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wingedfable · 8 days ago

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OKAY THE PROMISED REINCARNATION AU

As I said, I read a fic with 2012 boys having died and reincarnated into the Rise universe and adopted by the Rise boys and it gave me IDEAS so anyway

So I want Max Angst when the 2012 boys remember their past lives. I don't know exactly when they died, but I'm having Monster Arc and Heart of Evil and stuff be canon, but not Mutant Apocalypse. Again, not sure how/when they died to make this possible. But it WAS before they turned 20.

They're reincarnated as lil' babies, just tiny lil' guys. They're born to a normal turtle but uh, they aren't normal turtles, so the owner of their turtle freaks out and puts them in a box in a random alleyway. And then, as luck would have it, Señor Hueso opens Run of the Mill one day to find a box of small mutant baby turtles. With a deep sigh, he takes the box inside, feeds them some veggies, and calls up Leo.

"Ah, Pepino, none of you or your brothers have had any... flings lately, have you? No? Well, I ask because a box of baby turtles were in front of the door today-"

He's not even finished with the sentence before a portal opens up and all four Rise boys (probably early to mid twenties in ages) and Splints tumble out. Splints grabs the box, looks inside, and says "We'll take them!"

"That was easier than I thought."

They order some pizzas while there, of course, and get to know these tiny babies while they wait. They all seem to be the same species of turtle, and all the same age.

Now in the fic I read each Rise Boy raised their counterpart, which is great, but it could also be cool for them to be raised by their non-counterparts too? Like I could see 2012 Raph having been raised by Rise Mikey and 2012 Leo being raised by Rise Donnie? I think for this we'll have their own counterparts raise them but food for thought, let me know what other Father-Son pairings you'd do personally.

Anyway for the rest of this I'll be referring to Rise as Raphie, Leon, Angelo, and Donald, and 2012 as their usual nicknames.

Raphie holds the second smallest baby and coos at him, wiggling a finger over his face and watching the way the baby tracks it with beady little eyes. None of them seem to have irises or sclera at first, but Donald says it could just look like that because they're so young, the same thing happens with kittens who've just opened their eyes. As Raphie coos over the baby and waves his finger around, the baby scrunches up his face and starts to cry! Raphie panics for a second, but Splints shows him how to properly cradle the baby and soon lil' Raph is asleep.

Yes, they name their sons after themselves, Because They Would Do That, but also because Splints kept accidentally calling the babies those names anyway and they didn't want to confuse the little guys too much.

Donald holds baby Donnie up like he's examining a peculiar invention for a bit, and baby Donnie just smiles at him and makes baby sounds. After a bit of examining Donald cradles Donnie in one of the battle shell's robot arms and begins softly singing a little Dewey Decimal System rap he made up and baby Donnie slowly falls asleep as well.

Angelo is just gushing over this cute little baby and making all the silly faces, and baby Mikey is giggling and babbling non-stop, reaching up and lightly slapping Angelo's face with his lil' baby hands and it is The Cutest Ever! Angelo's heart is stolen and it sets the path for Mikey to be So Spoiled in the future.

Leon holds the last baby, a quiet and calm little guy who's just staring at him. He's a little creeped out, to be honest, and nothing he's doing to make the baby laugh is working. Then Hueso brings over the pizzas, and Leon grins and says "We'll need 'em, raising these guys is going to leave us, uh bone tired." And maybe it's the voice he uses or the cocky grin but that finally makes baby Leo laugh! And Leon's heart melts because the baby likes puns this is perfect.

So they take them home and bam! Four sons now! April is hanging out with Casey and Casey Jr when she gets the text "YOU'RE AN AUNT NOW!" and of course this makes her very concerned so all three of them head right for the lair and they enter to find Draxum on the couch with a book on child development, Splints playing peek-a-boo with a single bassinet full of four baby turtles, and the four brothers all eating as Draxum tosses out little snippets of advice from book and they all nod.

"Where'd you get those?" April says, pointing at the bassinet.

"Someone left them outside of Run of the Mill? Can you believe it? Four perfect little angels and someone didn't want them!" Angelo coos. At that moment baby Raph starts crying again, frustrated by the peek-a-boo game (and a little scared that Splints keeps disappearing).

Anyway, the four are raised as brothers and not cousins because non-nuclear family structures for the win, and it's great! They're all a little more well-adjusted than their past selves were. Raph's anger issues are taken more seriously and Angelo and Raphie talk with him a lot about it and help him find ways to manage it. Donnie feels way less insecure/resentful of being a mutant because he grows up around humans and mutants alike this time and goes out to the surface way sooner, and as we all know it's a lot easier to pass as humans with very little effort in the Rise world. Mikey's ADHD is like, taken seriously and everyone knows he's not dumb, just impulsive and has trouble paying attention (sometimes though he just chooses to be a little shit and they still get mad at him for those times).

I actually think Leo will end up the most The Same, just because his drive to be perfect/severity/endless pressure on himself doesn't really start until after he's made Leader in 2012, before that he seems mostly normal (for a teenage mutant ninja turtle anyway).

Wow this was meant to be an angst AU but Baby Cuteness got to me. Well I'll put the angst under a Read More I guess so y'all who don't want it can just have this happiness.

So when they're about 15, they start feeling more restless. They have a lot of fun with their family, but they haven't done much of the hero stuff. Their dads have tried to keep it to a minimum (it can never be Zero for them, but they have a strict "Let us get our kids home or at least ignore them while they hide" policy with the villains and most of them, like Warren and Hypno, don't mind and totally oblige and yes this is partly because The Rise Boys are intimidating parents and partly because why would they beat up an eight-year-old?)

So they've been minorly involved in some fights, but gosh, they're just kids. Their dads remember how fun it was to fight bad guys at their age, but also how damaging it was in the long run. And for the most part, their sons have been fine with it. They've gone a few minor fights here and there, even have a nemesis of their own (Hypno and Warren adopted a yokai girl, some kind of bird I think, and she's the most pompous person alive, their fights are never intense though because her dads are also protective) and it's been fine.

But it's like a switch flips, and suddenly they're constantly itching to go out. Suddenly Raph's having trouble remembering his anger management methods. Suddenly Mikey's acting up more than usual. Suddenly Donnie's patience is paper-thin. Suddenly Leo's being bossy and demanding of his brothers.

Well, "suddenly" isn't quite right. It's slow, but it definitely starts on their 15th birthday. And it just keeps getting worse.

And they're having nightmares. Lots of them. Donald rushes into Donnie's room one night after hearing screaming to find Donnie clutching his arm to his chest and sobbing incoherently about needing to find Mikey and Raph because he's after them, but come morning when Donald asks all Donnie can remember is "Something big hit me, and I knew they weren't safe either."

One night Leon hears a crash and runs into Leo's room to find his son crying, having fallen out of bed and landed on his knee funny and he's holding his throat begging to see his brothers. Again, come morning all he remembers is that he'd been in a bad fight and They Weren't Safe.

Angelo wakes up to Mikey crawling into his bed, shaking and quietly crying, and mumbling about squirrels and evil moms and all kinds of terrible things, and Angelo hugs him and calms him down. In the morning Mikey just says he might need to stop reading horror comics.

Raphie can't even comfort his son because Raph screams when he sees him through sheep-glazed eyes and backs away and begs and begs to leave him and his brothers alone, and he calls out for Leo over and over until his brother and uncle in blue both come in and Leo hugs Raph and the two fall asleep in each other's arms. In the morning Raph just says he thinks Donnie's nightmare from before got to him, and that something else got Leo and got him bad.

And they become so tired. They can barely sleep anymore. Leo's leg should be fine by now, it was just bruised, but he keeps limping. Donnie keeps staring at nothing, lost in thought, and all he can say when someone asks what's wrong is he feels like they're missing something, someone, and he's taking minor failures so hard now. Raph keeps looking around the lair like he's expecting something to jump out at them, keeps gripping his sai like he'll need to use them at a moment's notice. Mikey keeps acting desperate to be heard whenever he suggests something, and he keeps checking the freezer and tearing up when whatever he's looking for that he doesn't even know isn't there.

There's some nights where they don't scream or go to their dads. There's some nights, that only them and their grandpa know about, where they sneak into Splints's room and ask if they can just stay there for a little while. Sometimes all of them end up in there at once, and Splints wakes up to them gathered around his bed, leaning up against it as they sleep with weapons in hand. He never tells anyone, just shakes Raph and Leo awake so they can carry their brothers back to bed, and he goes with to tuck them all in. And sometimes on those nights, when the boys are half-asleep and mumbling, he thinks he hears them call him 'Sensei'.

And then there's the way they fight.

Their dads are all deeply concerned the first time they do some sparring after their 15th birthday. Because they seem to forget to pull back.

Leo flips Mikey with full strength and Mikey swings his nunchucks without bothering to aim away from Leo's limbs. Raph slams his shoulder into Donnie's chest hard enough to completely knock the breath out of him and then Donnie jabs the end of his bo into Raph's chest right back so hard that it cracks the wood. Draxum and Splints break them up, always on the sidelines watching with pride in their grandsons, and The Rise Dads scold them all for being so brutal to their own brothers.

It's during a fight with Meatsweats and some new cooking assistant of his that they learn Donnie and Mikey added some blades to their own weapons. And all four go for a kill blow when they get the chance. Meatsweats is out of there faster than you can say "Cowabunga", bruised and bloodied, and the dads have another talk with their sons. Something along the lines of "You can't be 15 year old murderers!"

And then there's the anger. All four of them are suddenly so very, very angry. And not in the short-tempered way Raph's been his whole life, or the easily irritable way Donnie's always been. They're all deeply, painfully, angry. And none of them can really explain why. Just that it feels like they lost something.

And then, one day, Donald is wearing his mystic-seeing goggles when Donnie enters the lab. And what he sees chills him to the core.

He sees this overlay. It's Donnie, but not. The overlay is a little taller, a little older, and horrifically scarred on every inch of his body. His shell and plastron are littered with scratches and chips. He's got small scars and nicks all over his body. He's got a big one on the arm Donald remembers him clutching after his first nightmare. He's got horrific burn scars on his head and face, like someone electrocuted him over and over and over without mercy, and there's burn scars everywhere else too but those look circumstantial and the ones on his face looks purposeful. There's so much visible pain, all over this overlay of his son, his son. And it doesn't even look much older, maybe four years older at most, and-

And it's so angry.

It's a transparent purple, a sort of lavender color the same as Donnie's mask, but it's eyes are a solid and stark white. They're narrowed, and his mouth is set in a deep scowl. Tears drip down his face non-stop, but it's like the overlay isn't even aware he's crying from the way he just radiates anger.

And Donald grab Donnie's arm, panicking, and lifts his goggles.

His son is looking at him in confusion and concern, and he's fine. He's got one scar, and it's just from a skateboarding accident he had when they were around 10 and his elbow pad slipped up when he skid across the ramp. He's not scowling, he's not crying, and he's trying to get his dad's attention.

"Could you get your brothers and uncle?" Donald asks, and Donnie nods and runs off.

When they get back Donald has set up a large x-ray like machine. He asks the boys to stand behind it, and explains to his own brothers that he put his mystic crystal into this machine to check something. He explains, quietly, that he saw something that half-explains what's been going on with their sons.

And he turns it on.

And oh, god.

Raph's overlay has a large chip taken out of the right corner of his plastron, and just like his brothers, is littered in scars on every inch of him. His overlay is scowling and crying and white-eyed, and it's body language is so much more tense. Raph himself is just sitting there, arms crossed, a little annoyed but not too upset, until he looks up and sees his dad and uncles crying.

Mikey such a strange one to see, scowling like that, just so full of anger and pain. Like Raph he doesn't seem to have any huge scars, until he bends over for a second because he dropped something and all over the back of his shell there are these discolored spots, like something broke it open from the inside and it had to heal back over. The thought makes Angelo's heart and stomach drop and makes him need to lean again Raphie.

And Leo. None of the overlays are free of scars, hundreds of scars, but Leo... he has the most small ones small but deep, like shards of glass stuck into his skin and had to be pulled out. He's got a jagged, messy scar on his throat that wraps almost all the way around to the back, and they can see another all-encompassing scar around his newly-bum knee. There's so many scars that follow such a specific pattern, two blades spaced apart in such a precise manner slashed across him without mercy and-

Draxum and Splints had followed, and they're both silent, horrified, and Draxum quietly says, "I think... those overlays are their souls."

And suddenly the whole family has a new mission: find out why their boys have such wounded souls. Find out who did this to them. Find out how to fix it.

They don't tell the boys what they saw, and it's for the best, because the nightmares keep getting worse and now they have scars they can place some of the half-remembered stories to. And they start to piece together that the boys are remembering some other life, some other world, and is this some kind of curse or something else? Is it another world bleeding through and affecting their boys, or is it possible they came from that world?

And then, as they're struggling to figure this out and to help their boys through sudden new PTSD episodes and triggers that their boys don't understand the cause of, then...

A portal opens somewhere in New York.

A pink, triangular portal.

And they find somewhere to point all the anger they have for their boys.

(I also have another version of this where they don't discover what's happening until The Rise Dads are captured by the 2012 Kraang and the 2012 boys, who fully remember their past lives, charge in to save them, and their Ninpo manifests as they can reach into the other world and pull things through like The Shellraizer and such, but it comes with the cost of their new bodies becoming more and more like their old ones, so their dads watch them fight incredibly viciously and pull all this stuff out of some other dimension and have to just watch as all these scars appear on them and they get older but suddenly they stop getting older very soon and that hurts just as much as seeing the scars and they're both horrified and in awe of how their sons are fighting.)

#tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt 2012 #xover #tmnt au

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