Chapter Text
He was just at his club, beating Jase at a game of online chess and discussing the best Miku figurine.
How he would buy it, what jobs he could do. Could he work at a pizza place? Would that allow him to take leftovers home? What position would he do? Probably a dishwasher. It was quiet and he could listen to music. Him and his brothers didn’t hide anymore, but the fanfare was still exhausting.
What else could he distract himself with? Her pink hair on that one Sakur-
White, hot, shouting. Shouting that demanded attention. Ripples, how his muscles tensed, unable to move. He couldn’t get a finger underneath him.
Right. Ow.
Something was in his wrist, poking, prodding. It was like the teeth of a wolf, or thorns of a rose. Whichever was more poetic. Mikey was better at that stuff.
Ripping, tugging. Flesh, green skin.
Pulling. Draining.
And wasn’t he exhausted? His eyes half lidded, almost shutting. The adrenaline had long worn off by now.
Mikey wasn’t kidding when he said this hurt, and sure Raph was trying to mask the pain through grunts and a tough guy persona but-
His throat gave out mid cry, shredding, tears. His cries sounded more like strangled huffs. He bit his lip, keeping it together. Heroes in space taught him one thing and one thing only, never show pain to an enemy.
And wasn’t that hard?
He couldn’t stop sobbing, sobbing through shaky shoulders and trembling breaths. Through achy joints, protesting being held like this.
With another jolt of pain he cried out. his face contorted as he lurched forward, challenging the machine. It pushed back, pushed carapace into metal, straining the already formed cracks on his shell.
It tightened the more that he fought, similar to- what was it? Wonder Woman’s whip? Ha. Say that three times fast. God his brain was slow right now. Was this what it was like to be Raph?
Another shock, his voice slurred now, not that it mattered. He was rambling anyway, rambling about astronauts and pink haired women.
He just couldn’t focus. It was breaking the world apart, with each blurred shape or throat ripping scream. Each command to shut up, each shock, each plea, each threat.
White, searing.
Please stop.
Please.
Please
“This will take longer than expected, now that there is only one of them.” a woman’s voice spat the words like poison. What did she look like? Who? No. He knew that voice.
She was.
She had kidnapped him before.
But this time hurt worse. This time he had been cut by blades, double blades on the same arm. Like the sickening two claws of a raptor, but on one arm- ugh where was this analogy going?
The man was shiny. He called himself.. what was it?
He hadn’t known he was talking till he heard the small mutters tumbling from his lips like prayers.
Shredder. His own lips chanted. Telling his brain what he need not forget.
Did he have a concussion?
His vision was blurry, doubly so, they’d taken his glasses an hour ago. The tears weren’t helping either.
His skin rippled with painful jolting tingles, steam flowing from his pores. This was not a good look, wow, he couldn’t even move his tongue. Instead it sort of hung with his jaw, slack, bloody.
Make it stop.
“My dad- my.. m” his throat was raw and croaky. Each movement painful. His body fought him now, and he fought right back. Move, anything, please. Please please he needed to fight, he needed to-
“The rat has no idea where this building is. Neither did you. Did you think we just disappeared? Is that why you came out of that hole?”
He couldn’t respond, only moving his eyes to look at the blurry figure of that woman. She was the same one who-
His throat rubbed raw with a final cry, the device digging further into his wrist before it stopped pumping. Blood, it was mixing with something, he knew that much. Through other means he knew his and his brother's flesh pierced red. But for some reason, she got green stuff. What was that? Was it another factor in their blood? Why was he so dizzy?
This giant behemoth of a machine was less sleek than last time, it was built with much shoddier equipment and metal. Other engineers took the day off? He tried laughing, but it sounded desperate.
Additionally, this machine only had one slot to accommodate one turtle. They had planned this.
So why had they chosen Donnie?
-15 hours prior-
Donnie stretched and pulled on his clothing, his neck sore from sleeping on it wrong. Just his luck.
He smiled as he grabbed for his phone, his screensaver being a new picture Mikey took 3 weeks prior at the school prom dance. It was Mikey holding the phone to his face and showing the three of them in the background. Donnie being held back by Raph, reaching for the phone, while Leo posed.
He remembered being so frantic. Luckily Mikey had shut the phone off by accident before turning it on again, missing his discord chats teasing how Leo kept fretting over their clothes.
He scoffed before rolling his eyes and checking his notifications over cereal. Mikey had made one of his concoctions that Donnie decided he didn’t like pretty early on, so a bowl of lucky charms had to do.
Some messages about a dnd club he joined popped up immediately (who’s dungeon masters barely did the quest pacing right. Lame!)
Others were about the tech club he joined. How they were dabbling with some other club named the purple dragons. It made no sense! Why not hint at what the club IS in the name? He’d probably have to check it out.. Later.
Next, Donnie scrolled through his various servers about anime fandoms he joined.
Browsing through a mob psycho theory that he was jumping to disprove, was he finally joined by Mikey. Wielding something disgusting.
It was his only miss. Some sort of napoleon ice cream salted potato combo?
“That is a poor excuse for flavor town, Mike.” Raph commented while walking by, checking the fridge before helplessly looking at the table. He grabbed a bowl and spoon, seemingly settling with what Donnie chose as well.
“Leo likes it.” Mikey shrugged
“It’s true, like milkshakes and fries, but slightly more questionable.” Leo joined them, going through his morning arm stretches like a geyser.
“Fo Shizzle” Mikey nodded, throwing up a signature smile.
Raph snirked. “What website did’ya find that one?” He poured himself a generous bowl like always. Raph was always overzealous like that, and if you mentioned it he’d pour another out of spite; even if he had a hard time finishing the first. “That’s not mondo right?”
“Don’t accuse me of that bro.”
“I didn’t think you woke up this early” Leo took the mix from Mikey, sitting down.
“i just go with the flow brah.” But it was clear he had stayed up on the switch, from how he was talking and how it was plugged in.
“I hope you didn’t erase my breath of the wild files.” Donnie noted without looking up from his phone. “Like last time.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it bro.” And he disappeared back out of view, reonto the couch.
Wing nut waved at them as she passed by, yawning, heading in the direction of her own section. “I’m gonna catch some z’s. You boys have fun at school yeah? Gooday!” She said, in contrary to the more popular ‘goodnight’
It was a nice bit. Donnie liked the wordplay for no other reason than how it existed. It wasn’t even clever, but he liked it nonetheless.
Being the first to sit down, Donnie was the first to leave. Maybe on the first day they went as one, but now? They sorta just filed in. Donnie liked looking through the library before the bells rang, picking out books at random for the thrill of something new and unbiased.
Today, he got four.
And bit his cheek, changing the weight he put on each leg too frequently.
Something had been following him on his way here. And he couldn’t stop looking at the library camera.
Like a foreign body was in the system.
That couldn’t be right.
So he stayed close to his friends the entire day, speaking louder than usual like something would come out of the shadows to bite him.
Something shiny and metallic. Slinking in the shadows like an unwanted thing, something quick and quiet.
He shook his head, rubbing the top of a unnatural indented rim of his shell, forcing that meek smile to stay on his face as someone ranted to him through brainfog.
He tapped the red hard cover of his book in a steady rythm, using his other hand to pull at his hoodie strings.
Something was in the window by their nerdy lunch table.
The bushes shook in their wake.
“-ie? Donnie? Hey?” Jeremy sat across from him, raising a brow. “You good?”
“Me? Oh yeah I’m fine. I just..” he glanced more at the still outside. “I thought I saw something, that's all.” He poked at his lunch, suddenly not hungry. “Continue?”
-
It wasn’t long till the day ended, the itches worsened, the flashing of shiny skin, two fingered claws. Pulling, crushing.
“You’re not as cool as I thought you were.”
He faltered, getting fools mated by Jase.
“I’m going home early.” Donnie stood, barely minding his computer. “See you guys.”
And a few awkward goodbyes later, he was off.
Until he bumped into something human and shiny and muscular, so achingly familiar in a darkened alleyway.
“Superfly..?” He had muttered so clearly, frozen.
“Worse.” The stranger was all metal, no face. “You, turtle.” Metal grinded against metal, blades extracted from the top of his wrist. “You can call me the shredder.”
In a second, his phone was impaled and laying on the floor.
In the next, his neck was taken by two hands.
In the last, he was gone; Broken glass in his wake.