#ship: casey x coral

[carlosreyeswrites]

Charlie Gillespie & Olivia Holt.

[goodlucktai]

maybe some of that tmnt space au cause it's perfecto?

thank you for even knowing about this au :’)

the rest of boldly go is here

x

Somehow, ridiculously, it came in the mail. 

Casey showed up in the lair on an unremarkable morning with an armload of packages, each one covered in a plethora of mismatched stamps and labeled “To Donatello and family, from Donatello and family.” 

“There’s still a ton more at home,” their human sibling said, looking as confused as Leo felt.

Mikey wanted to open them right away, as eager as a kid on Christmas, but Donnie wanted to scan them first to be on the safe side. 

He scowled when his scanner subsided into a mess of binary and an unhealthy static noise, mutttered “of course,” and ripped open the first package without preamble. 

Inside was a thick letter of instructions, what looked like an assembly manual; somehow printed to the pages in what Leo recognized immediately was Donnie’s untidy scrawl, right down to the afterthoughts scribbled in the margins. 

“They must have come from other you,” Mikey said. “The you that’s with the Fugitoid right now. That’s so cool!”

Oh, right. That was a thing. They had a band of alternate selves roaming the universe somewhere, probably getting up to all the trouble and mischief Leo and his brothers had. Probably even more, since they weren’t on a time-sensitive mission to save Earth, and had more room and opportunity to roam and play.  

Leo… wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“Trippy,” Raph said succinctly. “What is it, Don?”

Their little brother was fully absorbed as he flipped through the pages, brown eyes wide behind his mask. “These are the building plans for an ansible. A – communications device. They only exist in sci-fi books. Normally there’s a limited bandwidth, but this – this looks like it’s going to be a telecom, holy cats! It would be amazing if I could build something like that!”

Donnie leafed through the manual some more, completely lost to that inventor’s half of his brain that took him places his brothers couldn’t follow. Leo gestured for help getting the rest of the packages open, and they arranged the vaguely familiar futuristic tools and complicated-looking parts on a clear worktable as carefully as they could. Going so far as to dive after any of the tiny circuits they dropped, because there’d be no replacing any of this stuff if it got lost.

“Well, I mean,” Casey said, crawling on the floor looking for a chip the size of a pea, “if Don’s the one who sent us all this stuff, he probably knew to send a ton of spare parts.” 

“Still,” Leo said, at length. Casey rolled his eyes without heat and enlisted Raph’s help in collecting the rest of the intergalactic mail stowed at Casey’s apartment.

It took two and a half weeks for Donnie to assemble the machine that was light-years ahead of Earth technology. His other self thought of everything, down to the last bolt and wire, not taking for granted how limited their supplies were – remembering, probably, how difficult it was for Donnie to build anything he could take pride in with junkyard parts. April and Casey practically lived at the lair all that time, helping him assemble and make sense of the near-impossible. 

It was an exhausted Donatello that leaned out the lab door on an early Thursday morning and beckoned his family inside. There were dark smudges under his eyes but he was glowing with a visceral excitement that made Mikey bounce on his toes in turn. 

The screen was alive, flickering as it sent out a signal to the coordinates the other Don included in his instructions.

“You did it!” Raph whooped, grinning at him. “You’re a freakin’ genius, Donnie, I don’t say it enough.” 

Don beamed at him. 

Casey was dozing against April’s shoulder, and she looked like she was barely hanging in there herself, but Donnie was the absolute, undisputed champion when it comes to surviving on nothing but coffee and willpower. 

“Once the connection is established, communications will be fast,” he said brightly. “Like, faster-than-light fast. We just don’t know how long it might take to – “

“ – think it’s working now,” said Mikey. But when they glanced at him, he blinked back, nonplussed. 

They all turned to the ansible as one and a second Mikey smiled at them from the screen. His mask was gone, and one side of his face was taken up by the curling edge of a soft pink tattoo. The only familiar thing about this version of his little brother was the freckles dusted across the bridge of his beak, and Leo felt something uneasy lurch in his stomach. 

“Good job, Don,” the second Michelangelo said warmly, with a quiet pride in his voice that made him sound like Splinter. “I’ll go wake up the others.” 

Before he could go more than a step, someone tackled him from behind while he was still in frame and he lurched forward with a sudden yelp.

“Joke’s on you!” Leo’s other self said, loud and cheerful, hanging off Mikey’s carapace like a limpet. “I’m already awake!” 

Their jackets matched, Leo realized, watching the two of them in fascination. The tattoos on space Michelangelo, where Leo could see them peeking out of his collar and curling down his shoulders, warmed into a happy coral color.

“Oh, it’s Leader Leo,” the second Leonardo said, as though it wasn’t a miracle of engineering that they were talking face to face from whole light years away as effortlessly as Skyping. “Hey, I actually had a question for you! What’s your favorite cartoon? I can’t remember.” 

Thoroughly overwhelmed, Leo said, “It’s, uh. Space Heroes.” His other self brightened, the way Casey and Mikey both did before the beginning of a bad joke, and then laughed.

“That’s kind of redundant, isn’t it?”

“Wow,” April breathed from somewhere behind Leo’s shoulder. “They’re so different. It’s only been a year, hasn’t it?”

“Just about,” Raph said back, equally as quiet. “I guess I thought they’d be just like us, but…” 

“Now, what’s all this?” said someone from the space-side of the transmission. Leo heard Donnie’s breath catch. “It’s bedtime for turtles, you know. Past so, even.”

“Extenuating circumstances, Professor,” the second Michelangelo said wryly, and stepped aside with Leonardo to give Honeycutt room to peer into the telecom screen. 

“Oh, my!” he said, delighted. “Extenuating circumstances, indeed! Mike, Lee, go and fetch your siblings. I know they’re tired, but they won’t want to miss this!” 

“Sure,” Leonardo said agreeably, hopping down. He tugged Michelangelo along by the trailing end of his long scarf, walking backwards to talk along the way. Michelangelo followed agreeably, and laughed when Leonardo tripped and fell with a squawk. 

“Ah, well. Never a dull moment with six children aboard ship, let me tell you. Anyway! Hello, dear friends!” 

Honeycutt’s digital eyes were curved into happy parentheses, his hands moving erratically. He was exactly the same as the last time Leo had seen him. 

“What a pleasure this is! I’m not sure if you remember me – we only met briefly, after all – so allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Professor Zayton Honeycutt. I had so hoped we would meet again!”