Chapter 1: This Is Messed Up

The four turtles were lined up in front of their father, in their master's personal quarters. They had silently followed him here from their not-so-good hiding place behind the dojo's tree. So far, they had exchanged panicked glances but none of them had spoken.

Master Splinter looked carefully at each one of his sons. Raphael was looking at the floor like it was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. Leonardo contemplated his hands carefully resting on his knees, obviously avoiding eye contact with his sensei. Donatello was still looking at his device and frowned the way he used to when he was confronted with a particularly difficult problem. Only Michelangelo was looking directly at his father. More exactly, he was beaming at him. Seeing that familiar smile, the rat master relaxed slightly and asked again.

"What is going on here?"

Leonardo looked up and blinked.

"I am not exactly sure, sensei. You see, we are kind of coming from another place…uh…"

"Not another place, Leo! Another time! This is awesome!" added Michelangelo, still beaming.

"This is absolutely not awesome, Mickey! This is not the way it was supposed to be!" said a desperate Donatello. "How are we going to fix this? We can't alter the past in any way or we could stop existing in our present!"

"Looks already pretty altered to me," muttered Raphael, who was now admiring the wall behind Splinter. A very nice wall, by the way. Almost white, which was something for such a place as the sewers.

Master Splinter was aghast. If he had heard correctly, and he must have, considering how fine his hearing was, the four turtles in front of him pretended to be coming from… the future? He knew strange things existed in this world. He was one of them, after all. But this… It took all his ninja training to stay calm and focused.

"You four are coming from the future?"

The turtles looked at him, including Raphael, who had hesitated to look at the ceiling instead but decided against it. Too obvious.

"Hai, Sensei," they answered in unison.

Master Splinter took a deep breath and stood. "Stay here." If it was true, four other turtles were currently in the lair. He was going to check up on them.

No sooner had he left the room than the four teenagers began to speak all at once.

"This is bad. This is really bad. I have no idea what happened. I need to calculate everything again and I don't even have all my equipment here and…"

"I knew it was a bad idea! I told you so, but did anyone listen? No! "You're just being pessimistic, Raph", "Relax, Raph", and now you see? See?"

"Owww, guys! Do you think we could take a look at ourselves? How old are we here, anyway? I must be so cute!"

"What are we going to tell sensei? We can't tell him about the Kraang… or the Foot…or Shredder…or April, or Casey, or anything at all!"

They stopped talking and looked at each other. Leonardo sighed. "OK, Donnie. What can you tell us about our current predicament?"

"Not much. We are still in our dimension, only a few years in the past." Donatello looked at Michelangelo. "We should be around fourteen here. I need more time to figure this out. In the meantime, we have to be as discreet as we can to avoid…" The purple clad turtle thought carefully about his next words, trying to keep his explanation as simple as possible. As much as he enjoyed confusing his brothers with scientific and technical jargon, now was not the time. They had only minutes before Master Splinter came back. "… disturbing anything important in our timeline."

"So we don't say anything about our present and we don't interfere with our past selves. So far, so good," said Leonardo hopefully. Raphael rolled his eyes at this statement.

At this instant, Master Splinter came back in the room. He had to accept there were now eight turtles in this lair. Four from the future and four from his present, right now arguing with each other about a TV show. From what he had just overheard, a new episode of Space Heroes, Leonardo's favorite cartoon, was about to begin. Raphael thought it was lame while Michelangelo was ready to watch anything. Donatello had exited his lab to share his disappointment at the way science was used in the show, because there was no way Captain Ryan's spaceship could exceed the speed of light. He had nonetheless taken a sit on the couch to watch the new episode. The ninja master sighed and reported his attention to the four turtles watching him.

"I believe your story, though it is much…unexpected. By the way, what did happen to your voice, Leonardo?"

The aforementioned turtle fought desperately for a suitable answer. He knew that "I was beaten by our most dangerous enemy, the Shredder, after taking down his minions on my own on a very cold night during an alien invasion. I spent months in a coma. When I woke up, I discovered that my throat had sustained permanent damage," while entirely true, was not a suitable answer. Wait… maybe he could keep the cold night part.

"I caught a nasty cold, sensei," he explained, trying to ignore Raphael's gasp at his side. He knew he was a poor liar, but prayed that his sensei would let him go with it. For now.

"I see… It must have been a nasty cold indeed," Splinter answered slowly. He went on. "What happened for you to be here and now?"

Three of his sons looked at the last, genius one.

"An experiment kind of went wrong. Sorry for disturbing you, sensei. We will be on our way to fix this now!"

The ninja master frowned.

"On your way? What do you mean, on your way?"

"Uh… I need some data to process from a certain… place… on the surface?" Donatello had whispered the last few words. Master Splinter looked intensely at him. Sensing that this wasn't going very smoothly, Donatello looked pleadingly at his brothers. Michelangelo decided to help him.

"Yeah, you know, we go, find whatever Donnie needs and come back. Piece of cake!"

"We won't be seen, sensei," Leonardo added carefully.

"We do this stuff on a regular basis after all," Raphael said with his most convincing tone. The four brothers looked at their father in expectation.

Splinter couldn't believe his ears. Let his precious sons go to the surface? On their own? Even if those were not exactly the turtles he knew, even if he admitted they were older, he wasn't prepared to allow this.

"No, my sons. You cannot go to the surface. This is too dangerous. What if you are seen? What if somebody tracks you down here?"

"It won't happen, sensei," Donatello said desperately.

"Yeah, it won't!" Michelangelo added. "I mean, we have been seen in the past… by people and non-people… But it won't happen this time! Oh, and someone did track us down here once, thanks to Raph, but he was a friend in the end, so it is cool! And we destroyed the evil robots who had followed him, and…" Mikey became suddenly aware of the murderous looks his three open-mouthed brothers were directing at him, and stopped talking.

"You are right, Michelangelo," Master Splinter said with the utmost exterior calm. "It won't happen this time, because you are not leaving the lair."

"But sensei, we have to come back to our time!" Raphael exclaimed.

"And it would be better if our past selves… your present sons, that is, didn't know of us," said Donatello.

"We are really stealthy," added Leonardo.

Master Splinter frowned. He wasn't going to allow them to leave, but he believed that some compromise would do more good than a simple refusal.

"If that is the case, my sons, why don't you prove your stealth to me? If you can stay here, in the sewers, for an entire week without being noticed by your younger selves, then I will reconsider. In the meantime, you are not allowed to leave this place."

His four ninja sons looked at each other in disbelief and horror.

"We are doomed," whispered Mikey.