Chapter Text
Chapter Seven: I feel it inside me like a pulse, it's starting to slow and the meter dips (oh)
Awareness came to him slowly.
It was hard to reach it through the fog smothering his every thought, trying to push him back down under the waves of unconsciousness. But there was a sense of urgency, however muffled it was, that was urging him to focus. To see to hear to fight.
Fight…
Fight what?
What was threatening him?
No… no, that wasn’t quite right.
He’d always been threatened. Whether it was from the wrigglingwrithingdisgusting parasite in his brain or the hounds pounding at their doors, wailing in anguish, there was always something threatening him.
No. No, this time, someone else was being threatened.
Someone small.
Someone vulnerable.
Someone young.
A little one.
A little one.
Cyonardo’s eyes snapped open and he inhaled sharply, throwing the full weight of his body forward as the memories came surging back and he instinctively tried to protect Leo. The fleshy membrane encasing him stopped him short, making him growl - a guttural thing that shook his chest - in thinly veiled fury before he could stop himself.
It didn’t take a genius to know The Krang had captured them.
These prisons of flesh and sinew were all too familiar, made of vivid and haunting memories that he wanted to tear out of his brain like he did the parasite in his eye.
He knew struggling was useless, that it wouldn’t do anything, but even so it took every scrap of strength he had to stop himself from trying anyways. He eyed his surroundings, trying to keep himself quiet and still, because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what kind of impression struggling would leave under The Krang’s watchful eyes.
He didn’t care what The Krang thought of him, but the influence of the whispering parasite behind his eye was getting harder to fight off.
They would think him afraid, weak, good, let them underestimate him and he was not weak.
He couldn’t see much, admittedly. It was dark and damp, and all he could hear was flesh and squishy tissues writhing unpleasantly in the walls.
Wherever he was, The Krang had already sunk their tendrils into the very foundation of it.
As he examined his surroundings, he tried to send a ping to Cydon’s servers, and he wasn’t surprised in the least to find that something blocked the signal from reaching its destination.
Well.
You couldn’t say that he didn’t try, at least.
And that wasn’t even what was causing the pit in his stomach to build with every passing second, anyways.
No, what was causing nausea to grip at his throat and make his stomach churn was the very simple fact that Leo was nowhere to be found.
Now, that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t there. There was a very high chance The Krang were just hiding him, waiting for the right moment to bring him out to really piss Cyonardo off.
But here’s the thing.
The Krang were cruel, vicious creatures that loved to torture and make examples of victims that held some kind of importance in a rebel faction. Cyonardo knew this because he had experienced it firsthand, had lived it for nearly an entire year of his life. Had been forced to carry it out so many times he saw it when he closed his eyes.
He knew their tactics, so he knew that they only did this when they wanted to put on a show.
The Krang weren’t stupid. They may view it as weak, but even they knew what a familial bond looked like. Cyo knew, far too intimately for his liking, just how many times The Krang had witnessed strong emotional bonds in action. How siblings would run into a Krang horde to try and save the other, or how they’d jump in front of a fatal blow fully knowing they were going to die. Had seen a brother raise his staff to the sky with a smile.
Cyo knew that The Krang could recognize patterns, that they had seen what parents would do for their child, how they reacted when their children were in danger. How they screamed when a child was bloody and beaten and pushed onto their knees on a screen they couldn’t reach through no matter how badly they tried.
Cyo knew that The Krang saw the physical similarities between them, saw how they rushed to protect each other, and made the most reasonable assumption they possibly could with the information they had.
They would be right, to a degree.
But they also couldn’t be further from the truth.
And The Krang didn’t waste any opportunity to take advantage of those bonds, because they perceived it as a weakness. And in a horrible, twisted way, it was.
This knowledge did nothing to quell his growing anger when Krang Prime moved into view, melting out of the shadows opposite Cyo with a smug, self-satisfied smirk that Cyo wanted to rip off his face. He didn’t tear against the cage of flesh and sinewy tissue keeping him suspended in the air, but he couldn’t stop his lips from curling in a snarl at the sight of the disgusting creature.
Krang Prime noticed, because nothing ever escaped the eyes of The Krang, and his smirk turned cruel and vicious as he moved along the ground, getting closer and closer to Cyonardo with every passing second, “You’re stubborn, I’ll give you that.” He started, and Cyo had to bite his tongue that was twisted and foreign because The Krang ruined everything they touched to keep from lashing out, “But you know as well as I that resisting is pointless. Everyone kneels before The Krang one way or another, and you are no different than every other self-proclaimed ‘hero’ that came before you.”
Cyo couldn’t stop the hiss from spilling out of his unnaturally sharp teeth that tore, straining minutely against the cocoon of slime and flesh that held him down, “I never broke under you parasites before, and I’ll be damned if I do so now.”
Krang Prime laughed, and Cyo didn’t miss the way the darkness above him shifted to reveal a vile yellow eye peering down viciously at him. He didn’t bother looking up, because they all knew he’d seen it. Seen her.
There was no use stalling.
“What did you do with him.” He snarled, not bothering to phrase it as a question. You don’t ask The Krang anything, you tell them. You demand answers, pushing forward to take them if necessary. It was what they expected, how they deigned to humor their victims.
Krang Prime smiles, a falsely sweet thing that fooled no one and everyone knew it, because it was just for show, just to rile him up, “What we always do with prisoners.” He purred, the cage squeezing around Cyo in a horrible imitation of some kind of comfort that made Cyo struggle not to squirm away from.
“You infected him.” He said, not bothering to hide the venom and disgust and fury in his tone.
“We gave him a gift.” Krang Prime corrected, smiling in a way that Cyo knew meant that the parasite was toying with him and knew that Cyo knew that.
“You may call yourselves gifts, but you’re just parasites that thinks themselves gods.” He growled lowly, baring his teeth at Krang Prime as he came closer.
The parasite chuckled, inclining his head towards Cyo’s prosthetic eye and making Cyo wish the false god was close enough he could rip its eyes out with his teeth, “I see you tried getting rid of our little gift to you, and I see that it ended with failure.” Its grin was taunting and cruel, “Just like all the others who tried before you.”
The parasite behind his eye howled.
He lunged forward, his jaw snapping around empty air just inches from the unflinching grin of Krang Prime, and he hissed and spat and tried again and again even though he knew it was useless because the parasite in his socket called for blood and he didn’t even try to resist its call.
He never had before, after all.
He’s tasted the blood of The Krang on his mutilated tongue so many times before that he’d started to crave it, almost.
Cykey may have been called Krang’s Bane, and Cyo himself was called the Immovable Dragon by the soldiers that followed him, but there was another name he was known by. One that he both loved and hated in equal measure, because of the nature of it; Devourer.
The name of “Devourer” came from countless days lost to a bloodlust that was birthed from an anger that had burned in his chest ever since the sky had been ripped open on August 5th, 2018. An anger that turned into an overwhelming need for vengeance once he had been torn from his family and turned into a weapon that broke its own bones and cut its own skin to lure its family into a trap. That bashed its head into a rock to split its skull open and make its family wail.
A bloodlust fueled by vengeance that drove him to dive into a horde of Krang and rip and tear until all that was left was chunks of flesh and teeth and claws soaked with pink and green blood that never came out no matter how much skin he scrubbed away.
He never remembered it, but he could never forget the taste.
Krang Prime just chuckled and tilted his head to the side, amused by him. “You’ve done me a favor, you know. Having kept that little gift in your eye.” Cyo suppressed a disgusted shudder, and the parasite in his socket wriggled in recognition as something reached out and connected.
“There you are.”
The voice rang out, loud and echoing and booming in a way that drowned out the rest of Cyo’s thoughts, and he couldn’t stop the pained noise in his throat from escaping, and he heard the voice chuckle, deep and grating and painful as it reverberated against his skull, “This will make this so much easier.”
And Cyo realized, too late, that with differences in universes came differences in The Krang.
And the parasite rooted in his socket
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Yeah. Lmao. Cyonardo was supposed to get possessed again HAHAHAHA I still remember how excited I was to finally get to this part. The ENTIRE scene above was actually what inspired the whole fic! Cyonardo was always supposed to take Raph's place in regards to "krang-infected turtle", and Leo too I suppose, though him being possessed just kinda happened. There's a few directions I could've gone with that, like the past and present Hamato's having a big emotional confrontation w their respective Leo's to break them out of the possession. They likely would've succeeded, in some aspect anyways. Little Leo would've been able to break free fully, but Cyonardo... sadly, a double Krang infection is hard to shake. He would've lived in the end, sure, but he wouldn't ever have been the same. In what aspect, I can't say. I'm sure at first he'd be swinging back and forth from being coherent and then back to possessed, and then eventually he's coherent more than he's not. But he'd always look infected, and Cydon wouldn't be able to cut those parts away like he did the last time.
The original plan for where this particular part was going to go actually kinda cuts immediately to the confrontation where the turtles re-awaken their powers after Leo gets through to Raph, but before that during the fight. What was GOING to happen way before that, though, was who exactly was in Cykey's other portals being revealed!!! Some of you guessed it already, but one of them was going to Future Raph! Aka Cyael! The other portal had THREE occupants, actually, which was April, Mayhem, and Metalhead! I actually kinda revealed all that over on tumblr via some asks last year thanks to the AU comp starting up again, not that I partook in it, but some asks ended up thrown my way regardless. So! I'll show y'all the art I made so you can get an idea of designs and such. In fact! I have quite a few pieces of art I made for this series, and I'll just show y'all all of them with explanations!!! :D
First up we have the ref sheets I made for Cydon, Cyonardo and Cykey, of which you can tell the quality changed between all three as I got better at making ref sheets lmao
So! As you can see from Cykey's ref! He's hiding a few things :) He uses his magic to hide the scars that, ironically, his own magic left behind. I took HEAVY inspiration from Mikey starting to dissolve in the movie when he was trying to save Leo at the end. Little Leo actually noticed that something was wrong with Cykey when he showed up and teleported everyone and they were all in that void, the Cykey on the left is what he saw! With clothes, obviously, but that's what he saw! A common idea is that F!Mikey's magic hurt him to use, which is canon to a degree. My idea was that it wasn't exactly aging him, but just. Slowly killing him. Hence the gaunt cheeks and slowly spreading cracks. It's a little hard to see, but Cykey's eyes have chains swimming in them! I think I mentioned that in the fic somewhere, but I. Can't remember honestly, it's been a while since I went back and read it, hah.
The reason there are chains swimming in his eyes was to show that he was hiding something, but they were also signs of his magic taking a toll on him alongside his pupils becoming stars. The White Spider Chrysanthemum on his shell was supposed to be a red herring, supposedly foreshadowing his death near the end of the fic. In reality, he was just going to do a cliche fake out death. He would've been fine. Well- He would've been alive, not fine. The reason it's on his shell is because he got it in remembrance of everyone that had died in the war. Took me AGES to draw that damn thing holy FREAK man, I initially tried to freestyle it but then I realized Very Quickly that wasn't going to work, so I ended up having to trace an actual picture of one. Took me SOOOOOO long to do that hhhhhhh I hated every second but worth it lol
OH I ALMOST FORGOT the hole in Cykey's stomach is from...! I don't know! I know that his organs are failing as a result of it though. Slowly. Hence the "buy him some time" thing.
On a side note, I don't... actually remember what specifically caused all the tiny little scars on Cyonardo's arm, but I KNOW that it was during his time being the Krang's, uh, "pet." Most of those scars are. I knew at one point, but I never wrote it down so it's... lost. Whoops. I think it had something to do with the Krang experimenting on him? I wish I could remember hhhhhhh
ANYWAYS
Onto some misc art!
Here's Cydon holding itty bitty baby CJ for the first time :] CJ is Fresh here. I'd like to say he has hair bc he was one of those babies born w a head of hair but the reality is I just. I don't know what babies look like HA
There's also a whole slew of art I made for the peepaw polls but I'm not. I'm not adding All That so I'm just gonna put my personal favorite of them which is me (outdated sona lol) hitting CJ over the head w a frying pan HAHAHAHA
WHICH REMINDS ME I ALMOST FORGOT I ACTUALLY DREW WHAT CJ LOOKS LIKE HANG ON
There he is!! There's the boy!!! He doesn't look much different from his canon counterpart bc you can't mess with perfection, the main difference is the markings on the mask and his arm being made of metal! Oh and also his eyes are bright neon green lol
I also made a sketchy comic of Cydon and CJ's first steps (though Cydon is still struggling) that I am STILL really proud of thank you (ignore. the cussing. looking back i had these guys swear a bit. too much. yikes)
IGNORE HOW HE'S HOLDING BABY CJ OKAY HANDS ARE HARD I DID MY BEST
I'm still super proud of this one I just. They learned to walk together okay and maybe CJ doesn't remember it but Cydon does and I just. I get emotional just thinking about it because Cydon was SO frustrated with himself at first, because he used to be able to do this with ease, why is it so hard to take even one step? And then CJ started to walk because of HIM, and how could he possibly hate CJ?? All these thoughts he had about himself could be applied to CJ, and once he realized that he just. He didn't let those thoughts persist after that. And he stuck with it, and he and CJ learned to walk together, and Cydon couldn't have been more proud of both himself and CJ. I have SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THEM OKAY. I'VE MOVED ON FROM TMNT BUT I STILL LOVE THEM SO MUCH MAN
Cough
Anyways
I also have a comic of Cyonardo and Little Leo having a little talk :]
IT'S ABOUT LEARNING TO FORGIVE YOURSELF OKAY. DON'T TALK TO ME UGHHHHHH
Can you tell I still love this au of mine? I hope so because I DO I know it seems like I left it behind for a few years but UGH. ALL THE EMOTIONS I HAVE FOR IT. One of the HUGE defining factors of this au for me was that it was always about the fact the future turtles and the past turtles were always the same people. They changed over time, yes, but that's still THEM. Still them in the future, still them in the past. So many people say they'd hate their past self if they ever met them, but whenever I think of past me and all their mistakes I just see a little kid who had no idea what they were doing. It's hard to remember sometimes that the you making all those mistakes that haunt you forever was a you who didn't know any better, because there's no guide for life. There's no guide for every decision you make, no handy walkthrough video going into depth on all the consequences every action will have. Nothing.
Everyone in the fandom (at the time anyways, idk if this is still a thing) had all their F!Leo's hold some form of resentment for their Little Leo's, and I just. I couldn't see the F!Leo we saw in the movie holding that level of hatred for someone so... small. So young. I feel like, even if he did hate his past self, actually being faced with him would've thrown all that out the window. Because, oh god, was he really that small back then? He comes face to face with this... this kid. This young teen, who hadn't yet realized he could die. That he people around him could die, because of a mistake he made. This kid had no idea. And he was going to do his damndest to make sure he never would. Because... that's him. That's him. I've always wanted to just hug little me and tell them it'll all be okay in the end. It gets better. It got better goddammit, and if I had the opportunity to make sure little me never went through all that pain then you better fucking believe I was gonna take it. I projected all that longing and those feelings I had onto Cyonardo, and I regret every day I never got to actually portray that in the fic.
WHICH IS WHY I'M REWRITING IT. It'll initially be in the apocalyptic future, but eventually, eventually, it'll take place in the past. The new future. I don't care how long it takes, it will get there. I will write it on my deathbed if I have to.
Now, onto the asks I mentioned at the beginning! >:D (btw all this art above and the following asks can be found on @just-this-once-ao3 on tumblr!! as well as some more world-building and rambles about JTOEL lol)
This one was in response to an ask sent by @littlemissartemisia giving the JTOEL gang flowers! They never got to truly make their appearance but Cyael, April (Whose name would've probably been something like Cypril. unimaginative I know, but I was also playing around with Cyprus), Mayhem, SHELLDON and Metalhead are all there! It was nice to revist them after so long :]
This one was in response to an anon sending in a slice of cake, and chocolate is poisonous to Mayhem HAHA Not fatal tho, it'll just make him a bit sick.
@riseleon sent over some strawberries in an ask! Cykey was the recipient. He didn't notice his glamour faltered for a moment...
And now... the moment I've been waiting for... the art I DIDN'T post anywhere!!!! >:D
This one is an unfinished WIP, but it's depicting, as I'm sure you can all tell, Cydon's sacrifice! I wanted to finish this one so bad, but I very quickly realized I. Could not depict it accurately. I didn't have the skills :( Oh well. Onto the (also unfinished) next one!
This one takes place, as Cykey said, nine months after Cyonardo is initially captured and infected. Cykey hates it, but he's ready to give up on Cyonardo. Cydon, however, is not. What was supposed to happen next was Cydon would blow up at Cykey, screaming at him to shut up because Leo isn't gone. He can still feel him. Or something. That's about the point I got stumped on. This was mostly an exploration of what these two were like in the period after Cyonardo was captured, and how they got to the point they did when they finally brought Leo home. The comic, evidently, didn't end up getting finished --;
But you know what I DID end up finishing? >:D
THIS BAD BOY!!!!!! OHHHHHHH I'M STILL SO PROUD OF THIS ONE HAHA Even though it's a screenshot redraw STILL. VERY PROUD OF IT!!!!! This was the first time I'd actually sat down and explored what Cyael would look like!! It's for the iconic scene of these two clashing, but with the roles reversed!!! The lighting doesn't really make sense but IDC IT LOOKS COOL!!! This is actually a moment in the fic I was planning to get to!! It's. Also the last point I actually had planned. Beyond this scene I had no idea where to go. Hm.
But, well, explanation anyways. Cyael was supposed to show up after Cypril, Mayhem and Metalhead, who would've shown up to help everyone else trying to get to the tower. (What would've happened, exactly, I have no idea, but it would've been a REALLY COOL BADASS ENTRANCE OKAY TRUST) I don't. Know when exactly Cyael would've shown up but!!! It would've been really emotional and confusing for everyone involved!!!!!! Especially Cyael!!!!!!!! Because wtf happened while he was gone man! Cyael's the youngest now! That's not right!!! And then yadayada they confront Krang Prime and the infected Leo's show up! Cyo's still in there, but it's difficult for him to fight off this universe's Krang, ESPECIALLY since the infection came straight from Krang Prime, who reactived the old infection as well as adding his own. Very not fun time for Cyo RIP.
And... that's about as far as I got...
...
SIKE I HAD MORE
You guys remember how I said Kirby was a major part of how JTOEL turned out? Yeah? Well, you're probably wondering he was the entire fic, right? Well... I can't tell you that because it's sPOILERS FOR THE REWRITE WHOOPS BUT!!!! At the end of JTOEL, what was supposed to happen, when everyone is celebrating their victory and such, SHELLDON is supposed to active a program he did NOT know he had called "Protocol: Little Hope" and give CJ an envelope FULL of information on how to find and retrieve Kirby and Venus, both the past and the future versions. AND SURPRISE!!! VENUS IS ALSO CANON TO THIS AU!!!!!!! She was long before the writers confirmed their existence! The next fic was supposed to be an adventure of rescuing them, with a huge focus on the mystery of Kirby himself and what his deal was, until eventually they found out about the time loops.
What my future turtles thought his deal was, for reference, was that he was prophetic. He kinda was, on account of how many loops he'd gone through. But, again, spoilers ;)
Next up is posting a compilation of all the deleted scenes and things that never made it into the main fic (including the family file I made, which holds the extended Hamato family tree) that are obsolete now, which will be it's own seperate fic in the series. Speaking of which, to those of you who might be wondering about how I'll go about announcing when the rewrite is up (which will be a while), I'm going to update THIS fic with a link to the new fic and it's series. I thought about just keeping them all in the same series, but I decided against it bc I felt that'd be too cluttered and or confusing to new readers. But both series will have a link to the other for people to find easily!
If you guys have any further questions or comments, please feel free to leave them down below and I'll get to them as soon as possible! Sorry this took so long to get out btw, I kept meaning to but life got in the way. So, again, sorry about that! But hopefully it was worth the wait <3
Thank you all so much for reading this fic and giving it your love over the years, I hope to see you all in the rewrite! And if I don't, thank you anyways :] Bye bye for now!