IT'S NOT MY FAULT! YOU GAVE ME THE PROMPTS! HOW AM I NOT SUPPOSED TO WRITE ABOUT AN ADORABLE PAPER NINJA

Rise April Challenge 19: Baby

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A thick blanket had been thrown over the cold tile floor of the kitchen, images of dinosaurs and volcanoes spread across its surface. A few stuffed animals and some of Donnie and Mickey's old fidget toys had been spread across the blanket. Mikey lay on his stomach, his upper half resting on the blanket while the rest of him hung off.  

The box turtle stared wide eyed at the four small forms crawling around on the blanket in awe.

When Draxum had called and explained that Mikey’s brothers had been transformed into children, Mikey had thought that he had meant ten to twelve. Not literal babies.

He could hear Splinter and Draxum arguing in the room over, but from what he could tell it was mostly just worried shouting with a few insults. Nothing that really needed Dr Feelings’ supervision. Besides, he was too busy staring at the little baby turtles crawling around on the floor.

They were so... tiny. Leo and Donnie could sit in Mikey's cupped hands, and while Raph was a bit too big for that, being twice the height of the other two. Mikey wondered how their dad had raised them without worrying about stepping on them.

Raph was currently chewing on the paw of a teddy bear, that he was cuddling with. Donnie had gotten hold of one of Mikey's old slinkies and was rolling it forward and back from where he sat with a look of very serious concentration. Leo on the other hand was giggling and trying to work the buttons on a fidget cube but that was the size of his chest. Mikey just stared at his little brothers.

Little brothers. Mikey had little brothers.

Holy cow, Mikey was a Big Brother!  

The thought made him squeal with overwhelming giddiness and excitement. He knew that this wasn’t going to last very long, Draxum had said that they should be fine by tomorrow, but still!

Donnie made a small quacking bark as he pushed the slinky too hard and it rolled farther away. The baby turtle wobbly stood up and stumbled towards the toy.  Leo stopped and looked over at the noise and, seeing his brother, he dropped the cube and crawled over. Just as Donnie had reached his toy, Leo stood up and with a smile and a loud squeal, leaned forward and fell on his brother in a hug/tackle. Donnie yelped and grunted as he tried to wiggle out from under his red eared brother.  

The noise broke Raph of his cuddle with his teddy bear. He stood and walked over to his brothers, much steadier than the younger two. He leaned over the wriggling mass and wrapped his arms around them and picked the twins up and held them to his chest, which just made the noise louder.

Raph then looked over at Mikey and held up Donnie and Leo with a proud look on his face while the other two just stared.  

Mikey wasn’t going to make it! This was it!  

The now eldest sat up and reached over, grabbed them all and placed his brothers in his lap. Donnie had settled and seemed resigned to the cuddle fest and just glared at them all. Leo settled across his twin’s back, rubbing his cheek across Don’s soft shell, and closed his eyes. Raph just sat up and swung his tail back and forth letting out happy chuffing purrs. Mikey just smiled and tried to keep from squirming in joy. Then he reached over and grabbed his phone, opening the camera.

He was going to tease them so much when they were fixed!

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Please check out @zee-rambles who came up with this challenge and look at @rise-april-art-challenge to see more submissions by other fans. Please give me feedback if there is anything I should work on.

Reblogging for personal future reference....

Rise Ponderings:

What if all the turtle brothers had a savage mode?

Not necessarily triggered by separation anxiety like Raph, but is more like a survival mode in an unfamiliar environment?

I'd argue that Donnie experienced something of a Savage Mode during that episode when they were in the woods where he was acting like a feral creature of the forest and built that treehouse. I think in his Savage Mode, Donnie's gets hyper-aware and his brain kicks into overdrive, and I've always sort of seen him as the family's substantial provider - his high income from selling tech (he literally has a patented company - Genius Built), the Rise Lair looking surprisingly modern and comfortable given their circumstances - hence the treehouse. Even in his 'savage mode', Donnie thought of shelter and facilities first. Also, his homicidal urges would likely increase tenfold against threats.

With Leo, I'd like to think that his Savage Mood is more akin to ruthless, calculating strategist. He's a cunning bastard but usually loud and flamboyant, which would make it all the more unsettling if Savage Leo went quiet yet that sense of cunning and strategic mastermind was still present, and since he's in survival mode that means he's absolutely ruthless to any threats that may harm him and his family.

Mikey with Dr Delicate Touch as a survival mechanism would be deadly, but it'd be a lot more eerie if his Savage Mood maintained his cheerful dissonance yet had Dr Delicate Touch's abrasive and merciless behaviour. Killing with a smile, basically. He's tiny but strong, quick and resourceful as heck. Savage Mickey would be running around scaring people and wrecking havoc like a giggling gremlin.

Now take everything I just said, imagine it's post-Kraang invasion and put them into a crossover with another TMNT iteration. Just one of them alone would be a force to reckon with, as seen by Savage Raph, but all of them together, directly post-invasion?

Unfamiliar, potentially hostile environment? Check.

Hurt brothers? Check.

Entering Savage Mode? Yes.

[Also friendly reminder that Rise turtles were made intentionally by a then-villain for the purpose of destroying humanity(?) (Draxum does hate humans and why else would he want to create 'the strongest warriors'?)

Plus, they're dumb teenagers. The turtles definitely have a few moral screws loose]

Which means that the turtles from that dimension would have to deal with 4 feral, overprotective teenagers with overpowered mystic abilities in survival mode whose instincts are perceiving nearly every moving thing as a threat and telling them to ELIMINATE.

Robot: You are not human and will never be. Can you feel real pain? Is your pain different from a human's? Can you feel joy? Love? Anger? Can you feel anything at all? You will always be looking out over the faces of humanity and will never know if you lack the emotion that they all share.

Clone: You are not you, and have never been. You never had a real life. You have always been an imitation of someone else. Is there anything that can separate you from the true you? You are a lie given form, a facsimile of someone else. You are not a person, not an animal. You are nothing.

Both of these are horrifying, and there is no clear answer.

Today, all I have is medication and lemonade, and I forgot to take my meds. 

God Dammit! 

I haven’t been a fan of TMNT for long, I was only brought into the fandom with Rise but this hurt! 

I love these boys! 

Can I kick it? (Yes, you can!)

Rise April Art Challenge: Day 7 Nonsense

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Ao3 link: here

(I was sick yesterday, so I had to skip that day’s prompt. I might try again at the end of the month. Please enjoy.)

The sound of fake lasers and explosions are just barely audible from Leo’s spot on the couch. It’s late and he doesn’t want to keep anyone up with the sounds of Jupiter Jim’s saving the world. Besides he’s watched this movie so many times he can resight it by heart.

It’s just getting into another of the long action seance since when his phone’s alarm starts blaring. Leo feels himself slip into doctor mode the second he hears it. The slider stands, shutting off the alarm, and heading to Mikey’s room.

His littlest brother, for all his claims that he can take care of himself, had decided to razzmatazz a little too hard and had ended up with a concussion. Leo had taken on the responsibility of waking the little orange one up every few hours. His insomnia was acting up again anyways, so it wasn’t so bad.

Entering the room, Leo blinked when he saw the empty bed. There was a moment of panic, before he turned and saw him on the other side of the room staring at the wall above his bed. It, like the rest of the room, was covered in bright colors and paint. But there was nothing more than that. Leo walked over to his brother and squatted next to him.

“Hey, bud. What you doing?” Mikey turned to him; eyes unfocused but with a soft smile.

“I’m tracking the goldfish.” He slurred. Leo blinked. Ok, that wasn’t great.

“Ok... I’m going to ask you some questions, alrighty?” Mikey nodded. “Ok, what year is it?” His little brother paused for a moment, then turned to Leo with absolute confidence and said:

“The one that’s bee like, but without the pink sickness.” There was silence, then...

“Oh, boy Mike. This is worse than I thought.” Mikey blinked and stared at his brother before continuing with his concussed rambling.  

“Do you think that you can see lines that have never been there? Or will never be?” Yeah, Leo needs to stay with Mikey till the others wake up.

“I don’t know.” Leo answers, deciding that he can deal with a little nonsense while he waits for everyone to wake up.  

“I don’t think I can. But Donnie can see jumps even when nothing moves so maybe we can if we look the right way.” Leo just nods and leans against the wall.

The next few hours are filled with Mikey talking about a whole range of topics. Some of which Leo can’t understand even a little, things like: bell heads, blanket laws, the power of purple elephants. But some of the things that are mentioned are worrying. Like when he says that Leo should never ever be called Green, with a look of such fear and grief on his face. Or when he whippers that he doesn’t want to crack into dust. It thankfully doesn’t last long, because he’s always running off on another tangent by the time Leo is trying to sort out what is being said.  

In a few hours the rest of the family will be up to help, and in a few days, Mike will be right as rain and when Leo brings up what he said the younger will just be confused and say that he can’t remember saying anything like that. After that, it will fade from their memories and will never be thought of again.

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Ao3 Link: Here

Please check out @zee-rambles who came up with this challenge. And take a look at @rise-april-art-challenge for other submissions. Please give feedback if I need to work on something.

Rise April Challenge 24: Rebirth

Prev - Masterpost Ao3 Link: Here

The yellow of the setting sun was painted over by the swirling pink of the hole in the sky. The wind whistled past Leo's ear as he listened to the young voice coming from his comm.  

“Just tell me when you’re home free, and I’ll pull the plug!”

Casey’s voice rang in his ears as he looked up at the hulking steal encased monster and the endless void of suffering just on the other side of the gate, marching towards him. Towards the city. Towards the world.

Towards his family.  

Maybe that shouldn’t be as high on his list. Maybe a real hero would do this for the world. But Leo isn’t a hero. Leo is selfish, arrogant, and a screw up.

But if there's one thing that Leo could consider good about himself, it was this: he was loyal and he loved his family more than anything. So, screw it.

“Casey, listen to me.” He says, not taking his eyes off the Krang. “When I get to the other side, you close that door.”  

He knows what he’s asking from the kid. Knows he is asking him to pull the trigger, to kill him. Leo knows he could have lied, could have told him to close it without telling him that he was still on the other side. But Casey shouldn’t have to live with the guilt of thinking that it was an accident, that Leo had a chance of making it out and Casey somehow screwed it up. He deserves to know that it was Leo’s choice. That there was no other way out.

“What? Sensei, no!”

Leo tunes out his response, his explanation, to focus on the enemy in front of him. He knows the way it will go, knows the words.

It feels like he’s already said them a thousand times.

Raph’s panicked voice brakes through his concentration. He’s begging, pleading, trying to reject what is happening, to demand and hold all of existence down so that is has no choice but to compile.

Leo did the same when he was dragged away by the escape pod.

He says something, a joke he forgets before it’s even out of his mouth. What he’s really saying is “I know this hurts. I know you’ll hate yourself for this. But you’ll live. You’ll be ok after a while. And that’s all I want.”

He stares at the end of everything he loves, and, with his body and mind collapsing inwards on itself like a dying star, he brings forward his Ninpō and rases his blades.

It’s a pitiful fight that’s over before it starts. But he feels his first blade in the void of the prison behind him and digs the one in his hand into foot pining him down.

“What you fail to understand is I missed on purpose.”

His Ninpō flared and he teleported deep into the prison.

In the moments between the disappearance and reappearance, Leo could swear that he could feel the weight of thousands of despairing eyes burn into his soul.  

The Krang tried to fight him, tried to run back towards the open doorway, and Leo knew he couldn’t keep him there for long.

“Casey, please.” He pleaded.

This is a plea that he knows, one that sings in his blood. Hamatos have always been forced to sacrifice everything for their family, for the world. And they always died the same way: begging their loved ones to understand. To forgive them for not coming home.

The portal closes, the Technodome explodes.

Leo let’s go of his hold and waits for death.  

-

Mikey opens a portal and saves him. He comes home.

But Leo is still waiting for death.  

He sits in his med bay cot and listens to the beeps of his heart monitor and waits for it to stop. He feels each breath and waits for it to be cut off.

Nothing happens.

It doesn’t feel real. He thinks back to when the Krang’s anger was trying to crush him, when it rained hits down to try and crack open his shell and rip apart whatever was inside.

He hadn’t been alone. He could feel them, watery eyes that watched with despair, hands that reached out and tried to hold him, voices that thanked him and whispered to him that “Anata wa hitori ja nai.”  

As he hugged the photo of his family to his chest and smiled, he felt a sense of familiarity well up in him. As if he had already done this 1000 times over. But it wasn't him, no, it was spirits that gathered around him. That could do nothing but reach out for him as he waited to die.

Leo wonders how many of his family sacrificed themselves for the ones they loved, how many died for some cause. How many deaths did it take to carve the knowledge of sacrifice into a bloodline?

But Leo hadn't died.  

He began to cry. He let the tears flow freely and he cried. Because even if his heart had never stopped beating, he still felt like he had died. Like whoever he was had disappeared into that dimension and left him a broken body to return to his family.

But that wasn’t true, he was alive. Scared and beaten and broken, but alive.

Why? Why him?

Out of everyone, out of all the souls that had reached out and shared his pain, why was he the one to come back home?  

What had he done to be brought back while they were mourned?  

No one answered.

After a minute Donnie would walk in on Leo still crying. He would grow stiff and reach out and grab his hand. Leo would cling to it and sob that he was sorry that he hadn’t listened to them, that he had put them in danger for his ego, that he had almost made them lose him.

Donnie would just cling right back and soon began to cry in turn, begging Leo to never do that again. To always be safe and with them, and Leo agreed.

Thus, Leo returned to life not with fire and ash but with tears and sobs. Nothing would be the same, nothing would be the way it was before, but they would always love each other and nothing else mattered.

Prev - Masterpost Ao3 Link: Here Please check out @zee-rambles who came up with this challenge and look at @rise-april-art-challenge to see more submissions by other fans. Please give me feedback if there is anything I should work on.\

@nickelodeon Bring Back Rise

Ahhhhh! I can't wait!

ATTENTION

The list shall be released in two hours! I repeat, the list will be released in two hours!

Everyone will get a private dm of who they are gifting to. The list has been adjust specifically to accommodate everyone. All those who do ships will be paired together, all those who don't do ships will be paired together, and those who haven't specified will be paired together. I apologize for the long wait, and I'm excited to see what you all make!

Rise April Challange Day 3: Casey And Casey Jr

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Ao3 Link: here

!TW! Talk of Grief and Loss !TW!

Casey Jones doesn’t remember his mother well. He doesn’t mind too much; he’s lost so many people over his short life. Everyone in the future had, and he's still trying to get used to the idea that isn't normal here. So, he's kind of grateful that he only has vague and blurry memories of her. It means that he doesn’t have much to grieve for.  

He knows that’s shitty to say, but he thinks in his circumstances it’s fair. He’s lost so many people, he’s lost everyone, his whole world. Yeah, it was shitty, coated in blood, grime, and krang flesh. But it was his. He was born into it, it helped make him, and it held everything he had ever loved.  

Master Michelangelo, with his flowing movements and soft sparking magic lifting him high enough to see the world bathed in unworldly light and color that only the two of them could see.  

Commander O’Neil, hugging him with scared arms with a quite “Try to keep up, Jr.” Diving into battle, smiling with bloody teeth as she tore apart burning metal machine.  

The quiet and lonely shrine with a huge, spiked shell that hung on the wall with a pair of cracked purple goggles with red and blue lenses on the table below. Where his family always gathered before a mission, just sitting and holding each other, with hushed ‘I love you’s and ‘be safe’s on their tongues.  

And of course, Master Leonardo. Who had tried so hard to be a father to him, even though he was fighting a war that he knew he was losing, even as he held the lives of everyone on his shoulders. He had tried so hard to be a father that he always said Casey deserved.  

He had lost all of them.  

So... yeah. Casey was grateful that he didn’t have another person to morn.  

But... his mom was here. Alive. And he had to keep himself from panicking because he had time to figure out what to say when you're meeting a version of a mother you had never really known. He thought he had time. He didn’t.

-

Casey Jr sits ramrod straight on his spot on the couch, across from the intimating woman across from him. His mom (mom, mom, MOM!) Stares across from her with sharp eyes and narrowed in what looks like anger, and Casey's mind is very split on this.  

One half of his brain is just screaming that she’s here and alive and real! Not just a story, or a memory that he isn’t totally sure he didn’t just make up. She’s really sitting across from him, and he can see his eyes and hair on her face. And somehow this is the most earth-shattering thing that has happened to him. Or at least the only part of this disaster that he can process.  

The other half of him is trying to decide what should happen now, what he should do or say. He isn’t given the chance to figure out because she speaks first and Casey Jones the Second hears the first words he ever heard his mother say.  

“Do I need to start a collage fund?”  

It’s... it’s absurd, and out of nowhere, and said with such seriousness that it makes Casey break down into laughter that shakes his whole body. He bows over trying to get enough air into his lungs because this is so stupid and chaotic and that probably (is) the best thing you could say in a situation like this. What is his life?  

“No-No!” He says between laughs. “I don’t think-” He breaks into more laughter. “I don’t think I need that.”  

He continues to laugh as she stands, hesitates and then marches to the seat next to him, sits down just as straight as Jr had a moment ago, and stiffly hugs him to her side. He wheezes through his laughter.  

“What-what are you doing?” Casey manages to hiss out.  

“I have been told that mothers are meant to comfort their children when they are crying.”  

Crying? Was he- Oh... yes, he was. At some point his laughs had begun to turn into sobs, and tears had leaked down his face. Everything had just hit him all at once, and he just... couldn’t anymore. He leans down and wipes his nose and eyes, and just breathes.  

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”  

“It’s alright.” Cassandra (Mom? Casey Sr?) responds, still holding his shoulder.  

It takes a miniate before either of them can do anything other than look over each other, looking over every similarity and difference. Then Mom (Cassandra?) meets his eyes and with a stone face asks what Casey thinks she’s been wanting to since she saw him.  

“Can you tell me how I die?” The time traveler looks away.  

“What makes you think you did?” He doesn’t think he can look at her right now.  

“Because I would not be so foolish or weak as to let my son travel through time!” She says it like he just insulted her, and he wants to argue but...  

“Infection.” He answers. “Which is impressive considering that when you were found you had one arm missing and had been impaled at least 5 times. You lasted about a week after that.” It’s easier to say than he likes. There is silence. Then:  

“I am... happy that I did not abandon you.” He turns to his mom, and she doesn’t look at him, staring past him and he makes a realization. That this whole conversation is as hard and awkward for her as it is for him, and he doesn’t know why it took him so long to realize that. Hell, they're almost the same age! He smiles and faces her completely, pulling on the quiet patience of Master Leonardo.

“I know that this is insane, and neither of us had time to really think about it. But if it helps, I don’t think we need to decide what or how we feel right now.” She pulls a face at the talk of “feelings,” but does relax slightly.  

“Very well. Until we become comfortable with the reality of this situation. Would you be amenable to the title of my brother? I... am uncertain of being refired to as a mother.” Brother? That could work. Casey grips Cassandra’s hand.   Yes, it's Cassandra for now. Maybe for forever, but that would be ok too.

“Sounds good.” 

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Please check out @zee-rambles as the one who came up with this challenge. Also take a look at @rise-april-art-challenge​ for more submissions. Please give feedback if I need to work on something.