To be honest this idea has been eating at my head for a while now. It was inspired by SAINW, in the sense that, well, what if one of the other brothers had died? What would have happened then? So obviously there's a character death, but yeah. You'll eventually figure it out.

Hope you enjoy!

And Welcome to Shattered Mirror

S.S.


Cracks

"Alright, that's it!" Michelangelo snapped, throwing his arms up into the air, "I am banning us from ever cleaning out April's basement again. Ever! First it was that compass thing, then it was the statue that went nuts on Halloween, then it was that compass thing again, and now this! I bet next time there'll be a crystal necklace from Krypton or the Key of Truth for a futuristic Arthur or Merlin but you know what? We won't know. Because we are never ever cleaning out April's basement or shop or living room or even the kitchen again. Yes, even the kitchen. EVER."

"You know, I think that's a good idea." Donatello groaned as Leonardo helped him up off the ground.

"Mikey has a good idea," Raphael growled, rolling his shoulders and neck, making them click. He waved off Leo's offered hand up and grunted onto his feet. "Shell. Lightning does strike twice in the same place."

"I'm serious!"

"Yes, yes, we know. And I think I can say for all of us that we agree." Leonardo sighed, and gave the surrounding a quick once-over, knowing all his brothers were fine. "Any chance that we could still be in New York?"

They glanced around, taking in their surroundings, making sure that they were alone and thus far unseen. The alley they were currently standing in was atypical to any by-street they often found manholes and fights, a couple of bags of trash and a lone garbage bin huddled in a corner. It smelled like their New York, of car fumes and oil and hot concrete. It sounded like it too, which was baffling; if they'd been pushed into a secondary dimension or something, usually something was blaringly wrong. But here, it wasn't. It was more of a… twinge in the shell.

"It… looks like we are," Donatello hazarded, wondering if the others had that feeling too.

Raphael was gripping the sai at his belt, frowning. "This ain't right. Somethin's not right."

"We did just get zopped by an ancient artefacty thing or something," Mikey pointed out, "Maybe we just got like, zipped from one place to another. Like a mini transmatt."

"But are we ever that lucky?" Donnie asked, jabbing a newspaper with his bo to stop it from tumbling away. He bent down to pick it up, unfurling it from its sticky ball, "There always seems to be a catch somewhere…"

"Let's go back to April's," Leonardo suggested, already heading towards a fire escape, "Take a look at that crystal that did this to us, and see if there're any unforeseen side-effects. The last thing I'd like to deal with is an open portal to a demonic planet or… something."

Michelangelo and Raphael gravitated towards Leo and the fire-escape too, finding no arguments against it.

"No."

All three of them looked back at Donatello, who looked… terrified?

"No," Don repeated, swallowing, and there was a firmness in his tone that brooked no argument. "We're going home. Now."

"Is… what's wrong?" was Leo's bemused question, "What's on the paper?"

"The date." The purple-banded ninja swallowed, and folded it to show them what exactly had freaked him out so badly. "It's… it's twenty years ahead of our time."

They all froze. Twenty years. They crowded round the paper, and sure enough, it was twenty years wrong. Cold gripped them like bear-traps. They'd been zapped twenty years into the future. Twenty years. Without Master Splinter.

"Oh shell," Mikey whispered, abject horror in his eyes.

Leonardo was already diving up the fire-escape, Raphael hot on his heels. "To the lair. Now!"

… … … … …

The Water Plant was empty.

"Master Splinter!" Raphael roared, throwing himself straight for where his underground herb garden was. Michelangelo followed, calling his brother's name and then their sensei's sounding desperately afraid and shrill as he went for Splinter's quarters.

Leonardo would've followed too, but years of paranoia had his eyes scanning for danger without his permission, and what they saw made him pause. He also noticed Donatello gripping his bo like it was the only thing anchoring him there, but still, he was here, seeing this place like he was.

Too much dust. The air tasted stale and was thick enough to choke on. There was no kitchen, no couches, no shelves full of books or racks with weapons, no equipment, nothing. Bare as any abandoned civic building would ever be.

Leonardo gritted his teeth and checked the door that they came through, and there were no scratches there, not even the one he'd placed there when forcing the door open all those years ago, when they'd first claimed this place to be their own. He clutched a sudden stray hope that he couldn't even articulate yet, fumbling for a flashlight in his belt to look for any marks of nails drilled into the walls where they had first placed security cameras, when the compound wasn't secure enough for Leonardo's tastes.

They weren't there. He pointed it out to Don, who had noticed the lack of a generator too, and they came to a similar conclusion.

"It's empty."

"Yeah. It's empty."

"Damn it!" they heard their brother curse, "Where is he?"

"Master Splinter! Master Splinter!"

Don collapsed. Leo almost dropped with him, catching him before gravity could slam him against the rusted, dirt-covered floor, and there were tears in the genius's eyes.

"Guys," he called to the two still frantically searching for their father, who were looking less panicked and more bemused now, "I don't think he's here. I don't think we were ever here. What's the theory, Don?"

This he added as Raph and Mikey leapt up the stairs without a sound, letting Don have a second to gather himself. He nodded, looked around, nodded again, and set his gaze on each of his nervous brothers. "Leo's right. This place looks like how we found it after Karai's ambush. No appliances, no TVs, no security measures, nothing. I don't… I don't think we were ever here. I think, whatever caused us to be here, it shifted us to a New York that… I don't know. A New York without us, or a different us, or… we'd have to look to find out exactly what is different. But Master Splinter isn't here. If he is here at all."

It meant that they hadn't abandoned their father to twenty years' worth of worrying and waiting. With that knowledge everyone took a deep bone-wearying sigh of relief, and allowed one another a long slow minute to clamp down on their panic.

Raph stirred himself first, shaking off the fear like water from a duck's back. "Right. So. Still stuck in this dimension or world or time or whatever, so how do we get out?"

"Well, usually I'd suggest going back to the source and reverse the effects," Don hazarded, "But that might not work."

"Why? I mean she'd be totally cool with us…" Mikey puttered to a stop, the finger he'd raised in protest drooping with his expression. "Oh. Right. She wouldn't know us and do the screaming thing again, huh."

"Actually, I…" Don was gripping his bo still, a habit he had when trying to hide his shaking hands from his brothers. "Remember how we met her?"

There was a baffled pause. Then Leo clicked first, if only by half a second. "The Mousers."

Raphael slapped a hand against his eyes and groaned. "…Damn it. Stockman had them sic her."

Michelangelo's complexion paled and he shuddered as his imagination flashed him scenes of April being torn apart in the dark. "That's an image I'm not going to forget in a while."

Leonardo shook his head before his mind could conjure up all the other things that may or may not have happened in a New York without them, and focused on now. "We need more information; we may be in physically familiar territory, but once we move out we're essentially blind. We should treat this New York like we would an alien planet, or else whatever we hope to find or use to our advantage, chances are there won't be any. Most of all, we should expect the worst. Just because we don't seem to exist it doesn't… it doesn't mean that our enemies don't, too."

Especially the ones we've defeated, was left unsaid, but they all knew it, and their hands went comfortably close to the hilts of their weapons, if they already weren't.

"And on top of all that, we're ahead in time, which obscures the condition of the hypothetical enemy even more. Anything can happen in twenty years, with or without the usual mess we seem to attract," Leonardo continued, standing up and dusting off his hands, "And till we find a way back home, we're going to need a secure base we can protect ourselves from and to rest. Though I hope we won't have to stay long enough for that to be necessary."

They all made noises of agreement at the final disgruntled sentence.

"Right. Do our shell-cells still work?"

They checked, called and txted each other to be sure, and put them away.

Nodding in approval Leonardo put on his Leader Face and they all marched out of the reservoir. "We'll explore the sewers and check for any unusual activity. Once we're sure there's nothing big enough to be a threat, we'll see if the Y'lintian lair exists."

"Why not here for base?" Was Raphael's response as they descended into the dark underground, a familiar sense of a mission cementing them into a team. They began to jog, building momentum. "It's empty as ever."

"I'm not ruling out the reservoir, just plotting it as Base B. Abandoned or not, it's still a civic building, known to humans. The Lair is further underground, less obvious, more secure, and central. Strategically, it's better suited to our needs."

Raph grunted his concession. They sped to a run as they entered the storm drains, and the splashing ceased when Leo gave the silent order. As ninjas they bled into the dark and silence, and moved as shadows.

The silence was broken by the barest of whispers. "Are we splitting up?"

"Not now," he decided as they ghosted through tunnels they knew as well as each other, all of them taking turns to peer round corners, nodding each other onwards, a shapeless entity with four pairs of eyes. "Like I said, we're moving blind. The Old Lair might not even be there, depending on how different this New York is to ours. Once we've scoped the area and secured it, we'll go topside, and if it's dark enough we'll split. If it's daylight by the time we get there, we'll have to sit tight and figure out what to do then."

Nunchucks out, the brother that'd questioned him grinned and saluted before leaping forward and waving the others onward.

He kept pace with Donatello for a while, silent together, thinking over different facets of the same question. Their silence spoke for them, and when Don nodded, Leo nodded back. They slipped around the corner their brothers deemed safe, whispers of shadows even the rats barely noticed.

Until they skidded to a halt and made them squeak in fear.

There was a wall there that shouldn't have existed.

Don hissed in surprise as Leo glowered at the unfamiliar territory. Mikey and Raph joined them, one bemused and the other annoyed. "Now what?"

"We go around, goob," Raph replied, already turning away, "Like Leo said, twenty years is a long while. The city probably fixed this place up."

With the exception of one, they turned. Leo noticed the absence, turned back, and frowned. "Don?"

"The City could've upgraded the drains, yeah… Except they didn't," Don murmured, sheathing his bo and stepping towards the myriad of pipes that sprouted along the brick and concrete. He passed his hands over and around them, till he found a valve that he twisted, which pushed forth a post-box sized brick from the wall, revealing a security pad, which he hesitated at.

Michelangelo blinked. "Wait, so we do exist?"

Donatello nodded. "Almost definitely. I always put these pipes up like this. But it's… the keypad, it's high tech, even for me, and this wall? If we built this from scratch… where would we have gotten the materials? Okay, twenty years is enough time to scrape a good wall together, true, but why?"

"If you really wanna know that bad, we could just ask, right," Raph drawled, crossing his arms, "It's us. Talkin' to us."

"I don't know…"

"Geez, Don, it's not like we bite. And the us that might be on the other side, we're twenty years older, right? I think we'd've gone through enough weird, wonderful, trippy shit to not be too damned surprised about seein' us."

"I'm really going to be confused by the end of this, aren't I."

"Shut up, Mikey. Seriously, Donnie, what's the nervous break-down for?"

Donatello would've snapped if that final sentence had been spoken with scorn, but it had been genuine bewilderment and Raph's brand of concern that'd marked it, which made him sigh instead. "You know how that, Ultimate Draco thing zapped us into different parts of time and space that one time?"

"…Go on," Leo prompted, after sharing a glance with the others. Don had never talked about that bizarre episode of their lives, saying rather bluntly that he really didn't want to, and they'd left it at that.

Still not looking at them, but at the key-pad, Don nodded. "Well, Draco zapped me in… I suppose it was a different time line. I mean, I'm sure it is now, since we got rid of the Shredder, but… I'd disappeared. You were in your forties, maybe fifties, the Shredder had conquered the world and I'd been gone for thirty years. It was like that book 1984, only… much, much worse. Judging from what we saw topside, this isn't that world, and for that I'm extremely grateful…" he saw the looks on his brothers' faces and he gave a wry smile. "I'm just, concerned. Anything could be behind this door, familiar or not."

They all turned to Leo, who was holding his chin in thought. "Our options are this: we go in, ask for their help, see how they react. Or we watch and wait, see how they are, and then approach. I admit, the latter option would be safer, but we need to remember that twenty years has theoretically passed. We might not even be here. We could have moved out, or got ambushed, or we may be on a pizza run as we speak; still night topside, after all. Only, this time lapse is a huge advantage to them, and like you said, Raph, if they've dealt with as much weirdness in their lives, chances are they might strike first and ask questions later."

"I say we go in." Raph decided for him, unsheathing a sai and spinning it. "Both plans might end up the same way, the only difference is the stallin'. And I ain't waitin' around for my own permission to go into my own home, and to get back as fast as we can we gotta get our shell's movin'."

"Let's just hope they're friendly." Mikey clapped a hand against Raph's as Don and Leo nodded agreement. "And who knows? Your looks may've improved, Raphie-boy."

Said turtle snarled as Don keyed in their oozeday and the door rumbled open on rusted hinges.

It looked like a garage. A couple of sewer sliders, a bike and a half with its innards scattered round its skeleton, and the Tunneller. There were spare parts of engines and vehicle frames, hooks hanging from ceilings, and wracks typically found in auto-depots to look at the underside of a car without being pressed against the ground. Probably necessary, since they barely fit under cars as it was with their shells.

No turtles in sight.

"I guess we built this when we figured an abandoned warehouse was too much of a security risk," Don hummed, pulling a lever on the wall to get better lighting, "I remember thinking that a few days before the ambush."

"Hey we have a pinball machine! Sweet!" Michelangelo bounded forward even as the weak fluorescent bulbs flickered and gave the thing a quick once over, grinning broadly. "Dude, this is Star Wars 7! And it's… really, really dusty."

He retrieved his hand with a mild note of disgust, the dust so thick on his palm it may have been a layer of felt. He shook it off a long-winded 'ew', and sneezed.

The three remaining turtles were also wondering in, gravitating towards places they found interesting. Leo followed Raphael, knowing Don would be in a world of his own as he clued himself in on their alternate selves' projects. Raphael picked through the bike's skeleton, his expression growing darker by the second till he gave a growl of resentment, stood up and kicked away a rusted engine. "Some mechanic. If this me's been wasting good scrap by lettin' it sit and rot here, there's gonna be words."

"Fists, you mean." Leonardo couldn't help but tease.

"After the words." Raph shot back, giving his knuckles a few satisfying cracks.

"Is it me, or does this place look kinda unoccupied?" Mikey called, jogging back towards them, sweeping his arms out to take the place in. "I mean, I know Don's room can be a pigsty and Raph has the hygiene sense of a hippo, but you guys can be pretty neat-freaky about all the grease-monkey stuff. What gives?"

Don sighed and called out from where he'd wandered off. "Raph?"

He nodded obligingly and smacked Mikey upside the head.

"He does have a point though," the blue-banded turtle continued without missing a beat, even as the abused brother protested loudly and rubbed the sore spot, "You guys are scarily touchy about your rides."

Raph glowered at the mess and nodded. Don was checking up on the Tunneller, muttering to himself. They called him over once they found the crystal-run elevator, and they descended into their old home.

When the doors opened they were hacking on the dust-cloud that billowed from the action.

"D'aw, gross!" Michelangelo stumbled out of the elevator and windmilled his hands to try and dismantle the blanket of dead strata that hovered all around them. "Dude, we must've moved out or something because no way Master Splinter would let us-"

There was a blurred shadow racing towards their distracted brother and Leo lurched forward crying out his name. Don got there first by the length of his staff, sweeping Mikey's feet from under him as Leo lunged over his squawking frame to intercept the oncoming blade, his own ken ringing against the attacker. The foreign tanto flew and there was a cry of agony.

It sounded familiar.

"Raph! Lights!"

He'd already slammed his hand against the wall where the switches were, the weak bulbs flickering like strobe when Leo had given the order. When the underground facility cleared up, they all gasped.

It was Splinter. Master Splinter, their father. Yet not.

He looked scarily old. The robe wrapping his hunched form was faded, frayed, abused. He was shaking as he clutched the paw that'd held the tanto, wincing from the disarmament, almost curling double over himself. In that instant he looked infinitesimally small and vulnerable, jarring their minds with the wrongness of it all. Despite his height he'd always seemed so big, powerful, their Master Splinter could never be disarmed by the likes of them, much less be hurt, and…

Leonardo knelt in front of the greyed rat (so much closer to white than they could believe, his fur was thin and he was balding around his dry snout and could this really be him?) consequences or danger be damned, dropping his weapon as if it burned. Taking the painfully thin paws into his rough ones, the blue-banded ninja peered into the rat's eyes, which seemed unfocused and wary. "Sensei I'm so sorry I didn't know I didn't… Master Splinter…?"

The rat blinked, and peered right back, and his voice was like gravel rolling down a snowy hill, soft and slow and lost. "Leonardo…?"

Michelangelo scrambled from the ground, whispering 'no way' way too many times as he too knelt next to his father, and he just stared, and he was too shocked to flinch when the old mutant placed a violently shaking paw against his beak as if to make sure he was real.

"Mich…" he coughed, swallowed, and his eyes were shining . "Michelangelo?"

"Yeah, it's…" he held the hand firmly against his face, determined to reassure his father. "It's me, sensei. It's all of us."

"All of…?" was his awed gasp as Leo and Mikey shifted to the side, revealing Raph and Don who were frozen into statues of utter disbelief. The rat's eyes widened, taking them all in, repeating their names once more before any other words he spoke became incomprehensible with tears.

Master Splinter. Crying. It was as if their life would never make sense again.

"Oh my sons, my sons," he whispered gratefully as he tottered forward, and with terrifying speed Raph barrelled into the rat and Don nearly cried out 'don't hurt him!' but he stopped himself, because Raph was being so scarily uncharacteristically (yet not; he really could be soft when he allowed himself to be) gentle as father and son embraced.

"My sons," Splinter wept, "Oh, my sons, my sons…"

They all found themselves in a group hug, and didn't know for how long they stayed that way, as each brother stared at the other, all their eyes asking the same question:

What happened to us?


Am I the only one who feels as if Splinter doesn't get enough love? I'm working on a Splinter-centric fic, but it's really hard to figure out sometimes.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, and that it's managed to be a pretty good precursor to the rest of the story.

See you next time!

S.S.

Oh and please review.