Chapter Text
Rottmnt verse
Michelangelo pov
The day began like most others had since the invasion—quietly, almost deceptively so. The soft hum of city life drifted upward as sunlight cut through the broken skyline. New York was scarred but healing, and so were its hidden heroes.
Breakfast had been a mix of banter and burnt toast, with Mikey tossing pancake bits at Donnie while Raph pretended not to laugh. Leo, of course, wasn’t at the table—not because he didn’t want to be, but because he physically couldn’t. He was still under strict bed rest, courtesy of a nasty wound he got during the final Krang skirmish. Raph had taken it upon himself to keep Leo in check, a job that mostly involved babysitting a very annoyed, very stir-crazy leader-in-blue.
After breakfast, Mikey and Donnie suited up—not in battle gear, but in cloaking brooches and construction gloves. The city might’ve survived, but it hadn’t escaped untouched. Crumbled buildings, exposed wiring, busted streets… it all needed fixing. And who better to help than the turtles who’d fought to save it?
Mikey’s hands still ached sometimes. The Krang’s twisted energy had burned deep, leaving not only physical scars but emotional ones too. For a while, he’d hidden them under wraps or gloves, embarrassed by their raw, jagged patterns. But Draxum had helped—through long talks, old mystic tomes, and even a few unorthodox healing rituals.
The mystic healing wasn’t perfect. It only worked on specific kinds of damage—those tainted with mystic energy—so the scars never fully faded. But something strange happened when he channeled his powers: they glowed. Not with pain, but with light. At first, the sight made his stomach twist with memories of the K-word—Krang. But over time, with his brothers' support, he’d come to see the beauty in it. The glow wasn't a reminder of what he lost—it was a symbol of what he’d survived.
Now, he thought the scars looked kind of badass. Like abstract tattoos sketched by fate.
He and Donnie had been working all morning—Mikey floating chunks of rubble with graceful flicks of his mystic energy, Donnie overseeing blueprints on his holo-tablet and calibrating busted wiring with his tech gauntlet. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it felt right. Needed.
They were taking a break now, perched on a half-repaired rooftop, munching on protein bars and sharing a thermos of lukewarm coffee. Their cloaking brooches kept them hidden in plain sight. Even after saving the city, anonymity was still their strongest shield—especially now that public awareness of mutants had shifted from myth to reality.
Then it happened.
A loud crash echoed from an alleyway a block away. Both turtles froze.
“Did you hear that?” Donnie muttered, lowering his thermos.
Mikey nodded, already tensing. “Yeah. Didn’t sound like falling debris.”
Silently, they activated their weapons—Mikey’s kusari-fundo gleaming faintly with mystic energy, Donnie’s tech bo crackling softly. They crept toward the source, every instinct alert, footsteps feather-light.
The alley was a mess of shadows and overturned garbage bins. They edged closer—hearts racing, breaths held—until a sudden clatter made them both whip around.
A blur darted past. Something knocked over a trash can with a loud clang . Mikey raised his weapon—only to see a wide-eyed cat darting out and vanishing into the street.
“Just a cat,” Donnie sighed, lowering his bo.
Mikey let out a laugh, a soft breath of relief. “Dude, I was this close to flipping out.”
“Same. But hey, better paranoid than Krang’d again.”
They exchanged a look—half-joking, half-serious—and turned to head back to their rooftop.
That’s when they heard another noise and when they tried to look back a light blinded them and they both lost consciousness.
Donatello pov
When I finally regained consciousness, we were still in a dark alleyway. However, it was a different one which worried him. He looked around some more and felt that his gear was still there. That’s when he spotted unconscious Mikey not far from where he was.
Donnie scrambled to his feet, adrenaline overriding the dull ache in his skull. He hurried over to Mikey, checking his pulse—steady. Breathing—shallow but normal. His brother’s face was scrunched in discomfort, but no visible injuries stood out.
“Mikey,” Donnie whispered, giving his shoulder a gentle shake. “Come on, wake up.”
Mikey groaned, lids fluttering before squinting up at him. “Ugh... Did someone get the license plate of that truck that hit me?”
Relief washed through Donnie. “You’re okay. We’re okay. I think.”
Mikey sat up slowly, rubbing his head. “Okay, what just happened? Last thing I remember is turning around and—boom. Instant strobe light disco of doom.”
Donnie looked around more carefully now, scanning the alley walls and layout. “Something’s off.”
“No kidding,” Mikey muttered. “These buildings look... wrong.”
And he was right. The alley had the same New York griminess, but the architecture was subtly different. More polished. Less broken. No signs of Krang damage anywhere. The fire escapes were in perfect condition. No mystic residue either. It felt cleaner—too clean.
Donnie tapped his tech gauntlet, frowning when the holo-map sputtered and displayed nothing but static. “No signal. No GPS. No connection to the lair’s network.”
“That’s not good,” Mikey said.
“That’s very not good.”
Mikey frowned. “So... either this is a super elaborate Krang illusion, or—”
“Alternate dimension,” Donnie finished. “Possibly parallel Earth. Tech-based, low-mystic... definitely not ours.”
Mikey blinked. “Wait... are you saying we’ve been multiverse-hopped?”
Donnie didn't answer immediately. He pulled out a small energy scanner from his bo that he hid in his pocket, swept the area, and stared at the results. The energy readings were faint but unfamiliar—definitely dimensional.
“This isn’t our New York.”
Mikey let out a low whistle. “Whoa... Okay, we need to find answers. And maybe pizza.”
“Priorities, Mikey.”
“I said maybe .”
They exchanged a look and, without a word, flipped their cloaking brooches back on. Donnie adjusted his gauntlet to reroute internal power—if they were cut off from their usual systems, he’d need to make every charge count.
They climbed to the rooftop, hoping for a better vantage point. But when they reached the edge, what they saw confirmed everything.
The skyline was different. Familiar yet not.
It was daytime but thankfully the cloaking broaches were still on.
“We should probably either look for a place to sleep on top or look around the sewers” Mikey proposed.
What they saw confirmed it: a different skyline. Familiar yet foreign. No damage. No mystic anomalies.
A clean slate.
They agreed to head into the sewers. If this really was a parallel New York, there was one place likely to give them answers: the lair of their counterparts.
Donnie sent out micro-drones, mapping tunnels while Mikey provided back-up. It didn’t take long to find traces—footsteps, vibrations, heat signatures.
“Okay,” Donnie said, crouching by a drone feed, “when we locate them, I’m deploying a new prototype: Mouse-bot v2.0. Stealth surveillance, low-energy radar, AI-assisted mimicry...”
“Why are we doing this again? It’s not just for your personal research about multiverse, right?”
“Pshhh... Of course not. Okay, maybe a little .... Anyway- We need that intel also so we can evade them and so we can locate our home faster. I was already studying the multiverse so if I can find out which universe we’re in then I know which coordinates I must use to get us back home.”
Mikey gave a dramatic sigh but nodded. “Okay, Professor Portal-Hopper, I’m in. Let your creepy little robo-mouse do its thing.”
Donnie grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
He activated the mouse-bot and handed Mikey a pair of small goggles synced to the bot’s camera feed. The little device skittered away into the tunnels, surprisingly quiet for how much junk Donnie had crammed into it. The screen inside Mikey’s goggles blinked to life, showing smooth, curving sewer passages—cleaner, brighter-lit than the ones back home. It was bizarre.
“There’s a lot of variation in sewer layout,” Donnie murmured, half to himself. “Must be an entirely different infrastructure design. I’m picking up minimal mystic traces, too. That means this version of New York likely doesn’t use mystic channels.”
Mikey raised a brow. “So we’re in a tech-based turtleverse?”
“Exactly.” Donnie stopped “Wait turtleverse?” Mikey shrugged.
“Yep. That’s what we’re calling it now” Donnie just sighed at that.
The mouse-bot rounded a corner and froze. Movement.
A voice drifted through the bot’s receiver—louder now. Laughing, deep, familiar... but not theirs .
Another voice followed, calmer, commanding. “Let’s wrap patrol up early tonight. I still wanna go over those blueprints we found.”
Donnie and Mikey both stiffened.
“That’s...” Mikey whispered. “That’s me. But not me. That’s—”
“Michelangelo. TMNT-2012,” Donnie finished, staring at the feed.
The bot’s camera peeked out again. There they were: four turtles walking in formation. Mikey (2012) bouncing a yo-yo. Donnie (2012) typing something into his phone. Raph (2012) with arms crossed, eyeing the shadows. And Leo (2012)... standing tall, calm, and very much not injured.
“They look... stable,” Mikey muttered. “Like, emotionally.”
“Don’t get sentimental,” Donnie warned.
“Dude. Do you see my freckles? I mean—his freckles?” Mikey was pointing at 2012 Mikey’s belt, which had a small comic book tucked into it.
“Focus!” Donnie hissed slightly, as the 2012 turtles stopped at a table.
The bot, hiding behind a vent, continued recording. The 2012 Donnie said something about scanning the surface at night and went deeper into their lair.
“Okay, so far, zero hostile vibes,” he whispered. “That Mikey is even humming some anime theme song. Feels... wholesome.”
Donnie, still half-glued to his tech gauntlet, nodded. “Good sign. But we’re not going in blind. Let’s follow at a distance and map the route—maybe we’ll find a secure observation point nearby.”
They trailed the mouse-bot through the maze of the 2012 lair’s outer tunnels. It looked around but also stayed hidden. The mouse tried to get to Donnie (2012) however something blocked him from doing that.
A massive door.
Not mechanical like the ones they had back home. This was manually reinforced—welded sheet metal and sewer junk turned into a makeshift blast protective door.
Donnie signaled for the bot to back off. “I don’t want to risk detection this close to their central hub.”
Mikey frowned. “So... what now?”
“We go back topside and look for somewhere to stay in the meantime. The mouse is hiding there and the range of controls is large so we should be fine for now with this.” Donnie said and they both went back topside.
They activated the broached and got themselves a makeshift shelter for the night in an abandoned building on the side of New York.
As Mikey plopped onto the mat, Donnie sat cross-legged with a determined expression and opened his data tablet.
“Okay. If this is the 2012 universe, we’re dealing with classic tech-based Turtles—still mutants, but no mystics. And if my dimensional theory is accurate, there might be a natural rift somewhere nearby. The question is... why did it open in our alley?”
Mikey blinked. “Wait... you’re saying someone pulled us here? Not an accident?”
“I don’t believe in interdimensional coincidences,” Donnie muttered, typing rapidly. “Especially not ones that knock us out with a mystic-ignoring flash of light.”
Mikey looked over his shoulder. “You think the 2012 guys did it?”
Donnie hesitated. “I don’t know. But I’m gonna find out.”