The Pizza Game (Chp 4)
Chapter 4: Mikey Orders a Pizza
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Ao3 link
Summary:
Mikey opens a time gateway. (But not the gateway you're thinking of) words: 3423
Notes:
Bit of a time skip from the last chapter! We are still in Angstville. :3 I rewrote sections of this chapter like 3 times, so I hope the final result is okay
Michelangelo sat in the Middle of his room, books and scrolls surrounding him.
I can do this. I can do this. He repeated to himself as he took a steadying breath. (He ignored his trembling hands).
For all the years and scrolls and books he had searched for and researched, creating a Time Gateway wasn’t actually that complicated.
But years it had taken.
---
Mikey had demanded that Draxum help him find the time scepter or relics. Draxum had refused, but only because he knew that the items Michelangelo wanted no longer existed, if they ever did in the first place.
Then Mikey begged Draxum to help him look for it anyway or for any way to get his brother back. It was in the wake of Raphael’s death, and his determination was the most alive Mikey had looked in months. He needed to find some possible way to fix things. That was when Draxum caved and agreed to help him find a way to create a Time Gateway.
Draxum only knew about the theory of them in general, he could not perform the ritual himself. But he knew they were risky and usually required multiple masters to have enough power to perform one.
Mikey didn’t let any of that deter him.
Mikey was then told of where they could possibly obtain the knowledge necessary to learn how to make a time gateway. Draxum and Mikey told everyone that they were going to complete Michelangelo’s mystic training to become a master. That was true, it was one of the reasons that Draxum agreed to the search, that in doing so they would also finish his mystic training at the remaining strongholds of Mystic Teachings.
And then they had left. Over the next two years Michelangelo and Draxum found the texts to learn how to make a time gateway together, though Draxum was still wary of it, claiming the process to be very risky, both for the casters, and for time itself.
However, on the journey they found something else.
They had found that the empyrean had actually been created by the Krang’s arrival centuries ago. They found a way to mystically reverse engineer it to push back the Krang.
They had made headway over the next couple of years in the fight against the krang and gained land and resources. With the war finally turning in their favor, Mikey had other things to focus on and his plans for the time gateway were pushed to the side, even though his grief had dulled but never disappeared.
And then the krang found a way to negate the mystic attacks. The war had stalled for another 2 years, and they lost Baron Draxum during that time.
Then the krang found a way to turn the mystic attack against them, and they scrambled to hold their ground.
And then Michelangelo lost another brother, and gained a new reason to try for a time gateway.
---
According to everything he read on the matter, the only things needed to create a Gateway was: Focus and Conviction set on a clear point in time of when you wanted the gateway to open to, and an immense amount of energy to tunnel through the stream of time.
(That last part was what Barry had been worried about the most. It’ll be fine, don’t think about it.)
And okay. It was a little more complicated than just thinking about When you wanted the gateway to open. There was a lot that had to deal with sensing the flow of time, and following it back (or forward but that was more complicated) and staying connected within your own timeline and not fracturing it and possibly destroying your own time line in the process before even getting there.
Draxum had worried over that too, saying the gateway wasn’t worth the risk. But he wasn’t here to stop him, Mikey thought bitterly. Neither was his most overprotective brother. Nor the brother who had the most to say about the possibilities of time travel.
That was why Mikey had to practice now, get used to the flow of linear time, and how to reach back in it. Reach back, open a gate, and pull something (some One) Back.
He couldn’t worry about the possibility of only being able to do it once. He had to be able to do it twice. So this first attempt was just practicing. If he messed it up, he didn’t want to get stuck in a time loop of his brother dying. (Don’t think about it, don’t think about it. Focus.)
He had to focus on something else. Some other time. Some other time with something he could put enough conviction in to focus on…
Well. They certainly had joked about it enough.
Mikey was going to order a pizza.
He raised his hands. Moved them in the specific pattern the scrolls said to. Felt the flow of time around him, focused on When he was wanting to go, and Reached.
It was a weird feeling. Cold rushed past him, but there was a warm chord of time he was following that connected to when he wanted to go. Trying to expand the cord into a tunnel felt like standing at the bottom of a waterfall and trying to swim upwards.
He pulled a little more from the well of mystic energy he had inside to push forward (backward? FOCUS).
He could do this. He had to do this.
He needed his brothers back.
He had to be able to do this. Just a little more.
A little more.
Come on, come on!
He could feel the push and pull of the time stream.
“Mikey?”
He just had to keep pushing, put just a little more energy into it-
“Mikey?!”
Focus. He had to focus. This couldn’t work if he was distracted.
“What are you doing?! Mikey stop!” The pleas of his (last remaining) brother were ignored. He had to FOCUS-
“Michelangelo! STOP!” The cold (hot? It felt like they were burning) hands that shook his shoulders sent him out of the timestream, faster than he had entered it. He gasped like he’d actually been holding his breath. In the dying light of the orange gateway, that had been about the size of a quarter (that was all the bigger it had gotten?) he saw Leonardo’s concerned and slightly panicked face.
Michelangelo glared at him.
“Why did you do that?! Why did you stop me?! I was So Close!” he growled. (It was a lie)
“So close to what? Mikey, what were you even doing?! Do you see what it did to you?”
“I was-“ He cut himself off. How could he explain this? “I’m fine!”
“Michelangelo. No you’re not.” Leo gently took Mikey’s hands, and he looked down at them.
There were cracks that covered his hands and spread up to his elbows. They were bleeding ever so slightly. Well, Shit. That hadn’t ever happened before. He hadn’t noticed it at all before, but now he could feel the pain seeping into his limbs.
“Oh…. Ow.”
“Yeah ‘ow’” Leo sighed. “Sit on the bed, big man.” Leo said as he guided Mikey into sitting.
Mikey stared at his hands. Was this what Draxum had been so worried about? Pulling from the source of his mystic energy, his ninpo, and using too much it was actually pulling him apart too?
“Let me see your hands” Leo said, kneeling in front of him, holding bandages and other medical supplies. When had he stepped away to grab them? Mikey rested his hands on his brother’s metal one (Mikey had been on his journey when Leo lost the real one. He tried not to feel guilty about not being there). The movement stretched the cracks and he winced.
He couldn’t help but think how 20 years ago he might have asked for some pain relief, but it was a rare commodity now, only used in extreme cases, and this was far from the worst pain he’d ever muscled through.
They sat in silence for a few minutes as Leo wiped the blood away, and applied a very thin amount of antiseptic to the cracks.
“So you gonna tell me what you were doing, that caused this?” Leo asked conversationally as he began to wrap his hands. Leo was looking at the wrappings, but Mikey still avoided his brother’s face and looked around the room. It looked like a whirlwind had swept through and threw all his books and belongings every which way. He remembered the feeling of cold sweeping past him and wondered if maybe a whirlwind HAD swept through.
His brother was still looking at the bandages he was wrapping around his arms, giving him space, but Mikey knew he was still waiting on an answer. Where to start?
“I was…” Mikey chuckled wetly, “I was trying to order a pizza.” His voiced cracked on the last word.
Leo turned his head at that, eyebrow raised in confusion, but the corner of his mouth was twitching at the remark. “You were… ordering a pizza?”
“In a way…” Mikey chuckled before sighing.
Leonardo was done with the bandages and sat on the bed, shoulder to shoulder with his brother. Mikey leaned into him. 35(34?) years old, and he still leaned on his older brother.
“Do you remember that one time we were talking about pizza?”
“Gonna have to be more specific there, Miguel.” Mikey butted his head against the shoulder he was leaning on.
“When we were talking about summoning pizzas?”
“Haha, yeah I remember that! And old Barry said you’d need a dimension filled with pizza for it to work? Don’t tell me you found a pizza dimension” Leo chuckled.
“No, no pizza dimension, sorry,” Mikey hummed.
“Darn.”
Mikey fiddled with the edge of his bandages before he spoke again.
“And do you remember how Donnie said it was too bad we couldn’t just travel back in time to get one?” He felt his brother stiffen. “And then Draxum said that time travel was possible but you needed a time scepter or a gateway, but that pizza wasn’t worth the risk of messing it up?”
Mikey could feel Leo looking at him. Mikey couldn’t look back at him, kept going, knowing if he stopped, he wouldn’t be able to start again.
“And, and do you remember how me and Barry were gone for two years to complete my mystic training, after-“ deep breath”-after Raph died?”
“Yeah?” Mikey could hear the confusion and concern in his voice.
“I- I asked Draxum to help me find a time scepter or whatever, but he said they didn’t exist, but I kept asking about anyway to go back. And then he agreed to teach me how to make a time gateway.”
“Mikey.”
‘I- I just wanted to get Raph back!” Mikey plowed on, “You and Donnie were so angry and upset! Without Raph you were both throwing yourselves into fights and I was afraid I’d lose you too! And and I wanted him back too! So I made Barry teach me! On that trip I found all the books I needed, but it still took time to learn, and then we found out about the empyrean and we started winning and I- I stopped working on the gateway, trying to finish the fight with the Krang! And I forgot about it! And then- and now- now Donnie is dead too-” Mikey was sobbing by the end, voice cracking so bad the words barely made it out.
“Oh Mikey” Leo breathed, eyes wet, turned and wrapped him in tight hug, letting Mikey sob into his chest.
It’d been only two weeks since Donatello’s death.
“I want our brothers back, Leo. How are we supposed to do this without them?”
“I don’t know Mikey. I don’t know” And Oh. Oh shit. Leo was crying now too.
Mikey knew that Leo took Raph’s death very hard. They all did, of course, but Leo especially. They’d been co leading missions and supply runs and just watching each other’s backs. When one couldn’t handle the load, the other took it up. But then Raph was gone and Mikey himself had gone on a Mystic Journey for almost two years leaving them alone. So Leo and Donnie had relied on each other even more than before. And now Donnie was gone too. Mikey should have been more surprised by how well Leo had been holding himself together.
Mikey now realized why his brother had looked so panicked when he stopped him from opening the gateway. He didn’t want to lose his last brother.
“Shit, I’m sorry Leo” he cried and hugged his brother harder.
“Shhh Mikey” Leo whispered and rubbed soothing circles on his shell. He didn’t say it was okay, because nothing was okay.
They sat in silence for a while longer. Part of him was ashamed for crying so much when they were already surrounded by so much death and destruction. The other part of him (Dr. Feelings? Hadn’t heard from Him in a while) said that this was needed, that keeping everything locked up would just cause problems later.
They held each other and shared their grief for a few more minutes. Then they finally untangled themselves, and went back to leaning shoulder to shoulder.
“So this,” Leo pointed to his damaged arms, “was caused from you trying to open a time gateway?”
“Yeah,” Mikey sniffled.
“Guess this is why Draxum said you needed a team of sorcerers huh.”
“Yeah, trying to push the gateway through time was pretty tough. Guess it was a good thing you stopped me, I hadn’t even noticed the cracks.” Mikey rubbed at his arms, the more they sat there the heavier and more sore they felt.
“Even though you said you were close?” Leo asked, concern once again on his face.
“I wasn’t. Not really,” Mikey admitted. “I’d say I only got about… 60%? of the way there? But I was…. Also trying to go farther back than I really needed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t kidding, earlier, when I said I was trying to get a pizza.”
Leo raised a brow in question.
“I was practicing. Seeing if I could even do it at all. Figure out how it feels to navigate the time stream. We joked about it so much,” Mikey chuckled wetly, “I thought I’d practice by pulling a pizza from the past.”
“Oh my god. You really did try to order a pizza via time travel” Leo said face palming, but Mikey saw a hint of smile, so he’d call it a win. “Wait, you were just going to pull the pizza through, not you go through the gateway itself?”
“Yeah that was the plan, though I’m not sure if it would have worked like that. That’s why I was testing it. I thought… I thought if I could just- just go back in time to right before they died, that maybe I could bring them here. Nothing else would be changed, we’d just get them back in the here and now.”
“Mikey, I’m not sure that would have worked anyway.”
“And why not?” Mikey demanded. He had worked too hard, to be told it was a fruitless endeavor (even if he already knew it).
“Because they did die,” Mikey refused to look at the purple and red bandanas tied around the sword handle that proved it. “And if you would manage to bring them here… It means you’d have pulled them from some other Time line, breaking it into branching timelines.”
“You sound like Donnie,” Mikey grumbled. Leo just smiled sadly.
“And if you did do that,” Leo continued, “you would have just made another timeline where we still lose a brother. And I don’t think either of them would want that.”
Oh.
Mikey hadn’t thought about it like that.
He still didn’t like it.
“I suppose you’re going to order me to not attempt it again?” Mikey asked, expecting a resounding “you bet your shell!”
But he was met with silence.
“Leo?”
“Well, I can’t really order you to do anything. But… I… don’t think you should try again, for pizza or our brothers,” Mikey pretended not to notice the tremor in his voice on that last word. “It seems too much of a risk for you to lose yourself in trying, and my Ninpo isn’t strong enough to help either.”
Leo paused and stared at his hands.
“Master Splinter used to say something about not wallowing in bad things of the past, that we just have to make do with what we have now. That all our experiences, good and bad, help to shape who we are.”
Mikey could remember his dad saying something like that. He thinks it had originally been said about his own fate of being forced to fight in the Battle Nexus and then captured by Draxum and mutated into a rat. And that while those events were awful for him, he wouldn’t change it for the world, because it had also given him his sons.
“So you’re saying that if we go and start trying to fix all the bad things in the past, we might miss out on the good things that also come from them?”
“Now you’re getting it,” Leo smiled at him.
“Like the finding out about the empyrean when I left after…?”
“Yeah. It helped us push back the Krang, and regain some area and resources.”
“But it didn’t last for very long…” Mikey said dejectedly.
“No, I guess it didn’t, but maybe it gave us enough time and space to find another way to finish them off for good. We still have hope that we can turn things around. As long as there’s hope that we can fix things here in the present, we shouldn’t use time travel. That… time travel will be the last possible course of action, Okay?”
“Okay, as long as you promise me you won’t die too,” Mikey knew that Leo couldn’t really promise that. But he needed his brother. Needed to know he wouldn’t throw himself into danger recklessly in vengeance or self-sacrificially.
“I promise to do my best to stay alive, as long as you do too.” That was really the best he could ask for in the situation.
“Ha, I can do that.” Mikey huffed a laugh. He continued, “So ordering pizza via time travel is a last resort, huh?”
Leo laughed the first real good laugh Mikey had heard in a long time, “Is that what-“
“What you said 15 years ago when we first had the conversation about time travel? Yep!” Mikey popped the p.
“Oh real funny old man!” Leo laughed, and locked an arm around his younger brother and gave him a good noogie.
“Old Man! Have you seen the wrinkles you’ve got!” Mikey said, affronted, while he failed to wiggle out of the hold.
“Not as many as you! And all that grey hair!”
“Excuse you! This is not hair, NOR grey! And it makes me looked distinguished, thank you very much!” Mikey said with a flip of said hair. (It was actually algae that had grown while on his mystic journey with Draxum. He had been going to get rid of it, but the rolling laughter it gave Donnie at seeing the look of jealousy on Leo’s face, that Mikey got to have Hair when he didn’t… well, Mikey decided to keep it).
“It makes you look like an old man!” Leo laughed.
“You’re just jealous.” Mikey sang.
“I am not! I-“ Leo was interrupted by his communicator beeping.
“Sensei?” The high pitched voice of a 12 year old Casey asked, “Have you found Master Michelangelo yet?”
“OH RIGHT! Yeah Casey, I got him, be there in a minute!”
“Understood, Sensei!” The call ended. Mikey raised an eyebrow.
“What was that about? And Yeesh, that kid needs to relax. He knows he doesn’t have to call you that all the time right?”
“I’ve TRIED to tell him that! But the kid just won’t have it,” Leo sighed, throwing his hands up in the air, but he had a fond smile on his face. “And he made something he wants to show us, and I was supposed to come get you. We better get going.”
As Mikey followed his brother out of the room, he thought to himself, that as long as he had people he cared about, like his brother and Casey and April, around, that everything would be okay. He would keep looking forward.
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