#wait au

Future guys:

Raph- becomes a middle school teacher in the undercity. Before he gets his memories back, he volunteers on weekends. And gets married and divorced. After he gets his memories back, eventually, he adopts some kids, so his weekends get busier.

Donnie- starts his own tech company, and starts making and innovating prosthetics. (Im also considering making him enter a polycule with Kendra's and Jase's parents because it would be SO funny to me but idk jury's still out on that one.)

Mikey- opens a fusion craft store/tattoo parlor. I dont totally know how this would work but he does it.

Cassandra and Leo- take over the Lou Jitsu School on Ninjutsu and start running it. Cassandra specifically works on like expansion and opening new locations while Leo is just happy to train the next generation.

April- I was going to say news reporter, but tbh? I don't think thats a dream she can go back to, after everything that happened to her. Its the dream of an April that died long before April actually died.

I think she bounces around alot of stuff for a while, and lands on studying magic and eventually opening a potion shop in the undercity.

Casey jr.- I think he sticks with the present turtles and keeps helping them be heros. I dont think he particularly knows how to slow down, but i also dont think he wants to. As he gets older, eventually he gets a job working part time with a mechanic. Their name is Car Engine and they start dating Mikey on and off again

Present guys:

Unlike the future turtles, these guys dont retire, so they are still doing heroing and as such cant really open and run their own businesses. But they do get some downtime, so this is what they do with it.

Donnie: I think he takes a bunch of online college classes and gets a degree and starts like. Doing remote work for Nasa. Why would nasa accept donnies strange and unpredictable schedule? Its simply the price they pay for his intellect

Raph: Helps out at the school with Future!Casey and Future!Leo. He also volunteers every once in a while

Mikey: becomes an influencer :(

Leo: tries to become an influencer :(

Okay but actually

Mikey: Does freelance art online, and does graffiti art. Also pursues an online degree in art

Leo: okay he actually does try to become an influencer for a bit, but after that falls through he bounces around a couple things for a while.

Starts doing college classes to become a veterinarian, drops out. Helps out at the lou jitsu school for a bit, but has to stop due to his injuries during the krang invasion. I think he ends the story still figuring himself out, which is okay. Normalize not knowing what you want! He does join an improv club though.

Also meets a particular rabbit yokai who works at run of the mill pizza and they start dating 👀 👀 👀

Cassandra: Starts doing work to help provide opportunities to former convicts and stuff. Specifically, she works with the future guys to get them jobs.

Hell yeah time to talk about my au- *gets the shit kicked out of me by midterms*

Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh oopsie doopsie a month passed ANYWAY

Here's my seperated au with extra steps lol (I intend to start posting about my aus more (edit: LOL nevermind I GUESS) so I'm calling this extra steps au) 

Also i think (?) Jennika and Venus were girl turtles that were supposed to be added in the show and then never got to be so those two are in this au but I know nothing about them so uhhhh my characters now >:3

It's a separated AU where Splinter takes Raph, Draxum gets Donnie, Big Mama gets Mikey, and Hueso takes in Leo.

BUT Splinter KNOWS about the other turtles, he just couldn't grab them in time. So a lot of time is spent searching for the other turtles, hoping he could find them.

In this process he finds a very young, very parentless, Cassandra Jones, and he takes her in too. So Raph and Casey grow up as siblings. 

It's a long time later, Raph is around eight, when they finally do find Leo. And it's not Splinter who finds him, its Raph. So Leo and Raph find out about each other young, but they haven’t known each other since birth. 

Draxum in this au is not a like totally shitty father. I, personally, like to think that if he HAD kept the turtles, that he would have dropped the whole “murder humanity” thing in order to focus on being a father. And in this au, he pretty much does that. 

Anyway, Donnie is still a highly skilled and trained warrior due to Draxum teaching him from a young age, but Draxum didn’t force that on Donnie, Donnie wanted to and so Draxum taught him. Also, Draxum is still working on ending humanity, but its like. A personal project lol. He decided to let Donnie come to his own conclusion about humanity, and for the most part Donnie agrees with Draxum. Until, that is, he meets April (for the second time)

Mikey was found by Big Mama, but she didn’t really raise him. Or pay attention to him at all, in fact. She clearly had a favorite in Assistant (who Big Mama also found), and Mikey was left to kind of… wander the endless halls of the Battle Nexus and (to a lesser extent) the Grand Nexus Hotel. Mikey ends up becoming the champion of the Battle Nexus at a young age. Also, Mikey and Assitant are pretty close (at least when Big Mama isn't looking), and he calls Assistant "Tanny". Mikey isn't really given a name, he's generally just called things like kid, turtle, Big Mama's boy/child, little man, etc. That is, until he becomes Nexus Winner after which he's given the name Champion.

Donnie learns about "Champion" watching the Battle Nexus. He’s got it on idly in the background while he tinkers with something. He brings it up to Draxum, who recognizes him as Mikey. Draxum is banned from the battle nexus so Donnie begins training even harder, with the goal of joining the battle nexus to find Mikey and let him know who he is. 

Donnie enters and makes his way through the battle nexus at the age of 14 years old, and while he doesn’t get crazy far, he makes a pretty big impression for a newbie, and the resemblance to the primer champion definitely helps. He finds and meets Mikey, only to realize Assistant is also a turtle, and upon telling them both that they are all siblings, Mikey flees the Battle Nexus with Donnie. Tanny tries to flee too, but they almost get caught, and Tanny stays behind to cover for them. Mikey hides out with Draxum, and the three of them plan to get Tanny, who they now learn is likely Venus. 

April meets all four turtles in the span of like two months at the age of nine due to a series of coincidences, and then just does not put two and two together until they run into Mikey and Donnie again in this au’s version of episode 1. She knows about yokai and just kinda figured that there were just a lot of turtle yokai running around.

The four boys all finally meet each other in this aus version of Mystic Mayhem. This time it’s Leo, Raph, April, & Cassandra, with Mikey and Donnie not being present for… obvious reasons. April is trapped in Draxum’s lair for longer this time though, and actually runs into Donnie and Mikey. 

Of course, the fight after the Mad Dogs arrive ends up going way worse for them than in the original episode, because instead of 4 v 1 it’s  3 v 3, and both Mikey and Donnie are far more skilled in this version than in the original, and Leo is actually even worse at fighting than in the original show because Hueso didn’t feel like training his child in combat was actually super relevant to his life (which, you know, fair), and so Leo only started training with Splinter at around age 11. But both Mikey and Donnie aren’t fighting at full throttle.

The Lab is destroyed not by Mikey’s lack of control over his mystic weapon, but by an unfortunate combination of the goyles getting thrown around and Leo’s portal shenanigans.

The rest of the episode goes similarly, Mayhem is rescued and the Mad Dogs escape but the lab is destroyed and the oozequitoes are let loose. 

Jennika in this au more or less plays the role Cassandra does in the original show.

But uhhhh yeah that's kinda the basics of this au! I have a version of this post that is much longer and ramble-ier (I know, longer and more rambley than this? crazy) but I tried to get the basics down but I do NOT know how to be concise.

I have a LOT of aus though:

Wait: a future!turts +april and cassandra getting sent to the present au... kind of. its complicated, i am making a post for this one

Rise of the Unsleeping: a crossover au with the unsleeping city. also making a post for this one. 

Rising Fantasy Higher (working title, will probably change it lol): another crossover, this time with fantasy high/the seven. its the rottmnt characters in the world of spyre. I haven't thought about this one as much but i just think the turtles should just get to like. chill with kids their age and go to highschool and stuff. Maybe Augefort isn't the best place for that though lol

DGDT (pronounced digit, short for “Doppleganger Donatello”): Donnie is kidnapped and replaced by a robot copy of himself. But the robot copy doesn’t realize he’s not the real Donatello. Chaos (and drama) ensues.