Turtles Forever: The Same as They Never Were
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Just a little Plot Bunny that hopped into my head after watching the new crossover flick on 4Kids last month. I don't get those often so I thought I'd go with it. As always, I claim no ownership of anything from the different TMNT universes that this story is based on.
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*Spoiler Alert* If you haven't seen Turtles Forever or Same as it Never Was you're going to want to stop right here and go watch them, because they're awesome and this story won't make any sense if you haven't. Ok…and the Plot Bunny is off!
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What if one of the turtles got separated when Donatello (1987) used the Trans-Dimensional Portal Stick to get both teams/families out of the collapsing lair or when Karai transported them out of the Technodrome centrifuge? What if it was their leader? If Leo (2003) didn't show up in the 1987 universe or fallen on top of Casey in the crater left in the street by the Technodrome's weight, if his brothers couldn't find him or get to him, and if they thought he might have been crushed or separated into non-existence…what would they do? Would they go on with trying to find the Technodrome, save Turtle Prime, and destroy the Shredder? Or would they stop at nothing to find a lost brother who might be hurt, dead, …or nonexistent?
And what might have drawn Leo to that dark dimension, the dystopian future, which would not have called to Donny? What happened after Donny left that dark place? What if one of his brother's counterparts got up from that fight discovering the rest of his family dead at his feet and himself alone? If he cried, called, and screamed for a brother "loud" enough, could it draw that brother's counterpart from one destination of trans-dimensional travel to another?
What if Leo and that brother-counterpart fought together in that alternate dimension, becoming friends and brothers, fixing a world with very little good left in it, finding love, and bringing this brother back to his own world? Would he, could he live in a bright world after so much dark? Could he ever forgive himself for his greatest mistake? If anyone could help him do it, it would be Leo. If they survive long enough, if they get back to Turtle Prime and save their original counterparts in time...
This is the "what if" crossover story describing just that, bringing the events of the Turtles Forever movie into the Same as it Never Was dimension, and the characters from that dimension back into the Turtles Forever plotline. Enjoy.
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Chapter 1: Back to the Future
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Leonardo
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New York City, 2009
Eight figures spun around and around a bright metal chamber, screaming in pain as the centrifugal force tore them apart, their master and father screaming along with them in horror and grief and their enemy screaming in triumph as they disappeared into nonexistence.
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I heard my brothers, both my dimension's and the others, screaming around me in pain and terror as we were hurled around and around the Shredder's centrifuge, feeling myself coming apart at the seams and knowing that my brothers were being torn apart as well…and I could do nothing, absolutely nothing about it. Their screams tore at me worse than the centrifugal force, assaulting my very soul in the utter wrongness of the experience. How could it end this way? We hadn't even had a chance for a last look, let alone telling each other how much we care—love—each other. I couldn't even make eye contact to show them I was here, to try to comfort them. I was going to hear their deaths and then die along with them, leaving Master Splinter alone to who-knows-what fate, as my last experience in life. Well, at least we were going down together. I know I couldn't live without my brothers.
The screaming and the pain intensified at the same time as the light exposure of the room intensified to a blinding white. I could feel myself pulled along with my brothers into that white light and I was sure that this was death. The screaming peaked, and in the midst of that screaming, clear as a bell, I heard one of my brothers scream for me, echoing across the whiteness around me.
LEOOOOOO!!!
My name, but filled with such emotional pain, with a pleading terror that made clear a need so strong that it was pure instinct, only natural, to turn towards the brother who called for me in such a way, even in death. As I turned I could feel a different sort of separation happening as I realized—to late—that my turn took me away from the brothers around me. Before I could possibly understand what was happening I felt my body reforming as I landed in a heap in a much darker place.
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Unknown Dimension, 2035
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"LEOOOOOO!!!"
As my name echoed around me in the darkness, so strikingly different from the bright white I had been in, it took me a moment for my eyes to adjust, and many more to understand what I was seeing.
Raph, or at least, an older, one-eyed, scarred version of my brother Raph, was crouched on his hands and knees over a much older, scarred, bloody, and very pale version of me. Raph's face was twisted in pain, distorted by his sobs and scream, disbelief and denial curdling with grief and despair as he drew—me—to himself. My counterpart's mouth was agape, blood trickling from the corner and down his cheek, his head flopped limply to the side as Raph wrapped an arm behind his neck and lifted him into an almost sitting position leaning against Raph's plastron and supported only by Raph's arm. It was clear to me that my older counterpart's string had been cut, that he was gone, even before Raph brought his other hand up shakily to feel his clammy and pale throat, checking for a pulse that was not there. Raph froze for a second, his shoulders stiffening, and then shaking violently with the turmoil of emotions going on inside of him. He wrapped this arm too around his Leo's body and held him tightly to his own, embracing him like he hadn't in decades and burying his face in Leo's rapidly chilling neck, sobbing his heart out and calling for him.
"Leo! LEO!!! NOOO!!!"
My face felt frozen as I took in the scene before me: older, injured versions of Raph, myself, and…I looked around and saw a bloody, one-armed green figure off to the side a bit…Mikey. I stood shakily.
"You're alive! And Mikey, you have both arms!"
I remembered what Donny said, the brief synopsis we got out of our brother after the whole Draco/Damio's son episode was resolved. Donny hadn't wanted to relive it, sharing only that he had met and spent time with our older and completely worn-down-by-life counterparts, lead them into battle in a dystopian future world ruled by the Shredder, and watched them die. First Mikey, all alone and calling for Donny, then myself stabbed in the back by Karai, and then Raph in his attempt at vengeance for me. Donny had shared that after his chest was sliced open Raph crawled towards my counterpart, his Leo, calling for him and finally collapsing just short, his hand flung out and just managing to touch my—err—Leo's own. Raph looked like he had just gotten up from that position when I first arrived.
I turned to see Karai in a mangled heap, her silver hair crusted in her own blood, face down in the dirt, the exosuit Donny had told us about chained to Shredder's, and April, wasted looking, standing off to the side and looking brokenheartedly at the dead turtles before her, and the empty space beside her where Donny must have just disappeared from. I knew where I was, I knew when I was, and after seeing Shredder's little slideshow presentation I understood what it was: an alternate dimension, like the 1987 version, only different in so many ways. I was in the alternate future that Donny described, somehow, drawn in by Raph's scream.
April, hearing Raph's scream and realizing that he needed her to snap out of it and be the leader of the resistance that the last 30 years had made her into, ran to him, shouting orders at her men to check Mikey, knowing that it was hopeless, and bring a medic for Raph. She collapsed to her knees beside him, placing a scarred and calloused, but still warm and comforting, hand on his shoulder.
"Raph," she said softly. "Raph look at me. We need to sew up that gash or you'll bleed out." A medic approached and started opening her bags, withdrawing needles, thread, antiseptic, and gauze. Raph would not let his Leo's body go.
"Good," Raph replied gruffly, I could tell his voice was distorted by more than just time. I had never seen my brother in such pain. "Don's gone, Splinter, Casey, and now Leo's—dead—" he choked, "and Mikey is too, right?" His sob ended with a growl. "I have nothing left, no reason, absolutely no reason, to stay in this hell-hole any longer. It's over."
"Raph please, let us help you! You still have Angel, you know it would just kill her if she knew you gave up like this, and…me. Please Raph, let go of Leo." April begged.
"No," he replied gruffly, dangerously, holding my counterpart's body closer to himself, blood from his wound squeezing out from where he pressed Leo's body against it. I stared on in horror, knowing I had to act to save my brother, but my body wasn't cooperating. I watched as the bloody body of my lighthearted little brother, my sun—or at least, his counterpart, was zipped up in a body bag. I watched as Karai's body was kicked into one as well. I looked back into Raph's rapidly paling face and saw that he meant to die here with his brothers.
"You need blood. Please Raph, please don't give up! We still need you…" April begged, crying now. I could tell, somehow, that it was something that she hadn't done in a very long time, since Casey's death, I surmised, that something had broken inside her at the thought of loosing him too, that Raph was all that she had left from a happier time, her brother, that she could see that he was giving up and that she really didn't have anything to offer him that would make him stay.
Raph laughed, a startling, gruff sound twisted by grief and pain. "From who?" I knew what he meant, what he was laughing so bitterly at. The brother whose body he was holding, whose blood had already been spilled and was now cooling and congealing within his veins, was the only one he thought was compatible to him. "No April, just let me go." Raph trailed off, burying his face in his Leo's cold neck again. "I want to," He added, tears leaking from beneath his mask again. That was too much.
"No." I had spoken without even realizing it, was standing in a defensive position, taking a step towards my brother and firmly stating: "I won't let you." And I couldn't. How could I let him? Even knowing that I would feel the same way if our places had been reversed, I couldn't stand by and let it happen.
Raph stiffened, his breath caught in his throat, obviously thinking that there had been some miracle he lifted his head from his Leo's neck and turned to look into his still face.
"Le—eo?" His voice broke and my heart broke along with it as I heard the little brother within, so scared. Meek and almost afraid to hope. I saw his face darken with the disappointment but then transform in confusion as he looked up and towards the source of the sound, at me. They all stared at me.
"Yes." I replied simply, what else could I say? I figured an explanation was in order. "I'm Leo too. Don's Leo. My Don, that is. The one who just disappeared," I gestured towards the spot where April had been standing, where Donny must have just disappeared from, taking a step closer to Raph and April. "He got back safely, years ago, told us about what happened here. He thought you were dead though, Raph. Our dimension's Shredder sent me here, by accident, I think. He meant to kill me. I'm worried about my brothers but—" here I stumbled—"you're my brother too Raph, and I won't let you die, not when I can save you." I stood beside them now, crouching to place my hand on Raph's shoulder. The touch seemed to affect him more even than my words.
"Leo…" I could see it was all way too much for him, especially after so much blood loss, after the shock of seeing his brothers die. He passed out. Perhaps it would be easier this way, easier to explain everything with him healing up in a bed and with the dead me in another room, rather than clutched tightly in his arms. I gently caught him as he started to fall, lowering him to the ground and lifting my dead counterpart off of him. I tried not to look at the wasted version of me but couldn't completely control the shudder that touching the body elicited.
"April, I'm sorry if this is all too much of a shock for you too, but we have to act quickly to save him. I won't let him die." I saw her face harden in resolve and she nodded.
"Neither will I. Medic, men!" She shouted, gesturing to the medic to begin sewing up Raph's wound and the rest of them to pick up their Leo's body and help them get all of their wounded out. I noticed how carefully they placed my counterpart's body in the bag, almost reverentially cradling his head as they slid him in, zipped the bag up, and lifted his body into the air. It was respect I saw. I shuddered again, having to tear myself away from the disturbing scene and back to the figures around me. The medic had Raph's wound cleaned and nearly sewn up, and it seemed clear that she had worked on this dimension's versions of my family before. Wrapping gauze and a bandage around the wound she gestured to an assistant to get the blood transfusion equipment prepped, then turned to me.
"Are you sure you're compatible?" She asked flatly. I nodded, how could this Raph's blood type be different? He had the same skin color. He looked just like my Raph would after enduring 30 years of warfare.
"Yes." I stated simply. She nodded back and swiftly plunged the needle into my arm, withdrawing enough to make me woozy. I didn't complain, this was my brother, after all. Or at least, one version of him.
And, I shuddered to think it, he might be the only version I have left. In the shock of the things going on in my immediate surroundings I hadn't allowed myself to think about my brothers' fates until this moment. We were supposed to be dead, more than that, nonexistent. Something clearly went wrong with my separation, but my brothers weren't here. I couldn't help but despair that they weren't anywhere anymore. I hadn't given up on them, oh no, I wouldn't give up hope until I found out what happened, until I found them, alive or—I couldn't think that yet. They had to be ok. I could feel it. I would know if they were gone. They must have been transported to some other dimension, much like what happened when Draco/the Damio's son separated us and sent us all to different spaces and times. I would find them, no matter what. But for now I couldn't help them, so I was going to do everything possible for the brother I could help.
As soon as the needle was in Raph's arm and my blood started trickling into his veins we transported him into a van and out of there. On the way I held his hand, staring at the lines in his face and the missing eye in anger at the universe for doing this to him, for leaving him alone. I talked to April as well, asking questions about the events of the last 30 years that Donny had skimmed over, trying to determine where this universe branched off from my own. It was before the Draco/Damio's son incident, that much was clear. It seemed like this universe was created from the possibility that Shredder's exodus had been successful, as if we hadn't even known about it, but April was also a little skimpy on the details.
I asked her about the fight between this universe's Raph and Leo, almost afraid to know the details. She bit her lip, clearly not wanting to tell me how bad it was but assuring me that they made up after my Donny showed up and that it was clear to her, even after decades of fighting and avoiding one another, that they still cared about each other the whole time.
"Angel could tell you stories…" she began, a small smile lit her face but turned quickly to a grimace. "They were so stupid," she shook her head angrily. "Twenty years wasted, and it turned out they still loved each other in the end. They could have had years together, but no, they got hours…Poor Angel…loosing Leo's going to kill her—no," April corrected herself, "loosing Leo and Raph would have killed her" April finished darkly. I could tell that there was much more to this issue than April was telling me.
We arrived and gently carried Raph and the bags containing his brothers' bodies into their headquarters. I stayed close by his side, not really taking in the underground bunker around us. They led us into a white hospital room bisected by a curtain. Raph was placed on a bed on one side, and his brothers were gently taken out of their bags, placed on tables, and covered by white sheets on the other. I realized in horror that that side must be the morgue.
When I looked around at April I could see that she was crying silently again, saying goodbye with her eyes to the covered forms of her brothers, my brothers. After a moment she composed herself and her face hardened again into an April I didn't know. She said something to the underlings around her but I wasn't really listening. I heard something about finding Angel and having a lot to do now that Shredder was gone, needing to take this opportunity before his forces regrouped and I stopped listening. I couldn't be a leader today, or a warrior or a ninja. Today, right now, I could only be a brother.
I drew up a chair beside Raph's bed and took his hand. Apparently I was all Raph had in the world, and he might be all that I had as well, so I would not leave his side. I could not leave his side. I could see April watching me but I did not look at her. I had eyes only for his wasted face. The face that, despite the missing eye, the scars, and the deep-set lines, nevertheless looked more like my Raph's face in unconsciousness than it had in waking. It made me ache for my brother, for all of them, but my helplessness was total and kept me grounded at his side.
I talked to him while my blood replaced his, seeing some color coming back into his chalky complexion, still holding his hand. I told him stories of when we were young, adventures we had had together, laughter and mischief and happiness, not knowing if any of it had actually happened to him and his Leo, or if it even mattered. I became aware that I was crying and was not sure how long it had been going on, shaking and trying my best to suppress the sobs, loosing the battle for control. I buried my face in my arms on the side of his mattress and cried for him, for my brothers…and for his.
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So, what did you all think? Obviously I got this idea after watching the new crossover movie, Turtles Forever, so if you haven't seen that (or SaiNW if you were living under a rock for the last four years) then you're going to want to before continuing this story. If I may say so myself, it's an awesome movie, absolutely spectacular to get to see the different turtle groups interacting. And for that matter, as I'm sure many of you agree, SaiNW is the best episode ever. With access to a "Trans-Dimensional Portal Stick" how could I not have our heroes off exploring other universes? Exactly, I couldn't. Not when they even showed the turtles from the SaiNW universe to our boys. No way.
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Oh, & PS? It really bothered me that Hun found and destroyed their lair. Seriously? Another home destroyed? No, that's stupid. I don't want to have to explain it away or find them a new lair in my story, so I'm just going to pretend that it was just some random sewer tunnel that collapsed and separated them from Splinter and that the pump station lair is ok. If it was up to me they'd still be in the Elintian one, but I couldn't make that fly at all. Yes, I know it's a cop out. I know it's a plot hole. Whatever, my story, my rules. Also, you'll have to excuse the obvious differences in time elapsed in each dimension. For some reason the time goes slower in the Future dimension…yes, even though it's in the future, suggesting that time should be moving faster in that dimension to be that much farther ahead. I know, major plot hole. Just accept it. We're working with theoretical concepts here; I think I'm aloud to be a little shady with time and space.
Anyway, give me a review, yell at me for the plot holes, praise me for the idea, suggest things, whatever you want, just as long as I get the feeling people are reading it and interested in reading more. Thanks!