#tmnt maggot

[mammonmuffinz]

“Are you threatening me?

Are you threatening me in sketchers?”

I thought that line was funny so yeah

[craacked-splatters]

"Buzz Buzz"

A lil 🤏 snippet for TMNT 2012 Mutant Apocalypse

Haha I don't know why it took me so long to realize I can just throw out bits and pieces of my writing instead of adding it to the pile of incomplete wips and drafts. Like wow I can just do that and call it a day! this is great!!

Anyways, wrote this at 2am after thinking too much about the Rot apocalypses tend to bring. As one does yk 🥲

There might be a following part after this one, still don't know yet

Enjoy!

(edited 11/24)

They trickled in at first.

Always there around each corner they turned. A second thought to the paths they treaded on.

It was expected. Necessary.

But then they began to grow.

Hundreds turned to thousands and then millions and billions until the air turned thick with the beat of their wings and the waters grew black.

The flies.

They whispered the sorrows of the flesh, uttered the stench of rot they had been forced to consume. Buzzing and roaring together with such frenzied desperation, it was a miracle he hadn't been pulled under their waves.

Death was prominent in those early years.

Of course it was.

Of course.

Raphael grew to understand it better than anyone. Annoying is what it was.

Agonizing

It was almost a near comfort to hear them singing.

The flies.

It wasn't him that was rotting and being used as a buffet after all.

He was still breathing.

Raphael Hamato.

Still going and kicking and fighting.

Still alive.

Yeah.

Still alive.

He made sure the flies knew it too.

[spongebob-connoisseur]

I went to fan expo yesterday. Unfortunately not in cosplay. My sewing machine gave out😥 Take this as advice as to why you shouldn't make your costume last minute.

But I still want to share what I got, specifically the Spongebob related things <3

I got a sealed Spongebob comic! And a pin! The pin I got for free since there was a paramount section with backgrounds of different shows and they give you a pin with each show. I got star trek and TMNT pins as well but those aren't important. Spunchbop was the real star✨

They had a number of spongebob merch there but I have too much Spongebob merch tbh. I don't need more. I know you can never have too much but I literally don't have enough space lol.

I got other stuff too. I got several posters (for free) and I won a water bottle! And I got a 90s dracula trading card pack! And a Ren pin! (Tbh I should make a collection out of Peter Lorre related pins, I already have a maggot pin from corpse bride, now a ren pin, two down)

[eccentric-nucleus]

anyway so i posted another chapter of the TMNT fanfic i've been working on. fun fact by the time i get this full thing posted it will be by far the longest thing i've ever posted on ao3.

it's over here!

further thoughts under the cut.

this story is obviously kind of a deviation from my regular writing (by which i mean, extremely explicit monster pornography) but i've been wanting to write some stuff with actual plots and themes and the like recently, so i guess when nanowrimo rolled around i just dug in. i was thinking of what kind of junk i love to see in fics and just threw all of it together in one big self-indulgent heap and so now it's a wild genre mashup. gotta kill yr internal censor & no better way to do it than to write self-serious teenage mutant ninja turtles romance/drama fanfiction.

there's that kind of chestnut about romance stories where people complain about how 90% of the plot could be removed if the characters actually just talked to each other, right? whoops it's all miscommunications and people keeping secrets for no reason, and that's the dynamo that drives the plot b/c you need some kind of tension, but you don't want the characters to come off as seriously flawed. relatedly, there was that one tweet thread by abbadon recently where he kind of touches on that. gotta have the characters be, you know. nice, good people. or sometimes so evil and over the top that it becomes cartoonish. but actually i think something i really enjoy in romance fanfic is when one or both characters are just genuinely obnoxious people. i mean i don't think i'm hitting that super heavily as a story theme so far, but. more jerks, imo

porn on ao3 vs. plotted fics on ao3 tend to have wildly different hits/comments/kudos ratios, & this is actually my first time being on the other side of it. like porn tends to get lotttts of hits, from people searching by tags or w/e, but not a lot of in-depth comments. meanwhile you will see fics that are like, 200,000 words, 70 chapters, 300 comments, 1200 hits. and it's like oh okay, this has a niche audience. this is somebody actually engaging with the local fandom. i tend to avoid fandoms that are actually, you know, 'active', so i don't really get a lot of that for anything i post. i guess my naruto fanfic kind of got that? people still care about naruto, i guess.

apparently there's kind of an active TMNT fandom on tumblr and like i guess i could link my tumblr in the story notes but i basically never do that kind of fandom enagement. i don't really, you know. like interacting with people. but who else can i tell about all my au ideas????

but with this TMNT fanfic it's very funny to have posted 8 chapters across three months and still have under 2k views. like whatttt all the plotless porn fills get thousands and thousands of hits. the teen wolf story with maggot infestation tagged got more hits than this one, and this has been bumped seven times! but yeah that's what writing a story with a plot gets you vs. writing porn, so, it's not actually surprising it's just funny to see in action.

i mean all that being said, kind of the joke of the initial two chapters of the story is that it's presented exactly like it's just a oneshot porn fic so really maybe the lack of hits is something else entirely; who can say. the mistake of everything being quantified with hits and kudos and subscriptions is that it invites you to systematize data, when actually it's probably mostly just noise & externalities. maybe people just don't like weird turtle dick.

(also if you'll excuse some yelling at clouds, just as an aside, but there are so many chatfics in the fandom (b/c this is media for children and kids these days only talk via chats) and with like two exceptions they're all completely unformatted, just bold names and double-spaced paragraphs between every line, from copying the story in from a google doc or something. please learn how to make a work skin + the css to format yr story like it's an actual chat client. at least get rid of the double-spacing. my story contains like 20 lines of grindr text messages and i still put together a whole custom stylesheet for it. it's not hard!! it looks so much better! you can give characters custom colored text bubbles, which works well since all the characters are already color-coded!! anyway.)

(also lol i do actually have a leatherhead/mikey/raph/slash 4some wip i'm considering finishing, which is much more my standard style. i can't believe i've gotten into teenage mutant ninja turtles. i think i've read like 80% of the extant fanfic on ao3 in the past few months. i really do think the major issue stopping me from getting into it was just that i always found it a little obnoxious that the turtles were always copy-paste palette-swap designs. if it's in black and white and they don't have their weapons in shot good luck figuring out which turtle is there b/c their designs are identical. thank you rise for giving them wild designs even if your toy line was garbage so the show got canceled immediately.)

ANYWAY so the story is actually kind of under-tagged, and in the original post draft of the fic i had way more warnings, but after some consideration i cut a lot of them out. like, if you're reading this fic you are hopefully an adult and you can form your own opinions about the characters and what happens without me having to signpost. and also i read somebody's post that was like, actually i hate content warnings when they're just like "tw: sexual assault. sexual assault happens" and it's like wow that's so vague and open-ended it could mean almost anything, and that looming ambiguity is more stressful than just encountering w/e happens in the full context of the story. obviously this is subjective but there's not really an objective way to present any information.

i mean okay originally ch 1 was gonna have a note like "do your own risk assessment before hosting & having unprotected cloacal sex with a total stranger off grindr. actually don't do anything mikey does in this fic." which would get funnier and funnier as more of what mikey actually gets up to gets revealed

but also the main tension of the whole story is literally just character motivation? you get to see mikey & raph do a lot of things but justifications for why they do them is notably lacking. u gotta figure that out. so it feels kind of didactic to even tag it as like, 'organized crime', not even in 'that's a spoiler' territory although i guess it would be, but in the sense of like, this is a structured narrative that you are supposed to form concepts about. ...so i guess that's exactly spoiler territory, actually. listen i am new to this whole "writing stories with plots" thing.

also i mean it is very funny that i've gotten kind of worried about under-tagging this or it having too extreme content when the fandom is full up on like, serial killer yandere aus or w/e else. 'x is a creepy rapist and he kills his other brothers so he can keep y as a sex toy'. actually this story is extremely tame in comparison.

anyway some people get murdered in this latest chapter of the fic, is what i'm saying.

[westofwonder]

Pull List (09/20/2023)

Batman/Superman: World's Finest #19 Captain America #1 (Legacy #751) Cyborg #3 Dark X-Men #2 Hawkgirl #3 Superman #6 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #143 Wolverine #37

World's Finest - I'm glad Moore is doing the flashback issues. It gives Mora a time to refresh - or in his case do the Shazam interiors - and helps to give this book more of consistent but different look. It's not out there; it works.

Captain America - What an odd time for JMS to be taking over a Cap title. I think this could work. It gives Saiz another chance at a Cap title than being the artist behind 'Hydra Cap.' Could be good.

Cyborg - Credits are different on the cover and in the book. This book is only six so I'm not sure how this will end up playing out.

Dark X-Men - First issue was good. It mad Maggot interesting to me for the first time ever. Fun Goblin Queen stuff - looking forward to it!

Hawkgirl - I think doing Court of Owls stuff is a mistake - overplayed. DC wants Kendra to work again so maybe this will all be beneficial - hoping for something!

Superman - I am not feeling Melnikov on interiors this issue. Campbell was the anchor of this book and without him it's just Williamson doing Williamson things. Sanchez on colors is the star of this issue from what I've skimmed through.

TMNT - What an odd time for me to get into this series because it does feel like I've missed a lot more than what's being discussed. It can be frustrating, but I'm still enjoying myself.

Wolverine - I'm going to keep up with this title as long as Fall of X continues. I will have to determine how to proceed with it after the arc.

I still feel this post is abridged. Not feeling the energy for this list this week.

Happy readings!

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

finds untrue / the echo of your own voice in your ears

Title taken from the poem Cast Off by Belle Randall.

Prompt: Imposter Syndrome

TMNT 2012.

You can find the whole collection on AO3 here.

(tw hallucinations, unreliable narrator, body horror, discussions of family dysfunction, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, mental health issues, nightmares, violent threats, self-esteem issues, unreality, kind of experimental)

You’re a liar, Leo.

You’re lying right now, aren’t you? Look at you in that bed, pretending you don’t see us in the corners of your room. Pretending you don’t see us coming closer, closer, our feet so quiet on the bedroom floor.

What? You think that we can’t be your brothers, just because we’ve got worms coming out of our mouths and maggots in our eyes, just because we’ve got open seams where blood drips through? Pretty narrow-minded of you, bro.

And don’t blame it on the fungus, either. Just because the things it shows aren’t always real doesn’t keep them from being true. And the truth is so ugly, bro; why else would you keep running from it?

I’m not running, you whimper, but you run every day, don’t you? Run and hide and put on a show, do everything you can to manipulate the people you love. Anything to keep them from seeing how very useless you are, how little of a clue you have about what you’re doing.

Yes, you’re a fraud, Leo. A child playing dress-up as a hero, tricking everybody into thinking they can rely on you, that you have a fraction of what it takes. You take credit for victories that you know damn well were more about luck than anything else, putting our safety on the line for your ego.

Let’s be honest, why should we put our lives in your hands? You’re not especially clever, or strong, or talented. You trained your ass off for years, more than any of us, and you still barely break even.

Face it, Lame-nardo, we’ve a spark that you don’t have, never had, and you know it. You’ve always known how fucking useless you were, even when you tried to conceal it from us.

I killed Humongous, you protest. So what? You couldn’t stop that goddamn fungus from traumatizing everybody, could you? What happened today should be enough for you to step down as leader, but you won’t.

No, you’re going to keep on your merry way, messing with everybody’s heads, and see this? See our jaws detach, our rotting bones poke through our skin, our cold cold fingers? This is what happens because of that, because of you.

Of course, even if you did step down, it’d be too late. You’ve messed with our heads to the point that we’ve forgotten how to function without you��like that time Raph tried to take over while you were off gallivanting with the enemy. He could have done it better than you, you know he could have, but even he couldn’t fix the mess you’d made of your team in the time that he had.

You’ve got tears in your eyes—good, finally—but you’re shaking your head. Why? Oh, you’re thinking of Splinter. Daddy patted you on the head and told you that you were worthy, and you ate that shit up with a spoon, didn’t you? Ha.

Truth is, the only one reason Sensei looked twice at your worthless ass is that he needed someone to be his little Miwa point two, his heir, somebody to kiss his tail and treat his words like gospel. And you fit the bill, if only because you were desperate to keep him and the others from realizing what a pathetic little freak you are?

But now the original model is coming back, isn’t she? Miwa’s alive, and she’s everything you’re not: strong, smart, determined. She doesn’t flail around pulling stupid plans out of her ass.

Splinter’s going to get her back or die trying, and then where will you be, Leo? In the fucking garbage where you belong, although knowing you’ll probably drag everyone with you while you’re at it.

Aw, look at those big sad eyes. Boo hoo, baby’s finally figured he’s not the center of the fucking world. Took you long enough.

It’s not like it’s such a surprise, is it? Splinter told you himself—the only use you have for this family is when you fuck up so completely you actually end up doing some good. Like that day in the Technodrome, remember?

That was a good day, wasn’t it? You still get nightmares, although you’re at least mature enough not to come blubbering to us about them. Letting all that dark, ugly water crash over you...it was the day you finally stopped fucking around enough to do something of use.

And then you had to ruin it. Climbing up out of that water, crawling back into our lives like the parasite you are. You could us saved us from this, from the fucking nightmare in shining armor called Hamato Leonardo, but you couldn’t be bothered.

So maybe….maybe we’ll have to do it ourselves. Huh. What d’you think of that?

You shrink back as we draw near, but you don’t try and fight. Is it fear? Or perhaps this is what you’ve always known needed to happen, deep down, even if it took a fucking fungus to confront it. If you love us, Leo, you’ll let us happen.

And perhaps you do love us, Leo, in his own selfish little way. Because you lie still as we put our stinking hands on you, still as we dig our icy fingers into your flesh. We don’t disgust you as much as you disgust yourself.

Come on, Leo. Death and betrayal have made us strong. Feel us as we grab on and pull, hard enough to rip and tear, break you into enough pieces that you’ll never have to hurt us again—

Leo!

Leo! Leo, stop the fucking screaming, it’s us!

Shhhh, it’s okay, you’re safe, it was just a dream. Just a nightmare. You’re safe.

Sorry? The hell do you have to be sorry for?

Stop babbling and breathe, okay? You’re fine.

You’re fine, Leo. Just hold onto him, okay? Let us help you like you help us.

Take deep breaths. That’s all you need, deep breaths.

It’s all right, we’re here. We love you.

Breathe.

[prowl-autism-extraordinaire]

not to name names but in that one tmnt fic where leo packed his wounds with maggots so theyd eat any decaying flesh and keep his injuries clean? hot as hell

[zsskayrd]

Decided to finally get around and watch the reboot. Finished the first 10 episodes so far, thoughts underneath

-First 2 episodes are rough and a weird place to start as an introduction

-First ep really grossed me out, I could have done without the maggots

-I don’t think they even imply Gwen and Ben are cousins till like the end of the second ep and its a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing

-Wrestling episode very fun, should have started the show with this one

-Bummed the aliens have normal voices, especially Heatblast, they just sound like a dude

-I see Cash and JT made it but they couldn’t put in ghostfreak, smh

-Gwen’s shirt keeps cycling between a cat and a rabbit

-Ben’s a theater kid

-Steam Smythe “my generation made Hindenburgs, Titanics!” Cool dude you made stuff that crashes and explodes

-Ben gives no shits about a secret identity

-Civilians don’t give a shit about aliens, just another Tuesday for them

-Damn this Ben is even more irresponsible with the Omnitrix than OG series

-Pretty sure covering a dragon in crystals would kill it? Like it wouldn't be able to breathe?

-Gotta love Hex

-So far it’s nice that Ben and Gwen’s bickering hasn’t been as present as it was in OG

-Not a fan of the transformation sequences, looks like Ben’s getting devoured by a inflatable costume

-The fact that Stinkfly is voiced by the same person who does Mikey for TMNT is incredibly distracting

-Max really isn’t much of a character, more of just a presence

Turns out the order on HBO is out of chronological order, so that sucks, but I don’t think it’ll matter much since its in the vein of the OG series with being episodic. Some of the episodes do feel like they needed longer than 11 minutes but other than that its not a terrible start. 

[divine-motion]

my rewrite of tmnt 2012 is turning more into “my fan iteration within the story of 2012 which i change a bit to suit my self-indulgence” (which it pretty much was from the start but hey) so i’m just gonna write down some General Stuff abt it like arcs and stuff

Tang Shen is alive but did get sliced by Shredder like when she dies in canon, so she has scars and Shredder believes her to be dead. Tang Shen also believes that Yoshi went and disappeared on her when he went to buy those turtles so, you know, rough couple of years for her w/ regards to thinking her infant daughter is dead, moving away from japan w/ her husband, and then her husband mutates into a rat and doesn’t tell her abt it. now she works as a robotics engineer at Stockman labs and while she’s still depressed she’s getting better, she likes her work, and she’s working on a certain nanobot project which is going good

(Nano is in this version but they instead are in an arcade cabinet that the turtles then bring to the Lair so that Nano has a family and they get to play with the turtles often. Happy end for Nano!)

Raph is the one who first meets Shen and Shen starts signing the adoption papers for the turtles

Splinter is pretty much the same as in 2012 but like, he gets confronted abt his shit instead of just being Flawless Wise Mentor, mainly by Michelangelo and then Shen when she meets him again. think he’s still gonna die but only once instead of. what. three times?

the turtles have known April for about three years since they went to the surface in secret and met a curious human girl. April quickly decided she has four brothers now and they agreed whole-heartedly

April’s parents are both alive btw and very good parents, though since “the Kraang want to kidnap April” isn’t a thing here they are both unaware of her mutant friends

April isn’t trained as a kunoichi and instead relies on her telepathic powers, which would grow at the same rate as the turtles become better fighters. i have a whole list of her powers and their limits - for example, tinfoil hats do work to keep your head protected from telepathy, much to everyone’s surprise. a metal pot also works, or a metal helmet. Shredder is unknowingly immune to it with his helmet always being on...

the brain worms serve a slightly bigger role, but they are instead creatures from Dimension X, a weak, telepathic parasite that crawls into people’s brains and controls them to keep the worm safe while it feeds on the person. they are what Kraang Prime mutated himself with to create the Kraang hivemind. they are also called “mind maggots” in Dimension X, “brain worms” is just what Stockman and Donnie started calling them when first discovered. removing a brain worm from a person without using telepathic powers can result in the person’s death or severe brain damage

also the Kraang are a more literal hivemind. if one of them sees you, they all see you. the turtles have to use all their ninja stealth to deal with them, and it’s always a risk because the Kraang can easily overwhelm them with how many of them there are

Kraang Prime is probably gonna be offed at the end of the “season 1 finale”, probably by Leatherhead. he deserves it. offing Prime also frees the Kraang hivemind from his control and the Utrom have their autonomy back. either that, or they manage to release the hivemind from his control another way, and it leaves Prime like weak and useless somehow. maybe by plucking off those weird crystals on his head, i dunno, still thinking abt it

oh Leatherhead! Leatherhead is a doctor for mutants, being a bit of a mix between his 2003 and 2012 self. he wants to help other mutants since he knows they’re victims of the Kraang too, however indirectly, and that they can’t exactly get medical help. mutants do have greater regenerative properties, but that’s only going to help you so far, and your bones might grow back wrong quicker. so, Leatherhead spent his years of freedom studying medicine and mutant biology, using stuff he stole from the Kraang during his first escape.

it would be a lot more focused on helping mutants in general. like, there would still be mutant villains that would be fought when needed, but Mikey and Donnie would put their feet down and try to offer the mutants help in settling into their new life. the turtles would also not be disgusted with mutants like they are in 2012 like jeez, dumbdotcomm really put it into words

anyways the Kraang would cease being a threat after “season 1″ and the truce Karai suggests between Foot and Hamato does happen. Splinter hates it and doesn’t trust it at all

Baxter Stockman has his own lab which is pretty successful, and he is an incredibly smart and eccentric guy with a bubbly personality - until you threaten him or talk down to him, at which point he shows himself to be calculating and ruthless, still with a smile on his face. he doesn’t pick up on sarcasm very well, though, and if you ask him to explain something, he will happily do so in great detail, whether you’re friend or foe. also, he doesn’t get mutated into a fly, and he doesn’t get turned into just a brain, either. he’s just a funky regular human guy

Timothy becomes The Badger in this version. he’s also treated better by the turtles, especially Mikey who takes it upon himself to train Timothy, partially bc Mikey wants to be a superhero but knows he can’t show his face. in fact, Timothy was inspired by Mikey specifically as he saw Mikey trying to be a costumed superhero at one point. when Timothy mutates, he becomes a human mutant like Hun and Ravenwood from IDW, so he can become like an actual superhero with powers

more female characters. like just in general more girls please. i beg of you.

Angel is Casey’s older sister who’s off at college as a STEM student, and she is also Nobody here bc i absolutely love that for her, IDW was galaxy brained when they did that. Alopex is her partner here too same as in IDW, and they jokingly call themselves “Batteries, the Double-A Crime Fighting Duo”. Angel is very much against Casey being a vigilante despite being one herself, but she’s an adult so it’s different, obviously

the turtles ask Alopex to be their teacher, too, especially since Raph notices that she fights using anger in a controlled way, and she is a bit surprised and slightly awkward about it but she accepts. Alopex is an arctic fox instead of a red fox here btw, though she has a summer coat most of the time and only gets white fur during winter.

April would also have an arc where she strives to understand her mutant side and powers better, so she would venture into Dimension X alone to find the Utrom, and learns about their society before and after Kraang. Rook and Queen (named Quin here bc Bishop isn’t a Utrom in this version, and Utrom don’t have a concept of queens and kings) would have bigger roles, as they would help April out with her powers and figuring out what being part Utrom/Kraang means for her identity.

Rook is also an alchemist/scientist who created mutagen in the first place, and Kraang was her assistant. this isn’t super important to April’s arc but i just thought it’d throw it out there

the brain worms/mind maggots would result in a City Fall arc i’ve decided. but it would be the only time mind control/brainwashing becomes a plot point in this series bc i think 2012 really overused that trope. like it was there with Splinter and the Rat King, with the parasite wasp mutant episode, and then again with the brain worms but like, several times over.

this also means that Karai doesn’t get the brain worms pumped into her brain. remember that scene where she’s hooked up to the machine and Shredder’s like “damn that shit sucks i’m sorry Hamato Yoshi’s doing this to you”?? that scene was pretty fucked up. anyways Karai has like. agency in her own arc this time

in the City Fall arc Splinter would die and at the end Karai kills Shredder, and Leo and Karai as new leaders of the clans would be like “alright this stupid fucking ancestral cycle of vengeance” ends here

Northampton time after that because it would be a Lot

after that i think it would be space arc time? it would start with the turtles being separated across dimensions and planets a bit like when SAINW happened, but without SAINW. like, Donnie would get to Neutrino (elves with crazy hair version), Leo would get to Usagi’s dimension, etc. etc.

also in case it wasn’t obvious Tang Shen will play a big role as the turtles’ Better parent and she’d have her own stuff to work through, like meeting her daughter she thought was dead and finding out her boss, Stockman, is evil, that her husband got turned into a rat, and that her new kids get into all kinds of dangerous trouble constantly

anyways that’s um. already quite the wall of text so i’ll shut up now ‘til i have more art to post, digital art this time so you can like. actually see what things look like.

[mammonmuffinz]

I’ve given up… sorry guys 🤷

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

and the soul creeps out of the tree

Title taken from the poem All Hallows by Louise Glück.

Prompt: The Past Comes Back to Haunt

TMNT IDW.

Full set of stories here.

(warnings for gore, horror, death, body horror, mentions of past non-con, internalized victim blaming, mental health issues, simulated character death, nightmares, blood, self-esteem issues)

Leo sees them in the woods.

Bodies, impaled by steel thorns, twisted and shattered under the pressure of clutching bark, grave dirt clotted at their feet. Blood runs down their sides like sap, or perhaps it's the other way around. The forest finds them, chokes them, enchanted sleepers that are never ever going to wake up.

Compared to the empty look in their eyes, Karai's sneer, Kitsune's smirk, even Mast--Saki's hungry leer is almost a kindness. Their wooden jaws jut from the tortured wood and the fear turns Leo's guts, but when it's soured by guilt it feels like our acid in his stomach. Tears prick his eyes, drop to the earth and stain the grass black.

Look upon your work, chunin, Kitsune croons. We are so proud. They laugh, laugh, laugh and the sound sends Leo stumbling away from them, deeper into the midst of the pale, hanging bodies.

His victims do not call his name. They just smile, or frown, or cock their heads in confusion. Some of them are close enough to see where they have been sliced open and stitched into the wood, bits of torn flesh clotting the fabric. Sometimes they quiver with death-gurgles and the vibration shakes the leaves around them.

They don't speak Leo's name, because they don't know it, and he doesn't know theirs. He just knows that his master said kill them, and sometimes it happened while he was fighting for his life (if only in a battle that he should have never entered in the first place) and sometimes it happened while they were on their knees in dark rooms and sometimes it was almost a mercy kill, as they hung screaming in bloodstained ropes.

Some of them are men, some women. Some are children, sucked in the wars of adults just like Leo and his brothers were, his age and younger. The younger ones cry softly, blood and maggots dripping from their eyes.

I'm sorry, Leo wants to say. But sorries are stupid, pitiful things in the face of all this. Sorry won't fix anything, won't raise the dead. Sorry won't get the blood out of Leo's fingernails or scales, won't fix his poor tortured brain.

The dead reach for him, blood staining the wood as their skin is pulled by the breaking point. He is drawn towards them, letting their cold cold hands brush down his face, his neck. They are so cold to the touch it burns, and he thinks he can almost smell his own flesh burning.

One of them, a little farther down the tree, reaches out to touch his stomach, his hip. Leo closes his eyes. Is this what they want, then? Is that what they need? If...If that's what they ask of him, they can take it.

The dead man's fist twists into a cruel smile. You? Who would want something as used-up as you? His hand pinches, twists, and Leo hisses as he feels scales breaking, blood running down his leg.

Damaged goods. The hand pulls away, leaving him standing trembling there.

They're right. Who would want him after this? His brothers certainly don't, not after he stabbed them in the back and spread his legs for the enemy. Leo's not sure if he wants himself around.

Rustling overhead and he glances up, blinking. Two of the bodies, both teens around Raph's age (he knows them, Foot recruits who tried to run and were punished accordingly) descend from the trees, leaving their heads planted firmly in the bark and trailing ragged strips of flesh behind them as they move.

They're holding something. A crown? No, a mask. Leo closes his eyes as he feels it settle around his temples, press warm and slick to his skin. They tie a neat little knot at the back of his head, pulling so tight it hurts.

He feels something warm and wet dripping down his neck, the cling of warm meat on his skin. The unmistakable smell of viscera fills the air.

Entrails. A mask of entrails.

Well, why not? He might as well wear something, and everything else has been lost to him one way or another.

Open your eyes, little killer.

He does. Everything is filmed red now, stained and dripping, figures smearing at the edges like charcoal sketches.

And he can see his brothers, now, hanging amongst the bodies. Burnt, twisted corpses, lolling with burst eyeballs and ash staining their bones, broken jaws sagging open to reveal lungs coated in soot. But still, they straighten, they look at him.

They aren't the only new bodies. Splinter, caught somewhere between the hulking rat-man and the gentle father he remembers, with jagged teeth and soft eyes. April, her hair caught on the branches and matted black with blood. Casey, April, Angel...

Leo opens his mouth to scream and out comes ash, coals, embers sizzling in the red puddle at his feet. He staggers back, the world spinning under his feet, his head light and earslits ringing.

They reach for him, one by one, the unknown and beloved death together. He screams, but he doesn't fight as the world dissolves into black and red, as their fingers slip through the gaps in the scales and take them apart.

(By the time Donnie finds him, Leo's been screaming so long and loud he thinks he might cough up blood).