Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1. Mask

April looks into the mirror and can't help thinking that the pretty, normal, human girl looking back is just a disguise cooked up by the Kraang, a way to hide something more outsider than any simple mutant.

2. Crescent

Anyone can see that Slash wants Raph, and Raph wants Leo, and Leo wants Karai, and Karai--she's not sure she's capable of wanting anyone anymore, maybe not even Shini.

3. Name

Angel will never like the name "preschool," but at least it's better than "doll" or "bitch" or "wetback" or all the other far more common, far more painful words she's heard on New York's streets.

4. Voice

Come home, little fox, Kitsune whispered no matter how times Alopex shoved her away, and even after she got up the courage to commiserate with Leo they'd never be completely sure whether the words were coming from outside or inside their heads.

5. Fractured

She'd been alive for centuries and had thought she'd seen all there was to see, but when the glass shattered next to her head Shinigami realized she'd never seen anything like April O'Neil.

6. Possibilities

In another reality it wasn't a moment of hesitation that made Karai lose to April, but a telekinetic punch to the chest, and by the time she got up the other girl was long gone, leaving them each to pick up their upended views of the world on their own.

7. Body

Her father had made her expose herself to lots of men, but Leo was the only one who looked at her scars with the same wonder as her breasts, and Karai didn't have the words to tell him how precious that was.

8. Languages

When they fucked Alopex spoke in a tongue of grunts and growls, rustling fur and pheromones, which built into one of the most beautiful symphonies Angel had ever heard.

9. Necromancer

April never told anyone that she tried to bring back her mother after bringing back Donnie, or the possibility that she could have done it if a part of her hadn't been terrified she'd resurrect another monster instead.

10. Poison

Karai was always exhausted and nauseous after using too much of her venom, but the Shredder had never cared about pushing her too far so why would he stop now?

11. Sacrifice

She reduced a Shredder to dust once and they locked her away for centuries, took her memories so she could be returned to an Apprentice, but Renet knew that it was worth it.

12. Tainted

Jennika knew she wasn't like her "brothers," that she shouldn't even bother trying to scrub the blood off her hands, but if lives ever had to be taken at least she was the one who could do it.

13.  High

Shinigami swore she hadn't let Mikey take some of her magic mushrooms for pizza, and if it wasn't for the way she cackled uncontrollably upon entering a room full of hopelessly, inadvertently stoned turtles Karai might have believed her.

14. Dangerous

April's father burst into tears the first time he glimpsed her practicing her powers in her room, eyes glowing white, and even though he later promised he understood she was careful never to do it where he could see again--or to reach into his mind, for fear of what she'd find.

15. Soldier

When she was seven they ordered her to kill one of her planet's herbivores as an ancient rite of passage, when she was ten she was ordered to break a classmate's arm in combat training, when she was fourteen she was ordered to climb on a ship before heading off to war, and it wasn't until she met a green-eyed boy who'd never followed an order without question in his life that Y'Gythgba realized she might not always like taking orders after all.

15.  Unusual

Miyamoto Usagi drew his sword at the sight of her, a nearly furless creature that didn't look like anything he'd ever seen, and even though things were straightened out and he was apologizing a minute later, April though she might have had an ugly glimpse into what the turtles felt when she screamed at the sight of them, all those years ago.

16. Gasoline

There was something deeply comforting, almost homey, about the flames of a burning building warming her face--and no, Karai didn't need a shrink to tell her how messed up that was.

17. Envy

There are so many mothers on the other side who want to speak to their children again, and Tang Shen knows that they're jealous of the visits she gets thanks to the Dreamer, and wouldn't believe her if she said these rare glimpse hurt just as badly as, if not worse than, nothing at all.

18. Blood

April sat in the tub as Donnie scrubbed her clean, humming a Japanese lullaby, while behind her eyes a knife slammed back into its thrower's face over and over again.

19. Puppets

When you live long enough it's hard to see mortals as entirely real, let alone worthy of respect, and as a result Kitsune found it far too easy to control them.

20. Boredom

While Karai talked to the crime bosses, Shini played games on her phone and waited for the moment when she'd get to terrorize someone.

21. Identity

Karai was the name the Shredder used when he lied to her and Tang Shen was the name he used when he raped her, but whoever she was she'd never be able to fit into the mold of Splinter's Miwa, so she wasn't quite sure where she stood.

22. Past

Donnie was the only person who knew about her time in prison, because Donnie had researched everything about her when she first entered their lives, and even though Jennika wished he hadn't been made so paranoid she was grateful that he'd never mentioned it to the others (she only knew he knew because he'd brought it up once when he found her crying) or asked her if it was like Orange Is The New Black.

23. Defiance

"I'm not going back," Sally said, taking care not to meet Man Ray's eyes because then she might be reminded of everything he'd done for her and she would crumble all over again.

24.  Jump

April leaps over the edge after Donnie, using her powers to boost her descent, and lets out a vicious scream as she drags them both back up through the air, blood flying from her nose as her vision tunnels towards the roof.

25.  Feed

The fourth time she threw up after trying to eat a raw squirrel, Alopex accepted that there were some barriers between her and her old self she'd never be able to cross, and let her tears fall with the autumn leaves.

26. Nature

Aka has seen countless reflections of April O'Neil across the multiverse, enough to know that for her unassuming appearance she is capable of great and terrible things, and trusts that she will do the right one this time.

27. Warrior

"Samurai," Alopex calls her, and Angel is proud to take that role, to be attention-grabbing and defiant whenever Alopex and the others needed to slip into the shadows.

28. Abortion

Karai gritted her teeth as she lay down on the cold table and was grateful that she'd noticed her "condition" before anyone else, so she could get rid of it without any added embarrassment and wouldn't have to worry about whether her father would have made her keep it.

29. Music

Jennika introduced Mikey to Lita, the Misfits, and Jem and the Holograms; she smiled at the joy on his face and didn't tell him how much better the songs had sounded when she'd had proper ears to hear them with.

30. Forever

A hundred years down the line, April is still amazed by the way the moonlight shines in Shini's hair, and Shini's breath catches when she sees the stars reflected in April's eyes.

31. Brief

Y'Gythgba knew her relationship with Raph couldn't last forever, but a warrior culture like the Salamandrians understood the need to let go of things, and she'd hold on to every second they had until the last goodbye.

32. Queen

Karai took her father's helmet and refashioned it into a crown of her own making, as she ruled over a kingdom meant to save lost children instead of swallowing them alive.

34. Color

She could have made the suit look like anything, but Angel chose purple because it was exactly the kind of "girly" shade that people would snicker at before it was too late, and because it made her look and feel like one of the fiercest storms.

35. Vengeance

Renet couldn't always keep herself from the dark, ruined timelines and would end up in the Time Masters' infirmary with sai or sword wounds that would have killed a human woman, taking a bit of her former friends' desperate pain into herself.

36. Guilt

Alopex and Jennika would sit on the roof sometimes and talk about the people they'd killed, keeping their voices low because the others could never hear about such things.

37. Meaning

Her father had given her the nickname Aka--Red--because he'd seen that one day she'd be stained bloody at the hands of a sibling and thought that the cruel name was fitting punishment for being too like her mother, but she defied him by adding a little red to her white costume, by refusing to reject either parent completely even as she pursued her own path.

38. Evolution

April stood in a hospital corridor slicked with bodies, Tessen and tanto dripping bloody from her hands while the last one's neck seemed to snap itself, as it struck her how very far away from the scared little girl in the yellow shirt she was.

39. Understanding

Karai thought about the things that she'd done and had done to her, and tried not to think too hard about whether her mother would have preferred her to burn in the fire instead.

40. Introduction

April had finally introduced her new girlfriend to her dad, and thought it was going well right until Shini lit a cigarette by snapping her fingers and poured something she called "eye of newt" into her coffee, wearing a shit-eating grin all the while.

41. Concert

Mona Lisa feels the screaming vibrations thrumming up through her bones, lifting her off the ground, and for a moment she can't feel the weight of her tail and the spikes on her face, so that it's like the last six months never happened.

42. Kiss

Casey kissed her, but then April accidentally read his mind and realized he was thinking of Donnie when he did it, necessitating a very awkward conversation before she managed to drag him out of his armored closet.

43. Style

Sure, Leo was wearing a seat belt for no discernible reason, but Karai had tattooed bright red lines over her eyes while Shini didn't feel comfortable entering the battlefield without bats at the ready and a hat that she referred to "the severed penis of the devil" when she was drunk, so they didn't really think they had the right to judge other people's free-thinking fashion choices.

44. Acceptance

The other turtles had collections of masks in every color to wear if one of them was lost the way Raph was, and when Jennika saw them adding yellow to the mix she didn't know whether to cry from joy, reassure them that they'd never lose her, or tell them they didn't deserve a burden like her.

45. Protection

Karai laid out the specifications for kuniochi gear, Donnie was argued out of adding a laser shield in the course of his "improvements," Shini wove a good-luck charm into the metal, Mikey added discrete gold accents, and Raph and Leo both offered to help her test it out with looks of awe in their eyes, so that when April wore her new armor into battle against the latest threat to New York she felt like she had an army at her back every step of the way.

46. Choice

Angel found the guy who'd killed her mom with Harold's help, and dangled him over a rooftop for ten solid minutes, watching him weep behind his gag, before deciding her mother wouldn't have wanted her to turn out that way (and besides, traumatizing him for life was probably a greater punishment overall).

47. Magic

"Earth or sky, you're still a witch," Shini said, rolling her eyes when April tried to protest that her powers weren't actually supernaturally based.

48. Runaway

Sometimes Ice Cream Kitty liked to slip out of her cage during the winter months, but she made sure to always leave a trail of sweet-tasting droplets behind so her so the Chief Cuddler and his brothers would never have too much trouble finding her.

49. Offer

"I could bring you back to life if you let Leonardo return to his rightful place," Kitsune said, but Tang Shen didn't even dignify that with a response, because no life was worth the sacrifice of her baby's free will.

50. Storm

Y'Gythgba already knew she was unstoppable with a laser sword in her hand, but the thrill of seeing her enemies realize it never completely went away.

Chapter Text

1. Sweater

Perhaps it was silly, but it was a gift from Pepperoni's beloved master, a connection with the Upwalkers she longed to fight besides, a sign of her survival in a season that her species wasn't supposed to endure, and she wore it with pride.

2. Decision

When Donnie told her that her shifting wouldn't last forever Karai knew what she was going to do, knew she could spend the rest of her life with a snake for an arm and jet-green eyes on an otherwise human body and be happy in her final form.

3. Necessary

Mar'iell had lost a wife, a planet, an entire way of life to war--she wouldn't hesitate to kill her brother if he started things up again, because what is a shattered heart compared to peace?

4. Sky

April can use her powers when she jumps, soaring higher than anyone else, and she tells herself that the fact it'll never quite feel the same as real flying is a good thing.

5. Weak (IDW Karai)

She had rebuilt an entire ninja clan from the ground in one of the least honorable ages mankind had ever encountered, she had faced down gangsters and police officers and angry mothers without flinching, but her grandfather could make her doubt herself with just a look and it took Karai far too long to realize this wasn't a good thing.

6. Mother

Krisa referred to Null as "Mom" once and Zodi had stung her, because she knew how dangerous it was to even pretend to play around with such terms.

7. Trapped

She can't breathe down here on the ground, and as she looks at her ruined wings it dawns on Koya that the greatest mistake she could have made was to think the little blue turtle soft when he spared her life, because in truth he was someone who already knew that there are crueler fates than death.

8. Beloved

"I'm not the favorite, you are," Leo says; his brothers may think he's crazy, but Karai knows he's right, even though no amount of love from the father she lost can make up for memories of endlessly, desperately striving for the approval of the man who raised her.

9. Spill

Alopex kneels in the church and confesses her sins to the priest, wondering if he'll be the first person to judge her as a monster without even realizing what she is, and knowing she won't be able to stay long enough to find out.

10. Holy

People of the distant future will worship the Crystal Goddess, with her blood-red hair and telekinetic tentacles, until the day a robot turtle arrives with his twice-mutated family and reminds her that she once had another name.

11. Cursed

Her mother had fallen in love with the wrong person, and as Natsu looks at the woman who was trying to kill her until less than a day ago, the woman she sacrificed everything for while barely knowing her, the woman who literally just fucking shot her--and thinks, "Wow," she suspects it might be a family curse.

12. Shift

Madam Null wore the body of a white man while building her business, and she considers the ability to have a female, suitably inhuman form in her current dealings as a sign of her success.

13. Apprehension

April knows the turtles love her, but the monster-mother taught her that it's possible to fear and love something at once, so she tries not to push too far into their heads, tries to trust that their love for who she is will always outweighs their memories of what she's done.

14. Lullaby

When she was younger, Jennika used to wear headphones to drown out the sounds of her father screaming at her mother, hurting her; later she wore headphones to draw out the sound of her boyfriend's snoring and the neighbors cackling over meth down the hall; she'd clap her hands over her ears and hum to drown out first the obscene racket of prison and later the grim silence of the Foot clan; now she's wearing headphones again, blasting music to keep away the memories of blood and gore and terror inside her own head, a litany of sins piling up inside her skull.

15. Loss

"Our last poet committed suicide last week," Ma'riell says, like it's nothing, like she doesn't feel cold whenever she looks at the static archives of her people's culture, but Zom somehow senses it anyway, because she leans forward and gently rumbles, "Then you must raise new ones, and tell your own stories until you can, the way we have--we can show you how to do that."

16. Duty

Y'Gythgba loves Raphael, and she's grown to respect April O'Neil, but she respects honor and loves freedom more than any of them, and if the Kraang's greatest weapon ever turns against Y'Gythgba's people she will not hesitate to destroy her, even though she knows it would mean sacrificing everything she's built with Raph in the process.

17. Truth

Shini's hands shake as she lifts the porcelain mask of her face away, as she shows April an eldritch horror not even Karai has seen, but April looks at the way her scales and shadows wink in the moonlight and says, "Beautiful."

18. Trio

There's not much Karai and Raph can agree on, except for the fact that their brother Leo is an arrogant dork and they're both ridiculously in love with him.

19. Loyalty

When her siblings teased her as a child her father lifted her into his arms and told her she was his greatest creation, because he'd had time to work out all the flaws in his designs, and Kitsune would burn the world down just to feel that warm and safe again.

20. Other

"Can you teach me how to use this?" her dark-haired, glasses-wearing counterpart asks, hefting a laser pistol, and it dawns on Y'Gythgba that maybe they're not so different after all.

21. Guilt

When she hears about what almost happened to Mikey, about the way he sometimes wakes up screaming, gasping around the remembered tube in his throat, April hates herself for not being there--and the hate grows worse because whenever she imagines saving Mikey, she's got the crystal around her neck, helping her tear the people who did such terrible things to her friends asunder.

22. Hunt

"The past is alive," Alopex murmurs, half-drunk, carding her fingers through Raph's mask tails as she tells him what they've never admitted to each other: "It's alive, it's on our heels, and if we're not careful it'll eat us."

23. Rewired

A part of Karai will always be sitting there in that helmet, feeling the brain worm sink into her skull, and a part of her will always be tearing free, the guilt and horror of what she's done crashing down on her like a torrent of knives.

24. Body

She used to bind her breasts before her premonition to Assassin and a room of her own, so she wouldn't become a target in a dormitory full of male soldiers, and now Jennika traces her fingers over her flat new chest, relishing the newfound safety, but also remembering the boys and girls she once trusted to kiss her breasts and mourning the loss of that sensation, that connection.

25. Outsider

No one dares to bully April O'Neil, but she can feel their eyes on her all the same, on the girl who does weird workout routines during free periods, hangs out with "Crazy Casey" Jones, talks about mutant rights like it's an actual concept, grabs at her leg or back at loud noises like there's supposed to a weapon there, has a habit of showing up at school looking like she hasn't been there for months or with the pale wanness some people (perhaps accurately) diagnose as drug addiction, leaves a trail of broken things and mysterious headaches in her wake when she's mad.

26. Possession

Tang Shen grits her teeth and slips into the EPF soldier's skin, scans his memory for the details of using the gun at his side and the location of the captive turtles, before heading out to save her sons, hoping she can hold on to this body long enough to free them.

27. Safety

A gun is a more effective weapon than arrows or claws, but those weapons afford a kind of control that Jennika has never found in a gun, and guns don't make her think of broken hearts on bloody gas station linoleum or the ugliest threats her father used to scream.

28. Home (Mutated Pepperoni AU)

Renet brings her back to the beautiful, brutal world where she was born and her siblings died bloody deaths, where her species eked out a living before their extinction; she stands in the trees for a few minutes, breathing in the heat, then turns around and asks to go back to the place she belongs, where her true family waits in the future.

29. Help

Splinter's hurt, Leo's brainwashed (oh god), and Karai's supposed to help care for a bunch of turtles who more or less hate her guts, and even with Shini promising to come to America she can't breathe under the pressure (but she will, she must, she has no choice and so much anger to keep her going).

30. Scars

"Put that mouth to good use," the guard says, shoving Jenny to her knees; she kills him later, slowly and painfully, but in a way he's still won because every time Jennika tries to give a blowjob to someone she loves she ends up getting sick partway through.

31. Fortune

People in Mutant Town tell Mona she's lucky for having kept her original skin tone and hair after the mutation, but she's still not human enough to see her family again so what does it matter, really?

32. Coincidence

Her wooly-eared one-night stand starts giggling the next morning, but Sally doesn't really get how the concept of "the lion lying down with the lamb" has become part of a religious text, especially one as apparently popular as the Bible.

33. Present

The mask is green, the color of the forest where her first family lived and the skin of her second one, and Alopex thinks it's one of the most beautiful gifts she's ever received.

34. Want

After the Jem and the Holograms scandal breaks ("the first band with a CGI Lead" the headlines scream) Jennika thinks back on the dark, frightened days of her childhood and understands the desire to be more than you are.

35. Divergence

April could never imagine being a reporter, being someone who draws attention to themselves and exposes secrets, because ninja just can't do that if they want to survive.

36. Guilt

Jennika first meets her future jonin when she catches him sobbing on a rooftop for a family that he wrongfully thinks dead and he threatens to carve out her kidneys if she tells anyone; it takes a long time for her to learn just what had happened to Leo before they met, and even longer--if ever--for her to forgive herself for following people who did such things.

37. Lovely

"He's small," her fellow soldiers sniff, "Small and mad," but to Y'Gythgba Raphael is a glorious steel tornado and his emerald eyes...well, if they have madness in them that just makes him more beautiful.

35. Split

One side of her face is white and green, the other is smooth skin and delicate lip, but Karai notices that only the human side wears bruises, and only the snake side truly looks like it knows what it's doing.

36. Guardian

As a kitten she was called soft, too much like a dog in her friendliness to humans, but Ice Cream Kitty recognizes the steel strength and ruthlessness needed to protect someone the way she does for the Chief Cuddler, and she can prove herself vicious as any of her kin if need be.

37. Risk

Angel knows it's dangerous to climb the wall into Mutant Town--suicidal, maybe, for a dark-skinned girl like her who can so easily be wiped away by the authorities--but hers has never been a tame heart, and love for Alopex leads her own.

38. Levels

Kitsune considers herself brutal, never cruel (she's more likely to force someone to slit their wrists than make them dance themselves to death, the way the Rat King does) but then again, she's never been on the receiving end of her own mind control, never learned what it's like to be broken and remade by someone who doesn't even see you as a person.

39. See

If she concentrates April can sense the moves her opponents are planning to make before they make them, so she can block and dodge with a speed to rival Mikey's; eventually Shini figures it out and disables her by imagining a brutal flash of white light, but she still loves watching April pull her trick on other opponents.

40. Bond

It's not quite love, what they have, but it's something--something to dispel Ma'riell's grief for what she'll never see again and Zom's fear for what she might have lost forever, something in the carefully restrained touch of rough hands on Ma'riell's delicate nerves and the bold exploration of Ma'riell's tentacles on Zom's skin, a way of making some small repayment to one another for the sins of their people.

41. Possessions

Karai has one box for her makeup and one for her knives; she's definitely not telling anyone about the time they were both on her vanity and she absentmindedly reached for the wrong one, almost taking her own eye out before she saw what she was holding in the mirror.

42. Alone

Sally's cut off from the Mutanimals for the first time in years, cut off from Ray for the first time in her life and it's Jennika who finds her huddled in a corner, shaking with the weight of crushing blinding terror, and it's Jennika who talks her through the panic attack, tells her that she knows what it's like to be left broken and lost in the wake of something that you thought would sustain you for the rest of your life.

43. Name

"Kanojo-akuma," Raph growls as Alopex straddles him, she-devil, and from the way he says it and the look of desperate love in his eyes she recognizes it for the profound compliment it is.

44. Performance

Raph's pounding on the door now, but Karai begs for one more picture, so April keeps twirling the stolen weight on one finger, brow narrowed in concentration even as a shit-eating grin blazes proudly across her face.

45. Gravity

She'll never be able to sustain flight for long, not without a lot more advanced technology, but the few moments Angel gets to hover are enough; she feels like her namesake, only not a sweet blond one clad in white, but a mad burning thing of fire and strangeness that could tear cities to atoms if it so chose.

46. Sins

Tang Shen remembers the bruises on Hamato Saki's wrists, the ones she let herself believe were from training even though Yoshi never had ones quite so dark and vicious, remembers the way he flinched when his father raised his voice and the time he broke a boy's arm after the boy caught him crying at school--remembers and feels shame, not for angering the monster standing before her, but for allowing it to grow in the first place.

47.. Compulsion

"Excuse me, sir," Shini says, rocking her stone back and forth before one of the doctors about to saw April's head open. "Would you mind eating a scalpel for me, please?"

48. Sweet

The Shredder pushes goodies through the bars of her cell, as if he's just making up for hitting her too hard during training or screaming at her at dinner or being rough as he violated her again, and Karai laughs until she weeps.

49. Truth

"I don't think it's just a shell," Jenny tells Mona as the other girl runs her fingers down Jenny's plastron--it's the first night they made love, the night Jennika confessed what she'd done in the past and Mona somehow found the courage to forgive her. "It's my shining armor, maybe, my...my redemption made flesh."

50. Beginning

April runs her fingers through her hair and feels how the tips are slowly turning into purple tentacles, tentacles no amount of retromutagen has driven away, and finally admits to herself that this is the final step away from normalcy she was always going to take in some form, that her only choice is to accept her change so she can face it head-on and fight to keep it from corrupting her (while hopefully finding a way to scramble ordinary people's brains just enough that they don't recognize her for what she is on sight). 

Chapter Text

1. Afterparty

They're both still sticky with the Shredder's blood, but Karai's already pushing Leo down and kissing him like that can somehow making the shaking stop, clinging to him with legs and tail, anything to prevent herself--prevent him--from falling apart.

2.  Beastly

Karai is the monster queen on the dead king's throne, scales pulsing under armor like a heartbeat, whispers of hate and love burning equally in her sensitive ears, all green eyes and teeth behind the warrior's mask.

3. Cut

April can't lift a car anymore, but she can shatter glass, and in the right hands a few well-flung shards are deadlier than a thrown Honda Civic any day.

4. Goodbye

"They're tired of getting you back and watching you go, over and over again" Shini says when she exorcises Splinter one night, murmuring, "It's time for them to heal."

5. Myth

Karai is the naga-lamia monster of legend, April is the mutant superhero everyone dreamed of and the world-burning dead-raiser everyone feared, Shini is the witch of fairy tales with living shadows for blood, and together they are stories brought to life, able to burn down the world if they so tried.

6. Silence

Alopex sees a hungry, lost little turtle creeping down the street and knows she should offer him a role in the Foot Clan, where he'll have purpose and a warm place to sleep (and brutal training and vicious comments and the iron rule of a dead-eyed master), but for some reason the words stick in her throat as he passes by.

7. Defiance

The Shredder drags his claws down her face, boasting about the turtles he's already killed and how his men will find Donatello any day now, but Angel looks into his eyes, thinking of all the bratty, vicious men who've told her she's powerless, more than she can possibly count, and laughs.

8. Wave

She washes up with the tide in a tangle of tentacles and teeth, a monster from the deep, but the purple-jacked, glasses-wearing boy who finds her sees the intelligence in her bright blue eyes and feels the desperation in her soft mental pleas, convinces his brothers to help him take her home and tend her wounds in a tank, and when he asks her name she gives him the impression of soft rain drumming on the ocean and a faint breath of spring slipping into underground caverns, a name she helps him translate into as April.

9. Shoal

Koya swoops down to devour the fish with a predator's vicious claws and she concentrates on picturing her enemies' bones (Leonardo, smug and vicious, her new wings too closely bound to his beating heart) crunching her beak, but she keeps losing concentration and finds herself relishing the taste instead.

10. Garden

Flowers, her father calls them, the pretty little girls and boys in perfume and high heels who have nowhere else to go, who can be used as disposable toys for her father's allies or simply be passed around as rewards, a legion of colorful ghosts where Karai learned the arts of seduction before she ever had a choice; she goes back to them when she needs to build an army, offering them a chance to give bruises for their leader instead of receiving them, and is not surprised when many of them say yes. 

11. Sound

The world is too sharp in Alopex's ears, so it's Angel who guides her in the noisy storms, and it's Alopex who shows Angel the way in pitch-silent forest and alleyways, feeling her way through the rustling of the window and a mouse's echoing heartbeats.

12. Burnt

Shini is in Hiroshima when the bombs fall, is the only survivor, the only one from miles who doesn't fry or crumple with radiation sickness, and has to wander in the wilderness for a while putting the pieces of herself back together; when she returns to mortal civilization, Karai is one of the first people she talks to.

13. Magic

In another world, Shini is a scared young girl in baggy black huddled in the shadows of a great hungry forest, summoning a fairy that will turn out to be redheaded, blue-eyed, and one of the most beautiful, most irritating creature she has ever met.

14. Party

Their escape from Todd Baron's lair is delayed after they wake up naked and dazed in a hallway, sticky with sex and buzzing with adrenaline, and Alopex has to go track down the scattered pieces of Angel's armor and clothing while Angel hides under a drapery and curses everything.

15. Promise

If Angel dies Alopex doesn't doubt Brooklyn Bridge will take the suit and try to kill her--what's more in question is whether she'd let him.

16. Entrails

Karai slurps them down as she huddles over a tattered corpse in the middle of a briefly Kraang-free alley, babbling half-remembered lullabies to herself as she tries not to gag on the sickly sweet taste of liver.

17. Feast

Her former father's heart still beats as Karai chews it, rich juices running down her throat, the thrum thrum thrum echoing into her stomach and filling her with new life.

18. Marks

Alopex doesn't think the scratches in Raph's shell are that prominent, at least until they go out to breakfast and everyone starts giggling, and Raph breaks out in that kind of smug fury unique to him.

19. Discovery

Turns out that a kiss can stun Karai far more effectively than a punch, and April reminds herself to pay Mikey five bucks.

20. Hideous

Karai is a twisted mess of tails and limbs and malformed genitals and endlessly screaming face in the first few weeks; sometimes she pulls that form back on and looks at herself in the mirror, to remind herself of of the indestructible nature of horrors like her, how there are few things on this earth scarier than herself.

21. Heartbreak

Her people need Earth's resources, so one day Y'Gythgba goes to war and when Raph faces her on the battlefield his eyes blaze white with fury; a gratifying sight because that means he doesn't know about how she was punished for "accidentally" failing to sabotage his side or gather useful information before she left; all he knows is that he abandoned her, and Mona hopes that his rage will burn his love away, that he won't have to suffer quite as badly as she does.

22.  Resurrection

When she regains herself Alopex screams, feels herself coming back to life as Kitsune's claws rip out of her brain, leaving a bloody, ruined, but sentient mass behind.

23. Hunger

April can feel the threads of power holding Donnie together when they touch, knows she could become a god again if she was ever heartless enough to take it back and let him crumble, but she doesn't know if that's going to tear them apart or draw her to him.

24. Telepath

All your father does is hurt you, her red-head target says, eyes narrowed as she rifles through Karai's head, and Karai's breath catches when she whispers, We could keep you safe, because for some crazy reason she might actually believe it.

25. Drift

April grits her teeth as she struggles to maintain the globe of oxygen around them and push herself and Shini back up through the dark; it's a war between the combined water pressure of the Hudson River and her will, so it's really no contest.

26. H(a)unted

After her father almost drowns Karai dreams of Leo, all big blue eyes and sharp teeth; later her nightmares are of Splinter, claws slick with her mother's blood and hungry for more; and these days she dreams of Shredder, hissing threats and lies through his helmet, a dead-eyed white snake writhing from a leash on his wrist.

27. Change

"Hold on," Alopex whispers as the healing mutagen tears through Angel's battered body, as wings sprout from her back, as scales spill across her body and claws glimmer on her fingers and she becomes a dragon brought to life. "Hold on, my beautiful samurai, hold on, and come back to me."

28. Confession

"I ate people for Kitsune," Alopex confesses, expecting hatred, but Raph just pulls her close and tells her about hungry days in the dark, about the taste of dead homeless men, and she knows that if nothing else she won't be alone in her monstrosity.

29. Soldier

"My people come first," Y'Gythgba whispers, but her eyes are slicked with tears and when Raph collapses to his knees screaming she can't take the opportunity to kill him, can't do anything except stand there as Donatello's weapons scream through her people's ships overheard and everything crumbles around them.

30. Mother

Of all Kitsune's children Pimiko is the first one with her gift, the first one whose soft black hair crackles with magic as she coos in her arms, and for the first time in centuries Kitsune looks at something small, weak, vulnerable and does not think prey.

31. Daughter

"I love you," the creature with her mom's face says, and April screams as she tears it apart because she can sense that it means it, in its own twisted way, and a part of her feels the same.

32. Sister

In another life she's a little girl snake bossing around four little boy turtles, safe and happy in the warm underdark, and Karai would spend a lifetime in scales for that opportunity.

33. Repurposed

Karai melts the helmet into knives for herself and her family, weapons to protect them when all else fell, or free them from life if escape is impossible.

34. Bonding

Raph and Karai meet on a ledge, share whiskey and ugly memories of the brain worm, and it's not until they walk home together that they realize they were both there to jump.

35. Star

She blazes so bright and high, so wondrously destructive, but later April feels like the ghost of a burnt-out star, a phantom whose afterglow echoes through the galaxy, playing at light, playing at life.

36. Keepsakes

Her memories are held in the burn scars the missionaries left on Shini's legs, and the little bag of their teeth and bones she collected in a bag; she finds herself smiling whenever she uses one of them for a spell.

37. Rejection

That's not my daughter, April's mother whispers, eyes huge with terror, and when the people at the hospital come for her she slits her wrists, folding into a swirl of blood and blond hair that April edits from her memories as a means of survival, so after her mother emerges from the basement she seizes the second chance with both hands and doesn't remember the truth until it's too late.

38. Mourning

They find the ruins of Irma Langstein in a Kraang laboratory, taken apart and rearranged into something less than human, drooling through mercifully insane eyes; April weeps while she kills her, watches her buried besides parents who didn't survive the first invasion and leaves the black roses Irma loved on their graves.

39. Showoffs

Shini swans into the prom, all massive hat and pitch-black makeup, while April balances on her arm with a blaze of silver roses on her yellow dress and gold flashing on her face, wearing weapons because they feel like it and out-smirking anyone who dares try it with them and dancing everyone else into the ground.

40. Rapunzel

Karai had never needed someone to set her free, she'd only needed people--a blue-eyed turtle with a heart of steel mixed with gold, an irritatingly long-lived psychic, a witch who had patiently waited for years to be proven right--to show her that she was a prisoner, to help her free herself.

41. Goodbye

Part of Tang Shen wishes she could have found the strength to leave them both Yoshi and Saki, to raise her daughter away from their crazy world of steel and hatred, but she was always too ruled by her heart and now she fears that Miwa might grow up into someone without any heart at all.

42. Wonderland

April fell down the rabbit hole, but unlike Alice she has no intention of ever really leaving.

43. Permanent

They both know that crazy leaves its mark; a part of Karai will always be slick with her own blood and shit, screaming to herself beneath a conquered city, and a part of April will always be cackling under waves of apocalyptic power, ripping herself apart from the inside out.

44. Memory

"She was beautiful," Leo says, talking about crossing paths with Karai's mother. "She was strong-willed, she was clever, she loved you, and....and she wasn't afraid of us, after she got to know us. I think that was my favorite part."

45. Selfish

Karai doesn't know what she would do if she had a chance to see her mother--her mother, it still rankles that the turtles were the only ones who got to see her--a chance to save her, and whether she would take it, even if it meant sacrificing April and the turtles and maybe New York City in the process.

46. Penance

There are cuts on April's arms for every minute Donnie spent dead, and sometimes she rips them back open with her fingers when the shame drowns her.

47. Claws

Raph compares her to Wolverine while Leo's eyes narrow with memories of Shredder, but Jennika doesn't quite have the words to tell him how important it is for her have weapons that remind her of a monster, so she'll never forget to keep a close eye on the dark potential in her own heart--and unleash it if necessary.

48. Trophy

When she's feeling frightened or alone Alopex plucks the scrap of her brother's fur out of her pocket and remembers the rich scent of Tiger Claw's blood, reminding herself of the great and wonderful things she's capable of.

49. Trigger

Jennika looks at the bruises on Mikey's face and remembers angrily slapping makeup over her own in the mirror, hears her father's excuses echoing alongside Splinter's, and that's when she realizes her days with the Foot Clan are numbered.

50. Request

"Take care of them, keep them safe," a woman in ancient Japanese garb whispers in Jennika's dreams, and she swears she will; she will face down armies and burn cities to the ground before letting her brothers come to harm.

Chapter Text

1. Refusal

The metal singes Alopex's fur and burns her claws as she rips Angel free of the suit, but she doesn't care; she's seen enough of her loved ones swallowed by fire and she won't lose anyone else.

2. Worry

When she's in a mood to torment herself, Ma'riell will piggyback onto a human television signal and wonder if the earthlings are going to wreck this planet the way her people wrecked their own.

3. Youth

After people start looking confused when she tells them she's out of college, April finally gets the courage to investigate Kraang lifespans with Donnie, although she doesn't need psychic powers to suspect what they'll find.

4. Fury

Shini finds marks that shouldn't be on Karai's body and tries to get rid of Oroku Saki discreetly, only for things to go horribly wrong and for her to be left standing on the roof, alone, the words "Talk to me again and I'll kill you" burning in her ears; the fact that Karai left her alive makes things so much worse, because it proves just how strong what they had was.

5. Forgiveness

Karai staggers to her door a year later, battered and broken from paying far too brutal a price for her mistakes, and everything Shini had convinced herself she'd forgotten comes rushing back in a heartbeat.

6. Determination

The sight of a bear still chills Alopex's blood, so she makes a point to never cross the street when she encounters one in Mutant Town, even if it puts her out of her way, because she won't let fear tell her where to go.

7. Truth

The Dreamer is older than the continents, the Dreamer's mind is full of things that would snap a human soul in two, but when the Dreamer sees the multiversal phenomenon of mutant turtles appear in her world for the first time, she feels a shiver of what might be anticipation, and wonders how they'll turn things inside out here.

8. Jealousy

Jennika watches the mutants spar from the shadows and quietly envies Leonardo's impossible sturdiness, Alopex's blinding speed; it's not until much later that she realizes what price such "gifts" really ask for.

9. Noise

As time passes the voices start crowding into the back of her head with an imperceptible slowness, until the day April wakes up and finds herself muttering to herself in her landlady's native Russian as she gets dressed and realizes her mind is no longer quite her own.

10. Request

Leo talks to her about Don Vizioso and even before he manages to spit it out Karai knows she's going to help make him "disappear," because as important as it is to keep Donnie's hands and head clean she hasn't had that problem in a very long time.

11. Courage

Tribble's hands are shaking as she dons the armor for the first time, but her parents need her, the people who are fighting and dying for her country right now need her (and she refuses to let the chance to wreak a little havoc among the Utroms go to waste).

12. Name

Her name isn't really Shinigami, of course, but names have power for all magical beings, so she keeps hers close to her chest, and whoever she dares to share it with will know to never use it in a casual setting.

13. Shatter

Once Karai was able to grind her rage down into knives and keep the rest of herself locked away under vicious ice walls, but then some turtles and rat started breaking everything apart and she learned how much harder it was to fight for something, rather than in the name of destruction.

14. Revival

Irma sits at the kitchen table in this so-called lair, cursing her throbbing headache and the taste of alien goo in her mouth; she blames that and the general fucked-up state of her brain when the first question she asks is "So none of you guys wear pants?"

15. Adrenaline (IDW Karai)

 They fuck on Karai's new desk after sealing the rat away, Karai's fingers and teeth leaving bruises that will melt into Natsu's tattoos, and Natsu loves it: loves the rattle of weaponry next to her head, loves the pain reminding her she's alive, loves the beautiful vicious queen who's claimed her as consort.

16.  Freak

Mona snaps at Donnie and Mikey, and she hates herself for it, because of course they've suffered for what they've become, it just....the mutagen lifted them up, and right now Mona feels like she's been thrown down, down into the dark.

17. Persistence

Tang Shen asks again and again to be reunited with her family, and again and again the Dreamer refuses her with talk of balance and fate, as Shen slowly learns that it is possible to quietly hate someone who has given you so much.

18. General

The leader of the resistance against Shredder has red hair and ancient weapons and the powers of a god, the leader of the resistance against Shredder is a source of hope and defiance for every free spirit of New York, the leader of the resistance against Shredder keeps her broken heart tucked gently away, and most days you can't even see it.

19. Cruel

The fantasy she spins for Leonardo is vicious, self-indulgent, perhaps more than enough to break his young mind, but seeing the smile on her beloved's face afterwards makes Kitsune release a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding, and she tells herself it doesn't really matter.

20. Impact

In another life, four very human brothers fish Y'Gythgba out of her crashed spacecraft, and as she finds herself staring into fierce green eyes again and again over the course of her recovery she begins to worry that this silly little backwater will permanently fuck her up.

21. Question

Shen's read about polyamorous relationships and in desperation she tries to get Saki and Yoshi to listen, to figure out if they could just try sharing her, but the mere suggestion sends the other two spiraling into a rage and she's left with a heart that still wants to a painful degree.

22. Life

Her little girl has a turtle's shell, furry white ears and a tail she'll chase when she's bored; her beauty is breathtaking, her fragility is terrifying, and Alopex would rip the cosmos apart to keep her safe.

23. Nightmares

Jennika dreams of bony hands pushing her head and limbs into her shell, taping her in, telling her in she shouldn't cry about being put in a coffin since she's sent so many people there already, and whenever she wakes up there's always someone rushing to comfort her, whether or not she thinks she deserves it.

24. Secret

A weak part of Karai misses the soothing certainty and righteousness the brainworm gave back to her, misses the soft warmth of being her father's favorite and the promise that one dead rat would make up for all the blood on her hands and the shadows in her head.

25. Doubt

It's easier to blame the turtles for everything, but the night after she leaves April finds herself lying awake for hours, thinking about all the havoc wrought in her name and wondering if the person who really destroys everything they touch is her.

26. Happy

"Okay, I'm still pissed at you for lying, but I've got to admit that this is awesome," Irma admits to April as they watch Donnie try to teach Metalhead 2.0 how to fly.

27. Dance

Karai can fight, stalk, seduce, kill, climb mountains and run for miles....but she can't dance, so April and Shini take it open themselves to teach her, and as clumsy an affair as it is she thinks it might be the nicest training session she's ever had.

28. Leaving

Shen kisses her husband and children goodbye, knowing they won't remember this when they wake up in their new bodies, and feels the heart that hasn't beat in centuries shatter as they fade away.

29. Overheard

April's older, saner counterpart is talking to her living mother on the phone, and suddenly she wants to blow the kitchen apart with grief and loss and jealousy.

30. Petals

The Shredder used to give her flowers after some of his worst offenses, and even now walking by a flower shop makes Karai sick.

31. Watchful

Whenever she wakes up screaming from nightmares, Zom will find herself checking on her remaining soldiers by pacing past their dormitories (and God help the private who tries to tease her for her "motherly tendencies)."

32. Eyes

Even when people aren't running and screaming, there's always been a sense of passerby thinking too big, too strong, too buff for a lady, and sometimes Ravenwood has to shift her organs around a little, just to remind herself she has power on a level no words can touch.

33. Vision

April's eyes turn white and her world melts into a swarm of colorful auras, pulsing hungrily at her touch; the crystal burns hot on her chest with a need to keep them safe, or possibly eat them whole.

34. Crush

Irma has always loved girls with swords in the way of someone who knows they're never going to get such a thing in real life, so when a girl with an actual sword walks in, a girl who also happens to have killer makeup and a scowl that can curdle milk, Irma needs a moment to pick her jaw off the floor.

35. Swim

"You could drown up here if you're not careful," her commander warns her as they stand watching the stars, her first day on deck, and it's not until several years of beauty and horror, boredom and wonder, trauma and joy, fear and victory have passed that Y'Gythgba really understands what he meant.

36. Hope

Perhaps, Tang Shen thinks, there is a world out there where her story has a different ending, where she can be the survivor, perhaps even the hero, rather than playing the role of victim every time.

37. Blink

The Time Masters know of the Dreamer, have trained their students to recognize her mark, and as little as she knows Renet can still recognize the touch of the Dreamer on the turtles' souls, and that's all the encouragement she needs to ask for their help.

38. Sacrifice

The green ball of energy compresses to nothing in her grip, and in the last moments before her heart gives out April wishes she could have said a better goodbye.

39. Transition

Ravenwood thinks returning to work with her proper gender on display (not to mention bigger and stronger than she'd ever been as a man, because to hell with those kinds of norms) bothers most of her employers more than her returning as a mutant, and she couldn't really give a fuck--if she hadn't realized who she was, she never would have progressed beyond the level of dancing goo.

40. Fear

April wonders how much of Donnie's life-force is tied to hers and whether he'll be able to outlive her, or where the power in the crystal will go should he die first, and knows that there are some possibilities she won't dare examine too deeply until she has no choice.

41. Burn

The mutagen melts her down and reforges her, turns her into something a thousand times stronger, and eventually Karai learns to be grateful for her time in the crucible.

42. Lies

But it doesn't make the human skin she wears any less of a mask, a pale suit for the snake to wear until it's time to play again.

43. Mind

You have to be a little crazy for this job, Renet thinks, or the weight of the horrors you won't be able to stop for all your power might just eat you alive.

44. Lips

Shini paints hers with the blood of her enemies, taken out of carefully sealed jars, and she likes to kiss girls who can recognize the taste.

45. Justice

Angel beats up crooks and cops with equal determination if she catches them doing wrong, and she doesn't mind the press ragging about the "Purple Menace" if it means somebody's children got home safe.

46. Art

"Who cares about some old dead white men?" her fellow students used to ask, and Shen didn't always have the words to say it wasn't the men that had stolen her heart, but the works they created, the way those paintings made her breath catch with their beauty, power, and grace.

47. Pictures

Her mother drew a sketch of her as an infant that the Shredder kept in his desk; it was a half-charred ruin by the time Karai finally cleaned out his things and she discovered that she could never run out of new reasons to hate him.

48.  Shame

In an uglier world, April visits Irma's family as they mourn and wants to scream I did it, it was me, they killed her because of me, only for the words to get strangled in her traitorous throat.

49. Whispers

Sometimes Ma'riell visits her brother's suspension tube and tries to talk to him about the world she wants to build, about the things that went wrong, about the childhood they've lost...now that he's free again she'll find herself visiting the empty tube at times and fighting the urge to crawl inside and hide from everything, because she's worried that if she does she'll never be able to come out.

50. Protection

When the memories get really bad, Karai will tuck herself under a blanket of scales and remember that no one dares mess with a snake.