Tentative Devotee AU

Tentative Devotee AU

Leonardo is a Foot recruit in training. He's been raised by Lieutenant and Brute since he was around 9 years old. Time before then was kind of fuzzy. — In the past two months, he's been going on his first proper missions, quickly becoming aware of a persistent threat against the Foot Clan. 3 mutant turtles and a human who repeatedly tried to foil the plans.

What he wasn't aware of was that they were 4 siblings who never gave up on finding their missing brother.

Story Posts:

Enemies || [ 1 ] [ tbc... ]

[ TBA ]

Doodles: [ TBA ]

_Further info below the cut_

I do feel like a Content Warning is due:

This AU will explore: Mourning of a family / Mourning of a child (who isn't actually dead, but believed to be). Violence is canon-typical up to the standards of the movie— That is also a reference point for the tone of this AU. There will be cult themes and dips into the topic of cult trauma.

I do not know how much I will post about this small AU. This started out as just a Foot Clan Leonardo idea that I was gonna write for short fanfic, because I honestly just wanted to see what other people would do with the idea I put down. But I've got a couple other ideas I wanted to try out and decided I wanted to draw a couple of them out.

The AU will be told in segments, comics of various points of the story. They will be organized chronologically under this post because the segments will likely not be posted in that order.

Bonus! Miscellaneous info that doesn't play big into this AU but matters enough to me:

Leonardo's transmasc (uses he/him + maybe some neos) because that's true for all my AUs

A version of Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo comics exists and it's Leo's second favorite comic series in this AU.

'Tentative Devotee' is the name of the fanfic I was originally going to write. It was just gonna be a 2-shot fic and a way to navigate some feelings as someone who was born and raised in, and eventually left, a cult.

The initial tone/direction of this AU was much different, Leo ending up in the Foot Clan under different circumstance (i.e. direct kidnapping from Lieutenant and Brute). I found this didn't quite work for me.

This AU occurred on accident because I wanted a scene where Leo breaks a guitar and it's revealed to have organs inside. Then it just spiraled from there.