A separated au series, featuring team A being raised by Splinter, and team B raised by Draxum. It mainly focuses on the relationships between the brothers and their own personal struggles, while (very) loosely following the plot of the show and the movie.
A separated au series, featuring team A being raised by Splinter, and team B raised by Draxum. It mainly focuses on the relationships between the brothers and their own personal struggles, while (very) loosely following the plot of the show and the movie.
Rise of the TMNT
Post-movie
Chapter of a longer fic; THIS IS PART OF A SERIES
[AO3]
---
Karai doesn’t really look like he remembered her.
That’s a strange thought, and he’s not really sure why it nags at him as much as it does, but it’s the only thing he can bring his mind to focus on.
That used to happen to him a lot when they were kids. He was always easily distractible and full of thoughts, his head a full three steps ahead of the rest of him. He and Donnie had that in common, but he was never quite able to spin it into anything productive the way his brother did. Mostly, it just left him feeling unbalanced.
These days, he’s been keeping his head firmly on his shoulders.
“Sorry?” He says, because he just realized she asked him a question. She must’ve, judging by the way she’s looking at him now.
Her face softens, all smooth edges and warm eyes. She looks happy to see him at least, even when he’s not doing the best job at listening to her, which is good. He’s happy to see her, too.
“I asked,” she repeats, stepping a bit closer, “can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Leo says without much thought, his voice strangely hollow in his own throat. “Well, now I do.”
There might be a bit of an echo here, which is weird only in that he can't really hear it. And that he's not really sure where 'here' even is, actually.
He looks around, but it all blurs behind his eyes, already a distant and forgotten memory by the time he moves his eyes away; blinding like staring into the sun. That’s strange, probably. He should start worrying about that sometime soon.
“Okay,” he says, more to himself than anything else, but Karai must’ve read something in his tone or on his face, because she reaches out a hand – palm down.
“You can sit,” she says, and it’s only then that Leo realizes she’s standing a bit further than he would’ve expected her to.
As with most things when it comes to his family – they’re far past any sort of social conventions, but they’re hardly strangers, and the distance feels off. He glances down, looking for a reason.
It’s a turtle.
He’s not really sure what he was expecting. As far as he can tell – maybe it was exactly this. He wouldn’t know one way or another, and he can’t quite bring himself up to care.
“Okay,” he says, again.
It’s a red eared slider. When they were little, all the way back when he and his brothers didn’t live together (he can’t really remember why now, but he can only imagine it must’ve been for a very good reason), Donnie prided himself on correctly guessing what species of turtle Leo was.
“They’re very food-motivated,” his brother explained, in the sort of tone that could come off as natural to anyone else but Leo.
“I’m not stupid,” he said, because that was what Donnie meant. “You’re food-motivated.”
“Softshell turtles are cannibalistic,” Donnie replied, all casual.
Leo doesn’t have any food on him. Or anything, really, now that he’s thinking about it. He reaches behind to pet himself on the back, his hands meeting only the smooth edges of his shell.
He doesn’t like walking around without his swords, but his Nimpo feels heavy; not weak but curled up tight somewhere deep inside of his chest – asleep and dead to the world. Maybe it’s because Karai’s here, he reasons with himself. Nothing bad will happen if she’s around.
Leo decides to give it a break.
“Don’t worry,” Karai tells him. She must’ve noticed his nervous shifting, or maybe the look on his face, or maybe something in his eyes. Raph always says he can tell how Leo feels just by looking into his eyes. “This won’t take long, I don’t think.”
“What do you mean?”
She makes a weird gesture, something between a shrug and a wave. She really does look different. What is it? Her eyes? Her nose? He’s usually a lot better with faces, but he hasn’t been feeling a whole lot like himself lately.
That’s a strange thought, and he lingers on it for a moment, but it fizzles out before he can drag anything from it. It feels a little like running into a closed door – face first. He decides not to worry too much about it.
Mikey always tells him he worries too much about things like this. Mikey tells him a lot of stuff, actually, and Leo is rarely the one to listen.
“It’s like talking to a wall,” his brother said once. Leo can’t remember why they fought in the first place, but it couldn’t have been anything important if they were still talking to each other after it.
Leo hates when they fight for real. Being angry with Mikey feels like chewing his fingernails off one by one.
“Maybe the wall doesn’t want your advice,” Leo answered, which wasn’t really true.
He couldn’t help the feeling of always knowing better than his little brother, and his incessant need to always add his two bits into everything grinded on Leo’s nerves, but it was nice to know he still thought that was something worth adding to.
Leo doesn’t remember sitting down, but he must’ve, because he’s face to face (face to knee) with the turtle now. It’s not really looking at him. Or anything in particular, really.
He kind of forgot about it, and looking at it again makes him feel funny all over. His head is starting to hurt a little; he can feel it pulling on the edges of his smile.
“Can I ask you something?” He says, looking up. Karai’s sitting down too, her hands neatly placed over her thighs – palms up. She looks almost a bit too formal for his liking, but then again, maybe she always does. He wouldn’t really know. “Where are we?”
Her smile dims a little at that.
“Don’t worry about that,” she says vaguely, which isn’t an answer, really.
Usagi would hate that, he thinks, because he’s always thinking about Usagi these days.
They grew up a lot in the last couple of months, pushing into each other and intertwining like tree branches. Leo told him as much, and it made the red half-moons around Usagi’s eyes wrinkle in a smile.
“I think we’re more like tokage,” he said, absentmindedly picking at the blue charms on his phone. “They mate for life.”
Leo wanted to say a lot of things at that moment.
They’ve been glued together for a long time, and his absence suddenly stabs deep into Leo’s gut, hitting a lot harder than he would’ve expected.
“Okay,” he says, rather unsure. He looks down once again. The turtle looks back. “Who’s that?” He asks.
It’s a silly question and an even sillier way to put it, but he can’t shake off the question now that it came to his mind. Karai’s face does a funny thing.
“It’s your mom,” she says.
Leo blinks up at her once, twice.
“... Deadass?”
She purses her lips. “I don’t really know what that means.”
Leo looks down again.
The turtle (his mom?) isn’t really looking at him anymore; vaguely lingering around without any real purpose, the way most reptiles do. Leo’s not really sure how to feel.
Hesitantly, he reaches down a hand to smooth over her shell. That’s probably weird, he realizes, quickly pulling back.
Leo never had a mom.
April did, a damn good one at that, and back when they all were a little younger and a little meaner – he couldn’t help but envy her in the most insignificant, pathetic of ways. He was always bitter about this thing or that back then; angry at the world and everyone around him, drunk on unfairness.
Carol was a stubborn woman – all no-nonsense and sharp protectiveness – and her daughter fought with her with all the furiousness of a baby bird trying to fling itself out of a nest.
“She’s so…” April told him one time, gesturing wildly in demonstration. Leo mostly got the point. “She never lets me do anything fun. Like, hello, I’m gonna go to college soon. I’m basically grown.”
April was twelve back then. She still wore her skirts with polka-dots thighs.
“I think she cares about you,” Leo told her. “But it sucks, I know.”
“Is your dad like that?” April asked.
Leo blinked, a bit taken aback. He wasn’t talking about his father at all. It was the middle of summer, and Leo hadn’t seen his dad in a few days.
“Yeah,” he said, twisting a loose thread in April’s shirt around his finger. He pulled on it until it ached.
Leo blinks at the sudden memory, his hand frozen mid-gesture. It’s not a particularly nice one, and it makes him want to curl up, all too exposed. He didn’t like thinking about Splinter on a good day, and this is slowly starting to feel less and less like one of those.
He reaches to rub his temple, face pulled into a frown.
“Uhm, Gram-Gram?” He asks, a little hesitant.
He doesn’t want her to take it the wrong way, but his whole body feels a little too cold to ignore. His neck aches.
The turtle’s looking at him again.
Karai’s face softens a little.
“Hum?”
“I think…” Leo snuffles, wiping his hands on his thighs. “I think I should go now.”
He always promises to stop running away after a fight, but that’s what he must’ve done, because he remembers fighting with Raph. Lately, it feels like that’s all they’ve been doing.
Splinter got involved, which made Leo angrier, because Raph is barely home as it is, and Dad’s lectures are never helping with that, and it also made him feel all kinds of bad.
Leo’s used to disappointing his dad, but he might never get used to feeling this awful about it.
“You are a team,” Splinter said, like somehow they didn’t know. “You are brothers.”
Leo didn’t say anything to that – afraid that if he did, he would’ve sounded six years old all over again. Raph stayed quiet too, but that wasn’t really a surprise.
Raph and Dad don’t really talk anymore.
Leo winces, the headache drumming behind his eyes. His ears ring a little.
“Yes,” Karai says, and it’s only then that Leo realizes it took her a moment to decide on that answer. “I believe you should. Your family must be worried about you.”
“Yeah,” Leo says.
And then he’s sitting up straight, hands clasped together between his knees, because suddenly it’s all he can think about.
He’s been giving his family a lot of reasons for concern recently. He doesn’t really remember why, but he must’ve had a reason, which probably also means it was a dumb one either way. Sometimes, he gets so caught up in his own head that he forgets other people operate on rules fully independent from his bleeding insecurities.
Raph must be worried about him.
He’s always worried about him – always has and always will be – but he’s been looking at Leo in that particular way again, the one that makes him seem ten years older.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he said once.
“That doesn’t sound too awful,” Leo joked, because he always did when he didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t, because the thought of losing Raph was the scariest idea that ever crossed his mind.
Leo would be lost without any of his brothers, forever a puzzle missing pieces, but without Raph – he wouldn’t be Leo at all.
Leo blinks, the world suddenly blurry and hazy. The turtle bumps its head on his knee as it passes.
“Leonardo,” Karai says, shifting closer. She takes his face between her soft hands. “I wasn’t looking forward to seeing you again so soon.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, because that’s all he can think of. His head feels close to splitting open.
“Take care of yourself,” she says. “It won’t be like this the next time. It’ll be real.”
He wants to ask her what that means, but his eyes feel heavy; his throat closed up. He might be getting sick.
He lets her brush her hands down the sides of his neck, shoulders, then back to his face. She smiles, one last time, and it’s only then that Leo realizes what it is that’s so different about her.
This animatic is based off of an Afterlife AU me and my best friend have, based off of the bad future we see at the beginning of the movie.
Mikey managed to send Casey back in time, with a move he knew and accepted would end his life. He pulled it off, but wakes up in a strange place that he nor some very familiar faces are able to explain.
[ID: A photo of the Sydney Opera House and surrounding landscape, except the building has been photoshopped and replaced with a photo of a dishrack with white bowls and plates that resemble the arcs of the original. End ID.]
Here are the close ups of my contributions to this week's Magma, including the treat in the mayhem collab
This was my first time using magma and my first time participating. I had a blast and am exited for the future. Thank you, Rhys, for creating and setting up the jams. Thank you, tmnt Fandom artists, for being so welcoming and generally amazing.
see every time i see this status i get angry because i’ve played through literally every scenario in rct1 and there is no place where this is a thing. there is never more than one park per map. and in rct2 you can’t make that happen i the scenario editor either. it is not remotely within the game’s functionality to simulate two discrete parks and these games were coded in assembly for christ sake so it’s not like someone modded it in by adding the line “int const TOTAL_NUM_POSSIBLE_PARKS = 2;”. there is no conceivable way this post is anything close to true and even though i know how writing all this out reflects upon me as a person and even though i know exactly how meaningless and trifling of a takedown attempt this is on some random facebook screencap with hundreds of thousands of notes im going to post it anyway because i’m too petty to have any say in the matter
