Chapter Text
Leo huffed. He'd been working on this for hours but felt no closer to controlling this new power than when he first started. Turns out teleporting was a lot harder than it looked.
It wasn't that he was portaling so fast it looked like he was teleporting, but actually pulling himself through space. A blink and suddenly he's in another spot. No need to spend the extra time swinging his sword, or any movements at all.
He could make so many moves with this! No need for extra steps to slow him down. His dodging game would be practically impossible to beat. Or it would be, if he could actually get the dumb teleporting thing to work..
It feels like when he first got his odachi, unable to actually get his powers to do what he wanted them to. Want to go to the new place on main and impress his fam with some pizza fresh from the oven? Actually no, instead he's in Paris now, on the Eiffel Tower. Stuck there for about an hour while the pizza got cold, too busy having a panic attack about falling to actually go home.
So here he was, for the last three hours, trying and failing to teleport himself across the room to his swords. He can feel where they are, even when he's in another room, he's connected to them. And he knows he can use them as an anchor point, he's done it before!
But he needs so much concentration, and a little break of focus is all it takes before the mystic energy he's been gathering is gone. And he's no closer to actually getting his ninpō to do what he wants it to. The worst part is he did so well in the Shredder fight, but now it feels impossible.
Shouldn't it be easier for him to teleport? It's just moving himself through space, not making an entire doorway anyone could go through. It takes a little bit of energy every time something passes through, he can even feel it enter and exit.
But it's just him, so why isn't it working?
Something, something about the bigger it is the more energy it takes to move through space.
He can’t be expected to remember every lecture. And this particular one wasn’t even from Donnie, the main lecturer extraordinaire, but no, it was from Draxum. The very same sheepmen that, y’know, threw Leo off a roof.
Plus, he was very busy trying to move like twenty fridges into Draxum's apartment for a really good prank when he had to stop because it made him too tired. He just woke up from his impromptu nap when Draxum started getting on to him.
So yeah, he very much wasn’t paying attention to that lecture.
Besides, after a little practice he can move over a hundred fridges without a sweat. He just needs a little more. But it seems like his current practice sesh isn't working.
He grumbles to himself before releasing a huge breath. Maybe he just needs a change of scenery, yeah, that’ll work. He’ll just have some pizza and then with the power of said pizza he’ll master teleporting and his fam will be so impressed.
He closes his eyes and exhales a long steady breath. He draws from the flame of ninpō in his chest while picturing Run of the Mill. The hustle and bustle of the ever busy restaurant. The cozy warmth of the slightly greasy booths. The smell of fresh pizza and garlic-
The door to his room bursts open. Leo yelps and lands face first on his bed. He groans and lifts himself up only to catch Mikey- or Dr. Feelings stare. Leo’s little brother is in a turtleneck paired with dark pants, even holding a clipboard.
Eugh boy…
Leo just huffs and plops back into his bed and buries his face into his pillow.
“You and.. Why are you glowing?”
Leo doesn't know and mumbles as much into the pillow.
Mikey just hums and his claws clink against the clipboard. “Sure.. Well glowstick or not you and Raph need to talk. You both said some pretty hurtful things.”
Leo gives him his best side eye before pulling himself up from his pillow. During his pillow pouting Mikey had pulled a projector displaying a slideshow called ‘Communication & You’ with little cartoons of Leo and Raph talking around the letters. He doesn’t even know what it’s plugged into.
Leo would rather be anywhere but here. Yeah he knows he was a jerk, but so was Raph! This whole thing is a little unnecessary. They’ll both get over it, eventually.
So he's been fighting with Raph. He's been the one going on like normal, very normal. Super normal in fact, so what if he's been extra annoying on purpose.
It's his big brother that's been getting on to him about being a serious leader. Like what? Why in the pizza supreme does Leo need to be serious? The villain they fight aren’t even threats anymore.
Not to mention Leo shouldn’t even be leader in the first place, that’s Raph’s job, not his. Why are they even going along with what Splinter said anyway? It’s not like he’s out and about fighting villains with his sons, shell, he didn’t even know the Mad Dogz existed for almost a year!
But, he can’t exactly tell Raph that, It’ll mess up his whole image. So instead he’ll just be his annoying self and show Raph he shouldn’t be leader. He’ll become the Faceman again, and then everything we’ll go back to the way it was before. When everything made sense.
Leo can feel his eyes glaze over as Mikey goes on to point out things he’s noticed about Leo and Raph’s relationship. What they need to know to fix it. He already knows, he just doesn't want to.
He gets Mikey wanting to make sure he and Raph are good and all, but can’t he just mind his own business? He’s just a kid, he shouldn’t try to be his brothers’ therapist.
But if he tries to stop him, or at least right now, it’ll lead to another argument and even more hurt feelings. Leo really doesn’t want to upset another brother, one is enough.
He looks back at the projector, it's now showing a photo from when they were Todd scouts. Of when Leo and Raph made marshmallows together. His big brother tended to a decently sized campfire while Leo balanced as many marshmallow sticks as he could manage.
The fire lit up the forest around them, but it was dim compared to bright smiles they both had. Things were simpler then, back when being heroes was actually fun. The whole trip to the woods was fun, especially when Donnie somehow became the squirrel master. He had a whole army of them doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
Plus, the woods itself was just pretty.
Trees dotted the landscape, leaves swishing as the cool breeze blew through them. The fresh smell of pine and earth, how clean each lungful of air felt. The clear blue skies, Leo thinks he even saw a falcon flying overhead.
And Leo doesn’t realize that his stripes never dimmed, that they’re starting to glow brighter. Mikey's still talking, confusion leaking into his voice. But Leo can’t even make out what he’s saying before bright blue consumes everything.
Suddenly, he finds himself falling. He hasn’t even blinked the light out of his eyes before air is whooshing past his tympanum, the tails of his masks whip around his head. He screams. The forest floor is getting closer and closer. The sharp tree branches brandishing each sharp twig, like spikes ready to make a turtle kabob.
Leo squeezes his eyes shut, fresh tears stolen by the wind before they can even form. Leo thinks of the trees, the forest floor. How he’d rather be there then here right now. Or he’d rather be there in one piece. He really doesn’t want to finish what Draxum started. And then he suddenly feels his momentum pause. And then he falls again, but this time way softer, onto the forest floor.
Leo flounders for a second, his hands gripping the damp moss-covered ground. Leo's eyes fly open. He teleported again! And he didn't go splat! Double win!
A large grin splits across Leo’s beak. He huffs out a relieved breath and goes to sit up. But in doing so he realizes his arm has a weird drag to it. Like it’s stuck somehow. He furrows his brow-ridges and looks at his right hand.
It’s in a tree.
What.
There’s a small little blue circle swallowing his arm into the tree. He wiggles his trapped right hand and feels only air. He has no idea where his hand is, it could be in Tahiti for all he knows.
Okay, this isn’t ideal, but Leo can work with this. He’s handled much worse from his brother’s pranks, he shudders at the “Toaster Incident of 2012.” He could never look at them the same way.
He tries to yank his hand free but has no luck. He tries a different angle, but again no dice. The worst part is he can’t even feel the portal around his arm, it’s just weirdly solid air with almost no give.
He tries pulling on his ninpō to widen the portal. He closes his eyes and imagines the blue flame. He thinks of the zipping and zapping from place to place, the spark of movement that should come easily to him.
He thinks he feels something. His eyes fly open, excitement bubbling up from bein-
And it’s just a squirrel staring at him.
Maybe Leo has some squirrel powers? He and Donnie are brothers after all.
"Hey," he thrusts out his free hand, making a grabbing motion while cooing. "Spspspsp, come're."
The squirrel slowly inches closer. Leo feels hope rise in his chest, maybe somehow the squirrel can free him? He grins and wiggles the fingers of his free hand.
"Maybe you could lend me a hand?”
The squirrel goes from gently sniffing his hand to scrunching up its snout like it smelled something rotten. He can't help but think the squirrel is judging him harshly, Leo didn’t know a squirrel face could do that. It's actually impressive.
It throws a nearby rock at him before scurrying away. Leo lets out an offended squawk as a rock hits him on his beak. Leo grumbles and uses his free hand to rub at the area. Definitely a squirrel Donnie sent, probably.
“No one appreciates good humor these days…”
He squints as he looks at where the squirrel was, it’s slowly getting harder and harder to see as the sky darkens in the distance. Leo looks up at the sky, normally a brilliant blue, is a dark grey with storms clouds rolling overhead.
The glow from the portal is pretty much the only thing Leo can see now. It’s soft and usually isn’t very bright, but it's the only light source in the quickly darkening forest. His guts twist at the sight, Leo really misses the light pollution of New York.
He really needs to wrap this up, this whole being stuck thing? Yeah, it’s getting old. He tries yanking and pulling his hand again, and pretty much anything he can think of to widen the portal. The third time’s the charm, that’s how the saying goes. Right?
It’s in fact not the charm and is a lie.
“Okay.. This was very fun uhh, portal-thingy..? But I want off this ride, like yesterday. Ugh, c'mon!”
He groans as he slumps further along the tree. Maybe he’ll just be trapped here for a little bit and then his family will find him, razz him, but save him nonetheless. At least it won't get any worse-
A big fat drop of water lands on his head, dripping down and soaking into the fabric of his mask. Then another raindrop follows, then another and another and soon it’s pouring rain.
“I didn't even say it out loud!”
This makes Leo actually want to deal with Mikey’s weird feelings shtick. At least with that he'd be at home on his warm and comfortable bed. Mikey would even let him have a snack.
He grabs a nearby stick with a big leaf attached to it and holds it over his head in a very sad attempt at an umbrella. The weight of the water causes the leaf to bow and dump a bucket's worth of water on Leo’s head.
He screams in frustration and flails to emphasize his point. Only stopping when a flash lights up the entire forest and he yelps with the following boom of thunder. His arms give out and his arm falls further into the tree, now bicep deep.
Somehow in his frustrations he widened the portal.
He blinks, trying and failing to get the water out of his eyes. He gives up, instead taking a deep breath and once again focuses on his ninpō. Finally, slowly it starts to listen to him and the portal gradually widens.
It feels like he’s making a really big portal, but he knows it’s small. Is his arm just really, really far away? Eventually it grows big enough and he falls through.
The first thing he notices is the smell of ozone, followed by the soft leaves underneath him. A warm gentle breeze blowing around him, making his mask tails sway and chasing away the lingering chill of the rain.
The ground is a mass of dark blue leaves, around the same color as his mask. At some point the leaves just stop, like the edge of a cliff. But instead of seeing the ground far below, there’s nothing, it’s just a void.
Around him he sees even more blue lighting up the sky..? The space above him, turning less saturated the further it goes into the void.
The air itself has blue glowing fog? It reminds him of the stuff from a smoke machine from a fancy play or a haunted house. It glows as if there’s a nearby light, but it’s coming from the fog itself instead of a spotlight.
Tendrils of it snake and curl around itself, occasionally rippling and sending bits of crackling electricity arcing through the air.
It has no features, but it feels playful. That it's ready to pull a fun prank and goof around. But at a moment's notice it'd turn serious and surge with power. Ready to fight, to help, to protect.
Why does he know this?
Leo slowly gets up and turns around. The air seems to shimmer with his movement, tinting the sky a darker shade. His eyes widen when he looks into the distance.
In the void there's a massive tree. The bark itself is a dark green, extending past the mass of cerulean leaves he's standing on.
The branches themselves stretch up towards even brighter balls of light, like little suns. They seem to pulse with life, and he knows them, but he doesn't know how.
The suns shine so brightly they tint the leaves around them. Red, purple, orange, green and white.
Then he realizes that the blue leaves beneath him are a part of another branch, splitting off from the trunk and reaching towards him.
The fog swirls again, glowing brighter and causing the leaves around it to pulse with color.
He walks towards the tree, water driping down his legs and leaving a small trail as he does so. But he doesn't seem to get any closer to it. Instead, he reaches the edge of the platform.
The massive trunk plunges far below into the void, seemingly going on for miles. Eventually it splits off into hundreds of roots which extend towards just as many colorful but dimmed lights. Each one more muted the further down they are, like hundreds of faraway stars.
He hums and reaches into his pouch, he cringes at how wet it is but keeps going and pulls out a pen. He twists the cap a few times before throwing it at the tree in the distance. It flies through the air before the billowing fog races towards and then swallowing it.
He waits with bated breath for the pen to reappear, staring intently where it disappeared and yelps when the pen hits him in the back of head. He grumbles and rubs the offended area.
The pen lands beside him, he moves to pick it up but stops when the fog ripples and sparks zip through the air in a rhythm.
Is it laughing at him?!
Okay, this is getting weird, he should probably find a way out of here. But it doesn’t look like this place has an exit. He quickly picks up the pen and draws on his ninpō to call his sword. He doesn’t want to teleport himself into another tree at the moment.
The flame of his ninpō feels so much bigger, and just one small pull has it flooding towards him. Then the fog rushes towards him too. The comfortable warm breeze gets hotter as the cloud of energy glows brighter.
He stops. It stops too.
He waits a beat and then draws from his ninpō. The fog blazes and electricity zips around him. Even sparking into small flames where the more concentrated energy is gathering.
He lets go, and the fog pauses.
He tries again and this time the lightning arcs down and zaps him. He flinches.
But it didn't hurt? It just felt like static. Similar to when he wears socks and rubs them on the nearest carpet so he can try to shock his brothers.
So this time when he tugs his ninpō he doesn't stop. The fog billows down and swirls into his hand. The energy pooling into static against his fingers as it gets warmer and warmer.
It’s hot but never to the point of pain. It’s actually kinda comforting, reminding him of holding a mug of hot chocolate on a cold winter day or a warm hug from one of his brothers.
Flames ignite from the static and start to take shape, forging itself into a katanta.
He grips the worn handle, it's snug and presses perfectly into his calluses. He swings it around a few times, testing its weight. It’s flawless, the balance just how he likes it.
It's then he realizes It’s not just a sword, it's his sword.
It has the same little nicks in the blade. The small scratches on the handle. It even has the straps from his first katana, the little scraps made from the shabby leather his brothers spent months collecting. Something he should replace and not wrap onto his new sword but did anyway.
He grins and tugs at the flame again, his other katana materializes into his hands with the help of the fog’s flame.
No wonder it all feels familiar, it's him!
Energy in the air seems to shimmer with joy at his realization. It circles around him, calling him.
He calls back.
The sky lights up into a vibrant blue. The color then bleeding into the grooves of the branch beneath him. It glows and then spreads, pooling at the trunk and moving up towards the other lights, which then shine back at him in turn.
Like greeting an old friend.
Eventually the lights calm back down to the, still bright, state they were in before. Leo grins and leans one of his katanas on his shoulder.
"Look, uh me..? Err.. my ninpō..? Y'know what? I'm gonna call you Neon."
Tendrils of the fog snake around him gleefully, twisting around his arms and shoulders before racing away, balling up and then dispersing back into the air.
"Yeah! Neon Leon right? Alright, so I'm guessing you like that. But I need to go home, so like..?" He shrugs and motions to the most concentrated bits of energy near him.
Electricity bolts from it and zaps his sword, the hidden symbols on the blade glow for a moment before disappearing.
"I think I see what you're putting down."
Leo swings his katana and more electricity races up to meet him. It orbits around him for a moment before coiling on the blade and ripping through space.
A blue vortex spirals from the rip, it's brighter than normal and crackles at the edges. It feels more somehow, like this is a more concentrated version of his portals.
Not to mention it's taking way more energy than a normal portal. But he doesn't spend long dwelling on it before stepping through the circle of energy.
—
Leo pulled a Donnie and started experimenting with the place he’d found. He found he could portal back if he concentrated hard enough. He thinks it might be inside his ninpō. Since anytime he does something with his ninpō it seems to react.
It moves along with him, doing whatever he wants it to. He doesn't even have to say anything, it just knows. Plus Neon's been pretty chill, just coiling nearby when he visits.
He’s even started storing things in there. He hasn’t tried anything heavier than he can lift by himself. He really doesn't want to get anything stuck in here, in case it'll mess with his ninpō or something. But so far everything he's added hasn't caused any changes, or at least any that he's noticed.
Inside, instead of an empty space, he put up a large tent with a mountain of blankets and pillows. A beanbag from the old lair, Donnie insisted on new ones for the new place. He even has a cooler filled with drinks, along with a box of snacks right next to it. And on the outside of the tent there’s a box filled with things Leo doesn’t want his brothers to see, mainly future gifts.
Along with other things he wants to have in easy reach, like extra medical supplies, spare gear and whatever he thinks he might need on-the-go, if for some reason he can't quickly portal back to his room.
He's pretty much made the little pocket dimension into his own little personal space.
Leo smiles to himself as he plops down in his new sanctuary away from his brothers, he loves them yes, and he'd probably be nothing without them, but sometimes he just needs a break. He grabs a nearby comic from beside his beanbag while snuggling deeper, a contented sigh escaping his beak.
He's glad for his little space, a place he can relax. No need to worry about his brothers bothering him, or any image to maintain. Besides, nothing can go wrong with a little alone time.
Right?