Chapter Text
Day 1
The first thing April realized when she hit the ground was that she didn’t recognize this alley.
And wasn’t that a weird claim she could make – the fact that in a city almost five hundred square miles, April could connect every fire escape, lamp post, and mailbox with a crazy, absolutely bonkers memory. In her city, she’d kicked ass and taken names everywhere from Brooklyn to, unfortunately, Staten Island.
So when April fell a good eight feet onto the ground, skinning her palms and knees on the cracked asphalt, she didn’t immediately wonder what happened to CJ and the boys. No, she wondered why this alley didn’t look familiar.
New York alleys weren’t all that special, to tell the truth. They usually smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer and didn’t have much going for them except some dumpsters and some graffiti, which could admittedly range from very cool to very racist, based on where you were.
But this alley was – plain. April didn’t feel the urge to gag as soon as the rancid dumpster-stench hit her nostrils, not like how she would back home. Don’t get her wrong, it didn’t smell like roses and daisies, but it still somehow smelled – less. Like she’d pinched her fingers over her nose. The walls were bare too, no eye-popping colors to be seen. The only sound she could hear was some newspapers rustling in the breeze, not the usual pack of alleycats screeching and squabbling for a moldy tuna sandwich. April felt like she was in some sanitized imitation New York alley, like one on a Lou Jitsu movie set.
The analogy finally made April notice that she was alone. Well, as alone as you could be in New York City.
Where are the guys? she thought, finally picking herself off the ground. It shouldn’t have taken her this long to get up. She was lucky she hadn’t cut herself on broken glass or something.
“Come on, O’Neil,” she whispered to herself. “Focus. How’d you get here?”
The last thing she remembered was helping Draxum ‘keep mystic artifacts out of the hands of those who would do both yōkai and human alike great harm’.
Or, as Leo had put it, beating up the people who’d snatched Draxum’s trash. He hadn’t been wrong.
Something had happened, though. They’d been holding their own, no sweat really, when the building, some museum maybe, had started coming down. They’d needed to get out of there fast, so…
“Leo made a portal?” she guessed. Or Mikey, maybe. She wasn’t totally sure if portals were permanently a Mikey thing now, but she couldn’t forget that he’d created powerful mystic gateways before. A good investigator never discounted any of her leads.
She kept thinking as she stuck her hands into her pockets and made her way onto the sidewalk, weaving in and out of foot traffic like it was second nature. Which, to be fair, it was.
April remembered the foundation under her feet becoming unstable as a bright green ring of light was drawn around her and the others. She hadn’t scrambled out of the circle the way that Draxum’s C-tier enemies had, trusting whichever turtle that had formed their getaway. She’d tumbled through, and now here she was.
In not just an unfamiliar alley, but a whole unfamiliar city.
“What the shell?”
For the first time since she’d started walking, April took a good look at the buildings and people around her. Every building was so utterly identical to one another that it looked like someone had taken three cookie cutters, at most, and just went to town on the city. She couldn’t spot a single building that wasn't a skyscraper or an apartment complex. Then there were the faces of those walking besides her. They were duller, somehow. And rounder, even for the sharp-nosed, weasel-faced man that deftly stuck his hand into another man’s pocket and pulled out a wallet.
Reflexively, April checked to see that she still had her phone and wallet. She winced, seeing that her phone was on 11% battery.
Leo’s portals used to fry any technology that passed through them, back when he struggled for his ōdachi to make anything bigger than an onion ring. Donnie had refused to even let Leo’s sword in his lab until the slider could confidently chuck his own phone through his mystic portals without fearing that it would devolve into a metal brick. It hadn’t been much of a claim, though, since Leo did everything confidently and, consequently, broke six phones before his technique improved.
So maybe that meant Mikey had made the portal that had sent April to wherever she was? April knew for a fact that her phone’s battery had been almost full when she’d gotten a text from Raph explaining the whole Draxum-artifact situation. Maybe a distaste towards tech was just part of the growing pains every mystic-user went through when learning to make portals.
Either way, it was just one more thing that wasn’t going April’s way. She sighed, switched her phone onto low-power mode, and realized that she was quickly approaching a crosswalk at a large intersection. She glanced back at the alley she had appeared in. She needed to find something to use as a landmark so that she could find her way back there, if need be.
Her eyes landed on a building across the street from the alley. It looked somewhat distinct from all the other buildings, with red accents and what April was pretty sure was kanji on the front of it. Its sign read 24/7 and depicted a bowl with noodles and chopsticks. Mmm, noodles…
Focus!
She locked her gaze on it for a few more seconds, then turned away from it and marched with determined steps, even as she bumped into a blonde woman who pulled a face and muttered a curse under her breath. April only snorted at that. Jeez, even the insults here were blander.
Really, the woman’s rude words were but the final confirmation April needed to truly believe her hunch. The unfamiliar area, the stark difference between the very tone of her home and this place – it could only mean one thing.
April was in an alternate reality.
Or was it a parallel universe? Different dimension? Whatever, Donnie would probably know.
But he wasn’t here now. None of them were. Not Leo or CJ or Mikey or Raph either. It was just April, and she had no idea where her brothers were. She felt a little sick to her stomach at the thought.
“Quit your worrying, O’Neil,” April grumbled. A greasy-haired kid skating beside her shot her a weird look at her talking to herself and pointedly skated away, wrinkling his nose.“The boys are fine.” Mikey had probably seen this city’s blank walls as a sign for free artistic real estate and already begun to make his mark on this dimension. And she’d bet her last Teddy Bear Town rewards card that CJ was already using his super cool future tech to track her and the others down. “You just gotta find them.”
First she needed to find something else, though. Come on, where is it? There’s gotta be one here… That’s too exposed, that one too – There!
April ducked into another alley, grinning as she spotted what she’d been looking for: a sewer grate. She quickly stretched her arms out and heaved the heavy object out of the way. The almost tastable scent of 100% authentic New York sewage only made her smile even wider as she started making her way down the ladder, the motion as second nature as navigating foot traffic was.
Knowing Donnie, the first thing he’d do if he wound up in an alternate dimension was find the other version of him. And take over the world, probably, if Raph didn’t stop him first. Which meant that it was time to go exploring.
Because where there were sewers, there were turtles.
The sun had set, the city that never sleeps had reached its bedtime, and April had gotten nowhere.
The sewers of April’s dimension were but another part of her city that she knew like the back of her hand. She could navigate them blindfolded, and she had before, during a bet with Cass. But these sewers were different. The layout was jumbled compared to that of her home, some areas were blocked off for construction, and there was actual, legit sewage floating past her as she had wandered through the concrete labyrinth. Who woulda thunk?
The final straw had been that weird fluorescent mushroom creature she’d seen slinking around in the shadows of the sewers. She’d felt like she was being watched and turned around all of a sudden, intent on confronting whoever was following her, only to make awkward eye contact with what looked like a cross between Toadette and silly string. She’d gaped for a moment, then sprinted back out the way she came.
Which is where she was now, back in the same exact spot she’d started in, now just several hours later.
She checked her phone. It was 10:21, her battery was at 6%, and she hadn’t gotten any messages since before she’d arrived here. No new developments, then.
April sighed, rubbing her eyes. She was really, really tired after searching all day and she hadn’t thought of where she was going to spend the night. A quick look through her wallet informed her that she had a twenty-dollar bill, three quarters, four nickels, and a Lou, Mike Tony, Tony’s Pizza gift card on her. She looked up if the pizza place existed in this dimension, sighing again once she read that the restaurant was still being built and wouldn’t open for a few months.
She began walking back towards the alley she had appeared in. Hopefully she could find a homeless shelter or a seedy motel on her way there. She’d even take hiding in a library ‘til morning over sleeping on a bench tonight.
April turned a corner, relieved to see the red-toned noodle shop she’d noticed this morning. Right on cue, her stomach growled. It reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything all day. It looked like she was out of luck in finding a safe place to sleep tonight, she might as well get some grub. The situation wasn’t ideal, but it was okay. She was April O’Neil, she could handle anything. Anything.
It was just nicer, sometimes, to not have to handle everything.
She shook her head, trying to get out of the funk she’d found herself in. Complaining about the situation wouldn’t do her any good now. It’d just be beating a dead horse. It was noodle time, she needed to focus on that.
Above her, she heard the faint sound of muted, ninja-like footsteps. Then – a large thud.
“Booyakasha!”
She froze. Only a certain type of individual was capable of turning a word whose vibes could rival that of ‘cowabunga’ into a battle cry.
“Get back over here so I can beat the green off of you, Mikey!”
April ducked behind a dumpster and looked up, towards the sound of the voices. Years of watching the boys get better and better at blending in with the shadows had taught her how to pick out the faintest light in the harshest darkness.
She spotted two figures leap from rooftop to rooftop, one chasing after the other. One figure was quickly closing the distance between them and the other, tackling the second figure while atop of an apartment building. It was hard to tell from here, but April was pretty sure that they started wrestling, each trying to pin the other down.
“Guys, keep it down!” a quiet voice shouted. She had to strain her ears to pick it up, but the two figures froze, then continued their albeit less loud squabble.
Above the noodle shop, two more figures started following the owners of the first two voices. They moved at a slower pace, not incentivized to catch a troublesome brother the way the first figure had been.
Four ninjas, rooftop tag, booyakasha…
Something small fell from the pocket of one of the figures as they stumbled on a ledge and had to flail around to orient themselves. It rolled around a bit until it came to a stop directly at April’s feet. She rushed to pick it up.
It was a receipt for four orders of pizza gyoza from Murakami’s. It had the same logo as the sign of the noodle shop, and it had led her to the eternally pizza-obsessed Hamatos of this dimension.
This wasn’t just any trash… It was pocket trash of destiny.
On the rooftop, the wrestling began dying down. April’s heart skipped a beat as she realized that if she didn’t act now, she’d lose her best and only lead.
No way she was letting that happen.
April kicked the door to Murakami’s open, the sound of her heartbeat almost blocking out her own voice as she shouted, “I’m a junior fire-fighter and I gotta get to your roof!”
The restaurant was mostly empty, except for a graying man wearing dark sunglasses and two teenagers around her age. The teenagers shot each other a wide-eyed look as April sprinted towards a door with a sign of a stick figure climbing up stairs hanging on it.
“Miss, I’m afraid you can not go in there,” the man said, not unkindly. He rushed to stop her, balancing a large pot of steaming soup in one arm as he held out his other to block the door.
I’m really sorry about this, sir, April thought, but I need to find my family.
“The orphans are on fire!” she insisted. “I need to get on the roof right now to prep for the helicopter.” She ducked under his outstretched arm, not losing speed even for a second. “The city thanks you for your service!”
One of the teenagers, a red-headed girl who happened to be standing closer to the door than the greasy-haired boy that April actually recognized from earlier in the day, pulled out an odd-shaped cell phone, frantically texting. April pushed past her, accidentally sending the girl’s phone tumbling into the pot of soup the man was carrying.
“My tee – uh, perfectly normal phone!” the girl shouted. Her face was as red as her hair.
“Sorry!” April called back, already halfway up the stairs. “Bill the mayor!”
She reached the roof of the building in seconds, slamming the door shut as soon as she heard footsteps coming from the other side. She spotted four shelled individuals crouching down in the shadows of a rooftop five buildings over. They were pointing at something below them. They were facing away from her, and April knew that this would be her only chance.
She balled her hands into fists, taking a few steps backwards before taking off like a Donnie-patented missile towards the boys. The door to the stairs flew open, but she knew that they wouldn’t be able to catch her. She reached the ledge of the building, refused to look down, and jumped.
“Apriiiiiil O’Neil!” she shouted as she soared.
Painful tremors shot up her legs as she crashed onto the roof of the other building. She paused, just for a half-second, and was at it again, leaping from building to building like she’d seen the boys do a million times. She got closer to the others, three buildings away, then two, one…
As she reached the same building the other dimension version of her family was at, she heard the boy from the noodle shop scream, “Guys, run!”
An orange-masked face turned toward her, turning a paler shade of green as she saw how close April was.
He screamed, high-pitched and reedy, and frantically pointed towards her. His brothers saw her as well, their eyes going white – white? – as they slunk into the shadows. Now that they were actively trying not to be noticed, April struggled to spot them in the darkness.
To her right, on another roof, she heard the sound of a soda can being knocked over. She whipped around towards the sound, making eye contact with who could only be this dimension’s Michelangelo.
“Wait!” she shouted, but he just threw something white onto the ground.
Purple smoke erupted around him. April knew that by the time it dissipated, they’d all be long gone. Panic began clawing at her chest again at the thought of losing her best chance at finding her family. She couldn’t even try to follow the boys, she knew it was too dangerous to jump to the other rooftop when she couldn’t even see where the ledge ended and open space began.
Grasping at straws, she shouted the only thing she could think to say.
“If you guys don’t get your sorry butts over here in ten seconds, I will put every sewer grate on the do not serve list of every half-decent pizza place in the city!” She paused to catch her breath. Her voice cracked. “I know where you live!”
Wait, that didn’t sound right. That was way more stalker-ish than she had intended.
But still, her words had been spoken. The air shifted. April could feel it.
She could also feel the heavy foot launched at her ribs, knocking the wind out of her. She went sprawling and ended up on her back as she struggled to breathe. Before she could catch her breath, someone lifted her up by the collar of her jacket. She struggled, but was effortlessly lifted back up onto her feet and slammed into what felt like an air-conditioning unit. An arm pinned her down, as unwavering and immovable as a boulder.
A pointed metal prong met her throat, far enough away not to cut her jugular but close enough that if she tried to make a break for it, she’d be skewered.
“Chasing us down is one thing,” said the red-masked turtle with a vicious smirk. He kept his grip on his sai firm as his brothers circled around him and April. “It’s gutsy enough that I can actually respect it. But threatening our pizza? Now you made it personal. Big mistake.”
April held her breath. She would not do what she wanted to do, she would not, she would not –
April burst out into uproarious laughter, her giggles so uncontrollable that the mutant that could only be Raphael had to ease up his grip on his sai. He just stared at her in confusion, as did the rest of his brothers, as April struggled to quiet her laughter.
“I’m – I’m sorry,” April said between giggles. It was so bad that her glasses started fogging up. “You’re just – really short.”
Behind Raphael, the mutants April deduced to be Leonardo and Donatello, based on the color of their masks and their weapons, snorted. The two tried to cover up the sound with frantic coughing. Michelangelo, however, didn’t bother to hide his maniac chuckle, almost louder than April’s.
“Hahaha, she called you short,” Michelangelo wheezed. He gripped Donatello’s shoulder for balance and held his stomach like he was going to throw up. “That’s great. That’s so great.”
April had just managed to stop laughing, but she started giggling again at the sound of Michelangelo’s laughter. Her laughing made Michelangelo chuckle even harder, and the laughter spread to Donatello and Leonardo as they covered their mouths with a hand to quiet their own laughter.
Could you blame her? She hadn’t been able to see much of this dimension’s Hamatos in the darkness, and now that she was face-to-face with them, it was hard to take any of this seriously.
She’d been expecting a pretty similarly-looking version of Raph, big and huge yet still a softie on the inside. And while she couldn’t say much about this Raphael so far, the first thing she’d noticed about him was that he was easily a good foot shorter than her Raph.
All of the turtles looked pretty different from her brothers.
This Michelangelo had the same trouble-making glint in his eye as Mikey did, as well as the obvious orange mask and nunchucks. But he had none of Mikey’s fun stickers or colorful marker scribbles that made him the human-turtle version of a rainbow. His freckles were cute, though.
Leonardo held his katanas in front of him in what April assumed to be traditional Hamato style, not fidgeting the slightest, unlike Leo would ever be capable of. He preferred to lean on them or absently make portals to kick pebbles into whenever he had the chance. There also wasn’t the satisfied smirk Leo usually wore when teasing his brothers, which was weird to not see on a blue-accented turtle.
April almost gave herself whiplash when she realized that this dimension’s Donatello was using just a plain, wooden bō. Where was the sparkle? Where was the pizzazz? Where was the functionally useless but aesthetically ingenious disco ball for mid-mission dance breaks? Like the rest of this dimension, it was uncomfortably bland.
Where April’s brothers had different builds and varying shades of green to them, these turtles all looked pretty similar. Sure, some of them were shorter or thinner than the others, but they seemed like the same species of turtle and maybe even the same age.
April crossed her fingers that Raphael was the youngest and the shortest of all the brothers, because that would be beyond hilarious.
And what he said to her – pizza supreme in the sky, it was ridiculous. April had been a glorified baby-sitter at Albearto’s long enough to know when a kid thought that they were being so cool when, in reality, they just sounded like a complete dork. It was kind of adorable, to be honest.
Raphael didn’t think so.
“Watch it. You’re not so tall yourself,” he growled. To be fair, he was right. She’d always been on the shorter side of 5 feet. Still, though…
“I’m taller than you,” she shot back, and stuck her tongue out. Raphael’s eyes went white.
A green hand landed on top of Raphael’s shoulder. “Cool it, Raph,” Leonardo said. “She’s just pushing your buttons.” He waited, staring Raphael down with a stern look until his brother took a deep breath and gave a small nod. “Good.”
April hoped she wasn’t catching flies with the way her mouth was hanging open. A Leo talking sense into a Raph? Maybe she wasn’t in an alternate dimension, maybe she was in the Twilight Zone.
“That’s so weird,” she mumbled.
Raphael shot her a glare. “Speak for yourself. What kind of crazy person says that she’s a firefighter and goes rooftop jumping just to threaten a couple of upstanding guys, minding their own business, like us?”
Don’t start laughing again, O’Neil. What the shell, she was going to die of second-hand embarrassment at the rate that Raphael was going.
“Yeah,” Michelangelo added. “And what kinda sicko threatens a dude’s pizza? That’s messed up, yo!”
The levels of cringe radiating from this entire family was going to make April sick. “Sorry?” Wait a minute… “How did you know that I said I was a junior firefighter?”
Donatello cleared his throat, posing with his bō in a way that he probably thought made him look intimidating. “Hey, we’re asking the questions here!”
April raised an eyebrow. “And your question is?”
He blanked. “I…”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s what I thought.”
Leonardo stepped forward. “I have some questions. Who are you and why were you following us?”
April blinked. How was she supposed to go about this without seeming like the crazy lady Raphael had already decided she was. “Um. You see… I…” She had nothing. She had absolutely nothing.
Leonardo smirked. It wasn’t like Leo’s, born of causing mischief and chaos wherever he could. This one looked quietly playful, like he was playing a game that only he knew the rules of. “That’s what I thought.”
April fought down a snicker. He thought he was being so cool, didn’t he?
“I mean I could tell you…” April trailed off, purposefully meaning to catch their attention. Without realizing it, all four of them leaned closer towards her. “But I’d probably blow your minds.” She grinned. This was kind of fun. She could see why Draxum enjoyed his theatrics.
Donetello snorted. “As if. Unless you’re some sort of Kraang droid disguised as a teenage girl meant to trick us into revealing the location of our lair, I think our minds are safe. Most of our minds, anyway.” He glanced at Michelangelo, then shook his head, amused by the thought. “But that would never happen.
A cold shock went down April’s spine. “Kraang? You guys have the Kraang here?”
Michelangelo, who had sat down criss-cross applesauce, nodded. “Yeah? They had that crazy techna-drumstick in the sky just, like, a few months ago. Didn’t you hear?” He fiddled around with a throwing star in his hand. “Oh, wait, are you from Canada or something?”
“No, I – ” April took a deep breath. This was fun and all, but if the Kraang were here then she needed to find the boys ASAP. There couldn’t be a universe where those alien freak shows weren’t bad news. “I’m from another dimension.”
Donatello immediately took out a box-ish phone, similar to the girl’s in the restaurant. Raphael and Leonardo glanced at each other. Their expressions were unreadable to April.
Michelangelo just nodded sagely. “Yeah, New York’s probably so whack compared to Canada that it can seem like a whole ‘nother universe.”
Raphael finally lowered his sai from its position in front of April’s throat to lightly slap the top Michelangelo’s head. “No, dummy, she’s saying she’s literally from another world.”
Michelangelo’s eyes went wide. “Like an alien?”
“No!”
“But the Kraang are from another dimension and they’re aliens!”
“He has a point,” Donatello conceded. He didn’t look up from his phone.
Leonardo brought them back on track. “Are you from Dimension X, then?”
April tilted her head to the side, thinking. “I dunno. Donnie’s mentioned other dimensions existing before, but it was mostly when he going all was conspiracy theorist, so I don’t know how serious he was being. He never said if our dimension had a name or not.”
Again, the boys exchanged a look. It was the type that held a thousand words without being audible. April was familiar with it, though she couldn’t decipher it.
“You know me in your dimension?” Donatello said. His eyes were on her as he spoke, but he was still typing on his phone.
Oh, right she hadn’t told them her name. “Yeah, you guys are all my best friends.” She smiled and leaned back against the air conditioning unit she’d been pinned to a few minutes before. “The name’s April O’Neil, investigative reporter for Eastlaird University Daily News. Nice to me you.”
Donatello froze, as did the others. Again, they all met each other’s eyes.
Back home, April used to do this with the boys all the time. In the middle of a fight, when they needed to go behind Splinter’s back, even when someone was being really annoying and they needed to silently commiserate over it. April spoke this nonverbal language as well as she did English and ASL.
But this wasn’t her home and these weren’t her brothers and this wasn’t a language she knew. She had no clue what they were all thinking.
Did they even have an April here? What if the main difference between this dimension and her’s was her existence? What would April do then? Would they even hear her out?
“Prove it.”
April almost jumped at the sound of Leonardo’s voice. How was he so quiet?
Her eyes landed on his katanas.
Right. Ninja.
“Prove what, exactly? Me being from another dimension or my name?”
“Both.”
She shrugged. “Alright.” She reached into her pocket, jumping when all four of the boys shifted into battle stance as she did so. Michelangelo was up in a flash and the rest of the boys cornered her, weapons at the ready. “Wait, jeez, hold on! I’m just getting my phone and wallet.”
A glance at Leonardo – again with the stupid meaningful looks? – led all the boys to lower their weapons once more. “Slowly,” Leonardo warned.
“Guess this is karma after not believing future boy,” April muttered. She rolled her eyes at the dramatics as she took her phone and wallet out of her pocket. From her wallet she took out her drivers license, crane license, student I.D., and library card. She tossed each to a turtle, not caring who got what. Then she began looking through her phone for pictures of her and the boys.
“A scholar,” Donatello hummed affirmatively as he checked over her school I.D.. “Very nice.”
It better be nice for how much she’s paying per semester. Though, to be fair, she was pretty sure that Donnie had taken to paying for part of her tuition under the guise of the Othello von Ryan Scholarship for Awesome Normal Girls.
“Why do you have a crane license?” Raphael said, making a face.
“‘Cause I’m awesome, next question.” She tried to bite down her grin as Raphael shoved her license towards Leonardo, frustrated. He was really fun to rile up. “Oh, here you go.”
April showed her phone to the boys. She’d picked out the picture that the seven of them had taken after the K – after the failed invasion. It was perfect for showing her, the boys, and CJ, with Splinter there too as an added bonus.
Donatello snatched her phone out of her hand, zooming in on the picture. Then he took a look at April’s phone itself. “Are all phones in your hypothetical dimension as advanced as this?”
“Probably not? Donnie’s always messing around with my phone if I leave it around unsupervised in the lair, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s added some stuff to it.” She thought for a moment, then added, “He added a virus-blocker a while back. It was annoying at the time, but it helped me not get mind controlled by a magic mutant hippo, so. I’m okay with it.”
“Magic mutant hippo?” Leonardo said.
Michelangelo shrugged. “We’ve got a magic mutant MnM sparrow. Go with it, dude.”
“MnM?” Was that like the candy?
“Mazes and mutants! The best game ever! Well, aside from video games. And pinball. And skee-ball. And pretty much all arcade games. And all ball games. Oh, and – ”
Donatello handed April back her phone. “Show us some more.”
“Hmm. A please would be nice.”
He frowned. “Show us some more pictures to prove that you didn’t just photoshop yourself into some cheap sci-fi television show, please.”
So they’re cringey and rude. Great. Why couldn’t she have just spent the day watching commercials with Splinter?
“Fine. Here’s a picture of some pictures, for bonus points. Happy?” She showed them pictures she’d taken individually with each of the boys a few months ago, when they’d been redecorating the lair. They’d found a photobooth in a dump in Staten Island – though that wasn’t saying much since all of Staten Island was a dump – while they were looking for new furniture. They hadn’t been able to take the entire photo booth home, but Donnie had hacked into it and they’d taken some pictures together before they’d left.
The first one was of her and Mikey. They’d taken the first picture of three with the two of them smiling and holding up peace signs. Then they’d both held their hands up to their faces and pretended to scream, looking as terrified as possible. They’d only discovered the filters by their third picture, so they’d picked the first one they saw without thinking. It had been an alien filter, which Mikey had thought was hilarious because it’d turned the two of them bright orange and given them antennas.
She’d gone with Raph next. He’d barely fit into the booth, so they’d decided to take advantage of that. They’d gotten as close to the camera as possible for the first one so that all that showed up was two smudges. Then they’d backed up and stuck out their tongues. For the last one they’d taken together, she and Raph had also used a filter. This time they’d actually thought their decision through and picked a face swap filter. The result was kind of horrifying, if she was being honest.
She had been planning on going with Leo next, but Donnie had shoved him out of the way before he could get into the booth. In typical Donnie fashion, he’d connected his tablet to the photo booth and downloaded high-quality filters of his own onto the booth. They’d gone with a vampire filter, one that made the two of them look like their picture had been drawn with high-quality charcoals, and one where flames were everywhere, because the decade-old photo booth had decided to give out and catch on fire the moment they’d taken the third picture.
Donnie had fixed it up afterwards enough for it to be able to take one more set of pictures, albeit without the filters. He’d started ‘improving it’ but April hadn’t wanted a repeat of Albearto so she’d gotten him to stop there.
The lack of filters was okay, because she and Leo had decided to go for a more creative route for their photos. They’d posed back-to-back with each other, each folding their arms and looking at the camera with a no-nonsense look. Then, in the second photo, April took out a pencil and pretended to stab Leo in the chest as he turned towards her. He spent the final photo pretending to collapse to the ground as April blew the camera a kiss.
Her heart hurt, all of a sudden. Not because of the long day she’d had or the fights she'd gotten into in the last twenty-four hours, but because she’d remembered how much she missed her brothers.
She and CJ should do something like that together, she decided. Maybe go to the mall, just the two of them. Show him some normalcy that both of them hadn’t had much of during their lives.
“These are – very interesting,” Leonardo said slowly, like he was unsure what to make of them.
“‘Interesting’ is definitely a word I’d use to describe anything that has to do with the boys,” April agreed. “Now, is this enough or do I need to show you my birth certificate too?”
Leonardo blinked. “Do you have that on you…?”
April didn’t know what she was going to say, but Donatello beat her anyway. “I’d like to see a picture or video of the other versions of us without you in them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”
“Because if you’re from TCRI or the Foot or even the government, most people wouldn’t see the point in faking something like that.” Donatello adjusted his grip on his bō, though this time it seemed more nervous than aggressive, like it’d been before. April didn’t know if that was a good sign or not.
April had to admit that it was a good way of validating your sources. She reached to take her phone back from Michelangelo, who had been squinting at the photo of her and Leo, when her screen suddenly went black.
“Oh shell!” She snatched it back and frantically tapped the screen, but it didn’t make a difference. “My phone died,” she sighed.
“Convenient,” Raphael said.
“Do you guys have a charger?” The boys all shook their heads. “Then… what now?”
Leonardo took a quick glance at his phone. “Will you please give us a minute in private?” he asked her.
She nodded.
The boys walked a few feet away and huddled together in a circle. Raphael stared her down as the four talked.
April just ignored him and looked at the sky, taking a seat a few feet from the edge of the roof. The moon was so big and bright that it didn’t look real. That was one thing that was better in this dimension. Back home, the city was so vibrant and alive that the sky paled in comparison. She could hardly pick out Orion’s Belt most nights. But here, the city was drowsy and dark. If not for the moon and the millions of twinkling stars, she probably wouldn’t be able to see two feet in front of her face.
She wished her phone hadn’t died. Not just because she worried that without sufficient proof, the boys would leave her here, but also because she wanted to take a picture of the sky for her brothers. She didn’t know if they were here, admiring the same sky she was, and she wanted to capture the sight. The view looked like it was straight out of a Jupiter Jim movie.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?”
April jumped to see Michelangelo sitting down beside her, looking up at the same place in the sky that she was.
“The sky. Everything’s so dark over here that the moon’s as bright as an oozesquito. It’s amazing.”
“What’s an oozesquito?”
“These mosquito mutant things that this guy Draxum made them about a year ago. They mutated humans, animals, anything really.”
Michelangelo stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes in a way that reminded April so much of her Mikey. “So he’s like the Kraang? Ew.”
“No, um, we have the Kraang, back home. He’s way better than them, trust me.”
“Mikey!” Leonardo called from where he was still talking with Donatello and Raphael. “If you make that face, your eyes are gonna get stuck like that.”
Michelangelo grumbled but listened to his brother. April snickered a bit at that.
“What’s so funny?”
April just sighed, nostalgic. “It’s just weird to see a Leo be all…”
“Bossy?”
“Motherly.” Michelangelo wrinkled his nose at that, which only made April laugh harder. “I’m serious!”
“Really? Then what’s your Leo like, hmm?” Michelangelo asked.
“He’s…” April struggled for a word that could truly encapsulate the chaos that was Leo. “Loud. Pretty irresponsible, but he’s getting better at it. A sore loser and an even worse winner. Clever. Distrustful and good with people at the same time, somehow. Fun. Too fun, sometimes.”
If Michelangelo had eyebrows then they’d be raised higher than the Empire State Building. “Leo’s too fun?”
“Mhm. He and Donnie like to egg each other on to prove who the more dramatic of the two of them is, sometimes.”
He clapped his hands together, excited. “Ooh, what’s Donnie like?”
“Good question.” Donnie, Donnie, Donnie… “Well, dramatic, like I said earlier. The smartest person I know yet the biggest idiot in the world. Sarcastic. Passionate. Just as sore a winner as Leo is. He seems distant sometimes but he’s just as much of a goof as the others are.”
“You think Donnie’s a goof?”
April leaned forward. “The biggest.”
Michelangelo’s grin only grew at that.
Behind him, April could see the others begin to walk towards them. She intentionally raised her voice a bit as she asked Michelango, “And do you wanna know who the biggest, sweetest softie of them all is?”
Michelangelo tilted his head, deep in thought. “Are you gonna say something mushy like Casey?”
“Nope, though that’s true too!” April made eye contact with the short turtle as she said, “Raph.”
Michelangelo erupted into giggles at that. This time, Leonardo and Donatello didn’t even try to hide their grins as they each slung an arm over Raphael’s shoulder.
“Awww, how sweet,” Leonardo teased.
Raphael only growled, though he didn’t shrug off neither Donatello’s nor Leonardo’s arm.
“Don’t worry, Raph,” Donnie said, “we know that you’re a sweetheart, deep, deep, deep down.”
“Watch your shell, Donnie. And you!” Raphael escaped from his brother’s arms as he marched toward April. He spun his sais around his fingers, the weapons rotating so fast that they looked like fidget spinners. “You better be telling the truth, or I’ll skewer you myself, you hear?”
April gave Raphael her most unimpressed, Donnie-inspired look. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
He grunted and stomped away, already clearing three buildings by the time Michelangelo spoke up.
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
Leonardo gave a small nod. Michelangelo cheered as Leonardo said, “You’d know that if you’d stuck around for the whole discussion, Mikey.”
Michelangelo just easily shrugged. “I said my piece and told you my vote. What else did I need to stay for?”
Hmm, good point.
Leonardo turned towards April. “We’d like you to come back to the lair with us,” he said. “We’ll charge your phone there and, if you’re telling the truth, then we’ll help you get home.”
“And the boys? What about them?”
“What about whom?”
Oh, right. She hadn’t told them, had she?
“I was with Leo, CJ, Mikey, Raph, and Donnie before this. I’m pretty sure they fell through the same portal I did. They should be here.” Hopefully. She didn’t know what she’d do if she found out that they’d all been scattered across half a dozen different dimensions. Wait around for Donnie or Leo or Mikey to show up with a portal back home? How long would that take?
“Donnie?” Leonardo said.
“Already on it,” Donatello responded as he brought out a metal box with an antenna. “I’ve hacked into every computer and camera in the city. For now, I’ll just keep an eye out for any unfamiliar mutants. When we get back to my lab, though, I’ll input the pictures you have of your friends into the program to add a face-recognition aspect to the search.” He looked up and cleared his throat. “Assuming, you know, that you’re not a lying liar. That’s lying. To us.”
April raised three fingers in the mockingjay salute. “Cross my heart, man.”
“Good.”
Leonardo pointed west with one of his katanas. “Come on, then. Home’s that way.”
While Raphael had already disappeared from sight, the other turtles stuck with April as she slowly climbed down to the ground via a fire escape. Yeah, she was capable of leaping from roof to roof like some sort of ninja frog, but doing so on an empty stomach was sure to be a bad idea.
“Do you have a Master Splinter in your universe?” Michelangelo asked April, hanging upside-down on the fire escape railing. Her arms ached as she dropped from level to the level and the metal underneath her foot gave an alarming creaking sound at every move.
“Mhm.”
“And you have the four of us, right?”
“Yep.”
“What about an Ice Cream Kitty?”
“Not that I’ve heard of, but the boys told me that this mutant called Repo Mantis has a giant mantis-cat mutant in his junkyard.”
“Awesome! Ooh, what about a Leatherhead?”
April jumped off the last few feet of the fire escape. She didn’t land super well and had to balance a hand on a slimy dumpster in order to stay upright. The sudden motion made her stomach turn. She was pretty sure that her hunger must be making her nauseous now, which was absolutely wonderful.
“I don’t think so, buddy,” she said.
“Do you know a Casey?”
“Uh-huh,” she absently answered as she held a palm over her mouth. “Ugh, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Talking about Casey Jones does tend to make the average individual sick to their stomach,” Donatello agreed. He landed next to April, much more steadily than she had. He was shortly followed by Leonardo, then Michelangelo. “When was the last time you ate anything or drank water, A – uh, not-April? Other-April?” He waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll work on it later.”
He kneeled down next to April – when had she sat down? – and typed something onto his phone. Like she was looking through a kaleidoscope, April’s vision suddenly twisted and turned. There were two Donatellos, then four, then sixteen. April’s heart soared, then plummeted like a brick tied to a balloon when she realized that despite all the Donatellos in front of her, she still couldn’t find her Donnie.
“Last time I ate? Probably noon.” She took a deep breath through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. She tried to remember any Leo-isms she’d heard over the years about what to do in a situation like this but her mind was completely, absolutely blank. “Back when I was in my dimension, I mean. I haven’t eaten since I got here. Took a few sips of water at a drinking fountain, though.”
Donatello frowned. “You said that you got here this morning. That’s almost thirty-six hours without eating. That’s bad.”
“Mhm,” April hummed. She flexed her fingers a few times, trying to distract herself from the lightheadedness that was spreading through her body. She really hoped that she wouldn’t throw up.
“There’s a vending machine a few blocks from here,” Leonardo piped up. April had to stop herself from flinching at the sudden noise. Shell he was quiet. She’d almost forgotten he was there. “I can get something there, but I’m pretty sure all they have is soda and candy.”
April’s stomach turned at the thought of eating such sugary junk. She was pretty sure that she made a face, despite her efforts not to.
Donatello just shook his head. “It’s okay, Leo. She needs real food and water. Besides, the others are bringing food from Murakami’s over.”
April closed her eyes and rested her head against the peeling brick wall of a building. “That’s the noodle shop, right?”
“Yep!” Michelangelo said. “Best place in the city.”
“And owned by the best guy in the city,” a new voice shouted. It was crackly with puberty and way too loud for the hour, and quickly shushed by another new voice. “Besides me, of course.”
April opened her eyes to see the two teenagers from the restaurant. The first was the red-headed girl whose phone she’d accidentally destroyed. She wore a winter-fied version of a casual summer outfit; a long-sleeve under a t-shirt and leggings under jean shorts. She was holding a doggie bag with the red logo April had seen at the noodle place what felt like a million years ago.
Next to the red-head was the greasy-looking boy April had seen not once, but twice today. He had a skull-mask perched atop his forehead and two hockey sticks plus a bat clung to the back of his sweater, which April could respect. He looked like a cross between an emo-punk guitarist and a medieval squire, with his skull motif and trash-can-like shoulder pads. He casually skated alongside the red-head, smirking easily as Donatello immediately rolled his eyes.
“Great, Casey’s here… said no one ever,” he mumbled as he rose to his full height and turned to greet the humans.
“You’re Casey?” April asked.
The Casey Jones’s April knew were a badass butch lesbian and an equally badass yet all the more dorky teenage boy that April saw as a little brother. While the boy in front of her looked a bit like CJ with the mask, though that was where the similarities ended. April remembered Cass telling her once that she’d played hockey as a kid before joining the Foot Clan, but she’d been kicked out of every league in the city for ‘excessive violence’, so maybe that was where this boy’s equipment came from.
The boy snatched the doggie bag out of the girl’s hand, kneeled down in front of April, and presented it like a wedding ring. “But of course. I am the one and only Casey Jones, and I’ve brought but the finest of cuisine for the young damsel.” He leaned forward and winked. “You’re welcome.”
Oh. So he was just as much of a goof as the others were. Good to know.
The red-head slapped Casey’s shoulder. “Excuse me, I’m the one who had to carry that while you skated circles around me and complained about not being able to see the showdown on the other roof. Maybe I should get to introduce myself first, huh?”
Casey’s smirk only widened. He raised his hands above his head and backed away from April. “Whatever you say, Red.”
“Thank you,” Red said primly. She turned toward April with a small smile on her lips and stuck out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is April. What’s yours?”
Oh. Well, at least she didn’t need to worry about what would happen if this dimension didn’t have an April O’Neil of their own.
“Funny story,” April said. “I was just about to say the same thing.”
“Paranoid much?” April said as she sat on one of Donatello’s many, many stools scattered around his lab. She swung her feet from side to side as the tech-obsessed mutant scanned April’s phone with device after device, muttering to himself all the while.
“Please,” he snorted. “You think I’m just going to let you connect your phone to our base of operations without a quick virus check? I’m not planning on getting hacked, thanks.”
Quick? Please. “And you can’t use a wireless charger because…?”
Donatello blinked. “How can a charger be wireless?”
April sighed. “Nevermind.” She twisted the cap off her water bottle and took a sip, reflecting on the day.
Meeting the boys could have gone better, she could admit. It probably hadn’t been the best idea to chase them down in the middle of the night. If someone had done that to her and the boys – well, someone had, and she’d knocked CJ unconscious without a second thought. Really, things could have turned out way worse.
After she’d come face-to-face with the version of herself from this dimension, she’d scarfed down the dumplings and soba noodles they’d brought her from Murakami’s in seconds. The look Red had given her as she stuffed her face had been pretty disgusted while Casey’s had been genuinely impressed, but could you blame her? She hadn’t eaten in forever and the food was so good.
Red had mostly drifted behind April as they’d climbed down the ladder into the sewers, afterwards, along with Donatello. They were whispering about something, probably her, but whenever she tried to listen to what they were saying, Michelangelo and Casey’s conversation got louder and the others’ voices got quieter.
A well-oiled machine, she had to admit.
She’d mostly walked side-by-side with Leonardo as they’d made their way to the lair. He seemed to be mostly content with walking in silence, but after the fifth time April turned her head towards Donatello and Red, he’d taken mercy on her and made small talk. He’d asked her what she’d done today (answer: wandered through these very sewers, but in the absolutely opposite direction) and if she’d run into any mutants. He’d frowned when she told him about the mushroom spaghetti mutant she’d seen, so she hadn’t pushed the topic further.
As soon as they got to the lair, Leonardo disappeared to presumably inform Splinter about April and her appearance, Michelangelo ran to the kitchen with promises of coming back with a feast fit for a king, Red and Casey had followed after him to make sure he came back with something edible, and Donatello had dragged April to his lab to examine her phone, which was where she was now.
Despite eating only twenty minutes ago, April’s stomach growled as she chugged her water. Donatello must have picked up on the noise because he said, “April – not you, of course – should be back soon with some food. I think we have some canned fruit and frozen pizza.”
“Yum.”
“It’s either that or eating Ice Cream Kitty, and I don’t think she regenerates fast enough to be more than a quick snack.”
April hummed noncommittally as she leaned to the right to peek through the door and get a better view of the lair. It was interesting, to say the least.
This lair was bigger than the new one back home, but smaller than their old one that the Shredder had destroyed. It wasn’t as vibrant or colorful as either of them, though. She liked the retro arcade set up they had going on; Donnie mostly provided the video games they had back home, and his style tended to lean towards the modern so they didn’t really have anything from before the turn of the century besides Hot Soup: The Game.
The conversation pit was a nice touch. Still, it didn’t compare to the huge skate ramp they used to have. And the television? It was smaller and older than Splints himself, nothing like Donnie’s empire of flat-screen TVs.
The lair wasn’t bad or anything, it was just kind of – lame, compared to April’s. She didn’t dare say any of this, of course.
Her musings were interrupted by the entrance of Leonardo and another mutant. “I assume you are the April O’Neil of another world,” an old, steady voice said. It belonged to a tall, robed rat mutant that glided into Donatello’s lab, followed by Leonardo.
No way. Was this Splinter?
“Um.” April took in the sight in front of her, trying to process what she was seeing, for another moment. Then she blinked again and spoke. “Yes. Yeah, that’s – uh, that’s me.”
Behind her, Donatello hmphed. “We’ll see about that.”
April rolled her eyes at him.
Splinter cleared his throat, commanding the attention of everyone in the room, even Red and Casey, who were lingering by the doorway. “Child, would you please enlighten us of how you came to be here?”
April took a deep breath and began her story. She told them about the job Draxum had asked her and the boys to do for him. At some point the building had come down, one of the boys had made a portal, she appeared here without them, blah blah blah.
“A portal, seriously?” Casey laughed. “You’re saying that you guys have magic?” Red just sighed and whacked his arm.
April just gave him a look and said, “Gimme your bat.” She got up from her seat and walked towards him.
“What?”
“Give me your bat. Please.”
Casey glanced at Splinter, who didn’t protest, and handed April the wooden bat that’d been attached to the back of his sweatshirt.
As soon as the bat hit her hands, it lit up a bright, neon green and caught on fire. April grinned at the familiar thrum of Hamato ninpō coursing through the weapon. Truth be told, she’d been a little worried that her mystic powers wouldn’t work in this dimension. Good thing her hunch had been wrong, because it would’ve been really embarrassing if nothing had happened.
“Holy shit!” Casey scrambled away from April and her smoking weapon. Red just leaned in closer and held out a hesitant hand, about to touch the bat.
“I wouldn’t do that,” April warned. “Donnie thinks this thing might be a bit radioactive.”
Red nodded distantly and backed up.
Splinter came up next to April and gazed down at the now-mystic weapon. “Interesting. Is it that you and my sons of this other world are so spiritually connected that you are able to enhance your weapons?”
April casually slung the bat over her shoulders and thought about the question. “I don’t think so? We don’t totally know how mystic powers – really, the mystic in general – work. The boys could use less powerful versions of their powers back when they found mystic weapons, and they really weren’t spiritually connected at all back then. But once we all connected to Hamato ninpō, which might be inherently spiritual, the boys’ powers all got stronger.” She paused and reconsidered her words. “Well, Raph, Mikey, and Leo’s powers got stronger.”
Leonardo tilted his head in careful consideration. “Donnie’s powers didn’t improve?”
April saw Donatello tighten his grip on the radar he’d been using to check over April’s phone, just the slightest. Ah, the classic Donnie imposter syndrome.
She rushed to correct herself before more damage could be done. “Technically no, but only because he didn’t have mystic powers beforehand.” She thought back to Witch Down and the look Donnie’d had on his face as he avoided eye contact and clutched his broken tech-bō. “He thought they were stupid,” she lied with a shrug. Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie. More like a half-truth. It was necessary, though; there was no reason to air Donnie’s dirty laundry in front of these kind but nonetheless unknown strangers.
“Is this when you also developed powers of your own?” Splinter asked.
April rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet as she contemplated the chain of events that had transpired before and during Shredder’s attack. “I got some of ‘em then, yeah, but not this one. Not exactly, at least.” She pointed to her bat and said, “My original bat kinda smashed a cauldron in a town full of witches and magically caught on fire. Then a few weeks later, I connected with a Hamato ancestor, who taught me about Hamato ninpō. She used to live in my brain!”
Splinter hummed and stroked his whisker-like beard. “How very interesting. Three days ago, I sensed deep spiritual unrest. It was not malicious, but still very – chaotic, shall we say. I wonder if this came as a precursor and possibly even a warning to your arrival.”
April nodded along to what he was saying. “Mikey’s mystic powers have messed with time before. They don’t always work linearly, I don’t think.” Another point for the theory that Mikey had made the portal that had sent April here.
She supposed that it didn’t really matter whether Leo or Mikey or even Draxum himself had been the cause for April’s arrival in this universe. Still, the investigator within her itched to figure out what had happened.
“Done!” said Donatello. “Ape – uh, her phone is completely free of any viruses, malware, or spam software. Though I did get this weird signal.”
He twisted a knob on the box connected to his radar and a twisted ‘Donnie says no-no-no! Donnie says no-no-no! came out of it.
Splinter cleared his throat and fixed Donatello with a sharp, reproaching look.
Donatello nervously scratched the back of his neck. “Don’t worry, sensei, I was listening to what you were saying.”
The old rat once again hummed, fingers drumming against the top of his walking staff. “I suppose you have mastered the skill of multitasking, my son.” Donatello exhaled at that, visibly relieved. But Splinter’s frown remained as he added, “Though it would do you well to remember that a ninja’s skills in focus are just as important as their manners.”
Donatello winced and mumbled, “Sorry, Master Splinter.”
April could have laughed. It didn’t matter what world she was in, there would always be a Splinter who let his children act as vigilantes of the night, yet still gave them talking-tos about manners.
It made April’s heart hurt. She missed the old rat man; for his eccentricities and unexplained habits, he was still her number one supporter, through and through. Well, that might be untrue. Mikey’s enthusiasm was hard to beat, even by his own dad.
“You are forgiven, Donatello, as always.” Master Splinter – because yeah, he definitely deserved the title Donatello had referred to him as – peered over his son’s shoulder at April’s phone. “Now, might you fix our young guest’s phone? I admit that I myself am curious to see what oddities this other world contains.”
“Many oddities!” April enthused as Donatello plugged a cable into her phone. It was far bulkier than a normal phone charger should have been, and April was pretty sure that it connected to a car battery. “Uh, is that safe?”
Who was she kidding? It was a Donnie, and Donnie’s consistently practiced the bare minimum requirements for lab safety.
“Of course it is!” Donatello insisted, a little crease in his forehead. His… much smaller forehead, in comparison to Donnie’s. “Though you may want to step back a bit, Sensei. Better safe than sorry.”
“It would be wise to exercise caution.”
Like a figure summoned from the very sky above, Michelangelo sped through the door with a steaming tupperware container held high above his head. “Breakfast is served, yo!” He slammed the dish down onto a countertop, ratting the electric set-up Donatello had revolving around April’s phone as he sat hunched atop a stool.
“Or Mikey can come in like a mad man and blow us all up,” Donatello muttered underneath his breath. “Yeah that works too.” He straightened up as he said, “This should only take a minute until it’s up to full battery.”
“Perfect,” Michelangelo said with a smile, “‘cause that gives April 2 plenty of time to try my new algae, worms, and mushroom casserole!”
“You are not calling me April 2!” April said with just as much enthusiasm, as bright and peppy as she could be.
Casey sauntered over, gathering the attention of the entire room as he slung an arm over Michelangelo’s shoulder and loudly sniffed the dish he had made. “I call Red Red ‘cause of, you know, her hair. What if we called you…?”
April looked him dead in the eyes. “Think before you speak, white boy.”
Casey stood up straight and held his hands up in defense. “I wasn’t gonna – ”
“If we’re going for colors,” Red smoothly cut in, “then how about Green? For your jacket. Or Yellow, too.”
April scrunched her nose and drummed her fingers on the edge of her bat. “Nah, I’m good. Having a color name doesn’t feel right. It’s more of the boys’ thing, y’know?” She pointedly ignored the fact that she’d been referring to the other version of her as the very thing she didn’t want to be called. “You can just call me O’Neil. I think we’ll agree that it’s a very good name.”
Red gave a small smile. “Yeah, it is.”
“Well then, Miss O’Neil…” From out of nowhere, Michelangelo produced a little mustache sticker, a ginormous white chef’s hat, and a bright orange apron. “Would you like one scoop or two of tonight’s special?”
April looked down at the slimy mess of algae and mushrooms Michelangelo had whipped together and probably stuck into the microwave. It was a brighter green than her bat and it wriggled a bit as it sat on the counter. It had the potential of tasting good, that was for sure, but Mikey had the tendency to sometimes cook more exotic dishes that April wasn’t used to eating. She liked trying new food, of course, but this? This was a little too far out of April’s comfort zone.
“I’m good, man. I think I’m having one of those situations where I haven’t eaten for so long that eating too much now will actually hurt me, so I’ll just stick to water.” Her gaze flickered over to Leonardo, who’d been staring down Michelangelo’s creation like if he looked away for even one second, it would eat him. “Hey, Leo, man. This looks good, right? You should totally try some on my behalf.”
Michelangelo’s eyes lit up as Leonardo’s filled with horror. In a flash, the warm-toned turtle was next to his brother, holding up a fork filled with mush. “Come on, Leo! All the ingredients are locally harvested and everything. You gotta support local businesses, dude!”
“Locally harvested? From where, the bodega on Second?”
“Nah, man, here! The sewers! I’m telling you, it’s a provider of shelter and sustenance.”
Leonardo tilted his head confused, before his eyes widened in realization. “Mikey, I know where you got the algae and worms from, but are these mushrooms…?”
“The very ones you heroically slayed for us last week, dude!”
He stared at his brother, unblinking and horrified. “Those mushrooms that made us all severely hallucinate?” he said slowly.
April snorted. She covered her hand over her mouth to stop giggles from escaping. Holy shit… “Mikey, did you make an edible?” Oh shell, it felt illegal to say those words together in the same sentence.
He scratched his head in confusion. “Isn’t everything I make edible?”
April had to take a sip of water to stop herself from making a scene from laughing too hard.
“The phone’s charged!” Donatello shouted, a bit louder than necessary. “And not a moment too soon, huh?” he added with a forced laugh as he handed April her phone. It was warm to the touch, like it’d been sitting in the sun.
That was probably fine.
She tapped out her password and began scrolling through her camera. “This is probably the best video I have of me and the brothers” She handed the phone to Master Splinter and the others huddled around him to get a better view of the screen without a word.
On the screen, April fumbled with the phone as she pointed the camera towards two turtle mutants, one sitting in a huge chair in the middle of the room and the other leaning against the side of it. The first was practically double the size of the other and wiped sweat off his bright red mask as he clutched a steering wheel.
“No way, is that Raph?” Michelangelo leaned forward, trying to get a better view.
Donatello did the same. “He looks almost like – Is he an alligator snapping turtle?”
“Yes and yes,” April answered as she leaned on one of the counters. Her reasoning behind choosing this video had been approximately fifty percent about finding proof, thirty percent embarrassing about her goofy brothers, and twenty percent about freaking out the Hamatos of this world.
“Wait, is that me next to him?!”
Next to Raph was a smaller, brighter colored turtle who was practically sitting on his brother’s entire arm as he typed something into a phone of his own.
“Mikey, I can’t see!”
“Hold on! I’m skipping to the good part.” Satisfied, he nodded his head and tapped the screen one final time. “Hit it, Donnie!”
The camera swiveled around to show two similarly-sized mutants, one wearing purple and the other blue, sitting in chairs besides what looked to be some sort of control center. The first of the two took a jumble of wires in his hands and said, “Hitting in three… two… one!” He jammed the mess of tech into a large port.
Immediately, the room filled with the finest of Carrie Underwood. “–how to shoot a combo, and he don’t know–”
The turtle besides Donnie, Leo, pumped up a fist. “Shell fucking yeah!”
“Language, Leo!” Raph said. Leo only stuck out his tongue at his brother.
In the real world, Leonardo stiffened while his brothers and friends gaped. Master Splinter merely raised an eyebrow.
The turtles in April’s phone all grinned and yelled out the lyrics as loud and disharmonious as possible. “I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats!”
Casey snickered to himself. “They’re seriously singing?” Red placed a hand over her own mouth, though April couldn’t tell if it was out of shock or to stop herself from joining Casey.
“If you think this is bad,” April said, “then you should’ve seen the time they started a band together.” The boys stared at her in embarrassed horror.“Electro meets glam rock meets soul meets rap. You can imagine how that sounded.”
“Come on, miss birthday girl!” Raph said between lyrics. He turned away from the wheel for a moment to look directly at the camera and, presumably, the camerawoman behind it. “Show us what you got!”
Mikey’s face went a slightly paler shade of green and he frantically jabbed his brother in the shoulder. “Raph, Raph, turn!” Raph’s eyes widened in realization and he wrenched the wheel so hard to the right that the camera went flying through the air. The screen was filled with unintelligible colors until it was picked up by a smirking Leo, who turned it towards April and Donnie.
The two of them each had an arm around the other and they shouted into a microphone they’d gotten from who knows where. “I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights, I slashed a hole in all four tires.”
Every voice in the room joined in to screech out, “MAYBE NEXT TIME HE’LL THINK BEFORE HE CHEATS!”
From there, the video devolved into pure noise that could vaguely be considered musical as the phone was passed around from person to person, becoming less understandable with each new cameraperson. The song ended with each of them gasping for breath, yet they all still had grins bright enough to power the sun.
However, the smile of the tiny April on the screen faded as she crossed her arms and told the boys that her birthdays always ended so badly that they were bound to be cursed.
Next to her, Leo scoffed. “Cursed-smursed. We’re gonna birthday so hard, you’re gonna need a permission slip!”
A loud crash, followed by a screeching sound, came out of the phone’s little speakers. Then the screen went pitch black.
“Um, are they okay?” Red said as she handed April the phone.
She waved it off. “Yeah, don’t worry. Our car just got hit by a cannon fired by a mutant worm and his mutant hippo boyfriend. We had to pause my birthday to help them out, but it was totally worth it because I got to keep some of the worm’s remains!” she finished, excited. Some of her joy faded as she noted the expressions on the others’ faces.
Red and Leonardo looked vaguely grossed out, while Michelangelo and Casey’s jaws were entirely dropped open. Donatello just stared at her, the top of his mask angled down like pseudo-eyebrows, as if he couldn’t understand her. Master Splinter stroked his beard.
“What?”
Master Splinter placed a steady hand on April’s shoulder. “Your world is very interesting, child. I believe it is inevitable that you will bring such excitement to ours.”
April thought of Donnie’s frequent bursts into song in-between his science-y infodumps she only understood about half of and Raph’s insistence on cementing the family into the roles of New York’s protectors despite their unusual tactics. She thought about CJ’s craftiness when faced with a problem, Mikey’s supporting nature as well as his overly blunt reality checks, and Leo’s sporadic energy yet consistent love for his family.
“I think you’re right, Master Splinter.”
For better or for worse.
Day 2
Space Heroes was certainly… a show.
It took the low-budget atmosphere of Jupiter Jim movies and combined it with the cheesiest aspects of Lou Jitsu films. The animation style was stiff, every line sounded like it’d been written by a white man in the seventies, and the lessons the crew was trying to teach its viewers were either overly obvious or hadn’t aged well at all.
But April made a point of hunting out the very worst of television and watching it out of spite and an interest in bad puns, so she was having a pretty good time lounging on the old sofa that had clearly never seen a vacuum before and listening to Leonardo explain the intricacies of his favorite show.
“Okay, so this episode is kind of controversial among fans,” he said, standing directly next to the small television. Jeez, April could practically count the pixels on the old thing. “In my personal opinion, season eight is the low point in the series. It has a ton of callbacks to other sci-fi serieses, so most people won’t admit it, but the season’s just really bloated with one-off characters and unnecessary references. However, I think that this is easily the best episode of the season. It’s nothing near the height of the show in season two, but it could easily compete with any season five episode.”
Raphael, next to April, lowered his comic book to smirk at his brother. “You only think that because the whole episode’s filled with everyone kissing Captain Ryan’s ass.”
On the floor, Michelangelo snickered at the language as he flipped through a comic of his own, plastron to the ground as he kicked his feet in the air. Red didn’t look up from her notebook as she copied problems down from her Trig book, a few spots away from April.
Leonardo straightened and put one hand on his hip. He gestured widely with his other as he spoke. “It is not! It’s an important lesson on the dangers of hubris and excessive confidence, while also teaching the viewers that sometimes people have ulterior motives that are actually working for the benefit of others.”
His brother scoffed and turned back to his comic. “Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that.”
Rolling his eyes, he turned back to April. His hands were almost shaking in what she knew to be a suppressed stim as he spoke. “Here’s the best part of the episode: while the whole crew is having a great time exploring the inside-out planet, getting to know their lookalikes, none of them know that this whole time, the new Captain Brian was actually–”
Casey sprinted out of Donatello’s lab, almost tripping over his own feet, and launched himself over the couch and next to April. Donatello himself was right on his heels. He skidded to a stop in front of Red and sheepishly grinned.
“O’Neil!” Casey said with a charming smile of his own. “How you doing, dude?” Without pausing for her to answer, he continued. “Great, great, glad to hear it. Now listen, Donnie and I were talking–”
“We were debating the logistics of the imminent arrival of your versions of us,” Donatello interrupted. He glanced at Red, who didn’t even look up from her book. “It’s not like we were gossiping or arguing or anything!” He laughed nervously.
“Yeah, mhm, we were being the best of pals.”
“Thick as thieves!”
“Anyway,” Casey continued with a glare, “we know that you said that this CJ guy and your four turtles had also fallen through that portal and you don’t know who made it, but like is there any way that someone from your world might get super motivated in keeping you safe and heroically find a way to get over here?”
April tilted her head. “You mean like Splinter?” She didn’t quite believe that the scheming glint in Casey’s eye had truly come from an interest in finding the old rat man, but she supposed that anything was possible in this world.
“No, Casey was thinking more along the lines of…” Donatello stroked his chin, looking for the right word. He stuck his hand into the air when he found it. “A significant other! Or perhaps you already know that this person is on their way here?”
April glanced at Leonardo, who had a small frown and had crossed his arms. “Guys, can’t this wait? Leo was talking to me.”
“Well, yeah, but this is about getting you home, right? How’s Donnie supposed to do that if he doesn’t have all his nerd info?”
“Yeah! Hey, wait–”
They had a point, even if they were being super weird about it. If April missed out on finding her brothers because she’d been busy talking about Space Heroes of all things, she’d never forgive herself.
She sighed and told Leonardo, “Sorry, man. I’ll listen to what you’re saying right after, but give me five, ‘kay?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, not making eye contact as he went to sit down in between Casey and Red. “This is important, I get it.”
“It better be,” she muttered. To Casey and Donatello, she said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw my S.O. walking around the city, but I think we should focus on finding the people who we know did come through the portal.”
Donatello deflated as Casey brightened up. “So your boyfriend’s still in your New York?”
Boyfriend?
What? No way did these people think she was straight. This really was the blandest dimension imaginable.
Without looking up, Raphael sighed and shook his head, though he had the tips of a smirk poking out of his lips. She hoped that she wasn’t the only one who knew that this was a stupid question.
She leaned back against her seat, looked Casey dead in the eyes, and, as casually as she could, said, “Who said I had a boyfriend?”
At this, Michelangelo and Raphael both set their comics down to turn towards her, as did Red with her book. April ignored the feeling of ants crawling up and down her legs. It was going to be fine. It was going to be fine. These people weren’t going to do anything, and if they said anything, she could leave. She just needed to breathe.
Red’s voice was the first that April heard. “If you don’t have a boyfriend, then your significant other is–”
“My girlfriend’s name is Cassandra Jones,” April finished, stealing a quick look at her bat, resting against a pin-ball machine and faintly humming. Well, if all else failed, she knew that Hamato ninpō wasn’t homophobic. “We usually call her Casey, but since CJ’s gotten here, we’ve been using Cass as her name.”
“CJ?” Leonardo said.
She nodded. “Casey Jones Jr.. Cass’s kid from like twenty years in the future. There was an – incident, and he got sent to our timeline. Permanently.”
“And you’re not dating him?” Donatello confirmed.
April rolled her eyes. “I’m a lesbian and he’s basically my little brother, just like Mikey and Leo and Donnie and Raph. No way.”
Casey and Donatello met each other’s eyes. Michelangelo just hummed at that and went back to his comic book. Leonardo had already unpaused his show, although he’d turned the volume down low. April kept her eyes trained on the screen. She focused on the conversation Captain Brian was having with the alien Celestial as the two sat in a Panicon prison cell.
“Is Casey Jones Senior hot?” Casey said slowly, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask. At this, Raphael’s gaze flickered towards April.
Were oozesquitos a pain in the butt? Without a doubt.
“She’s my girlfriend, so yeah, I think she’s hot.”
He cackled in triumph and placed his hands behind his head, leaning back against the couch and kicking his feet up. “I’ll take it! Would you look at that, Donnie? There’s an April O’Neil dating a Casey Jones in another dimension! Sweet, huh? Oh and Raph, looks like I win our bet. I take cash and card.”
The turtle just grumbled and resolutely looked down at his comic. Donatello frowned to himself and started walking back to his lab, as Red reached over Leonardo to place a hand on April’s shoulder.
A bit awkwardly, she said, “That’s really cool. I totally support you.” She gave April’s shoulder a little squeeze.
April grinned at the formality. When she’d come out to her brothers, Leo had slung an arm around her and asked her what took her so long, while Donnie had taken out a handful of rainbow confetti to chuck at his brother’s face. Raph and Mikey had immediately painted her nails in the lesbian flag colors and Splinter had nodded, once, and gone back to his show. “Thanks.” Then, because why not, she added, “I’m trans too.”
To their credit, no one visibly reacted this time. April was cool with that; she could tell that they weren’t close-minded, just – unused to actually talking about these types of things.
That only meant that it’d be a thousand times more hilarious when they finally met the boys. Shell, were they gay.
“Cool,” Red repeated, smiling. “I like your name.”
“April’s my favorite month,” she said. It was when she’d met the boys. “Now, Leo, what were you saying about season eight?”