opening and Leonardo tumbling out, eyes glassy and chest heaving with panic—sweet, sensitive Red covered in a fleshy pink parasite and forced to attack the siblings he loved more than life itself, those little turtles he had fussed over and carried and kept safe since he was just a little turtle himself—

But nothing compared to hearing the voice of his second youngest child as he prepared to end his own life.  

His precious Blue, who could sell water to a fish, bravely trying to convince his siblings that it was right for him to go. Already pulling away, beginning the vanishing act, even as Raphael begged him not to do it. 

All for that tiresome, nebulous greater good. As if any happy ending could possibly exist with Leonardo removed from the narrative. 

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was, but his heart, patchwork, secondhand thing that it was, had never broken like this before. He crumpled to the ground, and listened to Blue’s line on the comms explode into a strange whine and then static and then nothing, and it was over. 

His Blue would never crawl into his armchair for late night Spanish telenovelas again, Splinter realized. Would never wheedle and bribe and coerce him into chess matches, because he didn’t seem to know he could just ask and Splinter would play as many matches with him as there was time in a day for. Would never run from a successfully antagonized sibling and fill the lair with his ringing, infectious laughter. Would never fall asleep at the kitchen table over a medical textbook he pretended to be too cool for in the daylight hours. Would never effortlessly argue his twin out of the lab for dinner, would never lift Orange up on his shoulders to get a hard-to-reach mixing bowl because teamwork makes the dream work, would never painstakingly stitch together a ripped teddy bear for the brother whose fingers were too big to handle needle and thread ever, ever again. 

There is not a word for a parent who has lost a child. There is not a word for that particular flavor of grief that carves you empty at the same time that it fills you to the last hopeless, drowning inch. 

April sobbed openly beside him, her small, strong shoulders shaking. She had always been exactly what Splinter would have wished for in a daughter, and so the Hamato curse didn’t spare her, either. It takes and it takes and it takes. 

And then Michelangelo turned his back on despair and handed his family a miracle. 

Splinter could feel his remaining sons’ ninpo stir and then surge together, and the sheer forceful brilliance of it staggered him from all the way over on the other side of the city. He knew better than to hope—but he also knew that nothing existed in this world or the next that could possibly outstubborn his children, or strong-arm them into abandoning each other, or quite frankly make them do any single thing they adamantly as a group did not want to do. 

“Guys,” April choked out. “Talk to me, what’s going on? Hello?”

Thudding footfalls announced Casey approaching at a run. He jumped over one of the pinned Krang’s flailing tentacles as if he dodged ballistic alien parts every day of his life and skidded to the ground beside them on armored knees.

“I felt it,” Blue’s child from another life gasped, face tacky with half-dried tears. “That’s Uncle Angie opening a door. No one else could do it but him.”

Casey had a familiar katana at his side, blue and gleaming. His fingers seemed like they wanted to linger on the hilt but he handed it over to Splinter agreeably enough. The lingering ninpo in the blade usually welcomed Splinter warmly, eager to be of use, a telling mirror of the way Leonardo himself was so anxious to please and be praised. But this time the tool that Splinter picked up was an innate, lifeless thing. 

He prodded tentatively with his own qi. The runes flickered once, half-hearted, in the manner of a dog waking at the sound of a key in the door, ascertaining the person there was not the one it belonged to, and laying its head back down to sleep. 

Splinter would not be able to follow the whims of his son’s ninpo to create a portal while it lay dormant. His own uselessness crushed him. 

“Raph mentioned Staten Island earlier,” April said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm and pushing herself to her feet, business-like and brisk because she couldn’t afford to be anything else. “I doubt the ferry’s running, and the bridge is going to be a gridlock nightmare, so it looks like we’re stealing a boat.”

“If your mother asks, I did not condone this,” Splinter said hoarsely. “That said, the marina is too far to run to, so first we are stealing a car.”

They were halfway across the river in a cruiser that probably wasn’t meant to sustain the sixty miles an hour April was pushing when that startling shout of their family’s ninpo finally started to fade into a soft-spoken susurrus. 

Before it was too quiet to make out clearly, he felt it: that achingly familiar mischievous blue energy, like a playful breeze flying above everything. Much smaller than usual, less spirited—giving more of the impression of a tiny tide pool creature hiding inside its shell than a smartmouthed sixteen year old boy with the whole world in his corner—but present. 

Alive. 

“Sensei,” Casey whispered. 

“They got him,” April said, a ferocious, not-to-be-trifled-with look in her eye, all but daring the universe to try to make her a liar. “They saved him somehow, I know it.”

They were both Hamato enough to feel it as certainly as Splinter did.

But the boys hadn’t thought to include anyone else in their immediate, hard-won victory—and in fact, the call Splinter, April and Casey finally received some ten minutes later was one of outright panic. 

“Dad, dad, are you there?” Orange’s voice warbled. He sounded all of fifteen years old and frightened in a way that set Splinter’s fur on edge instantly. “Dad, Leo’s hurt bad. He was awake a second ago, and talking even, but then he stopped making sense and just—just fell—”

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Purple added, high-strung and liable to start biting if one more thing went catastrophically wrong within a mile of his person. “I’m scanning him but I don’t—I’m not a doctor I don’t know—”

“Send the readouts to me,” Casey said quickly, pulling his mask down, its lenses glowing green as the interface came to life. “Sensei trained me in field medicine, I can help with anything short of an open-heart surgery.”

“You take after your father,” Donatello replied. “Irredeemable overachievers.”

That faint thread of gratitude in his voice would go unheard by anyone who didn’t know him, but Casey huffed a near-silent exhale, having heard it loud and clear.

What Future Boy had to share with them wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the worst it could have been, either. Leonardo had sustained a number of broken bones and soft tissue damage, the cartilage in his right knee was torn as if the joint had been viciously twisted, one of his cheekbones was fractured, and even his shell had suffered a few hairline cracks. Altogether, he was looking at a long recovery, not unlike what the survivor of a traumatic car accident might have had to look forward to—but he would recover. 

It wasn’t enough to prepare Splinter for actually seeing him. His Baby Blue, a tiny little thing in Raphael’s arms, with a face so beaten it was hard to make out the bright red stripe on one side. 

“Okay,” April said, voice thick with anger and hurt and love. “Okay. Everyone on the boat.”

And finally they were home, after the longest day in history. Casey confirmed his initial diagnosis, with the caveat that they would know more when Leonardo woke up. He insisted to an audience of grim faces that it was a very good sign Leonardo had been awake and coherent in the first place, however briefly. 

So Blue was disinfected and splinted and bandaged and medicated and then tucked safely away in the infirmary bed. Everyone else was seen to in short order. It was an easier task than it usually was, since none of them were remotely willing to leave just yet. 

Splinter made a mental note to call Draxum to double-check that Michelangelo hadn’t pushed himself too far in creating a gateway—the glowing lines on his hands had faded, and beyond an occasional tremor, he promised his family up and down that he was actually fine. Donatello’s shell was a quiet source of concern, but the only person alive who could harass him into a checkup without getting maimed for his trouble was currently very much out of action. Raphael’s eye was definitely infected, and blood vessels had burst when he’d ripped the parasite away, coloring the sclera an alarming red. 

The rest of the clan watched in some unspoken, exhausted wonder as Casey unthinkingly maneuvered around Leonardo’s infirmary as if he’d spent part of every day of his life there, knowing which drawer to find compression gloves for Orange in, locating topical pain reliever for Purple that he could apply himself and medicated eyedrops for Red in quick succession, before ultimately offering a bottle of extra strength Tylenol to April, who accepted it gravely. 

“You’re a weird kid,” she said. From her, it was a declaration of approval. “You better plan on sticking around.”

“Oh,” Casey said at length, surprised. Clearly, he hadn’t thought ahead to what the after of his mission would be shaped like. His gaze lingered on Leo’s little bundled-up figure in the bed, so full of love and grief for a man who didn’t yet exist, and Splinter thought to hell with it. The kid was as good as his grandson if you squinted. 

“We’ll find a bed for you,” Splinter said, some tiny corner of his mind free from screaming worry and bone-deep exhaustion already plotting where to make room for another subway car. “In the meantime, the sofa is yours.”

With that, five out of six children had been packed off to sleep. It took April and Michelangelo combined to pry Donatello’s hand from Leonardo’s, and subsequently his entire person from the infirmary. Raphael pulled a chair up to Leonardo’s bed and Splinter didn’t try to argue him out, knowing when to pick his battles. 

Red had a familiar look on his face, an elephant in the room that often went unacknowledged for both their sakes. That look that said you’re his father but he’s my kid, too.

He had earned the right. No one could argue that. Late night vigils were his wheelhouse and had been ever since he was about nine years old. When Splinter didn’t have to be quite so present—when he started to let the tired gray encroach more and more, when he stopped getting out of bed right away at the sound of a child crying—Red quietly learned how to tend fevers and stomach bugs and bad dreams. 

Soon enough, the boys stopped calling for daddy when they were hurting and started calling for Raphie instead. And their Raphie always came when they called.   

Which was why it must have hurt like a blade piercing clean through his ribs when Leonardo finally stirred at something approaching two o’clock in the morning, blinked muddy gold eyes open slowly, looked up at the familiar shape of his biggest brother beside the bed, and flinched. 

The world hadn’t ended yesterday. It was happening now instead.

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was. But life did not seem to ever run out of brand new lessons to teach. 

“Leo,” Red whispered, heartbreak obvious in every inch of him. His hand was frozen in the air between them, arrested right in the middle of reaching out. 

“No,” Blue managed, twisting around like he would attempt an escape the second he figured out where his limbs were in relation to the bed, IV be damned. The lines on the heart rate monitor started to crest dramatically. 

“Leo it’s okay it’s—it’s me, I’m not—I’m not going to—I would never hurt—” 

His voice strangled itself into silence. After all, at least some of those grisly black and blue marks around Leonardo’s neck were from him. 

“Papa,” Leonardo cried out, the call reaching directly into Splinter’s heart with hooks and yanking him out of his chair. “I want papa, please, please—”

Clambering onto the bed, minding all the hardware, Splinter placed a careful hand on his second-youngest’s feverish head to soothe him. 

He felt like an imposter, especially with Red still frozen like a statue behind him, but that part of his heart that had been smothered once, allowing his children’s cries for him to go unanswered and someone else to pick up the slack, was the loudest part of him now. 

There was physically nothing else he could do but stroke that bruised forehead with the pad of his thumb and tell him, “Hush, Baby Blue, your papa is here. You are safe. You are home.” 

Leonardo turned his face into Splinter’s hand, hiding as much as he was capable of. Raphael took one staggering step back, then another, then turned on his heel and fled the way Splinter had no memory of him ever doing before, infirmary door crashing behind him. 

Torn completely in two, Splinter summoned conviction from those ancient spirits housed in his soul and forced himself at knife point to be strong for his family for once in his goddamn life. 

“What are these tears for, silly turtle?” he murmured, the same way he had when Leonardo still mostly fit in the palm of one hand. Back then, all Leonardo wanted was to be held. He wondered if that was still true. “You are the safest little turtle who ever lived. There is no one left in this world who is stronger than the people who love you, don’t you know that? Your baby brother pulled down the stars for you. Your twin did not let go of your hand even once. And your big brother carried you home. You are safe. You are so loved.”

It was a nonsense litany for the most part, all true things said to someone who clearly was only absorbing every third word or so. But Blue stopped hiding his face at some point, eyes wet with tears he is even now too stubborn to let fall. 

Splinter felt as though he was looking at a childhood memory of himself, trying to be strong when it would have been better—kinder—to allow himself a much-needed moment of weakness. 

“You think you’re too grown-up to cry in front of this old man?” he said, gently pinching Blue’s cheek on the side of his face that hadn’t been crushed beneath a monster’s fist. “Try again in about a hundred years.”

Blue blew a tired raspberry at him. Splinter laughed, surprised at the show of spirit, his heart doing cartwheels at this proof of his irrepressible little boy unchanged by the close brush with tragedy. Winning a laugh from his father was enough to coax the ghost of a smile across Blue’s face. 

“How are you feeling? We have some water for you here. No, don’t sit up. Let me help.”

He really ought to let everyone know Blue was awake, but they had just gone to sleep. His other kids needed their rest, too. It had been a truly terrible day. 

And now that Red was out of the room—that thought dripped with oily, unpleasant guilt—Blue seemed to be in a more solid state of mind. He had winced as he tried to sit up for water, but if he didn’t have whiplash after a psychotic alien flung him around like a terrier would its chew toy, Splinter would eat his tail. There were none of the red flags Casey had warned him to be on the lookout for. The only thing Draxum had done right in his life was develop a mutagen that made these boys all but indestructible. Splinter would have to find the mental fortitude to choke out a thank you to him for that. 

“It has been a long time since a sick little turtle has called for me,” Splinter murmured, stroking Blue’s forehead around the bandages. “Normally you are all ready to fight each other to the death to monopolize Red’s attention.” 

It was only partly a joke. Leonardo gazed up at him, eyes glassy. It was hard to gauge how much of their conversation was sticking the landing and how much was somersaulting straight over his sluggish head. 

Then Leonardo said, “He hates me.”

“Pardon?” Splinter said stupidly. 

His son blinked, and finally fat tears rolled down his cheeks, soaking into bandages on one side, unchecked on the other. 

“He hates me,” Blue insisted. “He’s right. It was my fault.”

“No one hates you,” Splinter said, reeling. He’d been right here the whole time and yet somehow he was suddenly flailing about two miles behind. 

“You didn’t see his face. You didn’t see—and his eye—all because I—I couldn’t—” He sobbed, an awful sound, and turned to press his face into his pillow. Once he started crying he couldn’t seem to stop. The rest of his words stumbled out thick and choked and terribly sincere. “I couldn’t just—be what I was supposed to be. And he—and it was all my fault.”

There were few things Splinter regretted more than his fumbling of the leadership role. He had always known that Blue was too clever for his own good, that he had a head for strategy—as evidenced by his early mastering of chess, entirely outpacing Splinter’s own skill level by the age of eleven. 

Acknowledging that in theory and learning to trust it in practice were two separate beasts, but watching from the front row as his baby outsmarted Big Mama of all people left little room for doubt. 

On the other hand, Red was as solid and dependable as they came, the foundation his siblings built their whole lives on. As far as they were concerned, the sun only rose in the morning because Raphael hung it up there. 

But Splinter’s eldest son was prone to anxiety that tended to fall on him like a guillotine, a kill switch to his rational thought. The twins floated terms like ‘panic disorder’ and the entire family was well-versed in helping him through his episodes, but if even an ounce of the burden on his shoulders could be reduced, that could only help. 

Red would be happier and function better in a support role, where his top priorities would be to protect his little brothers the way he always had protected them, and to smash whatever Leonardo pointed him at. 

Splinter should have sat them both down and explained it. He shouldn’t have left Red to feel as though he had done something wrong, that he had failed somehow. And he shouldn’t have let Blue believe he would be shoved into the deep end and left to sink or swim.

His boys were little gremlins who thrived in chaos and learned best on the fly. Splinter had thought the surprise announcement would have been an utter shock at first and the new normal by dinnertime. They were always so much on the same page, so in tune with one another, that he couldn’t have guessed it would turn into the tangled mess of hurt and frustration and miscommunication and blame that it did. 

He should have stepped in the first time Red punched through a wall in a fit of anger and Blue laughed as though his biggest brother’s good opinion of him didn’t matter in the slightest. Instead he was a coward, unable to face them and admit his wrongs. He left his children to resolve it themselves and suffer in the meantime. 

He should have done better. Maybe one day he would learn. 

For now Splinter held Blue’s face in one hand and wiped it clean with a cloth in the other, patient with every new flood of tears. The last time he had seen Blue cry was the night the Shredder destroyed their home and killed Karai. There had been no time to comfort him then. 

He takes after his Gram-gram, Splinter thought, and tried not to resent her for it. 

“No one hates my sweet Baby Blue,” he said, willing the stubborn child to hear him. “Especially not my other sweet baby Red. You are a very confused turtle, that’s all. You will see. No one hates you.”

“You don’t,” Leonardo mumbled. “You’re not allowed to. You’re my dad. You don’t have to like me, but you’re not allowed to hate me. S’in the—the contract. You signed it. Legally binding. No arbi-arbi—”

“Arbitration. I would like to study your mind under a microscope. Maybe then I will have a hope of understanding these twists and turns it takes.” 

Splinter’s voice sounded nothing but fond even to his own ears. 

His children were all incredible people worth knowing, worth living for, and it was a very special joy to still be surprised after all these years by how much more he loved them today than he did the day before. To think about how much more he would love them tomorrow, even though it felt impossible to love anyone more than he loved them right now. 

“You are so important, Leonardo,” Splinter said gently. “To me, and to your siblings, and to your friends. We would miss you so much if you weren’t here. We all want to see you get well.”

“It’s not about me,” Blue said, wobbly and miserable and matter-of-fact. “I know it’s not. I have to make up for it. I’ll prove—prove—”

“You have nothing to prove. It was not your fault.” Splinter pressed Leonardo’s chin gently to close his mouth when he inevitably opened it to argue. “Hush. You did not steal the key. You did not open the door. It was not even your responsibility to stop either of those things from happening. You are a child. It cannot be any one person’s duty to save this planet on their own. That doesn’t even make sense.” 

Blue’s expression was becoming thunderous, which was silly and endearing, because his cheeks were still tacky with the remnants of his tears and half of his face was a swathe of bandages and without his mask he looked years younger than he already was. Splinter felt affection unfold in his heart like one of those absurdly big tropical flowers with petals the size of dinner plates, taking up more room than it was allowed and spilling out the sides and going on forever. 

“Can I tell you something else? Your brothers aren’t allowed to hate you either. It’s in the contract as well.”

“They do,” Blue said tearfully, face still screwed up beneath Splinter’s hand. But his eyes drifted in the direction of the door, and the wanting in them was plain to see. Splinter took matters into his own hands. 

“If I’m right, you must finish watching The Strange Return of Diana Salazar with me.”

His son took a moment to digest that, slower on the uptake than usual. Finally, he asked, “Don’t we have like a hundred episodes left?”

“I said what I said,” Splinter said sagely, then patted his cheek and hopped down from the bed. 

He found Raphael exactly where he expected to find him, sitting just outside the cracked infirmary door, a hunched over shape that seemed unwilling to take up a single unnecessary inch of space. 

Red stared up at him, unbandaged eye wide. 

“I don’t hate him,” he blurted. “I could never—I wouldn’t even know how.”

“I know, my dear.”

“Even if he’d done it on purpose,” Red went on. “Even if he stole the key and took it to the Foot and opened the door with his own two hands, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.”

Splinter had worried when the turtles were very young that Raphael would frighten one of his siblings accidentally. He was so much bigger than them and toddlers were not well known for their self control or emotional regulation. It was a lingering fear that Red would say or do something he did not mean in the heat of the moment, and alienate himself. That something would happen in a split second that would cause his brothers to grow up wary of him. 

It was an unfounded worry. Raphael was a quiet little boy, the last of the four to start talking, and as sweet as an American dessert. Splinter’s little apple pie. Even as he got older and started playing rougher, testing his strength and raising his voice, he never forgot when he needed to be gentle. 

His brothers never ran from him unless they were avoiding bedtime or a well-deserved grounding or really did not want to go watch wrestling, Raph, it was boring. Otherwise he was their North star. 

Even now, Leonardo would rather hide himself away than face a world in which he no longer had a Raphael to run to. 

“How could he think that?” Red asked desperately. “He was going to die back there and he thought that’s what I wanted.”

Splinter cupped Red’s face in his hands and told him, “Blue was trying to do what his hero would have done. All of my children are so quick to sacrifice for each other. It is a wonderful thing to love someone so much, but consider the example you are setting.” Red’s good eye filled with tears, and Splinter was powerless to do anything but kiss him firmly on the forehead. “As empty as our lives would have been without him, they would have been just as empty without you. You are fundamental to us. Please remember that.”

“I know, pops,” Raphael whispered. “I’ll remember.”

“It is not always possible to win without losing but we must fight tooth and nail anyway. Abandon honor and heroism. Do what it takes to bring yourself and your brothers home. I would much sooner tell the great Hamato clan where they can stick it then let you join them before your time.”

It coaxed a shy smile from his eldest son, the barest exhale of a laugh. Still his sweet apple pie, no matter how big he got. 

“I’m gonna go see him,” Red said bravely. “I’m missing out on premium Leo time while the gremlins are asleep.”

“Very wise,” Splinter said, patting his cheeks in approval.

Leonardo had managed to drag the blanket up over his head while no one was around to stop him, and only one golden eye peered out at them from his makeshift shell. 

Raphael snorted and leaned over to peel it back down, heedless of his smaller brother’s protests. He let one hand linger on Leonardo’s scuffed plastron, and the other cupped the back of his bruised head. 

“You’re so dumb,” Red said. “I love you more than anything. If you ever try to go anywhere without me ever again, I’ll make your life a living hell. Capiche?”

Blue stared up at him. It’s very possible he didn’t understand every word of that. But the tone seemed to get through. 

His hand drifted up slowly, as if it weighed a thousand pounds, to cover the one planted on his chest. When the world didn’t end and his big brother continued to smile down at him like nothing between the two of them was any different than it used to be, Blue risked a smile back. 

“I capiche.”

“You’re not alone, okay?” Red went on, playfulness gentling into sincerity. “We’ll figure it out. I’m in your corner, right where I’ve always been. But for now let’s get some sleep, big man.”

He didn’t move his hands even after Leonardo had dozed off. He just hooked his foot around the leg of his chair and scooted it closer to the bed before sinking into it. 

Splinter joined him, and felt both aged by the last hour and rejuvenated. He needed a good pair of running shoes to keep up with these kids.     

“He never asks to play chess with anyone else you know,” Red said suddenly. 

Thrown by the non sequitur, Splinter could only offer an intelligent, “Huh?”

“Leo only learned how to play because of a comment you made once about—I don’t even remember what you said. But it stuck with him. He wanted to impress you. And he started learning Spanish because of those weird soaps you guys watch. He drove us crazy practicing every day but he never let up.

“I know that it seems like he does whatever he wants without rhyme or reason, but I think he just tries really hard to make it seem that way. Otherwise we’d all clue in to the fact that every single thing he does is just—him trying to get closer to us somehow. And then his cool guy cover would be blown. And god forbid that.” 

Raphael brushed his thumb over the crown of Leonardo’s head, much like the way Splinter had earlier. 

“He doesn’t love you for no reason, pops,” Red went on, not looking at him. “None of us do. Even when getting out of bed was the hardest thing in the world, you came running when I needed you. Every time I needed you. I learned all my moves from the best.”

Splinter had seen the worst of the world. He was no stranger to pain. 

It was only occurring to him now that the opposite was also true. 

His life was so full of impossibly good, underserved things; every day a little brighter, every night a little richer. 

Four little creatures tumbled into his world by chance and then filled it to the brim with mayhem and color and laughter and pride, and he would not take a second of it back. He would not change a single painful part. 

If only he had known as a young man where he would end up someday. It would have made those earlier years so much easier to survive. 

Pretending his own eyes weren’t wet, Splinter said, “It will be hell on earth in the morning when Orange discovers we let him sleep through Blue waking up. You had better rest while you can.”

Smiling to himself, Red folded his arms on the side of the bed and rested his head in them, tilted so that his brother was within line of sight of his good eye. He had capitulated to the changing of the guard without complaint, but he was still tense. Primed for danger. Anxiety no doubt at play. 

But Splinter was not without his tricks. He stroked Red’s carapace between the spikes, humming an old TV theme song under his breath. He did this for upwards of an hour once, back when Red was still small enough to be held in his lap, fussy and clingy after a bad dream. 

Sure enough, with a great, shuddering sigh, Raphael’s shoulders went slack, and his breathing evened out—asleep within moments after the day he’d had.  

“I’ve still got it,” Splinter murmured, and let himself have the win, as small as it was. If nothing else, he could give his children a safe place to rest. 

And that really was no small thing at all. 

[djpachipikachu]

doodle dump of unreleased aus that r still actively in my Brain Often but i dont post shit about them

⚠️warning for old art and blood and injury drawn and death mentions⚠️

———

magic lily au:

main theme -

summary is that leo is transported to the samurai rabbit universe instead of his family’s arms through a trifecta of his ninpo, mikey’s mystics that begged for him to be safe, and the ki stone sensing a hero in need

when leo lands in the world, he doesnt know any japanese aside from simple phrases he grew up with; “thank you”, “please”, “excuse me”, “help me”, “i love you”, etc

him and yuichi fall in love and he remains there for a few years ! however . theyve all known since the beginning that the ki stone would take leo back once he was healed. she was clear on the fact he was only there to be helped , not to live there . so yuichi and leo hold off the inevitable, despite leo missing his family horribly and knowinf they think hes dead , despite knowing how selfish it was to have one more day with each other , they avoided the ki stone until they go to the temple together and leo is ripped from the world without even a chance to reallt say goodbye to everyone

uhhh etc etc they were their first and last loves as they were both on the aro spec and didnt have a need to find that kinda love again they just . wanted each other and blehhh

i have a playlist for it as well ! my oldest au , started since i got into the fandom

UUAU:

[temp name]

my original usagi/tmnt iteration with miyamoto usagi as the main protag ! i still want to create a comic and really officially send this out so i wont spoil a lot, but !

the basis is that usagi lives in a post apocolyptic solarpunk society and is forcibly sent back in time to a cyberpunk city where the seeds of a war have begun to sprout, dropped in the middle of the highest tensions between three turtles and their eldest brother who is on the enemy side

doomed siblings, doomed toxic yaoi, doomed Everything, its inspired by idw and 2003 so what else is there to expect

only showing the beta design for usagi ! i have a lot of other drawings for this but again, spoilers

historical graves au:

this one is the most recent of the bunch, just putting my version of yuichi for rise into a more usagi yojimbo styled setting ! the story is entirely different from the fanfic and im still working on it But

yuichi is the great grandchild of miyamoto usagi instead of a distant ancestor , so the debt of the shogun’s assassination is that much heavier and Far more dangerous to hold. yuichi and his adoptive little sister, hana, have recently escaped the mass murder and pillaging of their rabbit village (the same one that mariko and kenichi and usagi grew up in) and are on a journey to find their aunt for sanctuary

along the way, they run into a lot of familiar faces, such as the hamato clan , who has karai as their jōnin ! also yuichi gets possessed by jei at some point

hes trans too so he “disguises” himself as a boy to be more hidden as they travel

ive got one more original iteration but theres like . nothing i want to share from it rn lmao

SOOO THATS IT basicallt !!umm if anyone wants to know more about any of these aus id be happy to answer ! u can request doodles of them too !

if u read this far ily and im kissing you

[turtleblogatlast]

cw: // death mention // violence // torture //

Aw man I have an idea for a “Leo spends a lot longer in the Prison Dimension” divergence.

The way the Prison Dimension works is that it essentially keeps you alive so long as you haven’t completely broken.

Leo, despite how sure he was that he was going to die, didn’t want to, and that’s all the Prison Dimension needed to keep him “alive” and “resetting” him. His body is kept in the exact same state he was in when he entered the dimension - messed up, but mostly okay.

Also, Leonardo “jokes are how I cope” Hamato eventually uses his newfound “oh I can’t die” status as a way to relentlessly quip at Krang One. Sure, he “dies” many times doing this, but eventually he just treats it like a game. How much does he have to fuck around until he finds out?

The amount varies.

He’s thankful that his (Casey’s-) photo is still intact, though at some point he has to etch the names of the people in it (his family-) into the walls of whatever building rubble he called home.

Sometimes he and Krang One talk. It’s almost nice, at times, having another being there.

Leo doesn’t know what to think of this.

The nice feeling always ends with his “corpse”, anyway.

Leo’s eventually saved, of course, and he’s brought back home and he smiles, smiles, because of course his brothers saved him! Of course he got out! He never gave up, not really, so they didn’t either-

And then he noticed how tall they were. How Mikey had hair, how Raph’s scars had long healed, how Donnie’s tech was more advanced.

Six years, they tell him. Six years.

And Leo looks the same. Just as banged up as ever, still a mess of bruises and cuts that he’s grown so familiar with. (And it does not escape Raph’s eye how dark the ring of bruises around Leo’s neck are-)

And it’s fine! It’s fine. He just needs to play catch up, now. He’s technically six years older too, right? Only his body is sixteen. His wounds will heal, and he will grow up too.

Only that doesn’t happen.

Because here’s the thing about the Prison Dimension: it’s grown fond of Leo. Six years is nothing to it, but Leo was new, different from what normally comes through. Leo was a bright blue light that only grew brighter with time, coming back from where it was almost snuffed out. So, a piece of the Dimension attaches itself to Leo’s soul, living yet not, and he remains as he’s been for the past near decade.

His wounds do not heal. He does not grow.

He exists more than he lives. And in the back of his mind he can hear Krang One screaming.

He wonders if his own screaming was heard back.

[beannary]

OK so I dont really like this but this 2012 tmnt mermaid au has been driving me INSANE so here are some mermaid designs for the boys (which I might change if I draw more stuff for this au) and some lore for the au under the cut!

also Donnie is ftm and Leo is mtf and those are the facts! (Donnie did do top surgery on himself, do NOT ask me how he did that underwater safely)

(just a quick note: I am using some japanese mythos for the mermaid part but I'm also being loosey goosey with it alskjdfh)

ALSO slight tw for cannibalism? or like cannibalism adjacent behavior

There is a yokai described in Japanese literature called the ningyo, a creature that is half human and half fish. Legend says that if you capture a ningyo and eat its flesh, that you will be granted eternal life. Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki were familiar with these legends, though Saki always believed in them more than Yoshi. Saki believed in the legends so much that he became obsessed with finding the legendary ningyo and becoming immortal after consuming its flesh. Yoshi accompanied his brother on these ventures, more out of a sense of familiar duty and a need to watch out for his younger brother than an actual belief in the ningyo.

And of course, it just so happens that the brother who does not at all believe in the existence of yokai would be the one to find one. Yoshi encounters Tang Shen, a ningyo who has been living throughout the local freshwater river system. And suddenly Yoshi realizes that Saki's quest for murder might actually come true since apparently these ningyo are very much real. So now whenever he accompanies Saki on his hunting quests, he does everything in his ability to try to dissuade Saki from his plan, and when he realizes that isn't going to work, he starts to sabotage Saki's efforts. And Yoshi does this because well he kept in contact with Tang Shen, and the two became close friends, and son fell in love, bridging the gap between yokai and human.

They can't get married, obviously, Tang Shen is fully a yokai, but they build their lives together and eventually Tang Shen falls pregnant with their daughter Miwa. The two weren't entirely sure what to expect of their child, but Miwa turns out to be a completely normal human child.

Over the years as Yoshi and Tang Shen's love and family grew, Yoshi started pulling away from his birth family, and more noticeably, from Saki, who was you know pretty angry with Yoshi who seemingly disappeared on him with no explanation. Saki channels his anger into his search for the ningyo, and it takes three years but eventually he does finally find one.

Around three years after Miwa was born, Tang Shen and Yoshi welcome in four new kids! Quadruplets! Three boys and a girl. And these four, unlike Miwa, seem to all be fully ningyo, which very much surprised Yoshi and Tang Shen (both the fact that there were four kids and those four kids are all mermaids) but hey, they knew their genetic situation would be weird and they were fully ready to hop into raising these four.

It's only a few days after the birth of their quadruplets, so soon after that they haven't even given them names, that Saki stumbles upon the home of Yoshi and Tang Shen. And He Is Pissed. Not only did his BROTHER ABANDON him but he abandon him to start a family with this yokai? The yokai that he's been hunting all this time? And Saki, like in canon, kills Tang Shen and Miwa. (Or well you know, he kidnaps Miwa and renames her Karai but Yoshi thinks Miwa is dead)

Yoshi manages to get away with the quadruplets in the chaos, and he tries so hard to establish a new life for himself in Japan, but no matter where he goes, Saki manages to find him. Eventually Yoshi gets desperate enough to flee the country, and he finds himself in New York City!

But meanwhile back in Japan, Saki did in fact end up eating Tang Shen but idk how he realizes it but he figures out that he didnt get immortality, and so he concludes that oh, Tang Shen must have been tainted somehow by her relationship with Yoshi, which sucks because now he has to find a whole other ningyo to get immortality. Luckily he happens to know of four ningyo that he would be more than happy to kill, which is basically Saki's drive to finding and killing the Hamatos.

Anyways that's all I have so far!!!! I'm trying to think about how they would live in NYC, if they can somehow become human (in maybe like an H2O just add water situation) or if they are stuck in the water all the time.

I'm leaning towards them being able to shed their fish tails if even only for a small amount of time, just so they can still be ninjas and train on land, since I think Yoshi would still want to train them to defend themselves. I think that if they can be human for a bit, they still get dried out really easily so they can't stay out of the water for very long, probably not long enough for them to go to school full time, so they still live super isolated lives. Or maybe Yoshi figures out a way to train them to fight in the water? Idk suggestions are appreciated!

They do eventually meet April and Casey, I think April is gonna be on the swim team and so she's a fairly strong swimmer (for a human) and so she spends a lot of time in the water with the hamatos which they appreciate a lot! I think maybe Yoshi isn't a super strong swimmer so as much as he tries to spend time with his kids he can't really.

Casey is still on the hockey team and he can't swim, the hamatos try to teach him but they fully dont know how to swim with legs and so they are Bad tm swimming teachers salkdjfh.

[fabuloustrash05]

10 Raphael Headcanons

He REALLY wants to get a tattoo but his father and Leo always nagged at him never do it. If he did get one he’d either get the Hamato Clan symbol, a full tattoo sleeve, or Mona Lisa’s name tattoo on his arm. Once he’s an adult, he’ll most likely get a tattoo with Casey’s help.

To help with his temper tantrums as a kid, Splinter found an old drum set and put it together for Raphael. He told him anytime he feels angry he can beat on the drums. In the beginning it worked, but over time Raph actually started to learn how to play the drums and got good at it quick.

He LOVES watching Spanish soap operas. He watches them so often that he has become semi fluent in speaking Spanish. Often his brothers will walk in on him watching his soaps, screaming at the characters in Spanish for their dumb choices. Raph would even sometimes mumble something in Spanish when frustrated.

He also loves those old school black and white cowboy movies and TV shows.

Often Raph and Splinter would bond over their love of art and painting. The two would sometimes sit together in the dojo, not saying a single word to the other as they both paint something and eventually share it with the other, giving each other constructive criticism and tips on how to improve.

One of his favorite things to draw is Mona Lisa. She’s his muse and he likes to draw her whether she’s around or not. He has a bunch of sketchbooks full of drawings of just her. He mostly drew her a lot when he returned from his space adventures. Worried he’ll never see her again, Raph drew Mona everyday so he wouldn’t forget her. Even when she started living on Earth, Raph continues to draw her, with Mona sometime even modeling for him.

He snores when he sleeps. Like, REALLY loudly.

April and him are gossip buddies. They are secretly silently judging everyone and then later on they text each other to talk shit about it behind everyone’s back.

He's very skillful in sewing and knitting. Often as gifts for holidays or birthday, Raph will knit his brothers and friends hats or sweaters. He's made Mona a pink scarf and even made little hats for Spike and later Chompy

Raph deep down always wanted to have kids and become a father. This idea has been on the back of his mind since he was a kid taking care of Spike as if he was his own. He always dreamed of settling down and starting a big family of his own, but because he's seen as a "mutant freak" he quickly grew to accept the fact that no one would ever love him. That is until he met Mona Lisa.

Michelangelo Headcanons | Donatello Headcanons | Leonardo Headcanons

[midwesternvibes]

Time for more Seperated Leo Human AU! (I really need a name good lord-)

As promised, we now get to look into Leon's lore! He's a funky little guy, and shockingly well adjusted!

Lore drop under the cut!

His full name is Leonardo Tomás Esposito, and he is quite proud of it! He picked it out himself when he was about 10 years old, and he's happy to say that he still loves it to this day! (Fun fact: all of the names have double meanings to them hehe)

But anyways, his Mamà is in fact, NOT Big Mama (but it was a solid guess!), her name is actually Mia Esposito! (+10 Fandom points to anyone who can guess her full first name) She is a full time nurse and used to travel around the several NYC hospitals as an on-call nurse, but once Leon was born she stuck her roots down to one and has been there ever since!

She's actually an incredibly interesting character (with her very own arc!) with a lot of depth and meaning. She grew up with her Puerto Rican mother and Italian father, but after a series of misfortunes and despair, she ended up immigrating to NYC to start a new life for herself. About 10 years later she began raising a baby all on her own as a single immigrant mother in New York City (Sound familiar?). Whenever Leon asks about his father she tells him that she doesn't remember his Papá, only that he had the same almond-shaped brown eyes as her baby boy....

But ultimately she doesn't remember him hahaha maybe Leon should stop asking questions and get back to studying!

(Leon knows that she's hiding something, but ultimately he doesn't care about his father that much, he just assumes that he did something to hurt his Mamá and wants nothing to do with the man at all)

Leon and his Mamá are very close, they're very similar to Percy and Sally Jackson from the PJO series, and they would definitely fight God for each other.

Leon was raised very much with the mentality of "It takes a village" and has many aunts and uncles and relatives in the hospital staff that he considers family. Mia couldn't really afford childcare as Leon grew up, as it often came down to food or rent for the month. The hospital staff saw this and absolutely adored little baby Esposito, so they were more than happy to raise him alongside their own children. Mia owes her life to this staff and considers them her family through and through.

As he grew up, Leon saw all his favorite people as nurses and doctors and considered each and every one of them heros. He decided very early on that he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up, and after a terrible injury when he was 14 it cemented the fact that he wanted to be a pediatric surgeon, to help kids just like him.

But the issue is, Leon and Mia definitely do not have enough to cover medical school for Leon on a single nurse's income, even with all the jobs that Mia and Leon have taken over the years. That's why Leon NEEDS the athletic and valedictorian scholarship, without it he won't be able to achieve his dream. The only thing standing in his way is.....

THE HAMATOS

(Except Michael, he's a gift)

Leon is willing to do ANYTHING to get those scholarships, but his Mamá always reminds him that the Hamatos might need it just as badly as he does, and that's about all that's keeping him from REALLY doing anything to hurt/sabotage them. His Mamá has instilled a really strict moral code into his psyche and he won't actually do anything to them, he just....really wants to give his Mamá a better life, one she deserves.

Although, he is kinda curious as to why the Hamato brothers have the same eyes as him......

First // Previous // Next

Whew! That was pretty much just a really intense ramble, sorry there was no actual structure to that, I just really wanted to talk about my Leon lore! Props to anyone who figures out the significance of all the names, and to clear up any confusion, Mia is Half Puerto Rican, half Italian, and Leon is 1/4 Puerto Rican, 1/4 Italian, and 1/2 Japanese (but shhh he doesn't know that yet) and obviously he's got that amazing vitiligo (shout out to anyone and everyone with vitiligo, y'all are amazing and beautiful)

Thanks for reading my lore dump, see ya next time for..... huh idk yet, vote ig

See ya next time!

[afreakingdork]

Weak Spot - Chapter 63

RotTMNT Donatello x Reader

The Hamato are back together in this chapter art by @imatheneonleon

Warnings: Aged-up Turtles, Romance, Meet Cute, Villain Donatello, Cussing, Crushes, Xenophobia, Fear, Intimidation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Hurt/Comfort, Love, AFAB Reader, Vaginal Sex, Sex Rough, Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Creampie, Teasing, Scent Kink, Sexual Tension, Breeding Kink, Multiple Orgasms, Cunnilingus, Fellatio, Marathon Sex, Somnophilia, Bondage, Feral Behavior, Feral Donatello, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Public Sex, Dom Donnie, Human/Turtle Relationships, Turtle Noises, Roleplay, Sexual Roleplay

Synopsis:  A love story of villainous proportions! Though it hadn’t come easily, as these things rarely do, you found yourself in a whirlwind romance with a handsome and mysterious mutant. His idiosyncrasies had been easy to ignore as attraction grew into something more. However, will love endure when the unknowns about him end up being far darker than you ever considered?

Fem!Reader References/Warnings Below Cut

Also available on Ao3

First 💜 Previous

Fem!Reader References/Warnings: crutches, muscle weakness, talk of abuse, mental breakdown

“So that’s the menu.” Mikey rose up and dusted his hands.

You leaned against a counter getting some time upright and nodded over the messy handwritten note cards Mikey had brought over. Coated in loving use and old ingredients, Mikey had clearly been fine tuning these recipes for years. They felt to you like precious artifacts with their ancient evolving notes. Moving them around affectionately and wondering how many total of these cards there were, you tipped your head towards the turtle. “How are you going to bring all this over?”

“So, we got ingredients purchased and being delivered to an agreed upon location first thing tomorrow.” Mikey paused to give a raised hand to Donnie for his participation.

Donnie, who had been writing some code on his computer, scarcely looked over.

“I’ll take everything down, start placing my mise and then head over here for my regular shift around noon to cook it up.” Mikey fanned out the cards once before sliding them back into a fold. “If I did my math right then everything will be ready for dinner at 6:30pm sharp and our guests will arrive.”

You nodded, thinking over the process.

“I’ll have my assistant in spurts.” Mikey winked at you.

You rolled your eyes. “I’m sworn to rest when I need to. I get it, but I’m not letting you do everything.”

“Everyone has different kitchen dynamics.” Mikey chirped happily. “I love seeing how they all mix and our cooking chemistry though, like 90% of the time, I default to get out of my way!”

You laughed along with him. “I get that.”

“Having someone you can deal with in your space in that kind of heated situation is a big deal.” Mikey wiggled his brow ridge around his pun.

You hummed affectionately and remembered one particular time with Donnie. “Is that so?”

“Oh yeah, gotta be a marker of true love.” Mikey picked his cards and was slow to take on a forlorn look. “This is it…”

“Yeah…” You straightened a little yourself.

The family dinner marked the end of the Hamato watch. Though it hadn’t been officially discussed, you knew Mikey had passed on the information about Donnie meditating and Raph had obviously reported Donnie’s first time disengaging his powers. It had been a good sign and just about every person who’d entered the apartment since had seen some form of Donnie’s practice. The little purple particles that would percolate at a certain focused step were unmistakable. Whether Donnie was testing his emotions to manifest them or simply working on their creation, you had yet to know, but since he’d gone weeks without a single mishap, he was deemed safe enough to be left to his own devices.

Leo was just a portal away if anything went wrong.

You dampened more thinking about the blue brother. You guessed this was how it was now. You weren’t going to repair things with Leo and, after tomorrow, you never would have another chance to. You wouldn’t see him again and he would be an emergency contact at most. It stung. You knew it was probably for the best, but leaving whatever your relationship was with him in such disrepair deeply bothered you. You guessed you had others like this, people from your past that you were doomed to only have a negative memory of, but it ached regardless.

“Michelangelo.”

That was Donnie’s voice and you raised your head where your back was to him.

“Yup?”

Leo would be next and then Raph before Mikey returned for his final watch.

“I want to meet with him.”

You almost didn’t want Mikey to leave.

“…”

Maybe you could ask Raph to switch so you could sleep through most of Leo’s shift.

“Well?”

“Why?”

You blinked.

“Obvious.” You turned to find Donnie with narrowed eyes, but little heat as if he found the exchange tenuous.

“If it was, I wouldn’t have asked.” Mikey bit back with a similar lack of heat, but faint irritation.

You didn’t interject, but sent confusion toward your mate who didn’t look.

“I need to… speak with… him.” Donnie swallowed bile.

“About what? Why now?” Mikey folded his arms.

Now on one crutch, you moved from where you were leaning your weight on the counter and hooked it with learned ease to your body to go over to Donnie.

The movement caught his eye and he watched you with his closed off affection.

“If I could discuss the matter with any of you, I would have.” Donnie told you, though he spoke to Mikey.

You heard Mikey unfurl with a huff.

You tilted your head in question.

Donnie’s eyes had little response.

Mikey made an upset sound.

Donnie’s lip moved a centimeter which was the most smile you could get under these circumstances.

“He can come to dinner.”

Donnie’s head flew to Mikey in fury. “A joke!”

“Nope.” Mikey’s brow ridge bobbed, smug. “Not a question either. That’s the only way I’ll pass the message along.”

“This conversation is not for any of you!” Donnie’s lip curled back, but it was obviously out of tender fear as opposed to actual anger.

“I’ll head out when it's time.” Mikey’s shoulders bounced. “Give you space.” 

“Not for…” Donnie trailed off and looked at you in a similarly anxious way.

You weren’t meant to listen either.

You frowned.

Donnie’s gaze shot away in a pained way.

“We’ll.” Mikey was quick to add. “Step out.”

You looked to Mikey.

He nodded to you for encouragement.

“You need to talk to Splinter that badly?” You asked quietly.

Donnie flinched at the name and his wounded gaze stayed glued to the floor.

Mikey bent his elbows to the counter and waited.

“Yes.” Donnie spoke as small as he could.

Your chest tightened.

You knew you’d been keeping things from Donnie, but to hear the inkling that he was doing the same felt like a new wound.

It wasn’t on purpose, you wanted to scream.

You were going to unload on him as soon as you were alone.

That meant he probably would too.

The realization sobering, you leaned heavily into your crutch.

One more day.

“Dinner. The whole dinner. You don’t get to kick dad out after just because you feel like it.” Mikey laid down his ground rules.

This time Donnie surfaced slowly and with actual anger. “You expect me to entertain that-” He bit his tongue to keep a derogatory word out of his mouth. “-in my own home?!”

“You’re doing that with us, aren’t you?” Mikey spoke without malice.

The younger turtle even seemed oddly stoic.

He almost looked like Donnie when slipped all of himself under that emotionless mask.

Donnie’s eyes only narrowed.

“It’s either that or you try Leo, which, good fucking luck. Then there’s Raph and we both know how that’s going to go.” Mikey’s head cricked with the slightest tip.

Donnie inhaled slowly.

“You asked me for a reason.” Mikey spoke knowingly.

Donnie juggled something mentally before looking back to Mikey. “I did.”

“My terms or nothing.” Mikey lifted up and out of the conversation.

He walked over to where Leo’s portal would appear.

You saw that, as soon as Mikey’s back was turned, Donnie let a whole litany of emotions pass over his face.

There was outright fury.

You could see how much he wanted to strangle the other turtle.

There was bargaining.

He tried to work out a thousand ways he could get out of this.

There was anxiety.

The chance to speak to Splinter was slipping through his fingers and you could see just how much your boyfriend needed to do this.

You touched Donnie’s arm lightly.

He jarred from his swirling mind and you saw the whirlpool settle at the sight of you.

Another tap was more of a nudge.

You had his back.

You could take the verbal heat off if need be.

You could be Splinter’s chaperone.

Donnie’s expression welled with gratitude before he looked back to where Mikey still had his carapace to you both.

“Done. Do ask-” Donnie’s voice was gravel.

“For him to be on his best behavior?” Mikey cut Donnie off with a turn of his head that just barely showed his face’s silhouette. “I’ll ask him. I’ll do what I can, but he’s my dad.”

Leo’s portal appeared and the blue light reflected off Mikey’s eyes for a malevolent gaze.

“Our dad. The three of us.” Mikey spoke venom. “Don’t you forget.” He stepped through the portal.

-

The rest of the time until Mikey’s return was done in a preparatory wait. Leo had appeared casual with a levity that said he was ready to get this last shift over with. You imagined that he might even enjoy the dinner since it was a final blemish for him to endure. Skirting away from him to keep the mood light, you had very little to do. You mostly stuck close to Donnie who was trapped with the weight of what was coming.

Your mate stood in various parts of your apartment with nothing to keep his hands busy and eventually you coaxed him out of sight where you lingered in his space. Sneaking behind a partition felt juvenile in your own home, but you signed to each other regardless.

‘Why now?’ You started. 

‘Can’t explain like this.’

‘Later? Alone?’

‘Both of us.’

‘I’ve been planning to.’

‘Good. You’ve been avoiding Blue.’ 

‘Yeah. Long story.’

Donnie made the motion for ‘kill’ and raised his brow with delighted question.

You shook your head and placed both your hands over his.

He brought them up to his lips.

You mouthed, ‘I can’t wait to be alone with you.’

“Me too.” He murmured warmth and came down to press the side of his head to yours.

You lingered like that as long as you could.

-

You did your best, but the closer it got to Mikey’s and subsequently all the turtle’s final appearance in your home, Donnie’s stress was transferring to you. With each second hand tick of the clock, Donnie got more on edge. You meant to be strong for him. You wanted to show him that this was alright; that even though you didn’t know what big thing he wanted to discuss with Splinter was, you would be unflappable.

The only problem was, you were painfully in tune with your partner and him being upset was then permeating you through your bond.

You hated to see him uncomfortable and, though Raph recognized the dense air in the room, you could tell the older turtle was mislabeling it. All four men hadn’t been in the same room since the hospital discharge. You imagined Raph, rightfully, imagined the entire bale together bothered Donnie, especially in his own home. If there wasn’t some big talk added on top, you were sure that would have upset Donnie too, but you found it hard to believe that would have driven him to his current state.

You guessed Raph might have also thought Donnie was concerned to then be alone with his ninpo. 

You hadn’t gotten to talk to the older turtle and now still wasn’t the best time because he was just as distracted as you in watching Donnie move about like a stubborn plant searching for a crack of sunlight. In slow rotations, Donnie swayed, barely perceptible and feeling out his space blindly. He couldn’t do an activity because he was too emotionally confined to the pot, but he was deprived of something vital which had him wriggling with all his remaining strength.

You could hardly breathe by the time Leo’s portal appeared.

Raph was up and prattling on about lending a hand just to have an excuse to leave.

In a file, you watched as Mikey and Raph carted a bunch of food, pots, pans, utensils, and other kitchen gadgets in until your home was overflowing. Donnie made space on his desk and helped arrange the spill before Raph turned with his hands on his hips.

“Alright. I got class and then me and Leo will come by right on time?”

“6:30.” Mikey swung a spoon to cement his point.

Raph threw his own finger up genially and spun on one leg to leave through the portal.

“Ah!” Mikey suddenly fussed and passed the spoon off to you. “Hold it! I have something else to grab! Forgot something! You know me!”

Donnie’s head shot up where he was clearly cataloging as everything had been accounted for thus far.

“Don’t spike the food!” Raph complained but pressed a hand up to the top half of the portal like he was holding a door.

“I’m not! In this house?!” Mikey shot you a wink out of Raph’s eye line before ducking through the blue light.

“Yeah, yeah.” Raph shook his head after Mikey. “See y’all.” He gave a parting nod and disappeared as well.

“There shouldn’t be-!” Donnie furiously searched for what was misplaced.

You were about to help when Mikey returned with two stumbling leaps and a bottle of soda in hand.

Donnie gave an irritated face.

Mikey shook his head. “This was just cause I saw it. I actually forgot…”

It brought Donnie’s brow up before there was a blur and the portal shut.

For a moment, you didn’t register a change.

Then Donnie inhaled sharply and went ramrod straight.

You looked to find Splinter standing where the portal was holding a baking dish wrapped in foil. With his eyes downcast and wearing a little cardigan, he looked the picture of trying to do his best.

Your heart squeezed and you were in motion with a clunk of your crutch. “Splinter.”

“Y/N!” He walked up with his dish and found it occupying his hands. “I was worried! The boys kept me updated. I’m glad to hear that you…” He breathed a bit unsteady. “I am sorry this happened to you.”

“Yeah…” You’d heard that more times then you could count. “It is what it is…”  

“Still! Those police are an absolute joke! Useless! A waste! Morons!” Splinter huffed.

You couldn’t help but smile.

“Big Mama has been on a rampage.” Splinter told you casually before heading towards Mikey.

“Huh!? What?!” The younger turtle lowered himself to take the dish from his dad. “She what now!?”

“She was disrespected!” Splinter spoke as if this should be obvious news. “She has been methodically tearing down and restructuring the entire city center in her fury! So very her!”

“She’s…” You shook slightly in a rotation.

You looked to Donnie and couldn’t tell whether he knew that or not.

“Doing it for you!” Splinter threw a gesturing hand to you as soon as he was freed from his dish. “Oh, this is my very special green bean casserole, by the way! Also for you!”

“For…?” You took a few steps. “Wait, Big Mama can’t be doing that for me.”

“You, you.” Splinter waved a hand and looked around the packaged kitchen. “This place is too small!”

Mikey tapped his dad’s head with a spatula. “Don’t complain.”

“Hmph!” Splinter rotated. “You were her guest. Her new hotel’s poster couple! I’m surprised she hasn’t killed off and replaced the entire police department. Morons!”

He’d repeated himself, but the words didn’t seem real. “It didn’t seem like she liked me.”

“She likes you plenty! She wouldn’t do that for anyone!” Splinter turned, remembering something. “Put that in the fridge, orange!”

“I’m gonna be doing fridge Jenga, dad.” Mikey rolled his eyes. “Y/N, wanna help?”

“Uh, yeah!” You moved to set your crutch on a nearby counter. 

Splinter saw he was in the way and scrambled a few nervous steps out of the kitchen.

As you passed him, you saw him keep his head down as if he wasn’t allowed to look around the living room proper.

Concern stuck to your features as Mikey held the fridge open for you.

Stepping around it, he used the door as a barrier for a private conversation. 

You moved a few items in the icebox and gave a skeptical look as it would hide nothing.

He frowned and gave up trying to translate to instead focus on the task at hand. “How about I pass you perishables? That good?”

“Yeah. Standing in one place is easy. I’m just wobbly if I move too much.” You settled as a wedge in the fridge door as Mikey moved to pass things.

“It didn’t take too long to prep. I mean I’ve got a good few hours here so I wasn’t sweating.” He passed a few things over.

You methodically organized them.

“You’ll have to return my dear Tupperware.”

You paused in show of holding an old butter container that had something chopped inside.

“A family heirloom.” Mikey told you haughtily.

“Clearly.” You joked back and slipped it in.

Mikey walked you through the upcoming steps as you stuffed the fridge then freezer. When you came up with a semi-cleaned work surface, you glimpsed Splinter sitting on the couch near the closest arm and Donnie standing at a side angle near his desk. You imagined it would take some time for them to be able to approach each other and dove into the normalcy with Mikey. He ended up being a better teacher at cooking than meditation and walked you slowly through what you could best help with. In contrast, his own tasks disappeared in a flurry where he chatted casually as he moved around a full stove’s worth of burners and an active oven. You weren’t sure how he kept track of all the different cook times, but he seemed to know just when to move or extract something.

It had been at least an hour and you were casually washing some utensils for their third or fourth use when you heard Splinter’s voice. “You’ve made… quite the home.”

You didn’t hear Donnie respond and instead turned to Mikey who knowingly held up more dirty dishes.

With those soon cleaned, you moved on to oven Tetris for the many dishes that needed to be baked when you heard Donnie say something.

“You are still in contact with Big Mama.” 

“Y/N!” Mikey blurred through your vision, moving faster than your eye to put the last pans in and slam the oven door shut for you. “You gotta look at this sunset!”

“Sun… set?” You blinked.

“Yeah!” Mikey slipped around you and opened the kitchen window.

“The sun doesn’t set for another-”

“It’s beautiful, you have to see!” As if it were a door, Mikey stepped right through the opening. 

You stumbled a few steps after him in confusion and bit your lip on a noise when his arms shot out to grab you. In one perfect tipping lift, you were hoisted up and angled right through the window before you were set on the fire escape. “Wha-!?”

Mikey held a finger up to his lips and put great care in slowly closing the window.

When it was noiselessly shut he let out a big sigh.

“It’s time.” Mikey told you and then fell back to sit on a metal step.

“They’re talking?” You perked up.

“Yep. Not about to be a part of all that.” Mikey twirled a lazy finger and took a deep breath of city air. “Sky’s mostly blue.”

You leaned against the brick to look up. “Yeah…”

“It’s pretty.” Mikey murmured.

“Yeah.” You agreed.

For a long time you sat in the moment and let the bustle buzz as a dull hum until you made it over to Mikey. He moved aside to give you room and you both occupied the same step.

“Can you hear them?” You asked softly so as not to disrupt the moment.

“Nope.” Mikey tipped his head towards you. “Donnie’s got super glass or whatever he does.”

You snorted. “You’re going to slip up calling him that.”

“He can get me then.” Mikey threw up lazy fisticuffs.

“Thank you.”

“For saying I’ll fight him?” Mikey still had his arm’s akimbo and looked at you.

You bumped him with your shoulder, but left your body pressed to his. “For helping save me. For shortening my healing time. For teaching Donnie meditation. For making all this food. For getting Splinter...” You shook your head at the list. “For texting me about Donnie cooking.”

Mikey lightly chuffed and leaned a metered amount of his weight back. “I should thank you.”

“For what?” You looked at him.

You got to see up close how gooey his expression was when he turned to you. “For saving him.”

“I didn’t.” You shook your head. “He saved himself. I just got to watch.”

Mikey thought for a moment and returned. “Let me rephrase.”

“Go ahead.” You chuckled.

“Thank you for making him happy.”

Your heart jumped and you smiled brightly.

“Cute.” Mikey teased and leaned his carapace back on the steps.

You nudged him lightly where you couldn’t do the same and stared out at the darkening city until you felt a familiar pressure in your stomach. “Oh no…”

“What?” Mikey’s voice was sleepy.

“I have to pee.” You groaned and remembered how you’d been so on edge with Donnie many hours before Mikey had even arrived. That added to the current till, meant you hadn’t visited the bathroom since early that morning.

“Hold it!” Mikey sat up. “Do you know how rare this is!?”

“You think I don’t want to!? This was dropped on me the same time as you!”

“Yeah!” Mikey’s head shook with stress. “Stupid secret diner meetings with dad were not on my Donnie bingo card, but this marks the fourth time they’ve spoken ever! So I say again: hold it!”

“We have to go inside eventually!”

“Yeah, when the timers go off!”

Something beeped.

One single clear time.

“Mikey…”

Mikey paled.

“What was that!?”

“The… fifteen minute warning?” Mikey eeked out and went to grab his phone. “It’s 6:15…”

“We need to go inside!”

“We can wait!”

“Let’s just peek!”

“You peek!” Mikey scrambled up a step further from the window. “I’m not chancing nothing!”

You didn’t blame him in the slightest and inched forward slowly where your hips were weary. Nothing you couldn’t handle as you were a base level of sore as of late, you edged forward and carefully placed your fingers to the sill before hoisting yourself up to look inside. A clip of the counter blocked some of your vision, but you could see Donnie sitting with his back toward you and looking down the couch where you imagined Splinter was.

“What do you see?” Mikey was obviously impatient. 

“I can only see Donnie, but there’s no signs of a fight. He’s just…” You stared hard at the back of your boyfriend’s head. “… sitting there.”

“That’s probably fine…?” Mikey seemed to be genuinely asking.

“Yeah…” Your crouch put further pressure on your bladder. “I’m opening the window.”

“Y/N!” Mikey clanged against the fire escape as he shied another step away.

“We have to go back in eventually! Everything will burn!” You pressed the jamb lightly before cracking it.

You felt the rush of air and the scent of food waft out, but little more.

Your heart beat fast in your chest and you moved to check with Mikey.

His eyes were a new kind of wide.

‘Bad?’ You mouthed as obviously as you could.

Mikey shook his head furiously.

Your abdomen pulsed.

You pushed the window further up.

Mikey caught your arm.

You wordlessly pulled from him.

His head shook so fast his hair was coming out of its tie.

You yanked to the side and both of you struggled in front of the window.

“Is it really possible to love someone who is evil?”

Both you and Mikey froze at the sound of Donnie’s voice

Then you were nearly beating each other to try to close to the window.

“I once told her I knew there was still good in her.” Splinter’s response came next.

You heard a dull sound.

Something indistinct and electronic.

Mikey’s eyes turned white and he disappeared from you.

Blinking into the empty fire escape, you swore you heard the faint sound of a timer in the distance.

That meant the food was done. 

You had to go inside no matter what. 

Stunned, you looked toward the window with your heart plummeting and pushed it all the way up so you could climb back inside.

“I was wrong!” Splinter’s voice cracked as your belly pressed against the sill, halfway through. “Still good!? What does that mean!? She never said anything, but she must have known. Why was I so hung up on the distinction? Good. Bad…” He heaved a heavy breath.

You nearly somersaulted over, but you channeled every ounce of your physical therapy and just barely saved yourself with a careful foot to the floor.

“Love does not know such things! I loved her in spite of everything. I loved her after she imprisoned me. I loved her because I loved her. Her alignment or however you would say was not what my heart chose. I chose the woman who understood me. Who sat by me. Who liked going out dancing as much as she appreciated a good movie night on the couch!”

The last of your muscle strength was spent on dropping as silently to the floor as you could.

“I wonder if it was… my fault we drifted apart and… that may be…? Oh, but these things happen... I did not condone her activities. I still don’t, but I’d be lying if I didn’t think I liked that she’s still feisty!”

Donnie gave what was almost a laugh.

It also sounded congested.

You slithered on your belly with only the intention of getting to the bathroom and not interrupting.

“Donatello. None of us chose the life we are born into. I’d say we get to choose after and to a point I did, but a certain destiny caught up with me. Right… Wrong… Who’s to say? I made the decisions I did.”

You were close to the edge of the counter.

“What I can tell you is that when the time comes, for whatever that may be, you get the choice in how you react. When I had my hand in stopping the Shredder or the Krang, I wish I could say I thought of humanity. I didn’t. I thought of my boys. I thought of…” Splinter cut himself off and his voice shook. “I did what I did out of love. I continue to do it for the same. If you are worried that is bad, then you are wrong. Love may be the only right choice any of us can make.”

Your head appeared out from the wood and you saw Splinter first.

He had slid down to the middle of the couch at some point and Donnie now took his old spot at the sofa’s arm.

With his back to you, Donnie was slightly hunched, but that wasn’t what you were looking at.

Down on Donnie’s knee, you saw Splinter’s spindly pink hand settled on top of Donnie’s.

Neither party moved and there were tears in the air.

You meant to run.

You meant to fly.

You were going to lock yourself in the bathroom.

You weren’t going to intrude on this scene.

Instead you rose at the same time a blue light flashed.

Your heart hit the floor.

Donnie and Splinter jolted apart and turned in that direction.

“Y/N!” Mikey hissed as quietly as he could behind you.

Your head tilted toward the sound, but you couldn’t peel your gaze away.

Leo slipped out of the portal with his eyes closed and a carton of cream in his hand. “Yello, dinner party people!”

Raph’s arm appeared next, but Leo froze in his way.

Donnie spun and was heading towards you with his head down.

Staring at where your boyfriend had just been on the couch, Leo was looking at the vision of his father with huge fat tears in his eyes.

“Dad…?” Leo whispered a silent spell.

As if your blood pressure hadn’t fallen enough, it broke through the floor.

Leo didn’t know Splinter was going to be here.

Mikey’s earlier action slapped you in the face.

“What-” Leo’s voice darkened and he moved toward you.

Donnie passed you and Mikey squeaked where he was clearly still in the window based on the way he struggled.

A blue light broke out behind you and you turned to watch Leo’s head appear there, cutting Donnie off. “-did you do!?”

Donnie’s head snapped upright and from this angle all you could see was Leo’s face.

It was broken glass and horrified awe.

Raph whispered something to Splinter.

He was making sure his dad was alright.

“You…” Donnie spoke against the will of his body.

Leo was stuck by only his own accord while Mikey was very literally wedged in the window.

Donnie’s got his sights on the youngest.

“Why was Leonardo not informed?” Ice crystals could have formed on Donnie’s words and you would have believed they were real.

“Th-th-that’s-! U-um!!” Mikey’s hands splat against the wall where he tugged as hard as he could before he popped out of the jamb.

He hit the ground in a flop and shot to his feet, curling around Leo’s portal.

“Th-this looks bad, but I-I told you! There was no way Leo or Raph would have agreed! I couldn’t tell them!” Mikey stopped just shy of passing his disembodied brother.

No one moved.

“They would have stopped me! Or dad!” Mikey pleaded, tears welling up in his eyes. “You know that!”

Donnie inhaled a single time.

“I agreed!”

The scene had not defrosted, but you felt everyone’s attention shift to where Splinter had yelled out.

“When Michelangelo told me you wanted to talk, he shared his concerns about the others!” Splinter’s harsh voice didn’t have a single edge. “I agreed it would be best for me to slip in! They know I am stubborn! As long as I got here, they would not make me leave!”

Smoothly, his words slid and coiled around the group.

“Do they…” Donnie lifted his head and you knew he’d placed his villain persona on. “… control you?”

 Splinter made an audible jarred sound.

“Elderly rat at the whims of his more powerful sons?” Donnie was careful in rotating so he stayed out of your view and hit a button to turn off the oven.

“Donatello…” Splinter begged.

“All you do is lie.” Donnie’s malice broke and it dripped to the floor with several hard plops. “Always! All of you!” In a spin, you finally glimpsed your mate and the tears that flung from the velocity of his rage. “You never stop! You compulsive animals!!! HOW?! HOW CAN ANYONE BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU SAY!? WHEN YOU TAKE NOTHING SERIOUSLY?! WHEN YOU NEVER HAVE!? HOW CAN ANY OF THIS BE REAL!? WAS ANY OF THIS-!?!”

“It was!” Splinter stepped up onto the arm of the couch with tears matting his fur. “Donatello, please! You have to understand! I take this matter more seriously than any other!”

“Oh.” The cadence of Donnie’s words bled. “This then? You take this seriously? Now? NOW?!” He bellowed and even you flinched. “OBVIOUSLY NOW IN YOUR OLD AGE! LATER! OF COURSE! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! YOU ALWAYS HAD IT IN YOU! YOU JUST HAD TO HAVE ME GROVEL! NOT BEFORE THOUGH! THIS IS THE MATTER OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE! NOT WHEN A CHILD GOES MISSING! NOT WHEN A LAB EXPLODES AND YOU SAW, YOU SAW, ONE OF FOUR NOT END UP IN YOUR CLUTCHES?! NOT THEN!? NOT TO EVEN LOOK ONCE!!! NOT WHEN A LITTLE BOY WAS LEFT AND TORTURED FOR YEARS!!!”

Donnie choked.

Splinter welled up.

You looked to the others.

Mikey had brought his hands up to cover his mouth and his tears flowed from grossly large eyes.

Leo still hung, half in, half out, of his portal across the apartment and his face was painted with the bitter weight of the knowledge.

Raph’s lips drew a warped line and his features winced, but he refused to look away.

None of them knew.

Like Leo hadn’t known about the library.

Only you knew Donnie’s past.

“Now…” Donnie threw up his tear stained cheeks and checked around the air. “NOT, NOW HUH!? NOT IN THE ONLY APPLICABLE MOMENT?! NOT A SINGLE GUN!? NOT EVEN A BULLET! WHAT A HANDY FUCKING SCAPEGOAT THAT ALLUDES ME!!! YET ANOTHER BLIGHT BROUGHT UPON BY THE HAMATO NAME!! WHY!? WHY NOW!? WHY DOES MY ACCURSED NINPO NOT MANIFEST NOW!?!”

“It’s because you’re not angry.”

Donnie turned to you with outright betrayal on his features.

You rose with the blow of it and felt your face crumple. “You’re not mad… You’re… You’re sad…”

You watched, up close, how every emotion fell off Donnie’s face.

Left only with featureless surprise, his pupils shook with the empty off-whites in his eye before he turned.

He was going to run.

He needed to leave.

You would field the others.

You only needed to stop four mutant men.

Simple enough on a broken body.

They were already looking at you.

You would give Donnie an opening.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!!!” Raph’s voice cut through at a volume that caused the wall fixtures to shake.

It created a new spell, this one stopping time instead of freezing it.

“NO-!”Raph reached into the portal near him and yanked Leo out of the kitchen and to his side where he threw an enraged finger over top to keep his younger brother in place.  

Leo’s eyes took up his entire face and his head shrank down into the top of his plastron in translation that whatever Raph was doing was new.

“MORE-!”Raph stormed into the kitchen where he skirted Donnie long enough to pick up Mikey. 

The youngest was thrown clear across the apartment, toward the door, where he barely activated his flight, and staved off colliding with the surface with a burst of orange sparks.

Raph then looked out at his family across the apartment and pointedly put his shell to you and Donnie. “-LIES!!!”

Again, the apartment shook.

He stood there, a shock of muscles quivering with rage before he turned with watery eyes. “You’re right!” Raph told Donnie. “You’ve been right!”

One of Donnie’s hands started to lift.

“All this time!” Raph’s features fragmented and he had to scrub them back into place like a sliding puzzle. “Not how you did it! You fucked that up so bad, but about us! Of course you wouldn’t trust us! How could anyone trust us!?”

Donnie had clear reservations, but didn’t speak.

“We’ve said a thousand times before that we’ll change, we’ll tell the truth, that we’re finally going to quit lying, and not once has it been different! We’re not going to be different until we stop acting like it is! What happened!? Happened! What’s done!? Is done and I’m sick and tiredof pretending it’s anything else!” Raph shook with what was almost a laugh. “I’m out, Lee. As of right now? I quit.” Coming up, he looked the most serene you’d ever seen him. “I quit the team. Hell! As it is? I quit the family.” 

You heard Leo scramble.

Raph looked right at Donnie. “I’m going to the roof and I’m going to explain our ninpo. I’m going to tell the damn smoggy sky for all I care. You come or you don’t. Raph is currently a solo act.”

Raph then walked straight over to the window and stared at it for only a second before he grabbed the casing.

Your body pulsed with fear, but Raph barely flexed and pulled the entire frame straight out of the wall and brick outside. “I’ll fix this later.”

Setting the window frame down with far too much care for the destruction he just wrought to your wall, Raph walked out onto the creaking fire escape and climbed up out of view.

Donnie only surveyed some rubble that had landed by his foot before he moved to follow.

You stared as your partner stepped onto the metal. 

He paused for a moment, never looked back, and continued after the oldest.

You felt a brush and looked down to find Splinter at your feet.

The old man gave you a single even nod before he too followed out the hole.

Leo made a noise.

As soon as Splinter stepped outside a blaring red wall appeared to block the path.

You heard a knob click.

You spun just in time to see Mikey in your front doorway where he had a similarly empty expression.

Your lips parted to ask.

Mikey drew a tight line with his. “No more lies.”

You wanted to yell that you weren’t.

Of the entire lot of them, you’d lived the most honest.

That wasn’t quite true.

You only had excuses.

Guilt wringing you out, Mikey left and the door closed behind it.

That left you and Leo.

With Mikey manning the front door and Raph blocking what was once a window, you were now trapped with the only turtle who despised you.

You stood in the lingering heat of the oven.

Despite melting down, Donnie still took the time to save the food you and Mikey had worked so hard to prepare.

You loved your mate so much.

Had you hurt him?

Why had you told him that about his ninpo?

Should you have stood up for him more?

You held your hands close to the oven handle.

It seemed then, and still did, that you had said what you needed to.

You needed to be alone with him to deal with everything that had happened. 

You’d already agreed to do exactly that. 

It would help if you had a few of those categories sorted. 

Donnie always did prefer you to have done your homework. 

He’d done his both with Splinter and then would come with spades having had a conference with Raph. 

That left you now needing to deal with your shit. 

So you said what you needed to. “Guess we could start with the easiest stuff.”

Leo grunted lightly in what you imagined was him getting to his feet.

“How you’ve said you wanted me dead twice now.” You threaded your fingers through the oven handle, but only held it.

“Wrong.” You heard Leo try the front door.

Either Mikey or S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. was keeping it closed.

You imagined the automaton was somewhere with popcorn.

“At the gala, one. You wouldn’t remember my name.” You squeezed metal. “And the last time we really spoke. You said I hoped I would be your final straw.”

“I didn’t say hope.”

“But you did say you wanted me dead.”

“This is purgatory.” Leo decided and a thunk sounded that you knew to be his head against the door.

“Welcome to hell.” You gave a sort of smile. “We’re doing this.”

“Raph can’t quit.” Leo spoke distant.

You crossed the apartment.  

“We all agreed. No one was coerced. He’s not going to talk about our ninpo. We agreed.”

“It’s over, Leo.”

“I’m their leader.”

You stared.

There was no way to reach him.

He was going to encase himself in as many lies as he needed to protect his fragile heart.

You knew that all too well.

You had your own man doing the same. 

You were careful in signaling you were going to touch him before you did.

Leo only gave you a sharp glance, but didn’t move. “Dad’s there. He’ll stop him. Dad knows the threat.”

You took Leo’s wrist and led him to turn.

He came with his head down, locked in on his delusion, and turned toward you in a show that he would not be moved.

“Mikey took a different route. He’s got me. Mikey is always my best back-up. He makes openings with his ninpo. He takes the heat. He’s fire incarnate.”

You released Leo and sized him up.

“Then I slip in. You never got to see us work coordinated. Raph’s too obvious as a bruiser. Mikey’s the real tank. I’m the speed and precision and Raph finishes them off.” His foggy gaze gave way to how happy the memories were.

Your body ached and you used the pain to watch him clearly.

“We head home to dad.” Leo was exactly where he described. “He wouldn’t ask what we did. We wouldn’t ask what he did. We existed in the moment. That’s how it was. ‘Orange, whip something up.’ ‘You got it, daddy-o!’ ‘What’s on the menu tonight?’ ‘Well, we’ve got quite the array of the latest day old delights! Locally sourced from the finest dumpsters.’ ‘I’ll take the chef’s special.’ ‘Coming right up!’ ‘Think we’ll be able to pronounce it this time?’ ‘Not a chance, Rapharoni. Not a chance…’”

You hugged straight into Leo’s center.

He made an audible, “Oof.”

Getting as much of his carapace in your hands as you could, you squeezed him with all your might.

Leo’s arms hung limp over yours.

“’It’s knock-knees.’ ‘What the!? Gnocchi! What’s wrong with you?’ ‘You say it like no-key!’ ‘Of course there’s no key! We live in a subway! Where would we keep a door?’ ‘Leo!’ ‘That’s worse than your bit yesterday with the pho.’ ‘I thought you’d pho-geddaboudit!’ ‘Not again!’ ‘Why do you always do that!?’”

Fat tears knocked on your head one at a time.

You hugged him tighter and his sentences devolved until he was humming the tune of the past.

What had you really learned about this man?

You had no idea.

Leo never said what he meant.

Where Donnie was precise, Leo was ambiguous.

Both calculated, Leo played mental chess thinking of his finishing move while Donnie remapped the board at each step.

While each had their advantages, it was Leo’s methodology that you couldn’t follow.

Retroactive action had once threatened your relationship with Donnie.

It destroyed your knowledge of Leo before you could even place what it was.

He was too sharp.

He knew exactly how to push other’s buttons.

He was a master manipulator.

He’d done exactly what he wanted and kept you at bay.

Not without taking critical damage himself, it just so happened that you had a knack for such a thing.

You’d only inflicted him with wounds because you hadn’t planned at all.

You had time now. 

It was with yours, you found Leo, small and trapped in what had to be his teen years.

He clung to memories before the world came crashing down around them.

His family.

He never saw them differently.

That was why he spoke the way he did.

It shaped how he acted.

He created a mold then and there and pressed the rest of him through melted wax.

Only the die was imperfect.

He decided his final move as a child and never looked back. 

His family was his entire worth and everything he did was for them. 

Only he was so focused on preserving the them of that moment, that he hadn’t seen the field of play had changed. 

They no longer needed him in the way he’d decided. 

No matter how many times they tried to tell him, he kept stubbornly forcing himself through that old mold. 

Each time he extruded a blue shape that was more and more malformed.

It showed every edge where the plates hadn’t been properly set.

Trying relentlessly to make it work, Leo had spent decades refusing to rework the machine.

He only needed to try again.

The wax was wrong.

He was wrong.

He could fix it.

He just needed to try.

He’d sat stubborn.

Long past when the materials ran out and he had begun to crush his skin between boiling metal.

Through each throttle and scar, he continued until he no longer knew when to stop.

When his family acted out of the distorted image he drew, it was an attack of his very being.

He was betrayed again and again and forced more of himself into the mold.

If only he could get it right.

It would be an injustice for you of all people to stop him.

Not you. 

Not when he’d worked so hard.

He’d worked himself past flesh and to bone.

Then from the dust, he continued to toil.

He’d been right.

You both were.

You were happenstance over a sandwich.

You’d told him about choice, but his answer sheet was worn down.

How could he make any other, when he wasn’t on your plane?

He was a trapped time traveler and his portals only cut space.

He was also wrong.

Raph’s fed up speech ghosted your ears.

Things happened.

It was done.

You felt the shift.

By speaking those few words into existence and disrupting the flow, Raph had upset the status quo in the same way you had.

Then Splinter followed.

Before Mikey made his own path.

Which left two, one wholly present and the other here in body alone.

You anchored that side of him, having hugged him so long your arms screamed with a force very unlike all the stressors from your crutches.

Leo was sobbing, but he didn’t hold you.

He simply rained his sorrows down.

What could you do?

You couldn’t tell him.

He’d heard a thousand words.

They’d had family meeting after meeting.

They’d spent a lifetime and were still in the same rut.

What about Raph’s simple action had been so different?

What about yours scared Leo so deeply, to his core?

If it was what you said, then you should have reached him.

He’d said you’d dug it out of him.

Eyes damp against his shirt, you saw a mental flurry of Leo’s baring their souls.

It wasn’t you.

It had never been you.

It had been time.

Just like Donnie.

It was time.

“You did good.”

Leo babbled a few more syllables, before he stiffened in your hold.

“You did so good.” Tears threatened your vision so you closed your eyes and put all your strength into the hug. “You were right!”

“That-” You felt his hands ghost up to push you away.

“You were!” You forced your body flush with his and sent a watery grave into his eyes. “You were right to love! You were right to fight! You were right to worry! You were right to try! You were right to do everything you could to protect your family! Leo, you did an amazing job!”

A revelation did not pass over Leo’s features.

He stared down at you, spellbound.

He saw you.

The current you.

He saw now.

“They lived!” You told the parts of him, one foreign and aged mingling with the other who hadn’t properly looked in a mirror in years. “You did it. You got them all here! You protected them!”

“I…?” He believed you.

Your cheeks threatened to swallow your eyes. “Every one of them.”

“But they…”

“But nothing!” You stepped closer into him and he had to widen his stance to stay upright. “You can keep punishing yourself, but that doesn’t do them any good! They’re waiting for you! They don’t care what you did! They care what you do now! So, you didn’t save them the way you wanted? Does that really matter? The end result is the same!”

His own philosophy crashed the pieces of him together and he wobbled.

You squeezed until you thought your shoulders might pop out of their sockets. “And that’s where you are. You’re at the end of the road, Leo. You did it. You’re done. Your job is done.”

The first breath he took gave his new form life.

The second felt the years he’d lost.

The third sipped bittersweet in the many lives the old him had touched.

Then came happiness.

In a wave so large, his teeth lined up for a decade’s wide smile.

The time between flowed like a river down his face in droves.

“You can rest.” You buried your face into him, but saved your mouth. “Your loved ones are here and they’re waiting. They’ve been waiting all this time. They want to thank you. You did everything you could.”

Leo hugged you.

In one giant sweep, all that you had squeezed into him was returned until you were nearly bowled over.

You genuinely had no idea how either of you were still upright.

“He’s in good hands.” You added as soon as you got your oxygen back.

It was crushed right back out of you and together you both cried.

The downpour washed the slate clean.

You weren’t sure if you would etch it anew, but for now you were going to store it.

There was time.

So much so, especially for Leo, that you languished in it. It brought you both stumbling to the couch where neither of you could let go. It was only after being seated side by side did you feel sturdy, but Leo didn’t let go with an arm slung around your shoulders. He grew into a frustrating weight, but there was a certain comedy to it that had you both barbing each other with little spikes for a sense of normalcy. You weren’t sure if that would be your relationship moving forward, but for now it felt like you could traverse it on your own terms.

When Raph came down the fire escape in a series of clangs, Leo only arched out where he still had a hold on you and greeted his brother with a wry smile.

If Leo’s newly current presence was obvious to you, it was plain as day for Raph, who was moving forward. “Leo!”

“Hey, bro. Miss me? Bring that big beautiful mug over here for me to see!” Leo extracted his arm from you and whispered a parting sorrow in your ear. “Sorry, doll.”

For a moment you were on a rooftop until you were back in your apartment looking at Leo.

“What can I say?” He was all smarmy charm. “A fling’s a fling! No hard feelings?”

You had a thousand insults on your tongue, but Donnie’s arms wrapped around your middle and he extracted you with a bitter glower.

Leo didn’t pay him any mind and caught Raph by the cheeks to squeeze them. “Prickly, you forget to shave?”

“What can I say? It’s past five o’clock.” Raph fluttered his lashes.

“Big news: I’m thinking about quitting too.” Leo gave Raph’s face one last squish before he let go. 

“Oh?” Raph craned his brow ridge through his mask. 

“Yeah, thinking about starting a new team. I’m still workshopping a name. I’m thinking Mayhem’s Mutants. We get ourselves a cute mascot. Everybody loves a cute mascot.” Leo tipped his head, amused. 

“He is cute.” Raph caught the joking bug. “Good luck with that, I’ll have to see. I sent out a ton of resumes and have already gotten a few calls back.” 

“That right? Well, make sure to suit up for the interviews and when they hit you with that bit at the end asking if you have any questions, you always, always, ask ‘em about parking. They eat that shit up.” Leo threw out his hand in a smoothing sailing motion. 

“Thanks. I think I will.” Raph chuckled. 

“Also, like remember though, I’m just saying, my thing has dental…! So… you know… keep your options open, alright?” Leo clucked. 

Donnie cuddled you close where he’d pulled you clean over the back of the couch.

You leaned back and bumped your head against the underside of his chin.

He rested there.

Little nail clicks were Splinter and you opened your eyes to see him crawl up onto the couch to approach his middle son.

A small fear caught you and you grabbed Donnie to share the load.

He held you tightly.

It hadn’t occurred to you that Leo’s change could be an impermeant one, but faced with this father, a certain manifestation of how he came to be could upset the balance.

You wanted to interfere, but it was out of your hands.

Splinter touched Leo’s arm before moving to cup his son’s cheek.

He then pinched hard and pulled.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Leo squawked.

“Do you know how long we’ve been waiting!?” Splinter complained.

It was the perfect response.

Leo immediately welled up with tears.

“Come on, pops! C-can’t have been that long…” Leo spoke weepy.

“Foolish boy!” Splinter scolded, but his sharp edge was disintegrating by the second. 

Raph smiled and you watched his eyes flash red.

Leo’s joined for a flicker of blue and you felt Donnie jolt around you.

Looking up you found him with a shine of purple in his iris and then the front door exploded open.

“Leo!!!” Mikey shrieked and flew straight to tackle Leo off the couch and into Raph.

“Alright, alright! There’s enough of me to go around! Stop acting like I’ll disappear into another dimension or something!” Leo complained. 

A beat of silence passed. 

“Not funny, Leo!” Raph growled and pulled all the Hamato into a hug. 

“What is wrong with you!?” Mikey hissed. 

“You dare joke-!” Splinter threw out frustrated balled fists. 

Leo laughed brightly and you felt a very specific fracture in the family mend.

You leaned further into Donnie.

He moved to envelope you, but a growl rumbled out from his stomach.

There was a pause that could only be broken by Mikey, “Dinner bell!”

Everything then went into motion. The meal was salvaged in various stages and you found that the cream you had seen Leo with was because Raph wanted to make his own dessert. He apparently had a cobbler recipe he was proud of and wanted to show off to you specifically. Splinter was able to present his green bean casserole which was admittedly delicious and supposedly his tout to where Mikey got his culinary skills. There was talk of jobs and this and that. In moving groups, you got to mostly rest as the men scarfed down comical plate loads and got into arguments over the silliest things.

It eventually broke off where Raph took full advantage of the kitchen and its central food hub as he always baked. Making quick work of repurposing a casserole dish, he eventually had time to take some measurements of a wall and Donnie dismissed him only to point outside. Raph poked his head out to find supplies on the fire escape and a calling card post-it with a caricature of S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. on it that made Leo shudder. Clean up happened with Leo taking heavy point of washing many dishes and Mikey humming alongside him as a mystic dryer with orange tinted air. Raph stacked things up to eventually take with them and Donnie shot off a message to S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. from his computer about what was left for the window repair.

It eventually brought a curious Raph over to the computer as he wasn’t going to let his promise go of being the one to fix it. The eldest tacked on a resume of the work he’d done around the lair where he’d expanded arch ways to better fit his size and architecture slid into Donnie’s special interest category. Both men were soon scouring blueprints and you feared it wouldn’t just be a window put back in place in your kitchen. 

Nothing you could really do to stop them, you drifted to the side, where the other pair of turtles were entertained and found Splinter alone with a cup of tea on your couch. He gestured you over and made you one where you only faintly wondered where he’d gotten his supplies. You drank an incredible cup of smooth liquid that had you sending awe at the old man who took your praise in stride. A timer went off and Leo got a little too excited. His hand went up where it had been hand mixing a bowl of cream. The fling brought ire then a laugh from Mikey who seemed relentless in hanging off the blue brother.

All of it brought smiles to Leo’s face where piping hot cobbler was passed out with fresh dollops of cream running off.

Donnie was busy fixing a schematic and didn’t step away to grab a portion.

You’d been resting for long enough and got him one sans cream as you knew the melting whip would only sog the cobbler’s crispy top, a complaint you’d known well of your partner. Bringing the plate and a fork over, you set it down beside him to take at his leisure and he passed you a distracted glance along with an affectionate mating call for your effort.

It brought a plate clanging silence to the room.

Donnie immediately bristled.

Raph was the first to break out his excitement. “Life partners?!”

Fury was abated for repulsion on Donnie’s face. “Is that your descriptor?!”

“Uh, duh.” Leo rolled his eyes. “Kinda bigger deal than boring old English to have a special way of saying ‘I love you.’ What do you call it?”

Donnie turned and tried to bury his beak into his computer.

“Nope! Not letting that go!” Leo jumped the counter with Raph excitedly gushing about romance right behind him.

It caused Donnie to up and run from the pair where they circled the apartment making kissy faces as your boyfriend got more and more flustered.

Mikey appeared by your side with a forkful of cobbler. “I’m not into the whole thing.”

You nodded for the sake of it, watching the display and witnessing Splinter doing the same with an overflowing affection.

“Cretins!” Donnie reared a hand on a turn and with it came a wall of purple that Raph and Leo both slammed into.

Leo blinked a few rapid times before he peeled his face off the projection.

“Woah…” Raph ran his hands over the clear purple swath. “When’d you learn to make less lethal stuff?”

“Was he mad mad?” Mikey asked you. “Like ninpo making mad?” 

You shook your head as you honestly didn’t believe so. 

That made this Donnie’s first projection seemingly created his will alone. 

This was confirmed for you as Donnie came forward to study the barrier with a finger curled to his lips.

“Amazing.” Leo was unenthused. “It’s literally a rectangle. Whoop-dee-doo. Wanna actually impress me, egghead? Make it disappear.”

“Here we go.” Mikey exaggerated an eye roll.

“It’s not magic!” Leo bristled.

“You were one step away from saying abracadabra.” Raph snarked.

Leo mimed the magic word mockingly to the oldest. 

Donnie had his brow wrinkled during the exchange in clear effort. 

Something then occurred to him and he leaned away with a slow exhale as if giving up.

The wall crumbled with pixels collapsing like a perfectly cleared Tetris screen.

Leo arched his mask. “Huh. Well alright.”

“Let’s try for a pistol.” Donnie flared with a tame malevolence for him.

“I’m blameless! You shoot your sensei!” Leo pointed at Raph as he exited and headed over to Splinter. “Got a cup for me?”

“I’d need to boil more wa-” Splinter yawned.

Mikey’s expression grew gooey. “About time.”

“I can stay up!” Splinter complained.

“He’ll be passed out in ten.” Raph told you.

You giggled.

“I will not! This is a special occasion!” Splinter brushed his eldest off with a wave of his hand.

Leo put the kettle on and Splinter fell asleep before it even hissed.

Burners clicked off, there was a quiet movement of gathering things and dividing leftovers. It struck you that Donnie hadn’t consumed anything, but you had a feeling he might later. All based on chance and how things held up, you did your best in choosing to take dishes he might like and a portal was soon formed to transport the rest. Straight into the lair kitchen, things were filed out with the final retrieval being Raph carrying a snoring Splinter through to put him to bed. The eldest then returned once the apartment was emptied and the three Hamato children stood in front of the portal for their goodbyes.

A less than poignant affair, you mostly got a group hug where they wished you well and there were promises of check-in texts. All in order, Donnie stood politely aside and watched on for a slight nod as his great thank you. It was accepted with a few jeers that he barked at and with that the men exited one at a time and Leo’s portal blinked away for the foreseeable future.

Donnie swept you off your feet within seconds. “What happened?”

“Which part?” You tittered as he was pressed behind you and carried you like a hostage to the bathroom.

“You were close! You smell like orange and blue all over.”

“Mikey pulled me out the window and I finally got through to Leo, for real this time.”

“You will shower and explain.” He decided gruffly and it was so endearingly him that you didn’t mind as you stripped.

He sat off to the side, peeking through the curtain as you did a quick wash of your body while regaling him with all that had occurred that night. For Mikey, Donnie cared little, but he ran a gambit of fury at the audacity of the middle Hamato for slighting you. He was still mad, but quieted as you exited the shower damp and nude. It distracted him and he only held a huff as he did his washing up at the sink where you eventually brushed your teeth. Whisked to bed in a none too romantic sense, Donnie instead ate up physical affection in a very literal sense. Mouthing over whatever skin wasn’t coated in pajamas, he obviously scented you before cuddling close where you finally asked him about how he watched your physical therapy.

He began by impressing upon you how proud he was to have you as his mate. He explained that even when he struggled to watch or help, you fought mercilessly and he couldn’t have been more enamored. He even went so far back to remark on your handling of the kidnapping, a lost time that he still applauded you for because however long it was, you’d survived. You’d eventually kissed into him, sweetly at first, in a way that reminded you of tasting a rare bottle of wine. The complexity came with airing and outpoured details.

You found out Donnie had in fact been doing mental constructions during his meditation. While Leo had stopped him from implementing new security cameras, Sinai Hospital had their own footage which Donnie had pilfered and gone through. When he played the tape back and examined it, he’d found that his ninpo didn’t just appear out of thin air, it was constructed there, piece by piece just as he had learned as a child. Hearing Mikey say meditation came with a variety techniques helped him pair the ideas and he found the schematic process to be a soothing one regardless of the lethal creation it was trying to curb. He was pleased with the progress and, as you had seen, had recently start to tap into his ninpo as a pool of energy. 

Until tonight he hadn’t been able to conjure anything, but in his increased meditation, he no longer found the raging purple flame inside him. It was now an organ like any other, only it extended far beyond his body’s reach. He could now imagine himself approaching the well as if it were a materials cache. He imagined with practice not only could he manifest anything he could imagine, but there were probably other uses for the purple ooze beyond that. 

You added what you knew about the other turtle’s power and Donnie revealed to you the conversation had on the roof. Just as Raph had said, he only explained the history and knowledge of the ninpo and nothing more. It was apparently a combined manifestation of the Hamato clan’s essence. A generational pool of power passed down, it was an exclusive art that was thought to only be tapped by wholly connecting and trusting one’s family. It manifested uniquely to each user, but seemed as unlimited and wild as all mystic arts. There was no discussion after the presensation and the trio on the roof had spent a time in silence, allowing the knowledge to permeate. 

You tucked in close to Donnie at the thought of him wholly connecting to save you, his family, and he confirmed that, in that moment, he forgot all else, but a drive to save you. Overridden yourself, you felt compelled to open up about your healing humiliations. From stink to lashing out, Donnie took his time dismantling your concerns while also rubbing those exhausted muscles of yours.

Exhaustion and eventual mutual caressing coaxed loose lips where revealed he’d asked Splinter over because he needed a firsthand account of how love worked between a supposed hero and villain. Now that the forewarned grave harm had finally come to you, Donnie found it difficult to imagine you could have any sort of safe life together so he had to turn to the only pair he knew that had chanced and survived such a feat, successful or not. You admitted what you’d overhead and Donnie didn’t fault you. He only plied affections on how you’d snuck in without his knowledge. 

Beofre he diverted back to you, there was something about the way Donnie spoke of his conversation with Splinter.

He had a finality to him.

Not as an ends, but a means to, something about his tone made you think this was the final barrier that had kept him from actually proposing. 

You had to ask if that was the case as your lids grew heavy. 

It was drawing close to dawn.

You’d spent hours catching up.

“Yes..” He breathed warmth at your intuitiveness. “I had reservations. Unrelated to the grotesque concept of asking a father’s permission, however.” 

You were both gazing at each other from your pillows. “That last bit hadn’t crossed my mind. I swear.”

“He… did help...” He admitted. “He apparently proposed to Big Mama.”

You startled as much as your tired body could.

“Her response was to reveal her plans and imprison him to fight as a slave in her arena.”

“Oh…”

“He… still has the ring.”

You reached for Donnie.

He met you with careful fingers.

You wondered if Splinter had been any sort of stuck like Leo. There was the many names the old man had and he’d been open about his regrets. A frustrating like father, like son, you supposed it made sense and felt optimistic for the Hamato going forward. 

Their familial bonds were apparently transcendent. 

“His didn’t work out, but you think ours will?” You murmured.

“He was happenstance, to be clear. An example, if anything.”

You made a curious trill.

Donnie wormed closer. “Sleep, my love.”

“What was it, Don… exactly?”

Donnie’s beak lightly brushed the tip of your nose. “I was reassured that I am unlike them. Their cycle does not apply to me. I am something new. I am me and am immune to their failure.”

You brushed his cheek with a sloppy swipe. “Only one of you.”

“And you.” He pressed closer to seal the comment, before giving you space to sleep.

💜NEXT💜

Can you believe these two have been around since chapter 21? Hard to imagine a time before my betas @tmntxthings and @thepinkpanther83

[our-happygirl500-fan]

Something that I’ve been thinking about is the fact that at the end of the movie Casey Junior is still clearly wearing his apocalypse gear.

We know that time has past since the Hamato clan defeated the Krang because we see New York being cleaned up meaning it’s been a few weeks at least or a few months at most & Casey Junior is still wearing his apocalypse gear

I was thinking about how it’s probably been weeks or months & Casey hasn’t started wearing more comfortable/ time appropriate clothing yet but when you think about it, it makes sense

Casey Junior: We were hunted. We lived in caves. We ate leaves and rats. No offence.

Splinter: None taken. We are delicious.

Future boy grew up in a world where he was hunted by the Krang, it’s probably going to take more than a few weeks or months before Casey Junior actually feels safe enough to go outside without being decked out in armour & having a weapon close on hand. 

But other than the fact that it’s probably going to take a while before Casey Junior feels safe going anywhere without armour, Casey Junior’s apocalypse gear probably has sentimental value to him as well.

April: Looks like our friend Cassandra has been busy

Casey Junior: That’s my mom!

Donnie: And why are you genius-built apparel? That’s trademarked!

We already know that Casey Junior’s mask used to be Cassandra’s/ his mother’s mask so the mask has an obvious sentimental value to him but all of Casey Junior’s gear would have a sentimental value to him because all of Casey Junior’s gear was given to him by family.

Casey Junior: The reason I have this photo and your tech is because you gave it to me

All of Casey Junior’s gear, even the computer that’s been build inside his mother’s old mask, is Genius Built tech, it’s Future Donnie’s tech & Future Donnie gave it to Casey Junior to keep him safe.

Casey Junior’s apocalypse gear isn’t just armour to help him fight & survive, they’re mementos of family members that he’s lost.

Casey Junior is still wearing his apocalypse gear at the end of the movie, even though weeks or months have already passed since the Krang attacked, because not only is it going to take him more than a few months to go outside without armour but his gear is also the only things he has left of his family from his original timeline.

[obsidiancreates]

Yes yes, we all know that physically Rise Boys could wipe the floor with 2012 Shredder, but here's the catch: He's technically family to the 2012 Boys. And we all know how Rise Mikey feels about Technical Family Who Are Villains.

Cue Rise Mikey, who convices his brothers to help him, trying very hard to convince 2012 Shredder to stop being evil.

Like, he hears the story of how Oruko Saki and Hamato Yoshi were raised as brothers but a bitter feud grew between them, especially when Saki learned that his blood family was slaughtered by the Hamatos and he was taken by the very people who orphaned him. He learns that Oruko Saki and Hamato Yoshi loved the same woman and it was the straw that broke the camel's back. He learns that Oruko Saki accidentally killed that very woman while trying to kill the brother he now saw as a traitor to him and how it left him permanently disfigured and he's deluded himself into believing it was Yoshi's fault.

And he hasn't met Shredder yet. But he immediately assumes "Well, that's because he feels guilty and doesn't know how to process it! I bet I can get him to realize he's hurting his family and should stop!" After all he did it with Draxum, and their Shreddy was a loving father and noble man who was consumed by a demonic armor who was good again when the armor was destroyed, so he can probably fix this more human Shredder, right?

Cue Rise Mikey, and his brothers joining in to protect him and because he used his Little Brother Adorableness to convince them, trying to force 2012 Shredder into being redeemed. And this is one where they all have their powers still in the 2012 universe. So it's like some God just breaking into Shredder's throne room sometimes to pester him about "talking it out" with "his brother" for the "sake of his nephews and daughter" and he can't even DO anything about it because when he tried the FIRST time it happened he got THROWN INTO THE OCEAN AS HIGH SPEEDS AND BROKE MOST OF HIS BONES

2012 are begging Rise to stop. Rise are only more fueled in their quest by the pleading. Splinter keeps trying to explain that there is no good left in Saki, if there ever was any to begin with, and Rise Mikey simply Will Not Hear It. Even Tang Shen's spirit shows up, SHOCKING the entire 2012 family including Splinter, to tell Rise to knock it off. They still won't.

At this point Rise Leo and Rise Donnie are just in it because they hate 2012 Shredder and enjoy irritating him and beating him up when they get him to break and attack them. Rise Raph is there to make sure his brothers are okay because 2012's stories about Shredder HORRIFY HIM. And Rise Mikey is just more and more determined the more Shredder pushes back against him.

This DOES prevent 2012 Splinter's death (not because Shredder doesn't want to kill him anymore but because BEINGS OF GODLIKE POWER ARE PROTECTING HIM NOW AND THEY KNOW WHERE SHREDDER LIVES) however I can't say it prevents Shredder's.

[beanieable]

I thought adding Bishop to Rise would be fun!

Meet the grumpy adopted uncle of the Hamato Family. Agent John Bishop.

The second he realized that their just a bunch of kids, he develops some parental instincts and they adopt him as their uncle.

Read about him here:

Uncle Bishop

A few things about him under the cut

He doesn’t like authorities so he became the authority.

Very much Aizawa from BNHA vibes.

Likes to piss off his bosses. They would love to fire Bishop but can’t because he’s their best agent.

As soon as he got attached to the kids he began reading up on turtles. Specifically the species the boys are.

He takes them all out for pizza regularly.

Became good friends with Hueso after a while.

Gets all his nieces and nephews gifts. A good portion of his paycheck is spent on them. He also has a savings account for all of them, just in case one of them wants to go to college. He’s very well off because his job pays very well and he didn’t spent a lot of his money before this.

Some of the gifts he's gotten already include matching unicorn onesies for all of them and a pizza oven for Mikey. He's currently working on getting Donnie some uranium. Turns out that is incredibly hard.

He once got a best uncle mug from Mikey and he loves that thing so much. He will only drink out of that mug.

He didn’t know he had it in himself to be a parental figure of sorts. Now he knows he can but only with these kids.

He loves them, even if he doesn’t say it often. Or at all.

The kids love him too.

He’s very proud of all 7 of them.

This man likes his comfy clothes, so anytime he doesn't have to do official work, he walks around in sweatpants and a random shirt. Even when he's at work. He only wears the suit for meetings and press meetings.

He grew up in the forster system. He never got adopted because of his attitude. He never even had friends. His first and only family are the kids.

He would do anything to keep them save, and I mean anything.

[lovelyladylavie]

Day 3: Matching Outfits

Uniforms are outfits, right?

"Engineer Donatello often was surprised to see that the visits from Dr. O’Neil had increased since their accidental entrapment in the Jeffries Tubes. It seemed like she made any excuse to come down to the warp core, where she definitely did not need to be. Over the next few months they grew closer, meeting for little gossip sessions and lunches in their secret hideaway in the Tubes, or going to the Officer's bar, Eleven Forward (which was really a cheap copy their sister Piebald made to imitate the one on the Enterprise) Don wasn't much for socializing, as his blindness made it even more difficult to discern the emotions of others. But April’s presence made it...easy.

For April, her unfortunate history as a weirdness magnet had made it hard to find a long-term position on any vessel. But on the *USS Lou Jitsu*, she felt quite at home amongst all the strange oddities that Admiral Hamato had adopted into his family's science ship. She felt particularly attached to the Chief Engineer, whose visual disability device's neural uplinks needed constant finetuning by her. He was funny, sarcastic and... rather attractive. He was one the last 4 surviving members of the Hamatoans, and therefore, fascinating to study. Soon, she found herself seeking his attention for more than just scientific inquiry."

@apritello-newspaper

[evaglass]

Adding More Backstory to Tang Shen

I wish 2012 had told us more about Tang Shen. Not much was told except that she was born in Fukuoka, was 1/4th Chinese, and was a woman both Splinter and Shredder were in love with.

Also, there's a line Shen says at one point, which involves her saying, "I can take care of myself; I've always have." Giving the idea, she grew up in tough circumstances. We never hear anything about her parents, if she was orphaned or not. We know her grandparents were present in her life, and I looked up information about the city of Fukuoka, which is stated to be a fairly safe place. I wish that line was explored more, but it just feels like the writers put it there for some brief moment of angst.

There was also a bit of writing inconsistencies. In season one, episode 26, there are these lines of dialogue I got from the episode's transcript when Splinter and Shredder are fighting

But then, in season 3, in the Tale of the Yokai episode, there's this scene

Yeahh, I believe I found a way to explain this in my rewrite of 2012, but for now, I want to talk about my rewrite of Shen.

I was thinking of making Shen a Taiwanese woman of 100% Chinese descent. She was really close to her father, but unfortunately, he died when she was still a child.

Shen's mother raised her and Shen's younger sister as a single mother with the help of Shen's older brother, who stepped up to provide for his family after their father died.

Shen was a very studious and hardworking young lady, but also a little bit rebellious as she was very set on the choices she made for herself, whether her mother approved or not.

She got accepted to Cambridge University, where she majored in history and minored in linguistics, as she had a passion for history like her father, and wanted to become a historian.

After she graduated from her undergraduate program, she entered her PhD. program for history, where in the last few years of said program, she worked part-time on her dissertation while also working as an English teacher in Japan.

During her time in Japan, she met Shredder and Splinter. Shen met Shredder first; they became friends, and soon both developed feelings for each other. When Shen tried to make a move, Shredder rejected it, as he wanted to focus on the future of the Hamato Clan and gain the approval of his adoptive father, Hamato Yuuta; he also wanted to respect her dream of becoming a historian, and not distract her from it. Shen was embarrassed but respected his decision and agreed just to be friends.

Shen and Splinter don't get together until a little bit later. Actually, when they first met, they didn't like each other at all as their first impression of each other wasn't great. However, they, of course, do come to respect each other after Splinter helped Shen when her car broke down at the side of the road. Shen and Splinter later become friends and then develop feelings for each other, which surprised both of them, especially Shen, as Splinter was someone she did not expect.

I like to think that as they spent more time together, Shen felt more comfortable talking about her passion and also introduced Splinter about the history of the Renaissance Painters.

She does graduate from her PhD. program, but also accidentally gets pregnant because the portrait Splinter has looked like a wedding photo.

I also thought about how Shen was able to find out about how brutal the war between the Hamato and Foot Clan before Splinter does, seeing how it involved the never-ending cycle of revenge. Finding that out, Tang Shen never wanted her daughter to get involved with ninjitsu.

Look at the way Shen looks at her baby daughter; she would've done anything for her.

She wanted Karai to have a normal life, and that's staying in my rewrite, but I also want to explain why she would push Splinter to leave ninjitsu to go to New York with her to raise their daughter; the history between both clans would play a big part with that, as well as her love for Splinter, but also Shen would still be traumatized from losing her father at a young age, and didn't want her daughter growing up without her father.

But unfortunately, Shen dies. I'm keeping Shen's death the same way it happened in the show, but yeah, that was my rewrite. Let me know what you guys think.