#this is also why Donnie is so angry

[skeleton-in-a-hoodie]

After dying in Ghost Splinter 2, Splinter did a lot of soul searching (hehehe) and looked at his parenting through a different perspective. He knows he’s messed up: he’s put too much responsibility on Leo’s shoulders, should have helped Raph with his temper, and hasn’t spent enough time with Donnie or Mikey.

So he decides to make a change.

He gets more involved in the fight with the Foot Clan - there are stratergy meetings between him and Leo. It takes some of the pressure of Leo, but Splinter is careful to treat it like a lesson, or a teacher imparting wisdom - he doesn’t want Leo to think Splinter’s lost any faith in him. And when the meetings are over, Leo is pushed towards the pit to play games with his brothers or watch another episode of Space Heroes - it’s important that Leo has the chance of being the child he actually is, rather than the warrior he’s been forced to become.

There are several long conversations with Raph. Since meeting Mona, his temper has got a lot better, but finding out why Raph is so angry wouldn’t be a bad idea. Some of it’s caused by the life he and his brothers are forced to lead, saving the world whilst beleiving humanity will never accept them. There’s an element of righteous fury - why shouldn’t Raph be angry - and a desire to protect those he cares about. But there’s also the gut feeling that Splinter prefers Leo, that Leo is the favourite son and student. Splinter hadn’t realised that, which is part of the problem. They figure out something they can do together, just them. Raph starts learning embroidery as well as how to knit. One day the rest of the family can hear them argueing and it turns out they both have widely different opinions on this one artist/their work.

For Donnie, Splinter starts sitting in the lab with him, watching his son work. Sometimes Donnie will look up to find Splinter gone, but he’ll return with food and drink for Donnie. Eventually, Splinter starts asking questions - he’d known that Donatello was brilliant, but it’s another entirely thing to be walked through Donnie’s thought process. There are nights where Donnie falls asleep in his lab and wakes up tucked in bed. It’s weird, at first, to spend so much more time with his father, but it’s nice too. And if Mikey starts trying to touch things he shouldn’t, a word from Sensei usually puts a stop to it.

It’s similiar with Mikey. If Mikey’s playing a video game, Splinter will sit next to him and watch. After roughly the third time, Mikey asks if he wants to join in. Splinter is not good at video games, at least not without practice, and has a knack for finding every last glitch in the game without trying. Mikey ends up wheezing more often than not when Splinter’s character gets stuck half in a wall, before being flung across the map. He is very good at puzzles though, so they end up playing games like Legend of Zelda - Mikey handles the combat elements, and Splinter figures out how to solve the puzzles. Mikey starts talking to him about the comics he draws and an online friend he’s been talking to for a while (it’s Woody).

Splinter also ends up talking to April and Casey outside of training.

Things are going well. Sure Shredder is still alive and Splinter doesn’t have much control over his ghost powers or form yet (and he still needs to tell them he’s dead), but over the course of a few months his relationship with his sons has become stronger. And he’s starting to come to terms with his own death, like yes he’s dead, but he’s still here and can be there for his children. So he begins thinking about how he can break the news - they’ve got to know eventually, and he wants it to come from him and not be something they find out by accident. He’s not sure how he’s going to tell them, but he will.

And then Leo asks him if he’s okay, he’s been acting a bit weird lately and Leo’s just worried. He says he’s fine (Splinter is not going to tell Leo first - he’s already decided he’s going to explain it to all of his children when they’re together). Oh, there’a party at the Mutanimal’s place? That sounds like fun!

[sprite-writes-fanfic]

Hey , I was wondering how do you think the Bay Turtles would react to that Tik Tok trend where the gf called their bf their husband ? Like they could be at the lair and April calls reader amd reader is like " Ya I'm at my husbands place " etc.

This is the trend I'm talking about

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeypmGWK/

Very cute idea! Also Bayverse request! 😚👌💙

🐢Calling Them Your Husband🐢

💙❤️Bayverse TMNT x Reader💜🧡

Word Count: 917

CW: Gender-neutral reader, calling him your husband 🥰, fluffy as hell, not proof-read.

TikTok was an interesting platform that you enjoyed scrolling through occasionally, and it wasn’t until one day you stumbled upon the couple side of TikTok. You were planning on scrolling past until a certain one caught your attention, and it certainly got you thinking…

Later that night, you and your boyfriend were doing your nightly activities as you usually did, when you got a sudden call from April. You answered with a smile, “Hey April, what’s up?” You ask, the conversation flowing naturally until she asked where you were at. Without hesitation, you answered, “Oh! Yeah, I’m at my husband's place.” You smile, before glancing over at the turtle beside you, getting the following reaction…

🐢💙Leonardo💙🐢

💙 Leo was staring rather intensely at you, feeling a flood of emotions course through him as he stared at you. He would then let out a soft chuckle, and waited until you hung up. He really liked that, oh he REALLY loved that actually, you saw him as your husband, huh?

💙 Once you hung up, he wrapped his arms around you and kissed you sweetly, “So, what was that about, hm?” He mused, as you giggled a bit. “You want to get married? Why didn’t you just say so?” He smiles, and you couldn’t find it in your heart to tell him it was a TikTok, you just couldn’t, not at the time anyways. And plus, I mean the topic was on your mind after all.

💙 “Oh yeah.” You grin as you draw him into a loving kiss, “Let’s get married?” You ask, smiling at him. A chuckle escapes him and he presses his forehead against yours, “Yeah… Let’s get married.” He swiftly lifts you up, bridal style, “And let’s make it soon. I want this husband title to be more permanent.” He chuckles. (Though you would have to tell him later down the line about this because you felt a tad bit guilty, spoiler; he was confused, but he was fine with it.)

🐢❤️Raphael❤️🐢

❤️ Raph gave you a soft chuckle, before placing a hand on your hip, “Damn right you are.” He smirked down at you. Now this, dear reader, stroked his ego, he absolutely loved it. He waits for you to finish up the call with April, lightly rubbing your skin in a loving manner as he was left with his thoughts for a moment.

❤️ Once you hung up, he kissed your head, “Husband, huh? Get that from somewhere?” He asks, and you couldn’t help but chuckle, “Yes… I did, it was a TikTok idea.” He playfully rolled his eyes, “Now you didn’t mean it?” He teased, making you panic, “Of course I did, Raph!” He let out a small laugh, “Easy, Dollface. I’m messing with you.” He would kiss your forehead, calming you down.

❤️ He was a little disappointed that it was a TikTok trend, but he does have to admit, you calling him your husband certainly felt good. Now he was rather tempted to make you a Hamato, if you catch my drift. But he’d wait, he wants it to be at the right time… For now, he’s just relentlessly bullies you (lovingly) about this for a good while.

🐢💜Donatello💜🐢

💜 Chokes, Donnie literally chokes. He was in the middle of drinking some apple juice when the phrase, ‘my husband’s’, gave him some whiplash with this one. He was choking and coughing, wiping away dripping juice as you panicked and hung up on April to help him, (RIP Donnie, died to apple juice 💀).

💜 Once you finish helping him clean up, he would finally regain his composure, his nostrils still stinging from the apple juice, he asks, “What was that about?” He wasn’t angry, not at all, just really confused about this whole thing. Husband? That’s not the right term, you guys aren’t married (yet)! You end up explaining, “Well… It was a TikTok trend and I kinda wanted to see how you’d react.” You admit.

💜 He chuckles and shakes his head at this, “A TikTok trend?” He asks, “Well, it certainly caught me off guard… But maybe don’t do that the next time I’m drinking apple juice, it isn’t pleasant in the throat nor the nose.” He warns, making you smile, “Right, sorry Don.” And you kissed his cheek, returning back to your fun nightly activities of working on his latest invention.

🐢🧡Michelangelo🧡🐢

🧡 Mikey goes along with it, he’s seen this trend. He wraps his arms around your waist and leans against your shoulder, speaking closer to the phone, “Yup~ Wifeys at my place!” He grins, and now you were feeling yourself get red in the face, now a little flustered that he went along with it. It kinda made you feel a little giddy inside.

🧡 Once hanging up, Mikey was giving you a smug smirk, “Tried to pull that one on me? Well I’m two steps ahead of you, angelcakes!” He grins as he’d kiss your cheek, making you groan, “Damn it, Mikey. I was hoping you’d be a little more on the surprised side, but alas, you know TikTok better than I do.” Making him laugh and nuzzle against your neck.

🧡 He placed sweet kisses along your neck, “Nah, that just takes the fun out of it.” He grins widely, pulling away to look into your eyes, “Plus, I’ve always wanted to call you wifey.” He smirked again when he saw you blush a little harder, making you sigh, “Fine fine! You win.” You groan, hugging him around the shoulders, as he laughed softly and nuzzled your cheek lovingly.

[lothbats9000]

aksdjflkjd Raph said this in season 4 and I laughed so hard at the idea of Donnie somehow managing to get offended by this even while in a completely different universe, and so then whatever this is was born pffffft your welcome?

Also here have some of the super early quick sketches :)

And have this little angry guy too cause why not heheh

[somerandomdudelmao]

CASS! YOUR BRAIN! IT'S SO... HUGE!!!!Okay, okay. So, to recap what you have confirmed to us-

The robot that we see is NOT controlled by Donnie's spirit. We see that Donnie is able to control it via headset, etc.

Also, the reason this "Plan B" did NOT work is because Casey got possessed by Don's Hamato spirit in a memory from the future on accident.

It was going to work. He was literally mid-crawl before Casey swooped in and tried to help him but ended up somehow bringing his spirit into the past and cloning him a new body with plot serum.

We don't know if this robot would have worked. We don't know if Donnie even had enough equipment to make a robot body like the one he made for Raph. Maybe it would have failed. Maybe everything would've been okay. I just don't know.

But that's the beauty of this series. You planned this since you first decided how Donnie was going to die. Yes, you've said that you're kind of as clueless as we are at times when it comes to "what's next." But the amount of detail you put into this is ASTOUNDING!

Even with your VERY FIRST COMIC, you used Don's failed experiment with Leo and turned it into another chapter where we found out that Donnie was trying to find a cure for Mikey's peepawed body!!!

The fact that Donnie not only didn't say anything before he died because you knew that it "wasn't the end for him," but he also had a plan B that he didn't tell anybody about hence the guilty faces, the reasurrences, and ignoring Leo's "we don't need to worry" talks. And he couldn't simply tell them that "everything was gonna be okay" because his plan possibly wouldn't even work!!!

AND THAT'S WHY HE HAD A BREAKDOWN WHEN HE LOOKED BACK AT ALL THE RECORDINGS OF THE RESISTANCE FAILING BECAUSE NOT ONLY IS HE WATCHING EVERYONE HE TRIED TO PROTECT WITH EVERYTHING HE HAD DIE BEFORE HIS EYES, BUT HE ALSO REALIZED THAT HE FAILED THEM AND LEFT THEM WITH NOTHING!!! HE FEELS SO USELESS AND GUILTY FOR SOMETHING HE HAD NO CONTROL OVER!!!!

Even since we first met Raph, we got Don's theory about how storing spirits into mechs worked. He probably used the rest of their most valuable resources to even BUILD that thing.

I don't know if when they all realize that Casey is actually the reason Mikey couldn't sense any of their spirits because he snatched them up and brought them to the past/different timeline that they're either gonna feel angry or like "Oh!....oh." You know?

It seems to me that they still don't know the answer to that question. With all of them back, I thought they would have by now, but I guess we'll see pretty soon.

A lot of things could happen in this chapter. Good things, bad things, it's quite a toss-up. Let's just hope this whole big misunderstanding comes to a big finish soon. Donnie deserves a comeback. Everyone deserves to have a breather where they can all just...talk. Cause' by GOD there is a lot to talk about. I know they had some downtime before Miwa showed up, but Donnie's still working. If Donnie doesn't finally open up to his family by the end of this, I'm bringing out the beach balls, I swear.

[goodlucktai]

now the darkness comes alive

rise of the tmnt movie canon divergence word count: 10k characters: raph & leo

welcome to a very self-indulgent roleswap au that i started dreaming up in my friend’s turtle discord. big thank you to rem for the song rec that gave me the insp to finish (and name!) the fic, and also to lake, sara and meeks for enabling my insane behavior <3

oh, now the darkness comes alive it comes for me and i come for you

—brother, the rural alberta advantage

read on ao3

x

The Krang’s spike pierces through plastron and flesh with a sickening crunch and Leo makes an awful punched-out sound. Raph is seconds too slow, and seconds is all it takes for his entire world to end. 

For the past two years, they’ve been at constant odds, Leo going out of his way to undermine and annoy him. Every interaction was laced with frustration, hurt, worry, confusion. Why are you being like this? Raph wanted to ask, wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake until an answer came out. What did I do to you?

It was a miserable way to live. Being angry at someone you love more than anything, having nowhere to put it down, forced to hold onto it and hold onto it and hold onto it. Every day another argument, every night laying awake and hoping that tomorrow would be different. 

He missed Leo. He missed how they used to be. He didn’t know why Pops’ announcement had turned them against each other. He hadn’t thought anything would be able to do that. 

Once or twice Raph had a moment of weakness and imagined what it would be like if he just quit. If he went to Splinter and told him he was done. Let someone else be the oldest, the biggest, the one who carried everyone else. But that thought was always followed instantly by another, louder one—how small would he feel if he didn’t have little turtles climbing on his back and sitting on his shoulders? How empty would his arms be if he didn’t have anyone to carry in them? 

That’s the whole point. That’s why he’s so afraid. That’s why being left alone drives him straight past anxious and into a blackout. He can’t lose them. He can’t lose them. He can’t lose them. 

And now he’s living his worst nightmare. He’s living outside his own body, watching from somewhere else. It doesn’t feel real. 

His little brother, his little Leo, crumpled beneath him, blood staining bright blue an ugly rust color. His chest is heaving as if each breath hurts and his eyes are wide and wet. He’s gazing up at Raph like they’re children again. It’s the way he looked when he was afraid of a thunderstorm or he was about to get in trouble and he needed Raph to make it better. He always looked at Raph first. 

The monsters behind them are laughing. One of them starts talking, the sound coming closer at a leisurely pace. They aren’t safe. Leo is bleeding. Raph is afraid to touch him, shaking hands hovering over his cracked plastron. He doesn’t know what to do. His mind is white with panic. 

He has the escape pod in his hand, not yet activated. He doesn’t know if it’s safe to use it. Leo is skewered to the ground, pinned like a butterfly to corkboard. Donnie’s tech is highly intuitive, all of it programmed into S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.’s AI infrastructure, and maybe the pod would know to account for the particulars of the situation, but there almost definitely isn’t a way to remove Leo safely in the seconds they don’t really have to work with. 

Leo blinks, and the wetness in his eyes spills out, and Raph just wants to pick him up. Carry him somewhere safe. Leo has always been larger than life, but right now he looks impossibly small. 

“Hey, hey,” Raphael soothes, the same way he has a thousand times before, after bad dreams and skinned knees, “you’re okay. Raph’s here, you’re okay.”

Those gold eyes slide to the side, looking at a point behind Raph. Leo’s arm moves, and something cold and solid presses against Raph’s chest. It’s the key, and Leo’s hand is trembling so hard that Raph’s closes around it instinctively, taking the weight of it from him. 

Because he’s Leo, the corners of his mouth quirk into a smile. 

“I told you,” he says hoarsely. It somehow manages to sound wry, like they’re in on a joke together. “I got it.”

Then he uses the hand that Raph isn’t holding to activate the escape pod lingering between them and pushes it those scant few fatal inches forward. Raph doesn’t realize what the beep means until the pod unfolds in front of him and yanks him unceremoniously away from his brother.

“No,” Raph says, light-headed with fear, “no!” 

But a machine couldn’t possibly understand the wrong it was doing. What it was leaving behind. Raph pummels the inside of the pod hysterically but without his ninpo he can’t do enough to damage something Donnie built specifically to safeguard their family. It lifts him up and away and Leo’s crooked little smile gets smaller and smaller until it’s gone.  

——

When the pod touches down in the lair and releases him, the world around Raph is strangely muffled. There’s a ringing in his ears. He thinks he can hear voices but it’s all just noise. Nothing fully clears the chaos in his own head. 

Donatello is directly in front of him, and his hands are white-knuckled on the side of an empty blue pod. He looks like he already knows something went very wrong. His eyes are bright gold, a mirror of his twin’s, and the quiet fear in them places Raph directly back inside the warehouse, surrounded by monsters, too late to protect anyone, Leo’s blood on his hands, Leo looking up at him— 

Raph’s stomach lurches and he turns sharply away. His gaze lands on Casey Jones instead, who appraises him warily in turn, slim shoulders going stiff beneath the battered Genius Built armor. 

“Leo went back for the key,” Raph says, his voice a deep growling thing that cuts through the noise and brings down a curtain of stillness. He holds the stupid thing out, and if it were made of anything less than strange alien stone, his grip would have crushed it into pieces. Casey’s eyes drop to it and brighten, like it’s a good thing that it’s here even though Leo’s not. Relief floods every inch of his face until he looks even younger than he did already. 

“He got it,” the boy says reverently, taking it in both hands. “I knew he would.”

Raphael wants to scream. He wants to step back and let some other version of himself take the reins while he finds a hole to cry in. He doesn’t want to turn at his father’s firm call of his name or force himself to lift his chin until Splinter can meet his eyes and find all the miserable failure festering inside him, but he does. 

April is looking around and behind Raph, her eyes jumping to the red pod still standing open and then back again, as if finally noticing that Leo wasn’t tucked in there, too. As if it is only just occurring to her that there is a universe that exists where Raphael leaves Leonardo behind, and it’s this one, and it’s horrible. 

Donnie might as well be carved from stone, but Mikey is starting to get worked up, looking between everyone else with huge red eyes, trying to hear the thing they’re all not saying.

“He went back for the key,” Raphael says again, choking the words out. “I couldn’t—I wasn’t fast enough to—”

He clenches his fists and it drags his siblings’ attention to the blood on them. April covers her mouth and Mikey takes in a breath so sharp it must cut and Donnie starts to flap his hands. Splinter closes his eyes, looking as though he’s aged about a hundred years in the last few minutes. 

“What? That’s not possible,” Casey interjects as if he can’t help it. The young soldier glances around the room, like Leo is going to pop up from behind the turnstiles and rib them all for being so gullible. “Master Leonardo is the greatest ninja the world has ever seen, he wouldn’t just—”

“He’s not master anything!” Raph only barely manages not to roar. “He’s a sixteen-year-old kid!”

Casey flinches away from his anger and Raphael brutally wrestles it into submission. It’s not doing any good here. Casey is a kid, too. 

“Raph,” Mikey blurts, too loud and too fast, “is Leo dead?”

The word sucks the air out of the room and Donnie makes a noise like he’s been kicked in the stomach and Raph says, “No. No, Angie, he’s alive.” 

Even though their ninpo is locked away, and with it that subconscious knowledge of each other always lingering comfortably in the back of their minds like a warm afterthought, Raph knows they would know if Leo was gone. They would be able to tell. The world would be fundamentally changed, nothing would ever be the same again. 

He puts his hands on Mikey’s shoulders and adds, “We’re gonna bring him home.” 

The plan isn’t much of one, but their resident schemer is very much not present, and no one questions Raph when he lays it out. Donnie robotically admits that he has the means to track Leo, so the turtles and Future Boy are going to head that way and retrieve him, while Splinter and April babysit the key. 

“Use the shell hogs and just keep moving for now,” Raph says. “They have something we want, we have something they want.”

April nods, grimly understanding. If the only Hail Mary shot they have of getting their brother back is handing over the key and finding an opening to steal it back later, that’s just what they’ll have to do. 

Pops abandoned the Hamato Clan’s teachings in the first place because he didn’t agree with their preachings of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. He handed over the final piece of the dark armor without flinching when his sons’ lives hung in the balance. Even if the rest of their ancestors wouldn’t understand, Raphael does. 

He remembers the jar of oozesquitos he held onto once, trying—and failing—to call Draxum’s bluff. He may be a slow learner, but he only needs to be taught the lesson once. 

Leo risked his life to return this key to his family, so Raph is going to fight for it like an insane person for as long as it makes sense to. But if it comes down to abandoning one to save the other…

He’s his father’s son. He knows which choice he’ll make. 

——

In the Turtle Tank, Mikey and Donnie distract themselves on the trip to Metro Tower station by peppering Casey with questions about the future. The human answers readily, describing Master Donatello’s technological genius—holding out his arms so the entirety of his battered, cyberpunk-style kit is on display—and going on at length about Master Michelangelo’s mystic prowess. 

“I could fly?” Mikey squeaks, drumming his hands on the dash rapidly. “Was it cool?” 

“The coolest,” Casey is quick to agree. “And you opened a portal that sent me through time.”

But the warmth in Casey’s eyes doesn’t last very long, fading into something that looks uncomfortably like grief instead. He tends to look at all of them like that, like he’s in a room full of ghosts. 

He darts a sidelong glance in Raph’s direction and quickly faces forward again, staring out the windshield from Leo’s seat. He’s avoided speaking to him as much as possible, and Raphael can, unfortunately, put two and two together. 

Casey is familiar with everyone else—even April and Splinter—but he dances around Raph as if he’s a stranger. He didn’t know Raph in the future, he knew of him—someone to be respectful of and fall in line for, but certainly not one of the uncles he could brag about to their younger selves. 

When the Tank has gone as far through the tunnels as possible, drawn to a stop at a massive tangle of alien vines, they get out and continue on foot. Raph can feel his little brothers walking as close to him as they can without outright admitting that they’re unnerved, all of their guards completely up, senses dialed to eleven. 

The underground is home to them, always has been, and generally speaking if you’ve seen one subway tunnel you’ve seen them all. But the floodlights from Donnie’s battleshell illuminate a scene that looks like it belongs on another planet. Impossible masses of pink-purple mess dangle everywhere like Halloween store decorations, and the subway cars have been upended off the rails and twisted out of shape. 

Casey’s mask is down, the lenses glowing green as he prowls forward without missing a beat. If he came here from a future where the Krang won, Raph can only imagine what the New York City he grew up in looked like. 

“I hate to be painfully obvious, but since my other half isn’t present, I suppose it falls on my shoulders,” Donatello says after a moment, the sardonic tone of voice at odds with his very low register. “Something feels off.” 

He’s barely got the words out when hundreds of little lights blink at them from the jungle of purple vines—not lights, glowing eyes. The silent tunnel explodes into chaos a second later as they’re ambushed by parasite-controlled people and creatures and even objects. 

Raph and Casey are neatly separated from Donnie and Mikey within a manner of minutes. Raph’s heart is in his throat as he pummels through wave after wave of the infected, and it doesn’t settle until he hears on the comms that his little brothers have taken shelter in the Tank. 

He and Casey are pushed farther and farther away, chased down one of the tunnels by an animated subway car on what looks like spidery crab legs, towards a dead end. When Raphael feels the ground start to give beneath them, he acts on seventeen years of big brother instinct and very little else, seizing Casey around the middle and curling around him completely as they fall. 

It’s a dizzying, topsy-turvy couple of minutes, falling from the subway tracks into a maintenance tunnel underneath, and it takes awhile for his ears to stop ringing. He glances down at the human in his arms and notes with relief that Casey seems to be okay–tucked up small and compact against Raph’s plastron, all limbs accounted for, in such a practiced way that Raph thinks he’s been protected in exactly this manner more than once before. 

Neither of them speak right away, coming down from the rush of adrenaline and waiting for the shifting of crumbled concrete to stop and the dust to clear. Raph’s shell was made of sturdy stuff even before he became a chaotic alchemists’s bioengineering experiment, so when he’s certain they’re relatively safe, he pushes off the ground with his hands and lets the debris roll harmlessly off his back and shoulders. 

“Are you hurt?” Raph asks, sitting back to give Casey room to collect himself. 

“Um, no,” Casey says, tugging his cape down from where it had caught around one of his pauldrons. He doesn’t look uncomfortable, but more like he doesn’t really know what to do with himself now that it’s just the two of them, looking up at Raph and then away again. 

Raph can’t help it. He says, “I died, didn’t I? In the future.”

Casey jerks, as if he was surprised to be asked so plainly. Then his shoulders hunch, and he nods. 

“You all did,” he says haltingly. “Uncle Tello when I was thirteen, and sensei and Uncle Angie just… just before I got sent back.” 

Cold dread slams into Raph’s stomach. He doesn’t want to believe he and his siblings could ever truly be divided, but the proof is sitting in front of him. It’s hard to hear that the end of the world managed to take Raph from his little siblings. Donnie from his twin. That Leo and Mikey were left all alone, with a kid to take care of, and a losing war to fight. 

Casey swallows hard, and curls his hands into fists, visibly forcing himself past the loss that probably sits in his stomach and throat like barbed wire. 

“But you—it happened when I was little. I wasn’t really old enough to remember you.” Each word mincing and careful, he goes on, “Growing up, sensei talked about you all the time. He used to say you were the best—best brother, best leader. And he was so afraid when Master Splinter put him in charge, because he had no idea how to be as good as you. He didn’t want things to change, he was happy being your right-hand man. Sensei made it sound like he was really childish about the whole thing. He said he must have been a real disappointment.”

Raphael absorbs the words like a blow. 

Leo, his little brother, his little star, outshining everyone and pulling the world into his orbit, earnestly giving them the light and warmth they needed to live and grow and flourish, a disappointment?

Raph has been angry with him more times than he can count. Hurt by him, even, because that’s what people tend to do when they don’t understand each other. Frustrated and antagonized and fed-up, sure. But disappointed?

He has a shining, crystalized memory of being a child, no more than eight years old, crying over a picture book because the monster in the book looked like him. It was big and hulking, with dangerous-looking spikes and an alligator tail. Raph hadn’t realized Leo had found him until tiny hands took the book away and a serious little face, not yet grown into its stripes, assessed the situation. 

Even back then, Leo was too clever for his own good. He tossed the book on the floor and said, “They got it wrong. That author must not have ever seen any real monsters if they can mess up that bad. Who let them write a book?”

Raph was hardly able to see through his tears, making a distressed rumble in his chest, but his arms opened automatically. Mikey was in a phase where he had decided he was too big to be carried and Donnie had a hot-and-cold relationship with touch that his siblings all knew to maneuver carefully, but Leo absorbed any and all affection like a hungry little plant soaking up sunlight. He climbed right into Raph’s hug and his arms looped around Raph’s neck and hung on fiercely. 

“My Raphie is a better hero than all those knights and princes and wizards anyway,” Leo had said with conviction so huge it was better suited to someone five times his size. “I have the real deal. I should be the one writing books!”

From then on, Leo vetted any and all shared reading material that made it down to the lair before allowing it to be distributed with a very grown-up gravitas. Some things went straight to Donnie or Mikey’s rooms, or back into the garbage if Leo was feeling vicious about it that day, and no one ever said a word about it. 

About three months ago, April had brought them a bundle of the subscriptions they got mailed to her apartment, and Leo picked up a comic that came for Raph and started to flip through it like they were seven and eight years old again. He caught himself too late and looked embarrassed, sliding it across the counter and quickly making his escape, but Raph felt warm all the way down to his bones. That was proof his Leo was still in there, that he still cared, despite doing his best, for some reason, to convince everyone he didn’t. 

His Leo, who always cared. Who cared too much. 

Casey gives Raph another one of those searching, sideways glances, there and gone again. 

“Sensei said he let you down once and he never wanted to do that again. He said he would live the rest of his life making up for it, making you proud. Is—is this what he was talking about?”

Raph looks at the boy in front of him, Leo’s kid from a future that doesn’t exist yet, wearing tech his Uncle Tello must have meticulously built to outlast everything else, Uncle Angie’s smiley faces etched into the knee guards in a pop of silliness that somehow still existed in the apocalypse, his sensei’s red stripes painted proudly front and center on his mask. He carries his family with him with every step he takes.

It’s no wonder Casey is so cagey around him. If he was raised even in part by Leo, then he was probably raised on stories of Raph that only painted the good and the funny parts of the bad, because that’s how Leo loves. And it left Casey to reconcile how everyone’s hero Raphael could have ever thought poorly of Casey’s hero Leonardo. 

“Sounds like that sensei of yours had no clue what he was talking about half the time,” Raph say gruffly. “Raph may wanna pick up him and rattle him like a snowglobe about a hundred times a day but that’s just the Leo Effect. Ask anybody.” 

Casey blinks up at him, one corner of his mouth giving into a reluctant smile. “Commander O’Neil said that before,” he admits. 

“Now her you can listen to any time of day or night, because she’s never wrong,” Raph says, pushing himself upright and offering Casey a hand up, too. “Leo could never do anything to make me love him less. It kind of seems impossible after a lifetime together, but I actually only keep finding reasons to love him more.”

Sliding his much smaller hand into Raph’s huge one, Casey lets himself be tugged to his feet. He’s gazing up at Raph with wide eyes, tugging on the wrist of one glove absently. 

“Leo is as silly as they come,” Raph says. “He needs practical people like you and me in his life to set him straight.”

All at once, Casey’s face brightens, glowing from the inside out. His spine straightens, shoulders going back. It’s every inch Leo’s expression when he receives honest praise from his family in any direction. And Raph realizes abruptly that at least part of the reason Casey has been so nervous around him is because he doesn’t want to disappoint his father’s hero, either. 

——

They find a maintenance shaft and climb the rest of the way out of the tunnels, regrouping with the whole clan in the Metro Tower station. Donnie brings Leo’s location up on a screen and they all huddle around him—falling silent after a moment as they take in what the tracker is telling them. 

“He’s right—right on top of us,” Donnie says haltingly. “He should be—”

April seizes his arm and he cuts himself off mid-word. With a sense of dread, Raph follows her wide eyes across the room. 

Leo is standing there, watching them. He’s been standing there the whole time. Unmoving, completely silent, and covered in the same squishy, fleshy pink parasitic slime that every other infected they’ve encountered up until now has been manipulated by. There’s a mass of it concealing the lower half of his face like one of the respirators Mikey wears for his spray paint projects, baring dozens of large serrated teeth in a sneer. 

Leo’s eyes are pink, the pupils slitted. If Raph couldn’t see him breathing, he wouldn’t know for sure if he was even alive. 

“Leo?” Mikey calls out in a warbling voice, hands trembling. “Can you hear us?” 

It doesn’t get a reaction. 

Raph takes one slow, careful step towards him.

That gets a reaction. 

Leo explodes into motion so quickly it doesn’t make sense, going from zero to a hundred in seconds. He slams into Raphael with the force of a freight train, sparks flying from where his blades meet the sai Raph only barely manages to throw up in time. 

Their siblings scatter, Donnie yanking Mikey firmly behind him, April putting out an arm to keep Casey back, too. Splinter dives in to help his oldest son, the two of them fighting to subdue but not to injure, hyper-aware of the cracks in Leo’s plastron and the matching wound on his shoulder. The last thing Leo’s father and big brother want to do is hurt him any more. 

Leo doesn’t give them an inch of the same consideration, as cold and methodical as a knife. His swords are fully in action, a very present danger to the rest of them, singing and sweeping with fatal precision. 

They’re only fighting for minutes, even though it feels like hours, when Raphael feels it. An insistent tugging on the front of his mind. He and Leo are locked together, swords caught for a moment in the guards of Raph’s sai, and Raph spares a daring second to look into his possessed brother’s pink eyes. 

They glow white instantly, a successful connection. Leo’s mind pours into Raph’s like a flood. 

Take them take them TAKE THEM TAKE THEM TAKE THEM 

As if moving on autopilot, Raph’s hands fly to Leo’s wrists and wrench—not hard enough to sprain, but hard enough that the slider’s grip flies open and the katana clatter to the ground. Leo rips himself free and darts back to give himself room for the next attack. He makes no move to recover the swords and Raph scoops them up a second later, heart pounding. 

It was so quick, so clean, that no one watching from the outside would be able to guess what had just happened. Leo surrendered his weapons to his family in the only way he possibly could, begging with his whole body to be disarmed before he hurt anyone, so desperate for Raph to hear him that he triggered a mind meld for the first time in two years.  

The room comes alive, infected creatures spilling inside and surrounding them all, punching up through the floor from the tunnels they had just escaped from. A subway car covered in pink slime rears back and roars like a beast. Leo moves through the crowd of Hamato like water. The only one he touches is April, a brush of their shoulders together.

She makes a distressed noise in the back of her throat, hand flying to her bag where the key is. Where it was.  

Leo has it in his hand, facing them with unseeing eyes. The grotesque, fleshy mask covering his mouth twists into a stranger’s ugly smile. 

Raph thinks, No wait. It’s not supposed to happen like this. 

They’re not supposed to lose. 

April uses her bat to knock the rest of the deforestation chemicals toward the Krang, causing an explosion that stalls the hoard of infected just long enough to create an escape route. Donnie scoops Mikey’s shell into his arms and Splinter has to tuck a hand around both Casey and Raphael’s elbows and yank to get them moving. Casey doesn’t make it easy.

He must know a losing fight when he sees one. He must be familiar with this scene from the world he came here from. But he struggles anyway, eyes locked without blinking on the shape of a Leo they’re leaving behind. 

Raph wants to struggle, too. He wants to stay behind and fight until he can’t lift his arms or stay on his feet. He wants his lost little brother to know someone’s fighting for him, that someone will keep fighting for him for as long as it takes. 

But responsibility perches heavy on his shoulders. More than one person is depending on him. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done to let himself be pulled one step away, then another. It hurts more than every single other thing he’s survived. 

“Raph’s coming back for you,” he calls out, voice thick, swords weighing a hundred pounds each in his hands. “Hear me, Leo? Raph’s coming back.”

Leo doesn’t give any impression that he heard. He turns at some silent command and walks away, taking the key with him. The Krang got what they came for. 

——

Kneeling on a rooftop, watching the Technodrome come through a hole in the sky and rain destruction down on their city, Raph finds himself thinking I wish Leo was here. 

It’s a stupid thought to have, because Leo being there would solve a very large part of the whole problem. But specifically, Raph finds himself wishing he had his clever, charming brother at his side, who always knew what to say. Who always had an idea. Who understood exactly how to reach out to people and lift their spirits, rekindle their hope. Leo isn’t the strongest of his brothers, or the fastest without his ninpo, or the smartest next to Donatello, but that doesn’t mean he can’t outshine the rest of them in his own way. 

He’s always been the one they followed, really. It just so happened he was always going the same way Raph was. 

“He was happy being your right-hand man,” Casey said. 

How could Raph have misunderstood him so completely? How could he have just left him behind, twice now? What if it becomes a pattern? What if Leo thinks this is all he can expect from them? 

Raph’s family is arguing behind him, unwilling to accept their failure but unable to see any path ahead to victory. It certainly looks hopeless. New York City is burning, people are screaming, parasites and infected are filling the streets by the dozens. 

A familiar hand lands on his arm. Raph feels like he’s wading chest-deep through mud, but he manages to turn his head and look down into Mikey’s big red eyes. 

“What did Leo say earlier?” Mikey asks in a small voice. “I sort of felt it when you connected but I couldn’t hear either of you.”

“It was like being aware of people talking in another room,” Donnie adds, leaning into Raph from the opposite side. “You can just make out the cadence of their conversation but no words come through clearly.”

Raph looks down at his hands, the katana he’s still holding. He rubs his thumb over the guard on one, remembering Leo’s glowing pride the first time he manifested them. He felt so buoyed by Leo’s smile in that moment that he could have fought the Shredder a hundred times over and won. 

I miss you, he thinks. I miss having you on my team. 

“He wanted me to take these,” Raph says. “He was really scared of what he might do with them.”

Donnie’s golden eyes are very sharp, staring without blinking at the only proof of his twin with them here on the outskirts of the apocalypse. Behind the turtles, Splinter and April are still going back and forth with each other, but Casey’s voice has tapered into silence. 

“What else did he tell you?” Donnie asks abruptly. 

“Nothing,” Raph replies, numb.

“C’mon, Raphie,” Mikey says, mustering a sweet smile for him, even though smiling is probably the last thing in the world he feels like doing. “Our Leo? Keeping it brief? I’ll bet he had a hundred things he was trying to say.”

“Let us in,” Donnie says, pressing his head a little harder into Raph’s arm. Dogged and determined, fully ready to dig in with his teeth and not let up until he gets his way. “Let us see.”

Raphael is exhausted, and hurting, and missing the absent piece of their whole so keenly that he could lay down right here and cry for days. But the one thing he’s never been able to do is deny his little brothers anything they care enough about to ask for this earnestly. 

“Okay,” he says and sets Leo’s swords in front of him carefully. With his hands open, Donnie and Mikey each seize one in both of their own, and Raph tries to center himself. 

The first time Raph and Leo did this, it was well before they had fully realized their ninpo. He doesn’t need the mystic powers they’ve come to rely so much on to recognize the brilliant purple lightning and laughing orange bonfire on the fringes of his mind and let them both in. 

The lightning and the bonfire both skirt familiarly over the steadfast red mountain that makes up their eldest brother, at home together. They all feel the painful absence of a mischievous blue wind so strongly that it takes their collective breath away. 

The mountain guides them to the things the wind had given him. Above everything else, fear—of what’s happened and what hasn’t happened yet, fear of the parasite wriggling inside him, fear of his own two hands, fear of failing his family even more than he already has—

Stop, the bonfire says, burning warm and bright. Focus. 

The lightning strikes forward, knowing the wind better than the rest of them from a lifetime of sharing the same sky. It follows the wind’s twists and turns unerringly, illuminating the way in thunderclaps until it’s possible to break past the dark storm of fear entirely.

Behind it there are a hundred other things. Stubbornness and bitterness, a familiar grit that comes from being on the losing side and refusing to give up anyway. Anxiety that his efforts won’t be enough. Love, as deep and rich and unknowable as an ocean. Regret. Loneliness. Hope. 

Take them, the wind had said in the fleeting seconds it had to say anything at all, shoving as many secrets forward as it could. Take this and this and this and this. 

Leon, you devious little creature, the lightning says, with scorching pride and mean-spirited glee. 

It goes both ways, the bonfire cackles. The Krang can see into Lee’s head, but Lee can see into the Krang’s head, too!

This is it, the mountain realizes. This is how we win.  

——

Galvanized, the Hamatos split up one more time. Casey, April and Splinter to get the key back and keep the Krang occupied, and Raph, Mikey and Donnie to save Leo. 

Once Raph and his brothers are inside the Technodrome, they all understand exactly where to go. Everything the Krang knows about how to operate his ship, Leo knows, through that unwanted window between their minds. And everything Leo knows, he shunted as hard and fast as he could into Raph’s brain, hidden in a tangle of emotion so thick that it went entirely undetected by the parasite riding along. And since Raph shared the knowledge with the other two, Donatello could probably pilot this weird spacecraft blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back.   

Mikey is swinging one of his ‘chucks restlessly, ready for whatever fight comes his way first. He’s already a force to be reckoned with on a good day. He’s a walking natural disaster on a bad one, up there with hurricanes and tornadoes. 

And this is definitely a bad one. It’s the worst day they’ve ever had. 

“Dee’s got the ship and I’ve got Dee,” Mikey says firmly, sounding much older than he did this time yesterday. “You get Leo.”

Raphael moves with ninja stealth and speed, picking his way through the halls. It smells awful, like raw meat left out in the sun, and in the gloom it almost seems as though the walls and floors are squirming. 

From what Leo gave him, Raph knows better than to hope he and his siblings can go undetected for very long. The ship is almost a living organism itself, and can probably feel each step of progress Raph is making toward the bridge. 

It doesn’t slow him down. Every second Leo spends here is a second too long already. 

The maze-like halls open up into a cavernous dome, where a catwalk stretches toward a huge bulbous window. Outside, Raph can see a panoramic view of Manhattan engulfed in fire. It looks like a warzone. The air leaves his lungs in a rush. 

It’s Raph’s city, the place that raised him, and for the first time in his life it’s hard to look at. 

His hindbrain pings to awareness a split-second before he hears the movement of metal against metal, and Raph spins around to look up at General Krang. 

He’s seated in a throne on a dias, a smug, toothy smile on his face. Leo is standing like a statue at his feet, this tiny slip of green and pink and muddied blue. His discolored eyes gaze listlessly forward into nothing. 

Little Leo, who always wanted to be carried. Little Leo, who hunted down each and every opportunity to make his brothers laugh. Little Leo, who wanted so badly to be even just half as important to them as they were to him. Little Leo, who Raph wouldn’t know how to begin to live without. 

“You again,” the Krang says. “Nothing smart to say? This one wouldn’t shut up until I improved him. And here I thought it was just an unfortunate hallmark of your species.”

Raphael sees red at the way the wicked metallic fingertips of the Krang’s armor cage Leo’s head and jostle it carelessly, like he’s nothing but a cheap toy. Raph bares his teeth, a furious rumble in his chest, but doesn’t dare to say a single hateful word while Leo’s life is literally held in the Krang’s hand. 

“You probably would have made a much more impressive puppet, with all that brute strength,” the Krang goes on. “Oh well. All in due time.”

The alien must give a nonverbal order, because he retracts his hand and Leo springs forward. 

He doesn’t have his swords anymore, since they’re strapped to Raph’s shell for the time being, but the pink slime has trailed down his arms and tapered into two sharp points that he wields like knives instead. 

They meet in a ringing clash, Raph catching the pink knives with his sai. 

“I know you’re in there,” Raph says. “I know you don’t want to hurt me. It’s okay, Leo. I’m gonna make it okay.” 

The way Leo fights is vicious. He’s fast and he knows where to hit. There’s no joy in his body, no cocky gleam in his eye. Raph can’t help bu remember the way his mind felt when they connected so briefly earlier—the surround-sound of wailing panic and self-hatred, confined behind a stranger’s cold expression. 

Bearing down on his little brother, forcing him to his knees, Raph chokes out, “I’m not leavin’ you behind this time. I’m not goin’ anywhere without you ever again.”

“Empty promises seem to run in your family,” the Krang sneers. 

“He doesn’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” Raph says through gritted teeth. “Don’t listen to him. Just listen to me.”

“Don’t I? Let’s ask the others, shall we?”

Black vines shoot up from the organic mass that makes up the floor of the bridge. Donnie and Mikey are suspended inside them, fighting like animals—Mikey in particular is using language that there is no way Splinter knows he knows. 

“You thought I wouldn’t notice vermin slinking around in my ship?” the General asks. “Is this really the best the three of you can do?”

Leo is scratching and clawing at Raph’s hands, trying to break free of him at any cost. Raph is much bigger and much stronger than he is, and it hurts to hold him down like this, but he knows it would be so much worse to let him go. 

“This whole time, we just weren’t listening to each other,” Raph says, lowering his voice. Everyone else can probably still hear, but he wants Leo to know Raph is talking to him. “Somehow, I convinced myself you didn’t care, when I know better. You care so much it makes the inside of your head a nightmare to live in. The only thing you think about is being good enough for us.”

Leo finally manages to twist free, Raph releasing his arms at the last second when it becomes clear the parasite doesn’t care if its host’s elbow or shoulder gets dislocated. Leo rolls away and comes up on one knee, hand braced beneath him, the other white-knuckled around a knife. 

He can hear the Krang becoming agitated, because Mikey and Donnie refuse to be still. The vines holding them snap and give one after another, faster than they can be replaced. There’s something stirring inside of Raph, too, a fire in his chest that wants to roar to life. 

Leo strikes again. Despite everything, even with all the horrors they’re surrounded by, Raphael wants to smile. 

When they started training together, Leo was the first of the four of them to perfect a technique. Raph lifted him up onto his shoulders in victory and let him crow about it for the better part of an hour, flushed with joy and pride. Since then, Leo has never once landed that particular move wrong. 

An outsider wouldn’t clock that he placed his hand nearly four inches too far to the left, but Raphael knows those four inches made a fatal difference between a bad puncture wound and a severed artery. 

Leo has no true autonomy left but there’s a sliver of him awake behind the wheel. He’s still fighting tooth and nail in there. 

There isn’t any force in the entire goddamn universe prepared for how tricky and stubborn Raph’s little brothers can be. 

“I’m listening now, Leo,” Raph says, alight with how much he loves him. “I’m here. You’re not alone. You’ll never, ever be alone.”

Leo strains forward, dropping the knife and grabbing at Raph’s arm instead. Between one blink and the next, his eyes go from pink to shining gold. 

Raph seizes him, holding his face in the cradle of both hands, his heart soaring around in his chest like a bird. 

“Yes! That’s it! Come on back, big man, Raphie’s got you!”

With a slam, Leo goes to his knees, scrabbling desperately at the fleshy mass on his face. His fingers dig into the slime, but he can’t get a solid enough grasp to tear himself free. His chest is heaving, whole body shaking. He’s fighting so hard but it’s not quite enough. 

And Raph’s ninpo reacts to a sibling in distress the way it did when Raph used it for the first time, breaking past the Krang’s seal like it’s nothing. It surges forward in the shape of a river, finding the familiar place inside of Leo where his connection to their ancestors lives, and making a temporary home there. Raph’s armor limns his brother in rosy red, swelling from underneath his skin in a powerful flood and pushing the parasite out. It loses every inch it had to cling to while Leo continues to pull. 

Finally the worm is ripped completely away, shrieking as it goes, and Leo gasps. He drops the squirming creature and scuttles away from it, gulping in unobstructed air. The corner of his mouth is torn deep and bleeding sluggishly, and his face looks pale and hollow. 

But his eyes are the color they’re supposed to be, and they’re looking right at Raph and seeing him, a connection as meaningful and important as any mind meld.

Because he’s Leo, the first thing he says is, in a croaky, exhausted voice, “Do you have a sword I can borrow?”

Raph barks out a laugh, tears in his eyes. Earlier today he had reached a point where he thought he’d never smile again.

In this moment, he feels like he could hold up the whole sky and grin while he’s doing it. 

Purple and orange spark madly all around them, a lightning storm and a forest fire ready to rain merry hell upon any unfortunate soul in their path, just enough to keep the General busy while Leo finds his footing. 

Raph wants to scoop them all into his arms and carry them someplace safe from all of this, but he knows he can’t. That place doesn’t exist yet. They have to fight for it. 

Leo breathes in deep and lets it go, takes the swords that Raph passes him in hands that don’t shake, and reaches out for his brothers’ light with a light of his own. 

A gale rushes down from the mountain, leading the charge.

“Hey, ugly,” Leo calls out hoarsely, pointing a blade at the Krang. “I’ve been dying to tell you this all day. The decor in here fucking sucks.”

“Oh my god,” Raph says, half despair, half delight. 

Landing beside him, twirling a glowing bo, Donnie stands shoulder to shoulder with his twin and says, “I would cite you ‘time and place’, Nardo, but honestly you have a point.”

“No because it’s so distracting,” Mikey pipes up, dropping weightlessly into a crouch on Raph’s carapace, narrowed eyes glinting in the dim light like a smug cat’s. “Presentation matters! Zero out of ten, would not be held hostage here again.”

“At least it matches the Six Flags Fright Fest he's got going on upstairs.” Leo indicates his own temple with the hilt of one sword. “There’s something to be said for consistency, am I right?”

It’s as much of a hint as it needs to be. The Krang isn’t stupid, which is a big part of the reason why he’s been such a difficult opponent. He understands within the space of a few seconds what Leonardo is saying—what it means for him to have any idea what the Krang’s headspace looks like. This whole time, there has been a subtle, calculative undermining at play right under his nose. 

He clenches those claws into fists that have enough power to bring down skyscrapers. 

“You really don’t know,” the Krang intones ominously, “when to shut your mouth.”

“Says you and everybody else I know,” Leo replies, unflinching and fearless. “Get some new material.”

Raphael gets it now. Maybe he always has. He understands what Splinter was thinking when he looked at Leo, still growing up but ready at sixteen for the beginning of something greater, and decided he should be the one to lead. 

His brothers would follow him anywhere. Raph would walk straight into hell without looking back if that’s where Leo decided to go. 

——

It’s an instant relief to have those singing silver blades back on their side. Leo’s portals open and close with dizzying speed, moving his brothers like chess pieces around a board, somehow keeping track of it all. For a moment, it’s easy to think they might win. 

And then the Krang blows them all away with the flick of his finger. 

Raph thought his world had ended when he was too late to save his brother in the warehouse. Then he realized the world was actually ending in slow stages all around him when he had to leave his brother behind again at the mercy of a monster. 

It turns out the end of the world happens here. On the quiet, abandoned expanse of Staten Island, listening to his little brother’s wrecked voice over the comms say, “Casey, get ready to close the door.”

“I’m ready, sensei!” Casey reports, prompt and reliable. “Tell me when you’re home free!”

There is a split-second of hesitation from Leo—the barest pause, practically nothing—that sends Raph’s heart straight into his throat. Donatello jerks all the way upright from where he was nursing what’s almost definitely a broken wrist, and Mikey goes dangerously still. They heard it, too. 

“Yeah,” Leo says, just barely too late to be believable to the siblings who know him inside and out, “I’ll tell you.”

“Belay that order, Casey,” April cuts in sharply, every inch the Commander she was in another world. “Leonardo, think twice before you lie to me. What’s your play?”

There’s another pause, and Raph can imagine in crystal-clear detail the way Leo’s throat works when he thinks he’s in trouble with their sister, the way he’s probably clenching and unclenching his hands while he wars with that stupid self-inflicted mission to never make himself vulnerable to anyone for anything. 

The little brother need to be liked wins out. Leo admits, “I can’t think of how else to make him stay there.”

The ground falls out from beneath Raph’s feet. 

“No!” Mikey shrieks, fully at his limit of shit he’s willing to deal with. “No no no no!”

“Sensei I can’t just—I won’t just trap you in the Prison Dimension!” Casey says, horrified at what he was almost tricked into. “There has to be another way!”

“We’ve tried everything,” Leo rasps. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t let him—let him get you. Any of you. I have to stop him while there’s still a chance.”

“It’ll be a real shame if you save the world from the Krang this way, only for me to destroy it myself when I rip the universe apart to drag your sorry self back here,” Donnie bites out. “And I will, Nardo. I swear to every imaginary higher power you can think of, I will.”

“Leonardo,” Splinter says sternly from April’s end, the leaping panic in his tone well-hidden from everyone but his two eldest, “you will not sacrifice yourself for us today even if it means the world ends tomorrow. That is not what our family does. We are taking you home one way or another, Baby Blue.”

If being in trouble with April is bad, being in trouble with Splinter is cataclysmic. Leo is a daddy’s boy through and through. 

He hesitates again, seconds they don’t have to spare inching by, then says, “How?”

Before anyone can answer there’s a ring of metal and a heavy slam, and his line goes silent. Leo is fighting for his life a thousand feet above their heads, but at least he’s fighting. At least he’s willing to wait for help.

He sounded afraid, Raph can’t help but think. He doesn’t want to go, but he will if he has to. 

“I’ll get him down,” Mikey says, planting his feet, ready to move mountains. “I become a badass mystic warrior at some point, right? Might as well be now.”

“Wait, Uncle—Michelangelo,” Casey blurts, self-correcting a beat too late, “you can’t, when you did it last time, you didn’t survive.”

“If future me can open a portal through time and space and send my entire nephew through safe and sound, all by myself,” Mikey says, “then this me can do at least half of that with my brothers here to help.”

“The math is sound,” Donnie says, eyes trained unblinkingly upwards. “We haven’t met a single universal constant that we haven’t been able to turn upside down and inside out just for fun.”

“I’ve got ‘em, Casey,” Raph adds, his heart going out to the kid who stands to lose his whole family all over again if the wind blows the wrong way. “I’m the biggest, big enough to carry everybody if I have to. Nothing bad’s gonna happen while Raph is here.”

“Oh,” the boy says, very soft. “I remember you saying that.”

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” Leo shouts suddenly, his comm coming back on with a burst of static and a strange ambient whine that must be what the inside of the portal sounds like. “Now, please, now!”

Mikey lights up, a tiny self-made sun of burning, shining gold. He grits his teeth and lifts his hands, trembling under the pressure of the cosmic forces he’s wrestling into submission. Donnie wraps both arms around him and braces his little brother with his entire body, absorbing as much as he can. The feedback is halved instantly, and when Raph steps in and holds them both, it’s reduced even more. 

With a little huff, Mikey works his shoulders, like this is nothing more complicated than the tricky recipe he once found for an eight layer Doberge cake on one of those unreadable walls-of-text baking blogs. If he can figure out that, he can do anything. 

Lightning and fire and rock-solid, steady earth stretch out their hands, reaching past the open gateway and through empty space, searching for the windy blue thing that doesn’t belong in this darkness. 

The wind reaches back eagerly, desperate to be grabbed up and taken home and held forever. 

Inside the Prison Dimension, bright chains flare into existence—some to tangle around the Krang and immobilize him, still more to wrap around Leo’s chest and haul him back through the door while it’s still open, at a reckless, break-neck speed. 

It would have been dangerous for a squishy human, but Leo lands on the surface of the Technodrome in a roll and manages to find his feet. 

“I don’t have a sword,” he blurts, panicked. “I don’t know how to get down.”

Mikey clenches his fists. Ready to open up the portal that killed him in another world, after all, if that’s what it takes to get his big brother down here where he belongs. 

Then Donnie says, “You don’t need to have a sword, dumb-dumb. I have one.” 

It materializes in his hand, a purple construct of one of the matching lightsabers he made for his and Leo’s eleventh birthday. They were very quickly confiscated but Leo laughed like a maniac for the three minutes they had them, and Donnie kept the schematics for a rainy day. 

“Will that work?” Mikey asks, too breathless to sound as terrified as he probably is. 

“It’ll work,” Donnie says shortly. “A sword is a sword. Now’s not the right time to be a snob, Leon. Come here.”

Leo makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan and feels for the shared space between them where their ninpo lives, where the mountain and the bonfire and the lightning and the wind all live. Raphael can feel it when that mischievous blue energy finds a brand new rule to bend and decides sure, that sounds fun.  

Runes etch themselves into the handle of the Genius Built lightsaber. 

Raphael shouts, “Casey, now!”

At the same time the looming portal above their heads sends a shockwave over New York City, popping and sparking along the edges like a downed transformer as it shrinks and shrinks until it closes around the Technodrome, a flash of bright cyan heralds the abrupt head-on collision of Leo into Donnie when he swaps places with the sword construct his twin was holding. 

They go down in a haphazard pile of limbs, groaning where they lay on the concrete, and then groaning again when a hundred pounds of little brother gleefully joins the pile with an enthusiastic flop. 

The explosion above them is an afterthought. April and Splinter and Casey are all talking over each other on the comms, frantic for confirmation that they all came out of this alive. That they haven’t lost anything they won’t survive losing. 

“We’re all here!” Mikey says, crowing it to the wide-open, smoke-filled sky. “We won!”

Raph should probably elaborate on that for his dad, sister and nephew’s sake—let them know that everyone’s really okay, describe the little miracles Mikey and Donnie just pulled out of thin air like it was nothing, tell them about Leo trembling like a leaf in the wind but tucked securely into his twin’s side and absorbing the warmth of another living person like it was something he’d always taken for granted before— 

But there’s something else he needs to do first. 

“Noooooooo,” three little turtles protest as their biggest brother rounds out the turtle pile, flattening them to the ground. 

“Tough luck, bozos,” Raph rumbles. “I ain’t lettin’ a single one of you out of my sight ever again.”

Mikey giggles, half-hysterical, a contagious, familiar sound. Donnie shuts his eyes to hear it better. Leo hides his cold face in Raph’s neck and doesn’t say anything else at all. Raph holds them all tight, and imagines a universe where he’s strong enough to never lose them.

Maybe it’s this one. 

——

Casey, who is both medically trained by Leonardo’s future self and entirely immune to the slider’s particular brand of treatment-avoidant bullshit, turns out to be a godsend. Leo uses every trick in the book and still winds up in a bed in the infirmary. 

For someone who craves attention as much as he does, it would make more sense for him to milk a hospital stay for all he’s worth. But it’s always been exactly the opposite, Leo escaping at the first possible opportunity and hiding out somewhere until negotiations are made. 

After all these years, Raph finally has him figured out. 

Leo’s face is still puffy and red where it’s healing, but it’s inevitably going to scar—through the right side of his mouth and down his chin, where the parasite clung the hardest. And for the three days that they’ve been home, Leo ducks his head when anyone looks at him, talking to his hands or his knees instead of to their faces. 

Don’t look at me, Leonardo is screaming with his whole body. Raph doesn’t need a mind meld to hear that, loud and clear. 

Too bad, he thinks, not unkindly. His heart aches as he sits on the side of Leo’s bed and watches his brother tuck his chin immediately. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” he says, lifting Leo’s face again in one large hand, gentle and implacable. Leo resists briefly, but gives it up for a bad job when Raph rumbles at him.  

“Don’t,” Leo manages. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” Raph challenges. “I missed you.”

Leo’s eyes are downcast and wet, his mouth screwed stubbornly to one side in a manner that probably hurts, given the stitches. Raphael is a professional at outlasting moody little turtles, and he’ll sit here until the next apocalypse if that’s what it takes. 

Eventually, Raph’s patience pays off. Slowly, gingerly, Leo opens his hands. He lets Raph take them and squeeze strength and warmth into them, and clings back for as long as it takes to cobble together the remarkable courage he needs to look his big brother in the eye. 

“I lost the key,” Leo starts damningly.

“You got it back,” Raph says, ignoring the nauseous lurch in his stomach at the memory of the warehouse, Leo pinned to the floor, the escape pod activating and leaving him there alone. His nightmares always start right there these days. “We’re the ones who couldn’t keep hold of it.”

“I almost hurt you,” Leo says, a note of desperation entering his tone. “I almost—”

“You didn’t,” Raph counters firmly. “You have no idea how much more incredible it is that you didn’t.”

“I was so mean.” Tears drip down his face as he finally loses the battle not to cry. “When the Krang was in my head he saw everything and he said—said you must hate me, and he did all of you a favor getting rid of me, and I thought—I thought that makes sense, because I was so mean, and I’m nothing but trouble, and I don’t contribute, and even when dad gave me the chance to step up and be something I still wanted—I just wanted—”

Little Leo, who invented games of make-believe so Raph could feel like a hero. Little Leo, forever finding ways to make recalcitrant Donnie play, pleased as punch every time he pulled it off. Little Leo, who could listen to Mikey ramble for hours without getting bored or short-tempered, his bedroom walls an ever-evolving art collage of his little brother’s best work. Little Leo, who just wanted to be held and held and held. 

Raph lifts Leo into his arms, as easy now as it was when he was three and nine and twelve, and holds him. Leo shakes with how hard he’s crying, even though he’s not really making any noise. His hands scramble to grab onto Raph’s shell and he lets Raph squeeze him into something young and small and hurt and loved. 

As a general concept, Raph disagrees with murder—but he thinks he could make an exception for the monster who forced his way into Leo’s brain and turned it into an echo chamber of all the worst things he had ever thought about himself. 

An eternity alone in the dark with nothing but his failures is as close to justice as they’ll get. It’s kind of poetic, right? is all Mikey will have to say about it when it comes up a week from now, a mean-spirited little smile on his face. 

“I’m sorry,” Leo chokes out. “I’m sorry, Raphie. I’ll do—I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be better, I swear. I’ll never let you down again.”

“He said he would live the rest of his life making up for it, making you proud,” Casey said.

“Blue, this thing you think you gotta make up for—this price you think you gotta pay for existing—it doesn’t exist,” Raph tells him in a tone that brooks no room for argument, barely managing not to grind his teeth together. If anyone else had said anything even half as bad as Leo had said about Leo, he would’ve punched them straight through a wall by now. “You mean more to me than what you contribute to the team. Even if you brought nothing to the table, which is not true, you’d still be stuck with us forever. Non-negotiable. You could be a hateful little brat every single day of your life and I would still take a bullet for you, no questions asked. Are you hearing me?”

“Hearing you,” Leo mutters, knowing better to disagree with that tone.

“All I want from you is you. All I need is my Leo. Whether he’s feeling goofy or annoying or pissed off or scared—I want every shape of him. Every version. Don’t you dare,” Raph adds, punctuating this by a little rattle of the Leo he’s holding, “make me go a single day without him ever again.”

Leo is fully hidden beneath his chin, so there’s no way for Raph to tell what his face is doing. But he hears the little punched-out breath, and feels it a second later when Leo’s white-knuckled grip on his shell loosens, just a bit. No longer convinced he’ll be ripped away for some imaginary offense.

It’ll take more than one conversation to fix everything, but they’ve got more than one. They’ve got a million. They have the whole rest of their lives on each other’s team. 

“I missed you, too,” Leo whispers, like they’re four and five years old again, huddled under the blankets after bedtime and telling each other secrets. 

Back then, monsters were easy to conquer. Nothing scary or sad dared to follow little brothers to Raphie’s room. A warm nest and a turtle pile was the answer to every heartache. 

Some things stay exactly the same, Raph thinks fondly, amused by the way Leo’s already drifting off. He settles in for a nap on his plastron, Leo tucked securely under one arm. He gives it about thirty seconds before Mikey and Donnie stop listening outside the door and sneak inside to complete the pile, and starts the count in his head. 

He makes it to twenty-seven before the mattress gives tellingly beneath two pairs of hands, and he smiles. 

[our-happygirl500-fan]

I think I’ve figured out why Leo holds such a grudge against Draxum over the roof incident.

Leo: You threw me off a roof!

Mikey: Isn’t this nice? When’s the last time we all got together like this huh?

Leo: The time Draxum dropped me off a building? 

It’s not secret that Leo holds a grudge over Draxum throwing him off a roof & Leo is well within his right to, but something interesting about Leo’s grudge against Draxum is that he takes Draxum throwing him off a building much more personally than he takes any other attempt on his life by anyone else.

Donnie: Last time you saw her, she tried to kill you

Leo: Who hasn’t?

With other enemies though Leo doesn’t exactly forgive them, he doesn’t typically openly bare a grudge like he does with Draxum & if he needs something from them, Leo is more than willing to brush off any attempts on his life.

Leo: Capitán Piel? What brings you to this dump? How are things?

The last time Leo saw Capitán Piel before the episode ‘The Hidden City Job’ Leo was actively fighting Piel’s pirate crew but when he sees the pirate again Leo’s not hostile, in fact he’s friendly & asking how he’s been.

Leo typically doesn’t openly hold grudges or get overly angry as Mikey puts it in the episode Lair Games ‘nothing gets to Leo’ so then why does Leo hold a grudge against Draxum when he barely does for so many other villains?

Draxum: I may have created you, but I will not hesitate to destroy you

Leo: Uh? Who created what now?

The reason that Leo holds a grudge against Draxum is because Draxum is family, he created them & he still chose to try & hurt Leo.

Leo is someone who cares about family more than anything else & the second someone can be seen as a family member he gets attached & would do anything for them. Which can be seen by how the second he found out that Karai was a Hamato she became ‘Gram-Gram’ to him or how attached he was to Casey Junior after only a day because he knew that his future self was important to Casey Junior.

Leo: Hey, future me would be real proud of you. I’m proud of you

Family means so much to Leo which is why he gets attached to new family members so quickly but because Leo feels so much love & loyalty to family, it’s so hard for him to comprehend the idea of a family member genuinely trying to hurt him.

‘You don’t hurt your family, you look out for your family & do everything you can to try & protect them’ is a motto that Leo seems to live by, he understands that mistakes can happen & you might unknowingly hurt your family by mistake but Leo could never understand someone /choosing/ to hurt family the way Draxum did when he threw Leo off a building.

Raph: Mikey! What are you thinking!? Draxum is the sworn enemy of the Mad Dogs!

Mikey: But he’s also the one who created us and that makes him family.

Leo has the same mindset Mikey has, in that because Draxum created them he’s family, which is why the roof incident had such an affect on Leo, because a family member actively chose to try & hurt him. And Draxum knew he created Leo & his brothers, Draxum knew he was family, he didn’t try & hurt Leo unknowingly or by accident, he knew he created Leo & he still chose to hurt him.

Draxum throwing Leo off a roof is probably the first time Leo has ever experienced a family member trying to hurt him on purpose & that’s why Leo can’t let it go, because family means everything to Leo & he could never understand someone choosing to hurt family.

[akesdraws-blog]

Finding one of the turtles asleep on the couch

Version: 🎞️TMNT Bayverse🎞️

Who hasn't fallen asleep on the couch at some point? It happens to all of us, it could even happen to turtles.

⚔️Leonardo🍵

Like Donnie, it is very strange to see him asleep on the couch, but not impossible.

But for what you want, don't walk near this turtle if you see him collapsed on the couch.

Maybe you will say, why?

Well, Leo usually falls asleep on the couch only when he had a specifically heavy patrol and was also punished in the Hashi, and maybe you will say, What's wrong with that? Well, Leo ends a a little more tired than normal, which causes him to fall asleep, but also his reflexes to take over.

That's how it is.Walking near Leo when he is like this will probably only cause some accidental bumps. (Almost all in the abdomen and legs)

Casey was unlucky to find out after spending almost half an hour writhing in pain on the floor while he hugged his aching stomach.

Only Splinter is able to wake him up to go sleep in her room. (He is the only one with enough reflexes to avoid a blow)

Another thing, although it may not seem like it, Leo would be the guy with a very heavy sleep, Mikey could be playing his drums with all his energy, Donnie could be using one of his loudest tools, even Raph could be using the blender to prepare his protein shake, no one knows how Leo can sleep like that, but he'll wake up practically right away if a little bit of light hits his face.

🥊Raphael🧸

He is one of those most likely to see you asleep on the couch.

Maybe there was a “Fast and Furious” movie marathon.

But everyone will know he's in the room by the loud snoring that echoes through the sewer.

No matter how hard you try to wake him up, it's just not possible.

Raph will just say 5 more minutes and he'll fall asleep again.

Although he is also an honest grump.

You could ask him anything and he'll grumble back at you.

And he will literally say anything you ask him.

Last time Mikey asked if he loved him (at first he just wanted to see him frown and take a picture), and in response he received an honest reading of how much she adored his little brother, no matter how many times she made him angry. (Mikey almost cried after that)

While asleep he is so honest that sometimes his brothers use him as a kind of psychologist.

Leo even apologizes for the times they have fought, Donnie sometimes lets out some insecurities, Mikey just wants to hear his brother say that he loves him.

But changing the topic.

If you want to wake up this big turtle, just move one of his weights and he'll be there in a second.He does not like the weight to be modified or altered if he has not been notified beforehand.

Do it and he'll be checking every weight he has for about an hour.

⚛️Donatello ⚗️

Seeing him asleep is practically a miracle, because this adorable mad scientist doesn't sleep unless his body screams it at him.

So when you enter the lair and discover that the one on the couch is none other than Donnie, it's a huge surprise.

Of course, that also comes with certain caveats.

1. Don't try to wake him up or tell him to go to bed. (If you do, the thought of going back to sleep won't cross his mind again.)

2. Don't try to prank him when he's in that state. (Everyone learned the hard way that they shouldn't do it, and I'm talking about EVERYONE, even if you are their partner, revenge will come to you if you dare to do it)

3. Do not touch anything that has been left lying around.

The last one is the most important. Don't try to tidy it up, don't try to pick up the trash, don't even think about moving that plate with a half-eaten slice of pizza on it.

For heaven's sake, don't do it.

Because when Donnie wakes up and notices something different, he'll spend a full hour complaining that it wasn't a mess, it was a materialized brainstorm.

That's right, it seems that the empty soda can that Leo had thrown over had a purpose.

So if you don't want to have a dramatic Donnie, don't move anything around him.

🎉Michelangelo🍕

He is the one we will always see asleep on the couch.

Most likely, he tried to defeat a final boss from his most recent video game. (Courtesy of April)

So sometimes you could see his fingers move.

Donnie discovered that it was a combo that Mikey creates in his head and he writes it down so when Mikey wakes up he applies it. (And he copies it for when he wants to have an advantage)

But you should be careful if he stayed up late because of a horror movie marathon.

Because at any moment you can hear him screaming as loud as his lungs allow... and then he falls asleep again.

That's something everyone has experienced when Mikey is asleep after a horror movie.

Leo almost always loses his balance due to his brother's unexpected scream, but in the end he considers it as involuntary training for his reflexes.

Raph ends up breaking his comic book, or his water bottles burst from the force with which he crushes them in surprise.

Donnie ends up breaking his keyboard, or an experiment explodes.

°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•~°•

Hello everyone!, here returning from the lowest of my emotional state.

But here we are!

Tags: (Because it hasn't been tagged for a long time)

@turtle-babe83 . @dilucsflame33 . @thelaundrybitch . @scholastic-dragon . @leosgirl82 . @tmnt-tychou .@little-bunny-in-space . @happymoonangel . @lazyafgurl . @kikithedreamerwriter .@androidships007.

[ashtheketchum]

Comfort Bayverse TMNT

A/N: Somehow I only see stories in which the turtles are comforting us, but here it's the other way around! How would we make the turtles feel better? (Picture from Pinterest!)

Warnings: Maybe alittle bit of angst, fluff, Injury, GN.Reader

______________________________________

Leonardo:

Leo had argued with his brothers again, but it didn't end as well as it should

He was angry, but above all disappointed, so he went into a quiet corner

You had heard them arguing and you wanted to comfort Leo

You saw him meditating, so you quietly walked over and sat next to him

"You wanna talk about it, Leo?" "No, not really..."

So you just sat quietly next to him and watched him meditate

However, after a few minutes, he sighed loudly and started talking about what had happened

You comfort him by telling him that arguments are normal and that he shouldn't always take everything to heart

You then hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek, which made him relax

Thanks to you, he can think about something else

Raphael:

Raph was seriously injured on a mission and was now no longer allowed to go on missions (for a certain time only).

It made him angry and he even argued with you, with the end result being sent to his corner

The other three were off on a mission again while you were supposed to look after Raph

You had made him something to eat and taken some bandages with you

"Raph... are you hungry?" "... yeah, maybe..."

You had put the food in front of him and while he ate you had taken care of his wound

As you tended to his wound, you had hugged him tightly

Raph returned your hug and apologized to you for the argument

Of course you forgive him and then he finishes eating

While he ate, you explained to him why you insisted he rest and he promised you to take more care of himself <3

Donatello:

Donnie had spent an entire week working on a project that was very important to him

However, it went completely wrong and he was completely devastated

Leo had told you and asked you to take care of your boyfriend

So you had bought a few puzzle books and filled out a few things

As soon as you didn't know anything anymore, you made your way to your boyfriend

"Dove, not now... I don´t feel so good..." "But I need your help, please..."

So, unmotivated, Donnie sat down with you and you showed him the puzzle books

After only a short time, Donnie had forgotten about his old project and he enjoyed spending some time with you again

When you had finished all the puzzle books, you kissed him lovingly and hugged him tightly

Afterwards you always took a little time to fill out a few puzzle books

Michelangelo:

Mikey was a little sad that he couldn't go out on Halloween

It was the only day he could go out without being called a monster, but Leo had forbidden him

You didn't want to spend Halloween without your boyfriend either, so you decorated everything in your house and put on a costume

You then invited Mikey over while you ordered food and got out a few snacks

When Mikey arrived he was incredibly happy and he could already smell the pizzas you had ordered

"Happy Halloween, Mikey!" "That's awesome, Babe!"

You had spent the whole evening together and also looked outside to watch the others

One time even small children rang your doorbell and Mikey gave them candys

You also took a lot of selfies together and watched a few movies together

He wants to do this every Halloween now

[ju1cyfru1t]

ROTTMNT x Reader

s/o on their period hcs

Rise! Leo, Raph, Donnie, Mikey x Reader

fluff :D, afab reader, romantic, mentions of blood, MENSTRUATION 🤞, swearing, Leo being stupid 🤌

Leo

- He didn’t know what menstruation was until you told him

- “Wait, wait, wait. Slow down a sec. You’re telling me you BLEED out of your...you know, for a whole week every single month? …and you don’t, like, die?”

- I’m not going to lie to you, he’s a little disgusted. Not by you, but more so the whole bleeding and shedding your uterine lining thing.

- Lowkey hates your period more than you do

- glares at your uterus /hj

- “Uuuuggghhhhh, why does it have to get in the way of everything?” “Hey, don’t blame me! Blame god for that.” “Gods a bit of a dick, if you ask me.”

- If you believe he isn’t going to make period jokes, you are SORELY mistaken

- OF COURSE he’ll come over and cuddle if you ask. He’ll use any excuse he can to see you.

- “I mean, if you really need me that bad-“ “shut the hell up, Leo.” “ok sorry.”

- most likely to piss you off (bc he’s stupid)

- massages your lower stomach and is surprisingly good at it

- watches your fav movies and shows w/ you

- tries to make you laugh so you’ll feel better if you’re not in a good mood or cramping

- agrees with everything you say when you’re ranting about something or someone (he’s scared not to)

- he doesn’t know what the hell a pad is let alone a tampon or menstrual cup

- bust out the water bottle and tampon to show him how it works and he’s gagging

- “oh my god…it gets bigger like that??? In your…oh god-“

- he’s on edge the whole time with your mood swings

- “Must be nice to be a MAN.” “How is that my fault?”

- “it’s OUR period, babe. Uter-US.”

Raph

- terrified

- he can hear you bleeding

- “what’s a uterus?” JK JK JK (maybe)

- he also didn’t know what a period is, and still doesn’t really, fully understand after you explain but still supportive nonetheless

- “you shed your uterine what now?”

- “Right, right…and you bleed out of where?…OH-“

- he just really doesn’t get how you deal with it all

- he knows you’re in pain, bleeding, and uncomfortable. that’s all he needs to know to not like it at all.

- he is SPRINTING 🏃‍♀️ to get you whatever you need (frantically)

- pain killers? chocolate? hot tea? a heating pad? a pad/tampon? to be held? don’t even worry, Raph’s getting it for you.

- he would reach into a pit of burning hot coal and crush them into diamonds if you asked him to

- if you have them, your mood swings are making him nervous

- “Raphael, stop staring at me like that.” “sorry.”

- will be your shoulder to cry on and just listen if you need to rant (even if you’re being unreasonable)

- offers to let you hold his teddy bears for support

- you want him to come over? he’s knocking on your window not even 5 minutes later. you want to go over? of course! you want to be alone? no problem, just let him know if you need him.

- he really just can’t stand to see you in pain or sad. (or angry)

- “I know it hurts…it’s ok, Raph’s got you.”

- asks April for advice

Donnie

- Obviously he at least knows what a period is, just not all the gory details. Who do you take him for? Leo?

- He does his research when he starts dating you so he can be prepared

- He’s really trying not to think about the fact that you bleed 24/7 for a week every month of every year. All that blood- he just can’t do it. It’s not by any means a comfortable subject for him.

- Being comforting is not his strong suit, but he tries his best (sort of)

- keeps some extra pads and tampons in his lab for you (and April) if disaster ever struck

- also has a stash of pain killers (big forehead = big headaches JK I LOVE HIM I SWEAR)

- tracks your cycle. and dreads the couple of days leading up to and of your period.

- ^ “By the way, ugh…you’re gonna start menstruating tomorrow.”

- Yes, he refers to it only as menstruation.

- “Don’t be like that, Y/N.” “Be like WHAT?” “Wait, no..that’s not what- I didn’t mean- please don’t cry-“

- he is stressing

- ^ “Y/N, I can’t know what you want unless you tell me!”

- makes hot tea for you

- claims he could come up with and invent something to “take away all your pain” but tbh I wouldn’t trust that if I were you

- pats and rubs your back for support w/ cramps

- “Donnie, it hurts so baaaaad.” “Shhh, I know it does. Just relax.”

- massages your lower stomach pt.2 not as surprisingly, he is good at it but he’s just skilled with his hands in general (NOT IN A FREAKY WAY YOU FREAKS)

- He will 100% come over and lay with you in your bed if that’s what you ask for

- Sigh. Will let you cuddle in his bed if you swear on your mother you’re not going to leak on him or his bed

- Asks April for advice (poor April)

Mikey

- BEST BF EVER <333

- Has heard of menstruation (mostly misinformation), but he’s never had to worry about it until you started dating

- will let you explain exactly what it is and why it happens

- “Wait- a whole week?! You don’t just bleed it all out at once?” my sweet, sweet boy

- very sympathetic and open about it. He can’t deny it’s a little icky, but it’s your body’s natural function and it’s not like you can help it at all so he’s very understanding

- recognizes your PMS very well. whether you get really irritable, energetic, emotional, etc.

- after the first couple cycles he sees you go through, he starts to be able to read your needs to some extent

- cooks and bakes for you 👩‍🍳 really anything you’re craving as long as it’s within reason

- holds you anywhere and any way you want him to

- it’s like he can feel your pain

- “Shhhhh, it’s ok. I understand.” “..no, you don’t.” “you’re right.”

- gets you pain killers if you need some

- pretty good at handling your mood swings

- If you’re a crier on your monthly (like me) he wipes away your tears :(

- “Let it out, Y/N. You’re ok, I’m right here.”

- makes care packages for you with your favorite things (snacks, drinks, feminine products, stuffed animals, heating pads, etc.)

- if he comes to your house, he’ll offer to run a warm bath for you and wait for you to be done

- not necessarily scared, but definitely a little more careful with his choice of words towards you

- actually the sweetest I love him sm

- watching movies and shows if you don’t feel like getting up. or even just laying with you if you don’t feel like do anything but sleeping

- he’s very proud of himself for taking care of you

- “you’re the best, Mikey, thank you.” “Yeah, I know.”

[punkeccentricenigma]

Rise!Boys accidentally confess their love to Reader.

Relationship status: Romantic

Reader prounouns: They/Them

TW: Slight angst for Raph's part, Some grammatical errors because english is not my first language.

Author's note: Just enjoy lol.

.⋆｡⋆˚｡⋆｡˚｡⋆. .⋆｡⋆˚｡⋆｡˚｡⋆.

Leonardo

◇ Ever since Leo realized his feelings, his casual demeanor towards [Y.N] had turned into almost aggressively flirting.

◇ Despite not wanting to rush into confessing his feelings, he was practically a simp for that person..

◇ But he also teased them often, of course, not on a seriously offensive level. Just light pokes and prods.

◇ I'm sure he bragged to anyone about his not-yet relationship with [Y.N].

"Oh, and I recently won a unicorn plushie for them, and they were really delighted! WE'RE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER!"

"Pepino, get the hell out of here."

◇ Just as Donatello had enough of his (non-)twin, he now wanted to dig a hole to hell and throw him in there to finally get some rest.

◇ Anyway, the accidental confession happened one night when neither he nor [Y.N] could sleep.

◇ They were sending each other various memes through Discord in bulk. This boosted his confidence even more, leading to him typing 'I love you.'

◇ Of course, he hadn't sent it yet; his mind was suddenly filled with not-so-good thoughts. What if they don't feel the same? What if they laugh at him?? Or something worse?!

◇ Despite his persona, the boy was full of insecurities, from his looks to his personality, but with them... he felt good about himself.

◇ But would such a confession be too simple? The boy decided to wait at least one day before confessing his love.

◇ But fate said 'nuh-uh,' and his phone fell on Leo's face, causing panic. Due to his carelessness, he held the device wrong, resulting in the accidental sending of the ill-fated message.

"No, no, no, NO!" His voice trembled as he tried to delete the message immediately. Unfortunately, the app froze to his disadvantage. "Damn it!"

◇ When he managed to reopen the app, there was a new message.

◇ "... You are not joking, right?"

◇ This night would last even longer than a turtle had anticipated.

Raphael

◇ I think it happened during the attack on their home by Shredder. Absolute chaos, a storm of emotions, the perfect situation for an imperfect love confession.

◇ "Raph, have you lost your mind?!" [Y.N] began, full of outrage. "Why didn't you let me stay? Splinter and Draxum need help!"

The turtle furrowed his brow bones, looking down at the shorter person with regret. "It was the only way, I'm sure they'll handle it."

"And what if they don't? What if they needed our help right now?"

◇ No matter how advanced [Y.N]'s combat skills were, Raphael was even more opposed to the idea.

◇ "Nothing will happen to them!" Raphael raised his voice, as if trying to convince not only the teenager but himself. "And stop arguing with me; I'm the leader here, and I make the decisions!"

"Damn it, I don't understand you! I could handle it, and you would have more time to plan; I'm not needed here!!"

◇ Just a reminder, everyone present was watching this argument.

◇ "Yes, you are!"

"No, I'm not!"

"You are! I don't want to lose you like Gram Gram; I love you too much!" His angry red face suddenly turned shocked. Oh, oh. Did he really just say that??

◇ His dark eyes met the teenage counterpart's. Their whole face was red, and their determination to sacrifice themself slowly faded from their eyes.

"... Fine," [Y.N] muttered and sat down in the seat next to Michelangelo.

◇ When all this chaos is over, they'll have to talk, this time more calmly.

Donatello

◇ Donnie has a need to be as organized as possible, so before suggesting anything, he has to plan everything out and make sure that any confession of feelings will go perfectly.

◇ Of course, he had a large folder with potential scenarios that could happen before and after the confession. It had a bit of a vibe from his previous reincarnation, but much less scary and obsessive - he simply felt strong discomfort without preparation.

◇ Leo likes to tease him about it, by the way.

◇ Anyway, there was one situation the boy didn't anticipate. One night, he had been working on another invention all night, aimed at stealing another battery from the Purple Dragons, and in the morning, he fell asleep at his desk, or rather, he was half-unconscious.

◇ "Dee, come to bed." Raphael's voice echoed through the lab, gently shaking the sleepy Soft-shell's naked shoulder. In response, he got some sluggish syllables and a hiss. "You can't sit here like this; it's not healthy." "And sitting here all night is unhealthy enough," he added quietly.

"Get lost..." That's all the turtle understood. Raph rolled his eyes and moved away from his brother a bit.

"I'm not going to struggle; I'm sleep-deprived myself," the red-loving enthusiast said, picking up his phone.

◇ And so [Y.N] appeared in the lair, as the ultimate weapon.

◇ "Donnie! Get up! Lie down in bed!" The teenager themself was not well-rested, considering the early hour, but they tried not to sound irritated. Donnie mumbled something again and straightened up in his chair.

"Raphaello, leave me alone," Donnie started, putting his hands on the keyboard. Apparently, he had no intention of opening his eyes. "I still need to make a few changes to the code..."

"Wait, do you think I'm Raph??" [Y.N] asked in surprise, pointing at themself. Did their voice really sound so manly and deep?? Since when??

"And you're talking in the third person again; I've told you that it's no longer fashionable." Donnie tried not to hit his head against the desk even a little, wanting to at least be somewhat awake. The human wanted to say something, correct him, but gave up with a certain idea in their mind.

◇ they had noticed strange aspects of their friend's behavior lately. He was more open to their, often grabbing their hand or hugging their despite his usual aversion to it, he made various devices for their that made quite an impression on their... there had to be something to it!

◇ "Hey, buddy," the human leaned lazily against the desk, trying their best to mimic the speech style of the oldest of the brothers. "Do you, you know, have something going on with our best, most wonderful human friend??"

"You mean April?" Ouch, that hurt, even though [Y.N] felt the same way. "She's our almost-sister, Raph, yuck."

◇ "Oh, no! [Y.N], I meant [Y.N]!" The teenager corrected themself, slightly annoyed. It was weird.

"What about them? I already told you." No! Not like that!

"Ahahah, you know I have a bad memory when I'm not stressed!"

"Mh..." Pause. Did they say something wrong? Donatello is overly smart; he should figure out what's wrong! How will they explain this? "Everything's fine; my plan will be initiated in half a year at the latest." Plan? What plan??

"Plan...?"

"Rendezvous plan, duh," Donnie replied, resting his head on his hand. "I know you advised against it, but I can't do it differently. I need everything to be tip-top before I confess my feelings to them."

◇ "..."

◇ "..."

◇ "Raph...?"

◇ [Y.N] remained silent, trying to control their sudden heartbeat and their face turning as red as a strawberry.

Michelangelo

◇ Playing the role of Dr. Delicate Touch, the boy knew perfectly well what he felt and wanted to confess his love, but the natural fear of rejection also got to him.

◇ He wanted to think this all through. He wanted to do it as smoothly and charmingly as possible, but not in a way that made it seem like he didn't care. He didn't want to throw such important words to the wind!

◇ His artist's soul played a significant role here. Every time he felt great, he had to sketch something related to love.

◇ Just woke up from a fantastic dream? He had to quickly grab his sketchbook and sketch [Y.N] in a floral wreath.

◇ He was on patrol and saw their favorite cafe? He started sketching the teenager drinking coffee in the nearby sand with his finger, taking a picture of it as a keepsake.

◇ Spending quality time with [Y.N]? He convinced them to start painting each other with his favorite markers, and under the pretext of light fun, he drew orange hearts on their cheeks.

◇ It was all fun until there was an 'accident' during one of the previously mentioned activities.

◇ So, Mikey and [Y.N] were in his new room after Shredder's attack, and he needed help with some unique decoration.

◇ "Wait, isn't that a neon banner from the nearby store??" The teenager asked, pointing at the mentioned thing, peeking out from behind the boy.

"I neither confirm nor deny it!" Mikey laughed, shrugging his shoulders. "You have to admit it fits perfectly."

"Mhm, but I doubt you'll fall asleep with this," [Y.N] said skeptically, picking up one of the cardboard boxes that contained a surplus of notebook-like items. "Where does this go?"

"Oh! Just put it next to the cabinet; I'll put them in the drawers in a sec."

The human nodded, and as they took a few more steps, they tripped over the cables lying on the floor. they fell to the ground with a squeak, dropping the box less than half a meter in front of them.

"Are you okay??" The orange-loving enthusiast quickly ran to his friend, helping them get up as they groaned in pain.

"Yeah, I think so..." Their voice trailed off, surprising Mikey, who followed their gaze.

◇ His pupils immediately narrowed upon seeing an open sketchbook with many drawings and sketches of [Y.N], with a predominant theme of love.

"Mikey...?"

"IT'S NOTHING!" The teenager shouted, hastily picking up the sketchbook from the floor and pressing it against his plastron.

◇ Their faces both turned equally red with excessive thinking.

◇ Oops.

[precious-little-scoundrel]

Dear John || Tell me you didn’t

Dear John || Masters of the Air fanfiction

Series Summary: Major John Egan wasn’t the pen-pal sort but a couple of hours into a dark night full of writing condolence letters he finds himself wondering why he never tried his hand at the nicer forms of correspondence. Who better to reanimate his numb inspiration than the glamorous Miss Lana Tierney? -the army’s girl next door, the pinup so prolific she was practically a wall paper print and Bucky’s long-standing cinematic crush. It’s not like she’ll read it anyways, tucked up in luxury in Beverly Hills with carts of tedious fanmail burned in her back yard each day, his letter will get lost in the mix. It’s harmless. That thought -and the booze- may loosen his pen a little too much but it’s alright, it’s not like she’ll read it. Right? Right.

Circa: August 1943

Plot: Gale Cleven learns that not only did his best friend send dubious fanmail while blind drunk, he seems to have singled out with his indomitable luck the one starlet of the silver screen capable of matching his depravity

Warnings: 18+ for suggestive and crass content, it’s pretty much two boys acting like a couple of girls at a sleepover deciphering a dirty text from one’s crush

My thanks to my baby Bri for literally being the brains behind the plot and for Christi for assuring me this ain’t trash. We shall if y’all share those sentiments…

The referenced letter link 💌

“Tell me you didn’t.” Gale managed to keep his tone calm but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit his fingertips had gone a little chilly.

“I-“ Egan threw his arms out as if a better truth might form with a little more gesticulation but nothing came, “I did, Buck.” he admitted.

“You wrote it blind drunk.” Gale reminded him with urgency, as if the reminder of its ill calculated circumstances could snatch back his letter from out of Lana Tierney’s posh mailbox.

“I did!” He agreed, “-And I sent it blind drunk. And I never thought she’d read it.”

“I saw you eat it!” Cleven’s voice was growing angry, “I made you-“

“That may have been a botched first draft to Donny’s folks instead.” Egan winced.

Both of them lapsed again into silence, staring warily at the unopened and daintily addressed envelope in Egan’s hand like it might explode at any moment.

“You sonuvabitch.” Gale breathed, two frantic pink splotches appearing on his cherub cheeked face, judgment and disbelief making a whirlpool of his eyes. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute. What all did you even say?”

“I didn’t tell her about ACORN!” John vowed like a child swearing to their sibling regarding secrets kept from mother, “I mean, i called her that but I didn’t explai-“

“-John!”

“-and I said a lotta nice things too, I think, but, I also-“ Egan scrunched his eyes up as if to either better recall or maybe banish entirely all memory of his sentiments, “-I may have mentioned wanting to give her children.”

“JOHN!”

“It can’t have been that bad, she wrote back!” Egan defended with wounded hope, holding up his still sealed prize. “Buck, swear to God, I never thought she’d read it.”

Gale slumped down next to him on the bed as if the ordeal in voyeuristic stupidity had taken something out of him. “Maybe she didn’t.” he suggested grimly. “Maybe it’s from her attorney tellin’ you to never contact her again.”

He was enjoying ruining this moment a little too much, and now Egan was growing angry he had waited to open it until confiding in his friend. Not a little anxious, and not a little smug, Egan flipped the envelope over, ready to tear its flap. That’s when he saw the kiss print. “Ha!” he barked, flipping it back up and shoving it directly in front of Gale’s crossing eyes, “Do lawyers leave lip prints?” he questioned cockily and when Gale pulled far enough away to ascertain for himself, he gave a conceding nod.

“Huh.”

“Yeah, huh.” John goaded but his heart beat a crazy and skittish rhythm as he slipped his finger inside the fold and tore at the slip.

Lovely, scented, gold embossed stationery came into view, it made Egan question how well he had washed his hands the paper was so white and pristine.

“Well?” Gale kept to a respectful distance of half a foot away from his friend on the bed, and being a good sort of man, he was not snooping or side eyeing private correspondence.

“Uh, yeah, right.” Bucky rallied himself and unfolded the missive fully, forcing his eyes to focus on deciphering charming, school girl cursive. “Get over here, Buck.” he griped at last as it was hopeless to make headway between his own nerves and Cleven’s hovering presence.

Gale didn’t move and Bucky didn’t expect him to so he scooted over herself, smashing him on the edge and held the letter out as they both leaned in.

“Dear John, -I’m sorry Major Egan, I just had to.”

“Oh shit.” Bucky swore in realization.

“She’s funny.” Gale’s tone was ever so mild.

“Nah she’s, Buck, she’s quoting me back to me I told her -nevermind, let’s see-“

They peered back at the letter together, Cleven more invested that he’d ever admit and Bucky’s heart doing the oddest little flips at the realization that someone gave enough of a damn to write this sorta thing back to him.

“Heartfelt.” Gale murmured her choice of words for Bucky’s letter aloud with something close to relief, only to be then followed by a groan- “you did not write the word ‘knockers’ in a letter to a woman!”

“You're right, you’re right,” Egan ducked his head, repentant, he wouldn’t have been the least surprised if he got a wallop from Cleven for it, “awful of me. I admitted it even then. She admits it. Let’s move on.”

“RACK!” Cleven growled moments later in growing disbelief. “Jesus, John.”

“Oh don’t act better than all of it, you know she’s got the best melons out there-“

“-you’re the one who felt compelled to write a nice young lady and tell her as much.” Buck stabbed an accusatory finger dangerously close to Egan’s nose, “And used vulgarities while at it.”

Egan gave a defensive shrug and began his reading anew. “She said she’s fizzing…over making babies.” he whispered, “With me.” John was awed and this time Cleven had no rebuttal, just ever growing wonderment on his ever reddening face. “And she says here, look! she says you’re a bad boy for breaking us up that night! HA!”

“She’s being polite Bucky,” Gale cautioned, worried at where this surge of confidence might lead, “she didn’t admit to remembering a bit of it. They send girls to school to let fellas like you down easy.”

“Aww, now she says to give ya a kiss.” Egan cooed, saccharine and wicked, “See, she’s so nice and you’re the one who’s awful, doubting her like that. She says to give ya one if you’re the sort to take it well, are ya Buck, huh? Are you? Huh?”

“No, no! Jesus, get off me!” Cleven exerted every bit of his wiry strength to lug off the sudden onslaught of Egan’s heavy embrace as they folded together back onto the bed, John’s mouth making sickening smooching noises against Cleven’s baby smooth cheek, mustache a foreign and terrifying tickle on his jaw. “Get the hell off me, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m riled, just like her, that’s what’s wrong.” Egan replied vehemently, pulling his face away but keeping a perturbed Buck beneath his greater weight. “And maybe one day you’ll know what that feels like, Goldilocks. See, says right here: *I can feel my pulse somewhere besides my wrists* Do you hear that?” He demanded, still holding the letter aloft as Gale looked up at him with the sort of patience people reserve for lunatics liable to murder them at the least hint of movement. “I’ve made her horny.” he spelled it out and Gale’s face somehow flushed an even deeper shade of scarlet. “She wants to know what acorn means.”

“Don’t you ever tell her.” Gale warned.

“Why not?”

“It’s not even a good acronym, it’s misspelled and missing a whole word.”

“She wants it to be ‘salacious’ -says so herself.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.” Bucky flipped the letter over for Gale to see and judging by the panic in his eyes he caught more lines than that one alone.

“Jesus.” he repeated, it was starting to sound like a genuine beg for divine intervention. “Get off me.”

That itching physical impulse to roughhouse remained but Egan obligingly rolled to the side, aware Buck didn’t have what would cure his own riled self. “She says she enclosed something for the morale, said to keep it safe. But there’s not anything else. You see anything else?”

“I don’t.” Buck sounded worn down but he made an effort to look around amongst the sheets.

“Julia Jean.” Egan pondered, “Says that’s her real name.”

“Yeah, well, maybe now you can stop calling her acorn every damn time she comes on screen.”

“Don’t count on it.” Egan grinned back.

“Maybe it’s still in the envelope.” Gale suggested, tentatively picking up the air mail slip and handing it to Bucky.

Egan sat up and shook the paper between them, wondering if it was really something worth hiding from the censors like some OSS spy shit. A couple of shakes and sure enough, some slippery little card shaped thing fluttered out of a crease and wafted to the ground, settling between Buck’s boots. John’s stoic young friend bent over and retrieved it, but not without his entire spine stiffening like he’d been hit as soon as he’d caught it.

“Jesus.” it was more of a wheeze this time. Gale’s slow hand raised it and passed it over.

There wasn’t anything to say, not when confronted with such perfection. Not even a shielding arm to cheat him of the whole display, nothin’ at all but a carefully cropped photograph of the ripest pair of-

“Goddamn.” John’s tongue finally materialized a sentiment and he heard Gale’s appreciative sharp intake of breath beside him as if he’d forgotten to breathe here lately. “They’re wonderful.”

“Yeah.” Gale’s own throat sounded dry as dust, “W-we should probably stop starin’.”

“Whadda ya think she sent ‘em for?” John laughed, a rough, victorious laugh, never once dragging his admiring eyes away from them or ceasing to thumb over the shiny print. He could almost feel her warm, giving flesh under the pad of his finger, could almost imagine the pebble of a rosy nipple responding to his swipes.

“Yeah, they’re alright-“

“Alright? Alright!?” Egan repeated, incensed for his beloved’s reputation, “THESE ARE THE BEST TITS IN THE NATION!”

Gale actually looked mildly chastened, especially as his eyes strayed guiltily back to the photograph like twin marbles gravitating to the corner of a box when tipped.

“I know you haven’t seen many, Buck,” Egan goaded him further, “but take it from me -they don’t get better than this. And you better enjoy this look, it’s your last, she told me to keep them safe. So see this? These? This pair? S’why we fight, Buck.”

“Don’t be crass, John,” Gale stood up abruptly, less angry at his friend than at himself for his momentary lapse of discipline, “we fight for the people we love.”

“Course we do,” John grinned, “but I also happen to love these, told her so myself.”

“You didn’t-“

“I did.” Bucky was pretty chuffed, bouncing on the edge of the bed like he had her seated in his lap right now, “Everybody’s got to have a goal, Buck, you wanna marry Marj and I wanna aggressively come on ripe knock-“

“-A.C.O.R.N. yeah, yeah.”

“Acorn.” Bucky grinned in agreement.

“You gonna admit to her you didn’t know knockers was spelled with a k?”

“I did, too! Just couldn’t make it work.”

“Still doesn't work.” Buck informed, but his smile was returning, he’d not been this close with Bucky for this long not to learn to roll with the differences and appreciate that what made his best friend tick was a very different sort of morale than his own. “I’m happy for ya, John.” he conceded, as he turned to leave, “But when you write her back -and you gotta, she’s been too kind -promise me you’ll be a gentleman about it. Apologize, like the man I know you are. Drink got the better of you, just, explain it that way.”

“Uhuh.” John gave him a sober nod, still a little dazed this wasn’t some fever dream. “Kinda already did. In the one I sent.”

“She wasn’t deterred.” Gale mused, “Either you were shit at it or she’s-“

“Zesty.” Egan deduced, sucking his teeth with a manic gleam in his eye.

“Yeah, as an orange peel.” Gale snarked and walked away, past the rows of empty beds and outside into the rain, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Bucky fell back against his mattress, sudden peace and aloneness giving him a chance to soak it in a second time, carefully reading over it all again, savoring each quip, each earnest prayer and naughty subtext. Which naturally led him back to admiring her little picture, groaning in unrestrained appreciation for her assets. She’d hinted about him taking it to his bunk -well wasn’t he fast to obey! Something possessed him to flip it over and there in the corner of the photograph, written in tiny little script, were doodles of music notes along with the ever so familiar lyrics:

“Beat me daddy, eight to the bar.”

John threw back his head and let out a roar of appreciation for finding a mirrored soul. “Oh Julie Jean, honey baby, don’t you worry, I’ll beat out somethin’ for ya, that’s for sure.”

💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌

Thank y’all for reading, hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, please scream at me, I thrive off it. 💋

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[skysiren41]

What if Raph stayed mind controlled for longer? (TMNT 2012 rewrite)

As much as I love TMNT 2012, one of the things I thought was disappointing was having Raph only be mind controlled by Shredder for one episode. I think there was a lot of potential to have one of the turtles temporarily be on the villians side (kinda like how in the IDW comics Leo was brainwashed into becoming part of the foot clan) so I thought 'what if Raph stayed brainwashed for longer?' And now I want to share my idea

(Buckle in folks)

Clash Of The Mutanimals

Clash of The Mutanimals would largely remain the same, Slash and Rockwell are used as test subjects by Stockman and are brainwashed by Shredder, they end up in the turtles lair where they seem fine, but the mind control worms activate, a fight starts and they end up capturing Raph and bring him to Shedder where he ends up being brainwashed as well

However the changes start at the climax of the episode, instead of Leo making Raph mad which causes him to spit out the mind control worm, it's instead Donnie who manages to break Rockwell free first by insulting him till he's angry enough to spit it out. A now freed Rockwell then uses his psychic powers to blast the worm out of Slash. However when he tries to do it to Raph, it doesn't work, even the Turtles can't make Raph angry like they did with Rockwell. This is when Shedder taunts the turtles during his brawl with them and Mutanimals by revealing that during the time he had send out Slash and Rockwell out as bait, Stockman was able to create a stronger brain worm specifically for one of the turtles at the request of Shredder, which is why he ordered Slash and Rockwell to bring one of the turtles to him. Not only did he want Karai on his side again, but have one of the turtles as well just to rub salt in the wound for Splinter and the turtles. Eventually Slash and Leatherhead are able to push the statue on Shredder before a bunch of foot soldiers swarm the room with a still mind controlled Raph leading them. While the other turtles want to stay and save Raph, the Mutanimals (mainly Rockwell) tells them they have to retreat if they all don't want to be killed, and they reluctantly do so

Back at the lair we get the scene of Slash apologising to Splinter For hurting him, but also apologising for what happened to Raph, believing that it was his fault that he got captured. Splinter (though its clear that he's heartbroken over what happened) reassures Slash that what happened wasn't his or Rockwell's fault. At the very end Leo promises Splinter that he Mikey and Donnie will do everything they can to get Raph back

For the next episodes we see the heroes struggling with not only trying to find a alternative cure for the brain worms, but with the fact that one of their brothers/son/friends is gone and working for Shredder

Meet Mondo Gecko

Meet Mondo Gecko would for the most part be similar to the original, however we see how the characters are dealing with Raph's absence, with Mikey trying to distract himself in his shows, Donnie trying to find a cure for the mind control worms, and Leo endlessly training in order to basically kick Shredder's ass for what he did to Raph. Also during the race at the end, Fishface tries to taunt Mikey with bringing up what happened to Raph, how he and his brothers failed to save him and for a brief moment it works, but with the help of Mondo and Casey there able to finish the race

At the end of the episode we cut to Shredder's lair where we see him train with someone just as a defeated Fishface walks in. Fishface reveals to Shredder that the turtles haven't been the same since the loss of Raph (noting how angry Mikey got when he taught him about Raph) this pleases Shredder who says "how about we give them a much needed family reunion" before the camera pans to show not only a now brainwashed Karai, but a still brainwashed Raph in a new design that he will keep till The Fortold Trap

Think of the design as a mix of his Vision quest and Owari design but more Foot Clan themed. Also due to him loosing his Sai's during Clash of The Mutanimals (which Splinter now keeps close to him) He now uses the Shredder claws he used in that same episode as his main weapon

The Deadly Venom

Now this episode notably has a few changes, firstly the beginning of the episode is a flashback that took place before Meet Mondo Gecko, explaining what had happened with Karai and how she got brainwashed. In present day Shedder once again orders Karai to take down the turtles, Splinter, April and Casey, but this time she's joined by Raph who Shedder thinks they can use to find them easier (que the two acting like siblings). During the talk with Splinter and Leo at the start, Leo starts to open up about how he wishes that he wasn't so hard on Raph before he got brainwashed, thinking that if he didn't antagonise him as much as he did, then he would still be here. Splinter tries to comfort Leo by reassuring him that what happened to Raph wasn't his, Slash's or anyone else's fault, but it's clear after that Leo is still upset

With the help of Raph, Karai is able to find April's home where she uses her venom to poison her. When she fights Casey at first he has the upper hand, that is until Raph joins the fight and he hesitates, which Karai uses to her advantage to poison him as well. The turtles get an SOS from Casey, both Mikey and Leo go to investigate and they find Casey, but before they bring him back they are ambushed by Raph, both shocked with how diffrent he looks. They struggle during the fight, not only due to the training Raph had received from Shredder, but don't want to hurt him. During the fight however Mikey gets bitten by one of Karai's snakes, and Raph is able to capture him and Casey. Before he and Karai leave she demands Leo and Donnie to meet them both in the station or else they will kill Casey and Mikey, with no other choice Leo calls Donnie, explains the situation and the two adventure into the station while kirby and Splinter watch over a still poisoned April

The episode largely remains the same at this point with Leo and Donnie bring poisoned from the water, but Leo is able to heal himself with the Healing Hands and fights both karai and Raph, however at one point where Raph has Leo cornered and is a about to strike him but he hesitates, as if his trying to stop himself from hurting him, and Leo notices this. Back at the lair after the others are healed Leo reveals to the others what happened with Raph hesitating, and this gives the others hope that Raph is still in there

Mutanimals episode

ok so this is probably gonna be my biggest change, I'm gonna move Turtles in Time and Tale of The Yokai to take place after The Fortold Trap. In it's place would be an episode focusing on the mutanimals, mainly Slash. The episode would focus on Slash's guilt with what happened in Clash Of The Mutanimals, in his mind if he hadn't tried to ambush Tiger Claw at the docks, none of this wouldn't have happened and raph wouldn't have gotten brainwashed. Now I'm not gonna go into too much detail on this one cause I'm still trying to come up with ideas for it, but the main thing is that the episode would have a Mutanimals vs Raph and Karai fight that hints again of Raph trying to regain control from the mind control worm. If your interested in how the episode would go feel free to let me know

Attack Of The Mega Shredder

After finding out that Raph had hesitated in The Deadly Venom and the Mutanimals episode, Shedder has Stockman inject Raph with a serum in order to make the mind control worm inside him stronger. As he and karai watch, Shedder reassures her they they will both get their revenge (though we get hints that karai herself is starting to fight back against the mind control worm) he then orders Bebop and Rocksteady to double the security. Like in the orignal episode the other turtles try to break into Shredder's lair in order to save Raph and Karai as well as get one of the mind control worms, but they end up getting caught and have to retreat, with Donnie being to get his leg broken by Tigerclaw

Leo then tries to sneak into the lair alone but Mikey follows him and Leo eventually let's him join. Again the episode largely remains the same but during the climax while they try to stop the Mega Shredder, Leo and Karai have a one v one. Thoughout the episode Karai was slowly starting to fight back against the worms control, and eventually with the help of Leo reminding her who she is, she is able to spit out the brain worm, and now Karai is back on the heroes side and helps them defeat the Mega Shredder

They bring Karai back, we have a sweet reunion between her and Splinter, and she reveals that Shredder has infected Raph with the serum, making their job to find a cure more difficult. Leo then suggests to Karai that with Shredder being hell bent having her in his clutches, she should temporarily leave New York in order to not get captured again, which she does (explaining her absence for the rest of the season)

The Creeping Doom

This episode is basically the same as the orignal, just without Raph

The Fortold Trap

Here we are, the finale to this arc. The main difference with this episode is obviously instead of Karai, it's Raph who lures the team into a trap (also Casey is here) using his knowledge of his brothers, he lures each of them out into a trap. First Donnie, then Mikey, and finally Leo, Casey and April with the help of Shredder's mutants. When April tries to escape and Raph stops her, she pleades with him to snap out of it, but it falls on deaths ears as it's clear that what Stockman inject into Raph in Attack Of The Mega Shredder is working

He brings them into the trap rooms (with Casey being in the fire room) and while April continues to try and tell Raph to let go and snap out of it, he calls Splinter so he can witness the turtles, April and Casey's demise. With that Splinter basically goes "screw it" and goes to confront him and Shredder's mutants (bringing Raph's Sai's with him) After beating the mutants, we finally get a Raph vs Splinter fight, though its clear that he doesn't want to fight his own son. As the turtles and Casey each break out of their trap rooms with the help of April, Splinter begs Raph to fight back against Shredder's control, and eventually Raph briefly does for a moment. As he does before he can strike, Splinter and Leo together perform the Healing Hands on Raph. Raph stumbles and is about to fall into the rivulet before Donnie and Mikey catch him. And after a brief moment, he finally spits out the brain worm (which Leo quickly kills) he opened his eyes, they're back to normal and he mutters "what did I miss, guys?" With that the Turtles, Splinter, April and Casey group hug him, crying as they are happy to finally have him back. Raph begins profusely apologise for everything that happened, how he almost killed them but they reassure him that what happened wasn't his fault, and that they are just happy to finally have him back after so long. With that they head home, finally a full team and family again

On Turtles in Time and Tale of The Yokai, the episodes basically remain the same, they just take place after The Fortold Trap

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this rewrite and I thank you for listening to my ramblings! Feel free to share your thoughts, ideas and criticisms! And feel free to give suggestions on what I could rewrite next

[fizzywashere87]

OKAY OKAY SO I WAMNA REQUEST LIKE 2012 RAPH HAS A CRUSH

AND HIS CRUSH IS THE MOST DENSE MF EVER LIKE RAOH WILL FLIRT WITH EM AND THEY'LL BE LIKE "awe thanks!" Just really oblivious lol

notes: OMGIE YESSSSS THIS IS CUTE (it has been rotting in my inbox for a few weeks months and this i apologize for) also i didn't know if you wanted hc's or a fic so i js went with a fic for this one BUT I HAD SO MUCH FUN WRITING THIS TYSM FOR REQUESTING ML I HOPE YOU ENJOY!! 🫶🫶

Warnings: Gn! Reader, Fluff? Slight crack ig, Rushed at the end kinda

M.List

Think Babes, Think!

Raphael and his brothers were training in the dojo, as usual. Nothing new, nothing to bat an eye for, though Raphael was somewhat distracted. This was not usual.

What was he thinking about that made him so distracted you ask me?

Them.

Who's them?

(Name)

He's gonna try and flirt with them today, that's why he's so worked up.

Raphael is put against Donatello today in their sparring matches, and while they circle each other just waiting for Master Splinter to give them the 'go,' Raphael can't seem to shut his thoughts up.

They probably don't even like you back.

You're an ugly, gross mutant, they're human and just perfect, no human wants to be with a mutant, nonetheless one like them.

Ugly green freak-

His anger was beginning to show on his face. Donatello noticed, raising a non-existent brow, he started, "Uh- Raph-"

"Haijime!"

Raph lunged at Donnie right away, which the taller turtle narrowly dodged, causing Raph to tuck and land on his knees for him to quickly get back up again. The rest of the sparring match was a blur, Raphael was just angry.

"Yame!"

He came back to his sense when he heard Donnie groan from the floor as he stood over him panting slightly. He wasn't as angry as he was a few seconds ago, but the feeling of anger definitely lingered. Donnie got up, Leo and Mikey were already seated on their knees, Leo having won that match. "Uh, Raph, you look, like extra angry dude-" Mikey spoke up prompting Raph to whip his head at his younger brother and send him a glare.

"I am not angry." He spoke through gritted teeth, Mikey put his hands up in mock defense as Donnie and Raph go to sit on their knees beside their two brothers. Master Splinter stands in front of his four sons his hands clasped behind his back, the boys wait to hear what he's about to say, Raph, with an angered look on his features.

"You boys did-"

"Casey! Cut it out!"

"I didn't do nothin' red!"

"Say on God, we both seen you Jones!"

Master Splinter sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose at the certain ruckus going on at the new arrivals if you'll call them that, Leo also seems to sigh, the rest of the brothers unphased.

At the sound of their voice, Raph's anger was immediately lifted a ton, and he thought about his plan to flirt with them today. He didn't know how he was going to do it, but he was going to. His attention turned back to his sensei when he heard another sigh come from him. "You boys did well today, remember your strengths, hide and let go of your weaknesses. We will resume our training tomorrow."

"Hai sensei!" The boys say together, bowing slightly before getting up and meeting their human friends who're in the living room.

As the four boys walk in, April gives a warm smile and wave, (Name) flashes their usual grin, and Casey continues munching on popcorn. Donnie runs to April first much to Casey's dismay and he gets ready to pick a small fight. Mikey, as usual runs to grab a comic book and he plops on the couch next to Casey, giving (Name) a fist bump, Leo also walking over to greet and join his friends. (Name) looks to Raph who seems to be taking the soul out of that poor punching dummy.

(Name) walks over to him, smiling slightly. "Hey Raph, what 'cha up to?" They ask talking over his quieter grunts. He pauses for a moment, looking at them and sighing slightly, (Name) didn't pick up on it.

"Nothing, just punching." He replies, crossing his arms, they look at the dummy and back at him, nodding in understandment. He really wanted to say something sweet to them, something that would give them the hint. This was so, so, not like him. He's not supposed to care about this, the only thing he's supposed to care about is punching aliens and taking down Shredder. So why, why was he so persistent with this?

Although now that he thinks about it, he may have to be a bit more straightforward with (Name). There was that one time...

"Hey." Raph says as a greeting, seeing (Name) walk into the lair, they plop down on the couch next to him, and he sets his comic down.

"Hey Raph! What's up?" (Name) smiled and started idly tapping their foot on the ground. This was his chance, why was he doing this? Never mind that he's doing it, no matter how soft he comes off as.

"You," he clears his throat, "you look cute today." Raph says mentally cursing himself at the way he sounded and how they easily could've taken that as him implying they don't look cute everyday.

(Name) pauses for a moment, taking in his words. A bright smile etches across their face and she gives him a thumbs up. "Thank you Raph! You look pretty good yourself!" They stay quiet for a moment before speaking up. "You okay? It's totally not like you to give out compliments like that!" (Name) tilts their head a wave of concern washing over their adorable human features.

Raph was dumbfounded, shocked even. He stayed quiet for a moment as he processes how his flirting just flew over your head. Were they playing dumb with him to avoid rejecting him? he wouldn't blame them... (Name) was a human and he was an ugly green freak!

"What do you mean?! I can't compliment people?!" He plays the angry and defensive card to get out of that one.

(Name) watches as he punches the dummy, looking over how his muscles flexed at certain points, taking it all in. They wished he seen them the way they do. Why can't he like them back?

Raph stops his punching and turns towards (Name), he took a deep breath and sighed. "(Name), can I ask you something?" He sounded almost nervous? What was wrong?

"Of course Raph! What's up?" (Name) asked slightly concerned, it could be anything at this point. (Name) was hoping he'd get it over quickly so they don't have to wait any longer in suspense.

"Would you," Raph clears his throat, "Would you want to go out sometime?" His tried not to wince as his voice took on a higher pitch at the end.

(Name) thought for a moment, was he asking them out? Probably not, either way they would love to go. "Sure!" They smile, "Any specific reason?" They ask curious as to why Raph of all people would want to go out with them.

Raph sighed audibly through his nose. Welp, this was going to be all or nothing. Time to rip the bandaid off for this one. "I was asking you out on a date." He crosses his arms he scoffs. "Forget it, you wouldn't want to go on a date with an ugly green mutant. Stop playing stupid with me." Raph walks off, angry and a little sad.

(Name) pauses for a moment, as if something wet had just hit them in the face. "What?" They mumble. "Raph wait!" They call out and Raph pauses.

"What do you want?" Raph turns around to face them again, although he didn't really want to. (Name) lightly jogs up to him. "I would love to go out with you, I just didn't think that you liked me like that..." (Name) says rubbing the back of their neck awkwardly.

Raph raises a brow, a small smirk on his face. "You really are that dense." He said crossing his arms, getting an eye roll from (Name)."Where were you thinking we go?" (Name) asks, referring to their up coming date, completely disregarding his (lighthearted) insult.

"Mr. Murakami's place, it's not like I can go anywhere else." Raph says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. (Name) shrugs and nods. "You do have a point there." They smile at him and plant a kiss on his cheek.

"Pick me up at 8 on Friday!" (Name) skips off to go hangout with April who was seated on the couch engrossed in her laptop for school. Raph was left there with pink cheeks and wide eyes, his jaw slightly agape.

Wow.

@fashionablysouly @serendipitous-girl

[dawnisatotalqueen]

one last try

pairing: donatello x reader

show: rottmnt

tags: fem reader, jealous donnie, wingman leo, rowdy reader

warnings: cursing (once), y/n used once, maybe ooc idk 😞

word count: 1326

Your hair was bleach blonde before you met them. You were trying to settle on a color, but you just couldn’t make up your mind. You thought about dying it your favorite color, then decided not to because what if it didn’t compliment you? That would be the absolute END OF THE WORLD.

But! Your mind was made for you after you had gone on one of your wannabe superhero escapades and met some… strange boys.

You could fight decently, and when you first saw them you definitely thought they were some sort of evil monsters from another planet that you’d have to somehow defeat, however you were pleasantly surprised to find that they were just teenage mutant boys! They were your age, too.

You helped them out with the villain they were tailing and ended up making friends with them! They told you about this lair they lived in that was inside the sewers and that you should visit. You promised you would, though you looked…

Different.. When you arrived. Your blonde hair was now purple. Everyone knew immediately what was going on, especially after how you acted when they first met you. Well… everyone except the one you wanted to notice. Donatello.

He immediately piqued your interest after you had realized they weren’t evil space aliens there to kill you. He was smart, witty, and had this whole bad boy persona that made him oh so attractive. It’s like he was made to be your kryptonite.

Though he didn’t seem to feel that way about you. Actually, all of his brothers couldn’t help but adore you. You were this loud, rowdy girl who was also super fun to talk to. Those were all of the reasons Donnie didn’t like you.

You irritated him so much that his entire body flared up, angry heat spreading across his face. You went on and on about things that happened at school, or at home, or with this girl who told you that your sense of style was bad. You were invading his life all the time, and he was sick of it. Who were you to barge in and talk to him and try to be his friend? The audacity!

Yeah. He hated you. Sadly, that was the exact opposite of how you felt about him.

You tried for a few months to charm him or to generally befriend him, but he shot down every attempt. He showed absolutely zero interest in you, and you were going to accept that.

Until Leo had an idea, which is what led you to now.

You had just walked into the lair, a nervous smile plastered on your face. “Hey guys!”

The boys all perked up, looking over at the door. “Yoo!! Y/N!! It’s so good to see you–” Mikey got up and grinned before freezing.

Raphael was second to get up. “Did you get here saf–” He paused.

Donnie barely spared you a glance before he did a double take. “What did you do to your hair?”

Your normally purple hair was blue. Blue like..

“You look great!”

Leonardo.

“Thanks! I really like how the color turned out.” You didn’t acknowledge Donnie or his question, skipping over to Leo and sitting next to him.

“Blue really suits you.” He wore a shit-eating grin as he watched his twin from the corner of his eye.

Leo had always known that Donnie liked you. He saw the smiles that Donnie hid, and the way that he would just.. Look at you. Really look at you. That’s why he jumped to action the moment you told him you were going to try to move on. He prompted one last try. One last shot at winning Donnie over. He had tried to give Donnie time to process his feelings for you, but he just wasn’t getting it, and it was hurting you.

“D’aww, thank you.” You put a hand on his arm, mentally gagging. “Wanna hang out in your room?”

“Definitely!” He stood up, holding out a hand that you took as you both went on your way to his room.

…

Donnie was fuming. He had no idea why, but he was fuming. He had always passed off you and Leo’s friendship as an annoyance. Two loud mouths put together. Annoying, but bearable. But this… Were you dating? You ignored him. You just walked right up to Leo, then walked right into his room! His bedroom. It’s not like you two didn’t hangout there alone before, but it was just.. Just weird now!

Why was this bothering him so much? He shouldn’t care what you were doing. He shouldn’t care that you dyed your hair.

Then it dawned on him. It hit him like an anvil, this realization that he was not ready for.

He liked you.

All those times he brushed you off and you irritated him, he was really flustered. His face getting hot from anger was him blushing. You made him blush. You invaded his life because he let you. You invaded his brain because he likes you.

He didn’t know what to do with this newfound crush. You were very possibly dating his brother, and he didn’t want to ruin your relationship just because he figured out his feelings too late. He screwed it up.

But.. there was something that lingered inside him, telling him that he shouldn’t be so sure that you were dating Leo. He just hoped that little voice was right.

..

The next time you found yourself alone with Donnie was that night, in the kitchen. You had decided to sleepover since you genuinely did go over to hangout with everyone, not just Leo in an attempt to make Donnie jealous.

After Donnie had passed up watching movies with you guys in favor of working on a project, you hadn’t seen him. You and Leo’s plot didn’t seem like it worked. He was the exact same Donnie, just kind of.. Avoiding you?

You ran out of your drink during the second movie and excused yourself to the kitchen to refill it. To your surprise, you ran into Donnie, who had gone to get some water.

“Oh, hey.” You tilted your head a little when he tensed, slowly turning to you.

“Ah… Hey.” He swallowed, looking back to his cup.

You walked over to the fridge, grabbing a soda can. “What have you been up to?” Your usually energetic demeanor had disappeared, and you spoke with a soft voice.

It bothered him. “Just this.. Thing.”

“Ah.” You nodded, taking a sip from your cup. It was silent for a minute, and just as you were about to leave, Donnie spoke.

“..Are you dating Leonardo?”

“W– what?” You coughed on your drink, nearly forgetting all about you and Leo’s plan. “Oh.” You swallowed. “No, we’re not.”

Donnie visibly relaxed, enough that even you noticed. “Oh.”

The two of you were silent again. “..Why did you change your hair?”

You looked at the can before setting it down, rubbing the back of your neck. “I uh.. I guess I just didn’t think purple suited me.”

Donnie stared at you, looking for something in your eyes before he casually stepped closer to you. “I think it suits you.”

You looked up, blinking at him. “R–really?”

Donnie nodded. “And uh, I think purple would like to.. Apologize.. For not treating you well in the past, and not realizing how much he– I mean it, cared.” His cheeks heated up, and he glanced to the side.

You stared at him before you smiled softly, pink dusting your cheeks. You giggled. “Well, I hope purple knows that it’s okay, and I still like it.”

He looked at you again, his lips twitching up into a smile. “Really?”

You moved your hand down, taking his cautiously. “Really.”

+ extra

You and Donnie walked hand in hand into the living room, the both of you blushing brightly.

Leo looked over before whistling. “Called it!” 

a/n: would anyone want like a pt 2 of this at any point ??? lmk if soo... same w if u want a version of this with one of the other boys <3

[theyhavetakenovermylife]

hiii hello idk if you take tmnt x reader requests (ignore this if you dont take requests) but like. can you make an 03 raphael x fem!reader ?? like something with love at first sight,, ykwim :3 something kinda similar to the '12 raph x reader thingie you posted??

Foot Ninjas and Sidewalk Beauties

2003!Raphael x reader

A/N: Sure I can❤️ My guess would be that this takes place around season one or season two, but that doesn’t matter that much.

-----------

Warnings: Spelling, turtles getting their butts kicked, Raph falling in love at first sight❤️

-----------

Last encounter with the Foot was, just say it mildly, an absolute failure. The turtles had gotten their butts kicked and then had the floors cleaned with it. None of them had been prepared for Shredder and his ninjas. It had been a surprise attack, or as Shredder had called it, a warning. And then he left, leaving the turtles injured and bedridden for a week.

Leonardo was not happy. Not happy at all. He immediately started blaming their loss on their lack of training, giving way for him to start a ned training schedule. And Raphael did not like it. It messed with his own training. His boxing that helped him blow off build up steam was now cut short, leaving Raph more agitated and angry. Not only did he not have time for his anger relieving boxing, but his knitting had also taken a back seat. So to say that Raph did not like it, may have been an understatement. Raphael hated it.

Raph especially hated it today, as he was stuck on a roof on a Friday night, continuously doing push ups for what felt like hours. Both Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo was getting tired, yet their older brother did not yield. He continued, telling them to do the same, to which they sighed and did. Expect Raph. His patients was growing dangerously thin, as Leonardo continued once more.

“If I have to do one more push up, oh high leader”, Raphael growled. “The Foot ain’t the only one that will feel the rage of me breaking their bones!”

“Considering how you got your ass severely whooped the last time, I would have to see it to believe it”, Mikey shot in, causing Raph to growl at him.

“Raph, you know very well that we have to be prepared”, Leo said, during yet another push up, making sure his brothers were following his lead. “The Foot have been quiet for a long time. They could make their next move at any time”.

“Leo’s right, Raph”, Donnie strained as he did another push up. “After what happened last time, we can not be too prepared”.

“Don’t even remind me of that”, Raph said. If his arms weren’t preoccupied in his forced push ups, he would be slamming his fist against the roof. “Those bozos almost broke my sai!”

“That’s why it’s important we up our training”, Leo said as he got down on his forearms. “Plank, now. First to give in takes five rounds”.

“That’s it!”, Raph rumbled, getting up from his push ups, his arms screaming in relief. “No more training! I have shit to do, Leo! All of us do!”

“Raph”, Leo said, getting up to stand, frustration visible on his face. Donnie and Mikey sighed, knowing what was coming. “It’s not up for discussion. We have to be ready for the next Foot attack, and at the moment, we aren’t”.

“Speak for yourself”, Raph growled. “I’m ready for anything! Bring those Foot scumbags, and I’ll give them a taste of my knuckle sandwich!”

And as if those had been magic words, part of a spell, a ninja star embedded itself into the rooftop, in the space between Raph’s feet. All four turtles looked up to find a small army of Foot ninjas, waiting on the tall building beside them.

“Oh, crud”, was all Raph got to say before the ninjas descended upon them.

Once again the brothers found themselves unprepared. Their muscles weak after the extensive training Leo had put them through that evening, they found it hard to keep up with the Foot. Leo was the only one that seemed to put up a fight, while Mikey and Donnie dodged every attack that came their way, too exhausted to do anything else. But Raph was not the time to dodge. With his frustrations flowing, Raph threw himself at the Foot ninjas. But with his body and mind tired, he was easily pushed back.

It didn’t take long before they had backed Raph up against the edge of the roof, with no obvious way out. Okay, maybe Leo hadn’t been so wrong after all. But it was still his fault that they even were on the rooftop in the first place!

Raph did all he could, but with every punch or push he was taking a step backwards, until his heels hit the edge of the roof, causing Raph to go off balance. He tumbled backwards off of the roof and down towards the street below. Even though Raph was tired, the sudden adrenaline from his fall caused him to think fast. He took his sais and slammed them into the side of the building, digging them into the bricks in one hard move.

Raph breathed a sigh of relief, looking down to the street below, in order to look for an easy way down. But what Raph saw was far from what he had expected. Hanging from the side of the building, Raphael never thought that anything would be able to take his mind of the situation he was in, but then he saw someone. You.

You were standing right below him on the sidewalk, in the light of the street lamp, phone in hand and headphones over your head. You cased glances down the street, as if you were waiting for something. Most likely a car.

Continuously looking between your phone and the street, you did not notice the mutant turtle hanging off of the side of the building behind you, his mouth agape as he stared at you. To say it straight forward, Raph thought you were absolutely beautiful. The profile of your face whenever you turned your head to the side, the way your hair fell down your back. The silhouet of your body and the shadow it cast on the ground below you. Raphael felt his heart beat hard in his chest. Never had he thought he would see anyone so beautiful. How could his dream girl be walking the streets of New York City, and be so much better than he ever dared imagine?

While Raph admired your beauty from afar, the car you had waited for drove up beside you. You greeted the driver with a smile, that almost made Raph loosen the grip on his sais. He watched you take off your headphones as you took a seat at the passenger side, before shutting the door behind you. Raph watched, with his heart beat so loud he wondered if you could hear it inside the car, as you and the driver drove away, disappearing down the street, leaving Raph behind with a feeling of longing. He already felt a need to see your face again. You’re pretty face, that he hadn’t had the chance to enjoy the sight of, to the fullest.

A sigh escaped Raph, in the form of a breath he did not know he was holding. He felt a tingling sensation in his stomach that made him feel happy. All the anger he had been feeling a few moments before, was gone, replaced by a feeling of joy.

“Raph!”, his big brother’s voice sounded from the roof above. "Where are you? We need some help here!”

“Coming!”, Raph yelled back, suddenly having the energy to propel himself back up to the roof, using this sai and his own strength.

As Raph jumped back into action, giving the Foot ninjas a long overdo round of a good beating, his mind kept wandering back to you, enjoying the energy the thought of you gave him. Maybe that day's training session hadn’t been so stupid after all.

[bked0n-lorazepam]

"The Wrong Kind of Jealousy"

---------------->

Summary: A break up leaves Y/N heartbroken and feeling awful, and Patrick doesn't like it. He's the only one who should make you feel like shit, and he's determined to prove he can be worse than your boyfriend.

Warnings: Vulgar language, break up, kind of non-con, choking, passing out, dacryphilia, classroom setting, almost fingering, use of "slut."

Words: 1,586

A/N: My bad guys, I got botox up my bladder so I haven't gotten to my Wips 😭 Here's my apology, please don't burn my house down.

---------------->

“Aiden, please! I didn’t know he’d ask me out, I thought he was just being friendly.” You sobbed, breath raspy and scattered. 

You had met a guy named Donnie in your science class while you were taking a test. He had asked for answers since he was new to the school and didn’t know much, and being the people pleaser you were, you gave them to him. 

He asked for your number after and said that he’d give you the answers to the upcoming math test as a thank you, and you didn’t think anything of it. 

You two started talking, and became friends over the few weeks you knew each other. Of course, nobody ever has kind intentions anymore, and he called you, asking you out on a date while you were making food in your kitchen. Since your boyfriend Aiden went to a different school, the two had never met. And he picked up the phone before you could.

“Does that really fucking matter?” He raised his voice at you and you flinched. He’d never gotten so upset over things like this, so it hurt to hear him yell.

You had a plethora of guy friends; many that he was also friends with. So why was he so angry now?

“You never thought to tell him about me? About us?” Aiden threw his hands on his head and laughed. He was pissed.

“I didn’t think about it, it seemed innocent!” You couldn’t recall the last time you had to defend yourself like this to someone over anything because you were an honest person.

He shook his head and ran his hands down his face, inhaling deeply. “I should’ve known you were gonna cheat on me. Nobody’s that perfect.” 

“Aiden-”

“You’re a slut, Y/N. I should’ve fucking known. We’re done.” He growled, grabbing his jacket off of the counter and aiming towards the door.

“Aiden, please wait.” Tears fell down your face as you tried to reason with him. You loved Aiden, and you didn’t want to see him go. 

“I don’t wanna fucking see you again.” Aiden slammed the door behind him, leaving you to cry in your kitchen.

–

Two days passed, and you were miserable. You cut it off with Donnie, and you hadn’t seen or heard from Aiden since that night. It was lunch and you were at school, eating your meal in an empty classroom, sitting on one of the desks. You’d usually eat with Aiden and talk about anything, but now it was quiet and lonely. 

Holding your sandwich up to your mouth, you were about to take a bite when the door opened.

It was Patrick Hockstetter. The bane of your very existence.

He was such an asshole, and you hated him. He’d grope you, call you names, sometimes even hurt you if you two were alone. You had brought it up to Aiden a couple of times, but he’d always dismiss it, saying he did it to everybody and that you weren’t special.

You never had sex with Aiden, and he never saw you naked, so he also never saw any of the marks Patrick would leave on you. Burn scars from lighters and cigarettes, bruises, cuts, the initials he carved under your belly button. The hickeys.

You never thought it counted as cheating since you never reciprocated anything Patrick would do, and you never told Aiden about it in fear that he’d break up with you for it. But you knew deep, deep down, that you were cheating.

Because a sick, sick, part of you liked it.

Aiden was never rough with you when making out. He treated you like fine China, which you were thankful for. But he never went further, not like Patrick would.

Aiden would kiss you softly, never pressing too hard on your lips. Patrick would make you choke on his tongue and bite your lips, making you bleed every time. 

You hated him, and everything he did. But sometimes you’d look at your scars and remember how awful it felt, and you’d get hot and red in the face.

“Figured your cunt would be in here.” Grinning, he slipped through the crack in the door and closed it, locking it behind him. You shivered, knowing that you weren’t going to leave the classroom without some kind of wound. 

“What do you want?” You croaked out, voice hoarse from crying. You put the sandwich back in your lunch bag and crossed your arms over your chest, regretting the tight white shirt and pastel pink skirt you wore today. 

Patrick snickered at your poor attempt to cover yourself and he turned the lights off, making the only light in the room be from the cracks in the blinds that covered the windows. 

“What do you think I want?” It was only then that you noticed the blood from his nose, and the blood on his hands. Usually you’d never think anything of it, but you were somewhat worried.

Patrick never liked Aiden. He hated how much attention Aiden took from you, and he made sure you knew. He hated how upset you’d get when you remembered a date you two would have to go on, especially right after he’d make you suck him off.

You’d be a complete mess, mascara running down your face, lip gloss smudged, hair sticking up everywhere, drool on your chin, and your clothes would be ruined.

He liked you better when you looked that way and begged him to stop. He made sure to take a picture once, and when he couldn’t see you, he’d jerk off to it.

Patrick loved when you looked ruined, but you always wanted to look put together for Aiden.

“Patrick, what’s on your hands?” You asked shakily, eyes trained to his blood soaked fingers. 

Patrick tutted and started a slow stride to the desk you were on. “You know, Aiden was never a good choice for ya’, toots.”

You crossed your left leg over your right and your skirt rode up your thighs, and Patrick licked his lips.

“I mean, he always controlled what you did. You couldn’t go anywhere without him. And you surely wouldn’t be wearing that skirt if you two were still together.” He stopped in front of you, and put his right hand on your left knee, and his other on your calf.

He uncrossed your legs and stepped between them, removing his hands and placing them on the desk.

Patrick’s eyes never strayed from yours, and you were shaking. 

“What did you do?” You caught your breath and questioned him, fear evident all over your face.

“You never cried for me as much as you did a couple nights ago for him.” Patrick’s face held no emotion, and you had no idea what was happening inside his mind.

It filled you with dread.

“Patrick, please.” His right hand moved from the desk and he placed it up your left thigh, moving it under your skirt. His left hand went around your throat, and his fingers placed themselves skillfully against the sides of your neck.

He squeezed, hard, and slipped his fingers underneath the waistband of your underwear, pulling them back and snapping the elastic back onto your skin.

You yelped, and it took away most of your oxygen. Patrick’s fingers teased down your leg and to the back of your knee, leaving a trail of blood as it went.

You didn’t ask him, but you knew it was Aiden’s. You didn’t want to know what happened to him.

You were hyperventilating now, taking in any air that you could. Patrick would lessen his grip every now and then so you wouldn’t pass out, but then he’d tighten it again. The process repeated until you were wailing, and your hands were clawing at his.

His right hand was resting on your thigh again, and would etch up closer to your groin whenever he’d let go a bit. You were full on sobbing, and you looked perfect to him.

Mascara down your face, red marks on your neck that would surely leave a perfect blue and purple handprint later. You were trembling underneath his touch, and he loved it. 

Aiden could never make you cry like he could, and Patrick carried that pride with him. 

You tried to beg him to stop, but your words were broken and you could barely keep yourself conscious. Black spots dotted your vision, and you kept thrashing against him. 

He had never gone so far when choking you, and he’d usually leave you with some air. But he didn’t now, no matter what you did.

Patrick’s fingers climbed up into your underwear, and he smirked when he saw the fear in your wet, drowning eyes. Two fingers touched your entrance, and he dragged them up and down, pinching at your clit.

You’d never been more terrified as to what Patrick was going to do next, but you never found out. He squeezed your throat much harder, completely blocking your windpipe from getting any form of oxygen. 

The black spots took control of your vision, and you went limp in his hands. Your legs stopped kicking, your hands fell to your sides. Your head lolled back, and your face relaxed. 

Patrick hummed and let go of your neck, letting you fall back on the desk. He made sure your pulse was still beating, and his fingers went into your entrance with no more resistance. 

Aiden could never make you feel anything like he could.