The Lair: 2003 Cartoonverse
Several seconds of silence hung over the assembled crowd before anyone spoke. Even Mikey seemed struck dumb. Finally it was Leonardo who broke the hush.
"Strange turtle? Was there another?" He stepped slightly forward, despite his counterpart's warning glare.
"Yeah…" Mikey started only to be cut off by Leo. The blue clad terrapin held up a hand and walked slowly forward, looking the three newcomers over.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" Leo's voice was calm, with a thick edge of protectiveness about it. It reminded Leonardo of being lectured by their Master Splinter.
The slightly smaller blue clad turtle cleared his throat. "I'm Leonardo, this is Michelangelo and Donatello." He replied, gesturing to his brothers. Staring back at him, Leo's face pinched slightly, as if somehow he knew that would be the answer, but getting it so plainly made his head hurt.
"Just like us…" Donnie murmured in wonderment. Slowly his wide eyes expression shifted to a gleeful grin. "That's amazing, perfect inter-dimensional transport, right here in our library!"
The eldest of the turtles turned, perking a blue clad brow over to his brother. "That's great, Don." He paused a bit, taking stock of the situation and making sure the strange new turtles were staying put. "Can you explain that a bit more?" he asked in a tone that clearly said 'because I don't trust these guys.'
The scientifically minded turtle paced a little bit to get his mind working. "It's a theoretical science, that if the right amount of concentrated energy were focused at one specific point you could rip through the barriers that form between dimensions."
"Dimensions?" Mikey prompted.
"Realities, Mikey." Don paused, scratching the back of his head for a second. "Think of it like a deck of cards. You stack the deck and turn up the first card. That's your dimension, and it's solid. But if you fan the cards with yours on top, you can see other cards peeking through. Some are very similar – the same number or the same suit, and some are wildly different. Those are other dimensions. Differences in reality"
The youngest turtle bit his lip and finally nodded. "Ok… but they're theo-retical?" He pronounced the last word carefully.
"They're not theoretical." Donatello protested, his curiosity piqued by the conversation. "All you have to do is focus a large burst of Omicron radiation into a containment bath and destabilize the ion force into sub-micromatic particles." The smaller purple turtle paused for a second after he spoke. He had explained the basic principles of dimensional transport dozens of times; this was the first time that it ever sounded convoluted to his ears.
Don furrowed his brow in response. "Omicron radiation is highly unstable, even in a laboratory setting. I don't know how you would get an amount large enough to transport a humanoid controlled enough to open a dimensional portal without causing severe radiation poisoning to most of the city."
"By using an anti-radiation inhibitor control." His counterpart replied plainly. Once again, even though he knew it worked in his home universe, it sounded rather foolish here. As if to make things better, he added, "I have done it before… I could show you how it's done" in a rather plaintive tone.
Behind him, Michelangelo chuckled. "Maybe we're just highly unstable, dude?" He grinned brightly, and his mirth earned a little laugh in response from his counterpart, and a stony glare from not just one, but also both Leonardo's.
"Michelangelo, I think the jokes can wait until another time." His brother's voice was carefully cautious and he instinctively moved forward again, as if he was trying to put himself in between the odd brothers whose lair they had just crashed and his own brothers behind him.
Leo very slowly let a breath out between his teeth, the tension around him almost palpable. Still, as he watched the smaller blue clad turtle, he could feel himself doing the same, trying to sow the middle ground between the two groups. He closed his eyes for a second and slowly turned his attention back to the scientists.
Don wasn't paying much attention to the conversation anymore, his head still stuck on what his mirror was saying. "You know…" he started "as crazy as it sounds, it could work."
"But if it's not possible here…" Leo started, trailing off as Don waved a hand at him.
"That doesn't necessarily mean it's not possible in another dimension. If these guys really are us, and I think they might be, there must be enough similarity between our two home worlds to have a good deal of basic repetition between the both. There must be two planet Earths, both with similar people, and similar histories. But if there were no differences we wouldn't be separated at all – we would be them. That's a really convoluted way of saying that, yes Leo, I think it's possible and my reading tend to confirm that they really are us." The purple clad turtle stopped pacing while he spoke, finally finishing it off looking Leo in the eye, nearly beak to beak.
The slightly taller turtle looked back at his brother, struck by the amount of confidence in the quieter teen's voice. Slowly he relaxed and relented somewhat. "Then if they're us, what do we do next?"
"Find a way to make the impossible, possible. So we can get them back home." Don turned again, resuming his somewhat meditative pacing.
The smaller blue clad turtle cleared his throat slightly and as the three counterpart's eyes rose to him he spoke in a soft tone, "You said there was another turtle…"
xXx
Sewers: 2003 Cartoonverse
There was a burst of static electricity that ran through the air even before Raph heard the crack. It was a hissing burst of interference, like when a radio signal gives it's last protest before it dies. Every muscle down the back of his body an along his shell was tensed, and his legs quavered in fury before he spun a pirouette in the dank sewer slime and broke off towards the lair in a dead run.
Sliding along a slick patch of mold and slime coating one bend in the tunnel, the hotheaded young turtle reached out to grab one of the protruding water pipes, and he swung his feet out, surfing around the 90 degree corner like a professional hockey player and running like a man possessed. On the way his mind kept playing out scenarios where he opened the door to find his family slain and despicable monsters climbing out of turtle skins ready to take over. As much as he reassured himself that Master Splinter would never let that happen, he felt obligated to help protect his family. They were his family, and by record they were the only ones he got. The thought of anything bad happening to them sickened him to his core.
Temper: his old nemesis. It had left a hole in his defenses, and in turn, he had run out, leaving a hole in his brother's defenses with his absence. Guilt gnawed at his mind as he ran, though he was glad that he hadn't gone with his original, temper-driven plan of visiting Casey and suggesting they beat out some aggression on some well deserving thugs. His natural sense of mistrust has kept him lingering close the lair, just far enough away to feel alone.
Turning the familiar tunnels towards home, Raph's gaze clouded to a hazy red stare. If that evil clone of his was doing anything more than sitting in the library he swore he was going to rip him apart. His green fingers clenched on the door, rattling it from his hinges. He vaulted over the banister, his feet pounding away a small bit of hit anger into the dust of the floor, pushing over the coat rack for good measure. He could hear voices coming from the library. Good. Then he wouldn't have to go searching for them.
"Yeah, a fourth one just like you guys!" Mikey was speaking animatedly.
"Raphael?" to Raph's ears the voice was slightly familiar and completely alien all at the same time. It was the same wavering tone of concern that Leo got when he didn't want to seem as emotional about something as he actually was, yet not him at all. He partially processed that before he answered.
"What?" The heavy Brooklyn accent pierced the room a split second before the muscular red turtle came to a skidding halt in the doorway, looking winded and out of sorts. His eyes first fell on Don, Mike, Leo, all alive, well and unharmed, which served to abate his anger slightly. That was before his gaze turned into the library itself. "The hell is going on here!" he bellowed, his eyes widening to a state of shock. He gripped the molding on the doorway so hard that Mikey swore he heard the wood groan and crack.
Leo was on the move immediately, stepping in between the seventh turtle and the three newcomers. "Raph…" he replied in a warning tone, ready to grab his brother if he made a move to start something.
"No, Leo, tell me, who the hell are these freaks? What are they doing here?" Raph balled his hands into fists, but he kept them clenched stiffly at his side.
Michelangelo stared wildly forward at the sound and fury that had just crashed into the library and edged closer to Donatello. "That's not our Raphael, please tell me that's not our Raphael, dude."
The eldest turtle sighed a little, understanding more of how his red clad brother felt than he wanted to admit at the moment because they were probably the exact same question that had been running through his own head minutes ago, only controlled better. "We think that they're actually who they say they are, Raph."
Donatello looked to Michelangelo and gave him a reassuring little shake of his head. "I don't think that's our Raphael." It didn't stop either of them from grouping up defensively.
"And who the hell do they say they are?" the red clad turtle put his hands squarely on his hips.
"They're us, Raph." Don's voice was both tired and logical. "No matter how unusual it seems, scientifically everything lines up. They're not robots or clones, they are other dimensional versions of ourselves."
Raph glared at the newcomers. "That's a little too convenient, Donnie." He took a moment to stare down the newcomers, unsettled by how similar they were.
"You know, dude, if we had tried to sneak up on you guys by wearing "you" costumes, you think we might'a looked exactly like you instead of exactly like us." Michelangelo perked his head up from behind Leonardo, watching Raph.
It took a moment to process the orange clad turtles' words, but it didn't make then any less accurate. Despite the overall similarity between the two sets of brothers, there were a myriad of tiny differences that stuck out rather readily. They would have been very poor doppelgangers for one another. "I've got a point you know." Mikey replied, somewhat gleefully. It earned him a glare from Raph.
"Great." Raph relented, but he didn't relax. He stalked the back wall like a cat and finally slung one leg over a chair looking ready to pounce if things went suddenly wrong. "What do we do now?"
xXx
Master Splinter's room, the lair: 2003 Cartoonverse
There had been a general note of quiet between the young turtle and the elder rat for quite some time, something that Master Splinter was enjoying. There was a something of a gentle touch to the Raphael that sat before him. He didn't quite want to call it naiveté, but something about the young turtle reminded him of his own son before he got so angry. He leaned back, sipping his tea, his bright eyes glittering in the soft flickering candlelight. Across from him Raphael practiced the gentle art of biting his tongue.
His ears were perked up, listening to everything transpiring outside. Slowly Raphael was becoming aware of it, too but the red clad teen was exhausted and slow on the upswing. It wasn't until Raph's brash questioning wavered through the walls of Master Splinter's room that he turned his head around to pay attention.
"Um, you think we should go out there and check on them?" He asked, stretching to get up.
The sensei gestured for the younger turtle to sit back down. "Not yet, my son. But soon."
Raphael furrowed his brows, and strained to listen better, a little glimmer of hope lighting up in the pit of his stomach that just maybe there would be another friendly face. And despite the fact that he would deny it to his brothers, at that moment nothing would make him happier than seeing three friendly faces. It made sitting still very difficult and he found himself fidgeting like three-year-old Michelangelo on a sugar rush.
Behind his table Master Splinter chuckled very slightly to himself, watching. It took little moments to remind him that his sons were not as tough as they would like to pretend to be. Even his own Michelangelo all too often played at being more grown up. He cherished the moments when he could remember them as children.
As the discussion outside came to a conclusion point, the old rat let his ears perk up to full attention and he stood in one fluid movement. He looked over to the fidgeting red turtle and gestured for him to follow. "Come, I believe my sons have come to the conclusions they needed to reach."
An expression of confusion crossed the young turtle's face, but he stood, stretched and wearily followed the sensei out towards the library. Splinter entered first, answering Raph's question. "I think now is the time to accept what has happened, and prepare to solve it tomorrow."
All seven turtles snapped their attention to the old rat, but it was Raphael who broke the silence. Peering out from the hallway behind Master Splinter, his eyes widened from a half lidded sleepiness to full out shock. "Leonardo?" he called cautiously towards the blue turtle who looked very much like his brother. Slowly he walked fully into the library, hoping that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
"Raphael!" Leonardo sounded positively thrilled, even more so when Raphael perked his head up. The expression of the young red-clad turtle was a study in contrasts. His eyes were alight with joy, but he was trying to keep his face coolly unimpressed. He was failing miserably at it, too, a lopsided grim plastered across his beak.
"Hey, guys. It took you long enough to get here!" he chided weakly, his voice dripping with relief. He didn't even protest when Michelangelo jumped over to wrap his arms around his brother's shoulders in a bear hug.
"Oh, God, get a room." Raph muttered dryly from the corner, looking disgusted. Mikey snickered in his direction until he got a warning stare to knock it off.
Master Splinter looked around at the eight turtles standing around him, each regarding him with a wildly different posture, from ones that spoke of rage and defiance to ones that spoken of confusion, worry, and great relief. Very slowly a dank, sinking feeling encroached in the pit of his stomach, even as he gave them all a calm smile.
"My sons, I suggest that we all stop arguing. As it seems very likely that we all are, in fact who we say we are, I trust that there is no better salve for the turmoil of the day than to get a good night's sleep. We can set our guests up in the library for the night and worry about the rest in the morning."
"I can get that set up." Leo replied, nodding. At this moment he didn't even care if Raph was going to call him perfect later, following Master Splinter's orders gave him something to focus on for the moment, and it was a small comfort for a busy mind. Slowly the brothers peeled off, moving furniture or setting things or; some of them merely avoiding the others, or glaring, letting each turtle know his place.
Master Splinter watched them for one more second before turning. He had thought that dealing with the conflicting personalities of four hidden, mutant teenagers was difficult; doubling that to eight made his head spin. Something about them made him smile, something about the newcomers that evoked fond memories of his sons. Something else told him that he had better keep a fire extinguisher, a big pack of band-aids, and a case worth of Tylenol easily at hand. The old rat rubbed his temples as he strolled back into his room, feeling a nagging headache coming on.