Once again, the latest update from @somerandomdudelmao has left me fully in my feelings, and so I come to you with ~900 words of emotion.
(This one is a rough one: content warnings for death, sibling death, self-sacrifice, and just general despair. Y'all have read the update. You know what we're doing here.)
~~~~~~~
It's supposed to be over.
Master Michelangelo-
(No, no, he's never thought of himself that way. No matter how many times he's been called Master Michelangelo, in his own head he's still just Mikey.)
-Mikey has given everything. He'd opened the portal, watched his own mystic energy - grown larger and stronger with each battle even as it consumed his youth and his very life as its fuel - tear through his arms, cracks traveling up his body until the force of it shattered his form, consuming everything that kept him bound to the physical plane in order to form one last-ditch attempt at setting things right.
He'd managed a wink and a smile, and then he'd died.
And yet he's still here. Why-
The promise. The caveat to the plan. Leo.
Leo had refused to leave him alone at the end, and Mikey will be damned before he refuses to return the favor.
Not that there'll be anything left to damn. The family's Ninpo is what connected them to the Hamato afterlife, and Mikey's is shattered, expended to give Casey a better chance at life. At this point, he's held together with the metaphysical equivalent of duct tape and spite - Donnie's favorite building materials when supplies ran short.
(Donnie's gone. Mikey failed him - failed to catch the infection, failed to cure it, failed to find his spirit amongst the Hamato ancestors. The Krang had obliterated him, and Mikey had failed to help until it was too late.)
(He can't find Raph among the ancestors, either. One more big brother failed.)
(He knows there won't be much left of Leo - not after Leo spent so long being Mikey's living shield, letting the Krang tear into his Ninpo time and time again in order to keep Mikey's intact - but he won't fail Leo. He can't. He can't.)
He's still here, for now, and that has to be good enough. He levitates, surveying a battlefield gone cold in the wake of an overwhelming Krang victory, and goes in search of his last remaining brother.
Leo's corpse isn't far - Mikey spots it near where the portal had been, face down in rock that had been blasted smooth and clean. Krang laser. There's no surviving those.
His gaze flickers upwards across the horizon, and he sees something glow near the corpse, a white outline coming into being before the color follows after, taking a familiar shape. It's-
It's Casey-
It's Casey, but he looks different. Better. His clothes are intact and clean - brand new, from the looks of it. His hair is washed and fluffy. His face and arms have filled out and his shoulders broadened, like he'd been getting good food and enough of it. He doesn't look like the Casey Mikey had made a portal for minutes ago; he looks like how they'd all wanted Casey to look, like he's finally getting what they would have killed to have been able to provide for him. He looks like a dream.
And that's how Mikey knows it's a lie.
It's the Krang. The Krang have done something, made one final twist of the knife that's been stuck in Leo's heart since the night they lost the Key - for all Mikey knows, they're going to use it to desecrate his brother's body, and he is not letting that happen. He zooms closer to Leo's corpse-
"We did it, Mikey, we got him out-"
-and feels the world tilt.
That's not Leo's corpse, because Leo's not dead. He's clinging to life, muttering nonstop in a voice barely above a whisper - he's not long for this world, but he's still here-
The lie cries out in Casey's voice and makes for his brother-
And Mikey lashes out, magic coming to his hands as easily as it ever did. It's not enough to incinerate the lie - the thing is too smart, too quick, and pulls back with only an injury to its arm. That's enough of an opening for Mikey to land in front of Leo, snarling at the lie wearing his nephew's face. "Don't. Touch. Him!" That's his brother. That's his brother. That's the only brother he has left, and he won't have him for long, but that doesn't mean the Krang can take him! "Whatever Krang trick you are-"
Spite, while fun, is no substitute for engineering. Donnie had told him that once.
The spite - and whatever else is holding him together at this point - gives out, the collapse manifesting as pain, and Mikey folds in on himself with a groan. He can fight - he will fight - but if the lie forces combat, then fighting will be the last thing he'll ever do, and Leo will die alone.
He can't. He just…he can't.
He drops to his knees, laying a spectral hand on Leo's head. Leo doesn't react - his Ninpo is shattered to begin with, and Mikey wouldn't be surprised if death's door has robbed Leo of his senses as it is - and just keeps talking.
"We got Casey through the portal, he'll be okay, he'll get to grow up without all of this, we did it, we- we- we did it, Mikey-"
Mikey kneels there, one hand on his inert brother's head as Leo's life slowly sputters out. Eventually he'll die, and what fragments are left of his spirit will disintegrate, too shattered by years of warfare to persist after death, and Mikey will let himself fade along with them. Together until the rapidly approaching end, like they'd promised.
He kneels, and waits for oblivion to come.
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DEUCE TRIED TO BEAT ACE WITH A LARGE STICK WHEN THEY MET????????????????
oh my god i get to tell you this i'm so happy. this is going to get long because i just. adore how fucking cringefail deuce is at the start of the novel. the manga is great but it's so important to me how badly this man can fuck up within 10 minutes of meeting a stranger. his ass does NOT know how to keep his foot out of his mouth
going behind a read more bc long and spoiler filled (specifically heavy spoilers (essentially an abridged play-by-play of the first chapter) for Ace's Story book 1 and a little bit of the first chapter of the Episode A manga adaption)
if you don't want spoilers but are curious uhhhh basically deuce got a lil hangry ^-^ thats all ^-^
so, in the manga adaption, deuce pretty immediately warms up to ace, yeah?
yeah. deuce is pretty fuckin easy in the manga. meanwhile, in the novel, when ace immediately asks for help...
(if it's unclear, all first person is referring to deuce, the book is written from his POV)
in fact, deuce manages to fail basically every speech check in the first conversation they have together. i'm not kidding look at how fucking bad he is at this.
my man falls ass first into a rant to a guy he just met and manages to find himself saying 'wow why don't you go cry to your mom and leave me alone to be depressed' to a man who's mom literally died in childbirth. less than 5 minutes after meeting the guy. and the best part? HE KEEPS GOING.
he's gotta stop there, right? surely? surely even a man who's been stranded on an island alone for 3 days can tell when he's got his foot so wedged in his mouth he's practically deepthroating it? NOPE!
at this point, you'd think there's literally nothing worse that he can say. you would be so, so wrong.
MY MAN. MY GUY. i want to hammer in the fact that deuce managed to fuck up a conversation this badly with a man he's literally never met within like, 15 minutes at most.
deuce then proceeds to recover from this utter failure at conversation by just. walking away into the woods and proceeding to continue slowly starving to death for several days whilst avoiding ace. he also eats ants on at least one occasion. this isn't really relevant to the hitting ace with a stick thing but it's important to me that you know that.
he also despite all of this has this gayass moment
again, not relevant, but important to me that you know he saw ace failing to sail on the worst raft you've ever seen and still called him 'dashing'.
now, at this point, deuce has been without food and with only minimal water for days- probably close to a week, though it's a bit ambiguous. and my guy, brilliantly, thinks to himself 'well. ace doesn't look like he's starving to death. what if he has food?' and sneaks behind ace, following him until he sees ace with a huge fruit (the mera mera no mi).
all of this... deuce sneaking up on ace planning to fight him for the fruit, kill him if he needs to, because he's the son of roger... and you know what ace fucking does??? you wanna know what this giant depressed puppy of a man fucking says to a guy who was abt to bash his brains out??
"nice stick!" and deuce just fucking. starts sobbing on the spot out of guilt while they argue both trying to get the other to eat the fruit. they are. so stupid and i love them so much.
so yeah. deuce's first ever interaction with ace is loudly announcing that he'd want to kill himself if he was the son of roger, and his SECOND interaction is him attempting to kill ace with a stick because he's hangry. i love him so much he's so fucking shit.
tldr you're not you when you're hungry and also you should all read the ace novels. because of this and also because ace and deuce get cockblocked on a gay ferris wheel ride by a marine just deciding to jump in the gondola with them and sit there menacingly until ace breaks the door and just jumps out to escape her monologuing abt her traumatic backstory
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