Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

New Yorkers, no matter the timeline it seemed, grieved the same. The Wall of Heroes, once housed in the longest standing hub of the resistance, was a sacred place, a shrine of memories built to honor the dead. And Casey Jones Junior, in New York some 20 years removed in a completely different yet familiar branch of the past, found walls much the same everywhere he turned. 

Chain link emergency fences were woven with real and faux bouquets. The petals decayed at opposite intervals, both as eternal and faded as the smiles in the photos left beside the flowers and hundreds of handwritten notes. Casey held back the curiosity to read them out of respect. They were final, one sided conversations, and absolutely not meant for him. He felt tied to them anyway. It was his presence that had caused these deaths. 

* They would have died anyway, more even, had we not stopped things *, Casey had tried to reason to himself as he stared at posters taped to walls where buildings once stood. He had walked past so many misshapen wax monuments from candles being lit and relit several times over he’d lost count of which blocks they were on. No matter where he walked, hid, or watched, he could not escape the shrines. 

They all brought him back to the Wall of Heroes. Back to the plain silhouette of one of Master Donatello's normal battle shells, and the shape of a much larger and spikier battle shell — an experimental husk, meant for a much bigger project that the scientist never got to finish. Casey stumbled on the blueprints once when helping Master Leonardo copy and purge data from an old base - the project would have been epic. The shell was meant to cover Master Raphael's. The injury that took his arm also left his shell cracked. While it had healed, Donatello didn't trust it to hold forever with the way the snapping turtle used himself as a shield. Donatello had started the project by making Raphael a mechanical arm. Raph hadn't been too keen on the arm, and after Leonardo got hurt the arm went to Leo instead. Donatello never got to finish the shell, with supplies hard to come by. Other projects took priority, and even some pieces of the enormous battle shell had been taken apart for other things. Then, Donatello went out first, in a fiery statement that left nothing to bury. There was an old, spare, plain battle shell left behind in Donatello’s lab; Leonardo didn’t let anyone touch it. And some years later when Raphael had gone - also with nothing left to recover, lost to the expansive wastes - the larger unfinished shell meant for Raphael was hung beside Donatello's. 

Perhaps two years after that, in the final battle that split their two realities apart, Master Michelangelo had shattered, once unbreakable, into nothing but light.

And Sensei, Master Leonardo evaporated in a deathly beam right before Casey's eyes. 

None of them were invincible. Some days Casey wondered if he, too, would just disappear. 

It was in one such spiral of thought that Casey found himself, idly staring at a mug of cold tea, the beginnings of a headache starting to throb, while Mikey tried to grab his attention.

"Helllooooo, earth to CJ," the box turtle sang, *this* close to prodding his face with the back end of a wooden spoon.

Casey didn't respond, lost in the reflection in his mug. 

"Did you sleep at all yesterday?" Mikey asked, his tone becoming more worried. He finally nudged Casey with the spoon, and the kid jolted.

Casey shot upright, groaning and blinking his eyes against the sudden movement. Some tea splashed over the edge of the mug, which he regarded with a sigh and ignored. He hunched back down and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut. 

Mikey hovered beside him. "Dude. You okay?"

"Mhmm ," Casey mumbled, "Just a headache."

Mikey frowned. "You should tell Leo they're getting worse."

Casey replied with a wordless grumble in the back of his throat. 

He had started getting regular headaches once things began to settle down after they got Leo back. Even then, Casey hadn't really relaxed until Mikey finally woke up much later. He thought the headaches were just several weeks’ worth of exhaustion catching up to him. Leo thought they were caused by hypertension: Casey's nervous system seemed to fight every good intention to simply chill, strung tight like a cord ready to snap. He was jumpy, eyes darting to locate and catalog every new noise and experience, all while looking completely calm about it. 

Casey was just adjusting - yeah that was it. Still adjusting.  

"I'll be fine, Mikey," Casey said, squinting around the headache. He smiled with practiced reassurance at the box turtle. His vision wobbled, and Mikey looked … older. Just for a second. Casey blinked, and the abundant spots and feathery hair melted away. A much younger and very concerned Mikey stayed behind in the silhouette, clutching a wooden spoon with both hands. 

"Casey?" Mikey asked, quieter. 

Casey shook his head. He looked around, trying to place the confusion, landing on a small pot on the stove top. Currently boiling over. 

"The stove …" Casey started to say. 

Mikey gasped and spun around. “MY CARAMEL!” 

In one swift motion he turned the burner off and picked the pot up off the heat, stirring vigorously in a vain attempt to disperse the bubbles. The liquid sugar fizzled. 

“Um, shoot what’s next in the recipe?” Mikey asked. He looked over at his phone, which had since gone to sleep. He scowled at the black screen, still holding the pot and stirring with the wooden spoon. “Casey, can you …?”

“Sure thing!” Casey jumped up to tap Mikey’s phone screen. He puzzled over it a second, then swiped up to unlock it once realizing he didn’t need to ask Mikey for the pass code. The recipe appeared on screen. “It says – add butter and vanilla once it boils. And, remove from heat?”

“Okidokey!” Mikey said. Setting the pot down on a cold part of the stovetop he dumped in a chunk of pre-cut butter and the pre-measured vanilla. The caramel hissed and sputtered, and Mickey's head retracted an inch in surprise. He quickly stirred the bubbling mix, and held up the spoon after to watch it drip off in a thick, steaming syrup. 

“I don’t think I did it right,” Mikey fussed. “The texture looks wrong.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Casey said. He drank his cold tea, only now grabbing a kitchen towel to clean up the bit he spilled on the table earlier. He tossed the towel in the bin Mikey had once pointed out was for dirty dishrags.

Mikey sighed heavily, but continued to pour the quickly cooling caramel out on a sheet of wax paper. It was already starting to clump up, to Mikey’s disappointment. He smoothed it out as best he could. He filled the empty pot with hot water and put it back on the stove, to boil away the solid remnants of stuck on candy. Only once he got the burner going did he pull off the elbow high rubber gloves he was wearing. 

Donnie had made the gloves a few days ago, to cover up Mikey’s still heavily bandaged arms so the box turtle could still cook and paint without getting his wrappings dirty. It was a temporary solution to a bigger issue. Donnie, Leo, and Draxum would have preferred if Mikey didn’t try to do anything with his hands while the mystic cracks healed. But Mikey was too restless to sit that still. The gloves were the compromise.

Mikey stared distantly at the pot of water, idly rubbing and wringing his hands. He massaged his right wrist, only pausing when he realized the water was boiling. He dumped the hot, diluted caramel water down the drain and left the pan in the sink. 

Mikey realized Casey had taken a seat again, zoning out once more into the depths of his now empty mug. He plopped down in the chair next to Casey, flopping to the side to lean against the kid’s shoulder. Casey startled, but quickly eased back to normal posture. 

“I didn’t think caramel would be exhausting?” Casey ventured.

“This is the fourth batch I’ve tried," Mikey lamented. The first stayed syrup, the second crystalized when it cooled, the third burned.”

“Oh,” Casey uttered. “The burned one: is that why Donnie had the Lair’s airflow systems on full blast yesterday?”

Mikey laughed and groaned in disappointment. “Yes. I didn’t mean to burn it. I was just picking a playlist; I left it alone for one second.” 

Mikey proceeded to go on about the recipe he was trying to follow, going over the steps and where he thought he went wrong on each one in each batch. Casey smiled. Master Michelangelo had tried to teach him to cook when he had the time and resources. He’d spoken of ingredients, recipes, things lost to the apocalypse that maybe after things were all done, in the future, he could find again and show to Casey. Casey's smile fell at the memory. 

“Why the interest in … uh, candy making?” Casey asked.

“I’m bored,” Mikey said. He shifted off Casey’s shoulder, resting his head in his hands, wincing at the weight for a moment before adjusting and throwing his hands in the air. “I’ve never made candy. SO! I’m experimenting!”

“Is that so?” Casey asked. He couldn’t help but smile as Mikey grinned at him. “I thought you were trying to get back to painting?”

Mikey’s face fell neutral and he pulled his hands close, crossing them and resting his elbows on the table. He looked ahead. “Painting and drawing ... hurt too much.”

“Oh,” Casey said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Mikey said quickly, smiling again. But Casey knew well enough that he recognized the tone in his voice: tired, but staying positive.

Wait, no, that was something Master Michelangelo did. Mikey was once him, a younger version of him, yes. But that didn’t mean all the same mannerisms had stayed. Right? They were the same, but so, so very different. Master Michelangelo had faced years of war, which had trained him to mask his worries behind such ways of speaking, remaining hopeful even when fires raged around them. So Casey figured. This Mikey had faced only a fraction of those things. But there was a lilt to Mikey’s voice that hinted that the box turtle had always been a beacon of optimism. The two concepts of past and present mystic turtle blurred in his head, until Mikey’s voice broke the haze.

“Hey, hey CJ? You zoned out on me again,” Mikey said with distinct stress this time. He had a hand on Casey’s shoulder, leaning forward as much as he could beside Casey in an attempt to catch his gaze.   

Casey shook his head and blinked hard. He met Mikey’s concerned look. “It’s just the headache,” he said. 

Mikey wrinkled his snout. “You’re going to talk to Leo about that, right now.” 

Casey heaved a frustrated sigh. “It’s just a headache. I’ll be ok — ”

“NOPE! You’re seeing Leo, now!” Mikey huffed. He leapt from his chair and stood Casey up, shoving the surprised teen in the direction of Leo’s room.

“But …” Casey protested, partially stunned by the sudden change in direction but going with the chaotic venture all the same.

“CJ, it’s been a solid 4 days of ‘ just headaches ’. I’m no physician, but even Dr. Delicate Touch can see you gotta get that checked out.” Mikey stopped shoving when they got to the top of the stairs down to Leo’s room. 

“I can handle a headache. I’ve lived through worse,” Casey flustered out.

Mikey sighed theatrically and raised a brow. “Just ‘cuz you lived through it once doesn't mean you should suffer the small stuff.” He leaned forward, studying, “Do I need to schedule you for an impromptu session with the good Doctor, too?”

“Nope!” Casey stuttered swiftly. He knew how Dr. Delicate Touch could get. He’d seen Master Michelangelo bring the Dr. to the front on several occasions. Personally, Casey would rather deal with Dr. Feelings. But it didn’t feel right talking about *any* of his stresses with Mikey. Master Michelangelo, absolutely. But Mikey was younger than CJ by a solid year and a half, they’d determined. And Mikey had just lived through a tiny taste of Hell. Casey didn’t need to heap more of his own memories on top of that.

“Can’t avoid it forever,” Mikey retorted. He beamed another huge smile at Casey, “Now go see Leo!”, and gave him a gentle shove. 

Casey didn’t quite see which direction Mikey scampered off to, being wrapped up in his own thoughts and also trying not to eat it while stumbling down the steps after being pushed. He caught his balance at the bottom, and ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. 

* Man, the Hamatos have always taken melting into the shadows seriously * , he thought.  

It really was just a headache. Casey didn’t see what the fuss was about. He lingered at the bottom of the stairs, in the game room space outside Leo’s room, lost in the near silence. Two lone game consoles flickered and beeped softly. They were the only ones Donnie had found the time to repair, before Raph convinced him that he had to rest. Light poured out of Leo’s open door. Casey was starkly reminded of just a couple weeks prior, when the family had left the same lights on in loving memory. 

Except now there was no small shrine set up outside the door, and Leo really was there. 

Casey caught himself tipping over the edge of mourning, and the headache bit at the back of his skull. 

Fine. He’d talk to Leo about the headaches. They really had been getting stronger. 

He just hoped it was stress. Casey knew how to cope with stress. 

*   *   * 

Leo was more than eager to help the second the word “headache” left Casey’s lips. His left arm was free from a cast entirely and his right leg may have been upgraded from a cast to a bulky brace within the recent couple of days, but he still was required to use a crutch. Casey had to set the pace as Leo practically dragged him to the med bay, if only to keep Leo from full on sprinting. Crutches never stopped him before.

Leo settled into a quick check-up routine for Casey, taking his temperature and blood pressure, the works. He typed up notes in a new column of data next to the previous set of readings on Casey’s digital chart. Leo had these basic records for everyone: he ran a tight ship when it came to keeping track of the changes to everyone’s basic medical readings. Donnie had joked that the only other thing Leo kept that organized was his comic book collection, which earned him a slug on the shoulder from Leo. 

The folder of medical readings was the one live set of records in Donnie’s whole Lair system setup that Leo was allowed to touch. Not that it stopped him from poking around every now and then. 

“Oi, I gotta check the back of your throat,” Leo said, snapping Casey out of another trance. 

“Oh, yeah,” Casey said. He opened his mouth, and Leo shined a flashlight in and squinted. 

The light briefly crossed Casey’s face, and he couldn’t stop the instinct to shut his eyes hard against the brightness. If he thought about it, which he was trying not to, the larger overhead light in the med bay wasn’t helping the headache either.

“Well, there’s no signs of an infection. Yyyyyet.” Leo announced, face furrowed in a way that Raph would have certainly poked fun at. Casey could see the beginnings of a so-called chasm in the middle of Leo’s brow. But the slider didn’t hold the expression long, forcing it to relax into something more cheerful. “I don’t see any white spots in your throat, or swolleness or redness. You don’t have a fever or anything, which I was half expecting with the weather turning up top. Some cold or other always goes around New York this time of year. So we can count that out for now as the cause of the headaches. Everything else seems normal. The same baseline as your first records.” Leo said. He took off his medical gloves and balled them up, tossing them artfully into the trash. “He shoots, he scores!”

“That’s good,” Casey breathed out. He closed his eyes.

“Have you been taking anything for them?” Leo asked.

“The headaches?” Casey shook his head, eyes still closed. “No.”

Leo frowned, “Could you not find it? I keep painkillers in the bathroom, and in here.” He tapped across the room, using his crutch, and started rummaging through one of the cupboards, selecting a bottle and turning to show Casey. “I could have sworn I told you it was okay to take these if you needed.”

“I know where to find the medicine,” Casey said. He fiddled with his hands, finally looking up as Leo shook the bottle of pills to grab his attention. Casey squinted, still unhappy with the light. How was he going to explain this? “I just … didn’t want to.”

Leo gave him the same studious look Mikey had given him earlier. “Okay. Well, I’m officially prescribing some, right now. Just an anti-inflammatory, to ease things up a bit.” 

He placed the bottle on the small counter and grabbed a tiny, disposable cup from a conveniently accessible dispenser. He filled it with water, and with the cup in his free hand and the bottle of pills tucked under his arm, almost comically crutched across the room. He handed Casey the water and set to opening the bottle and dumping three tiny pills into his hand. 

“Don’t we have to save them?” Casey asked. 

“What? No,” Leo said, shocked by the question. “We can get more of these bad boys from the corner store. Don’t sweat it.” He deposited the pills in Casey’s hand.

Casey just blinked at him, and Leo blinked back. 

“Ohhh,” Leo said at length, “No seriously. We just prevented the apocalypse. We’re not going to run out any time soon. Take them, they’ll help with the headache, really really.”

He hopped up on the side of the bed next to Casey, propping his crutch within arm’s reach. “Trust me.”

Casey continued to stare at the pills in his hand. 

A memory forced itself to the forefront of his mind, a crisp visual in the middle that fizzled out at the edges. The last time he’d been given medicine like this, he was 8. He barely remembered the fever. He’d been sick enough to be bed-bound for two days. The resistance doctors breathed a sigh of relief when they learned it wasn’t “the plague” as Sensei had joked. Master Leonardo had given him some pills and a cup of water. “They’ll help you feel better. Trust me.”

Casey inhaled, and threw the pills in his mouth. He chugged the water. 

He leaned forward again, playing with the edge of the little paper cup. “Can we turn off the big light?” 

“Yeah, dude,” Leo said. He swept up his crutch, moving it carefully over Casey’s head so he could use the bottom end to tap the light switch. At the awkward, stretched angle it was a little less of a gentle tap and more of a comical smack. The light clicked off and Casey could feel a tiny bit of the tension behind his eyes drain away. The room wasn’t completely dark; the wall sconces were still on and the Lair-light still filtered in through the two oddly shaped windows at the heads of the cots, but it was enough to still see by.  

“You’re sensitive to lights, too?” Leo asked. 

Casey nodded. 

Leo hummed and reached for the data pad, typing in more notes. He mumbled something about a possible migraine, and looked back up at Casey. Leo paused, and asked playfully, “When was the last time you slept, Case’? You’ve got eye bags that rival Donnie’s after one of his classic 48-hour hyper-focus marathons.”

Casey scoffed, “I sleep. There’s just a lot of … new noises.”

Leo’s eyes softened. “Ha, yeah. Most of the Lair is soundproofed, but the tunnels sure do carry a lot of strange sounds from the surface.”

Casey crumpled the cup in his hands and tossed it. It bounced off the wall into the trash, earning a “Ten points!” from Leo. 

Casey turned to give the slider a high five – three? “What about you, Mr. Making Tea At 2 am?”

Leo’s eyes widened for a split second, and had Casey not grown up with an older version of the same persona he’d have blinked and missed it. Leo laughed and flopped back onto the bed. “I’m sleeping just fine. Deeply even! Probably getting the most REM of my life.”

The two of them sat in the half-dark for a few blissfully silent moments. Casey almost didn’t hear Leo add, “I don’t even dream.”

“What?” Casey asked on instinct. 

“What?” Leo replied swiftly. He sat up in a flourish that looked painful to Casey. And Casey knew it was, because Leo winced. But Leo disguised the pain with a new question; “What do you dream about, Casey?” 

“Me?” Casey mused incredulously.

“Yeah, you,” Leo pressed. 

“Oh, well,” Casey frowned. Images flashed through his head. “I stopped having run-of-the-mill nightmares when I was 10. And, uh —”

“Woah! Wait!” Leo interrupted, “Not what I meant. I meant like dreams ; the good kind.” Leo sighed with sympathy that made Casey’s heart ache. 

Leo continued, with all earnesty, “What did you dream about, for your future? Now that, I don’t know, you saved the world. You must have dreamed of seeing, doing something when it was all won. Ya know?”

“I …” Casey started. But the words, and thoughts, dissolved off his tongue. He thought hard, trying to remember what he even *had* dreamed about.  

“Well, you – Sensei – told me about the sky. About birds and grass I guess, but…” Casey furrowed his brow. He wrung his hands, lost in his head. The headache surged. He groaned and shut his eyes. 

“Don’t stress about it,” Leo offered kindly. He jumped off the bed and balanced with the crutch, reaching to pat Casey’s shoulder for reassurance. “It’s a big, wide world and I was just curious … you don’t have to answer today, m’kay?”

Casey glanced up and offered a smile. “Okay.”

“‘Kay,” Leo said. 

He fixed Casey with a look that spoke of a thousand questions. A thousand worries, a thousand hopes. But Casey didn’t get long to attempt to understand. 

“You look like you need a nap, and it’s gonna take a minute for the meds to do their magic. So let's get you somewhere you can chill, and I’ll check in on you in a couple hours, alright?” Leo warbled. He stuck out his free hand, to help Casey down off the raised cot. “We’re watching a Live stream later of the sneak-preview of the Jupiter Jim Christmas special. They haven’t put out a holiday special in like 6 years! You don’t want to miss it.”

Casey blinked heavily and mustered a smile. A nap sounded nice. 

*   *   * 

A nap sounded nice, in theory. 

His eyes sure wanted one. But his brain, Casey’s brain took the idea of rest and chucked it out the proverbial window. Except he was underground and there were no windows. Unless you counted the ones in the turtle’s train-car rooms. Casey’s little ramshackle room had no windows. 

The pain meds had eased the worst of Casey’s headache, momentarily. He drifted off, hovering in a hazy half-dream. He was lying on the ground, arm under his head in lieu of a pillow. The scouting patrols never carried pillows. He swore he could hear the whispering of the others on patrol with him, likely getting ready to wake him any moment for his turn on night watch. A bristling pain arced across his skull and the whispers died. Casey’s eyes snapped open, aching with burning exhaustion, and he promptly shut them. He rolled over to check the time. 30 minutes had barely passed since Leo left him alone. 

He dropped the phone back into the blankets and lifted his pillow, smushing it into his face to stifle an irritated groan. He couldn’t sleep like this. 

For a minute Casey just lay there. He readjusted the pillow back under his head, and stared up at the empty ceiling. Splinter had reassured him that he’d personally brushed away the cobwebs the first night they set him up in here, so Casey supposed that was one positive thing. He did not care for spiders. Gazing at the darkness, he remembered Leo’s question. 

“What do you dream about?”

And as though to answer, a different memory replied in Sensei’s voice. 

     “The city lights made them hard to spot, but there are stars up there.” He’d gestured up to the murky skies. “Beyond all that Krang filth, there is an entire galaxy. Little, tiny pinpricks of light, shining so bright.”

     “Di’n’t Don’tello have a map?” Casey Junior had asked. He was five, and always hanging off one of the turtles or April when Cassandra wasn’t around. “With a Milky Way?”

     Leonardo smiled. “Yes, he does have a map with the Milky Way.”

     “Why’s it called the Milky Way?” Little Casey wondered.

     Leonardo laughed. “Well, it for sure wasn’t because it was made of chocolate milk. There’s no cows in space.”

     Junior frowned seriously. “But, a cow jumped over the moon?”

     Leonardo ruffled his hair.

Casey Jones Junior blinked away tears, the memories shattering as his thoughts returned from the stratosphere. To his surprise, he was reaching for the ceiling. When he’d done that he wasn’t sure, but he pulled his hand back to earth in the same motion he used to sit up. He checked the time again. 

5:45 pm

The sun would be setting soon. 

Casey could see the stars if he wanted. He really wanted to. 

The headache teased pain. Casey shook his head to clear it, making up his mind. He was going up to see the stars. 

It didn’t take him long to pull on a thick hoodie, throwing his now washed cape over the whole ensemble. He wasn’t used to the creeping cold of this season called Autumn. The Krang had polluted his earth to a point it was consistently hot, his whole life. Cold was new to him. He had found his hoodies only provided so much warmth, and the cape added a much needed layer of insulation. Donnie had replaced the old Genius-Built clasp with a new one.

“It was starting to corrode,” Donnie had offered, “I saved it in case you want to clean and keep it – I have this solution that will eat away the grime and leave it all shiny. But anyway, the new one has an escape pod feature. Watch, I’ll show you how to activate it.”

Casey adjusted where the cape rested, swinging a belt over his shoulder. He fastened his collapsed hockey stick bō weapon in the holder on his back, and reached for the black belt and sheaths that held Leo’s katanas. Casey’s hand froze. He’d worn them when they had lost Leo, out of grief, and then shortly after they brought him home. At that time they were all he had of Leo, and by extension Master Leonardo aside from the picture from the future. After Leo was home and had started to get up and move again it felt … it felt wrong to continue wearing them. He tried to return the set of blades to Leo, but for some reason the young slider didn’t want them back. 

Casey figured he’d take them when he was ready. Not that any of them were returning to fighting crime soon anyway.

He left the katanas leaning against the wall, and utilizing the Hamato tricks that Sensei had passed on to him, Casey clung to the shadows and snuck out of the Lair.

*   *   * 

It was a nice night up on the surface. At least Casey assumed so. The breeze was cool and refreshing against his face, which was great because he was starting to feel a bit hot. He wondered if maybe the cloak had been too much. No: he’d learned over the last two weeks of cooler temperatures that he chilled easily. He was just adjusting to the difference from the stiller, warmer underground to the cool movement on the surface. Yep. 

This time of night there were some now desolate, ruined structures that Casey liked to perch in. It pained him to know the broken buildings used to be people’s homes, but construction hadn't started to tear them down yet, and the jagged walls still felt an unfortunate bit like home to him. They were quieter than most areas of the city, and Casey enjoyed that.  

It didn’t take him long to reach his favorite spot. He climbed, but by the time he reached the familiar outcropping, Casey realized the sky was bleak, cloudy, and dark. 

Now, Casey had already seen the stars on several occasions since he’d arrived in the past. He’d frozen in place in the middle of the sidewalk the first time he noticed their light, and once April realized why she let him stare upwards for as long as he desired. Until his neck started cramping, and they moved on. But Casey had never sought out a spot or time to do nothing but stargaze. It wasn’t like he’d had the time, helping with everyone’s healing — especially Leo and Mikey’s — going on excursions topside with April to fetch food and the like. But on this impulsive occasion where he’d gone against his better judgment and decided to go up and see the stars alone; it felt like a cruel joke to be met with an overcast night. 

Donnie said the weather could be easily checked on his phone. Yet another tool Casey had to get used to. The device buzzed twice in his pocket – a message – but he didn’t feel like checking it. 

Casey sat dejectedly on the concrete ledge. The breeze was picking up. The fresh air was nice, and he found himself noticing how it didn’t smell at all like ash, like he’d grown up with. It smelled, rather, like the dirt in one of the underground farms the resistance used to grow potatoes, right after the plants had been watered. It was fascinating, and Casey found that he quite liked the scent. 

He closed his eyes, and instead of dwelling on the disappointment of a cloudy night, he let the distant city bustle and his thoughts carry him away.

    He wasn’t outside, but the air felt tall above him and echoed with voices and movement. It was the common room, littered with tables and boxes of equipment, right off the area used as a kitchen on base. People were sitting and eating, taking their precious spare time to laugh with each other. 

   Casey was waiting. He didn’t sleep well, but he’d be ok. He had three more days in this rotation before he was to be switched back to a schedule mostly on base. He could sleep then. But his current schedule meant routine sweeps of the perimeter – a three day round journey that was always being covered by meandering groups of scouts. His group was led by Master Leonardo, who used the scouting runs as a means to keep Casey on his toes. 

     Casey loved these perimeter sweeps. They’d be leaving for this one soon, he was just waiting now. Master Leonardo was on his way —

A low rumble sounded in the distance. 

     Explosions on the surface? Are the Krang doing a firebomb run? How close are they? Why haven’t the alarms gone off yet?

Light flashed, and a deeper growl split the sky. Casey’s eyes shot open, a slightly painful experience with his headache having returned full force and starting to creep down his neck. He sat alert, and gaped up at the dark clouds.    

A beam of light raced across the sky, white and purple, crackling off into branches before disappearing. The clap of sound left in its absence startled Casey, and he physically flinched in wonder. He looked around, trying to see more of his surroundings. He heard it first, hitting the scraps of the ruins high above him, before a torrent of rain pummeled down. There was more light and noise, outlining the dark New York skyline in a flashing silhouette.   

Casey blinked water out of his eyes. He hadn’t had time to get under cover, but he couldn’t care less how currently soaked he was. Getting caught in the rain was almost as good a replacement for missing the stars. Leonardo had told him stories of rain, and Casey could only imagine what it was like. The times it had rained recently Casey had been underground, in the Lair. He hadn’t seen it for himself in person yet. 

It was like a shower, but everywhere. Softer, more gentle, cold. He felt too hot, and heavy, so he welcomed the change in temperature. The rhythm of the drops on his head lulled him into a sense of contentment. The smell of damp earth persisted, and the world hushed into peace. 

More light and sound intruded on that peace, and Casey remembered Leonardo describing storms. With a flood of memory, he realized that this must be lightning and thunder. 

It was wild to think the world just did this sort of magic show all on its own, and Casey felt all the more lucky to be able to witness it. 

He’d lived to see rain.

Sensei, Leonardo, Dad … had not. 

Casey hunched into himself, and sat in silence until the rain started to dissipate. 

It wasn’t until a helicopter cruised nearby that Casey snapped stickily back into reality. His head felt like an overstuffed pillow, and everything looked blurry. He wondered if it was because of the rainwater still dripping out of his hair, getting in his eyes. All he knew is that it was getting late, his head hurt, and he was out after dark –

* I have to get back! * The thought crashed heavy through Casey’s mind. He looked out over the rubble, over the buildings, across a desolate and dark space. 

     Crap, I'm out after dark. Have they shut the gate for the night? Who am I kidding, they definitely have. Oh, Sensei is going to have my shell.

     I have to find a different way home.  

Casey clambered as gracefully as he could manage down from his hiding spot, to the shadows below. He put his striped mask over his eyes, but the night vision fought with his headache in a truly unforgiving manner. His movements felt delayed, like there was a stutter between his brain and hands. It didn’t matter: using the night vision was his only way to get back safe and avoid the Hounds. And getting home safe was priority number one over whatever comfort his headache demanded. 

He really did feel much too warm now. 

He snuck down scrappy alleyways, familiar and yet somehow not, trying to plan an alternate route home. The world topside was quite active, with many heat signatures crossing his visuals. The Krang must have put out more platoons of The Corrupted, Casey considered with horror. He leapt over decaying Krang vines. He blinked, his vision warping. The vines were pink and alive – no, they were gray and dead. Casey didn’t have time to dwell on the specifics. He shook his head and kept moving. 

The rain ( rain? ) had made everything slick. Casey hadn’t expected this, and on one particular leap to a ledge, his grip slipped, and he stumbled down and out onto a brighter patch of street. 

Casey took a painful second to lift himself off the pavement. He’d scraped through his jeans to his knee, and the scuff burned. He stared at the edges of the ripped fabric, soaked from the puddle he’d landed in and turning slowly, steadily red. 

“Are you okay?” a gentle voice asked. 

Casey’s attention snapped up, his mask face to face with a woman who was leaning over him with a pink polka dot umbrella. 

She held out a hand. “You took a nasty fall, kid. C’mon, I’ll help you up so you can catch a breather. I’ve got some bandaids in my purse. Oooh, it looks like you need a few of them.”

But Casey didn’t take her hand. He shuffled backwards and away in panic. 

“Kid?”

Casey scrambled upright and away. 

“Wait, you dropped your —”

But Casey didn’t hear. He ran, far far away from the pink. Down alleys and across paths lined with more beings and strange vehicles Casey didn’t know the Krang possessed. But everywhere he turned there was more light, more people, more of the Corrupted. The Zombies. He had yet to see a single Mech or Hound, which Casey considered an insane bout of luck.

* Why are there so many of the Corrupted out in the ruins? * Casey wondered. * All the lights; did the Krang set up a new camp in the city? And this close to our base!? * He had to tell Sensei. Immediately. He smacked his wrist, to activate a communicator … that wasn’t there. 

Casey’s head throbbed, and he shut his eyes hard. He’d have to figure the communicator out later, and just tell Master Leonardo of the new danger in person.

But the base was locked up for the night. How Casey had managed to get stuck above ground after dark, alone no less, would earn him a lecture of the highest order. He’d never slipped up like this. But he had to get back, regardless of the consequences.

Casey paused for a moment to catch his breath. He was way too hot, everything too hazy and disrorted. He wanted to rip off his cloak, but he couldn’t; wouldn't. It was of precious value, and fabric wasn't something the base just had on hand. He pushed up his soggy sleeves, and took stock of where he was. 

He was in a familiar alley, one several blocks away from the old back-access point to what had once been the Grand Nexus Hotel. Perfect. He could use that to get back underground, and get back to base from there. 

Getting to the old hotel was slower than Casey wanted it to be. He tried to keep his wits, but his head was becoming heavier, more spacey. Every light seemed to bore into his skull. But he pressed on, barely contained in the shadows. He found one of the side doors to the hotel lobby, the ones tucked into crevices that had once been disguised to humans. But Sensei had shown him their locations, and his mask saw through the whatever mystic ward had been placed on them. He pressed his way inside.    

And instead of the dusty, dim remnants of marble pillars, Casey was met with a bright and bustling foyer of Yokai. 

He stood there in shock, taking it all in, as the Yokai stood stock still. Casey did not understand. Were they Corrupted? Was there a supply run going on, to get what they could from the hotel? Was this a wandering group of survivors? He blinked, his vision still cloudy and distant, and tried to take a slow step back. But balance was not on his side and he staggered into an awkward kneel. 

Most of the Yokai scattered, a few coming to alert attention as they half circled him. They glared at him with distrust, but as Casey did nothing more than sway on his hands and knees, they didn’t move to attack.

Casey was at a loss of what to do. The headache was raging now, pulling him under, and he genuinely couldn’t think straight. 

There was a clicking, like footsteps. 

“What is all the fuss and flimmity-flam about, now?” a cheerful voice asked, echoing in Casey’s ears. 

He chanced a look up, and saw a face he recognized. Big Mama crouched down in front of him. Her eyes traced over him, taking full stock of what she was working with, and then settled locked on his hazy stare through the green lenses of his mask. Something flashed across her expression, and her gaze darted down to the Genius-Built clasp before returning to his mask. 

She addressed him. “Aren’t you a curious little bug?”

Casey’s mental grasp swayed. He didn’t hear anything else she might have said. His eyes fluttered, and he fell into the sluggish peace of fevered sleep.

Chapter Text

“Oh come on, Raph! We’re gonna miss it!” Leo whined. He excitedly smacked his crutch against Raph’s shin, and Raph grunted an amused exhale. 

“No, we’re not. It hasn’t even started yet.”

“But there might be commercials before it,” Leo fussed. He moved closer to the doorway to the living room, bouncing between his toes and the crutch. “They might announce a new generation of action figures. Remember the Alternate Atomic lineup? That was announced before the marathon leading up to the release of the solo movie; Atomic Lass . And all the clues to which stores the rare Atomic Lass figures were sold at were dropped during the commercials. Donnie missed it cuz he got up to grab juice and apples, don’t you remember?”

Raph heaved a long sigh, scooping up both his and Leo’s popcorn bowls. “Raph remembers. Raph remembers Donnie dragging us to every single store in a 5 mile radius.”

Leo nodded. “Exactly! We almost had to go to Staten Island. Dad would have had our shells for going that far from home, but Dee found one in the very last store in Brooklyn.”   

Leo zipped toward the living room, tapping along in front of Raph. He cut a corner around the couch, opting to dive sideways over the armrest into his usual spot. The couch cushions caved as he landed, making Mikey tip over with a surprised squeak. He’d been on his phone and hadn’t seen Leo vault into place. 

Raph took his place dead center on the couch, squeezing between the laughing slider and box turtle as they finegaled trying to sit up. They shifted out of the way just long enough for Raph to sit, then immediately squished on either side of him to get comfortable. Raph handed Leo his popcorn. 

“What are you so worked up about action figures for?” Raph teased. He grinned, wide and knowing, “Is there a specific one you’re hoping they announce?”

Leo threw popcorn in his mouth.

Raph laughed and grinned wider. “I knew it, HA! I so knew it. You’re looking for one!”

“Oh, oh oh! Lemme guess! It’s the Blue Beyond suit variant of Red Fox!” Mikey supplied. He was leaning around Raph, trying to gauge Leo’s reaction. 

“What about the All Platinum Jupiter Jim, classic re-run?” Raph wondered. 

Leo shook his head, shoveling in more popcorn and maintaining a smile that said * I’ll never tell, but sure keep guessing* .

“Oh puh-lease, it’s neither of those,” Donnie announced from the depths of his favorite beanbag. He sipped from a long curly straw, which cascaded from two cans of pop situated on either side of his head, replacing his usual goggles. He smirked triumphantly. 

Leo fixed him with a cocky, questioning look. “Oh yeah? Then, what does your big-brain think it is? Guess .”

Donnie was more than happy to. 

“Based on internet chatter over the new line, Nardo is hoping for the long awaited and far overdue announcement of the Seven Galaxies generation of figures. Namely, among them, the suave, rogue rabbit Heron Lightfoot .” 

Leo sputtered and quickly swallowed his mouthful of popcorn. He leaned forward, shocked. “HOW?!”

Donnie just cackled and shimmied deeper into the beanbag. 

“Omigosh, WAIT, the rabbit guy? From the enemy ship?” Mikey mused. 

Leo grinned in disbelief. 

“The one with the super long headband tails?” Raph asked, thinking back on his memories of the film. “The one you thought looked so cool because he wore the headband over his eyes to hide his true identity as Muriel Cottontail’s long lost sibling?” 

Mikey gasped, “IS THAT where you got the idea of wearing our masks like that?! And you thought you looked soooo cool when you started it, and we all copied you?” Mikey giggled menacingly, weighing his next choice of words. “And why you wear your mask tails so long to this day ?”

Raph barked out a laugh. Leo huffed and sank back into the couch. Donnie looked downright victorious, snickering and turning to gossip with Mikey about the other figures in the lineup. Another presence sweeping into the Lair turned all their attention toward the closest archway. 

“April!” Raph twisted on the couch, and both Mikey and Leo had to duck down under his swinging elbows as the snapper peered over the back. “You made it!”

April stopped to lean against the doorway frame for effect, winking and clicking her tongue alongside dual finger guns as she made her entrance. Her right arm was still in a cast and sling, but she made due. A plastic bag swung wildly from the crook of her left arm. Mikey made grabby hands at it. 

“Did you find them?” he asked. 

“Slow down, big man. I did, as sure as my name is O’Neil.” April said. She planted herself at the edge of the couch next to Mikey, perched on the arm rest, and slid the bag off her arm. She handed Mikey a package of sour *All Lemon* gummy worms. He snatched them and immediately tore the package open, offering her one before reaching in and grabbing three at once. 

April fished in the bag again, and produced a bag of Spicy Chicken Ramen flavored potato chips. Donnie glanced her way expectantly, and she tossed them over. He grappled for them, but missed. 

Leo laughed. “Nice catch Donnie.”

Donnie ignored him and retrieved the chips from where they landed, popping the bag open and diving right in. Raph craned his neck in curiosity to read the package label. Already happily chewing a chip, Donnie extended the bag so Raph could try one. Both Raph and Mikey swept in to grab a chip each, both making faces to various degrees at the spice. Mikey stuck his tongue out and took a drink of pop, but Raph smiled and accepted Donnie’s offer for a second chip from the bag. 

“How do you guys even like those?” Leo mused, wrinkling his nose. 

“You’re just mad you can’t take the heat,” Raph needled, with absolutely no heat in the words.

Leo replied with a sassy nonsense-noise and a dorky face. The TV screen projection faded to black before starting a countdown: t-minus two minutes. 

“HUSH! It’s starting,” Splinter spoke from his armchair. 

The countdown ticked on as the living room simmered into expectant silence. 

“Wait,” Leo whispered, “Where’s Case’?”

“Hmm?” Raph asked, the only one close enough to actually hear his question. The others glanced over, not having heard. 

“Casey,” Leo said, “He was napping off a nasty headache. I texted him it was gonna start soon, but …”

“He probably is still sleepin’,” Raph said. 

“He did mention a headache earlier,” Mikey added. “He looked pretty tired.”

“SHHH!” Splinter enunciated, a voice obscured by his armchair.

The living room was silent for a count of 5, before April sighed and stood up. 

“I’ll go check on him, just in case,” she said. “He did say a couple days ago he wanted to watch this.”  

She left, and the others hunkered down in their seats, comfortable. 

April’s returning footsteps a few seconds later were swift and impatient. 

“He’s not in his room,” she said, an edge to her voice. Everyone, Splinter included, looked up at the announcement. 

“What?” Raph asked.

“He isn’t there,” April elaborated. “I knocked on the bathroom to be sure, but his shoes and mask are gone, too.”

Leo frowned heavily, and Donnie sat up in the beanbag. 

“You’re sure he’s not here?” Leo asked. 

“Sure as pigeons eat pizza,” April replied. Calm as she was trying to be, she was still concerned. It wasn’t the first time Casey had opted to meander on his own. But it was the first time he ignored pre-made plans, and unexpected.

“Hmmm,” Leo hummed. He pulled his knees close to himself, crossing his arms atop them. 

“I can confirm,” Donnie said, eyes fixed on projections from his gauntlet. “His tracker … uh, well, that’s odd.”

“Odd? Odd how?” Leo asked, snapping his attention to his twin. He tried to read the projection from the backside, which he figured would be a cinch if all his time as a kid decoding backwards messages in library books about Magic had taught him anything. 

Donnie’s gaze flicked across the data, searching and disappointed. “His tracker has some sort of interference, and I can’t get a good read on it. It keeps … flickering, in and out. In different places? But his phone is reading steadily on the surface.” Donnie tapped the projected map, which zoomed in on a blinking point. “Somewhere in Manhattan.”

“Casey actually agreed to let you put a tracker on him?” Raph asked, curious despite the tension in the air. 

Leo was typing, texting, focused on his phone.

“He did,” Donnie stated, “I’d only been able to track him based on his phone’s location at first. But when I offered to implant a Genius-Built chip, he said he actually already had one. And he did! It was future-me’s, and miracle of all miracles I was able to patch it into my code! Absolutely amazing.” Donnie rambled, “Although, the interference on his tracking chip is throwing me off. There’s nothing that should break that signal. Especially if made by a future smarter me. Not even being underground in the depths of the Hidden City.”

“Well, he’s not down there,” April said, leaning over to study the map. “He’s up top. Why is his phone getting signal but not the tracker?”

“Don’t ask me!” Donnie said with exasperation. “I – and no doubt my future self – stress tested my trackers for every variable I could imagine . It shouldn’t be bugging out like this!” 

“And Casey’s not answering,” Leo said. He frowned at the screen, quickly scrolling. “He didn’t even open my texts earlier.”

“Maybe he got locked out of his phone?” Mikey guessed. 

“He shouldn’t be,” Donnie stated, “When I set up his device I explicitly asked if he wanted a pass code. He opted for not, as the whole concept was new to him.”

“Okay, that’s great and all. But he’s still not answering. He usually answers,” Leo stressed. He looked at the phone in his hands again. “I … I don’t like this.”

They sat in stalled confusion, the countdown ticking in the background. 45 … 44 … 43 … 42 …

“Maybe we should go up and make sure he’s ok?” Raph suggested, breaking the quiet. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but it won’t hurt any to see.”

Leo nodded, brow furrowed. 

“Right, then,” Donnie stood swiftly, snatching the soda-carrier-goggles off his head and replacing them with his usual goggles, which had been on a table in arm’s reach. “We’ll go check in on Junior. Not because the tracker acting wrong is suspicious or anything, and totally not like helicopter parents … friends, cousins; brothers. But just because we’re worried. Yeah, worried.”

Mikey leapt up just ahead of Raph, followed by Leo rising off the couch. 

Leo started rambling, “And if it really is nothing, then we can all get more snacks and hit up Run of the Mill on the way back. Because we totally forgot to order pizza for this whole shindig and …”

Leo was aiming for the door, but was halted by Raph’s hand on his shoulder. He looked up, meeting Raph’s worry with his own determination. 

“I’m coming,” Leo said, resolute.

Raph sighed, “No, Leo, you need to stay.”

“Well! Then so does Mikey!”

Mikey protested in the background, and Raph just stared at Leo with such sad compassion it made something inside the slider writhe in frustration. Leo continued, “This is Case’ we’re talking about. If he’s actually caught up in something  – Pizza Supreme forbid – then we need the full team, Raph.”

“He’s probably fine,” Donnie offered, “And Mikey’s only coming because he doesn’t have any broken bones.”

Mikey crossed his arms. 

Leo scoffled and whined, “Daaaad …”

“No, your brothers are right, Leonardo,” Splinter spoke. He’d actually risen from his armchair for this, evoking Leo’s full name. Leo sputtered like a fish. 

“You need to stay home, Blue.” Splinter said with rare authority. “It’s too soon.”

Leo opened and shut his mouth, looking around at everyone. Their faces all said the same, but at least Mikey was the only one to look slightly guilty about the whole thing. 

Leo sighed dramatically through his nose. “Fine, I’ll stay.”

Raph and Donnie visibly relaxed. Raph pat Leo on the shoulder, before following Donnie out of the room. 

Mikey lingered. “We’ll be back soon. We’ll text you when we find him.”

“Yeah yeah,” Leo huffed. He collapsed back onto the couch, undignified. 

Mikey left. 

April scratched the top of Leo’s head as she passed behind the back of the couch, coming to plop down beside him. Leo craned his neck up a little at the scratches, before remembering he was actually stressed and supposed to be being serious. He picked up his popcorn bowl again, picking at the kernels.  

“Us broken bone buddies gotta stick together,” April sang, attempting to lighten the tension. “More popcorn for us. And I know Donnie has the system rigged to record this whole thing anyway. They can watch later, BUT –” she elbowed Leo in the arm, “ – WE still get to be the ones who saw the special promo first .”

Leo could not deny that he was concerned. Something told him that this wasn’t a simple case of Casey just going up top to explore. He’d promised to watch this with them. Something was up. 

But Leo smiled anyway, glad to at least have his Dad and his sister’s company. 

He grinned. “If that means I get bragging rights over Dee, then hell yeah.”

“That’s the spirit,” April said, then settled back to watch the show. 

* * * 

It wasn’t unusual for a human to stumble into the Grand Nexxus Hotel. Rare, perhaps, but Big Mama had safeguards in place. 

The staff exits to the surface were hidden and warded. Even the lobby was masked behind a layer of shimmering deception. From the street level, it all appeared very posh and proper, bustling with activity and people . There was a spell on the glass that made any Yokai inside look human. Most people looking for a hotel for the night dared not approach the Grand Nexxus, the whole thing shining far beyond their wallet’s limit. And the spell on the glass made them second guess the availability of rooms. But for the few that had deep wallets who got past that part of the enchantment, Big Mama was more than happy to welcome them. There was a floor or two dedicated to human clientele, rooms fully equipped with small pools, state of the art room-service: literally anything they could want and not venture deeper into the hotel for. Those who did wander either ended up charmed at their own doors again, or at the receptionist desk. The desk was the one position always manned by a human look-alike. The job was the one that received the most applications from the residents of WitchTown. 

There was the one exception, the poor human sap who applied and somehow made it through the rigorous hiring process, only to be turned into a bull mutant. His fancy-feet had led him off to who knows where. The next time she traipsed across her path, Big Mama was considering offering him a job as a dance instructor for her Yokai client base. 

But Big Mama didn’t expect a human to completely dodge every single one of her wards. Which had been strengthened after the invasion. Every. Single. One. And without setting any of them off. The Yokai staff didn’t even have time to make themselves scarce. A human, who had clearly not been feeling so well when they tripped into her establishment, wearing the insignia of the Turtles. It was the cherry on top of the whole affair, and Big Mama was looking forward to seeing how she could work this mishap to her favor. 

She stepped into the Hospital Ward – she couldn’t call her hotel truly Grand if it didn’t have a world-class staff of doctors and alchemists on hand, now could she? – and clicked across the tiled floors until she found the room where the human was being well cared for. 

A nurse looked up as she entered, and he smiled at Big Mama.

“Now,” Big Mama grinned. She held her hands behind her back and leaned over the bed, taking in the sight of the unconscious teenager. “How fares our little whittle-wandering trespasser?”

The nurse deposited their gloves in a bin and with a wave of his hands pulled open a virtual med chart, flashing the kid’s vitals alongside rows of Yokai text. 

“Our guest has something of a nasty mystic fever,” the nurse explained. “I’m not sure how a human got caught up in enough mystic energy to overload their system like this, but the energy is finally breaking up. It’s leaving his body, but causing fever and time-related hallucinations on the way out.”

“Oh my, that sounds positively not a good timey-wimey,” Big Mama crooned. “What sort of magical-mystic energy is it? That is, if you don’t mind elaborating more for me.” She studied the charts with scrutinous eyes, flicking through them on her own. 

The nurse kept his attention mostly on Big Mama, but checked the teen’s IV drip. 

“Based on what the lab was able to detect, some sort of time magic.”

“Time magic?” Big Mama spun on her heel and fixed the nurse with an unblinking, smiling stare. 

“That’s what the lab work says,” the nurse said, shrugging. “The only course of action we have is to ride it out, and keep this unfortunate soul comfortable until it all passes.”

Big Mama chuckled 

“Not unfortunate …” she started to say, when a soft groan from the human got her and the nurse’s attention. The teen scrunched their face, turning their head against visions in their mind. Pulled by long dormant instincts, Big Mama stepped closer to the bed. She brushed hair away from the teen’s face, noticing how high the fever had climbed. The touch startled the teen, but their unease calmed back into sleep. Big Mama’s gaze softened. 

“... just lucky,” Big Mama finished saying, “Lucky to have ended up here, the place in all of New-Newbity York best equipped for mystic mumbly-wumps and the like.” 

The nurse could have sworn, for a split second, she looked sad. He stood there, subtly trying to get a better read. There were rumors among the Grand Nexxus, of Big Mama’s real name. Big Mama was something she chose to present as. No one knew her from back before the title. And in times like this, the nurse could only wonder what Big Mama’s past might have been. But Big Mama’s eyes snapped back to calculating and steely. The nurse returned to their quiet work. He would never tell any other Yokai what he thought he saw for any amount of money, anyway. 

“Indeed. A very lucky one indeed,” he simply agreed.

Fluttering and energetic bickering at the door interrupted the gentle atmosphere of the otherwise calm Hospital Ward. 

“Ah,” the nurse sighed, already defeated, “That must be the delivery of the potion I requested.”

Big Mama watched in amusement as Huginn and Muninn somersaulted into the room, staying in the air, with a bottle of blue medicine balanced carefully between them. 

“Goyle & Goyle, delivery service!” Huginn greeted. 

“Prompt and always on time!” Muninn finalized, triumphantly yoinking the bottle away from Huginn and extending it toward the nurse. 

The nurse hid their comic frustration behind a smile, snapping up the potion with a mumbled “Thanks”, before retreating to fuss over the sick teen. 

Huginn and Muninn only then clocked that Big Mama was in the room with them. 

“Ma’am!” Muninn cheered. He did a flourishing curtsey in the air, which would have seemed proper if he hadn’t flapped his wings too hard in excitement and spun all the way over. 

Big Mama had hired them a few months back, when her guards caught the tiny duo trying to sell discounted Nexxus tickets too close to the Arena entrance. The two had been down on their luck, and were job hunting while trying to find where Draxum had run off to. Big Mama could not deny their enthusiasm. It hadn’t been the first time they’d been caught; stealing corn dogs from the hotel freezers once, trying to offer a valet service for her clientele’s bags another time. Instead of choosing retribution she had decided to sweep their devotion into her web. Why have a problem when you could have an ally? The pair became proud errand-runners. Every odd job around the hotel, they happily obliged. It landed them a soft place to sleep at night, by a fire. Which was very important to them. They’d accepted the deal without haggling for more vacation pay or anything (not that Big Mama’s package wasn’t extensively attractive to new hires already).

Right now, Big Mama was happy to have such allies. 

“Muninn!” She cooed, “You don’t have to be so super-dupity sweet to little ol’ me.”

“Respectfully, yes I do,” Muninn smiled, “Working here has been a true delight!”

Huginn beamed in agreement. “Yes, yes! Is there anything you need today, Madam? A fresh beverage in your office? A new pack of those squid-ink pens you requested last month.”

Big Mama laughed gently. “No, no, nothing quite that middly-mundane.” She glanced over her shoulder, then back at the tiny gargoyles. “I have a true task worthy of the likes of splendiferous errand runners such as yourselves.”

The goyles flustered with anticipation. They landed on Big Mama’s shoulders, listening. Big Mama walked back over to the bed. 

“Tell me, lovelies,” she mused, “Do you know this child?”

Huginn and Muninn stared at him. Muninn stayed put, but Huginn flapped down to stand on the teen’s chest in curiosity. “Should we?” he asked. 

“I had only wondered, a mere curiosity,” Big Mama said. She picked up a metal disk from a nearby table, where all the teen’s belongings and old clothes – now laundered and pressed after being sopping wet from the rain – were laid out under a mystic shield. She held the item up, “They bumbled into the hotel wearing this most partic-ulicular symbol.”

Huginn gasped, “That’s the turtle's sigil!”

“Do they know the turtles?” Muninn asked, loud and excited. It was a good thing Big Mama was well practiced in biting down her frustration over shouting in her ears. 

Big Mama continued, “I had wondered if you two might know more information, but yes, it seems they connected to our dear turtley-poos.”

Muninn leapt off Big Mama’s shoulder and joined Huginn in studying the kid. His big red eyes blinked worriedly. “Do you think the turtles know they’re here?”

Big Mama grinned, leaning down to address the gargoyles with a glint in her eye. They bristled with expectation, eager for a new challenge.

“My dearest Goyle and Goyle, faithful and capable, I have a teensy-weensy message I insist you deliver.”

* * * 

Casey’s head felt light, light as sandbag that is. His eyes were shut, and it seemed too painful a task to attempt to pry them open. There was an urgency in the back of his mind, something clawing there he needed to remember. But he was sleeping, and sleep seemed to be the only thing keeping that claw at bay. Casey buried his face deeper in the crook of his elbow, resting against a tabletop, the echoing sounds of a large room around him creating a glitchy, droning din. 

A dull, rhythmic thump against the table – tap  tap  tap-tap  tap – pulled Casey away from the edge of deep sleep. 

“You’re going to sleep through the scout meet up,” a voice sounded above him, muted at first but becoming clearer as Casey recognized it. Master Leonardo continued, “Now, I know I always tell you to get sleep whenever you possibly can, but right before a mission debrief? Usually it’s Mikey who accidentally falls asleep before meetings these days.”

“Sensei!” Casey said. He was awake, immediately sitting up and twisting in his seat to face him. “I was just … resting my eyes.”

“Uh huh,” Leonardo chided, grinning. “C’mon, we’ve gotta mosey. There will be time for beauty sleep in three days.”

Casey chased after the taller turtle until the two were walking in pace side by side. 

“That’s why I was catching a few winks beforehand,” Casey said, “because we won’t be getting any out on the borders.”

Leonardo laughed, deep and hearty. “We sure won’t. At least nothing good.”

Casey laughed in return, looking up after Leonardo ruffled his hair with his mechanical hand. For a moment, Leo’s face looked oddly far away, blurred out, like the time Casey looked through Commander O’Neil’s glasses. A sting of pain blossomed at the back of Casey’s skull. Suddenly Sensei was five paces ahead of him. 

“Case’?” Leonardo called.

Casey shook his head, clearing the ripples. “Coming!”

The mission debrief was the usual: a three day journey patrolling the edges of the base territory. Do not be seen, do not be heard, but always see, always hear everything. The platoon of four left together, a day behind the last group that was patrolling in the rotation. Casey enjoyed these missions, as serious and important as they were. He didn’t like staying cooped up on the Resistance base. At least the shades of gray and brown out on the borders were a little more varied. 

It felt like he blinked and two days had passed, almost like a pantomime puppet theater, the sky on a rotating disk in the background that spun around twice. Casey felt like he was watching a tiny stage from afar. Then he was sitting beside Sensei, under a slab of concrete that served as a makeshift shelter. They were quietly joking when the notification sound chimed from Leonardo’s communicator. His face set, and he stood to go answer the call. 

Casey … remembered this. 

The sky-disk spun again, and he watched a warped replay of their journey back to base, a whole day early in their return. The base was full of movement, and Casey remembered the hustle of people moving to and fro. To prepare, prepare for something big. Preparing to move. 

The Krang had caught some wind of where their base was. Intel they’d been sniffing out for literal years, which the Resistance repeatedly yanked out of their grasp. 

But not this time. 

Master Leonardo began the evacuation of the basic citizens. Half the fighting force went with them, traversing the underground tunnels to a location so hidden only three of the elders had known of its existence. “You have to go with them,” Leonardo had instructed, but Casey was not having it. 

“And leave you?” Casey begged, “No, I challenge that order. I refuse.”

“Casey,” Leonardo said, firm, a hint of worry hiding behind his teeth, “The Krang are coming. You fight well, extremely, but –”

“Yeah, that’s because YOU taught me. C’mon, I can take them.”

“Case’, please! I’ve seen you take down Hounds and pack leaders left and right. Gone toe to toe with a Marauder that one time. But what’s coming; what’s coming is the full wrath of Krang Prime’s worst.” Leo inhaled deeply, resting a hand on Casey’s shoulder. “Reserved for the Resistance, and the Resistance alone.”

Everyone moving around them was a blur as Casey focused on his Sensei, his Father’s, pained face.  

Leonardo so rarely showed fear. It caught Casey off guard. He nodded, agreeing to go.

Except, he remembered he didn’t go. He’d gone partway, but something had tugged him back. A fluttery ache in his soul, telling him something wasn’t right. 

The rear defense that Leonardo led, to buy the citizens time and maybe just maybe take a couple of the Krang leaders out just to really stick it to Prime, had been overrun. The fight topside had gone to shit. Casey had stared out over the battle in agony. 

The battlefield bent, warping like an oil spill in a puddle. Casey clutched his forehead. 

Deep and electric waves of pain coursed through his head, shouts twisting and stuttering in his ears. And suddenly he was running, supporting Sensei as they both sprinted. Sensei did not call him a lifesaver, like he remembered he had. Instead, “Why did you not stay where it was safe? You know what, nevermind. There’s no time.”

Casey fought against the fog in his mind, the confusion over the twisted memory, trying to pay attention as Sensei drew out the key on the back of a photo and shoved the ancient paper into his hands. 

More searing, aching pain over his skull, and Casey was squinting in front of a bright portal. Yellow light flecked the air like embers. With a pang of sorrow, Casey knew better than to call it fire. Sensei spoke his final instructions, but Casey didn’t hear them. He scrambled, and Sensei threw him into the light. 

Casey emerged into darkness, the whole warbled world of the apocalypse disappearing down a shrinking tunnel until it blinked into nothing. Where Casey was spit out, however, was worse. 

It was cold, dark, littered with lifeless husks of the enemy. The energy of the air was oppressing, numbing. But somehow, through the crushing silence, an explosion shook Casey to his core. He went flying, drifting among the shrapnel. 

There was too much going on for Casey to think. His head was throbbing, every heartbeat reinforcing a different fear. They didn’t win. They were all gone, the whole resistance. The Krang invaded. The world was destroyed, twice over. Again. 

The weight of a soul flew past Casey’s consciousness, and he dared another look into the void. 

Leo — younger, smaller, battle torn and bleeding — passed him, half limp. A flicker of urgency spurred Casey forward, and he lunged off a piece of metal, reaching out. 

“Leo!” he shouted. 

It didn’t seem that the young slider heard. But his trailing tears still hit Casey in the face, mixing with Casey’s, stinging just the same. 

“LEO!” Casey tried again. 

Leo looked up, barely there. And instead of flying backwards in the listless gravity, he suddenly began to fall down, Casey right after him. In that moment Leo’s awareness came to the front, and he reached back to Casey in terror. But as they both fell in tandem, into deepening black, Casey was still   too     
                       far       
                                     away.

*

The inside of his eyelids was pitch and fire. His eyes stung, and they weren’t even open yet. The barest hum of a beep filtered into his awareness, muted and soft at first, then steady and just loud enough to be grating. It was a different pitch than most medical equipment, a good half octave lower. 

Casey angled his head toward the sound, and was rewarded with dull electric pain at the base of his skull. 

Oh, okay. Moving was a very, very bad idea. 

He took a moment to just lay still and breathe, listen to his surroundings, and remember. There were quiet footsteps, very far away. He was somewhere quiet, devoid of much else besides the steady beeping. Casey became aware of a pinch in his elbow. He cracked an eye to investigate. 

It was almost not worth it. His head and vision swam, the pain splintering out and going down his back to all his joints. But Casey was able to sit up enough to see he had an IV drip in his arm, and was in what looked like the world’s least crowded med bay. The lights were off and he was fully alone, a solitary bed among an echoey tile room. A closed door exited into what Casey could only imagine to be a hallway. 

Casey continued to sit there, waiting for the ache in his bones to subside. He didn’t know where he was. He remembered … something old. The pain of his headache spiked, and Casey curled into a tight ball. His perception of the room flickered between two times; now, and a memory. A recollection of the day Master Leonardo had been rushed back to base after losing his arm. Casey clearly recalled being eleven, old enough to start training, but not remotely old enough for the field. He’d wanted to go with Leonardo whenever he left. Leo had told him that Casey would be ready soon, but not this time. Casey didn’t leave his bedside for days. 

Casey settled back in the present. The headache ebbed away, and he breathed deep and slow through his nose to try and dispel it faster. 

Someone outside walked by in shoes that clacked with each step. Casey remembered, suddenly, coming face to face with Big Mama. He looked around again, realizing that he must be somewhere in the Grand Nexxus Hotel. In the present, not the past … future, what’s-it. How exactly he’d wound up there, he couldn’t say. Those memories were buzzing just out of grasp, right under the ambient ache nestled in his head. 

All Casey knew was that he wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d been … going home? Home, to base, to the Lair. And he still needed to get there. 

Blearily, and without any semblance of a plan – which contradicted everything he’d had been raised on – Casey fumbled out of the hospital bed, ditching the IV but unable to loosen the thin metal bracelet on his wrist, and when the coast was clear, ducked out of his room and down the hallway.  

* * *

It always made Leo nervous when he wasn’t involved in things. Scratch that — being left alone in general made him twitchy. 

No wonder Raph hated it.

His brothers had very good reason to ask that he stay home. And sure, from a medical standpoint he got it. His shell was still fragile, enough that the cracks would need to be held together by Donnie’s special flexi-clasps for the next 3 - 4 months while they healed shut. The cast on his arm had just been removed, but the one on his leg had only been swapped for a brace. His breathing had improved significantly; he no longer wheezed just from standing up. 

He, April, and Dad had a grand time watching the preview for the Jupiter Jim Christmas Special — aptly named Jupiter Jim and the Figgy Pudding Pirates. It was going to be *AMAZING* (even if he was only paying attention to half of it while checking his phone every 5 minutes). Donnie had been correct: there had been an ad for the line of Seven Galaxies figures. They were everything Leo could’ve hoped for in a drop that significant. Marcus Moncrief, the infamous Jupiter Jim himself, had also announced a fundraiser starting up in the next couple of weeks that would carry through to the New Year. All funds would be going toward relief efforts in the wake of the invasion.

The city was still broken. New Yorkers pulled through, as sure as dawn after the night. But it was still obvious. That day left its scars on the citizens in more ways than visible hurts and broken bricks. 

April dared Leo to try and beat her in Super Kart Racers after the promo ended. With his cast finally off and the full range of his hand available, and April still wearing hers but feeling gutsy in spite of it, Leo told her to eat her words. April won anyway. Splinter ordered Chinese takeout for everyone, and after slipping into a disguise so he could pick it up from the delivery spot, April and Leo were left idly scrolling their phones while they waited for news of Casey.

But Leo could feel himself inching toward doing something stupid by the second. 

He got up and wandered toward his room, intending to sort his comic books, anything, just to have something else to think about. The Christmas special promo did hint at references to an issue Leo knew he had somewhere in his collection. But his worries had a mind of their own, it seemed. In the span of a minute, while Leo zoned out thinking too hard, he found himself outside Casey Junior’s room. 

Leo stood there for a moment, knowing Case’ wasn’t there. He was fine, Leo told himself, probably just up top brooding like all of them were prone to doing. And that was even before the invasion. He didn’t know the kid’s brooding tendencies, but what Leo did know was that Casey rarely went anywhere without telling someone where he was going. Whenever he went out, even walking out the door like a shadow, there was always a text 5 - 10 minutes later to tell everyone he had gone out. And whenever they texted him first, whether he was home or out and about, he always responded within a couple minutes. But this time there was no check-in text. There hadn’t been any sort of response from Casey for three hours, since Leo’s first texts announcing the promo had been about to start. 

Leo wanted to be up with his team, searching with them. He wondered if Casey had maybe, just maybe left something behind that might clue Leo into what he’d been thinking before leaving. Leo sucked in a breath, and opened the door. 

Casey’s room was the same as he’d last seen it. A row of boxes had been pushed up against one of the walls in what looked like it used to be an old ticket booth. The family had been using it for storage, before needing an extra place for someone to sleep. What had first been a low camping cot had since been replaced in the last two weeks by a proper bed that Donnie magically sourced. There was a floor lamp, which Leo switched on to see better. He looked up at the glow stars Mikey insisted Casey have, once they all learned how fascinated he was by space. The only book Casey had purchased was one on constellations, which sat on the one tall and narrow bookshelf the kid was using for his things. Spare clothes were folded and stacked on the shelves. Casey’s mask and tech-stick were not resting on the top, as they usually did when not in use. He definitely took them with him on purpose. Leo’s original katanas, however, were left behind, leaning against the side of the bookshelf. 

Leo frowned at them. Casey had worn the swords when Leo was gone, and then for a bit after he was home. Leo did not mind, actually. He’d … he’d sort of let go of the idea of ever getting them back, after they were knocked out of his hands …

Anyway, Casey had tried to give them back. But Leo declined. By then Leo had accidentally made himself a new, solitary blade from a palette knife. “I gotta see if Mikey has another tool he wouldn’t mind letting me borrow,” Leo had said with a wink, “Then I’ll have a set. But those ones, I think they mean more to you than me.” Casey had only smiled and nodded numbly.

Leo stood staring at the sheathed katanas for a moment, wondering why Casey had chosen to ditch that piece of his gear, before shaking his head. He had no leads there. 

Casey’s bed was not neatly made, as was his usual habit. He typically smoothed out the soft black and star patterned blankets, but they’d been shoved aside in a crescent that told Leo that Case had just shoved them off before immediately gearing up and heading out. Casey must have been insanely restless. 

Leo was about to leave, more worried than he’d been on entering, when something else caught his eye. The photo, Casey’s photo from the future, was resting half folded against the book on constellations. 

Leo walked over to it, hesitating to pick it up. He leaned on his crutch for a second, then bent down to grab the delicate piece of paper. He sat on the end of Casey’s bed, and carefully unfolded the picture. The last time he’d seen it the photo hadn’t been folded like this. Or cut. There was a slit in the middle, punching right through where the right side of April's face was. Leo thought, grimly, that it was like the picture had been stabbed. 

The edges of the paper were tattered, which wasn’t unexpected with the multiple lives this little sheet of paper had seen. Because of the folds the color along the creases was cracked. A variation in texture on the back made Leo flip the picture over in curiosity. He expected to see the drawing of The Key, but beside it there were rusty smudges, oval shaped marks with almost concentric marks inside them. With wide eyes Leo realized those were likely his own, now dried bloody fingerprints from the last time he saw this photo. Right before losing it in the Prison Dimension. 

Leo sighed quickly and flipped the picture back over, studying the faces of his brothers-but-not-brothers in effort to ease mental anxieties that he was rapidly telling to shut up in his head. As he tried to clear his mind, a double buzz from his phone pulled his attention back into the room. 

In the group chat a new message from Donnie flashed unread.

BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : We located Junior’s phone. But no sign of him yet. Has he returned to the Lair at all?

AyyyyyyPRIL : Just his phone????!!??!?!

BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : Yes, just his phone.

Leo swiftly tapped out a reply.

Neon~Leon : No he’s not here 

No lcuk with the tracker?

BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000: No luck. The signal is still not picking up.

LouJitsuFan1 : Do you think the weather is affecting it Purple?

BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : The weather SHOULDN’T be affecting it. Either way, we need to regroup and form a plan.  

Neon~Leon : :( See you here then

Leo frowned in real life, too, hunching down on himself and withdrawing back into the faces in the picture. Leo wondered absently if it might be possible to restore the photo, if Casey would even want them to. Maybe Leo could find him a nice frame for it, too. 

A new sound broke the weighted silence. There were voices out in the halls, borderline shouting and talking quickly.

Leo got up, and after setting the picture back where he’d found it, made his way in haste toward the voices. 

“I’m telling you, it was a message for the turtles and the turtles only .”

“Yeah, and they’re like legit my brothers,” April spat, “and he’s literally their Father so you may as well tell us! Spit it out.”

Splinter grunted in agreement, “Any message for my children is a message for me, as well.”

“No. I have a personal code of ethics only to deliver to the intended parties,” the other voice complained.

April hissed, “You obstinate little - !”

“Oh! There you are!” Muninn perked up the second Leo rounded the corner. The little gargoyle landed on the back of a kitchen chair, looking around in question. “Where are the rest of the guys?”

“Does that even matter?” April sassed, gesturing with her hands to accent her frustration. “Leo, Muninn here showed up at the door saying he had a message for everyone. He said it was important, so I let him in. And now he won’t spill.”

“I told you, for the turtles only,” Muninn insisted. 

“Well, I’m here now, have no fear,” Leo said. He leaned cavalierly on his crutch, hiding his lingering anxiety. Leo blinked, and whispered, “ My bad, what’s your name again? I can’t ever tell you and your, uh, associate apart. ” 

Muninn was more than happy to introduce himself. “Aw, how complimentary! People do often say Huginn and I are like peas in a pod. I’m Munnin. Muninn’s the name, and service is the game!”

“Muninn!” Leo snapped his fingers and beamed a winning grin at the goyle. “So, my good Goyle, what’ve ya got for me today?”

Muninn puffed out his chest. “Huginn and I were sent out by Big Mama to locate you turtles to deliver a message. The city is enormous, and we didn’t know if you’d be home or out on the town, so we split up to check all your usual haunts.”

“Uh huh,” April drawled, “THE MESSAGE.”

Munnin huffed but kept talking, “Big Mama wants to know if you have a human friend, kinda scrawny, probably your age, long black hair?”

April and Leo’s jaws hit the ground a millisecond apart. 

“Casey?!” April shouted.

Splinter stared down the gargoyle. Leo stopped leaning and stood straighter. 

“And if we do have a friend who matches that description,” Leo said, face serious, “What is it to Big Mama?”

Muninn cleared his throat. “Well, you see, your friend isn’t doing so hot. This Casey, they’re at the Grand Nexxus Hotel. Don’t worry though! Big Mama’s taking good care of them.”

“Do you have any proof?” Leo replied, sharp. 

“Nooooo, not on me. Man, I should’ve asked for one of those holo-scroll things,” Muninn said, “But, you can get proof. In person! In exchange for your friend, Big Mama requests an audience, and a favor.”

Chapter Text

“Raph’s still confused how that all even fit inside your shell.”

“Ah, my dearest eldest brother, a scientist never reveals their secrets.” Donnie loosened the tie on the giant yellow bandana he’d wrapped over top of his purple one. He yanked the whole charade, complete with a poofy, gray bun of hair peeking out from the back, off his head and replaced it with the comfort of his familiar goggles. Donnie tapped the side, adjusting the noise input features to something more tolerable.

“I thought that was magicians, who don’t reveal their secrets …” Mikey mused, looking behind Donnie as though he were hoping someone to have followed the softshell. 

“Michael, that’s – *sigh* – Anyways, I got Casey’s phone.” Donnie stated. He showcased the device, turning it on and simply swiping up to unlock it. A backlog of unopened notifications filled the screen in tidy rows. 

“But no CJ?” Raph asked. He also looked up, over the top of the dumpster all three of them were hiding behind. The remnants of the night’s earlier rain still dripped from the fire escapes that stretched up the alley walls, falling in droplets that discolored Raph’s bandana and echoed in the alleyway puddles. 

“No CJ,” Donnie confirmed. “Just his phone, which I had to convince the lady who found it to even give to me! She really did not believe that I was Junior’s worried Grandmother.”

Mikey frowned, “I told you, I could have bust out the waterworks and helped get it back faster.” He sighed, trying to look over Donnie’s shoulder to see what he could see of the notifications on Casey’s phone. “You should have let Dr. Feelings come with you.” 

“I was the only one who thought ahead enough to bring a disguise in the first place. Thank. You. Very much!” Donnie grumbled.  “And I managed to convince her all on my own just fine that I was * quote-unquote* Casey’s very concerned Grandmother out looking for him when he didn’t come home on time, and not some creepy old lady showing up randomly knocking on her door. I showed her that the SnappleChat app on the Banana Phone shows the location of a user's last post on GPS. That fact unnerved her a little, but she at least conceded it made sense for me to show up at her door specifically.”

Mikey huffed, “I could have been Casey’s cosplaying cousin, or something. Did the lady say anything about Casey? Did she see him?”

Donnie’s irritated expression fell back into something more somber. “No, she didn’t have much to say about Casey. She saw him trip in a puddle, and tried to help him. But, according to her, he ran away scared. Then he dropped his phone. She was going to drop it off with the police in the morning.” 

He shimmed the rest of the way out of the Granny disguise. Donnie kept the whole getup in his utility shell, which was the lightest shell of his collection. With his real shell still sensitive to reopening the myriad of healing scars that snaked across the surface, this utility shell was the only one he could comfortably wear outside the Lair. Donnie took a scant second to neatly fold the disguise down for storage, and Mikey took the chance to swipe Casey’s phone out of Donnie’s hands.  

Donnie sighed but let Mikey scroll through the messages. Donnie shoved the disguise in one of his shell’s empty containment spaces. Raph peered down over Mikey’s shoulder, both he and Mikey wearing similar faces of deep worry. 

Donnie watched them, and pulled up the display on his gauntlet so he could scan the phone’s memory. He shook his head; every single one of his family was going to end up with a ‘Raph Chasm’ at this rate. Donnie didn’t count himself in that statistic.

“Leo was right,” Raph grumbled, asking Mikey for the phone with a silent gesture. Mikey handed it to him, and Raph continued scrolling while squinting at the small screen. “Not a one of these texts ‘ave been read yet.”

“If Casey wasn’t with his phone, then where do you think he could be?” Mikey asked, fidgeting with one of his hoodie strings.

“And you said the lady saw him running scared? Was someone chasin’ him?” Raph asked, frustration and concern biting through the words.

Donnie grabbed Casey’s phone from Raph the second the snapper’s attention shifted. He immediately began flipping through the location settings and recent activity, eyes darting between the array of texts to Casey from Leo, from April, and then from Mikey and Raph when the search squad had gone up to the surface to do a quick check in. 

“I don’t know, but I can see if his tracker picked up any abnormal heart rates indicating he was running, and I can see where he was.” Donnie set the phone to sleep mode and tapped through several menus on his cuff until he pulled up a history log for the whole family’s trackers. He turned off the data points for everyone’s except Casey’s, and Casey’s phone. He ran an algorithm to display data from the last twenty-four hours. Mikey and Raph huddled close, watching the line of Casey’s journey as he flitted around the Lair. Casey and his phone stayed in the same place, but the data showed odd moments where Casey’s tracker would flicker out of existence for a couple seconds before coming back online. 

The lag was never long enough to alert Donnie’s computers that there was any issue. Donnie didn’t like that and made a note to check the code that handled the timing delay.    

“What’s that?” Mikey asked, pointing to one such interruption from the middle of the day. 

“Probably when the problems with his tracker started, at least today,” Donnie said, watching the progression of the data. 

“That’s around the time I was making that caramel —” Mikey said quietly.

“You mean that hard-as-a-rock toffee?” Donnie asked. 

“Yeah,” Mikey said. “Casey helped. He said he had a headache.”

“A headache?” Donnie wondered, quite loudly. “Hasn’t he had a lot of headaches the last two weeks?”

Mikey only nodded. 

The line of Casey’s activity moved away from the Lair about an hour and a half before the Jupiter Jim promo was set to start. Raph, Donnie, and Mikey watched Casey leave to go to the surface, where he stopped in a part of the city that was currently off limits, in ruins according to Donnie’s up-to-date map. 

A place the News stations called “The Dead Zone”.

“Why did he go there?” Raph mused. 

No one answered. No one had any answers. Casey’s tracker flickered severely, offline for several minutes while his phone moved. His heart rate – when the data came through between the flickering – showed higher than his usual resting or walking rate. The tracker flickered off and on as Casey darted around, tracked by his phone’s location, deeper into the city, before it glitched out altogether. Casey’s phone stopped moving shortly after, then moved a very short distance before stopping in the apartment building where they’d just retrieved it from. 

“Well, that doesn’t tell us much of anything,” Mikey complained. 

“No, but it does tell me that Casey’s tracker has been on the fritz and getting worse,” Donnie groaned. “And that, yes, something happened that made his heart rate climb.”

“And,” Raph added, “That Casey lost his phone at some point in all that.”

Donnie and Mikey nodded. 

“Do ya think he went back home?” Raph asked. “If he escaped whatever was after him?”

“We don’t know for sure he was actually being chased,” Donnie stated. 

“Back to the Lair? Maybe!” Mikey chirped, trying to sound hopeful. He pulled out his phone and began to type, but Donnie was faster. 

A ping sounded in the group chat a moment later. 

   BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : We located Junior’s phone. But no sign of him yet. Has he returned to the Lair at all?

April, apparently, was glued to her phone on the other side. The .. typing .. indicator flashed by her name in an instant.

   AyyyyyyPRIL : Just his phone????!!??!?!  

   BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : Yes, just his phone.

   Neon~Leon : No he’s not here 

                        No lcuk with the tracker?

Donnie scoffed at the missed typo but replied anyway. 

   BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : No luck. The signal is still not picking up . 

   LouJitsuFan1 : Do you think the weather is affecting it, Purple?  

“The weather, AUGH no, it isn’t, Papa,” Donnie mumbled out loud in regard to his Dad’s concern, already typing a retort.

   BoomShaka-ShakeIT9000 : The weather SHOULDN’T be affecting it. Either way, we need to regroup and form a plan.  

    Neon~Leon : :( See you here then

Donnie closed the group chat and turned to his brothers. 

“So what do we do now?” Mikey asked. 

“What I said in the chat, Mikey,” Donnie said. “Regroup at the Lair, form a plan for finding Casey. Maybe he’ll come back in that time, and maybe by then I’ll also figure out what’s wrong with his tracker. If he did run into trouble, we can figure out what to do about it. But we don’t know where to start just sitting topside.”

Mikey opened his mouth to protest, but Raph cut him off, “Mikey, Donnie’s right. We don’t have a plan yet. We’ll find him, but we gotta talk to the fam first. Form a plan, together.”

Mikey sighed, but nodded in agreement. 

The group turned to climb the closest first escape, to run home the shortest route across the rooftops, when a voice ripped through the quiet tension lingering in the alley. All the turtles jumped to defensive stances.

Huginn, backlit by the street lights, flew toward them in relief.

“Turtles! Oh, I’m so glad I finally found you! I’ll have to let Muninn know. But, just the three of you? Where’s Blue? You know, we can swap stories later. Right now, I have a very very very big and important message to deliver with your names on it, from Big Mama herself!”

*

“Don’t tell me you’re actually going to listen to her,” Splinter grumbled with distrust over the video call. “I’m just as worried for future boy, but how do we know she actually has him?”

“Casey can take care of himself,” Leo argued, “I’m sure he’s fine. Mostly. But also, there’s no proof she doesn’t have him either.” He folded his hands in front of him, concentrating and thinking. Muninn landed on his shoulder, holding a corndog and nibbling happily. Leo tensed but didn’t bat an eye.

~ * It is our first lead for knowin’ where he is. Or could be, *~ Raph said, ~* I don’t think she’d just lie about Case being at the Nexxus Hotel.* ~

April scoffed. “Are we talking about the same spider lady? Big Mama, ultimate liar supreme?”

~ *Well,* ~ Donnie offered, ~ *She did know to come to us with information on his whereabouts. So she was able to figure out he knew us.  She’d only be able to gather that if he had landed in her web…* ~

“...and she studied him like a bug,” Leo said, none too happy about it. “He was wearing our symbol, if he had his Donnie-pod on him. I didn’t see it in his room.”

~ *So Big Mama has Casey Jr.* ~ Raph said. ~ *And it seems like she wants to work out some kind of deal to let him go?* ~

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Leo said, “Her deals are never straightforward. You can’t teach an old spider new tricks, BUT, I know her tricks. So —” 

“NO,” five unanimous voices sounded on both sides of the call. 

Leo looked around at his family, gesturing with aggravation, “Oh, c’mon! I’m already healed, mostly. You know I’m up for this!”

~ *Your leg is still in a cast,* ~ Donnie pointed out.

~ *And Barry says your breathing still isn’t up to snuff,* ~ Raph added.

“Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about?” Leo bemoaned. He leaned forward hard enough it upset Muninn from his shoulder perch, and the Goyle flapped to gain balance and relocate to the back of the chair. “It’s a boot-brace, by the way. Not even a cast anymore. And this is Big Mama! You need all the eyes and ears you can get when negotiating with her.”  

~ *The deal does count on all, uh, four of you being there…* ~ Huginn said sheepishly. 

“Thank you!” Leo enunciated. 

~ *The three of us can handle that fidgety spider,* ~ Raph snapped, ~ *End of story.* ~

“What about Mikey?” Leo asked. “His grip strength still isn’t fully back yet, and he gets to go?”

Mikey was quiet as everyone’s eyes shifted his direction. He took a deep, measured breath. ~ *Leo, I’m not the one whose shell is still clamped in place.* ~

Leo opened his mouth, inhaling to argue, but shut it with a snap and sat back hard. So hard, in fact, he had a hard time hiding the visible wince as his shell made contact with the chair. 

Muninn stopped eating his corn dog and looked down at Leo with concern. Leo’s brothers took the opportunity to drive their point home. 

~ *Leo, if something does go south with the negotiation’, we don’t want both you and Casey potentially trapped and hurt,* ~ Raph said, trying to be kind. 

~ *We have yet to see what Big Mama even wants, anyway,* ~ Donnie said. ~ *We won’t do anything without checking in with you guys first. Rest assured of that.* ~

Leo sighed. “Fine. Go talk to Big Mama.” He sat up slowly, and added evenly, “But if something happens, don’t think you can stop me from jumping in.”

* * * 

Muninn opted to stay at the Lair, to keep an eye on Leo and maybe talk him out of trying to help, while Huginn accompanied the other three turtles to the Grand Nexxus Hotel.   

There was little fanfare to their arrival in the lobby, and the group of them were immediately ushered into the elevator without any sort of fuss. It was clear that Big Mama was expecting them, which further cemented the proof that CJ had indeed fallen into her trappings. Somehow. 

Donnie tried to get a reading from Big Mama’s systems as they waited in her office, to see what he could discover before she joined them. But he found out the hard way that her tech system was rigged to not accept anything but a specific kind of adapter. The Genius-Built Adaptable-Morph-Adapter (patent pending) that Donnie plugged into the oddly obvious computer on Big Mama’s desk only served him back a nasty shock. He yelped and stepped back, shaking out his hands to dispel the residual sparks of energy. 

“Raph told ya not ta’ do that,” Raph stated flatly. He was pacing in front of the large window that served as the furthest wall of the office. 

Donnie sighed and fixed his brother with a frustrated scowl. “You never know if you don’t try.”

Raph grunted a wordless affirmation. 

The office settled into silence. Mikey was pondering a wall of books. 

“Do you think Casey’s okay?” he wondered. 

“The kid will be fine,” Huginn said confidently. “He’s got the best doctors looking out for him. He was a bit under the weather when I saw him earlier, but Big Mama’s got the best of the best around. And that includes doctors.”

“Casey’s hurt?!” Raph shouted. 

“You saw him? You did?” Mikey blurted. 

“You never said he was injured,” Donnie hissed. 

Huginn suddenly felt very small as the brothers stared him down. He flew up high, perching atop a statuette on a shelf, out of their reach. 

“I may have forgotten that detail,” Huginn muttered. 

“Well, it sure would have been helpful to know beforehand!” Donnie spat. Anything else he was about to say was cut off as the door to the office swung open and Big Mama strutted in, talking to one of her aides who was following on her heels. 

She looked agitated, whispering in a high, clicking pitch that Donnie couldn’t quite decipher. Big Mama stopped suddenly, noticing the turtles, standing on the offense against her presence with glares to match.  

“Turtley-boos!” Big Mama cooed, “I’ve been a bit preoccupied. Apologiessss for the delay in your appointment. No one told me you’d arrived yet!” Her head turned slowly to the aide, who shrank back apologetically. Big Mama sighed, easing her shoulders into a more relaxed stance despite grinning through her teeth. She waved, and the aide scampered off, shutting the door behind them with a soft *click*. 

Big Mama faced the turtles, and gestured wide with her hands. “It’s so good to see you again! Especially after all that brimstone and fuss. I heard you had a hand against it.” She smiled, gaze scouring the room. “I’d hoped all four of you would come by to pay me a precious overdue visit, but, I don’t see the bumbling-blue one…?”

Big Mama hesitated a scant second, and asked sweetly, “I didn’t miss a detail from invasion day, did I?”   

“That’s none of your business,” Raph said, “And not why we’re here.”

Big Mama blinked. “Of course. How presum-diddily-uptuous of me. So straightforward today. You’re here about your human friend.”  

“We want to see him,” Mikey said icily, ready to unleash Dr. Delicate Touch at the drop of a pin. 

“That can be arranged,” Big Mama said. 

“Why is he here in the first place?” Raph barked. 

Big Mama looked taken aback, as though the snapper had accused her of being nothing more than an impolite host. “What are you insinuating? If you’re going to assume things, you should speak plainly,” she hissed. 

Raph scowled but said evenly, “Why did you take our friend?”

Big Mama laughed. “I didn’t take him. He came to me .”

“You expect us to believe that?” Donnie exclaimed. “That a friend of ours would just pop by your doorstep for a friendly chat?”

Big Mama smiled at the purple clad turtle. “No, but I wouldn’t mind if your clan visited the Nexxus on more … casual terms more often. For a nice cup of afternoon tea, perhaps.” 

“Your messengers didn’t invite us for tea. They also didn’t tell us our friend was hurt until a second ago” Donnie stated plainly, “We need some sort of confirmation he’s being tended to, at bare minimum, before we agree to talk to you about anything else.”

“Naturally. Can’t expect to pull any cobwebs over your eyes,” Big Mama said tiredly, still smiling all 5r way through . She snapped, and Huginn startled. He jumped off the shelf and opened a little drawer, pulling out a small organic data pad before flying to deposit the device in Big Mama’s hand. 

The spider Yokai held the device, staring at it intensely. A brief shine crossed her glasses, which was echoed in a shimmer from the device. It unfolded, and cast a display of light into the air similar to a holo-screen. It showed a feed of the room Casey was in. The turtles huddled close together in order to see. Casey was in a comfortable bed, hooked up to an odd array of not-quite standard medical equipment. 

Raph’s shoulders relaxed slightly. But Donnie had questions. 

“Is that equipment regulation? And why is he hooked up to all that?” He tore his scrutinies away from the projection for a brief moment to fix the spider with a withering look, then turned back to studying the projected image. 

After a beat, Mikey asked, “What happened to him?”

“Quick on the ceaseless question-arios, aren’t you lot,” Big Mama chuckled. “Yes, it’s all up to code. Yokai code, mind that meddling brain of yours. He is, unfortunately, down with something of a nasty bug. It’s lucky your little friend stumbled into my care; his condition is quite of the mystic variety.”

From the puzzled looks she received, Big Mama assumed she’d struck a useful vein of concern. “You didn’t know he was sick?”

Mikey frowned. Donnie seemed to ponder a thousand questions. Raph spoke up. “Is he, like, alright? How sick is he?”

Big Mama smiled with sympathy. “He’s alright, love. My staff are well equipped to handle all sorts of mystical medical mishaps. Including whatever your friend is working through their system. He just needs a smidgeon of rest.” A flick of her wrist, and the data pad curled up, shrinking the projected image into oblivion.

The turtles turned their expressions fully back to Big Mama as she walked around her desk and took a seat in the high backed chair. She rested her elbows on the wood, and motioned for the turtles to also take a seat in the three chairs that seemed to materialize out of thin air. They stayed standing. Big Mama sighed but maintained her smile.

“However,” Big Mama said, “It seems you don’t want any friend of yours to have an indefinite - even if luxurious - stay in my grand establishment.”

“What mystic illness is he even sick with?” Donnie wondered, asking more for Leo’s sake than his own. Leo would want to know what to expect when they all returned, and that included anything that had to do with the med bay. 

Big Mama pursed her lips, pondering her answer. “That is an answer I will provide you with in due time. I will provide it, but for the meantime it’s best he simply stays resting –”

“CJ doesn’t belong here!” Mikey snapped, interrupting, “He belongs home, with his family!” 

Big Mama’s eyes snapped toward him, absorbing the name drop like a voracious predator. Mikey realized too late that she didn’t have Casey’s name, until then. Casey didn’t exactly walk around wearing bracelets with his name spelled out, though Mikey had offered to make him one the other day. He looked down in aggravation for a moment, before looking back up to return Big Mama’s sharp stare. 

“So, it’s CJ,” Big Mama said, “I’ll make sure his medical charts are updated.” She looked at her nails. Raph took a step toward the desk, and she looked up.

“Like Mikey said, he belongs back home,” Raph said. “Anything your doctors or whatever can do, we can do just as well to help him get better. Mystic or nah.”

Big Mama hummed. “Don’t work yourselves into a tizzy over it; he can go home as soon as we’re done here,” she said carefully, “But the care he did receive thus far wasn’t cheap. You at least owe me for that. You wouldn’t want to fall into debt with the Nexxus, now, would you?”  

The turtles shifted on their feet, alert. 

Raph snarled. “How much are we talking?”

Big Mama leaned forward. “I have … a favor in mind. A favor, with abso-resolutely zero questions asked.”

* * *

Casey Jr. had never actually been inside the Grand Nexxus Hotel proper. Sure, Master Leonardo had shown him where the emergency entrances were topside, in case he ever got stranded and needed to get back underground fast. And the resistance had needed to move a large amount of supplies from the furthest storerooms beneath the hotel and deep inside the abandoned Battle Nexus once, which Casey had been tasked to help with. But the whole top of the hotel had long been smashed aside by the time Casey was born. 

There had been no reason to explore what was left of the hotel. No sane reason, at least. But now, wandering the maze of the Grand Nexxus in its heyday, Casey wished that maybe he had decided to explore the old ruins just a little. 

Casey had just enough presence of mind to scout for clues about where he’d woken up. It hadn’t taken too long to figure out he was in the Grand Nexxus Hotel proper. There were pamphlets in a tiny kiosk placed in a wall nook several floors down from where he’d escaped from. The papers advertised popular restaurants in the hotel and in the surrounding blocks on the Hidden City level of the establishment. The Grand Nexxus Hotel was highlighted in an array of stars and a “You Are Here” sign. The pamphlet encouraged guests to “ Enjoy their stay! ” 

Casey couldn’t say he was enjoying this all that much. 

He was having a hard time piecing together how he got there in the first place. He remembered being in the ruins, and having a headache. He needed to get 𝚑⃫𝚘⃫𝚖⃫𝚎⃫ home again. The surface was 𝚍⃫𝚊⃫𝚗⃫𝚐⃫𝚎⃫𝚛⃫𝚘⃫𝚞⃫𝚜⃫ unpredictable. Casey vaguely remembered rain, and lights passing quickly. There had been … someone in pink. He had … run? Toward the Nexxus Hotel, a hidden entrance. Then Big Mama was there. 

But that was where everything ended. 

Had she done something to alter his memory? 

No, that couldn’t be right. He hadn’t met her in this time yet, but even as a stranger, Casey was certain she wouldn’t just toy with people’s heads like that. 

She’d been a key strategist in the resistance, a mystic genius when it came to the Krang tech, and how to ward against it with a blend of witchy insight. When Casey had wondered how she knew so much, Master Leonardo simply had said; “Lets just say that over a thousand years ago, before the Krang were shut away the first time, everything they left behind became the foundation of Yokai technology. And Big Mama is more than well versed in old Yokai tech.” Yokai machines and whatever the Krang had dragged out of the Prison Dimension were of course no longer compatible, thank the Crying Titan. But the basics were enough to know how to get around Krang detection. Master Donatello had a strained collaboration effort with Big Mama in that tech department. Donatello tolerated it, as long as it kept the resistance safe. Big Mama was loyal to the resistance, having laid her claim to much of its success. But beyond that, she seemed to genuinely care, oddly enough, for every citizen the resistance saved. War created an unfortunate number of orphans, and when not operating the strategy table beside Master Leonardo, she was most apt to be found in the daycare.

Casey didn’t know who she was before the invasion. He’d hoped to meet her in this timeline under better circumstances.

‘Are you sure she didn’t upset something?’ a part of his subconscious asked, biting at the same time as a wave of distorted nausea rippled over him. Casey buckled under the pain, struggling to stay upright. He heard footsteps, and ducked into the shadows behind the nearest potted plant. Several bellhops ran past in a perpendicular hallway. 

He crouched there several moments, a strange tingling warping his perception enough to make him lean into the question. 

Would Big Mama have done something to his memory? And why did he feel so awful?

He had no other clues. Nothing beside gray spaces in his head, places where he couldn’t tell what he was supposed to be seeing. What he was supposed to have experienced. Where he was supposed to be. The memory of the headache stretched further than his recollection of … wherever here was. And now he was in a strange place that may as well be a maze, alone, without his gear… 爪卂丂ㄒ乇尺 ㄥ乇ㄖ几卂尺ᗪㄖ would be upset he’d lost it, but more happy to see him in one piece. 

Another headache pang shot fire and ice through every last inch of his nerves. Casey curled into himself, still hiding behind the plant, willing the pain to pass. The pain clawed into his thoughts, ensnaring them, erasing them until all he could do was beg for it to end. Make the pain end, please. Please.  

He just wanted to go home. He wanted to see his Dad again.

The fire ebbed enough until just the tips of Casey’s fingers tingled, like they’d fallen asleep and his limbs were waking up again. But he felt okay enough to try and stand again. As he did, he swayed, shivering against the fever as he clung to the giant planter pot for support. 

As he collected his thoughts, Casey wondered with alarm – where was he, again?  

A hint of recent memory called to him fuzzily, at the edge of his consciousness. He scrambled mentally after it, but it vanished in the fog. 

All he remembered was that he had to move, and the best route was down. And, for some reason, he shouldn’t be seen.  

Casey ventured out again, clinging to the shadows as he stumbled his way down floor by floor. He had several close calls with bellhops and other guests, but he avoided them all by a hair. He ignored for the most part the ache in his bones that begged him to rest, told him there was something wrong and that moving was only making things worse. But, Casey told himself, he’d be allowed to stop only once he was home. At home he could attend to the throbbing headache, the incessant chill. He just had to get home. 

Home. 

Where was home?

Casey stopped in the dark hallway. Most of the floors so far had been illuminated, but this one was dim, all the lights off except for a few wall sconces. He had ducked under some tape marked with runes and words, come to think of it. But he wasn’t concerned with the dark. He was trying to remember where home was. 

The first images that came to mind were distorted, distressed. It was a memory, less a series of rooms and more the people that inhabited them. Casey saw the resistance base. He shook his head, remembering that the last he’d actually seen of it the place had been in flames. 

How had he forgotten? He wasn’t there anymore. He was in the past, in a new branch of reality because he’d managed to change time itself. 

But, where was home here?

A sharp ray of pinkish light cut through the hallway. Startled by the brightness, his brain screaming Danger Danger that color means DANGER , Casey jumped to crouch behind a pile of construction equipment. His breath came in short panicked spurts, and he focused on trying to calm it down into silence. 

There was a shuffle down the hall, by the light. 

“Floor 37 is clear, no signs here,” a voice said. Footsteps retreated, and the bright pink light abruptly slipped shut, leaving Casey quite suddenly in stark silence.   

Unwelcome and unhelpful, a thought crossed Casey’s mind; ‘ When the gateway closed, when *I* closed the portal, was the darkness Leo saw on the other side this … quiet? ‘

He’d been to the Prison Dimension, when they got Leo out. It was cold, suffocating; he knew the answer. But, he’d never actually asked Leo about what it was like when the gateway shut, what happened right after. 

Did Leo think about Casey’s actions, in those first bitter moments? He’d asked, *begged*, for Casey to leave him there. But Casey had to wonder, did he regret that he’d asked the child soldier who never disobeyed orders, except for once, to pull the plug?  

Casey sure regretted it. Even as the world spun on in safety. 

A shiver raced up Casey’s spine. ‘ Don’t think about it. Not right now. Just get out of here, get out, and find the Lair. Keep going down, you’ll figure this out. Sensei taught you how to improvise. Stick to the shadows, and this will all be over soon. ‘

Casey kept moving. Floor after floor. The headache returned again and again with vengeance. He forgot whether he was going up or down, once or twice. He lost track of where he was, placing one foot in front of the other as he rubbed his arms in vain attempt to dispel his shivers. 

A voice shouted, and Casey realized he had been spotted. He didn’t recall why this was bad, but he took off in an uncoordinated sprint anyways.  

Casey was aware that several others had given chase. He careened around a corner, yanking the cloth off a bellhop trolley and upsetting the contents of used dishes onto the floor in an attempt to slow down his pursuers. 

He kept running, the repetitive hotel room doors blurring past him in an indecipherable stream. He heard a shout behind him again, and he looked back over his shoulder, neglecting to pay attention to what was in front of him. 

Quite suddenly his forward momentum crashed to a halt as he collided with another person. They both tumbled, which did no favors for Casey’s spinning vision. He lay on the floor, dazed, staring up at the ceiling. 

A face leaned over him, a young woman with sharp black eyes and a buzzcut.       

* * *

“You can’t be serious. They took the deal?!” Casey shouted into the com. 

~ * I KNOW! Tell me about it, * ~   Leo grumbled back. ~ * And they STILL wouldn’t let me come! * ~

“Heh, I’m on their side for this one,” Casey retorted, ignoring Leo’s very loud and disappointed  ~ * HEY! * ~   over the coms. “That’s where I come in. Did Purple guy say what else he wanted me to look out for, besides the kid?”

~ * I mean, Donnie never passes up the chance to gather data, but we need to make sure Casey - and the others if we know Big Mama at all - are okay first before we do anything. * ~ April said. She sighed, ~ * Thank you for responding on such short notice, Cass. We’d go ourselves, but we’re A) Not in any shape for that, and B) Big Mama likely expects us to try something while the others run her little errand. She won’t be expecting or planning for you. * ~  

Casey smiled, sitting atop an outcropping of a building near the Grand Nexxus. She adjusted her hood and face covering, black like the night to blend in all the better. “I regret that I’m familiar with Big Mama’s ‘errands’. Did the other three give you any clues where she’s sending them?”

April scoffed. ~ * No! Donnie just told us that they were sent to the docks in the Hidden City, where they’d meet her contact and be directed from there. * ~ 

“How long ago was that?” Casey asked. 

~ * Two hours. * ~ Leo stated. ~ * Donnie promised to check in every hour on the dot. But we haven’t heard from them since the docks. * ~

Casey Jones dared to wonder, “Those twerps didn’t get themselves captured as well, did they?”

~ * My sons should know better than to fall into traps this obvious. * ~ Splinter cut in. ~ * But, just in case, that’s why you’re going in. I can join if necessary, but you’ll be faster than my creaky knees would allow me to be. And, as just one, you can avoid detection easier. * ~ 

Casey nodded. “Go in, snoop around for what’s on the up and up, and call back to let you know before we do anything else, right?”

~ * Exactly. * ~ Leo said, an odd layer of seriousness to his voice that Casey wasn’t used to hearing. ~ * We’re counting on you. * ~ 

“Well, you’ve called the right person,” Casey grinned. “I’ll check in on the set rendezvous time.”

~ * You better. * ~ Leo said. The com beeped silent. 

Casey finished adjusting her wrappings for stealth, and leapt off into the dark. It was the wee hours of the night now. Most of the city was asleep, but the lights were ever bright and lively. Casey was grateful for the quieter atmosphere, giving her time to think before she snuck her way into the Nexxus Hotel. 

She had met the kid-Casey on a few occasions. He seemed to clam up around her, with a strange mix of shy awe and modest acknowledgement. She’d seen him spar with a punching bag, heard a couple of his stories from the future. The kid was a force, she could tell. She hoped to see him in action at some point, work as teammates. April had mentioned that maybe he should help Jones on her patrols. Pizza Supreme knows it would be good for the balled up nerves the kid was clearly holding onto. But he’d declined quickly with some excuse about the invasion still being too fresh. 

Casey never expected to have to help bust him out of Big Mama’s pincers. 

The Foot had dealings with the spider on many occasions. Casey had been in the Hotel for many such arrangements. Aside from the Hamatos, Casey was the only other person in their circle who would know the layout of the Hotel best. For snooping, and getting out undetected. And Casey was glad to be of service. 

She owed the Hamatos. They had welcomed her with open arms after she left The Foot, when she found herself without a social net for the first time in her life. Splinter had given her advice and training, a new chance to start fresh. The least she could do was help them secure the safety of one of their own. 

Busting into the Hotel was a piece of cake. The bellhops were always preoccupied with some business or other, and she had no trouble avoiding them. Big Mama’s wards for access to the upper floors, however, had proved a bit tricky. It seemed the Yokai had taken some precautions in the wake of the invasion, but Casey was able to snake past the cautionary measures by the skin of her teeth. She knew the patterns. The Foot had trained with similar sigils, after all.

Figuring out where to start looking, however, was much harder to pin down. She looked for an hour before finding what floor the medical ward was on. When she got there, the stoic halls felt like a death trap. Every movement threatened to echo off the pristine walls and shiny floors. But Casey eventually found CJ’s clipboard … and his empty room.

Leo and April were just as frustrated with that discovery. Casey had to hush them over the coms as she found a place in the vents to make the check-in call, from a corner in between two spheres of data jamming signals. 

~ * Did Big Mama move him? * ~ Leo groaned. ~ * Donnie said that Case’ was sick, and that Big Mama only told them that he needed rest. She wouldn’t say anything else. * ~ He hissed out a sigh. ~ * This doesn’t make any sense! * ~ 

“I don’t know! And don’t shout if you don’t want to get me caught,” Casey snipped.

~ * I thought you said you were too good to get caught. * ~ April teased. 

“I am,” Casey assured. “But, the fact he wasn’t where Big Mama claimed; I don’t like this a bit. She’s up to something. I’m going to look around for more intel. I’ll get back to you, with answers.” 

Casey lurked at the fringes of bellhop conversations for the next half hour. None of them had anything to say about the errand the turtles were sent on of course – that was most definitely something that only Big Mama and maybe one or two others knew about. But Casey was listening more for notes on prisoners, specifically for human prisoners.   

She caught wind that the staff were on the lookout for a loose human on the upper floors. 

That had to be the kid. Casey smiled. Big Mama hadn’t moved him. Of course he’d snuck off on his own, the clever shared namesake warrior that he was. Caseys just had that instinct in their blood. Now the job was finding him before Big Mama did. 

As she moved along, eyes and ears sharp, her hood pulled back so she could have a better sense of her surroundings, Casey became aware that the bellhops were becoming more and more on edge. They shouted, running in clusters of three instead of walking with confident, solo purpose. The activity on floors 25 and 26 was palpable, and Cass was hard pressed to stay out of sight. Her heart pounded, knowing that she was close and that it was only a matter of time before they found the kid. She needed to press on, be faster, be quicker. 

She briefly wondered why the kid hadn’t been able to fully avoid detection. Even knowing he was sick with something, he had still been trained by ninjas from the future. Casey’s mind swam with bitter memories of fighting through sickness in the harder days of her youth, being told to train, push through and swallow her pain. It would make her stronger. She shook her head, willing the memory to pass. Pain was gain. But April had taught her that it was okay to rest. Rest, before your body took the rest for you. 

An unmistakable holler around the corner thrust Casey’s attention back to the present. Gus, Big Mama’s trusted scent-hound, called out aggressive warnings. 

Casey didn’t have much time to react before a blur rammed right into her. The two of them tumbled a few paces before crashing to a stop, and Casey finally got a good look at who she’d managed to trip on accident. 

Casey stared down at Casey Junior, who looked worse for wear and incredibly dazed. Cass could tell he was flushed with fever, face red and eyes unfocused as he gazed dizzily at the ceiling. 

Casey ignored the shouts down the hall for a moment, overcome with concern for the kid’s condition. 

“Hey, kid, are you alright?” she asked.

He didn’t quite seem to hear her, but her voice earned his attention anyway. He squinted at her, confused and relieved both at once. 

The hallway faded out of Jones’ focus altogether as he feebly asked something that neither April nor Leo or Splinter had prepared her for on this rescue scouting mission, thing.  

Junior looked up and mumbled; 

“Mom?”

Chapter Text

Had she not already been seated, Casey may very well have considered herself floored. 

CJ’s eyes fluttered shut, the kid passing out in an exhausted slump on the ground. 

“Woah, hey!” Casey said, quickly shaking her head to clear the lingering shock. “We’ve both gotta be awake if we’re gonna get outta here.” 

She cupped her hands on either side of Junior’s face, smacking his cheeks in effort to rouse him back to wakefulness. But her efforts were fruitless, CJ barely twitching in response. Casey cursed under her breath, feeling exactly how hot the kid’s skin was. She moved a hand to his forehead, frowning at the warmth radiating off it. 

A light shuffle, a shifting of weight, drew Casey’s attention up into the hallway. 

Gus was on all fours, stopped a good 8 feet away but poised in a fine point from his snout to his tail. His lips curled over a frozen snarl as he watched Casey, waiting for her to make a move. Behind him a gaggle of bellhops stood ready. They glanced between each other anxiously, gazes steadily returning to the ex Foot Ninja they all recognized. Casey had scuffled with enough bellhops on previous visits she could proudly say she had something of a reputation. The bellhops here didn’t seem exactly eager to test her on that. 

A finger snap cracked the air, and physically parted the crowd.

“If you’re all quite done staring, I think there’s been more than enough kerfuffle for one measly night,” Big Mama chirped, striding through the created path. She stopped next to Gus, patting him on the head twice, and the enormous canine Yokai simmered into a sit. He still fixed a steely stare in Casey’s direction. 

Big Mama assessed the dilemma before her, whatever frustration she’d been harboring moments ago exchanged for contemplation. She clapped her hands in front of herself, and the bellhops in waiting dispersed, leaving just herself, her loyal Yokai hound, and the humans. She took another couple of steps forward, extending a friendly hand down to Casey. “I think it’s time the Mothers had a chat.”

Casey scrambled to stand in front of the unconscious CJ, ignoring the hand extended from Big Mama. She stood tall, chest puffed out in indignation. “Mother?! Whatever gave you *that* impression?”  

Big Mama straightened, withdrawing her hand with a slightly insulted expression. “Oh, you don’t have to hide it. I do admit I’m colored a weensy bit surprised.”

“But I’m not – !”  Casey snapped, “I don’t –!” 

She glanced down at CJ. Big Mama followed the movement. 

“Are you telling me that I *misheard*?” Big Mama sneered. Her eyes narrowed. “It isn’t often children don’t know their own Mother.”

Casey sighed with exerted force. “ Augh , no, but I don’t think he — look, the kid’s sick! Do you know how bad his fever is?! Nobody says a thing in their right mind with their brain cooking like that.”

She crouched low, arms poised for the offense as she hissed, “He needs to go home, and be around the comfort of his family! Not locked up in your fancy tower.”

Gus growled at her and hunched, claws digging into the carpet in anticipation of the pounce. Big Mama smacked him lightly with the back of her hand and muttered sharply under her breath, “ Gus, the carpet .” Gus swallowed the rest of his snarl, and heaved a puff of air out of his nose. 

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Big Mama crooned. “You think I’ve just been, what, holding a guest up in a cold, frigidaire, damp stone room? When they’re in a condition like that?” She shook her head in worry and clicked her tongue against her teeth. “No, Big Mama ensures that the Grand Nexxus is a warm happy haven for all, Yokai … and human alike.”

She took a measured pause, Casey glowering at her the whole while. 

“I’ve had my healers so carefully monitoring his mysterious mystic malady, until the daring dear snuck out. Poor soul is in no condition to get very far,” she gestured to the teen on the floor. “I’d sent my staff to find him, to tuck him back safe and snug as a bug in rug, before the turtles come to collect.”

Casey scoffed, poorly analyzing her chances. “Well, the turtles are taking too long. And I’m here in their stead.”   

She leapt, all sharp fists and fury. Big Mama stepped aside, dodging with ease despite her high heels. Gus met Casey with mirrored ferocity, nabbing her midair and spinning her around into a wall. Casey caught herself on the wall with well tuned, springlike reflexes, pushing off and dropping into a squat to avoid the giant paw swinging at her head. Gus’ hand made contact with the wall, too slow, while the smaller, lithe human launched herself onto his back. He snapped and twisted, but she was already hollering and pulling back his ears. 

“Oh for titular Titan’s sake ENOUGH! ” Big Mama shouted. Her voice rang and echoed down the hall. 

Gus and Casey froze their tussle, both staring at Big Mama with wide eyes. The Spider Yokai had picked CJ up off the floor, cradling him with effortless care despite her short stature. She shook her head at the other two as if they were nothing more than unruly children.   

“That’s better,” Big Mama said with a sigh. “I’m beyond tired of having to replace the wallpaper and carpet every timely-time there’s a dimbly disagreement between my staff and most welcome guests.” 

Casey grumbled and gave Gus’s ears another tug for good measure before jumping to the ground. Gus yelped and stalked away, heeling to Big Mama’s side. 

Casey caught her breath, her nerves still wired up on unspent adrenaline. She had a mission to finish. She’d be bringing CJ home, or else her name wasn’t Casey Jones. But Big Mama had the kid, and was currently holding all the cards. 

CJ’s face scrunched up and he stirred. Both Big Mama and Casey turned their attention toward the sound, and the friction in the air softened an increment. 

“He simply needs rest,” Big Mama said, her eyes studying the unconscious teen. “My healers have assured me that with proper rest he’ll heal up in a right jiffy. And I assured the turtles he’d be well cared for, until their return.” She looked up at Casey, suddenly, who stared back. “And they haven't, as of yet, returned.”

“So, what?” Casey contested, “You’re just going to hold him here until they get back?” 

It was an obvious question, which Big Mama smirked in the face of. “Not just him, Miss Jones. You’ve gone and stuck your nose all up in my business, stepped right in the middling middle of the whole ordeal.” She smiled, “I should thank you, actually; the dear would have kept running longer had he not had the fortune of finding a familiar face.”

The Yokai paused, her tone dipping toward something just shy of accusatory. “It does beg the question, though – how did you find your way in?”

Big Mama chuckled as Casey swallowed nervously. She continued, “Since you’re already here, it’d be a shame if you left so soon. I’m not so business-like as to separate family needlessly. Anyway, I did say us Mothers needed to have a nice chat. What the positively-perfect occasion to catch up!”

It took everything Casey had not to just bite, grab CJ, and run. But as Gus corralled her down the hall, falling in behind her and Big Mama as they walked along, Casey considered her odds of getting out of there with an unconscious person in tow. She would not get far, not with Big Mama aware of her starting position. 

Instead she just bit her tongue as she listened to Big Mama recount how the disturbances in roads on the surface were affecting the trade routes down in the Hidden City – which was severely upsetting the buffet cook’s menu options – as they wove through the halls. 

Casey was so not making that next rendezvous call time. 

* * *     

Leo really really did not enjoy being alone. 

Yes, he was often by himself in his room in recent days, happily reading his comics or scrolling on his phone at all times of the day. But he always kept the door open, listening to the telltale signs that everyone else was home. Mikey would make noise in the kitchen, not as much recently with his hands still fighting to regain grip strength; but the microwave timer would beep and the fridge would open and shut, the gas range stovetop would click as it ignited. The boosted bass of Donnie’s electronic Mood Tunes would reverb through the walls. Leo knew the sound of Raph’s footsteps by heart, and as soon as Leo had acclimated to their new home and committed the Lair layout to memory, he could always tell where the giant snapping turtle was.

But it was the wee hours of the morning, when everyone was asleep, that would set alarms off in Leo’s head. It seemed to be worse as of late. Leo tried to not think too hard about why that was. He usually walked a loop around the Lair, as quick as he could hampered by the boot brace, and once satisfied that everyone was still breathing and asleep (or working in Donnie’s case half the time), Leo could quiet his fears down just enough to catch a quick hour or two of sleep before Mikey was there announcing breakfast. 

Tonight, however, Leo knew he would not find anyone home. Well, okay, Dad was still there. And April was on the couch for the night, sticking around for moral support and the hope of updates. But Donnie’s lab was uncannily empty, the screensaver S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. icon bouncing around the same 5 screens. Leo watched it for an hour, until it squarely bounced off a corner. Mikey was not in his hammock. Raph was not clutching a stuffie close. And Casey Junior was still MIA. 

Leo sat on the edge of his bed in an exhausted hunch, bouncing his good leg as he glanced at his phone and the turtle-com he had slapped on his wrist earlier that night for the first time in three weeks. The silence stretched on. The little noises in the Lair echoed off the walls. Like a cold, dark place devoid of life. Leo stared into space, zoned in on a singular scratch in the floor of the train car as his mind swirled with plans and what-ifs and worries. The world around him faded. 

The fridge motor humming to life caused Leo to jump nearly out of his shell, heart hammering as he inhaled sharply. 

He wondered if this was how Raph felt when he was all alone. 

Well, Leo could wholeheartedly agree that it absolutely sucked . 

He sighed, glancing at the clock again. It was nearly 4:30, am, and Casey Jones — the First — was beyond late on her rendezvous. His brother’s call was even more overdue. And since Casey’s last check in, informing them that CJ was not in the medical ward, Leo had heard from exactly nobody. 

Leo grumbled and activated his com. “Captain Crescent Moon to the SS Starbolt. Anybody copy?”

Static greeted him.

He leaned over the speaker as it pulsed along to the sound of his voice. “Agent No Chill, this is Crescent Moon. Do you copy? Mission status update required, stat!”

Nothing but fuzz came over the intercom, until a bleary voice mumbled, ~ * And this is Agent Red Glasses, upset at being woken up at such an unholy hour. * ~ 

Leo heard the voice duplicate as it spoke, sounding both from the com and from the stairwell down to his room. He sheepishly looked up as April blearily leaned against his doorframe, rubbing her eyes and adjusting the edge of her bonnet.   

Leo offered his best smile. “Sorry, Apes. Didn't mean to wake you.”

April just squinted at him and sighed. “You haven’t sleep a wink yet, have you?”

Leo laughed, guilty. “What? No, I totally did.” He paused as April fixed him with a look of disappointment. “Okay, fine, I did try though, sheesh.”

April sighed. “Well, I’m not gonna be able to fall to sleep now. Come have some coffee with me. We can whip up toast, or something.”

Leo jumped up at the chance to do something other than sit around and wait. Granted, they still had to wait until they got word from the others, but at least Leo wasn’t alone with his worries now. 

April filled the coffee carafe with enough water for a full pot. Leo didn’t normally drink coffee – tea was totally more his mojo – but coffee had more of the caffeine kick he needed to stay sharp and alert for the second they heard news. He and April sat at the kitchen table, waiting for coffee. And for answers. 

Leo was bouncing his leg again when April commented, “You’re causing a tiny earthquake, man. You doing okay?”

Leo heaved a breath through his nose and smiled in spite of himself. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I’ve been watching you do nothing but stare at your com for the past five minutes,” April said. She was silent a beat. “They’re all going to be fine.”

“I know, I know,” Leo groaned. 

The coffee pot beeped, and April stood to pour both hers and Leo’s mugs. She put more french vanilla creamer in Leo’s than hers. Leo gratefully took an impatient sip the second April handed the mug off to him, making a face as he almost burned his tongue. 

“Dude,” April teased in amusement. 

Leo blew across the top of the mug and took another tenacious swig. “Mmm, good cuppa joe, Apes. Thanks.”

April smiled. If working at Sixth Sense Coffee Roasters had taught her anything, it was how to make a mean brew.

They sat in silence as the minutes ticked on, slowly drinking their coffee. 

Leo bounced his leg absently again before noticing and stopping with a heavy sigh. The coms remained quiet. 

At length April asked, “You think Casey’s just laying low?”

“Maybe,” Leo offered. “Or she got caught. Big Mama has a wide web.”

April grimmaced. “I’m really hoping for the first option. Thanks for the positivity, though.”

Leo exhaled long and slow. “Casey can handle herself, right? We know that about her.”

“Do you think she found CJ?” April wondered. 

“Maybe,” Leo said. 

Both April and Leo looked at their coms again. Time dragged on. 

Around 5:15 Muninn fluttered into the kitchen, roused from the bundle of blankets where he’d curled up beside April earlier in the night like some sort of strange cat. At the time April had made a joke about Mayhem disowning her if she came home smelling like gargoyle. Muninn had protested that he in fact bathed regularly and didn’t smell, so she had nothing to worry about. The little gargoyle had made himself quite comfortable in the Lair, keeping a (very lazy) eye on everyone as he also waited for news. Primarily word of where Huginn ended up. 

“Hmmm, is that coffee?” Muninn asked, sniffing the air sleepily. 

“Can gargoyles even have coffee? I thought you didn’t do human stuff,” Leo said with a layer of skepticism.

Muninn laughed. “Oh, Huginn and I love ALL sorts of human creature comforts.” He flew to the fridge. “Do you have any pumpkin spice creamer? I hear that’s all the rage in these autumn months. It’s in season now, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes, it is in season,” April said, watching as the goyle rooted around the fridge shelves in search. “We just started adding that to menu at work, last week? I have the type and order of syrup pumps memorized at this point.”

Leo frowned tiredly. “If Donnie were here, he’d make some quip about having to disinfect the fridge from your grubby footprints.”

Muninn emerged triumphant with a smaller bottle of creamer from the back of the fridge. He eyed Leo, “Someone woke up on the wrong side of their shell this morning.”

Leo just frowned deeper while April laughed at his expense.   

She got a small cup down from a cupboard and helped Muninn open the aluminum seal on the creamer. With a wink she remarked, “Blue didn’t sleep at all, actually.”

Muninn gasped. “No wonder you’re so grumpy!”

“That’s not it! Not by a long shot!” Leo argued. He ran his hands over his face, and stood. “I left my phone in my room. I’ll be right back.”

He left a chattering Muninn and a disgruntled April behind as he half-marched down to his room. He really had left his phone here. He wanted to see if anyone sent any messages, that maybe they just couldn’t safely use their coms and had opted for silent messages instead. But nothing new besides social media notifications appeared in the little icons. 

Leo sat on his bed in resignation. Everyone had been gone all night, with hardly a word or update. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out, how much longer he could hope and pretend they were still safe. At what point should he and April and Pops do something about the whole situation? Big Mama’s errands couldn’t take *that* long, could they?

The sound of wings caught his attention. 

Leo looked up to see Muninn perched on the end of one of Leo’s bookshelves. 

“April wanted me to let you know she’s gonna make toast.” Muninn announced. 

“Awesome, thanks,” Leo said. He gave the goyle a half hearted thumbs up and went back to scrolling his phone, refreshing the group chat yet again. Nothing. 

“You really haven’t heard from anyone?” Muninn asked, quieter than Leo ever thought he could be. 

Leo looked up at the gargoyle, surprised to see him wringing his little claws. Leo shook his head. 

Muninn nodded. “Do you think Huginn went on the Big Mama errand with your brothers?”

Leo’s brow furrowed. “Donnie didn’t mention if he did. I’m sure he’s keeping an eye on them though, if he did tag along.”

Muninn just nodded again. “We don’t usually stay separated this long.”

Something in Leo caved a little in sympathy. “You two are certainly attached at the hip.”

Muninn jumped off the shelf and landed on the steel bar at the end of Leo’s bed. “We only separated to tell you guys the message from Big Mama because we wanted to make a game of it. Whoever found you last owes the other a Strawberry Matcha Taiyaki.” 

Leo smiled. “Heh, I never woulda pegged you for the betting type.”

Muninn beamed. “Oh yeah! We bet on stuff all the time. Who can make the throw into the wastepaper basket, who can deliver the potion the fastest, who ….” 

Leo listened, amused by the gargoyle’s ability to just talk and talk, but he didn’t absorb a word. Leo’s mind wandered, going back to what his brothers must be up to, or stuck in; back to Casey likely prowling around the Nexxus Hotel vents, back to Case’ being missing all night, being all alone in such a big and scary place. 

Leo’s ears suddenly tuned back in as he registered something Muninn said.

“Big Mama mentioned something about it being ‘only a matter of time’. And based on how ill the kid looked, I’m not sure what exactly she meant by that. And that was right before she sent us off with the message for you — ”

“Excuse me, what’s only a matter of time?” Leo demanded. 

Muninn wavered under Leo’s intense stare. “Not super sure. But the kid from the message was sick with something.”

“Donnie also said as much, before going on the errand,” Leo rattled quickly, rushing through the questions, “But he didn’t get to see Casey. You saw him, though? You saw Casey? How sick was he?”

Muninn’s mouth worked and eventually squealed out a reply. “Casey? Isn’t that the ex-foot recruit?”

Leo replied, “There’s two Caseys.”

“Oh, okay,” Muninn said. “Uh, yes, I saw the kid Casey, then.” He swallowed. “And he was definitely sick.”

“Did Big Mama say with what? Did you overhear anything?” Leo leaned forward. “What was only a matter of time? Are we on a timeline for a cure or something?”

Muninn gaped and shrugged, shaking his head with uncertainty. 

Leo huffed and stood. He strutted over to the far corner of his room and pulled a single katana from a spot behind some comic book boxes. It was the one he’d made from one of Mikey’s palette knives, just over a couple of weeks ago. 

Muninn’s eyes went wide. “What are you doing?” 

Leo strapped his belts, wholly replaced and upgraded courtesy of Genius-Built Incorporated, over his torso. He slipped his mask over his eyes, tightening the knot in the back. 

“I’m not waiting any longer,” he stated. He sliced at the air with the blade, and a portal spun into existence. Leo turned to Muninn and raised his arm the way a falconer might. “You coming or nah, little buddy?”

Muninn grinned and took a flying leap, landing on Leo’s offered perch. Leo nodded sternly and turned to step through the portal. 

April was walking down the stairs with three plates of toast balanced precariously in her hands. She caught the tail end of the neon blue left behind Leo’s closing portal. 

“Leo!” she called, but the circle of light had already clipped closed. “Aaaaand he’s gone. What am I going to do with all this toast now?”

* * *

Big Mama wasn’t taking any chances this time. She had ordered a bed to be set up in her office, so she could keep an eye on the little escapee until the turtles brought her back what she wanted. She insisted Cass stick around as well, still trying to leverage the Mother card in spite of Cass’s confused protests. Casey was certain it was because Big Mama wanted to goad her into revealing more information. But what exactly about? Titan knows. It was nothing Big Mama would use for good regardless. 

CJ remained asleep, mumbling from time to time, but for all other intents and purposes dead to the world. 

Casey would be lying if she said the kid’s condition didn’t worry her. Whatever bug he’d picked up – which better not be contagious – seemed to mean some serious business. The kid was a warrior, through and through. It was unnatural to see him be so still. 

It was almost as weird as seeing the boisterous Blue turtle be confined to the Lair for his own safety. Casey hadn’t seen him portal about *once* in all her most recent visits. Leo had made a point to pout over still having to wear a boot-brace for his leg, but Casey knew that Leo would be the type to make his gallivanting around the Lair shorter by way of portals. But come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Leo with a katana near him at all in recent weeks. No katana, no portals, no teleporting. And half as many jokes. 

“If you keep making that most miserable face, I’m quite afraid you’ll get it stuck that way.” Big Mama’s voice yanked Casey harshly out of her own thoughts. She scowled even deeper at the Yokai, making a point to cross her arms in indignation. Somewhere above her, hiding among the books and shelf trinkets, Huginn snickered. 

Big Mama just tutted. A knock at the door drew both her and Casey’s attention, and Big Mama left her desk to answer it. A bellhop wheeled in a cart of snacks and delicacies, which made the spider Yokai’s eyes sparkle. 

“Oh simply supercalifragi-scrumptious!” Big Mama cheered, clapping her hands together with poised delight. She fetched a blue striped, wrapped candy from a bowl on a nearby bookshelf. “Have we heard word back yet from the docks? Have the turtles returned from their querulous quest?”

“No, Ma’am,” the foxy bellhop replied. 

Big Mama hummed. “Thank you, dear. Do send up the report lickity-split once news does arrive, alrighty now?” She deposited the candy in the bellhop’s hands. 

The bellhop beamed and gave an enthusiastic nod before scampering out of the room. 

Big Mama lifted a tea tray off the cart and set it on a table between the set of chairs where Casey Jones was seated. Casey tracked the spider’s movements, watching her pour a cup of pre-brewed tea and stir in a sugar cube. The spoon clinked bright and gentle against the porcelain. Big Mama offered Casey the drink. Jones simply raised an eyebrow at her. 

“Is that not how you take your tea anymore? You’ve had it the same way since the Foot started bringing you along for negotiations when you were … well … smaller.” Big Mama asked innocently. “And it isn’t drugged. I would hope you knew me a teensy-weensy bit better.”

Casey sighed and accepted the cup. She took a slurp, not bothering with all that etiquette stuff or whether or not she was even holding the handle the right way. Big Mama didn’t pay her any mind, pouring herself a cup of different tea from a different teapot on the tray. 

Huginn took the opportunity to join them, leaping down from the bookcases to perch on the back of Big Mama’s chair. Without a word Big Mama handed him an enormous cookie that smelled like a gingersnap. The gargoyle sang his gratitude, and began to crunch away at the treat. Casey watched him with amusement. 

The three of them sat in tense silence for several minutes. As soon as Big Mama finished her tea she leaned into small talk, to Casey’s huge frustration. 

“I’m not exactly an expert on how humans age,” she started to say, “So forgive me if the question comes across as … presumptuous. But I didn’t know you were a Mother.”

Casey groaned audibly. “I’m not that old.” She leaned forward, pointing a harsh finger at Big Mama. “And I TOLD you! I’m. Not. His. Mother. We’re like the same age? Wait, he’s a couple years younger I think. But still! ”

Big Mama nodded and smiled. “My apologies for the miserable mixup. I didn’t mean to create such awkward air.” She paused. “That still doesn’t answer why he called you ‘Mom’ in the hall.”

“He’s not well,” Casey stated. “You see that. His fever, or whatever he’s got going on, it’s messing with him. He probably hallucinated.”

Big Mama hummed in curiosity. “Or maybe, perhaps the dear just thought your face looked familiar?”

Casey shrugged, looking over her shoulder to where CJ continued to sleep. 

“Maybe,” she said.  

A beat passed before Big Mama attempted to lead the conversation again. “Well, even if we can’t speak as Mothers of any loose relation, it’s still been much much too long, Cassandra!” She poured another cup of tea, scooting a plate of small cookies in Casey’s direction. “It’s been way too long since just us girls shot the breeze. Tell me, whatever have you been up to? I’ve caught wind, here and there, that you’ve taken up baking since you left the Foot.”

Casey leveled Big Mama with an annoyed glare. “That’s none of your business.”

Big Mama laughed. “Your Brownie advertisements are too loud for that to NOT be my business. I do hope the tiny-terror scouts aren’t too much of a handful.”   

Casey tried not to feel like she was under a microscope, but she grinned in spite of herself. “They’re nothing I can’t handle.” 

Big Mama opened her mouth to ask another question, when a beeping cut her off mid inhale. She tapped a finger to her ear, listening to an earpiece with rapt attention. She smiled, then frowned, shutting her eyes to coyly hide an eyeroll. She stood quite suddenly. 

“Huginn!” Big Mama called as she strutted toward the door, “Keep an eye on our guests. Wouldn’t want them wandering off all willy-nilly again and getting lost, or worse.”

“On it, Boss!” Huginn crowed, jumping to sit atop Cass’s chair now. 

Big Mama winked at Casey specifically, then forcibly shut the door behind her. An extra click or three confirmed it was locked, and then some. Casey sank in her seat. The door was probably enchanted or some nonsense. And with Huginn hovering over her shoulder, chatty as ever now that Big Mama had gone, Casey knew she wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. 

Now *would* have been the perfect time to finally check in with Leo and April. Except Big Mama had Casey searched and removed of any communication devices before so much as stepping a toe into her office. It was just Casey’s luck. 

Huginn yammered on, and Casey slunk deeper into the armchair. 

“I’m surprised the turtles haven’t come back from the docks yet. Big Mama sounded quite confident they would have an easy time,” Hugin chirped. He hopped off the chair and landed on the little table among the tea set, busying himself with selecting several little cookies of the chocolate dipped variety.  

“What did Big Mama even task them with doing?” Casey puzzled. She peered over the arm of the chair, maintaining her slump. 

Huginn chewed and swallowed before answering. “Oh sorry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy on that matter, missy. Mum’s the word!” 

Casey grumbled and shifted slightly to stare at the ceiling. 

Huginn inhaled and held his breath a second. Casey braced for the question. “Did you hear anything from Muninn? I know he stayed back with Blue, but, did he say when he was coming back to the Nexxus at all?”

“Nnnnope,” Casey said. “I never talked to Muninn. Just Leo – Blue – and April.”

“Ah, gotcha gotcha,” Huginn mumbled, quieter. 

Casey heard the little gargoyle fuss with trying to lift one of the teapots, and sat up in aggravation that was more for show than it was sincere. 

“Let me pour,” she snipped, “You don’t want to risk breaking Big Mama’s fine dishes.”

“Thanks.” Huginn replied. 

The room was quiet for a blissful moment as Huginn took a long drink. But he was back to chattering in seconds. “I told Muninn we need to ask the Purple turtle, Don … Ryan, was it? Don, Derry? Dello? Donatello – Donatello! Yes, that’s his name. We needed to ask Donatello to make us mini versions of those walkie-talkie bracelets the turtles have. It would be SO useful in situations like this when we’re separated. Or when Muninn flies off to the Nexxus Churro Stand and forgets what toppings I wanted. I’m not used to being away from Muninn for so long … ”

Casey sighed and nodded along, Huginn’s words mixing into mush not too long after. But the little dude had a LOT on his mind, and Casey had literally nothing better to do than babysit a Gargoyle and a sick teenager. 

Her mind wandered as Huginn’s voice droned on. She thought of Casey, CJ, over on the temporary cot bed. He wasn’t all that much younger than her; 17 if she remembered what he’d told her once. She’d be turning 19 herself in December. Just teens, bearing the same name, and the universe seeing fit to hand them the path of the warrior before they so much as turned 20. Casey had seen some of the scars on CJ’s hands. Another cut across the back of his jaw. She thought of the scars under her own wrappings, from all the Foot Clan training she endured. She wondered what CJ had lived through to wear such scars. 

She remembered something April said, about CJ being from another time. He was the reason the turtles had learned of the invasion, and been able to stop it. It sounded insane. But Casey had been raised by a guy who had a permanent fire flickering on his forehead. She’d seen stranger things. 

Casey had long since gotten over the idea that her lot in life wasn’t “fair”. It had happened, and she was determined to keep moving forward. But seeing a bad lot in life for others? She hated the sight of it. 

It was one of the reasons she had stuck around with the Brownies for so long. She’d taken a day job as a truck unloading hand when she was freshly out of the Foot, finding herself strapped for cash and rent looming over her head. The job required muscle, and she was more than eager to deliver on that count. While unloading the goods – flour, walnuts, the like – she caught a crate falling from a high storage location before it landed on one of the scouts. After scolding the girl for being in such a dangerous location as the ingredient storage, Cass had been shocked to find the child following along behind her all day like a baby duck. She was annoyed at first, especially when the little duck brought friends. 

“What do you miscreants want?!” She’d snapped. 

Their eyes only sparkled in admiration. They begged her, “Teach us to be bold, and strong, like you.”

Casey soon learned that the girls were cunning, laser focused on victory over their long standing foes, the elite boy’s club of the Popcorn Guard. The boys had said, after the Brownie Clan had won the previous year’s fundraising battle, that they’d only won such a narrow victory because of the baked goods and no merit of the girl’s own. This year, the girls were determined to show up to the battle with more than just baked goods. 

Casey didn’t want to be a teacher. But the older ladies, the Clan Leaders, had begged her to stick around after seeing the positive impact she had on the girls. They needed more role models for the girls to follow, and even offered Casey compensation for a part time role. Casey agreed, at first just for the paycheck, then for a feeling she’d never truly felt before. 

She had no word for it, but it made her heart well with pride whenever her little students would face off in mock ninjutsu battles, beaming up at her from across the room, bloody noses be damned. She taught them to respect each other, to show no mercy in battle, but be true to your clan and they would be true to you. They certainly clung to her like they believed every word. The ones who came to the Brownie HQ right after school because there was no-one at home yet, or no good home to go to, would tell her about their day. Someone colored her a picture of a black unicorn, with blood on its horn: Casey hung it proudly on the fridge in her apartment. And no, she did not cry upon receiving such a magnificent masterpiece. On weekends the clan girls would discuss fundraising table strategies with her, and take breaks to spar. 

Casey loved her work. If it even was work anymore. It never felt like it, being needed and looked up to like that. To be … loved. And love in return. 

The turtles and April were slowly teaching her what real family was actually like. It was much different than what she felt with the Foot. It felt kind of like peace, and a fierce need to protect. She felt that with the Brownie scouts. Almost … Motherly. 

Well, damn. If that was what being a Mother felt like, maybe she wasn’t as opposed to the idea as she first thought. 

“Oh, that’s not good!” Huginn announced. The change in pitch and meter of his tone alerted Casey to a change in the room, and she startled and jumped to a standing position, looking around for the danger. 

CJ was mumbling in his sleep, face pinched as he loosely fought some invisible force.        

“Easy there, kid,” Casey called. She crossed the space to him, kneeling at the head of the cot and placing her hands on his shoulders to try and keep him from moving too much. “You’re fine. Or will be. You’re just in Big Mama’s office; the turtles are on their way, ya know? They’ll be here to jailbreak the both of us soon, so hang tight.”

CJ continued to struggle, hampered by Casey’s grip on his shoulders. 

Casey felt something like static build up under her hands. 

“Um, kid?” She asked, hesitant. The static crept up her wrists. “Are you oka – ?” 

She never got to finish her sentence, because she was tugged down into the depths of an inky blackness so dark it shocked the air out of her lungs. 

*

She hovered there a moment, dazed by the unexpected, before turning slowly in place to look around. The sound of a child’s laughter echoed a short distance away, from a sudden patch of ruddy brown light. Casey moved toward it. 

“See, now, you’ve gotta hit it like this – HA!” someone else said. A distant metallic *TWACK* echoed as the struck rock found its target: an old army helmet balanced on top of a weathered wooden stake. “And you WILL hit the bullseye every time.” 

Casey looked at the speaker, freezing in place.

* Is that, ME? * she asked out loud.

An older version of herself, with a slightly unkempt braid tucked off to one side with the sides of her head shaved, stood beside a young boy. She brandished a dented metal hockey stick, and the boy a shorter but no less battered wooden one. 

“Woooow! Good shot, Mom! Now it’s MY turn!” the boy said. He stuck his tongue out in concentration. 

Older Casey chuckled and dropped into a crouch to watch. “Show me what’cha got, sport!”

Casey also watched, not quite plopping into a squat, but looking around with confusion at the scene as a whole. The boy looked a bit like a shrunk down version of CJ, if Casey squinted just right. He certainly had the same nose, even if he hadn't grown into his chin yet. 

The kid concentrated, and took a practiced, confident swing. The rock he hit rocketed across the patch of dirt, knocking the old helmet clean off the stake. He grinned in triumph. Older Casey leapt up, fists pumping the air as she hollered, “Yeah, Casey! That’s my boy!” She scooped him into a noogie, and the kid laughed harder. 

They both crowed a happy victory call, “Jones! Jones! Jones!”

Casey was pulled blurrily into another moment, which seemed like more of a fragment in a disjointed chain. The air around her warped like ink in water, clearing to reveal the scene. She realized, as abruptly as the helmet had been knocked off the stake, that these were memories.

“Hey Case’!” Leonardo called, “Tell your Mom I need to see her in the strategy room, STAT.”

“On it!” CJ responded, not breaking pace. He was older than the hockey stick scene, his mullet more grown out. 

The memory warped into new ones. Casey Jones taught CJ sparring moves. CJ looked for his Mom as soon as a flying vessel landed and the bunker doors clamped shut. Casey gave him a cool rock she found out on patrol: it looked like a penguin, she said. CJ asked her, “What’s a penguin?” 

Another scene, and Casey gave a pre-teen CJ her old hockey mask, getting ready to leave for some kind of stealth mission where the bright white mask would stand out too much. Darkness melted deeper into the vision this time. 

Casey wasn’t aware the memory had changed again until she heard sniffling. She followed the sound through a dark room, some kind of storage closet, until she stumbled upon the pre-teen tucked as small as he could be in a wedge between a box and the wall. He clung to the hockey mask like it was precious. 

Casey could only guess at what that meant. 

She felt for the kid, she really did. Not thinking, she reached out to try and comfort him. Not that she really knew how to do that, but she felt like she had to try. Her hand brushed through the mask, and she was thrust harshly into a very different memory. This time it felt much older, and it was through her own eyes. 

She was running through the broken streets of New York, fleeing something. Darting around a corner, she ducked behind a pile of ruined brick and twisted metal. She was about to settle into silence, when a rustling at the end of the alley startled her. Casey was about to run again, find a new hiding spot, when a tiny warbling sniffle broke the air. 

She froze, and against better judgment, advanced toward the whimpering. 

Something kicked at the raggedy blanket laid over top of a living lump. Cass hesitated, glancing back at the open part of the alley, then brushed the blanket aside. Almost as though she were in some kind of dream, Casey lifted a snotty baby out of the rubble. 

She looked around. The child was completely alone. There were no bodies of others, of adults, nearby. The kid smelled like they’d been there too many days. He fussed. Something out in the streets screeched. 

Casey gasped and pulled the child close. She hunkered down in her original hiding spot, pushing the mask up off her face.

“Shhh, shh shh it’s okay dude,” she whispered. The baby cried. Casey frowned and gently bounced them in her arms. “You’ve got the lungs of a warrior, sheesh! But, please, baby. Now’s not the time. I’ve got you. You're safe. Shhhhhhhh shhhshhhshhhhh. It’s okay, it’s okay. Please be quiet. Shhhh shhhh shhhhhhhh…..”

The baby hiccuped and seemed to settle. 

The air suddenly went stagnant and tense. There was the sound of something heavy and wet slithering outside. The baby silenced. Casey held her breath. It lingered in the street too long for her liking, but slunk away after a minute. 

When the air itself seemed to relax, only then did Casey exhale. She looked down at the bundle in her arms, which was staring up at her with big, brown, observant eyes. 

Casey laughed. “Hey there, sport.” She sighed and asked him, “I’m amazed you’re still alive. Surviving out here on your own like a true warrior. You got a name?”

The baby blinked at her. 

“That’s okay,” Casey said. She smiled back. “I’ll call you Casey, like me. A true warrior’s name. At least until I can think of something better.”

The little one smiled. 

Cass watched the memory depart, hovering again in the black space again for barely a moment before losing touch with everything. 

*

Casey was aware of voices talking.

“I don’t know, Ma’am!” Huginn said. “The kid just started moving in his sleep and she went to hold him down. And then she passed out!”

Casey pried her eyes open. Big Mama and Huginn slowly came into focus, hovering near her. Casey was propped up against the cot. She blinked, realizing she must have collapsed on the floor. 

Big Mama noticed her movement and crouched skillfully despite her heels. She wiped a cool rag across Casey’s forehead. “Easy, dearie. You likely just got caught in a crosswind of mystical energy release. It’ll wear off in a few minute minutes.”

Casey stared at her dazedly. “Mystic energy?”

Big Mama nodded. “CJ here got himself into too much wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff, somehow or other. It’s leaving his system, and causing quite the fizzywinkle on the way out.”

“Oh,” Casey said. She twisted suddenly around to get a look at CJ, relieved to find him peacefully sleeping. She sighed and said, still dizzy, “I saw ….” She stopped herself. 

Big Mama rested a hand on Casey’s shoulder, gentle but stern. “What did you see?”

Casey didn’t dare look at Big Mama yet, unsure if she was safe company to talk to about the visions she’d witnessed. She was still processing it, just as confused as she was in awe. Big Mama kept her hand on Casey’s shoulder, patient. 

Casey weighed her options. Big Mama knew more about CJ’s mystic illness than Casey did. She wasn’t sure how much the smart Purple one, Donnie, had been able to pry out of Big Mama earlier, or how much Big Mama planned on telling once the turtles returned from wherever they’d been sent. However, it was highly likely that Casey had just learned something Big Mama didn’t know. CJ had an unfortunate run in with time magic, because he was from the future. 

But Casey, having been taken advantage of by the Foot and Big Mama on several occasions, wasn’t going to show her hand. Not this time. 

Carefully articulated, with acted poise that surprised her, Casey stated, “I – I can’t remember. It’s like a dream. A bad dream; one you forget the second you wake up.”

* * *   

Leo’s memory served him well. 

Okay, well-ish. 

He’d portalled twice to break the trip to the hotel up into manageable pieces. Once close enough, he’d had to stop for a breather. Muninn acted annoyingly concerned with how out of breath Leo was. 

“We don’t need to do this. I’m sure Huginn and the kid are fine,” he offered with a tone of worry. “Big Mama’s missions always end up being a bit of a goose chase, but I know your bros are handling things.” He paused, analyzing Leo’s slowed wheezing. “You can go home and rest.”

Leo frowned and stood taller, bouncing on his toes with his sword poised and ready. 

“I’m already halfway to the hotel anyway. Might as well poke around and see if we can’t liberate some Caseys while we’re in the neighborhood,” he sassed. 

In another bright blue flash Leo was inside the hotel. This was where his memory only served him well-ish. He had a photographic recollection of spaces he’d seen, even if only seeing them once. But he’d only seen his projected target in the semi-dark. So sue him if he portalled in five feet above the floor. 

Leo and Muninn yelped as they fell out the other side, landing in a fluffed up pile of pillows and cushions beside a giant lava lamp. They groaned and dusted themselves off. Muninn counted his bruises. Leo ignored the tweak in his knee, clapping twice to turn the lights in the room off. Something spinning with holes cut in it dropped over the main lightsource, effectively blocking most of the light. Leo melted into the shifting patchwork of shadow, Muninn clinging to his shoulder. 

Muninn provided some direction, at least as far as knowing what floor they were on. Leo wanted to head to the medical ward, just to double check if CJ had been moved back. 

CJ had not been moved back. Leo learned as much, eavesdropping on a pair of nurses whispering around the corner. They were discussing the wild events of the night, a real shocker as they mostly served the Yokai crowd. A human tripping into the hotel, as rumor had it, then escaping from the medical center was certainly going to be the hot gossip topic for the next month. One of the nurses was stopping by the nearest tech hub with the human kid’s medical charts, so the files could be entered into the hotel database. 

Leo wasn’t having any of that. Against Muninn whispering “Stop, wait!” in Leo’s ear, the slider was already moving. He knocked out both nurses with an elbow jab and a quick smack to a nerve Raph sometimes targeted when Leo’s insomnia or Donnie’s bad work habits kept them up too late. A small device that looked like it plugged into a wall fell out of one of the nurse’s hands. Leo picked it up, studying it. He’d been expecting a clipboard and paper. This was much more advanced. Yokai hospitals must be on the up and up, or Big Mama was just always much further ahead of the times as far as enchanted tech was concerned.  

Leo stuffed the device in one of his belt pouches and once again melted ambiguously into the shadowy corners of the hotel’s countless halls. 

It became trickier from then on to figure out where Casey and CJ were. Calling Jones would be a dead giveaway of Leo’s position. Like the time Jupiter Jim called Red Fox when escaping through the ventilation system on the prison plant in Jupiter Jim and the Red Handed Bandit of Psion 6. He might have tried that move in times past. But he really was trying to be a decent leader now. A good leader, though … he’d work on that. Leo wished he could speed run his recovery. But the whole leader thing, fully taking on the mantle: that was another shtick entirely. He’d stick with decent for now. Baby steps. 

After unsuccessfully trying to hack one of the podium computer stations on a different floor, Leo decided he needed a different strategy. Muninn didn’t know the password, despite being employed by Big Mama. Leo tried several different times to guess it, typing things like SpidersRtheBeesKnees and NexxusLife4EVER , his 15th failed attempt sounded a harsh siren and a flashing red light. In a panic Leo made himself scarce, ducking into a broom closet two floors up so he could attempt to strategize. 

Muninn was no help. All the gargoyle did now was fret with anxiety over how helping Leo might hurt his employment. 

“Oh man oh man, what if Big Mama kicks me out? And I have to leave Huginn here all alone?” 

Leo sighed, indulging in the small Yokai’s concerns for a moment. “Aw c’mon. You and Huginn are a package deal. I’m sure Huginn would stick by your side if it even came to that.”

“You really think so?” Muninn asked. 

Leo nodded earnestly. “I’ve never seen one of you without the other. Except for right now, obviously.”

Muninn relaxed a bit, appeased. He looked around the broom closet, reading the side of a mop bucket that had been inscribed with the words: Custodial Closet 32B. “Hey!” he chirped, “We’re only 8 floors down from Big Mama’s office.”

Leo raised a brow ridge. “Is that important?”

Muninn shrugged. “I don’t know. Just pointing it out.”

Leo hummed, narrowing his eyes. A beat passed, and he smirked. 

Muninn looked taken aback, putting two and two together, “Oh, I don’t like that look. Wait – you can’t be serious.”

Leo grinned, standing and leaning on the door of the closet to listen to the hallway outside. There were no footsteps. “I am so serious. If Big Mama has any information on CJ and my brothers, then I bet she has it in that huge office of hers.” He paused, getting ready to open the door.

Muninn thought, then his eyes sparkled. “Huginn might be there, too! If he didn’t go with the turtles. We usually hang around our room or Big Mama’s office when we’re off the clock.”

“Cool then, it’s decided,” Leo said with a nod. He thought better of stepping into the hallway, and kept the door shut. He pulled out his katana and closed his eyes, visualizing the office layout and where he wanted to pop out. Big Mama better not have moved any furniture recently or this could get embarrassing.  

Muninn hopped onto Leo’s back. Leo flinched as his little paws brushed across one of the healing cracks as the goyle scrambled up to a better perch. Leo exhaled, drawing as wide of a circle in the air as he could in the confines of the closet. And without another beat, he stepped through the glowing blue portal. 

Big Mama’s office was only half lit, dimmer than Leo had seen it. It was briefly illuminated in soft blue before Leo’s portal dissolved behind him. Big Mama must be out, which was a stroke of good luck if Leo ever saw one. He crouched behind the couch he’d spawned next to, taking in the sights of the room. 

Muninn however was not as careful. He jumped to the top of the couch, stretching his wings and looking around anxiously, loudly whispering, “ Huginn? You here? Huuuuuginnnnnn? ”

“Muninn?” the other gargoyle called from across the room. 

The two of them crashed together in the air with exclamations of greeting and how much they missed the other. They were catching up on their adventures as Leo stood, rolling his eyes. 

“Leo?” Another voice asked. Leo met Casey’s eyes in the dark. She was sitting on the floor beside a cot, where Junior appeared to be fast asleep. Casey scoffed. “Real ballsy of you to break into Big Mama’s office. Alone. I’d expect nothing less from you, though.”

“Glad to see you in one piece,” Leo snarked in greeting. He jerked his head in the direction of Huginn and Muninn. “And I wasn’t alone. I had tiny henchman #2 over there to keep me company.”  Leo’s face fell though as he knelt beside Casey, looking CJ up and down. “What’s going on with Case’ here?”

“He’s okay Leo,” Casey said. Leo missed how she glanced around the room, as he was too busy assessing CJ’s pulse and temperature. “He’s just sick.”

“Yeah, but what with?” Leo remarked. 

Everyone in the room jumped as Big Mama answered. “Just an Orwellian overexposure to time magic. He’ll be right as rain quicker than you can say ‘ Jumping-Jack Jitsu ’.”

Leo and Casey jumped up as Big Mama descended from the ceiling on a sturdy silk thread. In a single flourish she morphed out of her ominous spider-like form and flicked on the main control for the lights. Leo blinked against the brightness, katana at the ready. 

“Oh really, is that any way to greet an old friend?” Big Mama said, touching the tip of the blade with a single finger. She gently turned it to the side, and remarked warmly, “It’s so good to see you, little boisterous Blue! When you didn’t show up with your brothers I was quite beside myself. I was worried some horrid fate had befallen you, some weeks back. You lot do have a teeny tendency to be … heroic.”

Leo smiled, but the grip on his sword was still firm. “Nahhhh, you kidding? Nothing keeps me down.” He spun the handle in his hand so the blade was facing the other direction, but still at the ready. He glanced up at the ceiling and back to big Mama with a smirk, “Nice of you to drop in. I see your hotel is kinda sorta still here.”

“Hmhmm,” Big Mama chortled, “A few of the windows on the top floor got blustered out, but it’s nothing my glass smiths can make spick and span again.” Her eyes darted down to the brace on Leo’s leg and quickly across him, noting patches of fresh pink skin that hadn’t healed to a nice green yet. “While you're here, we can all have a nice little whole-family visit. Cassandra was so kind to surprise me, and now you’ve popped in as well! Once your turtley-boo brothers return, we can even give Lou a ring and see if he has a minute to swing by and — ”

“Yeah, about that,” Leo cut her off, “Where did you even send them off to? My brothers.” 

Big Mama smiled and waltzed over to a small table by the office door, where a tiered display of pamphlets rested. She picked one up, flipping through it. “I didn’t send them anywhere outrageous, if that is what you’re inferring. Nowhere I wouldn’t send my own capable staff.”

“Uh huh,” Leo snipped. “Then why didn’t your staff just go?”

“They’re a pinch busy cleaning up the glass upstairs,” Big Mama said. “Among other important matters of state.” She glanced over the top of the pamphlet. “The Hidden City has their knickers in a bunch over what went down up on the surface. I needed people who could get past their blockades. My staff are capable – Titan bless them – but sometimes their skills are better suited closer to home.”

Leo nodded, fixing Big Mama with an unwavering stare. “I see.”

Big Mama cleared her throat with a high pitched, tittering cough and returned to reading the pamphlet. “Let’s see, now. Your brothers should be back any mimbly minute. We can order in a lovely dinner, and all sit down and swap the hottest of gossip, catch up and the like. I have poso-lutely anything under the sun you could dream of eating, all ready to order at the drop of a pin. There’s something for everyone, even your new human friend.”  

“Aw, I’m flattered,” Leo said, letting out a small laugh, “Really! But we’re busy people and don’t exact-amactly have the time to stick around. Maybe next time?”

“You’re not going to wait for your brothers?” Big Mama asked, her tone sharp and icy. 

Leo took a long breath in and scowled. 

Big Mama set the pamphlet back in its place. She walked toward Leo and Casey. “Oh, you are worried,” she said, “Don’t try and act all tough, Blue. You wouldn’t have so unceremoniously barged into my office if you weren’t here looking for them.”

Leo was silent. Big Mama moved to lean against the closest armchair, casually reaching up to scratch Muninn under the chin like a cat. Huginn and Muninn had come to sit on top of the chair, watching the conversation.

Big Mama continued to speak; “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t knock out my healers, though. It’s a smidgeon ironic to have nurses take a sick day or two. Seriously, I saw the footage. Lou really taught you his perfect precision.” She looked up at Leo with a hint of admiration and pride. 

It caught him off guard, the acknowledgement. But he was well practiced with rolling Big Mama’s manipulations off his shoulders. He did curse under his breath about there being a camera, because of course there would have been. 

“Oh, you know,” Leo said, willing a smile to his face. “I could sneak in here in my sleep. Easy peasy. Sorry ‘bout the nurses: they gave me a spook was all.”

“Ah ha, sure boo,” Big Mama quipped. 

Casey remained tight lipped, not exactly sure what to add. Leo and Big Mama stared each other down in silence. It was testament to the tension in the air that Huginn and Muninn didn’t try to fill the room with oblivious commentary. CJ, unaware of any of this, made a sound in his sleep. All eyes shifted to him as the tension shattered. 

CJ remained asleep, even if his face looked a little pained. 

“What’s really wrong with him?” Leo asked. “I know your staff probably had a good look, yadda yadda. But you mentioned time magic?”

Big Mama nodded. “That I did, Leonardo, that I did.” She grinned; Leo did not like that paired with the full use of his name. “I can tell you, but it is going to cost you.”

Leo frowned. Casey shook her head and made a cutting motion in the air with her hand, trying to dissuade him from making any deals he might regret. Leo made a small face in disappointment. Did she have no faith in him?

Leo turned back to Big Mama. “Cost me how?”

Big Mama gestured to the sleeping teen. “Your human friend. Tell me more about him. He’s certainly sparked my curiosity, showing up out of the blue and sneaking past all my anti-human enchantments as he slipped and stumbled to my doorstep. The turtles accidentally told me his name – CJ – and the kid went and accidentally or not called Cassandra here ‘Mom’.” Big Mama’s eyes pinched as she smiled warmly. “I simply have to know more about your strange new friend. And in return, I’ll tell you what my healers said was wrong with him.”

Leo pondered the deal. “One to one exchange. One question for one answer each, so forth and so on.”

“That seems fit and fair enough –,” Big Mama started to say. 

“Bup bup bup!” Leo interrupted. “I’ll only answer questions if you let us leave after our fun little chat. I’m sure you want us out of your hair; after CJ sorta crashed whatever party I’m sure you were having.”

Big Mama hummed, her hand on her chin. “I’ll let you leave,” she said, “but first, you give me the data device you pinched off the nurse you knocked out.”

Leo’s eyes went wide and he flared his nostrils in frustration. He was quiet for a moment. “Fine,” he finally said. He retrieved the device from his pouch and placed it in Big Mama’s outstretched hand. But before letting go he added, “But I get to ask a question first.”

“Deal,” Big Mama said. Leo let go of the device and she set it on her desk. Big Mama smiled and snapped her fingers. A third armchair came zipping across the room, making Leo and Casey tense up on the defense. 

“Oh please, it’s just a chair,” Big Mama said. She took her own seat in the little circle. She began to pour tea from the tea set left out earlier. It was still steaming. “Tea?”

Casey begrudgingly took her seat from earlier. “How is that even still hot?” she asked, slightly accusatory in her curiosity. 

“Enchanted teapot,” Big Mama said. She offered the cup to Leo. He sheathed his katana over his shoulder and accepted the tea. 

As Big Mama poured Casey and then herself a cup, Leo asked, “So how exactly does time magic make someone sick?”

“The same as any magic,” Big Mama replied. She sipped her tea and continued. “Too much magic stored anywhere for too long without use will find a way to expel itself. For those without any type of mystic training, it has the chance of causing fever, aches, pains, and – hallucinations.”

“So like a spicy flu,” Leo pondered.

“Indeed. A rather furious flu at that,” Big Mama said. “My turn. How in the wonderful world did he make your acquaintance? It isn’t everyday a human traipses in here wearing one of Donatello’s fine pieces of craftsmanship. I’m curious how many allies you’ve recruited.”

“No fair, that’s like two questions in one,” Leo protested. “And where is Casey’s stuff anyway?”

“Casey?” Big Mama asked. She looked at Cassandra and then at the kid as Leo cursed. “I see, so CJ is a friendly moniker. Well, then; I’ll count that tidbit as one answer to my two questions. You just asked another question, though. So I believe it’s your turn again.”

“Casey’s stuff comes home with him,” Leo stated flatly. 

“That isn’t an answer,” Big Mama said thinly. 

Leo raised his eyebrows,drawing his lips into a thin line and crossing his arms. Big Mama scoffed and pulled out a remote. With the tap of a button a panel on Big Mama’s desktop opened, and the bundle of Casey’s things – collapsed Hockey stick and all – rose up out of a compartment. 

Leo just stared. Big Mama quickly huffed, “I had to tuck it away for safekeeping. So many fascinating gadgets I’d hoped to study.”

“You and Donnie, I swear,” Leo shook his head and cleared his throat for his next answer. “Casey came to warn us about the invasion. That’s how we know him, and were able to … stop it.” Leo withdrew into silence. 

Big Mama nodded. “A quite unexpected ally. I wonder how he knew.”

Leo squinted at her. “Wow, if that’s your attempt at asking a question you need to learn to be more direct.”

“Fine,” Big Mama snipped, “How did your friend know the invasion was coming?” She leaned forward, “Was he a spy on the inside, a fly on the wall, perhaps?”

Leo bristled. “He wasn’t a spy!” he snapped, “Casey’s just from the future! He was sent back — !” As suddenly as he’d shouted Leo went silent. He had intended to keep that particular information on the down low.

Big Mama on the other hand looked like the festive holidays had arrived early. “From the future? Well, that abso-fizzolutely explains the strange type of time magic my mystic experts detected.” She stood, Leo and Cass mirroring the movement. “Time magic from time travel. Now that could procure some positively peculiar findings. If only I could study …”

“No, no studying,” Leo said firmly. He started to walk toward Big Mama’s desk, to grab CJ’s things. “We’re done here. Casey, can you — ?” 

“Way ahead of you, fearless,” Casey said, hoisting the sleeping Junior over her shoulders with ease. 

“I never said we were done trading questions,” Big Mama hissed. She spun on her heel as she tracked Leo’s steps. She transformed into her spider form, looming tall to take back reign of the situation. Huginn and Muninn ducked and covered, snatching the last of the tea cookies and beelining for a hidden cat-flap somewhere in Big Mama’s bookshelves. 

Leo unsheathed his sword and opened a horizontal portal at the edge of Big Mama’s desk, and with one large sweeping motion brushed all of Casey’s belongings toward the portal. Big Mama exclaimed in frustration, throwing a string of web at Leo’s arm. She was too late of course, as the things had already disappeared into the circle of blue. The web caught on Leo’s hand. 

Leo regarded the web with distaste. He closed the portal and severed the web’s connection in a single motion. 

“No!” Big Mama shouted. 

She threw more webs at Leo. Leo only jumped out of their way at the last possible second, succeeding in making Big Mama even more furious. 

“You get to leave when *I* say so!” she hissed, firing more webs. “And THAT is looking to be scheduled for when your brothers return with my prize!”

“What did you even send them for? What doo-dad was so important you couldn't go fetch it yourself?” Leo needled back. He cut through two webs midair, effectively stopping them from pinning the Caseys to the ground. 

“I’m a busy business woman!” Big Mama said. “I don’t have time for petty errands!” 

“As fun as this is, I’m over it,” Leo said. He cut a bigger portal than before in the air, nodding for Casey to run through. She nodded back, but stopped just shy of the portal, waiting for Leo. 

Big Mama growled and charged. 

She didn’t expect Leo to do the same. 

Leo bared his teeth and snarled, which she noticed with startling clarity were much * sharper * than she’d ever seen them. And she was well acquainted with Leo’s usual smile from the last time he’d attempted to cut any sort of deal with her. His eyes flashed with remnants of his innate blue energy, which only highlighted his sharp, slitted pupils.

Big Mama stopped short, startled. Leo stopped, but kept his sword extended in Big Mama’s direction as he gutterally hissed at her. 

Big Mama blinked all her eight eyes. “What … happened to you, Blue?”

Leo scoffed. “Time changes people.”

Big Mama didn’t know what to say to that. 

Leo took measured steps backwards until he was just outside his own portal. 

“We are leaving, on my terms,” he announced, “And when my brothers come back from your fetch quest – which I’m confident they will –  they get to leave without so much as a scratch. Or I’ll find out about it.” He narrowed his eyes further, “ Savvy ?”

Big Mama nodded slowly. She quietly replied, “Crystal clear.”

Leo nodded once, and he and Casey with CJ in tow stepped through the portal. 

As the blue light blinked out of existence, Big Mama found she had a lot to think about.

Chapter Text

Casey Junior drifted through what he could only describe as a too calm sea, like waking up from a chaotic dream he could barely remember. He struggled to place what he’d been thinking about before this. It slipped through his consciousness like a silk scarf through fingers on a windy day. 

Hmm, he’d only felt silk once. Big Mama had a lilac handkerchief she kept tied around her neck. He’d been small, but old enough to know words, when he’d asked her why it was so soft. She had been helping watch the young ones, Casey included. Big Mama had smiled and simply said, “It’s silk, Casey-boo. It was woven of fiber so super-duppity thin that it just floats away on a breeze.”  

A long forgotten memory, dredged to the surface and sending out little ripples all around him. 

Casey didn’t know what triggered it, the memory. He still didn’t know what to make of how he felt. His eyes were heavy, and he seemed incapable of opening them. His limbs felt waterlogged and achy, and Casey had just as much strength to move them as his eyes. Which was none. But, he could hear. The sound was muffled, but it pulled him out of the echo chamber of his thoughts and into a slowly clearing awareness of the world around him. 

“As much as I would have loved to see Big Mama’s face when she, as you say –  ‘ stopped cold and let you go ’ – WE HAD THINGS HANDLED! By the Vitruvian Man, why did you go in alone?” Donnie sounded exasperated. 

“In my defense, I hadn’t heard from Casey, or you guys, for HOURS! What was I supposed to do?” Leo defended himself, “Sit around and wait for Big Mama to give an ultimatum first? No, nonononono. No thanks.”

Casey could hear weariness in Raph’s sigh. 

Mikey sounded pained as he added with insistent desperation, “Leo, we talked about this. We’re supposed to communicate with each other before jumping into things.” There was a pause. “None of us are supposed to be doing anything alone.”

Even with his eyes shut Casey could almost visualize the way Leo’s frustration melted away. It left Leo’s face and body language in a long, drawn out sigh. 

“I’m sorry, Mikey,” Leo said. “I just, with Case’ missing, and then you guys … I had no answers. I just sorta, leaped and — oof!”

Leo grunted as Mikey crashed into him. Intrinsically, Casey knew the smaller box turtle was wrapping him in a hug as far around as his arms could reach. Casey heard a quiet tapping as Leo pat the back of Mikey’s shell. “I’m just glad to see you guys in one piece,” Leo said. “Where did Big Mama send you off to, anyway?”

“Glad you’re in one piece too, idiot,” Raph said. With the silence, Casey figured there were more hugs happening. 

After a moment Leo broke through the quiet again. “No but really, what did Big Mama have you chasing after?”

“Coffee,” Donnie said with tired finality. 

“Coffee?” Leo quizzed, unconvinced. 

“Coffee,” Donnie confirmed. “The Hidden City put a metric ton of restrictions on incoming shipments, which Big Mama’s totally trustworthy and scrupulous supplier didn’t want to come near. The beans are sourced directly from small Yokai farms in Venezuela, which I commend Big Mama for: she may be many things but at least she buys as direct as she can from the growers … unlike a certain TwinTails coffee chain that I refuse to engage with.”

“She needed middle-men, middle-turtles?,” Raph added, “to go to the buyer’s ship and pick ‘em up – the beans – since the captain wouldn’t come in to dock.”

“And Big Mama couldn’t just wait for a bit of beuroca-sosoity to get sorted before getting her coffee?” Leo asked. 

“Bureaucracy. And no,” Donnie said, “But as a coffee connoisseur myself, I sympathize. This imported blend smells amazing .”  

There was amusement in Leo’s accusatory tone. “You took some for yourself, didn’t you?”

“Noooooooo,” Donnie denied, convincing no one. “But, I knew she wasn’t going to make the trade of the beans for Casey easy. She won’t miss a few ounces.”

“You sly dog,” Leo teased. 

“As if I would pass up the chance!” Donnie stated. “The aroma of the beans alone is divine; imagine how the brew will smell and taste!”

“Wait, I forget what they smell like!” Mikey interjected. 

“Yeah, I gotta smell these beans if they were worth stealing from Big Mama,” Leo said through a grin. 

The brothers bickered over getting a whiff of the coffee that Donnie was suddenly protecting from their “snotty and gross snouts”. The sound of light rough-housing filled the air as Casey drifted again, fading into a warmth of gray nothing. 

*

“I can’t leave for a single week without at least one of you falling into some sort of otherworldly predicament.” The grumbly voice over Casey belonged to Baron Draxum, who was checking Casey’s temperature with a wrist to his forehead. Casey didn’t know when he’d arrived: he still couldn’t open his eyes. “Why didn’t you call me as soon as you found out he was at the Nexxus Hotel? I could’ve negotiated.”

“To be fair, Big Mama did not call for you,” Splinter said from somewhere close, sounding the slightest bit guilty, “Just my sons. You know how she is when her terms get bent.”

Barry scoffed and shifted to finding Casey’s pulse, two fingers lingering on his neck long enough that Casey guessed he was counting. “Considering she’s the one that bends the rules the most, she can stand to have things not go all her way sometimes. Did she at least give any information about his illness?”

“An overabundance of time magic,” Donnie said. He was further away, and his voice sounded a little echoey. “Leo had already swooped in and whisked Junior back to the Lair by the time we finished her errand, so in exchange for her precious coffee beans she gave us information.”

With the way Leo retorted, Casey guessed Barry must be giving him some serious stink eye. “Oh come on, I know it was stupid. But I got results! I got him home and comfortable faster .” Leo complained, “And anywhizzle, in addition to whatever Big Mama said, with just a smidge of sleight of hand yours truly also snagged a doohickey with Casey’s medical files. Don’s definitely decrypted that sucker by now.”

Donnie made a sound of pride. “Decoded it and then some. The device the files were stored on is truly fascinating, and the port gives me a good basis to update my Genius Built adapter so I can hack Big Mama’s systems if we ever need to. Not that I am planning on it anytime soon, but –”

** EHEM ** Draxum loudly and purposefully cleared his throat, cutting off Donnie’s musings. 

“Right,” Donnie said, “As I was saying; an overabundance of time magic. In those without mystic training, any contact with mystic forces can cause mystic energy to build up in their systems. With no natural outlet this energy can eventually force its way out, and cause flu-like symptoms in addition to hallucinations and dreams…”

Donnie’s explanation withdrew, muffled as Casey dipped back into the realm of sleep.

*

“Do you think he’ll want soup?” Mikey asked. “Barry said he should wake up soon. Now that the time magic’s run its course.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Michelangelo,” Splinter said. A soft, wet cloth crossed Casey’s forehead.

“But what kind do you think he’ll want?” Mikey worried. “Gosh: do you think he’s ever had soup? Did they have soup in the future? Oh man, there’s so many good options. Minestrone, and Miso; Loaded Potato, French Onion … Tomato with grilled cheese! And –”

“Maybe just start with a classic,” Splinter laughed. “Nothing too heavy. Chicken Noodle should be fine.”

If Mikey’s mask tails could make sound, they would have rattled with enthusiasm as Mikey shook his head. He beamed, “It’ll be the best chicken noodle CJ has ever had!”

He bounced away, and Casey felt a space at the end of the bed lift as the box turtle’s weight suddenly vanished. 

“Hey! Use the rubber gloves to cover your bandages!” Splinter called after him. “And that handy chopper Purple made for you! Knives and the gripping of knives are still strictly off limits!”

Casey smiled. Even as sleep claimed him again. 

* 

When the world finally faded into focus, it took Casey a moment to recognize the dulled yellow-green shapes of glow stars above him. He was in his temporary … permanent room in the Lair, tucked in with a thinner blanket and twice as many pillows as he normally used. 

“Where … how?” he mumbled. Casey shuffled, rubbing his eyes and trying to look around. He still felt groggy, but much more present than he’d been recently. 

Someone nearby made a startled sound, dropping their phone with a loud clatter, which in turn startled Casey because he didn’t realize anyone else was there. 

Leo scrambled to pick his phone up off the floor, chancing a hurried glance at it to check for cracks, before beaming a wide and relieved grin at Casey. “Oh good, you’re up!”

Casey smiled back at him. He squinted at the room. “Why am I here?”

“Man, not even awake for two seconds and getting right to the deep questions,” Leo muttered. 

Casey rolled his eyes and tried to push himself further up using his elbows. It was a slight struggle, but the more he moved the easier it was. Leo’s hands hovered, ready to help, but keeping his distance once he realized Casey was doing okay on his own. 

“I meant: why am I in, um, my room; why not the med bay?” Casey finished asking. He rubbed the sore crook of his arm where an IV had been, now covered in a bandage. 

“Well, you were,” Leo answered. “The time-magic faded away yesterday, and your fever finally broke. Draxum said this morning that you’d wake up soon enough. So I made the call to set you up in here. Your room. This bed’s much comfier than the ones in the med bay.”

Leo got up from the folding chair he’d dragged into the room and swiped a cup of water and a bottle of pills from Casey’s lone bookshelf. He handed Casey the water, and the kid immediately started drinking. 

“How are you feeling?” Leo asked. “Any headache?”

Casey swallowed the water in his mouth, taking a second to breathe. “Feeling … better. Still a little bit of a headache, I think.”

Leo shook a couple ibuprofen into his hand and offered them to Casey. Casey stared at them, but accepted the medicine after a second. Leo sat on the edge of the bed as Casey finished chugging the water.

“I can have Mikey warm you up some soup,” Leo suggested. “Highly recommended. He made a HUGE pot of it yesterday, enough to last the fam for at least three days. Mike always says things are better the second day anyway. Something amount marinating and spices.” 

Casey nodded. “I could go for soup.”

“Spiffy!” Leo said, typing out a message on his phone. 

It was silent for a second, and Casey leaned back against his pillows. He stared up at the glow stars on his ceiling. They were dim, barely glowing, probably on account of the dimmable 3-way lamp that was currently turned to the lowest setting. Casey had learned the stars only charged enough to glow when the lamp was on full brightness. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You sure you’re okay?” Leo asked. 

“I’m fine.” Casey sat up quickly. “Just … tired.” 

“Oh, hi, Tired. I thought your name was Casey,” Leo teased. 

Casey turned a dumbfounded expression toward the slider. Leo was smiling, trying to disarm and lighten the mood. But Casey could see the worry hiding underneath it. 

It wasn’t fair how much he knew of Leo’s mannerisms. How much he was reminded of his Sensei. 

Casey smiled back, softer, definitely still tired. “So, I was at Big Mama’s hotel?” 

Leo nodded. “Yeah. How much do you remember?”

“Not a lot,” Casey admitted. “I — I went up to the surface. To stargaze. But it was cloudy. It rained, and stormed? I’d never seen a storm. But then…” Casey took a breath, “it’s all strange.” Lingering remnants of dreams and false visions fluttered around his head, disjointed, fading. 

“Big Mama’s files, and Draxum, did say that time-magic nonsense probably made you see things,” Leo said.

Casey nodded slowly. “That … makes sense. I thought I saw my Mom, but — what?”

As Casey spoke Leo made a face and sucked in a quick breath through his teeth. Casey’s eyes went wide. 

“Wait,” he stammered, “she wasn’t. . . Did my Mom – not my Mom – was Cassandra Jones really there?”

Leo only scrunched his features and nodded. 

“Oh Pizza Supreme.” Casey buried his face in his hands and mumbled through his fingers. “I … I called her Mom.”

Leo laughed deliciously. “She didn’t say anything about that! Dang, Jones; keeping a secret up her sleeve. That explains why she’s been asking how you’ve been doing, like, every hour.”

“She has???” Casey asked, sitting fully upright in embarrassment. 

“Yup,” Leo said. “I’ll tell her you’re up now, though.” He started typing on his phone again. 

“Nooooooo,” Casey protested. He didn’t do anything to stop Leo, though, instead pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his head on top of them. 

Leo hit send with a smirk and returned the phone to his belt pouch. His expression fell as soon as he turned back to Casey. Casey felt the mood in the air shift as Leo debated asking a question. 

“How long did you know you were sick? Like, something-more-is-going-on-than-a-cold, sick?” Leo finally asked, narrowing his eyes. Not quite in accusation but still curious.    

Casey thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I’ve dealt with worse. I didn’t consider it.”

Leo hmmph-ed, and pressed, “So you really really weren’t feeling good, the whole time! Just a headache, my ass. Granted, nobody would have guessed it was a time-magic thing. But you still thought it was a good idea to go off all on your lonesome to the surface, while feeling off? Without telling anyone?! Donnie tried to track you but you lost your phone and the time magic made his system bug out. Dude, you could have been anywhere .” 

Something broken and not quite fully healed twisted inside Casey. “That’s rich coming from someone who begged to face the end of the world alone ,” he spat. He curled further into himself, turning his face toward the wall. “And stop trying to act like you’re my Dad.” 

“Yikes, I’m not trying to be!” Leo hissed right back. “More of a concerned doctor, if anything! And not even Mikey’s kind; but maybe I need to ask him to bring more than just soup in for a visit if you’re gonna be sour about things. Yeesh.”

The bed creaked as Leo shifted to face away from Casey, the two of them stewing in the sudden bad air. 

Casey didn’t take long to break. 

“Look, I’m … sorry,” he said, sitting cross legged. He talked with his hands. “I just, **sigh** , everywhere I look I see them . All of them. I hear their ghosts in your laughter. Even before the time-magic hallucinations, or whatever. I … I see Master Leonardo in your smile. And at first I thought, maybe, I could move on just knowing that his future, my past, didn't exist anymore. That I helped make sure you, he, never had to suffer all of that.” He gripped the blanket over his knees in a fist. “But, it isn’t as easy as I thought.”

Casey looked up, and Leo’s eyes were on him, sorrow ladened and thinking. Casey went quiet again, but his thoughts would not settle.  

“After Mikey woke up and he told us that both timelines had to exist,” Casey continued, “that one could not be without the other, it changed the way I thought about everything. If my timeline didn’t happen, if it stopped existing, then I wouldn’t be here. Donnie said as much, explaining how time streams work. But, that just means that they all died. Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, gone. Dad — Master Leonardo is gone! I know, I know. I — KNOW. Mikey gave me the chance to say goodbye, but Sensei suffered and died and I am the only one who lived! How is that fair?!”

Casey found tears welling up in his eyes, spilling over and dripping onto the blanket. Leo produced a travel pack of kleenex from one of his pouches and moved to sit closer to Casey, holding out a tissue. Casey grabbed it. “Crap, I – I-I didn’t think I was going to talk about this right now,” he sniffed, inhaling deeply in an attempt to rein in the swirling emotions. 

Leo pat him on the back, silent as Casey took shuddering breaths. At length Leo spoke. 

“When I got stuck on the other side of that portal, I thought it was fair. Well, maybe fair isn’t the right word – but I’m going somewhere with this. I figured that if everyone else was saved, and I was the only one who had to get sent somewhere else, that it was a fair exchange.”

Casey looked sideways at him, already forming a rebuttal. 

“But really,” Leo said, looking uncomfortable and forcing the words out, “it wasn’t fair. It sucked, for everyone.” He twiddled his thumbs, staring ahead in thought. “But I’d do it again if it meant sealing that monster away, to keep my family safe. And you –” he turned toward Casey  “– I can guarantee that Sensei, that your Mikey, would still send you back in time if they were given the chance to pick a different choice.”

Casey frowned, wiping his face with the tissue again. “I’m not sure that’s exactly comforting.”

“I’m not Dr. Feelings. I’m trying,” Leo sighed. “But the point stands. What we, what *you* went through wasn’t fair. But your family kept you safe. You’re here . There has to be some good in that.”   

There were still tears in Casey’s eyes, but he thought of Sensei’s final words to him. Live, Casey Jones . Casey smiled gently, and nodded. 

Leo smiled back, sad but happy. “You got to try popcorn and pizza and see blue sky, and there’s still a whole hell of a lot of world out there.”

“Y-yeah,” Casey stuttered, “yeah, there is.”

Leo leaned forward suddenly and snatched Casey into a hug. “Good. I’m glad you know that.”

Casey hugged back just as fiercely. He could feel the cracks across Leo’s carapace, still held together with clasps in a few places. “Are you upset at me?” he asked, “Even a little? That I didn’t disobey orders just this once? You – you begged me to trap you, all alone —”

“Nope!” Leo said as he pushed out of the hug. “I’m the one who gave the order. Why would I be mad that you listened?” He laughed, nervously, “I’m still getting used to people actually listening to my leadership skills.”

Casey mirrored the laugh. “You don’t wish that, maybe, we could have made a different plan?”

Leo shook his head. “What’s done is done, hermano. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” He paused, suddenly pointing at Casey. “What I am mad about is you didn’t tell the team medic that you were feeling bad.” 

Casey bit down his guilt-ridden protests. Leo was right. There wasn’t a thing Casey or any of them could do by dwelling on what they couldn’t change. But … Master Michelangelo had sent him to do just that: change the past. Casey hadn’t been able to fix everything. He hadn’t erased the bad just to overwrite it all with good. Not entirely. Instead he started something new: a whole new branch of time full of possibility and hope. It defied logic. But that was something the Hamato clan was famous for. 

“Oh, by the way,” Leo said in a much more cheerful meter, “before you ask: yes we got all your stuff when rescuing you from Big Mama, too. Donnie’s just giving your gear a tune up. Sorry, but you were still unconscious and he’s been dying to take a look at that hockey stick ever since he laid eyes on it.”

Casey laughed. “That’s just like him.” His eyes drifted over to the katanas leaning against his bookshelf. Leo followed his gaze. 

“Donnie would probably love to fix those up, too,” Casey said. 

Leo shrugged and said nothing. 

“They’re yours, you know,” Casey stated. “You keep denying that.”

“I knowwwww,” Leo drawled. “They were. But I just, don’t feel it anymore. And I don’t think Donnie can do anything about the chipped one. He tried to test the strength of them once and all his tech could barely make a dent. They’re not normal metal; mystic metal all the way to the core.”

“Wait, mystic metal?” 

“Yeah. Todd made all our weapons, if you want to get into it. And we went all mystic warrior on them and turned them into what they are.”

“Interesting.”

Leo paused. “Did we not have mystic weapons in your future time branch-thingy?”

Casey thought back. “Master Donatello produced plenty of mystic machines and constructs. Used a titanium Bō, but I never saw it in action. I never saw Raphel in field battles either; I’d only gone on training missions when they were lost. Michelangelo never carried a physical weapon, just conjured mystic chains. But you - er - Master Leonardo never used mystic. Sensei always carried physical swords. Donnie forged them, with Todd.”

“Huh,” Leo remarked. “Well, I don’t need two sets. I have the one I made from Mikey’s palette knife thingamajig. I can easily swipe something of Donnie’s to make the second one. But those,” he gestured with his thumb over his shoulder at the sheathed katanas Casey kept, “I have a feeling those bad boys are yours now.” 

There was a spark in Leo’s eyes. He leaned forward, grinning. “Hey! ‘Cuz they’re mystic, maybe if you pick up some Ninpo training you can make them into whatever you want them to be.”

Casey hadn’t considered it, but now he looked at the odd set of blades with a new curiosity. He felt a tug in his chest, the same place where the Hamato crest had glowed with life when he said his goodbyes to Sensei. 

Leo prattled on in the background, suddenly scheming over what he would snatch from Donnie's tools to transform into the second of his own new katanas. And, if he could make any sort of blade, what else could he flare into existence. What if he took a handful of Raph’s pushpins from the chore chart and turned them into shurikens? Imagine, throwing those as well as his swords in the middle of battle and having not just two portals, but like TEN.

Any further scheming was cut short as Mikey rushed in with a bowl of steaming Chicken Noodle Soup, armed and ready to ask Casey a thousand questions about what Apocalypse Soup might have tasted like. 

— — — 

It wasn’t for another day that Casey felt recovered enough to get out of bed. Barry came by again to be sure that the time-magic induced illness had truly run its course, grumbling about whether or not the future had taught Casey anything about mystic illnesses. The future had, in fact, not taught Casey a lot about mystic illnesses. Krang induced illnesses, yes. He knew the symptoms of those and had long been vaccinated against them, as a matter of fact. 

What Casey had just considered to be a bad headache, though? Well, now Casey knew better than to keep that to himself. 

Only April, Leo, and Splinter had seen the preview for the Jupiter Jim Holiday Special, while the other three turtles had tried to hunt down Casey’s last known position. Casey felt bad for causing them to miss it, in hindsight. But, as Dr. Feelings insisted, Casey better not sweat it. Donnie’s entertainment system had it recorded. They could watch it all together now, and there was no time like the present. 

Mission - Promo Preview 2: Rewind Boogaloo - was a go. And in addition to pizzas being ordered this time, April asked if Casey Jones — the First — could join. 

Leo knew that Junior had already kinda spilled the beans on knowing Jones, maybe even instigated things a little bit by texting Casey when CJ had finally woken up. He’d promised to tell her, and he was a turtle of his word. But he kept his mouth shut as Junior pondered an answer. 

Casey Junior took a moment to reply, but eventually he agreed; “Yeah, the more the merrier!”

Raph and Donnie, on the now mandatory buddy system for leaving the Lair, left to get the pizzas. April met Casey topside to get the rest of the snacks. CJ helped Mikey put up some space themed party decorations that Mikey had found in the bin behind a party store before the invasion. 

“It’s just a preview. The actual Christmas special isn’t out for weeks, right?” Casey asked, hanging a 3D paper honeycomb planet. “This feels like overkill.”

“No such thing!” Mikey chirped. 

CJ had to admit, after stepping off the ladder and looking at all the streamers and paper rocket ships, it was a bit mesmerizing. A simple joy, perhaps. But he was allowed to have those.  

Leo suggested putting up blue glow stars around the living room. He had like five packs under his bed, ordered in bulk when they had first moved into the new Lair. Mikey beamed at the idea, but forbade Leo from actually helping put them up. With his boot-brace he still wasn’t allowed on ladders. Leo pouted but decided he rather enjoyed being Supreme Supervisor from the couch. 

April and Casey arrived with the snacks, soaked through.

“It’s rainin’ cats and dogs up there!” April said, pointing up toward the surface. She had on a raincoat and galoshes instead of her normal shoes, but the hems of her rolled up pants were still wet. “Don’t worry though, the goods are all dry.”

She proudly pulled a grocery bag out from the inside of her coat, placing the bag on the kitchen table.

Casey, on the flipside, had not worn a rain jacket. Her hoodie was drenched. She whipped it off, the shoulders of her shirt damp underneath. She started wringing it out in the kitchen sink. 

“A little water can’t keep us down,” she crowed. She shook out the sopping hoodie, spraying water over everyone in the kitchen. 

Leo fussed and April raised an arm to stop the drops from hitting her face. CJ flinched and also raised his arms. Mikey dove to cover the bowls of pre-prepared popcorn ready and waiting. 

“No, the popcorn!” Mikey cried, Dr. Delicate Touch hovering in the background of his voice. “Casey! You know we have a dryer! Just use that, you heathen!”

“My bad!” Casey said, raising her hands in mock defense. 

“Casey — ” Leo started to say. 

“I’ll show her where it is,” CJ said. 

“But, I wasn’t telling you …” Leo said, confused and looking between the two Caseys. They looked at each other, and back to Leo, all three of them unsure who was talking to who. 

“It’s fine,” CJ said. He was just trying to help. “The laundry room is right here.” He took a step in that direction, gesturing to Jones. “C’mon.”

“O-kay,” Casey said. 

Leo just shrugged, and went back to helping Mikey and April prep the snacks. 

The laundry room really was just right there. Directly next to the kitchen, it was the only other place besides the bathroom with pipes where it made sense to set up a washing machine.  

“What kind of heat does that need?” CJ asked, holding a hand out for the hoodie. 

Casey handed it to him. “Not sure. I ripped all the tags out.”

“Ah,” CJ said, “Mikey was teaching me that it matters which setting you use on the machine? For every garment. I’m not used to these.” He considered a second. “But you probably want this back soon. High heat wouldn’t be bad for it, right?”

Casey shrugged. “I guess. I dry everything on high and it’s survived this long.”

“Alright then,” CJ said, throwing the hoodie in the dryer. He threw in a clean towel and a few of the wool dryer balls Mikey said to use and slammed the door shut. With the twist of a knob the machine was spinning, the items inside gently smacking around as the sound of the heater and fan filled the small room. 

The echoes of Mikey and Leo bickering over whether to pour the pop into cups now or wait for the pizza to arrive drifted from around the corner in the kitchen. CJ and Casey both hovered where they stood, not looking at each other.   

Casey would be lying to say she hadn’t worried about the kid, after seeing bits of his past. But CJ hadn’t said anything to her about it, and she wasn’t going to bring it up first. Respect from one warrior to another. It was one of the rare times in her life where she didn’t have anything to say. Usually words left her mouth before she could think. But this was taking a pained amount of thought. She wanted to ask, she was curious to know more. But by Titan, she hated when people pried into her life. She wouldn’t do that today. 

“I’m glad you’re back in the game again,” Casey said at length. She grinned at CJ and nodded toward the kitchen. “Wanna help me break up their argument out there?”

CJ looked at her blankly before blinking. “I –” he started, then sighed. “I heard you helped rescue me from the Nexxus Hotel?”

Casey nodded. “Sure did.” She sat on the floor next to the entry archway. 

CJ exhaled. “And I … may have said some things without thinking about it.” He looked up at Casey, pursing his lips. “I don’t know how to say it without being blunt, but —”

Casey was willing to respect privacy but she could not handle beating around the bush. “Yep, I already know,” she said, “I’m your Mom, in the future whatchamacallit.”

CJ’s jaw dropped. “Did the fever make me sleep talk or something?”

Casey barked out a laugh. “HA! Not quite, but that would have been kinda funny.” Her face fell. “No. You just accidentally pulled me into one of your time-magic dreams when we were waiting to escape.”

“Oh,” CJ said. He sat on the floor opposite Casey, leaning on the other side of the arch. 

It was quiet a beat. 

“Big Mama and her goons don’t know a thing, either,” Casey added. “Only me.”

CJ nodded. “I meant to tell you, sooner. It’s just, not an easy topic.” He laughed a little, “How exactly do you say, “Hi, I’m your kid from the future” without it being … “

“Strange?” Casey offered. 

“Yeah,” CJ said. 

Casey huffed out a laugh. “I’m sure I’ve seen crazier. Have you been to the Hidden City yet? That place is straight up whack sometimes.”

CJ laughed in return. “I haven’t been yet. Just in the future, for supply runs. It wasn’t safe.”

“Well, maybe I can show you around sometime,” Casey beamed. “Did you know, I saw a giant floating cow head in the Mushroom Forest?” 

CJ's eyes were wide. “What? How was it even alive?”

“I’m telling you,” Casey said, pinching her fingers on either side of her head then opening them, making a fake explosion sound. “Whack.”

“Amazing,” CJ said. 

Casey smiled. 

They were quiet again, listening to the voices drift in from the kitchen. Splinter had joined them, insisting they needed more popcorn. 

“Look, I know it’s probably weird,” CJ stammered out, “that I’m your kid from the future. I get it. I want to see the Hidden City, but you don’t have to take me. I can go with the turtles.”

Casey laughed again. “Nonsense! You’re all family at this point.”

CJ looked startled, but smiled tenaciously. 

Casey continued, “Maybe the Mom thing startled me, thinking that I just … adopted a kid just like that. Wait –” she looked horrified for a second, “ – did you know? The adopted part? Did I, did future me, ever say or — ?” 

CJ smiled. “No, she told me. She valued honesty.”

“OK,” Casey said. “Good. Anyway; I can’t say I’m surprised I picked up the Mom title in the future, with the way I have the Brownie Clan Scouts following me around and all. A few of them have accidentally called me “Mom”, too. Oh, by the way, if you’re gonna be hanging around with me at all then I know the girls would all be dying to meet you. You’ve got at least 30 new sisters if all of you insist on calling me Mom .”

CJ laughed. He’d met some of the Brownies, in his time: cooks making rations last ages, soldiers, scout captains, all giving his Mom their undying respect. “I’d love to meet them.”

Casey beamed. “Anyway. I’m not surprised, but I am … still not warmed up to it.”

“That’s okay,” CJ said, “You’re only two years older than me now. It’s strange, to meet you now.”

“Yeah, a bit,” Casey said. She paused. “I may not be *your* Mom, exactly. But, you are family.” She grinned devilishly. “And I can still be like your crazy Aunt or something. I don’t know – I’m still workshopping the title.”

CJ bust out laughing deeper than he had previously. “You do have crazy Aunt energy.”

“HAHA!” Casey shouted, standing and reaching over to hoist CJ off the ground. She squeezed him in a firm and warm bear hug, enough to crack his back. CJ smiled and hugged back just as hard. 

There was clamor in the kitchen. The pizza had arrived. 

They let go and Casey stepped toward the kitchen. “Let’s go make sure Leo doesn’t hog all the Hawaiian pizza!”

CJ gasped. “You LIKE pineapple on pizza?”

“How could I have been your mother and you NOT known that?” Casey teased. 

CJ stuttered. “There was no pineapple in the future. And we didn’t have pizza either. How COULD I have known???”

“No pizza?” Casey mused. “Man.”

* 

Casey Junior learned that he didn’t really understand the theme of Christmas. The preview for the Jupiter Jim Christmas Special had a mishmash of things called Candy-Canes and green trees shaped like cones. The whole cast had something red or green on them, or silver and blue on the new Ice Planet the story centered around. But the preview was promising and Casey wanted to see the actual Special when it came out. It would be Halloween next week, apparently. But Donnie had bemoaned that he’d seen the beginnings of Christmas decor and email ads already circulating, so the Special movie premiere was only 5 or 6 weeks away.

“It gets earlier every year, I swear,” Donnie complained. “I need to track the earliest instance of Christmas being advertised each year, so I can catalog the data and predict when to expect the onslaught of all that is ‘merry’ & ‘bright’.”

“You have zero room to talk,” Leo quipped, “You always brag about shopping early and finding stupid early coupons.” 

Donnie smiled smugly. “Touche. I didn’t say I never took advantage of the encroaching holiday-creep. Not to worry, Nardo; I’m already researching where to find those Seven Galaxies figures.”

“See! You’re already scheming,” Leo shouted. “And I didn’t ask!”

“You didn’t have to.”

The recording of the promo played in the background as the others started to theorize about the Jupiter Jim Christmas Special plot, trading takes on the new aliens — the Figgy Pudding Pirates — and how the conflict would be resolved in holiday spirit fashion. Casey listened as they pestered each other about potential Christmas lists. Casey was touched with a pang of sorrow when Moncrief - Jupiter Jim - announced the fundraiser for New York. Casey remembered the ruins around the city, the pyres and pictures, mementos to the fallen. 

He was sorry that they suffered. He was lucky to have survived. He was lucky to have a family. Family which was currently causing chaos in the living room.

“OMGEEEE Leo!” Mikey cried with glee. “Your eyes are like a cat’s!”

“My what?” Leo asked, looking genuinely stunned. The living room lights had been dimmed so they could watch the promo, and Leo’s twice mutated pupils were almost wide open, catching as much light as they could.

Everyone leaned in to see, and Donnie whipped his goggles down. “I knew they’d changed but I’ve never seen them in the dark. Fascinating,” he remarked. 

“Ohhhh,” Leo said, subtly withdrawing a moment. Then he grinned. “Cat-like, you say? Like, Nya!” He curled a hand in front of him, mimicking a meme. 

Mikey, Raph, and April burst out laughing. Donnie rolled his eyes. Leo leaned into his twin’s apathy and laid on the annoyance. 

“Tell me, Don-tron, how are the im- purr -ovements to the Lair going?”

Raph was wheezing. Donnie sighed. 

“Leo, Leo Leo Leo,” Mickey stammered between laughs, “Careful! You know Donnie has a real cat -itude around puns.”

“Aw c’mon,” Leo snickered, “He knows I’ve gotta stay paw -sitive. This is how I roll.”

“Yes,” Donnie stated. He was smiling slightly, regardless. “I know.”

“Hold on, Raph thought Donnie was allergic to puns,” Raph said, smiling. “Don’t’cha got an anti- hiss -tamine for him in your pouch, Leo?”

Mikey started laughing harder and Leo smirked. “That I do, Raph.”

April leaned over the back of the couch to quip, “Careful, Leo. Keep up the jokes and you might not be fur -turnate enough to escape his claws .”  

Donnie stared at the lot of them, all doubled over in laughter. Even Splinter and Casey were snickering, while CJ scrambled to keep up with what exactly was funny but laughing secondhand, spurred by the surrounding mirth. 

“Do you see different?” CJ asked as his laughter petered off. “With your eyes like that? Have you noticed?”

Leo slowly stopped laughing looking around the room. The others were curious, too, but Donnie in particular was leaning forward in expectation of Leo’s answer. 

“Well, I guess. I dunno,” Leo said. “Stuff’s a bit clearer? Even with the lights off. I can really see those glow stars …” 

He trailed off, suddenly fixing CJ with a look that spelled mischief. Junior glanced to the side and back, unsure what was happening. Leo asked, “Hey, you never got to stargaze that night you went missing, right? That’s what you went up to do, but it was all cloudy and rainy?”

CJ nodded swiftly. “Uh, yeah.”

Leo smiled wider. “Do you want to go stargazing tonight?”

“Uhhh….” CJ mumbled. 

“Leo, you know it’s raining right now, yeah?” April said. 

“Yeah yeah yeah, but I have a plan,” Leo said, waving his hand in dismissal. “So, Case; you want to try again?”

CJ pondered. “But the rain …”

“Nah, we still can,” Leo replied. “Like I said: I have a plan. Do you trust me?”

Casey did trust him. He did still want to see the stars again. He nodded. “I do.”

“Magnifico!” Leo announced, twisting around to face his twin. “Donnie! What do you say to hacking the Hayden Planetarium after hours?”

“A field trip, for science?” Donnie muttered. He held his chin in theatrical contemplation. “I’m feline up to it.”

Amid a chorus of laughter and groans, Donnie reminded Leo that he would circle back to how much Leo’s vision changed when his eyes went wide in the dark. Leo rolled it off; a problem for another day. 

*

The world would never run out of things for Casey to be stunned by, he was sure. The fact that the past even had things like Planetariums was fascinating. On the way there Donnie explained that these existed so people could see the night sky without having to drive for hours upon hours to the nearest patch of truly dark sky. New York had what Donnie called light pollution. 

In the scheme of everything, to be polluted by light seemed a less egregious offense to Casey than the kind of pollution the Krang had dumped into the sky of his time. Donnie said light pollution was highly disruptive to nature, but expected of the City That Never Sleeps. Casey just nodded, feeling like he had so much more to learn. 

Hacking into the Planetarium was easy work. It thankfully hadn’t been damaged, but it was closed to the public until further notice. Donnie checked for guards, covering the turtle squad’s tracks as they entered the dome. 

Donnie asked CJ what he wanted to see. Casey didn’t know. Was there more than stars?

They settled on a replica of the night sky directly over New York, one without clouds and unblocked by tens of thousands of lights. 

Casey’s breath was taken away. 

The glimpses he’d seen with April in the past weeks were nothing like this. He realized that the city being without power in some spots had disrupted the light pollution enough for the light of a few stars to break through. But this, the true version of the night, was far beyond those tiny pinpricks. 

Leo started to point out various constellations, where the currently visible planets were, rattling off the names he knew by heart while poorly dodging Donnie’s insistence that he was a nerd. Donnie overlaid illustrations of the constellations over the star map, keeping the opacity low so Casey’s view of the multitude of stars wasn’t blocked. 

Casey just sat there, eventually laying down, content to just gaze while the others talked softly in the background. 

He hadn’t fully understood space before. Even when watching the Jupiter Jim movies – a Hamato rite of passage, apparently, right next to the Lou Jitsu films –  and seeing the fictitious realms of the stars: Casey had thought it had been the creation of wishful imagination. He’d picked up a book on space, to study, curious about the truth of what the sci-fi adventures depicted. The flat images didn’t do the universe justice. 

The world was beautiful; vast and full of wonder. 

No wonder people made movies about space heroes. Adventures where they got to be there , among the stars.  

If Casey ever found himself in the possession of a spaceship — improbable, but crazier things have happened — he decided it would need a name worthy of the hope he felt just staring at  a sky of infinite possibility.

He would call it, The Daring Dawn .