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elladescent449-artspace · 2 years

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Water

I initially wrote this as a standalone chapter but decided to make it a full chapter fic. This is for the stranded au, with Leonarado figuring out water and food to survive in the prison dimension. Once I start working on the fic and get the chapters going I'll probably delete this or at least edit it to have the chapter number and fic title.

Krang was leaving him alone lately.

He was laying in a comfortably shaped divot in the hull of one of the hundreds of ships that floated around. He was still healing from the big beatdown he had had with Krang a few weeks — had it been weeks — A week? — ago but he could probably thank his mutation or something for the quick healing. He would have to send Drax a thank you letter, or maybe a postcard.

He chuckled at the thought.

Leonardo had woken up some time ago — that’s all time was at this point, seeing as how the lack of sun rotations was throwing off his inner clock. When his stomach growled he ignored it until the gnawing sensation started to become unbearable. It must be because he didn’t eat before he laid down to sleep. He had just been so tired lately. Leonardo made it half way up before he collapsed back into the dust. With a grunt he forced himself up into a sitting position, and then he stood, choosing to ignore the subtle sensation of pins and needles in his hands and feet.He crossed his arms to stretch them, and then straightened with a groan.

“Good morning!” he shouted to himself with a smile. “The weather today is~” he announces, pausing for effect as he rotates a full 360 looking at the sky, “gray! There is no breeze, medium light, and a whole bunch of nothing!” His voice bounced into echoes as it traveled off and away into the gray void, leaving him in silence once more.

“Well, time for breakfast,” he muttered sourly, and he lept off of the platform. Gravity quickly fell away and he free-floated… fell? Fell through open space until he came into contact with some ruble. He propelled off of it towards a gargantuan Krang body, landing on a dusty white tooth the size of a taxi.

Gravity was weird in the prison dimension, which is why he was able to walk into its mouth, still technically being straight up. It was like space moved around him. The mouth was cavernous, the tongue a bristled carpet like a shriveled cat-tongue, and multiple rows of teeth pointing inward on the cheeks and roof of the mouth. Leonardo had guessed that at some point it might have smelled bad, but now it just smelled like dust. In the back of the mouth, blocking the throat in bulbouse, smooth masses was breakfast. Sepia colored orbs varying from the size of pencil erasers to softballs. Leo grabbed onto one a bit smaller than his fist, he found that the taste of these were a bit more bearable.

Back on earth there was a spoken rule about never eating an unidentified mushroom and the rule was probably the same here. He only learned these were edible when Krang shoved them down his throat to keep him from dying.

“Man, I miss pizza.” Leo mumbled before crunching down on the ball. Like always, it immediately turned to coarse powder in his mouth, sending a stinging, rotten vegetable taste over his taste buds. Leonardo held it in his mouth for a moment before bracing and swallowing the chalk-like substance down his throat. It hit his stomach like a rock and he gagged, “I miss pizza so much!”

Leonardo sat down and slowly ate his chosen fungus. He didn’t gag as much as he used to, but it was still bad. A few months ago — months? — he’d be having breakfast by now. If it was Saturday Mikey would make pancakes, mini waffles, or those crepes that everyone liked, with fruit or whipped cream. If April was over she’d be the one to drag Donatello from his lab, otherwise it would be Raph. Dad would be up and make Leo his favorite tea, they always did like the same types of tea. He and his family would all sit down together and eat, talking about silly things, or what they wanted to do that day. They might hang out at home and watch tv or play video games in the arcade, they’d wait until evening and head to the boardwalk and take the ferris wheel to watch the sunset while they ate funnel cake. Raph used to be so scared of heights when he was little, so when Leo would ride with him he'd hold his hand as they reached the top.

The memory was swallowed down with the last bit of mushroom. While his stomach was technically “full,” the shrooms always left his feeling dry and gross on the inside, like there was a thick film coating his intestines.

He sat inside the mouth for a moment, loosely hugging his knees as he stared out into murky dead space. If this wasn’t a gruesome prison he might have actually found some sort of “macabre beauty” in it. Leonardo chuckled, that’s what Mikey would have called it. He would have said it in his silly professional art critic voice.

‘Eh, not really my type of art.’ Mind-Mikey sat next to him, holding his legs the same way as Leo and looking past him out of the mouth and into the gray. With Leo’s attention he stuck out his tongue mockingly. ‘Never really flowed with me.’

Leo had a habit of imagining Mind-Mikey and his other Mind-brothers in their older, colored outfits. The mind version of Mikey wore his old colored knee and elbow pads, a call for older times as Dr. Feelings might call it.

The mental image of Michelangelo nodded, and then he was wearing a sweater with the rounded prescription glasses. ‘What’s on the agenda today?’

“Nothing.” Leo said flatly.

‘Well, you have to do something.’

“No I don’t,” Leo looked away from him, choosing instead to stare back into the gray as he rested his head on his knees. “I don’t have to do anything anymore.”

‘I don't think I have to educate you on the importance of doing enriching activities. You need some form of mental stimulation in order to live a full, happy life.’

“A full and happy life, huh?” Leo laughed dryly.

‘Well, as happy as you can get.’

There was no point. Leonardo didn’t want to do anything. He did what he was supposed to and he did what he needed too. His family was safe. The world was safe. There was no point in enrichment, there was no point in continuing this.

‘C’mon, get up.’ Mind-Mikey stood.

Leo turned his head to look at him. Mind-Dr. Feelings was standing over him, expectantly but patiently staring down at Leo as he waited for him to follow. Leo groaned but still stood up.

‘Let’s do something.’ Mind-Mikey smiled.

“There’s literally nothing to do, this prison dimension has nothing.”

‘Have you looked around?’

“Everyday I wake up and have to open my eyes to this place.”

‘Yeah but have you looked?’

Leonardo rolled his eyes, but with the patient stare of Dr. Feelings, he buckled. Leonardo sighed, “alright, hermano, i’ll look.”

‘That’s the spirit!’ Mind Mikey leapt out of the mouth and Leo followed.

Leo didn’t even humor the first ship. It was small in comparison to the others, the size of a small apartment building. He obediently followed the vivid hallucination of Dr. Feelings, not taking in any of his surroundings. They walked through together for maybe an hour, and at the end they hopped out of the front of a broken cockpit.

The second ship was larger, and with the weirdness of gravity they explored it with everything upside down. Leonardo took more interest, as it was comparatively clean, with more unbroken glass that you could use to look outside. It’s not like Leo took any notes or anything, but he definitely felt less bored after walking through.

It was at the third ship they were walking through. This one was almost the size of the technodrome, with dark hallways that sucked up the light. Leonardo stepped carefully over the body of a Krang that had long-since fused into the wall in the process of its decay. Something cold touched him and he flinched away. He rubbed his shoulder and came away with… water. Leonardo’s eyes widened. He put the trail of liquid in his mouth, yup, definitely water. Above where he stood was a tiny crack in the ceiling, the water grew, reflecting what little light there was in the room and falling into his hand. He looked to Mind Michelangelo and walked ahead of him, beginning to jog. He passed through corridors and jumped over gaps where the floor was missing.

And then there was a door.

As far as he had seen, Krang ships didn’t have doors besides the immediate entrance. He put his hand to the lumpy surface. It was ice cold. There wasn’t a switch, or a door knob, but next to the door on the wall was a panel, full of decaying, slimy masses.

“Any ideas on how to get it open?” Leo looked to Dr. Feelings.

‘Perhaps you just need to… hm,’ Mind Mikey hummed, ‘I’m afraid that this is out of my skill set.’

“Mind Mikey, can you maybe get Mind Donnie, please?”

A purple clad hand physically shoved Mind Mikey out of the way and an illusory vision of Donnie came into the view with a bright smile. ‘I was wondering when you would call upon my intellectual talents!’

“Yeah, so this panel has got some weird gooey stuff and I want to get inside past this door.”

Mind Donnie hummed as he scanned the door. ‘Well, ignoring the fact that Krang vessels don’t usually have doors and that definitely possibly means that whatever is inside was sealed away for the safety of a mutated monstrosity crew designed to be extremely physically resilient: put your hand in the panel.’

“What?!”

‘Don’t worry, I've done this before!’ “Yeah, but I didn’t exactly get details on how you did that!”

‘Oh, pish-posh I need to get a feel for it.’

“You mean I need to get a feel for it,” Leo mumbled but he obediently put his hand to the panel. His hand broke through the cold and slimy surface and he felt a bundle of thick slimy tube-like organs. He shivered from the feeling but pushed deeper, feeling around for anything that might indicate a switch or a pulley. Leonardo came into something a bit harder than the rest of whatever he had his hand in. It was more metallic in texture, and had less of a give to it than the rest of the mass he had his hand in.

‘Hm~ interesting.’ Mind Donnie hummed, narrowing his eyes in concentration. ‘You feel that thing under your fingers?’

“Yeah,” Leo choked out.

‘Rip it out.’

Leonardo gripped it and pulled. It came out and snapped immediately.

The door flung open and a cold temperature washed over Leonardo.

The room was huge. The ceiling reached five stories up, with large, claw-like gashes cut through the ceiling bleeding starlight into the room. Leonardo stood on a crumbling platform that sloped downwards to the left but dropped straight off in front of him. Hanging from the ceiling by meaty gray wires was a large Krang organ covered in white ice. Below it was a pool of water, and something glowed at the bottom.

‘This must be the ship's reactor!’ Mind Donnie was giddy with excitement. ‘It must have an endothermic decay property to it, causing the crystallization of water in the atmosphere and allowing it to naturally form ice!’

Leonardo immediately unclipped his belt and dived into the water before Mind Donnie could protest. Cold — Freezing cold water flooded his senses and he squeezed his eyes shut. For a few seconds his skin burned with how cold it felt. He blew out a jet of bubbles that coated his face and he slowly opened his eyes. The water was so pure it was like he was floating in the air. The pool was so much deeper than he had first thought, maybe… the depth of the original turtle's lair. Before shredder. There were the remnants of a tall platform in the water, starting at the top in a thin disk right beneath the reactor, with poles attached to it reaching all the way to the bottom, with two other disk platforms of the same size evenly spaced between the first platform and the floor. At the bottom of the pool, floating gently, were clusters of… something reaching up past the second platform. Cautiously, he swam closer. They were arctic blue collections of tiny cells, held together by a jelly-like membrane — similar to frog eggs. Leonardo poked it and it bounced away. He gripped it and ripped away a big chunk. Was this… edible?

‘Maybe don’t eat that-’

‘Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!’ Mind-Raph jumps into the picture, shoving Mind Donnie to the side

Leonardo immediately bit into it. It was soft, breaking between his teeth like a soft gummy. He groaned, this tasted so much better than the mushrooms. It was sweet, like licorice, with something pleasantly spicy like ginger underneath. Under the water Leo grabbed handfuls, greedily eating fist fulls of the stuff, only bothering to chew once between each swallow.

‘Oh-me-gosh stop you don’t even know what it is!’ Mind Donnie pushed back into the picture, yelling as he fought Mind-Raph for a voice in his head.

Leo only muttered in protest under the water, swallowing an oversized bite down his throat. He felt the need for oxygen and he swam up, sucking in a large lung full of air. He floated on his back, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, finally feeling full — in a good way for a change.

Leonardo covered his mouth as he burped. “What do you think it is?”

‘Probably something you shouldn’t have eaten six handfuls of.’ Mind Donnie glared at him, but after a moment, they sighed, ‘maybe it's some alien algae? This is strictly a hypothesis, but the microbes could have been picked up in another planet's atmosphere and then once there was a suitable place to grow, aka light and water — did so.’

Leonardo turned in the water, still on his back and kicked, allowing himself to slowly float under the Krang organ. If it wasn’t a literal giant intestine Leo might have called it beautiful, if still only in a morbid way. The crystals were almost transparent, softly reflecting the bleeding light from the ceiling across his face and body. As he floated under it he felt a thin stream of water dripping onto his shoulder and down his body as he floated away.

‘I guess the moisture in the air freezes when it comes into contact with it, and then melts from the natural temperature of the space.’ Comedically, Leo had now imagined Mind Donnie to be the size of his hand, sitting with his knees to his chest on Leo’s stomach.

“Yup.”

‘You know we’re coming for you, right?’

Leo didn’t answer.

‘I bet that I’m — well, the real me is working on a portal as we speak. We’ve been to prison dimensions before, like, with the shredder, and we have Draxum and the key, so it can’t be that hard.’

They would never be dumb enough to open up the portal again, no matter how much it hurt. The thought made his heart ache, and he tried his best to not think, but Mind-Donnie kept talking.

‘Raph is probably the leader again, and he’s training really hard to be strong enough. And Mikey’s probably… well, I don’t know what he’d be doing but he’s definitely doing it.’

“He’s probably beat my pizza box stacking record.” Leonardo lightly laughed. “What’s April doing?” She was probably back at school by now. Being awesome and continuing her pursuit in journalism like she always wanted, even when they were kids.

‘Do you remember that class she was excited to take?’

“Digital Photographic Imaging.”

‘I bet she passed that, she knows me and I am a - as the kids say - whiz at anything digital.’

“Has it been that long?”

‘Leo, it's been months.’

“You don’t know that,” Leonardo whispers.

Mind Donnie didn’t say anything else. Perhaps this was his way of not arguing with him, or at least not arguing with himself.

There are too many days where Leo thinks too much, and the illusory avatars of his brothers are a symptom of it. He doesn’t mind too much when the visions show up though, it makes this more bearable. The cracks in the ceiling let him stare into the dark void, and for a moment he allows himself to imagine that there are constellations for him to marvel at. Leonardo closes his eyes, allowing himself to draw a mental blank, to not think of anything anymore. He didn’t want to keep thinking.

“You need to get out of the water.” Mind Donnie broke the silence.

Leonardo ignored him.

“Leo, the water’s too cold, you need to get out.”

“Just another minute.” He didn’t want to get out of the water, this was the best thing he had felt in, according to Mind Donnie, months. After so long his skin didn’t feel dirty, and he finally had something in him that didn’t taste like an oil spill.

“Get out of the water Leo.” Mind Donnie’s voice began to rise.

“I don’t want to.” Leonardo rolled over, submerging his face to let the cold feeling wash over his front.

“Please.” Donatello whispered, fully in his head.

Leonardo opened his eyes again to stare at the bottom of the pool. He opened his mouth and let the water in, taking a few swallows. He breathed out.

He didn’t expect to stagger with his first step out. He fell to the ground on his face, feeling even colder than he did in the water.

‘Your experiencing early symptoms of hypothermia,’ Mind-Donnie said flatly.

“You don’t say.” Leo laughed dryly.

‘Get your body moving, there isn’t another heat source so you’ll have to rely on yourself.’

Groaning, Leo mutters out “yeah, I know.” Leonardo shakes his upper body, waking himself up a little before staggering into a standing position.

He was only in the water for about twenty minutes and he was already so cold. It wasn’t going to get any warmer here, so if he was going to come back and swim some more — which he most definitely was — he would have to cut the time down significantly. He had water. Finally he had water. And food that didn’t taste like poisoned chalk. It felt small, but it was something that he was finally looking forward to.

Note: Thank you Rott on Discord for beta-reading

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