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los-ninos-tortugas · 9 months

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*showers you in birthday confetti* Rise Leo and 03 Leo swap bodies for the day with no warning. What happens? How do their families react? How many toasters perish before the Rise boys figure out to keep 03 Leo away from the kitchen?

(Ah! Paper viscera!) Hi, this was too good to just write a headcanon about it. (Nobody get too used to this. I'm not going to do this every time someone puts a prompt in my inbox, this one just particularly inspired me.)

Something is off, Leonardo notes almost absently as he slowly blinks into wakefulness. He can't quite pin it down though. He doesn't feel sick, no headache, no nausea, no congestion.

As he rubs the grit out of his eyes a flash of blue catches his attention. Huh, that's odd, he thinks as he inspects his hand. His nails are painted a bright blue that definitely wasn't there when he went to sleep. Was that what was bothering him? Did Mikey paint his nails while he was asleep or something? If he wasn't so annoyed at Michelangelo's latest idea of a prank he'd be more impressed at the stealth it would have taken to pull that off without waking him. Leo is a notoriously light sleeper after all.

Except no. That's not it. As much as the nail polish bugs him he can tell that's not all that's wrong. His hand is the wrong color. His scales have taken on a more lime green hue than the forest green he'd always been. He certainly doesn't feel sick but something must be wrong if his scales are so off color...

He sits up in bed, knocking the covers off himself so he can take better stock of himself and finally get to the bottom of what exactly is wrong. But now that he's upright he realizes that the vague feeling of something being off doesn't begin and end with his body. He looks around and realizes he has no idea where he is. He is certainly not in his room in the lair, that's for sure.

He recognizes that he's in a subway car that has been kitted out to be a bedroom. The bed he's sitting on is balanced on some seats. On the wall to his right are posters for things he doesn't recognize (some movie he's never heard of some kind of rock band). To his left are some shelves cluttered with various knicknacks and next to that is the door, currently shut. Behind him is what appears to be some sort of closet area.

So either Leonardo has been turtle-napped in the night and brought to some strange place or maybe he is sick and he's having some kind of weird fever dream/hallucination. Given his family's famous "turtle luck" he's more certain of the former than the latter. But that doesn't explain the oddities such as painting his nails or why his scales are off color or why he's in what looks like some other kid's room.

Leonardo quickly stands up and almost just as quickly falls back down onto the mattress as he's surprised by his center of gravity being completely off. He tries again, slower this time. He seriously needs to take stock of himself. He almost trips over his own feet as he heads over to the closet and it suddenly occurs to him that he's taller now too.

Luckily for him there's a full length mirror in the closet. Unluckily seeing his reflection does nothing to help his situation as the turtle staring back at him is not one he recognizes in the least. He experimentally waves his arm just to make sure it actually is his reflection and sure enough he sees the motion reflected back at him.

The image in the mirror is of a mutant turtle who is taller and more lanky than Leonardo is. All lean muscle as opposed to the more stout and stocky build Leonardo and his brothers all share. More than that, Leonardo is pretty sure that this turtle is a completely different species than he is. He and his brothers are all common box turtles but as he takes in the colorful scales on his arms, legs, and face (that he momentarily panicked over, thinking they might be scars) he determines that this is a red-eared slider. He turns and looks over his shoulder to get a better look at the shell. A dark blue-grey with oval patterns though, they've been slightly marred and made incongruous by healed over cracks in the carapace. Leonardo winces in sympathy.

There are other scars as well, he finds as he continues his investigation. All of various sizes, some more faded than others. Though the largest one he finds is one along the right knee. It's big but it's a clean cut as well, surgical perhaps. He notices now that the knee itself is starting to get more and more achy the longer he stands.

He thinks back to the time he and his brothers met their alternative selves from other dimensions. Maybe something similar is happening again right now, and this is another universe, and this is his alternate self. But why is he here in this way? Why has he swapped with his alternate suddenly? What was the catalyst? He needs to fix this quickly. Who knows what kind of damage to the multiverse this swap could be doing.

He finds his other self's gear quickly enough. Gloves and socks but strangely no elbow or knee pads. There is a knee brace though, which he slips on and is glad for the relief it provides (he can't help but wonder what had happened to this version of himself). It's comforting to tie the blue mask on even if it technically isn't his. He's just glad certain things stay consistent across the multiverse.

Speaking of which, if he's in another version of the lair then that must mean that there's a version of Master Splinter here. Even on the comparatively silly Earth-87 that Master Splinter had been just as kind and wise as Leonardo's own father. Maybe if he can talk to this version of Splinter he can help him understand what's going on and help him fix it.

With that sort-of plan in mind Leonardo finally heads out of the room to go find Splinter. But as he steps out two things quickly become apparent. 1) He has no idea what the layout of this version of the lair is. And 2) holy crap this place is huge. So apparently the subway car wasn't just an aesthetic choice, these guys just decided to set up shop in an abandoned train station . Okay so slight hiccup in his plan but he's not going to let it deter him.

His attention is drawn to the distant sound of voices echoing from somewhere else in the lair. That's probably as good a direction to start as any. He follows the sound until it becomes three distinct voices. It's when he's standing in the doorway of the kitchen does he realize he's made a grave mistake. Because there in front of him are this universe's versions of his brothers. Even if he couldn't tell who was who from the colors of their masks the distinctions are self evident because 1) What the hell are they feeding this universe's Raph? 2) Why aren't they feeding whatever it is to Mikey why is he so small?? And 3) What is up with Donny's shell, he's got on some sort of prosthetic? Did something happen to his carapace in this world?

It's all he can do to school his face into something neutral rather than giving away just how stupefied he is right now. He doesn't want to alarm these guys after all, best not to make them aware of what exactly is going on until he can talk to Master Splinter and they can explain it together. But he's also so busy trying to mentally get his shit together that he completely misses that Raphael said good morning to him.

"Uhh, Leo?" Raph waves a (huge) hand in front of Leonardo's face, effectively snapping him out of his trance.

"What? Oh-" is that his voice? Well, no, no, it's the other Leo's voice. He just wasn't expecting to sound like that. He clears his throat and tries again, "Sorry, still groggy I guess. Morning, Raphael."

Be cool, act natural, he tells himself.

Raph blinks at him, the tiniest frown on his face. Leo tries for a smile that he's pretty sure comes out looking more like a grimace and stupidly walks past Big Raph further into the kitchen.

What are you doing? Abort! Abort! They're clearly all sitting down to breakfast, so if he just turned around and left after staring at them like an idiot for a minute that would be much more suspicious.

"Morning, Donatello. Morning, Michelangelo," he greets, not noticing the looks of concern and confusion the three brothers throw each other behind his back as he beelines toward the fridge. He has no idea why that's where he decided to go but in for a penny in for a pound. Thankfully when he opens the freezer he finds some frozen waffles. He takes out two and heads for the toaster, grateful for the excuse to not have to look the others in the eye. He drops them into the toaster slots and unknowingly pushes the pedal down just a little too hard. Now that his meaningless task is done the silence in the kitchen is deafening. Still he avoids turning back around.

Leonardo leans his elbows on the counter and starts picking at the nail polish. He feels slightly bad about it since these aren't his hands and he really shouldn't be ruining something that belongs to his other self but it just feels weird to him to have it on and he needs something else to do with his hands right now.

"Hey Leo," a voice says from behind him. He forces himself to turn and acknowledge who turns out to be Little Mikey standing there with a look of gentle concern on his face. Little Mikey takes his hands in his, forcing Leo to stop his frantic picking at his nails. "You havin' a bad day?" he asks.

Which, yes, Leonardo very much is. He's in another universe in the body of his alternate self and he has no idea how or why. But they're not supposed to know that yet so instead he replies, "I just woke up, how could I be having a bad day already?"

That just made Little Mikey's face soften even more. (Neither of them notice the smoke starting to slowly rise from the toaster behind Leonardo's back)

"It's okay if you are, did you have another nightmare last night?" This Leo gets frequent nightmares? He mentally files that away. But he doesn't trust himself to answer verbally so he shakes his head no. He's really gone and put himself in a corner here. He was trying not to alarm the brothers but evidently his demeanor is so off from their Leo that he's done nothing but draw attention to himself. He should've just bailed.

"C'mon we talked about this, no more brushing things off. If you need to talk about it-" There's a loud popping sound behind him and the feeling of intense heat as the room suddenly erupts into chaos when the toaster on the counter spontaneously bursts into flames. Not that Leo sees all of it happen because even though he himself was only mildly caught off guard by the event, the body he's currently occupying has a much stronger reaction. He is suddenly in darkness as his head and limbs rapidly retract into his shell which then crashes to the floor, thoroughly disorienting him.

The smoke alarm beeps rapidly from somewhere above, Other Donny produces a fire extinguisher to put out the toaster, and someone (probably Big Raph) starts to pick him up off the floor.

If the sensation of retracting into his shell after going his whole life being unable to do that was already disorienting, being picked up while still inside said shell was a whole other level of that. As quick as he can he forces his limbs and head back out and extricates himself from Big Raph's hold. He tries to ignore the look of hurt that crosses Big Raph's face. He's made a mess of things already, it's time to get out of dodge while he still can.

"Sorryaboutthetoastergottatalktomastersplinterbye!" he says all in one breath as he races out of the kitchen and back into the lair. Wherever his other self is in the multiverse, Leonardo sure hopes he's having better luck than he is.

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(I'm going to finish this with Rise Leo's POV later but at the moment I don't have time to finish this, hope you liked it so far though. Thanks for the ask!)

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