#specifically 2012 Raphael before he managed his anger issues

[procrastinatingwriting]

I can only accept Zuko as an awkward turtleduck if said turtleduck is a teenager and mutant and a ninja.

[remmushound]

Hello! I have another request. Could you do a story where 2012 Donnie decides to use the Rise!Turtles' weapons for a test drive without their permission? I imagine 2012 Donnie trying to figure what kind of materials it has in order to create the mystic weapons and testing it out. But then things goes wrong and he attempted to fix it but can't. Bet the Rise!Turtles won't be so happy at Rise!Donnie's counterpart for taking their weapons without their permission.

@assanmaharielsreblogs

He had to get a better look at them. I mean, when else was he gonna get a chance like this one? In his world there was no magic— there was tech far behind his understanding, sure, but that was still tech. Tech that someone engineered, using their own knowledge, for a specific purpose. But here? It was all over the place! Just one patrol using Donatello’s goggles had keyed him into hundreds of mystical hotspots all around the city! He had seen their weapons in action, but he needed to see them closely— in controlled settings under a microscope! To see the inner workings and try to replicate them! If he could get his hands on that kinda tech, then he and his brothers would be unstoppable! And these guys were just using them like toys! Well, not on Donnie’s watch!

Michelangelo’s kusari-fundo had been a difficult thing to snatch. The box turtle was sleeping with the thing on his bed, hugging the weapon like it were a toy. If Donnie hadn’t known better, he’d have said the blades looked almost soft. Michelangelo snored just like Donnie’s Mikey did, tucked under a soft, fluffy comforter and dressed in an orange unicorn onesie. Mikey shared the bed with him (as did Leonardo with Leo and Raphael with Raph), but the older box turtle was sleeping like a rock.

Donnie carefully pried the tool from Michelangelo’s grip with the skill and delicate touch of a true ninja, quickly replacing it with a stuffed animal. Michelangelo gave a soft groan at the disturbance, but quickly hugged the toy as he settled once more. Donnie grinned and looked at the weapon in his hand. Staring into the slick, painted surface, Donnie almost thought he saw an eye staring back at him. He quickly shook his head, looked back, and the eye was gone. Just his mind playing a trick. Leonardo was next.

******

“What are you doing?”

Donnie almost screamed. “Wha— what are you doing awake?!”

Leonardo crossed his arms and glared, his face remarkably bare without his mask and only slightly stifled by a blue nightcap.

“I’m a ninja with crippling insomniac tendencies— sue me.” Leonardo said calmly. “What are you doing with my sword?”

“Uh.” Donnie glanced between Leonardo and the katana he was holding, “nothing?”

“Nothing?” Leonardo scrutinized with a piercing gaze that seemed to call Donnie out in his lie

Donnie hesitated, then sighed. He gave a light laugh and ran his hand across his head. “S-sorry! Just panicked. Other Donnie wants to uh. See if he can use some of the mystic energy from your katana to reverse-engineer a rift for us to get home— me and my brothers, I mean.”

“Ooookay.” Leonardo’s eyes betrayed his distrust, but he didn’t say a word against it, “just ask next time, okay?”

“Yeah. Will do.”

********

Getting the Tonfa from Raphael was nerve wracking. Access to Donatello’s staff was easy— Donnie already had permission to examine and admire its inner workings, so his touch was programmed into the systems anti-theft database as a non-threat. Michelangelo’s kusari-fundo required stealth, sure, and Leonardo’s sword required cunning, but this? This required him escaping with the Tonfa and from the crushing bite of a genetic predator. No matter how calm and content he acted while awake, after that first night’s run-in with savage Raph, Donnie was more than cautious to avoid another similar outburst. Lucky for him, the Tonfa were hung up at a safe distance from the snapper on the wall, and Raphael’s snoring drowned out any noise he might have made.

And just like that, Donnie had everything he needed for a test run. Of course, he was far more skilled with the familiar bō staff than with any of the other weapons (past experience had taught him just how difficult learning a new weapon could be, nevertheless mystic ones), so naturally Donatello’s bō was the first one to try out. Though it itself wasn’t of mystic origin, Donatello had stated many times of the mystic enhancements that made the weapon flourish from a simple multi-tool to what could classify as a weapon of mass destruction.

“Okay...” the staff, despite its greater size to the one he was used to, was surprisingly light in comparison. A quick weigh-in brought it to only fifteen pounds which, given the amount of tech it carried, was an incredible feat. Just how his younger counterpart could manage such a thing seemed almost impossible to the older Donnie’s mind, but that only served to scratch his curiosity even more! There were so many buttons on the shaft he didn’t even know where to start...

He went for the biggest button first out of pure, childish curiosity. This curiosity led to the worse possible outcome as the end of the bō furrowed out and turned into a compact rocket, which turned sideways on itself and shot out sparks of power. Donnie tried to catch himself, but it was too late. Already the power of the launcher dragged him off his feet and forced his unprepared body into a spin. It took his mind a few seconds to catch up with his body and press the same button to withdraw the blaster.

“Note to self... big button bad. Shoulda known that.”

From them on, he was much more careful with his examine. Every press of a button was met with a brace-for-impact in case a similar issue occurred, but he thankfully avoided such an outcome. One button shot a burst of electricity out the opposite side of the bō from where the blaster was, while another button shot two reinforced wings out either side to form a glider. Another button produced a blade on either side of the staff, and another revealed a compartment filled with gauze and alcohol thread and a needle safely tucked into a surgical pouch— an emergency kit, he supposed. He remembered Donatello also having a much bigger one in his battle shell, so this turtle obviously came prepared. Another compartment had a pair of glasses and a bottle of ibuprofen.

“Wow. No such thing as traveling light, I guess.”

He put the bō staff safely to the side before grabbing the Tonfa next. He placed both Tonfa on the table and the first thing he did was examine one of them under the microscope. It was nothing special— just redwood, as far as he could see— albeit old enough to date back to ancient Japan and perhaps even further. Then he put on Donatello’s goggles and looked at the Tonfa through the lenses, which opened up a whole new world of beauty to the normal-looking weapons.

The Tonfa lit up an impossible red, and on the screen appeared the word Muladhara. The red chakra— the root chakra as Donnie knew it best, represented by a red lotus with four petals. Vitality and strength. Instinctual tendencies and the densest of all seven chakras. The more his mind worked it over, the more it made sense. Muladhara was Raphael down to the finest detail. It commands attention and can be forceful at times. The color of passion and love and determination— the color of anger and daring. A color and chakra associated with abandonment and inherited trauma...

Donnie didn’t want to think about it anymore. And he didn’t dare try to activate the weapons knowing their power. He sat them aside and moved onto Leonardo’s katana.

Like the Tonfa, they were nothing special at first glance. Blades made from tamahagane steel common in ancient Japan, and the Tsuka was as unique as every tsuka, covered in ray skin and silken rope, with writing from the first ever wielder of the blade.

Anatawa Hitorijanai... you are not alone.

Under the goggles, another new vision of the mystic weapon opened up for him. The blue chakra of course— Vishuddha. The throat chakra. It took a lot more critical thought than with Raphael’s weapons, but Donnie supposed that the chakra could fit Leonardo. The balance of Vishuddha would speak truthfully, encouraging conversation and relying on self expression. Speaking with confidence and feeling compassion for those around you— communicating your worries even when you were scared to... but an unbalanced Vishuddha with no way to express it could easily lead to the anxiety Leonardo often felt in social settings. Perhaps his chakra was underactive, or blocked completely, by the feeling of something... unfulfilled in his life.

Donnie had more confidence experimenting with the teleporting sword than he did with the Tonfa. He wouldn’t have to go through it himself, he figured— he could just toss something through and study how it worked. He picked up the blade and looked it over before holding it out to the air in front of him. Leonardo had told him that he had to have a very clear image in his mind— no other thoughts clouding it. Any mistake or misthought could lead to an unstable portal, and unstable portals were extremely dangerous. You could get trapped between rifts, or get portal jacked, or end up hundreds of miles away from where you intended! Donnie closed his eyes to better imagine the room in front of him. Every fine detail... every flaw and crack and puddle and crawl space... every bug skittering around and every sound and every smell surrounding him like a cloud of mist.

He traced the blades point through the air and he was sure he could feel some minor resistance, but he kept focusing on the room. Droplets falling on the stone floor... forming puddles...echoing down the tunnels...

He completed the circle and opened his eyes. Immediately he pulled back as the brightest shade of turquoise almost blinded him, and after a moment of shielding his eyes he finally forced himself to look toward the brightness. The circle wasn’t perfect. In fact, the rift itself seemed almost squiggly, as if distorted by water. Distorted, but hopefully functional. Donnie took a pen out of his tool belt and reluctantly approached the portal, resisting against the temptation of its mystic pull and holding out the pen ready to throw it in. Then another thought occurred to him. What if he just…

He dropped the pen. At first the pen made as if it was going to fall but stopped midair by some otherworldly force. Then it was drawn to the portal and through it with a bubbling noise as it disappeared. Then another rift came to existence above Donnie and, before he could do anything more than look up to it, the pen fell out and hit him on the head.

“Ow.” It didn't hurt, but he said it anyway as he picked up the pen and put it back where it belonged. Curious. Very curious…

He took the sword and slashed through the original portal, destroying both it and its awkward counterpart with nothing more than a soft blip as the magic returned to the blade. There, no harm done! Now all that was left was Michelangelo’s.

A long chain, surprisingly rust-free for how far back it dated. The previous owners must have taken extreme care to keep it in the shape it was in. A chain that, despite how flexible and controlled it looked in Michelangelo’s skilled hands, was short and almost stiff in Donnie’s. The weighty was only on one end, as opposed to both as would be used with most kusari-fundo. A round weight with a ring of spikes across it. Donnie gave one point an experimental poke and yelped as it broke the skin and he started to bleed.

“Another note to self— pointy bit sharp.” He examined the serrated edges a bit longer before moving onto the goggle-inspection.

The sacral chakra, as Donnie had expected. Swadisthana, the orange chakra located in the lower belly. Connected to empathy and intimacy, pleasure both sensual and sexual. Creativity, fantasies, feelings. Everything that made up Michelangelo. An imbalance could lead to someone with boundary issues… yes, definitely Michelangelo, Donnie added to himself with a slight snort as he remembered just how clingy and touchy this world’s Michangelo’s was. At least his world’s always directed that touch-hunger to Raph or Leo and not to him.

A carving on the side of the weight caught Donnie’s attention and he spun it around to get a better view. The design was very faint, but it was there. It looked almost like a smiley face with closed eyes, something Donnie figured to have been added quite recently by Michelangelo. But further examination of it showed that the carving was old, as old as the weight itself, and installed by a previous owner. He even doubled and triple checked just to be sure he wasn’t seeing things.

Now all that was left to do was test it out. He had minor experience with chain weapons (the likes of which still haunted him to his day and made him give an uncomfortable shiver) and it wasn’t like he was actually going to fight with it! He was just going to test out the weight distribution and how effective it would be during fights since he had yet to see any of the other-world counterparts in battle.

He grabbed the handle securely, nodding at the nice distribution he was already feeling. He was just about to take a swing when he remembered the goggles still on his face and decided to take them off first, in case they somehow screwed with any of his data. He did so and turned to swing the kusari-fundo once more until something else this time stopped him in his tracks. 

The glow didn't stop. He had taken off the mystic sensors and he tapped his head just to be sure! But the glow didn't stop. The smiling face was a much more prominent yellow against the orange, and Donnie was sure its eyes had been closed before… 

The pupils in the eyes moved to stare at him and Donnie screamed and dropped the weapon in horror as he crawled back against the wall. The weapon pursued. On it’s own with no master or anything physical to command it. It drifted up and it’s living, flaming eyes followed Donnie’s every move. He made an experimental motion toward the door and the weapon made the same motion as it readied to pursue until Donnie returned to his original position.

The thud of approaching feet sealed Donnie’s fate in stone. Seconds later, seven mutant turtles poked their heads into the room, three of them armed and the other four looking confused and concerned by their lack of weapons. 

“Donnie?” Leo tried to make a motion to approach his brother, but quickly withdrew out of the room when the kusari-fundo gave a warning spark. “The hell’s that thing?”

“Sparky!” Michelangelo ran into the room confidently with his arms extended, his brothers spilling in after him.

“Wait, no!” 

Donnie awaited a terrifying assault that didn't happen. Instead, the fiery weapon subsided it’s flame and fell swiftly through the air to land in Michelangelo's arms. Michelangelo cuddled it closely and churred as he covered the tiny face in kisses.

Finally able to breath, Donnie went to part from the wall, but was stopped by a rough hand the size of his plastron.

The anger in Raphael’s eyes was uncanny. “You have a lot of explaining to do…”