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theashemarie · 10 months

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Time Capsule - a ROTTMNT Fic

PART 1: Do you Remember Popsicles?

Chapter 1: [Read on ao3] + below the cut Chapter 2: [Read on ao3] Chapter 3: [Read on ao3] Chapter 4: [Read on ao3]

(Art by @katiemonz | Reblog just the art here.)

[That night, after the museum break in, they save the Key, but it's already begun by then. Foot Clan defeated. Day saved. Yadda yadda. Back to their post-Shredder lives, fighting mutants, shrugging off training, the usual.

Then, it gets worse. Leo is the first to be haunted by visions of an apocalyptic future and gruesome dreams of an alien invasion. Mikey is second, and he's dealing. He swears he is. Donnie third, and he doesn't know how to begin to process. And Raph? Raph has no visions at all. He's not sure what's worse: that he doesn't know what his brothers are seeing, or what it means that he doesn't.

One word in the center of it all: Krang.

(Or: A winding, eventual good end for the bad future.)]

Pull back for a second. There’s Leo, eyes covered with his sleep mask, fake eyelashes flashing in the dark of night. There’s Leo, tossing in bed, rolling and rolling like a pin when Mikey spreads pizza dough on a peel, wrapping himself up so tight in his blankets that when he wakes, he can’t move. He gasps, arms pinched at his sides, legs tangled and immovable, and gasps. And gasps. And gasps. Struggling to catch a breath. Hiccups.

Eventually. Eventually, he shakes his head, shakes the rest of him, swallows past a thick glob of phlegm, takes stock of his teeth, runs his tongue over them, finds them all there, twitches his fingers, finds them all there, closes his eyes, opens one at a time, finds them both there.

Centering exercises—and taking stock. His body is present, and he slowly unwinds himself from the tangled sheets, face blank.

He breathes and wheezes sniffles hiccups hums sneezes coughs shudders. A pull at the stack of drawers near the head of his bed with intact fingers, a blind reach, a snag of a spiral-bound notebook, like a late-night homework assignment. A flutter of pages, fifty-four to be exact, all dated. Two weeks of accounts.

An empty page. He sighs and touches a pen down, ignoring his shaking arm.

Pull in. Raph again, he writes. Crushed again. This time saving me. He threw me back as a robot crashed down on him, using both hands. Scarred eye, tattered clothes. Damn, I don’t remember as much as I should. When he looked back up at me, his teeth were as red as his mask. He swallowed past the blood and told me how much he loved me, how it was up to us now, to make sure that Donnie slept and to make sure Mikey didn’t overuse his powers. I begged him, told him no he chuckled at me and told me that Raph can’t control life and death i told him to shutup that we could save him we’ve come back from worsethings and he spat blood and breathed out laughed again breathless and told me to focus that we still had a chance

and then he died

thats the seventh time hes died in my dreams he’s always older so much bigger like he never stopped growing?? its always the robots or the hounds sometimes the pink tofu guys i don’t GET it what does it MEAN

when i look at him sometimes hes normal sometimes hes older sometimes hes smiling sometimes hes dead i can’t keep living like this what does it MEAN

what the hell are krang???

dejavu. donnie called it that when i zoned out and shivered because everything was familiar everything was too familiar like i had been there before but we were just on the verazanno staring at manhattan like always but i could see donnie floating up next to me and mikey flipping over and landing behind me and raph waitin gat the top with a glare and a reprimand and whats THAT about!! i haven’t even done anything!!

Man. This sucks. And tomorrow we’re supposed to stop a museum break in

And pull back again. There’s Leo, scrambling backward as he throws the pen and the notebook away. “How’d I know that?” he gasps to himself. “How’d I—”

“Leo?” Mikey’s voice, and then Mikey himself, sliding the subway car door open, his bare head. No hair. Leo relaxes because this is not a vision. “You okay?”

Leo’s face clears, drops into bullshit face man mode. “Hey Mike. Did I wake ya? Sorry.”

And Mikey squints into the darkness. And Leo grins, wide and sunny, and sits hard on his shaky hands.

Two weeks of dreams. Two weeks of visions. Two weeks of knowing what’s coming next. About to come to a head.

Today, they get the Key.

“A second chance? That’s what you’ve been fucking around with? Really?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Don’t expect me to— This is… It’s… It’s unnatural! We can’t just… start over.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, nothing about us is natural.”

“Fuck you. You know what I mean. What does Mikey have to say about it?”

“He agrees that it’s ethically repugnant. I’m doing it anyway. I’ve given us every opportunity to—”

“So our opinions don’t matter? Seriously? We need you to focus and instead you’re—”

“I’m giving us a chance. I refuse to feel bad about that.”

“You’re playing God. Don’t roll your eyes at me. You just want to create a museum—”

“I’m getting Raph back.”

“What?”

“I’m getting him back. Now leave me alone. I have work to do.”

It’s the beginning of August, still hot enough that Leo is sweating under his mask, even this late at night. Crouched on the edge of a roof across from the Natural History Museum, he feels sticky and antsy, despite the cool breeze that skims across his shoulders. His brothers flank him, watching the museum with bored attention. There’s no sign of movement inside, which is the first problem with this whole scenario, but Leo has it on good authority (namely: Donnie and his scanner and his Big Book of Bad Guy Codes— though he does find it strange that Donnie’s scanner predicted a crime, instead of reporting one in progress like it normally does) that Hypno is somewhere inside.

It’d been Leo’s idea to storm the place and stop the theft before it even happened, but he’d been shot down by the All-Knowing Raph, keeper and holder of tight assery and leadership, despite Leo’s new title of two months (seven weeks and two days, but who’s counting?), bestowed upon him by the most noble of fathers, Splinter of the Hamato Clan, in a terribly timed declaration on a rooftop just like this one, mere days after their final clash with the Shredder (Mad Dogs: 3, Shredder: 0, but again, who’s counting?). Raph is convinced that Leo isn’t taking this seriously, which is ridiculous, because Leo is the epitome of seriousness. He’s the one who’s usually right in situations like this, but Raph has it in his head that it’s better to retrieve whatever they stole after the theft.

Something something all-powerful artifacts, something something they can evaluate if it’s worth returning to the museum, something something he saw the Foot Clan lurking around on their way up, so they might be involved. Something something, look Leo, the sign on the door says super cursed!

This is all to say that Leo is feeling all sorts of antsy and uncomfortable with this mission. But he was outvoted. Since when is this a democracy, anyway?

“For the record, this is a bad idea,” Leo says, and then smacks Donnie on the back of his battle shell. “Are you recording? Did you get that? When this is over and I’m right, it needs to be clear that I was against this from the beginning.”

Donnie shoves him away with one hand, the other pressing to the side of his goggles. There’s a slight whirring sound as they extend in their zoom function. “Yes, it is becoming increasingly clear that when we look back on this moment, everyone will be in agreement that you’re an incorrigible annoyance.”

“An incorrigible annoyance who’s right—”

“Will you two focus?” Raph’s voice hisses, and Leo turns to glare at him. He’s crouched nearby, watching the building that they know Hypno is going to come crashing out of. “We need a plan,” he continues, pushing himself up to his feet. Next to him, Mikey nods, focused, while Donnie’s goggles continue to buzz.

“We need to think about this,” Leo argues, crossing his arms. “Since when is Donnie’s scanner this accurate and ahead of the game? This could be—”

“Since I updated it,” Donnie grumbles.

“This could be a trap,” Leo finishes. (He knows it’s not. He knows that this was pre-ordained; he’d written it in his journal at 2:17 this morning. Museum break-in, them stopping it. How they would stop it has yet to reveal itself, but he knows it’ll come to him as it happens. He’ll step outside of himself, like he has multiple times this week, a disassociated ghost watching the world tilt under him. Nauseous too, and dizzy eventually, feeling off—like someone came into the lair and shuffled everything a little to the left, shins banging, stumbling over himself as he fails to connect the ghosts of the visions with the present fast enough.)

“Take this seriously, Leo,” Raph returns, and it feels a little incongruous, but still familiar. Raph’s hard, impatient, worried glare strikes something in Leo’s chest, and he has a moment where he feels a little motion sick with the familiarity; the world tips and slides out from under him, just there, as he watches Raph’s fists clench.

“I am taking this seriously,” Leo says, grasping, grasping, for the slithery, oiled snake of logic. “Why are you—”

The doors to the museum smash open with an incredible spray of glass, and the Action News van skids into the road. Pedestrians dive out the way, screaming, and Leo watches it, can trace its path up Third Avenue, and doesn’t wince as it careens through a red light.

They take off after it, all arguments forgotten. Leo, Mikey, and Raph jump the gaps between buildings easily, like when they were little and leapt between chalked squares of hopscotch, while Donnie zooms after them in his jetpack. Leo’s body knows this path, and he barely has to think as he stretches his stride, plants his feet, lands hard on his toes and heels. They’re keeping up with the van—but not for long.

“We have to stick together,” Raph mutters, glancing sideways at Leo as they leap again. Mikey almost misses the jump but manages to grab the edge of the building and flip himself up to his feet. “Right, Leo?” Raph continues as Mikey catches up.

The van, despite its speed, hasn’t managed any further distance. If anything, they’ve gained on it, which makes Leo’s eyes narrow. He’s supposed to do something flashy here. He’s supposed to show off, because he’s the leader but he doesn’t want to be; he’s supposed to fuck up and get the Key (the what?) and lose it and cause the i̵̛͕ṅ̷̖ḁ̶̿s̵͓̏ị̷̿ǫ̶̏n̶̥̆.

His vision whites out, for just a second, and he stumbles. Donnie catches him, pushes him back up to his feet without a word, with impossibly fast reflexes, and Leo finds his stride again. He forces himself to focus.

“I have déjà vu,” Leo huffs, instead of answering Raph’s question directly. “Don’t you guys have déjà vu? We’ve been here before.”

“Again?” Mikey demands.

“We’ve been over this,” Donnie cuts in, the only one who isn’t short of breath. “Déjà vu is just your brain recognizing patterns and creating false memories—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever!” Leo waves his hands. “Or maybe it’s real memories! We’ve done this before! Look!”

Ahead of them, the avenue stretches forever, and the van bowls ever forward. They leap another gap, and the van jumps forward to match their distance.

“How are we keeping up?” Leo demands. It comes to him in a flash, spooling out in front of him: the van barreling down Third, Donnie and Mikey, maneuver twelve, Donnie and some one-liner about his mystic tech, the van careering out of control, Raph crushing the front of the van, the thing they stole flying out of Hypno’s hands, Raph catching it, Leo staying back like a good boy, the day is saved, they go home, all is normal and right in the world.

Except, it’s really, really not.

“We don’t have time for this!” Raph cries. “Leo, figure yourself out. Donnie, Mikey—maneuver twelve.”

“On it!”

Donnie and Mikey speed away, and Leo and Raph continue at their forward pelt, watching as Donnie whips Mikey toward the van. The roof explodes, van cut in half by Mikey’s blazing nunchaku, and Leo feels the world tilt again—in time with the déjà vu

It’s happening like every time. The other day, Donnie knocked a glass off the counter, and Leo saw the spray of glass before his elbow made contact. Leo kicked a portal under it and caught the glass with a smooth, magician’s flourish, eliciting applause from Mikey and a confused, worried look from Donnie. A couple hours later, Raph laid a trap across the entrance to the TV room—an entry in the ever-evolving and never-ending prank war—and Leo easily side stepped it, knowing exactly where the bags of flour hung, ready to tip onto the first sucker who dared cross the threshold. Mikey, who was just behind him, froze as the bag landed on his head with a dull thud, a dusting of flour fluttering around him, and the unholy screech he released when he saw the bag, the expensive logo, was enough to bring Donnie out of his lab, where Leo leaned against him as they watched Mikey skitter up the walls like a molting bug, Raph trying to reason with him but unable to because he was laughing too hard.

And, as Leo watched, he blinked, and there was a flash, and he saw Mikey, flinging mystic chains at monsters as the world lit up in orange flames. And Raph, shoving himself backwards across the gritty, destroyed asphalt, watching Mikey with terrified, hopeful, worried eyes. A pink hound launched itself at Raph, and Mikey launched himself at it, and Leo blinked again and it was just Mikey, coated in white, flying at Raph to deliver a three-star hurricane straight to his huge dome.

And those are the easy visions. That doesn’t touch the bad ones. Usually, they’re reserved for dreams, but, lately, they’ve been eking out into Leo’s waking life.

Like now. He knows exactly how this will go now. It’ll end with Raph holding the idol, triumphant, and Leo scurrying after him, contrite, proven wrong. And nothing will go wrong. There will be no i̵̛͕n̸̛̹v̷̖̇ḁ̶̿s̵͓̏ị̷̿ǫ̶̏n̶̥̆.

He’s getting a little tired of nothing going wrong though. How does he stop it? How does he change it?

“Prepare to be Donnie’d by my mystic tech,” Leo mutters, voice blending with Donnie’s, small and staticky from the communicator built into their wrists. The line comes out in stereo, both from Leo’s mouth and from Donnie’s line of the comms, and Raph nearly trips as he glances at Leo, wide-eyed.

“How did you—”

The van careens out of control as it swerves to dodge Donnie’s energy wall, and Leo knows then that they’re out of time. The thing they stole—

The Key, a voice he doesn’t recognize supplies from the back of his head.

The Key can’t get away, and it’s Raph’s turn in this strange song and dance. Leo knows exactly how this will have to go now, can see it play out in third person, knows exactly where he needs to land to catch it.

He portals away.

Raph plays his part well, as if compelled, despite his confusion. He flies into the air, smashes down onto the front of the van, and the Key—the idol—the thing flips through the air.

Raph leaps again, but Leo knows that he has to be the one to catch it. He can hear the idol as it climbs its arc, the slight swish, can see its trajectory, knows how this once went: Raph, catching it, Leo, portal-chopping his mystic arm, the idol, clattering to the ground.

Wait. Portal chop?

Leo intercepts Raph’s jump before the red light of his mystic projection can touch the Key. A portal opens in front of him, and he tears through it with an aborted yell of surprise. Leo is breaking the script—he’s supposed to let Raph grab it and keep it; that’s the correct steps in this equation, but he pushes against the impulse and, swallowing down how sick he feels to be breaking the rules, launches himself forward, slides across the asphalt, and snags the Key before it hits the ground.

The nausea passes.

He releases the Key, allowing it to fumble. It’s a split-second decision, but the déjà vu is too strong. He’s supposed to hold onto it, according to the force compelling him, hold onto it don’t let the Foot get it stop the i̵̛͕ṅ̷̖ḁ̶̿s̵͓̏ị̷̿ǫ̶̏n̶̥̆, so he lets it go.

There’s a slight flash, a jump-cut of vision, and the key teleports from its short plummet.

Right back into Leo’s hand.

[Read the rest on AO3.]

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of tmnt #save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt fanfiction #rise movie spoilers #rottmnt movie spoilers #ashe talks #ashe writes #long post #i told you guys i would get a proper post up eventually #chapter 2 is live now but i'm gonna let chapter 1 live here on tumblr in its entirety #fic: time capsule

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howaboutalittlehelpneos · 1 year

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So while the name "Kaito Faker" would sound horrible, anyone else think it's kinda strange that neither of Dr. Faker's kids have the same last name as him? Their last names being Tenjo implies they're named after their mother, who is never seen, heard, or mentioned once throughout the entire duration of the show (unless I'm forgetting something super small, in which case tell me)

But who IS their mother? I'm sure plenty of people have talked this one to death already, but the idea of her being from Astral World has become kind of a favorite fan theory of mine considering Haruto looks like this...

There's no way he's not meant to resemble an Astralite

He and Astral both have those round head things, and his outfit resembles the line markings that Astral has on his body. Haruto has gold eyes, while Astral's got silver and gold, which I guess you could chalk up to him being like... Artificially created? If I'm remembering right? I haven't watched Zexal in so long help sodkdmdk

Blue seems to be a very common eye color for Astralites, with colors like gold being a rare exception, since the only ones who seem to have it are Enna...

And Eliphas, once again with the heterochromia

Why is he the only one other than Astral to have like,,, defined eyes by the way? No one else is good enough to get pupils and all that? They just have the entire eye be one color unless they're special? Mister "I'm the will of the entire planet so only I get to have special eyes" smh.

Seriously I want to understand their biology so badly someone please tell me what all these little details about their bodies mean

ANYWAYS I got distracted, but going back to the whole Kaito and Haruto are Astral hybrids theory, the only issues with it are the canon timeline of events. Faker wasn't shown to have started getting involved in this whole other world business until 5 years before the start of the show, meaning Kaito would have been 13 when his dad met Vector and agreed to destroy Astral World. Him having an Astral mom would need to have been a thing even further back than that, which would require Faker to have met an Astral being at least 13 years before he ever met Vector. But what would an Astralite be doing on Earth if they didn't have a mission to be there? After all, Earth is full of primitive beings who like chaos, so why would anyone go there?

Well.

This is all just me throwing ideas out there, but what if it were Enna? For one thing, she's shown protecting the children on her planet in a lot of her scenes, so she kind of gives off that motherly figure energy.

For another, she's also the only adult woman we ever see on that planet, as everyone else is either a child or Eliphas.

Enna is also like. Pro chaos, which is a very human thing (also a very Barian thing all things considered, but since Faker was still very much the dad, we'll keep going under the assumption that he and Enna could have been a thing.) Like she was very much for chaos being used to heal the residents of her world, which was kind of a radical viewpoint for her to have considering all the centuries they've spent casting it out completely. Accepting chaos seems to be a very outside way of thinking for her people, and while it is entirely possible that she simply saw people suffering and came to the conclusion on her own that getting rid of chaos just wasn't helping anyone, it'd be kinda cool if she picked that perspective up on a trip to Earth.

At this point this is becoming more of a "wouldn't it be cool if" type of post rather than a theory, but... I mean, wouldn't it be cool if Faker's role in Zexal I had been trying to connect Astral World and Earth so that he wouldn't be galaxies away from the mother of his children? Idk, I think that'd have been a way neater plot than him trying to destroy it to help his sick child, and you wouldn't have to change around Too much of the plot to make it happen. Kite would still be hunting numbers, albeit for a different reason, but still a reason related to his family. Vector likely wouldn't appear until the very end of Zexal I and could have been a boss fight. In the original plot, he had that deal with Faker that he'd heal his sick son in exchange for destroying Astral World, but you could either nix that entirely, or have Faker agree initially with every intent of double crossing Vector and having his true intentions be to get Haruto home with his other parent where he'll be safe, regardless of what happens to him as a result.

Once again, my opinion, but. I think it'd be better than what they actually did with Faker's character, having him seem cruel and evil up to the very end, not seeming to care about his son and in fact seeming to enjoy hurting him, only for a last minute reveal that he doesn't actually hate him despite all his actions showing otherwise, he had his best interests in mind the whole time, no really stop laughing. A rewrite like this would actually show him willing to do anything to keep his son out of harm's way, regardless of what might happen to him after Haruto is out of danger, and would make him far more deserving of the redemption the show tried to give him (which really was not deserved in canon all things considered, and it didn't even come from the right person, it came from Yuma, someone not part of the family he'd been hurting, but that's another separate rant.)

Like... I don't know man, I feel like Zexal gave us too many hints about Haruto not being from this world, what his his whole deal in season one, his appearance, etc, and then they just kinda let it fall flat? They set up a possible reveal for him that they just never really followed through on. :/ And I haven't even talked about his brother yet.

Kaito doesn't bear as strong a resemblance to your typical Astralite, or if he does, it's more... Subtle.

I've seen others point out that both Astral and Kaito have hair that curves up, but given that it's just these two who have that trait while all the other background citizens on Astral's home planet seem to have hair that either spikes outward or flows down, I'm not sure if that's a strong point for or against the possibility that they share a common background... Kaito also has blue eyes, which we've established as a common color for Astralites, but since it's also a common enough human eye color, it feels like a bit of a reach to call that proof, too. His dad's got purple eyes, so he definitely didn't get the color from Faker, but it's also Yugioh, so relatives having completely dissimilar characteristics isn't exactly uncommon... The two traits Kaito has that could link him to being from Astral's world could just as easily be a coincidence.

You know what's weird about Kaito? Photon Transformation. I mean, where does he even get that ability from? It's never fully explained how he'd able to do it, he just does it, and whatever it does to him, somehow hurts him to use it. That could possibly point to him not being fully human if the other half of his heritage is able to pull off something like that naturally, but we once again know so little about Astralites that it winds up being speculation again.

I haven't actually watched Zexal in a very hot minute btw, so if anyone wants to chime in to correct me on something I got wrong/add in something I missed, go right ahead!

#i wrote this literally one year ago and never got around to posting it but im posting it now while im at the clinic just so yall #have something to eat while i sort my medical shit out #yugioh zexal #kaito tenjo #haruto tenjo #ygo zexal #kite tenjo #hart tenjo #enna #this is just a ✨fan theory✨#but i put a lot of time into it way back #and tumblr originally ate my first draft of this which killed my motivation to keep working on it because 'i Was gonna post this'#'but you decided to not save my draft so now i am not doing it' *begrudgingly starts over but with much less enthusiasm*#*saves it in my drafts for one year like a nerd time capsule*#long post #very long post

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