Chapter Text
LOOP: 233
FATALITIES: 233
TURTLES CONSCIOUS: 0
Leo shifted his weight, taking the extra effort to balance on the edge of the rooftop. His own unsteadiness surprised him. He’d grown up finely in-tune with his own muscles, every aspect of his body trained to an almost impossible degree of perfection. Even in his earliest memories, Sensei stressed the importance of a good base. Too flat-footed, and he’d never be able to move past the first strike. Too ungrounded, and he’d see every confrontation as a fight before it became one.
He was better than the tot that’d picked up his katana for the first time with unsteady hands, but he was still decades of practice away from becoming the master he yearned to be.
Sighing, he shook his head. No point in tackling that problem today. There were more important things he needed to deal with, and right now, his highest priority was the current mission. It wasn’t an especially complicated one compared to the hoops they’d had to jump through when taking back the city, but it was about the principle of it. When Leo committed, he committed, vowing that he’d put every part of himself into its success, until it was something he could look back on and be proud of.
His brothers weren’t the same. Case in point, while Leo scanned the TCRI skyscraper for prying eyes, Mikey had his T-Phone pressed close enough to his face that he was practically drooling on the screen as he tapped away.
Leo could see some sort of orange avatar hopping around on-screen, ducking away from 8-bit extraterrestrials firing at it from their spaceships. He pulled a face. How Mikey didn’t get tired of fighting intergalactic villains both in the genuine and digital worlds, he’d never understand. Sometimes, Leo even found himself rolling his eyes at the poorly designed aliens Captain Ryan’s team tussled with. After facing the real deal, the Cortexicons just didn’t seem as frightening anymore as they had to his six-year-old self.
Sometimes he wished that they still were. That instead of paralyzing nightmares about bladed bosses and horrifying transformations and loss he was too young to feel, he was plagued with two-dimensionally drawn, one-dimensionally written champions from the stars.
Oblivious to the world around him, Mikey didn’t look up from his video game. Something bitter rose up, and Leo smacked him upside the head. It wasn’t his usual tactic, more of a Raph move, to be honest, but it did the trick. Besides, Mikey always gave as good as he got, and if he didn’t, he made sure to get his revenge sooner or later.
“Hey!” Mikey yelped, and shrunk halfway into his shell. Then he peaked out and groaned as his phone screen went black. “Aww, you made me lose! I was about to beat my high score.”
“Do it on your own time.” And he would. Even if he had triumphed over his past self in that game, they both knew that he’d stay up far past his bedtime tonight to take another victory yet again. It was sort of ironic how both of them kept raising the bar for themselves, yet in such wildly different fields. “Raph and Donnie are waiting for us. We’ve got to go.”
He whined, though he did follow Leo back to the side of the roof facing the tower. “How come they don’t gotta climb the building like us? I’m lazy, dude. Raph’s the adrenaline junkie, make him do it!”
“We’ve all got our part to play,” he reminded him. For the twelfth time. Not that he was counting, of course, because that’d be petty, and leaders were above such immature practices. That was what his books said, at least. “Your job’s to clear the ops room so Donnie can hack their systems. Unless you want to be the tech guy this time?”
Mikey pulled a face, like he was five again and Sensei had scavenged a plate of vegetables for dinner. Or like he was eleven again. Or sixteen. He’d really never managed to choke down greens in non-pizza forms without raising shell. “Fine, full-body workout it is. I better get, like, five days off from training after this, though.”
Leo clapped him on the shoulder. “Given how sore we’re about to be, I’m surprised you didn’t ask for the week.”
“You monster.”
He rolled his eyes, but he was grinning despite himself. Shell, he loved messing with his little brother. Maybe once this was over, he’d team up with Raph and see if they could get the jump on Donnie. He usually either crashed after a mission or stayed up for hours on end, and if he was at the latter end of the spectrum by the end of the night, it wouldn’t be too hard to take advantage of his sleep-deprived self.
TCRI was swarming with Kraang, each perched on a zooming hovercraft. They zipped around the base of the building in waves, though they dipped into a divot around a third of the way up. Each disappeared for maybe five seconds before emerging again, with the fleets distancing from each other by about double that. It wasn’t a great window to strike, but Leo had dealt with worse.
“You’re on the East entrance, got it?”
Mikey kicked a pebble that Leo would pay serious money on it not being offending enough to warrant the act. “Maybe I wanna go West,” he grumbled, hiking his shoulders up to his tympana. “Be like the pioneers. I’m great at the Oregon Trail. Only got dysentery, like, twice.”
“East,” Leo repeated, because yeah, maybe it was a stupid hill to die on, but he knew better. If he let Mikey whine his way to changing this, then the slope would only get slipperier, until his little brother was mashing buttons on his console back at the lair while the others got all the grunt work done.
A new wave flew from the bottom of the building. Leo nodded their way as he and Mikey pulled out their grappling hooks. They aimed, the weight a minor difference compared to the rubber-tipped bows they’d grown up firing, and made their shot while the Kraang were in the midst of their blind spot. From there, they parted ways, making contact with the sleek surface of the outer plates on opposite ends of the skyscraper.
The suctions cups they’d brought with them felt almost cartoonish. Adhered to both his feet and hands, Leo spared a moment to hope that Karai didn’t pass by and see his goofy setup before getting to work. According to the schematics they’d gotten their hands on, the only opening that’d work for their plan was about almost smack dab in between the top of the building and the spot they were starting their trek at, so he had some elbow grease to put in.
He fell into a pattern that was just complicated enough that he couldn’t let his mind wander; raise his right hand, then left foot, then left hand, then right foot. It was slow, and it was awkward, and he didn’t entirely blame Mikey for wanting to shirk responsibility to Raph and Donnie. Those guys had the easy job, waiting at the base of their respective elevators until their brothers were finished with their parts. It was sort of boring, but then again, it’d be a bit too much to ask for all four of them to scale the building without getting caught.
It’d be fair to let Raph do the heavy lifting during their escape. Raph might even insist on doing it, rarely missing an opportunity to smash some steel skulls. And if that gave Leo a chance to catch his breath, then that was just a happy coincidence.
A small, almost imperceptible buzzing began in the frontmost pocket of his belt. As he pulled himself up, Leo heard the familiar ringtone that’d been pre-programmed into all of their T-Phones. Shell, now was not a good time. It’d be the safest bet to let it go to voicemail, but his brothers knew not to prank call him during missions, so chances were, it was something important.
One hand hooked onto the building, Leo fished out his phone and answered it. “Kinda busy right now,” he gritted out. Shell, even if he tried to tuck it into the crook of his neck to get himself better anchored, it’d be just his luck that he’d drop it.
“Leo!” Donnie shouted, sounding far too calm to warrant the pop-in. His tone turned confused, and Leo could almost picture the way his mask dipped down when he was deep in thought. “Wait, are you still climbing?”
“Yep.” A particularly strong gust of wind hit, one of his feet slipping from its perch. Shell, this was a bad idea. One wrong move and he’d go splat against the sidewalk. “Call you back later, Dee.”
“I wanted to ask – ”
Leo hung up. As soon as his thumb made contact with the screen, he winced. Donnie usually knew better than to interrupt the mission if it wasn’t for something important. Chances were, this was just like the season six finale of Space Heroes; Dr. Mindstrong had tried to warn Captain Ryan that the dwarf planet he was about to land on housed a society of ruthless scavengers intent on stripping him for parts, but the protagonist had been too busy to heed the advice.
He’d get in touch with Donnie as soon as he got the spare moment, Leo decided. Once he found Raph, there’d be a minute or two to breathe before they dove back into their objective. Besides, Mikey was en route to him anyway. Back-up was incoming.
The access point was almost there, anyway. Maybe twenty feet up, if that. By the time Leo got himself settled, Donnie’s problem would probably solve itself. Things tended to work out that way.
He pulled himself through a square, frameless window. From what they’d managed to tell from the blueprints, these were designed to give eagle-eyed Kraang snipers spots to shoot their mutagen capsules from great distances. There’d been a news broadcast they’d watched at the farmhouse of the entire fashion district being transformed in a matter of minutes thanks to the unseen assailants.
Most people would be too crazy to take advantage of the entryway, what with how high it was. But Leo and his brothers were just the right amount of badass, borderline-insane, and desperate that this was the best idea they had.
The hallway looked identical to all the other pieces of Kraang architecture he’d ever come across; white-purple accents, a major emphasis on hexagons, and enough tech to make Donnie drool. Most of it flew over his head without much thought, but he kept a special eye out for – bingo.
A good chunk of the bases they’d broken into had huge power conduits clinging to the ceiling. Donnie said that was like the lifeblood of the whole operation. Taking it out was akin to slitting the body’s wrists. Tactless attacks would be clumsy and inefficient, but if they knew where to strike, they could manipulate the Kraang’s own home turf.
In a practiced motion he’d run through hundreds of times in the lair, Leo sprinted straight for the walls, leaping off of the surface to gain enough height that he could stick the thumbdrive Donnie had made right into the ceiling. There wasn’t a clean-cut outlet for him to insert it into, yet the circuitry accepted it anyway, instantly fusing to the foreign device.
Like clockwork, the closest elevator gave an affirmatory little ding! It came just a moment before a series of footsteps worked their way down the hall. Coincidence? Probably not, but that was alright. These days, Kraang droids toppled like houses of cards. The sheer numbers might be a bit overwhelming, but they’d dealt with worse.
He flung a dozen or so shuriken at the first fleet of aliens that turned down his hallway. They all hit their mark, but the force wasn’t enough to completely KO them. Stunned, they struggled to raise their blasters before Leo was racing toward them. Like he was playing Whac-A-Mole, he slammed the flat edges of his sword into the open wounds his ninja stars had sunk into, burying them further until they neatly bisected his targets.
What the Kraang lacked in skill, they made up for with their rapid response time. As soon as Leo finished the squadron of droids, three more filled the hall. He considered the scenario as he swung his blades in a cautionary arc. It wouldn’t be too difficult to grab one as an inhuman shield, but he doubted how well that would work. The dime a dozen combatants often took out half their own ranks through sheer friendly fire.
A metallic hand scrambled to get ahold of his shoulder. He shrugged it off, quick to plant the hilt of his katanas right in the squishy pink pilot’s face. It shrieked at him, then shrieked at its fellow fighters as he pried it out of its seat and flung it into the crowd. The other droids collectively flinched, afraid that they’d suffer the same fate, before they pressed on.
Leo heard another chime as he ripped off a robo-arm and smacked it on a trio of droids’ heads like a baseball bat. He gave himself a moment to grin before doubling down on the brawl. Shell yeah, time for a tried and true A-Team beatdown.
“Nice of you to show up,” he yelled, right as a sea of silver hit the ground in one fell swoop.
Raph rammed a Kraang into the opposite wall hard enough that it shattered on impact. Fresh legs compared to Leo’s weary ones, he straight up yanked a blaster out of one Kraang’s hands, only to smash it on another’s legs until they clean popped off. “Took you long enough to make the climb! I almost fell asleep waiting.”
“I can tell. You fight like you haven’t seen a dojo in years.”
“Fuck all the way off, shithead.” Raph rolled his eyes, though he did take down the Kraang that’d been gearing up to shoot Leo in his bad knee, point blank, so he couldn’t be too mad.
From there, winning the skirmish was easy money. It felt more like training than a genuine battle. It was honestly embarrassing that the droids had ever given them so much grief in the past. Most of them were one-shot, one and done.
His shell was getting a little stiff, so Leo let Raph solo the last stragglers as he stretched. It was probably from the awkward position he’d been in while scaling the skyscraper. While his base form did travel on four limbs, the human aspect of their DNA always made them regret doing so. Their bones were weird. Donnie had once spent nearly a week straight trying to draw up a reasonable anatomical diagram for them, before finally quitting once Mikey innocently asked them why they didn’t have tails.
Once Raph finished off the final droids, Leo tossed him a protein bar from his belt. It was the one with chocolate chips, since he knew that the only one who enjoyed that brand more than Mikey was Raph, who took no small amount of pleasure in knowing that he was eating one of Mikey’s favorite snacks.
Raph practically inhaled it. “Thanks,” he grunted, dropping the wrapper on the floor as he made his way toward the computer room.
Leo sighed. “Animal,” he muttered as he scooped it up. Just because their family only qualified as fifty percent human on a good day, it didn’t mean that they could completely abandon all aspects of civility. Then again, Casey would do the exact same thing, so maybe civility was overrated.
“Donnie send the signal yet?”
“One way to find out.”
The hexagonal room they entered was covered head-to-toe in screens. In the center was a circular board, completely flat and devoid of any keys. Donnie would probably know what to do with it, where Leo and Raph were completely clueless, but that was okay. Their job wasn’t to understand.
At the top of the surface, where the T key would’ve been in a QWERTY setup, was a blinking purple light. It turned off-on, off-on, off-on. Then it morphed into a three-digit hand that eagerly flipped the two of them off before switching back to off-on, off-on.
“Dumbass,” Raph said affectionately, and then slammed his closed fist onto the signal.
“You said it.”
With the sign that Donnie had successfully downloaded the system’s information onto his own separate device ready for them, they got down to the fun part of the plan: smashing shit.
Leave nothing operational, Donnie had told them, and that was exactly what they did. The empty frames were raining glass by the time Leo was done with the screens. He hacked at them wildly with his swords, halfway wondering if this was the closest to teenage rebellion he’d ever come. Vicious sparks traced the steel edge of his katana, but he paid them no mind.
A few feet away, Raph was having the time of his life. He was going at the servers with his bare hands, sai tucked in his belt as he tore out a mess of wires with his fingers. He drop-kicked the tangled cords right into a small open fire that’d caught, smirking at the way the flames grew. A future arsonist in the making, Leo thought, before waving it off. If anything, Mikey was the true fire-starter of the family.
Gripping the handle of his shorter sword with both hands, Leo raised the blade high above his head, like an executioner about to deliver the finishing blow. In one smooth motion, he swung it directly down, onto the remnants of the keyboard –
BZZT!
Fire fire fire everywhere it must’ve got it must’ve because everything burned it was devouring him whole it lapped at his skin it wormed its way into his veins he couldn’t breath couldn’t move couldn’t do anything but seize so still just a corpse just a body just kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him –
LOOP: 234
FATALITIES: 234
TURTLES CONSCIOUS: 1
Leo settled on the edge of the rooftop, holding himself just a bit tighter. It was weird, come to think of it, how much extra effort he had to put into keeping himself steady. He’d been working on his balance for years. It felt like ever since he was a little, little kid, his father hadn’t let up in teaching them how to maintain their own equilibrium.
He shook his head, thinking of the growth he’d undergone since being that knobby-kneed novice. One day, would he look back on his currently teenage self and laugh at all that he didn’t know yet? It was worrying to think about.
While he looked out in the distance for trouble, he couldn’t help but notice the absolute lack of attention Mikey was paying anything other than his T-Phone. It must’ve been his new video that’d caught his fancy, because he was clearly pouring the entirety of his focus into maneuvering the little orange sprite on his screen.
Leo scowled and smacked him upside the head. Not too rough to actually hurt him, but enough so that Mikey dropped the phone right on the ground, eyes wide like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Then his little brother frowned, looking left and right and left again. Whatever he was searching for, he gave no indication of finding it.
“Are you alright?” Leo would’ve assumed Mikey would whine a bit about the interruption, if not outright retaliate. He tended to leap before he looked, so the genuine amount of consideration he was giving the surrounding area was – unexpected, to say the least.
“Where…” he trailed off. “Where’s April and Casey?”
Leo blinked. “At the lair,” he said slowly. “They’re not coming tonight, remember?” Casey was still getting over messing up his wrist from a bad fall he took the week before, and April had agreed to run through another set of lessons with Sensei. They’d all agreed it was best for them to stay at the lair just in case backup was needed.
“But I just saw them.” Mikey looked over his shoulder, but when Leo followed his gaze, there was nothing there. He didn’t act like he’d seen anything, just kept scanning the dim night sky. “I – I thought I did, I mean. We were talking. In – In the elevator.”
He pressed the back of his hand to Mikey’s forehead. It wasn’t too warm, though none of them were ever totally sure what their temperature was supposed to be. They were somewhat cold-blooded, from what they’d been able to tell. “We’ve been staking out TCRI for over an hour, Mikey. Just you and me. No one else is here.”
“I could’ve sworn…” Mikey worried his lip. Then he sighed, rubbing his eyes in that kid-like manner he’d never really grown out of. “Must’ve been like that Olivia Rodrigo song. Goodfour yu, I think?”
Leo smiled. The joke was a bit forced, so he knew Mikey was hamming it up a bit for his sake, and he appreciated his little brother trying to cheer him up. “Déjà vu, Mikey.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
He patted the top of Mikey’s head, the way Raph sometimes did with April when she pulled off a new move and landed an impressive hit on him during sparring. “Come on, let’s move out. You’re on the East entrance, got it?”
“What if – Nevermind. East, I know.”
Aiming with unshaking hands, both their shots rang true. They parted ways and began their individual ascents up the tower. It was awkward, and time-consuming, and more than a little bit strenuous, but Leo made quick work of his task. The only slight hiccup he ran into was when he was within eyesight of the access point, his T-Phone began to ring in his pocket, and he had to fumble not to lose his grip.
“Kinda busy right now,” he gritted out, and tried not to drop the very expensive, very reptilian piece of technology onto the streets of Downtown Manhattan. That’d sure be difficult to explain once Channel 6 ran a story on the shell-shaped phone that’d rained from the heavens.
“Leo!” Donnie yelled, though he didn’t sound worried enough to warrant the risk of continuing to chat with him. “Wait, are you still climbing?”
“Yep.”
“I wanted – April? What are you – ”
Already moving to hang up, Leo couldn’t stop his thumb from cutting the conversation short. He winced, regretting it immediately. It sounded like April had taken matters into her own hands and made the executive decision to call in backup early. It wasn’t the first time she’d done so, and he was unfortunately sure that it wouldn’t be the last. He didn’t approve by any means, but he could’ve at least helped minimize the ensuing damage.
He spared a moment to consider calling back before deciding against it. The odds that he’d be able to even dial Donnie’s number without going splat against the pavement below were low enough that he couldn’t risk it. Once things went calm after he made contact with Raph, he’d get in touch again.
Except he didn’t. Because then he was kicking ass and hauling ass and giving Raph shit and trying not to eat shit and slamming and smashing and –
BZZT!
And sizzling. Burning. Pure, unfiltered power running through him, everything crying it out in one quick heartache before shutting down the very next, muscles locking, couldn’t let go of his sword, his sword buried in the console, get it out –
His own charred flesh smelled horrible.
LOOP: 235
FATALITIES: 235
TURTLES CONSCIOUS: 2
Leo had to lean back abruptly to keep from toppling over the edge of the roof. Shell, he would’ve thought that after all those drills Sensei made him run through back in the day, he’d have better balance by now. A wave of vertigo hit him, and he had to shut his eyes tight to keep from reacting.
Must be hungry. He’d meant to have the last of his salad for dinner but ended up skipping it once he realized how wilted the lettuce had gone. It was fine. When he met up with Raph, he’d split a granola bar with him or something. He knew his body well enough to be sure that he could keep going until then without crashing. He’d done more on less before.
Glancing back, he shook his head despite the dizziness at Mikey, completely engrossed in his phone. He was button-mashing the screen as a pixelated character dove around in the depths of space. Far more exhausted than he should’ve been for this early into the night, Leo crossed the distance between the two of them and smacked Mikey upside the head.
The phone slipped from Mikey’s fingers. He didn’t even try to catch it, just staring forward, the top of his mask knitting together. He looked young, all wide-eyed confusion and quiet fear. It was moments like this that he was truly Leo’s little brother despite their lack of an age gap.
“Mikey? Are you alright?”
“I – April and Casey were right there, I’m sure of it.” He got to his feet in a flash, rushing toward the side of the roof far too quickly for Leo’s liking. “They were talking to Donnie. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but – but it must’ve been important. It must’ve!”
“Mikey – ”
He turned, meeting Leo right in the eyes, right in the soul. “Dude, we’ve done this,” he stressed. “Shot our grappling thingies, climbed the building, met with the others. I know we have.”
At first, Leo figured he was messing with him. Maybe getting him back for hitting him, which wouldn’t be unjustified. In their family, they were all familiar with giving as good as they got. But Mikey didn’t look like he was joking. There was this tiny, almost imperceptible shakiness to his hands that Leo just didn’t think was capable of being feigned. He held himself tightly enough that Leo was afraid what would happen when he uncoiled.
“You believe me, right?” Mikey blinked, and Leo’s stomach turned at the sight of a faint sheen of tears. “I’m not lying, honest!”
Leo spoke slowly, trying to keep his words from hitting too hard. He didn’t want anyone tripping from the blowback. “I think you’ve been playing that new video game nonstop for the past few days and it’s really been stressing you out. You know how you get when you don’t take breaks. When early access to that Greek myth game came out, you were so into it that you had weird dreams for weeks.”
He could see Mikey’s cheeks heat up. “But – But – ”
“If you’re still worried after the mission, we’ll get into contact with April and Casey, but we really need to move out now.” If they missed their window of opportunity, Raph and Donnie might incorrectly time their own roles, and things could get dangerous fast. Leo didn’t want to brush off Mikey’s feelings, but their family’s safety took priority first. Whatever was going on, it could wait. It had to.
It was times like these that Leo not only understood why he’d been designated the leader, but also wondered how long ago Sensei had made the decision. He felt like he was repeating lessons he’d been walked through since he was a child. Your brothers come first, Leonardo. We train to keep them safe. Everything else is secondary.
Sometimes, even their safety was secondary compared to the wellbeing of the entire world.
Mikey looked down, sighing, and Leo couldn’t help but feel like he’d let him down. “Okay. After, I guess.”
“After,” he repeated.
From there, they fell into a routine etched into their bones. Neither of them missed their shots, and pretty soon, they were both making their individual treks up the TCRI building. It didn’t take too long for Leo to reach the open gap, remarkably uninterrupted compared to the usual setbacks a mission usually threw at him.
He sweated a bit more than he would’ve liked to in dealing with the Kraang. It was likely just due to the sheer amount of them compared to him, but still, he let part of his mind debate spending tomorrow afternoon on training for a scenario similar to this. Whether it was droids or humans, their enemies often stuffed their bases full of bodies in an attempt to halt trespassers. In the long run, though, it never worked.
Really, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary that happened until Raph made his way out of the elevator. He didn’t wait long before joining the fight, though there was a brief beat of hesitation as Raph stood there for a moment, something unfamiliar in his eyes. It was gone before Leo could comment on it, and from there, he got to kick ass side-by-side with his brother.
He tossed him a protein bar once they were done, though he took a big bite of it first. It didn’t do much to clear his head, but by now, the fighting had mostly let him forget in favor of more important things. That was how his life went, he supposed; dropping one thing for another, again and again, until his palms were cold and raw.
“Thanks,” Raph grunted, not commenting on the incomplete snack besides a half-hearted eye roll. He paused, though, and gave Leo a onceover. It was weird, because he had no clue what he was searching for. “Are you – uh, feeling alright?”
“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s just something that Case – ” He cut himself off, expression shuttering. “Something that came up, I mean. It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Are you sure?”
He bristled. “I said – ”
“Okay, okay.” He held his hands up, physically and metaphorically backing off. “Shell, you don’t need to bite my head off.”
“Whatever.” Raph stomped down the hallway, emotional vulnerability apparently out of stock. He shouted, loud enough that Leo could hear him even though he wasn’t looking in his direction, “Donnie send the signal yet?”
“One way to find out.”
They got to their part of the mission relatively quickly. It wasn’t the most difficult task in the world, truth be told. Unsystematic violence aimed vaguely toward anything either of them figured could send out data, leaving Donnie’s copy of the base’s info as the sole survivor. It was sort of fun, actually. Leo found himself even enjoying the sound of his swords slicing cleanly through circuitry, until – BZZT!
LOOP: 236
FATALITIES: 236
TURTLES CONSCIOUS: 3
Leo found himself too close to tipping over the edge of the rooftop for his likening. He tilted back until he was balanced again, exhaling slowly. Shell, if Sensei could see him now. His father had been so intent on hammering the basics into his brain, even at a young age. Leo had always hoped he’d done good on following them, but if he was nearly plummeting off of buildings the moment he took his focus off of his own survival, how good of a job could he be doing?
He shook his head, disappointed in himself. It really was a constant uphill battle, wasn’t it? The moment he stopped pushing himself, there he went slipping off of some nameless cliff.
Did his brothers deal with the same worries? Their skills weren’t specialized the way his were, but his efforts in advancing his ninja prowess could translate into theirs with tech and generalized combat and – and whatever Mikey did. Whatever it was, it was crucial to their team dynamic, don’t get him wrong! Leo just, well, didn’t know how to describe all that.
Practically answering the unasked question for him, sitting a few feet away, Mikey brought his T-Phone even closer to his unblinking eyes, utterly enraptured by the 8-bit character he was piloting.
Tired, and more tentatively sure that the answer wouldn’t be something he’d like, he smacked his little brother upside the head. He expected some sort of dramatic reaction on par with Mikey’s usual theatrics, but he wasn’t met with any of that. Instead, Mikey just lowered his phone slowly, taking a deep breath with the sort of deliberation he rarely ever displayed.
It almost looked like he was waking up from a long nap, what with the way he rolled his shoulders, stretching, tilting his neck this way and that until it popped. Leo watched it all with no small amount of confusion. Was he sore from spending so long playing his video game without taking a break? They’d only been here for about an hour. Mikey had stayed in more uncomfortable positions for longer periods in the past, emboldened by the thought of breaking his high score.
“Are you alright?”
He slipped his T-Phone into a pocket on his belt, taking an extra second to fasten one of the snaps. He – He never did that. It was a minor miracle if he even bothered to put it away instead of insisting he could complete an entire mission with it clasped in his free hand. Had Leo missed something?
“Yeah, bro,” he said, though he didn’t meet Leo’s eyes. Which – weird. Mikey always made eye contact, even when it was kind of, sort of, definitely making Leo’s skin crawl and he had to physically turn away before he snapped out something he regretted. “Right as rain.”
He sounded subdued. Tired, even though it wasn’t anywhere close to their bedtime. Sad, almost. Like when he’d realized that Leatherhead wasn’t coming back through that portal to Dimension X, not for a very long time, at least. It wasn’t the nearly whiny sort of unhappiness he usually wielded, cartoonishly dialed up for reasons Leo didn’t quite understand. It was mature, far more so than he thought Mikey was capable of.
“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t really believe it.
“Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense soon.” Mikey smiled, but it wasn’t as bright as his typically hundred-kilowatt grin. “Sorry we had to leave you for last, though. I know you hate not being in the loop.”
Leo blinked. “What.”
He waved off whatever bizarre thing had come out of his mouth. “It’s okay, I’m just being silly. Goofy ol’ Mikey, you know how it is.”
That was not reassuring, not the slightest, but before Leo could even guess at how to act, Mikey was striding toward the TCRI tower, taking out his grappling hook and firing it almost immediately, without taking the time to properly line up his shot. Leo’s first reaction was to sigh, because Donnie always got so upset when they wasted ammunition, but against all odds, he made it.
“See ya soon!” Mikey called over his shoulder as he leaped away, apparently starting the trek up the skyscraper right then and there. From the quick glimpse Leo got of him before he was gone, he saw a grim edge to Mikey’s determined frown, the likes of which he didn’t think he’d ever seen on his little brother before.
It was all Leo could do not to gape.
That – Had Mikey been sniffing Donnie’s chemicals again? Leo’d thought they’d stopped him after last time, when they’d very painstakingly had to explain how dangerous that was, even though, yes, they did smell like nail polish remover, and no, he shouldn’t be sniffing that either.
Whatever it was, Leo didn’t have the time to figure it out. His window of opportunity was closing, and he didn’t want to see what would happen if he missed it. He took an extra second or two to properly aim before he too was scaling the building, thankfully uninterrupted. With how much of his energy was devoted to reexamining Mikey’s strange behavior, he didn’t want to even imagine what would happen if something else drew his attention.
Mikey could be messing with him, he supposed. It’d be a shell of a weird way to do so, but Leo had to admit that it’d gotten under his skin, although he couldn’t exactly explain what it was. Acting unusually devoted to the mission sure was a strange way to get him back for smacking him when his guard was down, though. He’d mostly just expected Mikey to hurl a water balloon at him next time he got the chance.
Still, the commitment to the bit was a little much. Mikey’d looked so sad. Leo didn’t know how much of that could be faked. It looked too true to just be part of a prank.
He pushed his concerns away when he made it to the entry point. This wasn’t the time, not when there was work to do. And there was always, always work to do.
The droids were about as annoying as usual. They weren’t much of a real threat anymore, only really slowing Leo down through their sheer volumes, and he was able to keep them back without much of a struggle until Raph showed up. The elevator didn’t take long to bring him up, and as soon as the door opened, his brother launched himself into the fray at a speed that surprised even Leo. He knew Raph liked smashing skulls, but he was intense with it today, even for him.
He seemed angry, which – yeah, Raph was always angry, especially when dealing with the Kraang, but this was different. There wasn’t a satisfied gleam to his eyes as he landed an impressive strike on his targets or even the faintest hint at a smirk. This wasn’t blowing off steam, it was just – violence with an end goal.
That wasn’t inherently bad for their mission, or even from the vigilante mindset they’d found themselves stepping into over the years, but – it wasn’t Raph. His brother believed in justice, but there was always part of him that visibly enjoyed kicking ass. The Raph that was ripping squealing pink aliens out of the droids’ chest cavities right now wasn’t having fun with his food.
“Nice of you to show up,” he mumbled, his quip dying in his throat as Raph finished within the same minute as he’d entered the fight. Damn. It was formidable, at the very least.
Chest heaving, sai dripping with fluids that may have been from the droids’ mechanisms or the Kraang themselves, and Leo didn’t think he wanted to know which, Raph just said, low, “You run into anything weird yet? Anyone weird?”
“Uh, Mikey was acting different, I guess.” Was Raph in on it with him?
He fixed him with a look Leo didn’t know how to decipher. It was piercing, though, as if he was looking at Leo through a microscope. “Different how?”
Ignoring the follow-up, Leo got close enough to press the back of his hand to Raph’s forehead. It wasn’t too warm, though none of them were ever totally sure what their temperature was supposed to be. They were somewhat cold-blooded, from what they’d been able to tell. “Are you alright?”
“‘m fine,” he grunted out, and jerked away, leaving Leo’s hand cold. When they were young, they used to hold hands all the time. Him and Raph, Mikey and Donnie. The sewers tended to cool, more so than any of them were accustomed to handle back when they were so small, so they’d done what they could to conserve body heat. “How was Mikey acting weird?”
Maybe it was an infection, like the one that wasp thing had spread to Leo. Or maybe it was hallucinogens from a mushroom again. Karai had been able to get her hands on some dangerous drugs from time to time, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for the Kraang to have them too, especially if they were still in business with the Shredder’s sector of the Foot Clan.
If something really was wrong, then they needed to get out of here, fast. Except by now, Donnie was almost certainly about to send his signal, meaning that all of their work would be for naught if Leo and Raph didn’t complete their half. If they left the job half-done, then the Kraang would definitely improve their security, beef up their current weak spots, and they’d never have another chance like this again.
Best bet, then, was to accomplish what they’d set out to do, but do so quickly enough that Raph and Mikey’s conditions didn’t worsen. And if they were perfectly fine, then that just meant that the rushed job should go even speedier. Win-win, and all that.
“Tell you later,” he said, clipped. That was what Captain Ryan would do, after all. “Right now, we have to get to the console before we miss Donnie’s cue.”
Leo made to search for the room, but Raph shook his head, stepping in his path. Blocking his way was an intentional move, and they both knew it. “Tell me now,” he countered. “Don’t go hiding information from your team, oh great and mighty leader.”
“It can wait until the morning.” Until they were back at home and Donnie could give them an examination in his lab, that was.
“We might not make it to the morning, so go on and tell me now.”
Gritting his teeth, Leo tried to shoulder his way past Raph, but he held fast. Leo may be the taller of the two and wield his weapons with greater skill, but the fact remained that Raph was easily the more muscular of them, and Leo hesitated to draw his swords on his brother. There might not even be anything wrong with him. Leo could very well be overreacting based on nothing more than a hunch.
A hunch, like establishing a second base of operations outside of the city before an invasion forced them out. Like showing mercy to a man that would bleed them dry if given the chance, yet who returned the favor against all odds.
Like welcoming long-lost family into their home, only to lose her in body and soul by the end.
He wasn’t perfect. He wished he was, sometimes, because that would mean that he’d never put his family in danger again. Any problem and he’d instantly know just how to solve it, and that would be that. But it wasn’t that simple. Try as he might, Leo didn’t think he’d ever be so clean-cut perfect. But he could keep trying, and keep learning, and keep improving, until one day, he was the leader that his brothers needed.
“He made a perfect shot with his grappling hook,” Leo said finally, and yeah, it was a small thing to nitpick on, but it was so surprising for Mikey that he couldn’t help but keep coming back to it. Raph studied him with about as much intensity as Donnie usually gave his experiments. It was a little unnerving. “I know Mikey doesn’t usually put that much thought into his aim, but I’m telling you, he didn’t even spend a second on it and it still hit its mark exactly.”
“It was practiced,” Raph filled in.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He nodded at that, gaze somewhere far away. As if Leo had confirmed something, though Leo had no clue what that could possibly be. “Anything else?”
“He was saying weird stuff, just like you,” he said pointedly, but Raph just rolled his eyes. “That’s about it. Is that up to par with your interrogation, or can we finish our mission now?”
“Always the goddamn mission with you,” Raph muttered, fists tightening. He frowned, and for a moment, he reminded Leo of the little kid he used to hold hands with as they wandered their frosted home. “What if you – What if we just didn’t?”
“Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t finish our mission,” he said with a shrug. Like it was that easy. It was never that easy. “What if we just went home and let things fix themselves for once?”
He felt his jaw set. He wanted to voice something inspirational, something uplifting that kids ages six-through-eleven would be quoting for years to come, but all that came out was bitter and dry and terribly old, like cracked tea leaves.
“We did that already. It ended up with all of New York under these dickheads’ control.”
And April’s dad mutated – again. And Karai stuck as an incorrectly mutated, half-conscious form incapable of understanding what she’d become. And an entire ecosystem exposed to volatile mutagen. And Leo’s knee fucked beyond comprehension, still aching to this very day.
The truth was, they didn’t have the option to just phone it in. Not for a single day. There was a reason why Leo had to keep pushing until he was as close to perfect as was possible. He didn’t know if he’d ever get there, but even the simple act of putting in the effort meant that it was another day where he didn’t let his guard down.
Something changed in Raph’s expression. His gaze lowered, breathing hitching for a second before turning steady again. He nodded, a short, curt thing, and Leo couldn’t help but be hit with that feeling again, the one that said he’d let his brother down. “Okay. You’re right, I guess.”
Normally, Leo would rub in the moment goodnaturedly, make Raph repeat the admittance once or twice or seven times, until the tension had eased out of the air, but they were already running late. For all they knew, Donnie and Mikey were waiting on them before they could meet at the rendezvous point.
“That does tend to happen every so often,” he joked, slinging his arm around Raph’s side and squeezing him in a half-hug. His brother gave a small smile, and Leo mirrored it. “Now, come on. Let’s go smash shit. That’ll make you feel better.”
The smile vanished. “No.” Raph jerked out of the loose hold, feet stumbling, as if it had been something other than a casual embrace. He looked left, right, left. Scanning the hallway and all that branched off from it for – for something Leo couldn’t see. “They’re not here yet. We have to wait for them.”
Damnit, and here Leo had been thinking he’d been overreacting. He set his hand on Raph’s shoulder. “Raph, we have to complete our mission – ”
“Fuck the mission!” he barked, ripping his arm away. Leo had been yelled at by Raph before, he had, about a million times, but something about this freaked him beyond his usual reaction; he couldn’t help but flinch back microscopically, jumping the slightest. It was a small motion that most wouldn’t have picked up on, but Raph did right away. “Shit, sorry, Leo. I didn’t – I – This’ll all make sense soon, I promise. You just need to wait, alright? April and Casey aren’t here yet.”
Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense soon, Mikey had said, so undeniably sure of something Leo couldn’t comprehend. Raph had all but stated the same thing. Their odd behaviors had to be connected. Maybe they’d been contaminated by something, or one of them had spread whatever was wrong with them to the other. Was Leo at risk of falling to whatever had gotten them?
“Raph – ” he started, but his brother just growled, eyes still flickering to the other exits. He looked twitchy, unsteady. Not like the protector of the group he’d cemented himself as.
“You need to wake up. This isn’t real!” He hesitated. “Or, it is, but it shouldn’t be. It can’t be, and April ‘nd Casey will prove it. They just – Ugh, where the fuck are they?”
“You’re not acting rational,” Leo said, trying to keep his own tone calm in the face of one that was so opposing. He held his hand out, like was trying to tame an alley cat. “I think you’re sick, and you need help. We need to go home as soon as possible.”
“I’m not crazy,” he stressed.
“Raph.”
“Mikey and Donnie know too, they have to! You need to listen, Leo!”
“We have to go!” Leo snapped. “We’re running out of time before – ”
There was a dull sound, like heavy metal thudding something infinitely lighter. It was stationary, and it didn’t take long for Leo to look down, toward the silver-platinum floor, and blanche at the sight of a compact explosive embedded into the ground in front of his feet.
In his periphery, he could faintly feel the presence of soulless bodies surrounding them. The Kraang had soldiers to spare, he remembered as he dove forward, muscles acting on autopilot. They wouldn’t mind the loss of a few dozen or even a few hundred low-level droid pilots if it meant the end of two of the largest thorns in their sides. It was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.
He made contact with Raph, who hadn’t moved from his frozen form, staring at the bomb. His arms slammed against his brother’s chest, sending both of them flying away as Leo tried to shield him from the imminent destruction as much as possible with his own body, because there could be shell knew what packed in there; gunpowder, mutagen, rusted edges of Dimension X’s rubble –
A pin slipped free of its chamber. The sound was almost drowned in the commotion of his own panicked, last ditch attempt at stealing five more minutes for his family, and when the piece fully dislodged, Leo didn’t even have the time to brace for impact.
BZZT!
LOOP: 237
FATALITIES: 238
TURTLES CONSCIOUS: 3
Leo tipped backward, letting the cool air of the night wash over his warm skin. He’d caught himself threatening to fall forward, probably straight into some diner’s dumpster, and taken the chance to right himself before he did something so completely ridiculous. Sensei would blow a fuse if he saw that. After all the drills he’d had Leo run through from such a young age, one would think that he’d retain one or two of them, especially in such a low-stakes environment.
Hopping off the ledge, he shook his head, a little amused at the thought. He could probably recite the very Space Heroes episode he’d watched the day that his father first taught him the importance of his balance, yet the information all but disappeared from him now.
It was weird how the brain retained memories. He supposed it had to do with their bases. Too bland, and they’d never stand out against the sea of all that came before them. Too eye-catching, and he’d never move past them. They had to be just right, just the correct blend of both for the mind to keep them.
Face mere inches away from his T-Phone screen, Mikey actively lost brain cells as he jammed away at his new video game. The pixelated avatar was flung around in deep space, its pilot oblivious to the entire reason they’d come here, ie. the mission.
Rolling his eyes, Leo reached over and smacked Mikey upside the head.
Dropping his phone at the contact, he didn’t yelp or strike back or even vow revenge to be enacted on Leo when he least expected it. Instead, he just sighed, looking up at Leo with undeniable exhaustion. “Seriously, dude? You couldn’t have thought of any other way to start the loop?”
Leo blinked. “Are you – calling me cheugy?”
He gave him a withering look, and for a moment, Leo’s little brother was the picture-perfect 2000’s era mean girl. “If you’re using the word cheugy, you know everything you need to know.” Then he got to his feet, stretching out his arms in one direction, then another. “For real, though. If we keep at this, you gotta stop giving me brain damage.”
“I barely tapped you,” he huffed, writing off the rest of Mikey’s nonsensical chattering as yet another reference he didn’t get. It was better not to comment on it until it became unbearably obvious that Leo wasn’t in the know. Last thing he needed was to be dragged for being a boomer again. “And we’ll be done with the mission before you know it. We haven’t been here that long.”
Just over an hour, if he was remembering correctly. It’d take a while for Raph and Donnie to plow through the Kraang until they got access to their respective elevators. The timing of this mission really was the tricky part; once the others began their assault on the lower levels, there was only a few short minutes for Leo and Mikey to make it to their entry points, not to mention how they needed to ensure they made their shots during the fleets’ blind spots. If someone was even a few seconds late, they could get so tripped up that the entire thing would be a failure.
Mikey shrugged, shoulder popping as he did so. “I mean, I guess not. April said the loop’s only, like, twenty minutes long, so we’ve really been gone for just a couple days. Feels longer, though.”
Leo made his way over to the other end of the roof. He kept an eye out for the wave of Kraang flyers that would mark their window of opportunity. Absently, he said, “I thought you saw April before we left. Has it really been that long?”
“Uh, I only saw her four loops before you did.”
There it was again. Was that supposed to be alluding to roller coasters? Mikey’s go-to jokes were usually at Staten Island’s expense. And Donnie, but Leo wasn’t seeing the connection there. “Loops?” he said again. Below, a horde of Kraang headed for the dip that’d signal the start of their climb. “Is that, like, part of your video game?”
Behind him, Mikey made a strangled noise. It sounded sort of like Raph when a cockroach crawled across the dinner table, an absolute cacophony of fear so abruptly pushed to the front of the mind, all of a sudden, that it tripped over itself. “Loops, dude. That’s what I – what we’ve been calling the repeats, you know? You feel?”
He turned toward him, frowning. “Really? These missions are so tedious that you’ve officially given them a Mikey-tized name?” Leo sighed, and for a moment, he felt far older than his time on this planet indicated. “Are Donnie and Raph in on this too?”
In a flash, Mikey was crossing the distance between the two of them. His hands were on Leo’s shoulders, iron grip, digging his fingers in until it neared uncomfortable. Still, Leo didn’t pull away. Something about the look in his brother’s eyes concerned him. It was frantic, more desperate than his usual wide-eyed, prank-pulling expression.
“You remember, right?” He swallowed, and fear flashed over his face before either one of them could stop it. “Last time, how you and Raph met with April and Casey, and they told you. They told you, right?”
“April and Casey are at the lair,” he said slowly. “They’re not coming tonight, remember?” Casey was still getting over messing up his wrist from a bad fall he took the week before, and April had agreed to run through another set of lessons with Sensei. They’d all agreed it was best for them to stay at the lair just in case backup was needed.
“Stop – Stop pretending! You remember, I know you do. You have to, or – or – ”
Mikey sobbed, an awful sound spilling out at the beginning of a round of tears rolled down his face. His hold loosened, and Leo took the opportunity to get out of it, stepping forward until he could scoop Mikey up into a hug, into one of those tight, practically back-breaking clutches that he knew his little brother adored. Blubbering, Mikey didn’t hesitate before he was squeezing him back.
“Or you’re going to die,” Mikey wheezed. “Again.”
The word choice didn’t hold anything back. It had Leo flinching despite himself, leaning back until he could make eye contact with Mikey, because there was no way he would throw around something like that. “What did you – ”
“THE ONES KNOWN AS THE TURTLES HAVE BEEN LOCATED IN THE PLACE KNOWN AS HERE.”
“Shit,” Leo hissed. He let go, scrambling for his katana, but it was too late. The rooftop was flooded in harsh pink light, countless Kraang fliers surrounding them. It was as if stepping out from the shadows was as easy as climbing to the top of the stairs; within seconds, the empty space was filled to the brim with hostile droids. The blasters from each hovering craft were glowing, no question as to who they were fixed on, and Leo had absolutely no clue how to get out of this.
When the Kraang spoke again, Leo couldn’t tell which one of them was speaking. Maybe all of them. The voice rumbled around him and Mikey in one formless mass, emanating from a million tiny speakers, until he could feel his tympana aching. “KRAANG PRIME HAS A MESSAGE KRAANG PRIME WOULD LIKE TO GIVE TO THE ONES KNOWN AS THE TURTLES.”
The fliers hummed, one universal noise, before saying, plain as everything else that dropped from their extraterrestrial lips, “NEXT TIME, BE FASTER.”
Mikey’s eyes widened. “What – ”
The Kraang opened fire.
BZZT!