Chapter Text
New York, 2044…
…or is it?
Angelo hadn’t known quite what to expect when he died.
Instant death, maybe. His body shattering into golden sparks, probably some pain, and then he would be with the rest of his family, safe in their arms forever. That was what he hoped for. Not this.
This was some sort of in-between state.
The noise of the battlefield was muffled, barely there around him. He was kind of hanging here, holding the portal open for as long as he could. He’d heard Leo’s final words to Casey. Felt Casey make it through. Leo’s presence weak but still there, still dying. The kid was safe now; it was time to let go. He wanted to wait for Leo. They could go together and arrive hand in hand.
But he was going now.
Battlefield, krang, the wreckage of New York City and the death and horror and waste… he would never have to see it all again. He could feel a pull on his soul. In mere moments he would see his family, he was sure. He just hadn’t expected it to feel… wrong. He didn’t think death was a rift, sucking him in… Someone was calling him, and it was not a voice he knew.
This isn’t the right way, he knew somehow. This isn’t the way to my family.
So he resisted. The voice grew stronger, the rift in his portal cracked wider to swallow him whole, and with all his power burned out and only his bare soul left, he was not strong enough. He was all alone here, and the rift took him.
And he opened his eyes to a crumbling moon in a sky of swirling neon colors.
Blurred voices sounded around him, and movement in the edges of his vision, but at least he could see now. That’s right, Angie, look for the positive, he reminded himself. Although it was funny considering the negative was that he wasn’t dead.
"Leo?" His voice came out as a hoarse croak. He couldn't feel Leo nearby... but he didn't know what to do but call out for his big brother. He just wanted Leo to be there, like he always was.
"Leo..."
The ringing in Angelo's head lessened, and he could make out voices now and see that he was lying on his back and the lights all around him were candles.
"I don't think it hears us..."
"It's disoriented. Give it a minute."
Fear spiked through Angelo's body at the unfamiliar voices and presences. They weren't krang, he could sense that right off the bat, but who were they? Humans or yokai? Friends or foes?
Head still swimming, Angelo sat up, years of sharpened survival instincts overriding all his discomfort and disorientation. Only to fall, dizzy, forward onto the lit candles. There were exclamations of surprise around him. Oops. That would probably sting in a sec. Angelo pushed himself up with his arms, but the candles were untouched, their flames just flickering a little. The ground was hard-packed dust marked with the chalk runes of some spell.
Oh, banana pancakes. He could see right through his arm.
Scratch whatever he’d said about not being dead.
"Is it a ghost? It appears to be a spirit of some kind."
"Shut up. You're ruining the moment. Spirit, can you hear my voice?"
Angelo looked up. Wherever he was, it was night, lit only by a circle of candles around him and the swirls of colors in the sky interspersed with stars. There were creatures standing around – definitely not humans. One, a small lizard person squatting right in front of him on the other side of the border of candles, was the one addressing him. He had a wrinkly face with leering, wild eyes, and ragged clothes.
"Can you hear me?"
Angelo blinked as his vision steadied. "Yes. Who are you and where am I?" His voice was a little bit off in his ears. Everything felt just a little bit wrong.
The lizard jumped to his feet, cackling and dancing a clumsy jig of excitement. "See! See, I told you it would work! Here he is, master! He's all yours!"
The creature nearest the little guy was a pretty big dude. He was some other type of lizard; bulky and spiky and mean-looking. He stepped forward. "Wonderful. If you ever tell me to shut up again I'll rip out your tongue."
The little lizard cut his jumping short and his eyes bugged out guiltily. The big guy turned his eye to Angelo with a piercing, calculating look that Angelo knew well to be the look of a power-hungry beast. "What is it? A frog?"
"Um... ah..." The small lizard peered at Angelo. "Actually, I think it's a turtle. He's got somethin' under the cape."
"Well, it doesn't look like much." The big lizard snorted contemptuously. "It certainly ain’t the dragon you said you could get me."
"Ah... eheheh..." The little guy sputtered and stammered nervously, but his leader ignored him, stepping right up to the candles to tower over Angelo.
"Spirit, I am your master now. What are you and where do you come from?"
Angelo stood up. He might be too disoriented to make much sense of whatever was happening to him, but he didn't have to be helpless. And he didn't really like how tiny he was in front of this guy, so he hopped up into the air and sat criss-cross-applesauce, levitating in his usual manner. It felt a little… different, somehow. He felt hollow. Well, duh, his body was gone. He placed his hands on his knees and tilted his head to shoot the big lizard a skeptical arch of the brow-ridge.
"Who are you and why have I been brought here?"
The big lizard did not seem to like that response much. Which was cool with Angelo, because this guy had major bad vibes and definitely wasn't someone he wanted to please. But the lizard answered anyway. "My name is Imperius Reptilicus, leader of the Scale Tail Clan, and you have been summoned to serve me. What sort of spirit are you and what abilities do you have that might be useful to me?"
Angelo could barely even listen to the rest of the speech after hearing that name. He wheezed out a laugh, slightly hysterical. "Wait, is that like, actually your name? Man. Uh... I'm afraid I don't have any abilities that you'd like. You can put me back, actually."
That would have been a lie, except that he was pretty sure it was even more true than he knew. Although his body was gone, he could still feel an exhaustion, and an emptiness in him that scared him.
It'll take everything I have, he'd reminded Leo, even as he did it. And it did. Ripping a gateway through time and space took everything. Not just his ninpo, but every molecule of energy in his physical body, the empyrean in his veins, the mystic fire from his kusari-fundo when he was a child. Everything except the one thing he couldn't give away; his soul. And now he could feel that emptiness, that exhaustion of his very spirit. It was worse than before he'd unlocked his ninpo, because it was worse to not have it at all than to have it and not know it.
"And what is your name?" Imperius prompted.
"Hmm... you don't need to know that." Angelo shot him a serene smile. "Unhook me and toss me back, boys. I ain’t big enough for eatin’." Wherever he was, this was the wrong world. He was supposed to be in the afterlife.
He looked down at the candles and the dusty cracked ground and the markings chalked into it; it was no spell he recognized, but maybe he could get it working. He just had to figure out what they'd done. He lowered himself close to the ground, studying the marks. "So what were you trying to summon, if not me? Did you mention a dragon?"
With a swipe of his foot, Imperius knocked over the candles, snuffing them out and wiping out the symbols in the dust. "You will do, I hope. I can tell you're something powerful. Are you a wizard? A ghost? A demon?"
Angelo narrowed his eyes, disappointed at the loss of the spell. "Hmm... all of the above? Nope, I'm outta juice, man."
"Stop bluffing. You obey me now, and you will tell me what your power is." Imperius huffed, kicking experimentally at Angelo, who watched his foot phase through him harmlessly with distant half-interest. Imperius turned on his small follower. "Wick. Did you not tell me that whatever otherworldly being you summoned would be under my command?"
"Well, I... yeah..." The small lizard stammered, grabbing a thick, worn-out book held together with crusty old tape and rubber bands – it looked even worse than Angelo's own adventure-worn spell book. He opened it frantically. "Well, I thought- I tried-"
With a curse, Imperius knocked the book out of Wick's hands and sent it flying. "You are the worst medium ever!" He pointed a claw in Angelo's face, his voice lowering to a growl. "Listen, spirit. I command you now, and maybe if you serve me well I will allow you to go back to your world. Do we have a deal?"
Angelo straightened out his legs, hovering just above the ground. "No, I don't think we do. I don't vibe with you. Like I'm sayin', just send me home and get something else. I'm s'posed to be dead."
Saying it out loud was a little different from just thinking it, and his voice almost quivered. It didn't feel real yet, he couldn't quite comprehend not having a body, he certainly was not having an easy time grasping that he was here, wherever here was. Was this real?
The last flame of a knocked-over candle caught his eye and fizzled out. And something – some sort of fear he couldn't put a name to – gripped him. He needed to get out of here. Wick didn’t appear a very competent magician, but incompetence could be even more dangerous. There was no telling what he could do… and this place felt so evil.
He just needed out of here.
Whether it was mystic intuition or warrior instinct, or just plain old panic, he turned and ran.
This was some sort of courtyard he was in, with high gray walls all around and a huge fortified gate and ramshackle buildings and bulky vehicles.
"Stop him!" cried out Imperius behind him. "Wick! Surely you can figure out how to catch a spirit!"
There were guards atop the wall, more lizard people, who turned at the sound of their leader's shout and saw something heading their way. But they couldn't do anything about it.
Angelo gunned it and ran right through the closed gate.
It didn't feel as weird as he might have imagined. He didn't feel much of anything. He certainly didn't stop to dwell on it. Imperius' shouts were more muffled behind him, but he heard a vehicle start up.
Outside of the fortress, Angelo was met with... pretty much nothing. A wide open desert; bare and lifeless and worn with tire tracks leading away into the distance. It was lighter out here, though, with all the night sky to light his way.
Angelo half-ran, half-levitated. He found he couldn't go fast enough; even if he didn't have a physical body to be tired, his spirit was worn out from ripping all the precious magic out of it. His vision tilted and his mind felt fuzzy with static. All he could do was focus on moving.
With a rattle, the gate was cranked open and he heard beefy engines and shouts. There was nowhere to hide out here. And, he could see by the soft golden-orange light that bathed the ground beneath him, he was a walking beacon.
Coming over a slight rise, Angelo didn't see the boulder in his path until he phased right through it. Hmm. Maybe hiding wasn't so hard after all. He stopped, turned around, and leaned into the rock. Nothing caught him, of course. He slipped right in.
It was pitch dark inside the rock. Duh. His senses were further dulled, but he could feel the vibrations through the ground as the trucks rumbled closer. They roared right past, and only a few minutes after he heard the last vibrations did Angelo crawl out. Regaining four of his five senses, he smelled exhaust and would have been coughing in the dust cloud left behind had he had lungs to breathe it in. Off on the horizon, the vehicles were distant and obscured in their dust trail.
Angelo stayed low to the ground and took off at a ninety degree angle to the path of his pursuers.
He couldn't run out of breath, of course, but deep exhaustion dragged at him and gradually he slowed from a floating run to a walk, letting his feet rest on the ground. A glance behind him confirmed the fortress was long out of sight. And he was, as far as he could see, all alone.
He walked on... and on... and as he walked, his head ringing and his soul feeling like a struggling candle flame, he tried to take stock of his situation.
It was hard to gather his thoughts; he'd gone straight from the battlefield, accepting his end and prepared to reunite with his family, to being ripped away from that to Pizza Supreme knew where. To some place where he was an otherworldly spirit being summoned like some genie. None of that made any sense yet to his weary, heavy mind. He hadn't even processed his death yet and would probably freak out later when he got the chance to sit down and get out of get-the-heck-outta-here mode.
Instead of thinking about that and risking a freak-out, Angelo did what he always did in situations – he reached out for his brothers.
It was something he'd learned a few years into the whole apocalypse situation. That when he was stuck in a living nightmare, he only had to reach out and find his brothers' presences, no matter how far away they were. Sometimes the result was that he could find them and be safe again, sometimes it just gave him the courage he needed; the reminder that he was not alone. And he'd exercised it so much that he could feel them from so far away they couldn't understand how he did it. Leo would just laugh and mess up his hair and call him his weird little mystic prodigy.
Now Angelo reached out in every direction for that blue; the only color left to him in the past few years. There were faint signatures of life in some places, but they were far away and most of them small and insignificant. Wild animals, maybe trees or something. He didn't care. He wanted his big, safe, strong blue. He wanted to touch that ninpo with his and be tickled back reassuringly.
But he found nothing. Not a speck, not a trace of any ninpo at all.
And he had none of his own anyway. That sent a new wave of pain through his soul. He hadn't even known he could exist without his ninpo. Even before he knew he had it, it was as much a part of him as his soul and his stomach and his love and his big brothers. He didn't even know that he could just rip it away from himself like that. Like willingly cutting off his own limb; or cutting off his own head to drain all his lifeblood out. It was a surprise to find that, even without it, he was still... himself. Somehow. He was hollow and barely here and everything felt wrong and he was alone, but even with half of him gone he remained himself.
Something hot slid down his face and he paused, confused, as a droplet of pure light fell and hit the cracked dirt and disappeared just as quickly into nothing.
Huh. Ghosts could cry. You learn something new every day.
He sniffed it away, and found that the ghost-tears weren't the only warmth he felt. He looked around. Nothing in the landscape had changed. Darkness, desert, paint-spattered night sky, and a spot of dim firelight where he stood.
It was in him. It was deep down, where he went when he needed all of his power. Down where he kept his love. A little dying ember, flickering with weak warmth; the last spark of his completely depleted ninpo.
Ah. That was the seam that had connected it to him; a seam he'd torn with no care for the damage it caused. He couldn't imagine that it would ever heal, because his soul wasn't made to exist without its ancestral power, was it? Would he fade away now? And if he did, would his soul find its way back to where it belonged?
Angelo hardly knew he had been walking for hours until the sun started coming up and the landscape changed from flat ground to bare brown hills. There were struggling gray plants here and there that he was pretty sure were sagebrush. The sun was not particularly warm, or bright, like whatever was in the sky stuffed up the atmosphere and held back its rays. But it was more bright and unhindered sunshine than Angelo had seen in years. He couldn't stop looking up at it, and wondering at how it didn't hurt his eyes. In his world the sun had been red for so long, little Casey didn't even understand when they explained to him that it used to be painfully white and searing hot and could even kill people.
Angelo came to the top of a hill and found a river. Or whatever passed for a river around here. It was slow and brown, but clear enough to see the sludgy bottom. It didn't look particularly healthy. But it looked miles better than any of the water back in the ruins of New York. If Angelo had been in need of a drink, he would have gone for it. As it was, he headed down the hillside to the bank and sat on the rocks.
This was far enough. This was a peaceful place for whatever might come next.
A few fishy shadows moved lazily through the river, and a morning breeze came silently through the ravine, with no grass to rattle. There was a mass of something plant-ish along the bank, looking like dull red lumps, but maybe they were just some more rocks. They didn't move. Angelo didn't care to check them out. He was too tired, and the hollowness pained him.
He laid down, and took in the sky of green and blue and purple nebulas, the only bright colors in this world so far. He closed his eyes and hoped that he was fading. He should be gone soon, right? Ghosts stayed when they had unfinished business, and he had finished his work. With his very last breath he'd done what he needed to do and he'd been at peace with it and he had no one to haunt.
But he couldn't feel himself fading away or leaving, or... going anywhere. That little lizard's spell might not have gone the way it was intended, but it had done something to Angelo to not only bring him here but keep him here. He swallowed fear. Maybe he just had to wait, and it would wear off. Right?
In the meantime, he reached down into himself again to further inspect the damage. That spark was still there. Just a weakly flickering remnant he was afraid to blow on. If it went cold he didn't know what would happen to his soul. In desperation and grief, despite knowing it would yield no results, Angelo reached out again, searching. Small lifeforms all around him, no ninpo. He really was alone in this world and he never ever been so far away from his brothers. Almost writhing in the agony of the thought, he pressed his hands into his eyes, too tired even to cry.
All he could feel was the lingering spark in the torn seam, and he hardly dared cling too tightly to that for fear of smothering it out. And in the midst of his wanting – he wanted Leo, he wanted to fade away, he wanted his dad and Raph and Donnie and a world with no more evil – an image came into his mind. Which was unusual, because when he had visions he usually got them in his sleep. Sometimes in times of grief. Sometimes in happy moments.
This one came in his agony, and he laid still to pay attention to it.
There were four people, which made him think of when he'd been one of a set of four, but these clearly weren't him and his brothers. Two big, bulky people and two smaller people. They weren't really doing anything. Just talking and laughing together, and he couldn't see their faces, but he liked them all. They stood surrounded by lush green plants, a stark contrast to their dusty, faded colors and grungy clothes. They weren't human, he could tell that much. Three of them were green-skinned and one gray, but like in a dream he couldn't see the details that he really wanted to see.
Then Angelo's eyes came open, and to his frustration it was gone. He frowned at the unmoving swirls in the sky. He didn't even know where to begin picking that vision apart. He didn't know those people or that place and it didn't seem to have anything to with him. It seemed useless, in fact. He'd gotten into foreseeing the future in the first place to help Leo make battle plans and to try and get ahead of the krang; he foresaw glimpses of things that came in handy down the line and actually had something to do with his life. This one was... distant, like it wasn't for him. It wasn't his life. Or his world. His mind had just reached out and grabbed it from somewhere in his moment of agonizing grief. Maybe it wasn't even a foresight. But it had yanked Angelo out of his pain for the moment, and he lay there with an empty ache instead.
There was someone nearby. The knowledge came suddenly, piercing, as he'd been too preoccupied to notice them coming. He heard movement on the other side of the rocks he laid behind.
Sitting up, Angelo peeked out.
A skinny, awkward figure hopped along the river bank, with an oblivious cheeriness and a song hummed under his breath. Between dusty green skin and a poncho and long stringy hair, he looked ragged and quite frankly dilapidated. Angelo watched in confusion as the newcomer stopped by the mass of red things and, halting his song, started jumping up and down in a crazy dance and screaming. He stomped the ground, yelled wildly and wordlessly, and then stood and waited.
Hmm. Clearly this poor creature was a few pepperonis short of a pizza.
But whatever his intentions, a moment later the red things started moving. They sprang upright, large blossoms unfurling, all moving like snakes on their stems and producing a hiss like wind in dry reeds. They looked like some big nasty carnivorous plants, in fact, like something one might have seen in a houseplant nursery in the Hidden City long ago. Actually, he was pretty sure Donnie had come home with something similar once.
The crazy green man – was that a turtle shell, under his poncho? – grabbed the nearest plant, pulled a machete out of his poncho, and hacked at the stem. The plant hissed and writhed, but he yelled and hacked and tossed it aside as he severed its stem, going for the next one and fighting off others as they lunged for his legs with toothy petals. They shrieked at him, and he cackled and shrieked back and stabbed and sliced with his machete like a murdering madman out of some horror movie. Then, even more quickly than he'd come, the man – he was definitely some sort of reptile! – gathered his harvest of dying plants in his arms, backflipped, and ran out of reach of their vengeful relatives.
"Ha! The eaters shall become the eaten! Take that!" he shouted triumphantly, doing a victory dance and pointing at the hissing, snapping patch of plants. Just then one of the dying ones he held reached up with one last effort and chomped his arm. "Yeow!" He flicked it off, dropping his whole load on the ground. It wiggled and hissed weakly, then went still with the others, leaking sap from its severed stem.
"Huh. The things I have to do for a salad," grumbled the turtle man, rubbing his arm, but the bite hadn't broken skin. "And I don't even like salad."
He turned to pick up his so-called salad, and Angelo got a better look at his face. He looked unhealthy, with dull scales and malnourishment and hair that was grayer than it should have been, but he was clearly a turtle. Angelo had to fight down the instant kinship he felt and remind himself that he couldn't trust a stranger just because they were a turtle.
Should he talk to him anyway, just to see what would happen? He could ask where they were, at least. It could be something to start with. He didn't get the chance to decide for himself, though, as the other turtle straightened, accidentally locked eyes with him, and promptly dropped his armful of plants all over again. There were at least twenty feet and several rocks between them, but he held out his rusty machete and yelled.
"Hey, you! You spyin' on me? Come outta there unless you're a coward!"
And as their eyes met, Angelo knew somehow that this was one of the creatures he'd seen in his visions mere minutes before. He didn't know how he knew that. The vision was so unclear. But he could feel it, and he knew by now how to distinguish those feelings and that it must mean something.
He stood up, hands held up peacefully. "Hey, man. Didn't mean to spy. I just didn't expect to see anyone here. I uhh. Come in peace."
"Mmkay." The other turtle narrowed his eyes at him. "What are ya, a ghost? Hey, are you a turtle?" His suspicion faded into curiosity.
"Um, yes. All of the above." Angelo hopped over the rocks and approached. Never mind the machete. It couldn't hurt him anyway. He'd like to see the other guy swing it at him, just for giggles. "I was hoping you might tell me where we are right now." He gestured to the landscape.
The poncho turtle lowered his machete. "Too close to Scale Tail territory for comfort. What're you doin' here? Are you a Scale Tail?"
Angelo shook his head quickly. "No, no. I'm just lost. Like, what country or world are we in?"
"Uh... I think this maybe used to be like, Texas?" The turtle scratched his chin thoughtfully with the tip of his machete. "Or Pennsylvania. I don't have a map."
"So... Earth, then," Angelo confirmed. So all Donnie's old multiverse theories had something to them. This was clearly not an Earth invaded by the Krang, so it had to be an alternate Earth. "And you don't have krang here?"
"Not anymore." The other turtle made a face of disgust. "Those slimeballs hauled shell a looooong time ago. I should know, I totally kicked their butts myself. A'course, what they left behind was just as bad."
No way... no way. Donnie's old theories. This was crazy. Angelo's mind spun. "Wait, what's your name?" He already had a suspicion that he hardly dared think. The turtle's headband and one arm wrapping were dirty, faded orange.
No, that didn't mean anything. He could be anyone.
"Hold on." The other turtle shushed him with a finger to Angelo's face, which went right through him. He didn't seem to care; he was listening. There was a churring sound, and up over the nearest rise came another turtle. This one was huge, like, elephant sized, lumbering on four legs and heading right for them.
"Someone's comin'," the turtle man announced. "Scale Tail Clan, he says. If you ain't with 'em, then you gotta hide." He looked back at Angelo. "Can ghosts hide?"
"Yeah, yeah. They're after me," Angelo explained. If they'd come all the way here, they must be scouring the desert, not just looking willy-nilly.
"In the river with Chompy, c'mon." The other turtle ran for the water, where the giant turtle was splashing in. "And they call me the Holy Chalupa!" He jumped onto his giant turtle's back and clung to one of the spikes as it submerged in the river, swimming to a spot between the patches of writhing plants. Some of the plants grew in the shallows, like reeds, providing miniscule shelter to hide in.
Angelo got his feet in the air and levitated fast across the water, joining the strange turtle, who laid flat on top of the huge carapace that sat just under the water's surface and slid himself into the water until just his head stuck out. He gaped at Angelo.
"Dude, are you levitating? Can you teach me how to do that? Or is it a ghost exclusive thing?" He frowned. "Also, can you stop glowin'? You stick out like crazy, man."
"I don't think so. Sorry," said Angelo sheepishly. He sank into the water, and it wasn't all that different from floating in the air. He did try to stop glowing, but he couldn’t help that any less than he could have helped being corporeal just the day before.
It wasn’t very long until he too heard the vehicles Chompy had warned of. They rumbled up to the top of the hill just across from where Angelo hid, and he could see the front tires of the foremost truck as it paused there. He hoped his glow wasn’t noticeable in the daylight.
“There’s tracks here, somethin’ huge,” yelled someone.
“Well, ghosts don’t make tracks like that,” yelled back the voice of Imperius. “We ain’t messin’ with that today. Move on before we attract it.”
The trucks roared, and sped away out of sight.
Angelo breathed a little sigh of relief and then noticed the so-called Holy Chalupa staring at him with one arched eyebrow. “Huh?”
“What’d ya do?” asked the other turtle skeptically. “Why’s Imperius Reptilicus himself out here huntin’ a ghost?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Angelo insisted with some heat in his tone. “He’s the one who… summoned me out of my world. I don’t even know.”
Chompy rose out of the water, taking the two smaller turtles with him, and plodded out of the river, dripping. He looked back to check on his riders and rumbled cheerfully.
“Good boy, Chompster!” The Holy Chalupa patted his massive spiky shell. “Well, I gotta catch some fish and then move along. Where you headed, Mr. Ghost?”
Angelo, sitting barely rested atop the shell, frowned. “I dunno. I’m not going anywhere.” His eyes darted around the landscape. Away. No… home. He needed to get home. This wasn’t his world… he remembered the question that had eaten at his mind the whole time they’d been hiding in the river. “What’s your name? Like, for reals?”
And he waited, breath held, bracing himself for a disappointment.
“The Holy Chalupa,” the other turtle insisted, with a flourish. “But… my actual name, not that anybody cares anymore, is Michelangelo.”
“Ohmigosh,” Angelo whispered, as possibilities and theories and wonderings swirled together in his brain like a blender. “Michelangelo Hamato?”
The other turtle had the grace to look startled. “How’d you know that name?”
A grin bloomed on Angelo’s face. He couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t what he’d thought he’d meant by figuring he’d landed in another universe. This wasn’t just any other universe.
“Okay, funny story, get this…” he said, drawing out the suspense for just a couple of seconds. “That’s my name too.”
The other turtle’s mouth dropped into an O, and Angelo could see in his round eyes the gears turning and the dots connecting. And he could see… himself. There was no mistaking it, this was no coincidence, not a doubt in Angelo’s mind or heart.
“No way,” gasped the other Michelangelo. “You’re me from another universe! I’ve met guys like you before!”
“What!” shrieked Angelo. “Seriously?!”
“Whaaaat! This is so rad!” Other Michelangelo’s freckled, pale face burst into a grin. "Wait, I know, we should call you Angelo and I'll be Mike. I rock at namin’ stuff. Oh, and this guy is Chompy Picasso." He slapped the shell he sat on.
"Okay, yeah, sure, hold up. Circle back, chico." Angelo held up his hands. "What do you mean you've met guys like me before? You know about alternate universes?"
"Well, yeah. It was a long time ago." Mike shrugged.
"Okay, so you don't have a hard time believing this?" Angelo asked just to make sure he wasn't being messed with. "'Cause my Don only ever had theories about it."
"Nah, you got mad Mikey vibes. I think I'd have figured it out anyway just from your vibes," said Mike airily. "Us Mikeys got a strong sense for this stuff."
"Agreed." Angelo nodded enthusiastically. It wasn't even a mystic sense, but something deeper and more intrinsic.
"So how'd you come here? Why're you a ghost?" Mike blurted. He looked hopeful. "Are there... are your brothers here too?"
Angelo had ten million questions of his own, but they were all there at once and he was too tired out and disoriented to get any of them out. And he didn't know how to answer, either. He shook his head slowly. "No. They're... not."
Leo. He wanted to just feel Leo, know he was there. He didn't care if they were both dead, he wanted Leo so much it hurt. Everything welled up in him and he felt hot tears on his face again, and droplets of golden light splashed onto Chompy's shell and disintegrated.
"Sorry, I'm... I've been through a lot, and I'm so confused and tired." Angelo sniffled, rubbing his eyes into his arms even as he couldn't stop the flow. "I still haven't grasped being dead yet. I might like, be in shock later. I dunno."
"Sorry, man. That's gotta be wild." Mike lowered his voice apologetically. "Um... you can sit here and chill, I'm gonna grab some fish and then head outta here before any more Scale Tails come by. Let me know if you need anythin', kay?"
"Thanks." Angelo nodded, trying to get control of himself. Everything was crashing down on him at once – everything he hadn't gotten a chance to even begin processing, hadn't dared to think about during his barely conscious trek across the desert.
It had all ended so fast. It was over for his world, his family, the Resistance, all of humanity and yokai. Just like that. And the only consolation was that Casey Junior, the sole survivor of the lost war, was safe in the past and on his way to stop it all from happening. He would succeed, Angelo was confident of that. Leo had taught him well. He found himself smiling and wiped away his ghost-tears. He hoped the kid knew he was proud of him.
Angelo sniffed and looked up, watching Mike in the shallows of the river, catching fish... with his bare hands, apparently. He was hunched over like a heron, snatching them out of the water and throwing them flopping onto the bank with triumphant yells.
Exhaustion washed over Angelo, and he rubbed his hands across Chompy's shell beneath him. It was dark with crackly red patterns and reminiscent of lava. Chompy churred, apparently able to feel even the touch of his ghostly hands.
Oh Pizza Supreme, he needed to shut off his brain for a while and just... not exist. He might not be able to technically sleep without a body, but he could still enter a trance to accomplish something close enough. He could already feel his mind starting to shut down; he felt safe here, and with a whole day of battle and confusion behind him, it was ready to wind down.
So he gave in, and got comfortable. And drifted off before he could even complete his thought about where to begin explaining everything to his counterpart.