Author Notes: It has been a long while, but the recent Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie has given me the writing bug again. Suffice to say, spoilers abound if you have not watched seasons 1-2 and the movie.
This is a bit different than some of the other stories I've written. It's not a fully plotted story, but more so my mind needing more than what we got in the movie (though the movie was totally awesome and everyone should go see it so we can maybe bring back the show for a season 3).
I'm not intending to fill in every blank (and am probably inadvertently creating some blanks in this story), I was mainly more interested in the details surrounding the brothers, namely Raph and Donnie's implied deaths and Mikey and Leo's future character designs, all things that never got explained in the movie. So this is my take on it.
Those answers will come in later chapters, but first I thought it would be fun to write what went down in the original timeline without Casey Jones.
One last warning, save for specific scenes, I'm expecting this to rely on exposition at certain points and be less scene driven to move all plot points forward as I'm trying to recount what could have happened without being forced to detail every step (plus this is written as if we are taking a look into the past). So if I just gloss over "this and this" happened, that is my intentional writing crutch. However, I will try to fully write out the most important (and fun) scenes and have at least one per chapter so it doesn't get boring with too much exposition.
—
"Say cheese pizza!"
"Cheese pizza!"
*Click*
"And one more for good measure," April announced, snapping one more photo.
"I can't believe they still make these things," Leo commented, eyeing April's line of cameras, specifically her disposable camera. "And you have to take it somewhere and wait like… a whole day to see the picture? That's like Splinter old technology—OW!"
Leo groaned on the ground, rubbing his forehead where the rat had smacked him.
"One, I am not that old! And two, need I remind you, I was a movie star! I saw all the latest state-of-the-art cameras! The shinier and bigger the better!" he bragged.
"I mean, as certain as it is that it was Leo's dumb-dumb luck, he's not wrong," Donnie noted. "Old is a relative term, but if Pa-pa (1) was making movies in the 1970 to 1980s (2) and the disposable camera was conceived in the late 80s, he would actually predate the use-OW!"
"I do not need you sciencing my age, Purple! I have enough insecurities as it is!" he huffed.
Leo grunted as he sat up. "Anyway, isn't this what phones are for? Taking 20 pictures until you get the winner?" he mused. "Then again, all my pictures are winners, so I actually don't know what that's like," he declared, gripping his chin photogenically.
"It's a backup plan, Leo," April explained. "Now that I'm gonna be busting stories left and right, I need the proof in the pudding or I've got nothing. And if I get caught, my phone is the first thing they're confiscating." She set down the disposable camera before picking up the polaroid photo, shaking it to hasten the development of the photo. "I'm trying out polaroids and disposable to see which will give me a better photo. Plus, it never hurts to have a back up to my backup," she waved the photo for emphasis. She was nothing if not thorough.
"Can I take some pictures?" Mikey asked with hopeful intrigue. "It'll be fun to see what I get!" he exclaimed at the prospect of the finite film.
"Sure, Mikey. Feel free to use up the rest of the roll," she handed the orange turtle the camera. "Once you're done, I'll send them off to get developed and come back to compare." She walked over to place the polaroid on the fridge with a magnet, squinting at the still developing image. Shaking the photo helped, but it would take a few more hours before it was clear enough to see the detail.
"Thanks April!" He hugged her tightly, receiving an affectionate pat on the head in return.
"And thanks for the grub," Raph chimed in as he pulled a gooey slice from the pie. "We could use it after the day we had," he grumbled.
"Which was just like any other day," Leo added smoothly, folding his arms behind his head. "Beating the baddies and doing it in style."
April raised a brow at the deprecating look the other three turtles gave him, but didn't choose to broach the subject.
"No problem. It's the least I could do with Donnie fixing my phone for the millionth time." She turned to the genius that was being fed pizza by a robot arm as he worked. "I wanna get a copy on my computer asap."
"Any time, my friend," he told her with a robotic thumbs up without looking up from the circuitry. "After all, you have the good sense to bring me real food to get on my good side and not an atrocity. Also known as hawaiian." He shivered.
"Your face is an atrocity! Boom!" Leo shouted, shoving an entire slice into his mouth.
Donnie's eye twitched. "And for that—among many, many other reasons—you're leagues above at least one other person in my regard."
Mikey hugged the grumpy turtle. "It's ok, Donnie. I love your face. Even if you do draw eyebrows on your masks for some reason."
"Wait, what?" Raph blinked with a mouth stuffed with pizza.
April rolled her eyes at the brothers' antics with a chuckle. There was never a dull moment at least.
"I just hope you can get back my pictures. I'm telling you, they had some nasty but juicy stuff in that lab at the school. In fact," April presented a small vile from her backpack, "check out this glowy goo."
The father and sons gawked in awe.
"Ooh, it's like a glowstick," Mikey fawned with eyes of wonder.
Leo remarked, "I don't know what it is, but I have the oddest urge to eat it."
"Keep that stuff away from Nardo, April," Donnie cautioned sardonically. "He means it. The bathroom was not a pretty place after he decided eating slime was a good idea."
"I would argue it was a very pretty and sparkly place—minus the chunks," Leo refuted. "And if it's not meant to be eaten, why do they call it edible?" he challenged with a smug grin.
"First of all, I'm actually impressed you know what edible means, and second, you," he turned away from his work to gesture to Leo in frustration, "did not buy the edible slime. You just assumed all slime was edible because they ate some on that video you watched."
"Pfft, worth it. Even after I stopped puking, I had rainbow and sparkles in my number 2 for days," he recalled fondly.
"And probably some minor internal organ failure, but time will tell," Donnie retorted dismissively. "Also, TMI. Hard. TMI." Donnie cast him one last disgusted scowl and turned back to fixing April's phone.
"To be fair, some of the slime did kind of look like confetti cake batter," Raph mused aloud.
"And it smelled nice," Mikey added with a dreamy smile. "Like vanilla, glue, and plastic. A little chemically, but kind of in a good way!"
"... Where did I go wrong?" Splinter muttered with a shake of his head. Maybe he should have been a bit more attentive to the boys in their formative years.
"That, father, is a question for the ages. I mean, look at how great I turned out," Donnie replied, touching up a smudge on his mask eyebrows in the mirror before he waved over April. "And one fixed phone, madam," Donnie announced pleasantly as he handed her the device.
Tapping the phone, April's face lit up along with the screen. "Oh! Dee, you're the best! I—Oh shoot, it's that late!?" She scrambled to grab her backpack. "Sorry guys! Gotta go feed Mayhem! Enjoy the pizza!" she shouted rapidly before bolting down the hall.
Donnie blinked, grabbing something from the table. "Wait! You forgot your glowy— aaaand she's gone…" He slumped, watching the dust cloud she'd left in her wake settle.
And that had been the last time the world was normal.
—
When the first attack happened, Donnie's crime scanners had gone crazy.
It didn't take long for them to gather around the monitors to see the devastation occurring at Metro Tower on the news. It was gruesome and harrowing on its own to see the people fleeing the streets like rats. But the worst thing of all for Leo was the single shot at the Tower's apex.
Just before the camera feed had been cut, a close up of a lone cylindrical object had been shown. The very one that they had lost the day before. Because of him.
"This is why, when someone says they got it, you let them get it!" Raph growled at him.
Leo twiddled his fingers awkwardly. "So does that offer still stand or-?"
"Obviously, I don't got it anymore. Now do I?" Raph cut in with a scowl, pointing at the still frame of the object.
"I suppose I may have incidentally been the reason we lost the artifact thingy," the red eared slider admitted sheepishly to his brothers, sweating under their heated glares.
"And caused the tallest tower in the city to be goopified—Mikey's words for lack of a better term, not mine—atop where a giant portal to who-knows-where is ripping the sky open," Donnie quipped critically.
"And now it's destroying everything that gets near it!" Mikey panicked watching the unsettling footage of helicopters going down.
"Give it a rest, you guys!" He rolled his eyes. "It's not that big a deal. We took down the Shredder! A giant piece of bubble gum is nothing!" He declared confidently. "One little portal to Metro Tower, grab the artifact back to stop whatever the goop is and wham, bam, thank you, mam! Crisis averted!" He waved his hand nonchalantly, not looking to see if anyone was buying it.
Under the concerned looks of his brothers, Leo had done just that, sending them all to the top of the tower. As usual, no one would see them coming and they'd put this to bed in time for late night pizza.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
What they faced was not only unlike any foe they had battled before, but a foe that left them in shambles.
It was four on two, but their numbers had done them no favors. The creatures calling themselves the Krang were skilled, fierce and ruthless.
The female was especially blood thirsty. It was clear from their malicious ranting that the turtles had become the punching bags to relieve countless years of hostility the Krang harbored for some kind of imprisonment they'd just broken out of.
Between labored breaths and shaky limbs, Leo discerned that they were protecting the artifact above all else. Meaning it was still important, even though they were already freed, so Leo made the play that had sealed their fates.
"Retreat! They're too powerful!" Raph ordered after he watched Mikey get whipped to the ground by his leg. "Leo, get us out of here!"
"Sure thing, Raph Just let me grab a little souvenir!" he yelled dramatically, after running behind Raph as a blindspot.
Using the unsuspecting alligator snapping turtle as a stepping stone, he leapt into the air, arm outstretched to grab the artifact.
"Hey! Leo!" Raph griped in a mixture of annoyance and frustration, stumbling from the force of Leo's jump.
"Sorry, big brother, but this time I got it!" he shouted smugly.
"What the-? You guys, there's one more!" Leo heard Donnie shout just as the artifact was within his grasp.
The victorious grin on his face slowly faded as a blur of something snaking towards him appeared in his peripheral.
"LEO!"
His chest felt tight as the familiar thick muscles of his larger brother enclosed around him. He could feel the impact alter his initial trajectory mid-air. He squeezed his eyes shut with a grunt when Raph's weight came crashing down on his chest and his head snapped against the hard ground.
"Ugh, Raph! Get off!" He groused, feeling like his head was going to split open. It was likely the pain was making his mood and tone more harsh, but he hadn't had that much awareness to realize or care.
With a groan he felt the back of his head, finding a goose egg already swelling. "I had it and you're drooling all over-"
His words died in his throat when he swiped at his damp cheek and found red smeared on his fingers.
"Raph…?" His own voice felt far away and he barely registered the relief of his lungs when Raph lifted himself onto his forearms above the red eared slider.
Despite the red blending well with his mask, it was easy to see the blood wetting the fabric and dripping down Raph's face from the turtle's right eye. It was gouged to nothing with multiple slashes descending from the socket.
Yet when he managed to open his remaining good eye, all Leo could see was concern for him.
He knew the "are you ok?" was right on Raph's lips, but their moment was cut short when tendrils had grabbed each of their legs and tossed them in the air in separate directions, right off the building.
The whiplash did not help Leo's pounding head, but seeing Raph slamming into a cell tower from a distance quickly snapped Leo out of his stupor. He brandished his swords to create a portal to Raph and did his best to roll once he hit the roof to ease his landing.
Groaning, he pushed himself up with a shake, likely running on pure adrenaline, and ran over to Raph, turning him over onto his back. He listened to his heart and felt his pulse with bated breath.
To his immense relief, Raph was breathing.
"Leo?" He started at the sound of his brother's faint voice, watching with pain as his brother's good eye cracked open. "Donnie… Mikey… we… we gotta…"
Without a need for explanation, Leo stood now that he was sure Raph wasn't at death's door. "I'm gonna go get them, get the artifact, and get us the hell out of here."
"Then I'm-"
"Going home," Leo declared firmly, leaving no room in his voice for argument. But that obviously wouldn't stop the over protective brother.
Just when Raph tried to lift himself to retaliate, Leo sliced a portal below his brother to send him back to their new lair.
"No!"
Ignoring the indignant roar of his brother cut short when the portal closed, Leo transported himself back to the roof as planned.
But nothing had gone to plan. Four on two had been a losing battle. Three on three was a slaughter.
Apparently a third creature had been embedded in the gateway the Krang were making, acting as a sentinel and making it impossible to approach the artifact.
When Leo returned he saw the female grinning in delight, standing over Donnie. As the purple turtle stretched to reach his bo staff, she slammed her tentacle down on his twin's hand. The subsequent cry of pain he gave distracted Mikey who barely dodged a blow with a grimace as he fended off the gatekeeper.
Snarling in anger, Leo quickly threw one of his swords towards each of his brothers, using his teleportation to switch places with them in rapid succession. Grabbing his injured brothers, he deposited them on a lower level of the roof and retrieved his swords from the air in the blink of an eye.
He now confronted all three of the pink, fleshy creatures, but wouldn't back down.
"How sad." The leader and largest of the three approached casually, the female stepping aside even though she clearly wanted to take on Leo herself. "All three of your friends are gone and they never knew."
"Knew what?" he bit out.
"That you had a death wish. Leaving you all by yourself against us is hardly a choice for those that want to live," he taunted. "Not that you'll be living much longer. Those who don't submit to the Krang will be made to kneel… or perish."
Past his urge to do murder in retaliation for his brothers still lay that defiant spirit of his, ready to wipe that smug grin off of the Krang's faces.
"First of all, they're my brothers. I can understand that with my rugged good looks you might have thought otherwise, but I just got lucky in the gene pool is all. Second, me? All by myself?" he scoffed with a smirk and held his hands behind his back nonchalantly, rocking on his heels. "Do you have any idea what kind of mystic mojo I've got going on with just me, myself and I? I know you guys are new around here, but way to show what noobs you are."
The Krang rose a brow, clearly unsure whether he was bluffing. He wasn't the face man for nothing.
"And pray tell, what can you do by yourself besides flitting from place to place like a gnat?" he inquired skeptically.
"A gnat?" Leo laughed, shaking his head as if he'd heard a pathetic attempt at a pun. "I think I'm a bit more elegant, like a dragonfly or something. But sorry to say, I was going easy on you guys, not wanting to upstage my bros. They're a little sensitive about that, you see…" he rambled, doing what he did best to distract them.
In a move that took more precision than he'd ever managed, or admittedly was still struggling with, he swirled one of his swords behind him to open a portal the size of his palm directly underneath the artifact.
He had to do it directly between the artifact and where it sat. And the last time he had tried this move, he'd barely slinked away from Donnie yelling about who had cut the new bust of himself in half.
He hid his elation as he saw the cylinder drop into the portal and snatched it behind his back. Check and mate.
The Krang's nearly glazed over eyes widened when they saw the blacked sky start to dissipate above them and twisted around to see the artifact missing from its pedestal.
"And unfortunately for you, myself is all we need." The young turtle wagged the artifact at them condescendingly with one last smug grin before opening a portal below himself and giving a salute. He'd come out the other side below by his brothers and portal them home-
An ugly sound made its way out of his throat before he was silenced entirely by the tendril that had threaded itself around his neck. He could see the veins of the Krang popping from their disgusting skin, livid at his trick.
In his struggle, the portal closed and without thinking he dropped the artifact to grasp the fleshy appendage to try and pull it from his neck to no avail. He was losing air quickly and in a last ditch effort, he used his other hand to try to portal away.
The Krang was having none of it and grasped his hand until he also let go of his sword.
"Enough babble! Enough tricks!" He yelled as his skin unfurled grotesquely and he unleashed the screech that would haunt Leo's nightmares.
"Leo!" Mikey yelled as he rode atop Donnie who was hovering up at their level. Mikey used his nunchucks to attack from a distance, the chain lengthening with his mystic powers.
Despite not knowing what the Krang was doing, Leo wanted to yell out to his brothers to get away, but it was too late. Some power ripped through them all as Leo was released, flinching at the sound.
He dropped to the ground and gritted his teeth until the sound stopped. Blinking, he noticed the artifact still on the ground, but out of arm's reach, and swung his sword to create a portal beneath it.
But nothing happened. He tried again only to earn the same results and blinked as his mystic power tried to emerge from his weapon only to recede as if the battery had died.
'What did they do to us?' he thought to himself with a creeping dread, but knew the answer.
They had been stripped of their mystic powers somehow. He looked to Mikey, seeing the box turtle brandishing his nunchucks just as uselessly as Leo had while Donnie was clearly trying to conjure something, anything, with his bo staff.
One shared look between the brothers had been enough to communicate one thing. They had no chance anymore.
Seeing the Krang advancing on Leo, Donnie pushed through the pain in his hand to initiate the code in his tech armband to engage his new escape pods. Leo had no doubt that it had only been through Donnie's actions that they had lived that day.
But he had no idea that what awaited them all was a fate worse than death.
—
Author Notes: Interestingly, the first scene of the story was a last minute addition when I realized the movie itself had a minor plot hole. The picture that future Leo carries would have had to have been taken after Leo lost the key since they didn't recognize it when they found it on Casey, but before the Krang took over since they looked normal and happy at the time.
And considering that the Foot probably didn't wait long, it was actually probably a tight timeline, like the calm before the storm.
(1) This is how I'll denote Donnie saying Papa in that funny way he does. It's stupid but so funny and I love it.
(2) I actually didn't totally make up Splinter's general age. It's not confirmed and it's stupid the amount of thought I put into this, buuut *puts on tinfoil hat.* Given that:
- Big Mama and Splinter met on the set of one of his movies in 1984 (a blink and you'll miss it confirmation on the movie clapperboard that shows the year in "Many Unhappy Returns")
- I headcanon that Rise started in 2018 and Mikey is the youngest at 13 (assuming Splinter didn't just make up their ages, which he probably did since he didn't even have them at the inception of this incarnation)
- Splinter escaped Draxum in 2005, 13 years before the start of the series around the time Mikey was born, Leo and Donnie were 1 and Raph was 2
- Google tells a single pringle like me that the average relationship lasts 2 years and 9 months (rounded up to 3 years)
If they met in 1984, Big Mama kidnapped him 3 years later in 1987 when their relationship ended and he was 32 (I use the age Bruce Lee died at/his career ended, RIP) and he was stuck in the Battle Nexus from 1987 - 2005 or 18 years, then raised the turtles for another 13 years to the present of 2018, then he would be 32 at kidnapping + 18 years at the Battle Nexus + 13 years raising the boys = 63 in 2018. So he actually is around retirement age, to his chagrin. Don't me about the math or I'll cry. ^_^;
Edit: Wikipedia also tells me that the Rise movie takes place 2 years after the series as everyone is 2 years older, so that makes Splinter 65, the ripe old age for retirement!