Archive of Our Own

Raphael settles far too young.

Lavinia is a golden eagle, proud and bold and watchful. She is a guardian, a symbol of strength and justice and heroism. She herds the other daemons with her large wings, just as Raphael herds his little brothers.

Splinter sees this and the regret and guilt make him sick. He has placed a burden far too great on one so young. He needs to be better. He needs to try.

His daemon would have been ashamed of him.

The boys’ daemons are chatterboxes.

Except for Sirani, who tends to hide in Donatello’s shadow; a moth on his shoulder, a snake under his shirt, a ferret tucked into the crook of his arm. She is as quiet as he is, observant of the world but keeping it all at a distance. And she does not speak a word to anyone, except perhaps Donatello, until they are ten years old.

It is Raphael who hears her voice first.

Donnie and his daemon are stubbornly independent. They don’t often ask for help and have the bad habit of keeping it to themselves if they get hurt.

But one night they come to Raph in tears.

Raph wakes up because Nia is nipping at him. Then he hears the quiet sniffles and rises from his bed in alarm.

Donnie is standing in the door to Raph’s room, hands cupped to his chest, tears on his face, and a blanket caught over one shoulder. He’s trying hard not to be too loud.

There doesn’t need to be a spoken invitation, Raph just opens his arms and Donnie is in them almost instantly. Sirani is a tiny mouse trembling against Donnie’s plastron, but Donnie is crying too hard to speak. So she peeks her head over Donnie’s fingers and whispers in a tiny, trembling voice,

“We had a nightmare. Everyone was...and we couldn’t—we couldn’t fix them...”

Raph wraps his arms around both of them, nuzzling his snout into Donnie’s head, and promises them that everything will be okay. Bad dreams aren’t real and they can’t hurt you. He sits there and holds them until Donnie can stop crying and Sirani changes into something a little bolder—a little squirrel that curls her fluffy tail around Donnie’s neck.

Raph gets them a drink of water and tucks them back into bed.

It’s only later that Nia thinks it strange that Donnie and Sirani came to them instead of Splinter.

April’s daemon is a huge, caramel colored wolf with a thick, mane-like ruff of fur around her neck. She is an elegant and majestic beast and appears calm and stoic next to April’s bluster and energy.

The brothers learned a long time ago not to take Zenique’s quiet stillness as passive submission.

Her bark is just as deadly as her bite. And, like April, it is often the worse of the two.

Testing your range is a right of passage.

The boys and April like seeing just how far they can push themselves, trying to outdo one another. They’re all fiercely competitive and the game can carry on for hours until they exhaust themselves.

Leo has tears and sweat streaking down his face, his teeth gritted and his hands balled into trembling fists. Tiziano is inching his way across the sewer floor in the form of a colorful snake with iridescent scales. They’re both straining their bond as far as they can, shaking with the effort.

The rest of the children hover nearby. Raph is fidgeting with worry, Nia shifting back and forth on her talons on the lip of his shell. Mikey is clutching Nelli close and she’s hooked her little house cat claws into his plastron—Mikey always cries and can’t let her get far and it hurts to watch his brother pull apart like this. Donnie and Sirani are watching with sharp eyes, she with a hawk’s gaze and he with a tape measure at the ready. April has her fingers in Zee’s ruff, watching with bated breath to see how far Leo will go.

It doesn’t last much longer.

Leo lets out a pained and watery chirp and scrambles across the tunnel floor. He nearly falls over himself reaching for his daemon and Taz leaps into his open arms, shifting into a shivering little bunny to press against him.

Sirani soars down the tunnel and lands on the floor, scratching a talon into the stone, “Here. Taz stopped here.”

Donnie hums and has her hook her talon into the end of the tape measure, holding it in place. He backtracks to the starting point, passing his sniffling brother, and crouches to set the tape flush against the floor. There’s a beat of silence, everyone holding their breath as Donnie reads the numbers and does his quick calculations.

He looks up with a smug smile, “Our records still stands, Nardo.”

Leo groans dramatically and April laughs.

Her name had been Honoka and Splinter misses her very much.

She had been a large, sleek silver rat; whip crack smart and fierce enough to take down the biggest bear daemon. She was his heart, his strength, his pride and joy. She was him and they had looked out for each other.

And then he lost her.

Splinter knows his dear daemon is still with him, in a way—he would be dead or worse if she was not. He can feel a whisper of her presence in him sometimes, the murmur of her clever wit and scolding judgment. But he cannot hold her, he cannot see her, he can never run his calloused hands over her beautiful silky fur ever again. It makes him ache in a way his old injuries never have.

He misses her terribly.

In his worst moments, he wonders how much more this world will take from him before it is satisfied that Hamato Yoshi’s arrogance has been sufficiently punished.

Yokai do not have daemons.

When the brothers and April sneak in to rescue the little teleporting dog-thing, Baron Draxum gapes at them in shocked jealousy.

And he lashes out at them with furious envy.

Tiziano likes to take the forms of things that move fast.

He is lithe and quick and clever, just like Leonardo. As a fox, he is a darting shadow, nearly invisible in the dark. As a hawk, he is a whirl of wind, untouchable and unrestrained. As a cheetah he is quicksilver and as a lizard he is lightning.

Taz’s ego is more tempered than Leo’s, but he talks just as much. He is boastful and takes great pride in his appearance, no matter the shape. He is fast and he is beautiful and he loves them. He loves Leo. He loves who they are and he loves the rest of his family with an unconditional haughtiness. He knows they are unstoppable and no one can catch them.

And yet he will not settle.

It doesn’t bother them.

It didn’t bother them when April and Zee settled; they’re older, it just makes sense. And it didn’t bother them when Raph and Nia settled. Because Raph is the big brother and Nia is his daemon, so of course they would settle first of the four of them.

But then they’re having a Mario Kart tournament and Leo is going head-to-head with Mikey. Raph’s trailing the pack but he’s cheering his brothers on and laughing when he throws blue shells towards the front. Nelli and Taz and snipping at each other, flicking between forms and swatting at one another with paws and wings in a play fight. Nia is nestled on a pillow by Raph’s feet and she snaps her beak teasingly whenever the other daemons get too close. Donnie’s sitting this round out, but he’s still watching from a beanbag beside them all, stretched out and lazily content.

Sirani has been hunkered down next to him as a big fluffy cat, watching the play fight on the floor. Until she abruptly decides she is no longer content with watching.

She launches herself from the beanbag and pounces on top of Nelli and Tiziano. The other two had been a jackrabbit and a ferret respectively, so they’re both pinned by Sirani’s larger, fluffier cat form. They screech in protest, wriggling to get away while Sirani sits on top of them with a smug look. She’s purring loudly and proceeds to lick the top of Taz’s ferret head.

Leo starts yelling about distractions and cheating and Mikey howls with laughter, almost missing a jump. Raph is taking the opportunity to push through the pack and climb his way towards first place. Donnie laughs at them and, when Leo glances at him, there’s pure joy on Donnie’s face, bright and happy.

He still kicks at the pile of daemons on the floor—swinging wide on purpose—and sends Sirani scampering off.

She jumps back into Donnie’s arms as a ring-tailed lemur, nestling against his plastron, and he puts his arms around her.

A pause hangs in the air.

And then Donnie let’s out a soft, hushed, “Oh…”

It’s almost lost beneath the sounds of the game but Raph immediately looks up, “Donnie…?”

“I...uh…” Donnie blinks dazedly, holding Sirani close and stroking a hand down her back. He looks up Raph, “We settled.”

There’s a pause and then a cacophony of noise as the others all shout and clamber over one another to cluster around Donnie and Sirani. They’re delighted, they’re congratulating him, they’re laughing.

Leo is still sitting on the floor with the controller loose in his hands, staring. Taz bunches close to the ground, a black ferret that almost disappears into the shadows. The game is abandoned, forgotten. They don’t know how they’re supposed to feel.

“Wait, does this mean Donnie’s older than Leo?” Mikey gasps, ever the youngest stirring up trouble.

That’s all it takes for Leo to find his stride. He smirks, rising to his feet and stepping closer to grin at Donnie and Sirani.

“As if,” He says, hands on his hips, “Dee and Sirani only settled ‘cause they’re boring!”

“We’re just more mature than you,” Donnie sniffs, nose in the air. Leo barks out a laugh, finds something else to needle his brother with, and starts a whole cascade of arguments and name calling. Everyone’s laughing again, reaching for controllers and daring each other and being noisy. Having fun.

It keeps their attention away from Taz, curled under the lip of Leo’s shell as a plain, brown mouse.

They’re giggling about the delivery guy having a fish daemon and how troublesome that must be when the goat yokai lets one of those glowing bugs sting the human.

They’re not laughing after that.

Donnie’s retching against the wall and Mikey is clutching Nelli as if he can press her into his chest and keep her safe. Leo’s knees are weak and he’s never felt so cold and horrified of anything in his life.

The delivery guy and his daemon are no longer two.

The mutagen Baron Draxum has created is horrifying. They’ve just witnessed it first hand.

They see it again later at the Nexus Hotel, the unfortunate bellhop getting fused with his bull daemon when the brothers fail to complete their mission.

Mikey watches it happen to his favorite celebrity chef.

It twists the body and soul, knotting them together into a wretched abomination. Humans merged with their daemons, their forms twisted and their souls bound inside them. It must be agonizing, to have yourself so near but being unable to touch it.

Yokai do not have daemons.

Baron Draxum had been trying to make it so they could.

Dust was never meant to be used in such a way.

“We need a tiger. You’re just a rat.”

Lou Jitsu’s daemon was always a ferocious tiger in the movies. Her savage grace matched his wicked strikes perfectly. They were a movie poster duo, beauty and destruction, power and strength beyond measure.

Lou Jitsu had an image to uphold.

No one ever noticed that movie action star Lou Jitsu never once touched the tiger daemon throughout all his films.

No one ever questioned why Lou Jitsu was always accompanied by the same body guard wherever he went.

Famous movie stars did not have rat daemons. It did not make for good television.

Donnie should have known better.

Kendra’s daemon was a rather beautiful snake with black, red, and yellow stripes. It had been curled around her shoulders, like a small necklace, and watched with beady little black eyes. He and Sirani had dismissed it—despite the reputation people with snake daemons had, Donnie fully believed in a fellow tech enthusiast. Besides, milk snakes weren’t dangerous.

He’d been blinded by the pretty colors and the luxury of the gifted jacket.

Milk snakes aren’t venomous.

But coral snakes are.

Even when the brothers fight, they feel pangs of sympathy for the mutated people they are forced to defend themselves—and New York—against. These were people once. They were a human and a daemon, the way they were supposed to be. It doesn’t matter who they were, only what they have become now.

Rupert Swaggert and his pig daemon had been fused together on live television. Thousands of people witnessed the horror (Mikey still has nightmares about it sometimes). But Meat Sweats has to live it. He will never hold his daemon again. And he tries to fill the emptiness it’s left in him with food...and other peoples’ daemons.

Hypno keeps searching for his daemon, but he will never find him. They are one and the same now and it’s something the poor magician can’t seem to wrap his head around. He tries everything to get his hippo daemon back, and it only drives him further into despair.

His relief comes from the strangest of places in Warren Stone. No one knew that the former news anchor’s daemon had been a worm, of all things, but it’s disgustingly suited for his personality. Somehow, he and Hypno get along like a house on fire.

Todd finds solace in kindness and providing a safe and loving home for puppies. He is desperately lonely, beneath the smiles and generosity and lemonade. It hurts to look at, sometimes, the way it hurts to look at the sun.

Repo, if anything, has only grown more bitter and greedy. His mantis daemon had been a fierce one and he’s taken on her hunger as easily as donning a coat. To say nothing of his mutated cat, driven near feral by what’s become of her.

These people are broken, ruined by Draxum’s mad experiments. It is wholly unfair what has happened to them.

But it is no excuse for their behavior.

And someone has to clean up after the Baron’s mistakes.

Raph doesn’t think stopping paper thieves will make them heroes.

But Leo makes convincing arguments and they do have to start somewhere.

Of course, that’s when things get turned on their head. Because that seems to be happening to them a lot lately.

The big guy’s daemon is a huge, tan dog, all lean muscle and ferocious, black maw. He leaps into the air after Nia, snapping at her tail feathers, his booming bark echoing against the metal hull of the ship. Nia’s talons rake the dog’s face and he and the big brute howl in pain.

The smaller one, the one who folds the paper ninjas, is more deadly. His daemon is a snake, a deadly adder that slithers through the piles of paper. She almost bites Taz and it’s only Leo’s quick wit that gets them out of the fight.

Raph still doesn’t think stopping paper thieves is a big deal.

At least the salami is tasty.

They are so tiny.

These little turtles—these children—and their freshly born daemons. All of them can fit in his hands.

And they have to, because there is no one else to help him. His precious Honoka is gone, pressed into his soul and seeping into his flesh. She cannot help him here.

What a horror, to witness understanding and intelligence bloom in the eyes of such small creatures. What an atrocity, to watch as their souls were born and then viciously torn out, ripped into the open and forced to take form.

They aren’t crying now, finally settling down to sleep.

The eight of them are so very, very tiny.

He hopes he can keep them safe.

April’s new friend Sunita, has a small, bright red bird for a daemon. It’s a flighty thing, fidgety and darting out of view often. It doesn’t like to stay still and neither does Sunita. Sometimes the little guy seems to disappear completely, which is fairly impressive for a brightly colored bird.

Zee thinks it’s cute. When she tries to give the bird an affectionate and friendly snuffle, it darts away and hides. April tries not to be offended.

“What are you doing here?”

“Selling pretzels?”

“I can literally see Taz trying to hide in your skirt.”

So apparently some yokai hire other yokai to pretend to be daemons when they mingle with humans. Interesting.

Donnie takes it seriously when the Purple Dragons are involved. His brothers don’t seem to find them a threat, but Donnie knows what they’re capable of.

He’s had just about enough of his brothers screwing things up.

Sirani make doubtful noises about the Mental Intelligence project, but she doesn’t stop him. She’s tired of Taz’s annoying antics as much as Donnie is. This is the perfect solution to make them work better as a team, to get them to focus on what’s important.

Neither of them really took into account what it might do to their brothers’ daemons. Surely altering their intelligence would have no adverse effects on their personalities.

It isn’t until after the mission, when things start going downhill, that Donnie and Sirani see what they’ve done.

Tiziano hasn’t spoken a word since the reprogramming. He’s been lingering in the form of a muddy brown-red fox, his eyes blank and dark as he trots obediently after Leo.

Lavinia remains either perched on Raph’s shell or floating silently along next to him. Her usually sharp and watchful eyes stare straight ahead and she says nothing.

Nelli has none of her usual energy. She is a quiet and nondescript bird, a sparrow or something, alighting on Mikey’s shoulder and doing little else.

It’s eerie to see the empty shells he has turned his brothers into.

Donnie tears himself to pieces over it. He and Sirani spend tireless hours altering the Reprogrammulator to fix their mistake. They can’t bare it, the hollowness, the sneers, the coldness with which their siblings act. They need to fix it, they have to, they’re so sorry.

The relief is tangible when the other six are back to normal. Sirani will not admit to crying, but she will admit to hugging her fellows daemons as tightly as she can. She cannot stand the thought of losing them.

“Lou Jitsu’s DNA, combined with my ooze, gave you life! I created you! You were supposed to be daemons! Daemons for yokai! But you are so much more! You are warriors! You have the potential to save the yokai from—”

“Omigosh, Lou Jitsu’s our dad!”

“What.”

The Foot Recruit’s daemon is an ill-tempered mongoose that’s as scrappy as the Recruit herself. They’re both loud and mean and fight like they’ve got the devil in them.

Nelli and the mongoose are a flurry of teeth and claws and fur while the Recruit chases Mikey down for the Hot Soup video game. They yowl like a couple of alley cats, hissing and spitting. The Recruit is just as relentless in her pursuit of Mikey.

The only thing that slows her down is when her mongoose throws Nelli off, and Mikey’s daemon skids across the floor. She almost winds up under the Recruit’s heel, would have been stepped on if the Recruit had not hurled herself backwards and fallen to the floor.

When Mikey’s brothers and the two Foot Clan leaders barge in to “save” their respective charges, the big tan dog picks up the mongoose in his mouth, ignoring its squirming and hissing. Lavinia immediately begins fussing over Nelli and Mikey meets the Foot Recruit’s eye.

Something like understanding passes between them.

“We need a longer range,” Leo says distractedly, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his ōdachi, frowning at the New York skyline. Tiziano is an elegant black swan on the edge of the rooftop, almost disappearing into the shadows.

“Eh? What do you mean?” Raph asks. He and Nia both cock their heads at the same angle.

“I mean, if I’m jumping through portals or sending you guys through portals, then I always gotta wait and make sure that all of you are there,” Leo explains, turning to face his brothers and their daemons. Taz abruptly changes shape into proud lion, puffing himself up, and Leo smirks, “So every second I waste trying to make sure you slowpokes keep up is another second that I’m not out there lookin’ good!”

“I think what Leo is trying to say,” Donnie cuts in with an unimpressed look at Leo, “Is that in the time it takes for him to ensure that our daemons are next to us before he makes a portal, anything could happen. Those scant few seconds could be the deciding factor between victory and defeat.”

“Sure, yeah, what he said,” Leo waves his hand dismissively and Sirani bristles, fur standing on end.

“Hm, Raph sees how that makes sense…” Raph is rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Yeah! Remember what happened with Meat Sweats!” Nellie bounds into the light as a tiger, slamming her weight into Tiziano, “He took Donnie and Sirani got left behind! And neither of them could fight!” She giggles when Taz responds by pouncing on her, changing into a lizard and skittering away to run circles around Taz.

“But how do we extend our range manually?” Nia’s talons clink against the air conditioning unit she’s standing on as she shifts her weight.

“There’s research,” Donnie says offhandedly, already nose deep in his phone, “And I do have some theories. Leo,” His gaze snaps up to stare at Leo, who blinks at the abrupt shift in attention, “How well can you aim your portals now?”

It hurts.

Leaves a throbbing pain like a fresh bruise inside them, tender and raw. Something has been pinched and stretched and prodded, an overworked muscle begging for rest.

All of them are exhausted.

But their ranges have grown. They can go nearly two city blocks apart now.

Once upon a time, they may have bragged about such a distance. Now it simply feels like a necessary evil.

Draxum’s ooze does strange things to animals.

It mutates them, making them bigger and stronger, often giving them strange abilities. In some cases, it even grants them intelligence and awareness.

But it does not grant them daemons.

Piebald says it’s weird enough to suddenly have a concept of mortality and existential dread. She doesn’t need it in a double dose.

“Besides, what would my daemon even be? A fish?” She says and laughs loudly.

A lot of people are intimidated by Zenique, and it makes it hard for April to get a job sometimes.

So when she’s hired at the shoe store almost immediately, she doesn’t ask questions. Gift horse, mouth, etcetera.

Then she and Splinter find some mystic, ancient evil armor underneath the building.

Zee thinks they might just be cursed.

So.

Splinter is Lou Jitsu.

Splinter is Lou Jitsu and Baron Draxum is the reason he was mutated. Baron Draxum is the reason that Splinter’s daemon is no longer tangible. Baron Draxum is sided with the Foot Clan. They are going to resurrect the Shredder.

The boys and their daemons realize far too late that they haven’t been taking this situation seriously.

“Heeeeyyyy Donnie?”

He doesn’t look up from the wires he’s stripping, “Yyyyyeeeesss, Shelldon.”

“Ha, weird question, bro, but, uh...I mean, um...do I...will I get a daemon?”

There isn’t a singular word Donatello can choose to adequately describe the feeling he experiences at Shelldon’s question.

A hollow chill sinks into his stomach. Something painful rips into his chest. His fingers go numb and he glances at Sirani. She stares back at him. She looks devastated.

Donnie slowly puts his tools down and lifts his googles to rest on the top of his head. He feels as though he’s breathing through a pin hole.

Without quite understanding why, he turns away from his desk and holds out his arms to his little drone his son. Shelldon lights up and dives into Donnie’s embrace, because Donnie so rarely openly offers hugs like this. Donnie tries to keep his hands from shaking as he smooths a palm over Shelldon’s metal head. Shelldon’s cooling fans whir louder in something like a purr, and he nuzzles into Donnie’s plastron.

“I...I don’t know,” Donnie finally says, “I don’t know, Shelldon. I’m sorry.”

“Oh…” Shelldon droops in Donnie’s lap, eyes dimming. Donnie feels wretched and looks helplessly at his daemon.

Sirani hops onto his shoulder and leans down to cup Shelldon’s face in her little hands (it doesn’t sting, it doesn’t bring that nauseating drop that comes from someone else touching her, and Donnie almost wishes it did).

“I think you have one,” Sirani says softly, “But she is shy and doesn’t know how to show herself yet. Maybe when you’re older, okay?”

“Yeah? You think so?” Shelldon brightens at that, pressing into Sirani’s hands with a little whir of his machinery, “Haha, I bet you’re right! I can’t wait to meet her!”

Donnie leans his head against his daemon’s side, idly scritching across Shelldon’s casing as Shelldon rambles on about what shape his daemon might take. He honestly couldn’t say whether Shelldon has—or will have—a daemon or not. Shelldon does not behave like an artificial intelligence; there is something more to him than coding and circuits, something that learns, something with heart.

Something alive.

The train mission is a disaster.

They’re separated from their daemons almost immediately and are very grateful they went through the trouble of training and extending their ranges. Moving through the train is a confusing jumble of lights and mystic teleportation.

But this mission is too important. They can’t let their father down again.

Reaching the armor gives them a thrilling buzz of victory.

“How sweet.”

It’s squashed immediately when April and Zee are dragged away into the dark.

“Daddy’s little turtles, all grown up...”

The brothers manage to dodge the first lashing vines, but then Leo crumples to the floor with a strangled gasp, his eyes wide and face pale. He’s snatched off the floor, hanging limp as a ragdoll in the tight grasp of the vines.

“He must be so disappointed in you.” Draxum steps from the shadows with his hand around Tiziano’s neck. Taz hangs from his grip, shivering in shock and horror.

Draxum is touching Leo’s daemon.

More vines coil around them, twisting around their daemons, crushing their limbs, hoisting them into the air until they’re helpless. Draxum sneers up at them and tosses Taz into the waiting coil of a vine. Leo visibly sags in relief.

“Good thing he’ll never have to look at you again.”

Splinter has had enough of sacrifice.

He has lost so much already. He will not lose his sons.

So when Baron Draxum presents an ultimatum, Splinter knows what his answer is. He knows what his dear Honoka would do.

They would let the world burn for the ones they love.

Victory feels like something won by the skin of their teeth.

None of them have escaped without scars. All of them are exhausted.

But Raph is delighted to share with Leo and Splinter how Mikey threw an entire ship at the Shredder. And Leo is still giddy over having outwitted Big Mama.

It’s finished. They can breathe. They can relax.

Or, in some cases, they can rebuild.

Daemons react to mystic poison about as well as the turtles do.

Leo is sweating like he’s got a fever and keeps spontaneously erupting in blue mystic flames. Tiziano is an ever-shifting hybrid of creatures, drunkenly stumbling between body parts like a kind of twisted chimera. The head of a rabbit with the body of a goose, the legs of a dog and the tail of a lizard. The body keeps changing, unable to keep its shape, and Taz is all but useless.

While Donnie’s stomach suddenly gaining a horrific form of sentience is terrifying in and of itself, Sirani seems to lose herself completely. Her senses leave her and she becomes a wild animal, snarling and snapping, outright attacking the other daemons. When she launches herself at Mikey like she’s gone rabid, Nia pins her to the floor.

Donnie whines and sulks when Raph helps Nia to stuff Sirani in a cat carrier. But it’s the only way to keep both of them safe and stable.

Mikey practically melting into soup is one of the scariest things Raph thinks he’s ever seen. To say nothing of poor Nelli, who almost immediately turns into a goddamn fish.

There’s a mad scramble to get her into some water and Raph thinks he would be pulling his hair out, if he had any.

This is by far the stupidest thing his little brothers have ever done.

“He made me. He made us. Without him, I wouldn’t have Nellie. Without him, I wouldn’t have you…”

Big Mama’s Battle Nexus New York is a fucking joke.

A horrible, terrifying thing to do, yes. But stupid all the same. As if the rest of the world would sit idly by if New York suddenly disappeared.

No one is laughing when the Shredder begins tearing into them.

They run. They have to. They need to regroup. They need help.

Raph is the only one who sees their dad as a child.

Splinter—Yoshi—is so young and small that his daemon has not even settled. She prances about in the cherry blossoms as a little dog.

Their grandmother, Yoshi’s mom, is a beautiful lady. Raph wishes they could have met. A small owl is perched on her shoulder and doesn’t speak a word during the course of the memory.

When Yoshi’s mother begins to leave. Grandpa Shō has to hold Yoshi back and his daemon, a gruff old bear, pins Yoshi’s daemon down. The cry of despair they both unleash breaks Raph’s heart.

Her name is Hamato Karai.

The bird that forms with her is an osprey, a wickedly fast bird of prey with a sharp beak. He does not give his name, only eyes the lot of them with a distant curiosity.

They beg for her aid. She is happy to give it. The boys and their daemons are even happier to have another member of their family. It warms them all to see her smile.

They don’t get much time with Karai or her daemon.

Shredder comes for them.

Everything goes wrong.

It falls apart so fast that Leo can hardly keep up.

Leo screams when Raph pulls him away from Karai. Brave, foolish Tiziano tries to lunge to Karai’s aid but Nia was ready for him, drags him back before he can get far.

The osprey daemon dives at Shredder with a shriek. He is batted out of the air as easily as if he were a fly.

“Anata wa hitori ja nai…”

Mikey breaks down into begging sobs as the turtle tank drives away from the lair.

Nellie becomes a wolf. Her mournful howl rings in their broken hearts.

“How can I? I’m not—I’m not one of you!”

“Oh, my child, you have always been one of us…”

There is light. There is warmth. And, faintly, a shimmer of golden Dust.

“Why can’t I do this!? I’m failing you…”

Raph takes a step back, smiles at his brothers, and lets himself fall.

“RAPH!”

They jump after him. Of course they do. They will always jump after each other.

Wherever one goes, the rest will follow.

The Hamato Ninpō is an incredibly powerful force.

It is a link not only between the family past and present, but also between souls.

Tiziano can blink out existence and reappear a few feet in another direction. Still unsettled, he has the unique ability to cover both the land and the sky, as bird and beast. He harasses the Shredder from every angle.

Nelli casts herself in flames. Like Taz, she still hasn’t settled. And, like Taz, she takes to both the air and the ground, streaking across the battlefield in a blaze of light.

Lavinia creates glowing red duplicates of herself, leaving them scattered in the Shredder’s way. She uses these as a distraction to claw at his armor and batter at him with her great wings.

Sirani’s violet shields are brief things, but they are strong enough to deflect the Shredder’s blow if need be.

They fight together.

They fight as one.

The air is filled with gold.

With the armor burned away, there is only the Hamato left, whole and reunited.

Power thrums a steady heartbeat, the connection of their family now so raw and fresh that it fills their lungs with every breath they take.

It’s over. It’s finally over.

Peace has been restored.

They can go home.

Only...there’s nothing left to go back to…

When Donnie finds Shelldon’s broken remains, he screams until he loses his voice. He is inconsolable.

Some part of him is dead. Some part of him has died. It’s died and it’s not coming back.

He can’t fix this.

Sirani’s wails of heartbreak and despair haunt the tunnels.

It takes weeks for them to find their feet again. Even after that, they are never the same.

“Hey, Dad, funny joke, but Raph’s still in charge.”

“No, no, it was not a joke. You are a clever one, Blue, you will make a great leader.”

“Yeah, one problem, we don’t want to lead.”

“It will be good for you! And perhaps it will help your daemon.”

“Help my—what’s wrong with Taz?”

“You are at the age where you should have settled by now. Nothing wrong with being a late bloomer! But you are both too old for this childishness.”

“Childish—we don’t—”

“Shhhh, shush shush, my show is on! No more talking!”

Time passes. Things change.

Leo throws himself into danger like he has something to prove. He jokes and laughs and runs ahead to leave his brothers behind. He needles Raph whenever his big brother tries to help, tries to lecture. Tries to lead. They argue now, Leo launching barbs while Raph struggles to keep his temper in check.

Tiziano is just as bad. He darts in and out of Lavinia’s space as an annoying humming bird and takes the form of a hyena to make obnoxious giggling sounds when Leo is getting under Raph’s skin. He doesn’t say much anymore, in contrast to Leo’s insufferable ego, merely flicks between birds and dogs for whatever suits his needs.

When Dr. Feelings attempts to corner them, Leo complains that he’s tired and doesn’t want to play. He keeps dodging Mikey’s attempts to talk.

The recklessness continues. It escalates.

Until the night when everything goes wrong.

Casey Jones is a herald of doom.

None of them are sure what to make of him and his strangely silent daemon. She looks like a rabbit but her ears are too long, her body too narrow. (Sirani mutters “jackrabbit” and that makes more sense.)

Both Casey and his daemon startle badly when they see Tiziano drop from Leo’s shoulder as a loudly colored macaw to alight on the floor as a big Newfoundland dog.

There’s no time to dwell on it. There’s a job to do, a world to protect.

They are not prepared for the Krang.

Casey had tried to warn them, but it still catches them off guard.

The Krang do not have daemons. The Krang care nothing for the taboo. Their daemons are no safer from the Krang than they are.

They lose their powers.

And then they lose Raphael.

Leo is fast. He and Taz have always been fast. Always been streaks of neon lightning, always been quick and clever and sharp. Leo is so fast.

The Krang are faster.

Raph and Lavinia are faster still.

The crunching crack of breaking carapace is a sound Leo hopes to never hear again.

“Raph, wait no! No, no, Raph! Nia! Raph! RAPH!”

“Why a bird?” Raph whispers it to Nia in the dark, when they are supposed to be asleep. She settled two days ago and Raph is still getting used to the fact that his daemon no longer changes shape.

Getting used to the idea that he’s a grown-up now when he still feels so small.

Nia blinks at him and shrugs her wings, “So we can fly. So we can see everything. I dunno.”

“...you’re really big,” Raph whispers almost shyly. Nia trills at him and rubs her head against his cheek. He giggles softly and pushes his fingers into her feathers.

“We the big sibling, the one who is the biggest,” Nia says and it rings in Raph’s heart like a piece finally clicking into place, “So it’s our job to keep everyone safe! That’s what big brothers and sisters do!”

“The one who is the biggest,” Raph agrees.

They carry that statement with them, no matter how heavy it gets.

Mikey and Nelli believe in their older siblings with all their heart. They believe in themselves, too, of course. But the trust they have in their family is like their lifeline. Without it, they would be lost.

They have never seen Leo and Taz so angry and afraid.

Leo and Taz aren’t afraid of anything. But Mikey can see how scared his brother is now, how shaken he is by having to leave Raph behind.

Nelli tries to offer Tiziano some comfort and he ignores her. It’s not mean, he doesn’t snap or push her away. But it’s clear his focus is on other things.

Leo’s plan to get them through the subway tunnels is a good one. Mikey believes in his brother, believes they can get through this. They will make it through, they’ll save Raph, and then they’ll save the world.

Because they’re the good guys. And the good guys always win.

But when they’re trapped in the turtle tank with Donnie and Sirani, when Donnie is shutting down and clutching his daemon and curling up into a defeated ball, when the steel walls are caving in and Donnie’s own voice is counting down their demise, there is a moment. For a moment, Mikey’s heart falters. For second, the unflappable faith in his family wavers and his heart goes cold.

“Casey must have been wrong about us…”

He’s not a great mystic warrior. He can’t save them.

Maybe the good guys don’t always win.

“But we were doing everything right! How could it go so wrong?”

“Because you weren’t listening to your team!” Casey snaps and Tiziano flinches, “You don’t have all the answer all the time!”

“But I’m the greatest ninja the world’s ever seen,” Leo throws it out like an accusation, has to make this someone else’s fault because if he’s to blame then he’s gotten his family hurt again and he doesn’t think he can bear that, “You said that.”

Casey’s expression is twisted and angry and hurt as he climbs to his feet. His daemon doesn’t move from where she’s perched on a rock nearby, her ears back as she stares at them.

“I was wrong.”

The words are acid.

Taz shrinks back, his form folding into a street mutt with his tail between his legs.

“You’re impulsive, you’re arrogant, and you don’t see that every decision you make could cost someone their life!”

Leo puts his back to Casey, puts his shell out like a shield to protect him from the blows raining down on him. Taz presses himself into the floor, prostrate on his belly, making himself as small as he can without changing his shape further.

“You want to know what really happens to your brothers in the future?” No, they don’t, they really, really don’t, “They die. Everybody dies fighting the Krang.”

Ice claws up Leo’s throat and he can’t breathe. He’s numb. He almost doesn’t hear Casey’s final punch.

“The world needs Master Leonardo and his wolf. And all we get are these guys.”

Things get better, marginally.

Leo finds new resolve. He and Taz know what they have to do, what Raph and Niz have been doing from the very beginning.

They find Donnie and Mikey, April and Splinter and their daemons again.

And then they find Raph and Nia.

The Krang have turned them into monsters.

Nia has fangs in her sharp beak and a single yellow eye. Flesh tangles with her feathers, slowing her flight but making her heavier, deadlier, stronger. Raph is just as twisted.

The Krang get the Key.

And all they can do is run.

“We still have hope!”

“A ninja’s greatest weapon…”

Donnie and Sirani immediately decide that they hate the Technodrome.

It’s squishy and damp and smells weird. It’s full of things they hate and it makes them nauseous. But for their family, and for the planet, they will do what they must.

Sirani clings to lip of Donnie’s battleshell as he shoves his hands into the console. It makes her wretch and she curls her soft tail around his neck, trying to comfort them both. She can feel a vast consciousness prickling at the edge of her mind, making her shudder.

“It’s not enough…” She murmurs, ears pinned back.

“Mikey,” Donnie grits his teeth, “Take off my battleshell.”

“Don’t!” Sirani cries weakly, pressing herself against Donnie, clinging tightly to his artificial shell, “Don’t, don’t, I don’t want to, Donnie, please, Donnie, don’t! Don’t!”

Mikey hesitates, glancing at Nelli, and Donnie tears his arms free of the console. He pries his crying daemon from his shoulders and wraps her in his arms, pressing her to his plastron. She whimpers, digging little claws into his carapace.

“Mikey, there’s no time! Hurry!”

“I don’t want to!”

The humid, damp air on Donnie’s leathery shell feels sticky. He puts his exposed back to the Technodrome console and tries to look like he knows what he’s doing.

Then he sets Sirani on the floor.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Sirani shrieks as the oozing tendrils of the console burrow into Donnie’s back and drag him out of sight.

Then her eyes roll back and she collapses, unconscious.

And then they are a spaceship.

Nia has her talons in the thick fur around Taz’s neck.

Raph has Leo by the throat.

Donnie and Sirani, Mikey and Nelli, are suspended, tangled in black sinew that is burrowing into their flesh. Trickles of Dust are leaking from the daemons.

“And I’m sorry.”

The floodgates open.

“Why can’t we settle?” Leo asks Tiziano. They’re in their bedroom. The lair is quiet, everyone else is asleep. Donnie and Sirani had just settled hours earlier and Leo wishes he didn’t feel that sting of bitterness about it.

“I dunno,” Taz murmurs, sprawled across Leo’s stomach in the shape of a dull gray cat, “Just...nothing feels right, ya know? No form I take feels like the right one.”

Leo hums softly in acknowledgment.

When they were really little, Leo and his brothers would always try to guess what they would settle as. Leo always said that Taz would settle as a dragon. It would be cool to have a dragon for a daemon. But Leo doesn’t feel like a dragon.

He doesn’t know what he feels like.

Maybe he’ll never know.

Maybe they’ll be like this forever.

Something about that feels lonely.

Leo is still up on the Technodrome, facing down the remaining Krang.

And Tiziano is on Staten Island.

The portal shuts.

Leo is on the other side.

Tiziano screams.

“Leo never gave up on us, I’m not giving up on him.”

“Took you guys long enough…”

Tiziano has not been seen since the invasion.

“He’s hurt. Angry,” Leo says, still healing from the battle, from the beating he took in the Prison Dimension, “He’ll come back when he’s ready…”

“Witch’s range…” Donnie mumbles in realization and Leo winks at him.

Nelli is a crane with a bright red spot on her head. She has been a crane for several days.

“Did you settle when I wasn’t looking?” Leo asks Mikey, squinting at him.

Mikey giggles, “I don’t even know when it happened!”

“The portal,” Nelli says, ruffling her wings and preening, “When we rescued Leo.”

Leo beams at them, “Proud of you, little brother.”

Mikey lights up like the sun.

Raph and Nia try to hide.

Their family doesn’t let them.

Both of them are held and hugged and loved. Both of them are told how nothing was their fault. Both of them are made to feel safe.

Raph cries. He cries and cries until he can’t anymore. And then Lavinia cries for them.

Because they are so loved and because they love so much.

Casey is changing Leo’s bandages. He takes the old ones to discard in the biowaste bin, leaving his jackrabbit daemon to sit on the stool and stare.

Leo stares back at her, “What’s your name, anyway?”

She blinks her large eyes and Leo thinks she’s not going to answer. Perhaps she can’t speak.

“Pandora,” Her voice is soft and low, “Sensei always said we were the last hope he had.”

Tiziano comes home after two weeks.

He is in the shape of a dog with splotched fur and large oval ears. He slinks into the lair in the middle of the night and climbs into bed beside Leo.

In the morning, he is still a dog.

He is still a dog when they go to breakfast.

He is still a dog when the rest of the family startles at his presence.

He does not change.

“Painted dog,” Sirani chitters, touching noses with Taz in a friendly greeting. She smiles when Taz wags his tail, “It suits you.”

“I know,” Taz says smugly.

The lair is full of laughter.