NerdyBoiYeet

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It Didn't Matter Before!

"Alright bro, you got this," Raph cheered on as Leo held a katana in his hand, preparing to make a portal.

Again.

It wasn't that he couldn't - his glowing blue portal smoothly opened before his face without fail every time he tried.

The problem was that ever since the krang invasion when he, with Casey's help, portal-chopped the guts out of the technodrome - leaving him all alone with Krang Prime on the wrong side of the shut portal - he just couldn't seem to bring himself to walk through his portals.

In fact he couldn't seem to let anyone go through his portals. Every time they tried (to prove to him it was safe and there was nothing to worry about) a little voice in the back of his head screamed: 'DANGER! DANGER!' telling him they were about to be led off to some deathly dangerous place, so he always slammed it shut just before someone stepped through.

Actually, he couldn't bring himself to go through any portal, which currently meant that a trip to the Hidden City was off limits, and after everyone healed from the invasion he wasn't even able to bring himself to cross the threshold for the wide-open wall portal leading into Hueso's restaurant (his fam didn't push the issue though and they ended up getting take away and eating their victory pizza on top of a nearby bridge).

At first he tried to keep this problem to himself.

No one expected anything of him while he was recovering in the med bay from Krang Prime's murderous assault, but for weeks after that he practiced opening portals in his bedroom only for him to wind up a blubbering mess on the floor time and time again, with his anxiety shooting through the roof for fear that he would step through and come out the other side back in that hellish prison dimension.

Despite how encouraging his fam had been Leo had made absolutely no progress in this regard over the eight months since the invasion.

And now at the moment his three brothers were with him in the dojo, cheering from behind his back: "Lee-o, Lee-o, Lee-o," (okay, his two brothers; his twinsie was clicking away on his cell phone but he was still here for moral support, so that counted).

Leo stared at the portal, the blue light softly glowing on his face and accentuating the hairline marks in his plastron that were a lasting reminders of how Krang Prime pummeled him into the dirt, cracking his shell in numerous places in the process.

His portal led to April's. He was sure of it because Casey was with her and he had texted Mikey when the exit portal opened in her living room. The two of them were waiting on the other side with celebratory pizzas they could all share together-all-he-had-to-do-was-raise-one-foot-and...

"Argh I hate this I can't do it!"

The portal shut, the cheering stopped, and Leo's hands dropped down by his sides - the katana loosely held in his grip.

Even the promise of Hueso’s extra creepy supreme wasn't enough to help him push through his fears.

He felt so defeated.

(He felt so useless)

That was when Mikey spoke up and Leo supposed he was trying to be his encouraging, sunshiny 'Dr. Feelings' self when he politely said:

"There's no shame in having a phobia, Leo. You can keep trying."

Anger burned inside the slider at those words and he whipped around to glare daggers at his little brother, shouting:

"I DON'T have a PHO-BIA! I'm NOT AFRAID of my PORTALS!!"

Then he sheathed his katana in lieu of tossing the sharp, dangerous weapon across the room full of people and stormed away to go stew in his bedroom for a while.

"I'll let April know we'll try again bro!" Raph called out, not realizing his comment that he meant to be encouraging (aka the 'try again' part) actually further discourage the frustrated slider - who merely grunted at him before he disappeared around the corner.

Once Leo got to his bedroom he tossed his swords down haphazardly against the wall and plopped down beside them to sit on the floor, dragging both hands down his face and loudly groaning over his own (pathetic) failure.

It wasn't long before he was laying flat on his stomach with his arms wrapped around his head, not wanting to move, not wanting anyone to come in and disturb his little meltdown or ask him to leave and do something with them to distract his mind.

Right now the only thing he wanted to do was stew in his own misery and be left alone.

Which naturally meant that was the perfect time for his twin brother to come on in without knocking (as was the norm for the two of them) bringing his laptop in with him.

Leo didn't look up from his position face-down on the floor, so Donnie gently kicked his leg to let him know he wanted room to sit. In response Leo bent them up at the knees and Dee sat beside him, with the slider lowering his legs to rest his feet in his brother's lap.

After fumbling around a bit Dee managed to put his laptop in a comfortable position atop his knees and opened it up, but before he began clicking away at the keyboard he flatly commented: "Your looking better."

That was sarcasm of course, it was meant as a joke to lift his brother's spirits.

At first Leo's response was to let out a loud, long groan, but when that drama was over he mumbled into his the crook of his elbow: "If by 'better' you mean my anxiety's up there at the ceiling but I'm face-down on the floor, then yes."

That was sarcasm of course as well, and a few minutes passed by with the clickedy-clacking of mutant fingers on a keyboard being the only thing filling the silence in the room. That was until out of nowhere Donnie threw out the question:

"Have you ever considered opening a portal under your feet?"

"Huh?"

That query got Leo picking up his head and pushing himself up onto his elbows to look back at his brother in apparent confusion. So Dee followed up his inquiry by calmly stating:

"That way you would fall through before you had a chance to change your mind."

"Yeah," Leo griped, pushing himself up all the way to sit cross-legged beside his twinsie. "Mul-ti-ple times."

"Alone?" Donnie next asked, with Leo bluntly answering: "Yeah?" but sounding more like a grumpy question than a comment because he was wondering what Dee was getting at.

"What if someone went with you?" Donnie next surprised his twinsie by asking - aka that being his way of offering to support Leo with this new phobia of his by going through with him the first time.

The previously disgruntled slider perked up with his eyes twinkling as he looked at his supportive bro, saying nothing more than: "Yeah!?" but sounding a little more light-hearted, with both of them knowing that was his way of confirming: 'you'd do that for me?'

That was all it took for Donnie to put his laptop aside and Leo watched as he reached over to pick up one of the blue-handled katanas on the floor beside him, and held it out for his brother to take, waiting expectantly with a neutral expression on his face.

A big grin spread across Leo's face and he eagerly grabbed the sword, jumped up onto his feet (with Donnie doing the same) and then...

"You're trembling, and yet you do not have a portal phobia you insist oh-so convincingly," the observant-to-a-fault softshell annoyingly noted for reasons his brother didn't understand.

"No I'm not!" Leo instantly and defensively blurted out. "I'm..." "Quivering?" Donnie interrupted with one eyebrow raised.

That . . . that was the same thing.

Darn that Donnie and his blunt honesty!

"Pfft no," Leo tried to deny, dismissively waving a hand in the air and saying: "If anything I'm shivering cuz of how cold it is in here."

Predictably his techy brother clicked at his wrist tech to bring up the display screen showing such things as the weather, temperature outside, as well as the temperature in the room where they were standing; sarcastically quipping: "Ah yes, you're shivering because it's a cool sixty eight degrees in here."

Leo shot him a dirty look as his way of saying 'drop it'. Donnie thankfully clicked off his touchscreen and dropped the subject instead of reminding him of what Mikey and Raph had said - namely that there's no shame in having a phobia and he can keep trying again (something Dee understood all to well considering his lifelong phobia of beach balls). Then Leo held his sword straight out in front of him, gritting his teeth in anxious anticipation and grasping the hilt so tightly in his hand his fingers were starting to hurt, while quivering some more shivering from the 'cold'.

It took a good ten minutes - during which time Leo changed his mind and changed it back again half a dozen times - but eventually the added support of his confident twinsie by his side won out, a blue light shone beneath their feet...

and in a state of pure panic Leo tightly grabbed onto his brother and cried out on the way down: "Bwah! I changed my mind!"

But it was already too late because they both had fallen halfway through his portal by the time he lost his resolve, so that the two of them ended up landing not far away - inside Donnie's sound proofed lab.

Expecting the fall and being accustomed to Leo's portals, Dee landed on his feet but the petrified slider wound up falling onto his hands and knees with his katana clattering to the floor beside him.

Donnie didn't mention anything about his little freak out, instead he encouragingly commented: "Congratulations Nardo on your first successful portal trip in eight months."

Realizing they hadn't ended up somewhere dangerous (the prison dimension), Leo's fearfully tiny, constricted pupils dilated and he blurted out a hearty laugh of relief.

"I did it!" he cried out from joy, picking up his katana as he picked himself up off the floor, before raising the blade up in front of his face and appreciatively kissing it.

Now that the first try was a success Leo's fears melted away - and he actually began wondering what he had been so afraid of in the first place.

"Yes you did it, now if you don't mind..."

Donnie was about to step away to continue work on a new project, but instead his sneaky twin surprised him by grabbing his arm, pulling him close, and opening another portal beneath the both of them.

"Nardo please don't..."

It was too late, they fell through and came out atop the roof of the Grand Nexus Hotel.

Leo was positively giddy from this safe landing, so he was quick to open yet another portal that the two brothers once again fell through, laughing jovially as they did so.

This one took them a little further away, to Repo Mantis' Junkyard.

"Ah, while we're here I have been wanting to find..." "Nope!" Leo cheerfully interrupted.

Another portal opened beneath them and they once more fell through - this time somewhere further away, in Death Valley.

Then another one.

New Mexico.

Another.

Brazil.

Another.

Ethiopia.

Again.

Russia.

Once more.

The Andes.

"Are we done this little world tour of yours yet?" Dee asked in apparent annoyance, but he couldn't help but smile at Leo's excitement as he happily exclaimed: "Just one more and then we'll go home, I promise!"

Ignoring the achy - somewhat burning sensation - in his shell, the ecstatic slider opened one last portal beneath their feet that sent them to a spot he thought Donnie would like - on a tiny isolated island somewhere off the coast of Fiji.

But something was wrong.

The dull ache in Leo's carapace erupted into a blinding pain shooting through the hairline cracks that were leftover as a lasting reminder of what Krang Prime had done to him.

Specifically the ones that went over the stylish blue markings that lit up with his ninpo energy every time he tapped into his mystic powers.

This had never happened to him before. Sure sometimes when he practiced too long his shell wound up aching but he never really gave it much thought.

(He also had never tried opening so many portals in such quick succession since the invasion)

Similar to the first portal they went through, Donnie landed on his feet in the soft sand of a beach on a secluded tropical island, while Leo did not. But as opposed to landing on his hands and knees from fear, he landed on his side with a pained: "Oof!" followed by an: "Augh!"

"Leo!" Donnie cried out, crouching in front of him and pulling up the vitals app on his wrist tech that was wirelessly connected to the subcutaneous tracker he placed on his brother.

Curling up in a ball and whimpering, Leo directed Donnie to the source of the problem by forcing out through gritted teeth: "My. shell."

He whimpered some more and tears rolled down his face wetting the sand beneath him from the pain he was in, as Donnie moved around to inspect his back.

But what he saw left him speechless.

A dull blue glow was being emitted from dozens of cracks in Leo's shell - all of them over the light blue markings and all of them actively bleeding.

Don had seen something like this once before, with Mikey.

He had literally begun to tear himself apart trying to force open a portal between dimensions to save their trapped brother; and Casey informed them he would have done just that if Donnie and Raph hadn't stepped in to help.

'Future Boy' also told them Mikey in his future had torn himself apart opening the time portal that ultimately saved the world but cost him his life.

But he also told them his Master Michelangelo had access to healing ninpo, something which the eager-to-learn box turtle in this timeline had been practicing with a degree of success.

Meaning he could help in a time like this - if only he wasn't in New York and they weren't thousands of miles away off the coast of Fiji!

Donnie was so stunned by what he saw that his brain stalled for a moment and he didn't even have it in him for his usual shocked 'oh my banana pancakes' statement.

But suddenly it felt like the blood rushed to his head when he gasped in a breath through his mouth (how long had he been holding his breath?) and he got his head on straight, saying: "We have to move you off the beach," because of how bits of dirt and sand were sticking to his brother's bloody shell, possibly contaminating the open cracks and running the risk of infection.

After grabbing one of Leo's arms Donnie made use of the Extend-a-Claws™ in the spider shell he was wearing to grab Leo and his sword and helped him up, with the slider whining and letting out a pitiful chirp of distress from the pain of being moved with bleeding cracks in his shell. But he didn't object and did his best to work with Dee to get off the sand onto a grassy slope - where Donnie was careful to deposit his brother onto his stomach.

"What happened, what caused this?" Dee asked once that was done, using his tech claws to take out some disinfectant cloths and a first aid kit he thankfully had tucked away in his shell.

Leo's eyes were squeezed shut with his face contorted into one indicative of the pain he was in, and he managed to hiss out: "Don't know."

Donnie began the unpleasant but necessary task of disinfecting the bits of stuck-on sand off Leo's shell, making the slider involuntarily cringe from the touch and either hiss through his teeth or cry out: "Augh!" or: "Ow!" a time or two. But he didn't try to stop his bro because he knew it needed to be done.

Taking shallow breaths and biting his bottom lip to help stop himself from screaming out from the pain even more, Leo lay still to let Donnie disinfect his carapace, and when that was done he mustered the effort to tell him: "My shell aches when I open too many portals but it's never been like this!"

"You didn't think to tell us this before!?" Donnie snapped in frustration, with Leo's equally disgruntled voice snapping back: "It didn't matter before!"

Donnie thought over the risks and pondered over what to do from here - calculating the percentages of success with each option to try and come up with the best plan of action.

Draxum was dead - he died warding off krang zombies in an attempt to protect the Hidden City from the infections krang parasite - but there were too many too fast. So calling him for the use of his portals was off the table.

He had upgraded the turtle tank to include a flight mode and there was a mini med bay aboard - tucked away in places that seemed impossible to fit as his impossibly futuristic high tech was prone to do. But the main problem with this was that in their current location they were over seven thousand miles away from New York - so it would take hours for the tank to get here and Leo needed medical treatment now - and they'd have to find a place nearby to refuel or else they wouldn't make it back home.

Which . . . now that he thought about it the way home wouldn't need to be a rushed emergency to get Leo to their lair's med bay if Mikey could use his healing hands to repair at least some of the damage.

Donnie put that option on the figurative back burner to mull over and mentally went to his other options.

Or, rather, option.

Leo's portals was the only other option available to them.

On the plus side he'd get them home in the blink of an eye, but how much more damage would that cause to his mutant body? His ninpo was literally tearing him apart like what had happened to Mikey.

In Mikey's case his supercharged ninpo was too powerful for his mortal body to handle.

In Leo's his injured mortal body was apparently too weak to be able to handle multiple uses of his ninpo in quick succession. And although Mikey had healing hands he wasn't able to heal old wounds, so by the time he was able to control this power it was already too late to heal the cracks that were left over in Leo's shell.

It was possible that Donnie could pour his ninpo powers into Leo to help his body stay together for one more portal home, but in Mikey's case on the day of the invasion he needed both of his brothers mystical might to keep himself together in one piece.

The risk was great, if Donnie's ninpo alone wasn't enough to aid the portal attempt Leo ran the risk of literally tearing his atoms to shreds.

Leo . . . didn't know this.

He had been in a medically induced coma for two and a half weeks after the invasion and knew about Mikey's injuries and how he sustained them, but no one had told him his little brother almost tore himself apart opening that portal.

He also wasn't aware whatever was happening to him now was the same thing that had previously happened to both their Mikey and Casey's future Michelangelo. And unbeknownst to Donatello he was formulating his own plan inside that mutant turtle head of his.

He made up his mind.

Meanwhile Donnie . . .

was stuck inside his own head, calculating percentages, figuring out odds, trying to come up with more options...

He didn't notice until it was too late.

Desperate to get home for needed 'mystic hands' medical care and pain relief, having made up his mind and not knowing about Donnie's newest upgrades to the turtle tank or that sending tech over such long distances was even an option, without discussing it with his bro he grabbed the hilt of his katana.

"I got this," he grunted out to Donnie.

His markings lit up.

"DON'T!"

A portal began opening in front of them.

There wasn't any time to explain why 'one more portal' was potentially a deadly decision so running more on instincts to protect his brother than conscious thought Dee reached out and forcefully knocked the sword out of Leo's hand.

With a snap of electricity and a flash of light the portal flickered and blinked out of existence.

Leo glared at his foolish brother who just cut off their express one-way trip to salvation and sourly spit out: "Way to go, dummy!"

He coughed.

Throwing his hands out in frustration Donnie yelled at him: "Your portals are literally tearing you apart, so who's the dummy now!? DUMMY!"

As the ninpo light on his body settled down Leo groaned from a new surge of pain in his shell he had never felt before and coughed twice more.

Blood droplets splattered out.

Donnie stared slack-jawed at his severely injured brother's face as Leo slowly brought a hand up to his mouth in disbelief, wiped off something wet and sticky, and raised his hand up to stare at the shiny crimson splotches on his fingertips.

"Eugh boi that's not good."

His shell stung.

His insides felt like they were on fire.

Something was actively happening to his carapace, he didn't know what it was but whatever was happening it was bad-bad-bad-bad-BAD and he wanted it to stop NOW!

Donnie noticed an eerie blue glow being emitted from Leo's back and when he gave it his undivided attention he gasped from the frightful sight.

Bits of his scutes around the cracks over his markings were separating from his shell to float in the air as tiny triangular flecks of blue light that disintegrated before his eyes.

Once the process was complete Leo was left with bloody divots gouged into his shell, some of which were deep enough to extend all the way down to the underlying layer - exposing shiny pieces of bone, coated red with fresh blood.

Leo coughed, gagged, and then something came up.

He was too afraid to look at the ground in front of his face to see if there was blood in his puke or not and instead closed his eyes and tried to distract his mind from the agony in his back by counting the seconds between the waves on the beach.

Donnie refocused his gaze from Leo's back to stare at the vomit spewed across the grass in front of his brother's face.

Parts of it was tinged bright red with fresh blood.

Leo groaned, complaining: "I don't feel so good," and laid there on his stomach, resisting the urge to roll over onto his side so he could wrap both arms around his aching stomach because of how badly his shell hurt.

The situation had escalated exponentially, Donnie regretted panicking and smacking Leo's katana out of his hand, because the portal that was no longer in existence had been fully opened and led straight to the lair's med bay.

Leo might not survive another attempt.

(The possibility remained that he might not survive the previous attempt)

His techy brother went with the only other plan he could think of by swiping to his red emergency screen and clicking at his portable wrist computer's touchscreen, activating an alarm in the lair.

Raph knew what to do, like with the Donnie pods they used during the invasion, because Donnie kept him in the loop about his emergency tech.

"We need Mikey!" came Donnie's voice through the lair's speakers.

With his eyes wide from panic and without a word of explanation, the big snapper scooped up Mikey, and Splinter watched in surprise from his position standing in the living room entrance when his eldest rushed past to the garage with the stunned box turtle tucked under his arm.

They hastily hopped in the newly modified turtle tank, that automatically drove out of the garage as soon as they were aboard, heading above ground.

Mikey cried out in a panic: "What's going on!?" but instead of answering him Raphael hastily strapped him into his seat, told him to hold on, and they both heard the whirling of mechanical parts that were the wings and jet engines engaging as Raph strapped himself in as well.

And then..

*WOOOOSH!*

The turtle tank's upgraded flight tech kicked in and they took off - flying straight for a blipping dot on the tank's map that was located thousands of miles away somewhere near Fiji.

And then Donnie's voice sounded through the speakers, explaining what was wrong.

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Nighttime had rolled around about two hours ago for the two turtle brothers waiting help to arrive.

Donnie had done the best he could by bandaging up the holes mystically burned into Leo's shell, but there was nothing he could do about the internal injuries his twin had given to himself.

Thankfully he only vomited up blood one more time since the first and hadn't coughed up anything since then.

But now it was Donnie who was quivering from fear because it was taking too long - the real danger remained that if their mystic prodigy didn't show up with his healing hands and soon all hope would be lost and it would be too late.

There was nothing more he could do but wait.

Access to all this tech at his fingertips but they were too far away for it to be any use right now when Leo urgently needed it!

He felt so useless.

Leo's vitals were not good. Despite his better judgement because of how his 'low battery' warning had been blinking on his screen for the past three hours, he kept routinely checking Leo's heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels because of how they kept dropping.

At the moment his red-eared slider appeared to be taking rest in sleep but Donnie knew based on the numbers displaying on his screen his brother was actually on the edge of unconsciousness.

That was when a notification came in from his maps application, so he swiped away the vitals to click on it, only to see that the turtle tank was nearing their location.

Rising to his feet, Donnie stared off into the dark sky in front of him and saw a glowing light on the horizon.

It didn't take much longer than that for the tank that was zooming towards him to gracefully land on the beach and for two turtle bodies to come rushing out, straight over to Leo's side.

Making use of the lights from the tank's headlights, Raph crouched down in front of Leo's face while Mikey quickly got to work doing what he knew he had to do, by removing the bandages off Leo's damaged shell.

"How is he?" Raphael asked in a concerned tone of voice.

"Alive," came the only disheartening answer.

They both watched in silence as the only one of them who had access to what they needed got to work.

Mikey pressed his hands down directly onto Leo's carapace and the orange lights of his healing ninpo glowed from beneath his hands, radiating across Leo's shell and from there being absorbed into his body.

Leo stirred.

The lights pulsated again, but this time orange flecks remained attached to the sections of Leo's shell that had been mystically eaten away.

The slider took in a deep breath through his nose and opened his mouth, incomprehensibly muttering, asking what was going on.

Nobody understood what he had said because of how quiet his voice had been and how he struggled to pronounce his words because his tongue and lips didn't want to move properly, but the next thing Leo knew he gasped from a strange sensation radiating from his shell into his aching belly.

Soothing relief followed the motion that made him relax his muscles he hadn't realize he tensed until now.

Then he felt it again - a pleasant reaching something soothing his shell and moving deep into his boy, healing all the mystical wounds he had accidentally inflicted upon himself.

Then, as fast as it began, it was all over.

The rough, bloody gouges in Leo's shell were replaced with the smooth surface he had before and the burning pain subsided inside his gut until it was no more.

Leo sat up with a smile on his face, not surprising his family in the least when he he completely dismissed what he had done to himself and tried to detract from his little oopsie by exclaiming: "Who's up for pizza!?"

The stern look Raphael gave to him made that smile fall, and predictably his over-protective big brother scolded: "Why didn't you tell us it hurts your shell to use your powers!?"

Leo sheepishly scrunched his head down into his shell a little, letting out a nervous laugh and excusing his behavior by timidly saying: "Heh, it didn't matter before?" but making it sound more like a question then a statement.

Raph smacked him in the back of his head - but not hard enough to hurt - before pulling him in for one of his special big brother bear hugs, softly telling him: "I'm glad you're alright, bro."

"Yeah, thanks to Mikey!" Leo eagerly replied, pulling one hand out of his hug with Raph to stretch it out toward Michael, happily inviting: "Bring it in little bro!"

Mikey was eager to get in on the action and as soon as Leo felt his warm body snuggling into his side he offered his heartfelt appreciation for fixing his little woopsie for him, just before Raph dragged Donnie into the brotherly group hug.

At first the disgruntled soft shell rolled his eyes, but deep down he really did enjoy these group hugs and leaned into the sensation - but not without scolding Leo himself and reminding him to take it easy with his portalling powers until his shell fully healed.

The cheeky slider grinned at that reminder and airily replied: "Ah yes we all learned a valuable something about never something-ing my ninpo again. Now..."

He squirmed out of the warm embrace, picked up his mystic energy channelling katana off the ground, and grinned wildly at his fam as he happily suggested:

"Why let this tropical vacation go to waste! Let's grab some zza's and have a par-tay! My treat!"

He wasn't really planning on using his mystic powers so soon after what just happened to him, but rather the cheeky turtle was egging for a reaction from his loving family.

And a reaction was what he got when Donnie chastised: "Nardo, don't you dare!" and Mikey brought out his 'Dr. Delicate Touch' personal, shouting: "Boi you better step AWAY from that sword!"

But the best of all was when his protective big brother who he especially liked to pester simply scowled at him, clenching his fists and yelling out at the top of his voice:

"LEEEE-OOOO!!!"

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₦ɆӾ₮:

#6 - "No Grave Can Hold My Body Down"

Prompt: medical restraints, pinned to the wall

Leo-centric, post krang invasion

Quite frankly, when Leo thought about being captured by the EPF it was...

. . .

Well, actually it was exactly what he had imagined.

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