Donatello (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
boselfdestruct) wrote2013-02-07 12:38 am
boselfdestruct) wrote2013-02-07 12:38 am
Entry tags:
application | tushanshu
Player Information:
Name: Ricky
Age: 19
Contact: AIM - therixkeycopy
Game Cast: N/A
Character Information:
Name: Donatello
Canon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012/Nickelodeon)
Canon Point: Post-"The Alien Agenda"
Age: 15
Reference:
Donatello
Series
Setting:
On the surface, the world - the New York - the turtles know is virtually identical to the one we do. Skyscrapers, dirty streets, a wide variety of people both good and bad and everywhere in between. They have pizza and ramen and smartphones. If a stick hits a metal object hard enough, it breaks. If someone catches video of something interesting; it's going right up on the internet. Nobody ever looks up. If it weren’t for the interference of the Kraang, it probably never would have been any different at all.
The Kraang are a race of alien squid-brains who seem to operate on some sort of limited hive-mind. On their own they’re only about as threatening as a mobile brain with eyes and teeth can be, which, creepy, but not particularly dangerous. This is why they utilize a type of neural-controlled robot as both transportation and weapon, making them significantly more problematic to deal with. When they’re blending in, the robot can apparently be equipped with a “skin” of a generic, shady government official type guy. They all look the same. They all talk weird. They’re not very good at blending in. (But then, nobody’s really noticed they’re aliens from another dimension yet if they haven’t torn their faces off, so maybe they’re very good at blending in.)
They travel to and from Earth through a dimensional portal (or they did, until Leatherhead happened, but that’s for later), and virtually nothing is as of yet known about where they come from or what their ultimate goal is…except that it’s probably sinister.
The only thing we really know about their plan is that it includes the mutagen – a green and blue, so-bright-it’s-probably-radioactive, semi-solid goo – and that they’re responsible for bringing it to Earth. Except whatever they were originally going to do with it, they hadn’t counted on how, once they exposed the mutagen to the physical laws of another dimension, it wouldn’t actually do what the box says it’s supposed to do. So now it just mutates everything it touches.
Hamato Yoshi was among the first known affected in the series. During an unfortunate confrontation with the Kraang, he managed to get himself and the four baby turtles he’d only recently purchased doused in the mutagen. The way the mutagen works is it appears to meld the primary life form with whatever living thing they had touched last, turning them into what this world calls mutants. Yoshi had touched a rat, so he became a rat-man. The baby turtles had last touched humans, and so turtle-boys they became. Yoshi took the boys and disappeared into the sewers of New York, settling in one of the more abandoned sectors beneath Chinatown where he would take on the name Splinter. For the next fifteen years he raised his sons, passing on his knowledge of ninjutsu and keeping them safe beneath the city.
It seemed to be a good life, at least. They boys grew up active and healthy, developing into fairly well-adjusted teenagers, considering the circumstances. They're a close-knit family, both out of necessity and out of love.
Eventually boys do grow up, however, and on the turtles’ fifteenth “mutation”day Splinter finally allows them to go up to the surface.
Now, in an effort to understand what had gone wrong with the mutagen and fix it, the Kraang had started kidnapping scientists from all around New York. Naturally, this is the night the turtles run across April O’Neil, a sixteen-year-old girl who swiftly becomes their best friend and eventual kunoichi-in-training due to her empathy, or natural sensitivity to the world around her, and her father, Dr. Kirby O’Neil, being abducted by the Kraang. They try to rescue them, they fail, they try again, and they at least half-succeed with April. Dr. O’Neil remains a captive of the Kraang, and his rescue is the primary goal of the series up to this point. The turtles have failed twice so far. As it stands, the harder the turtles try and find a way to rescue Dr. O’Neil, the more they become embroiled within the Kraang’s plans, the more they become dedicated to stopping them, and the more the Kraang want them all dead.
This wouldn’t be half so difficult if it weren’t for all the new mutants running around. Fighting the turtles – or even being in the same vicinity as one of their fights – tends to be a really bad idea, as you run about a solid fifty-fifty chance of turning into a giant mutant monster. So far the running tally includes:
The Kraang have also taken to experimenting while trying to learn whatever it is they’re trying to learn about the new properties of the mutagen. There are only two known subjects so far, and both started off as animal:
So…so far the turtles seem to be doing the Kraang’s job better than the Kraang.
But these are turtles’ enemies beneath the surface. The majority of the world isn't even aware mutants exist, much less that alien robots are running around throwing goo at people. As odd and strange as the world can get sometimes for the turtles, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the world is perfectly normal and perfectly oblivious. Though it does help explain why Leo’s so excited when the Foot finally reach New York. As he says, it’s just really nice to finally be fighting people. To Leo’s credit, he didn’t know who the Shredder was at the time he said this, or that the Foot were a ninja clan under Shredder’s control.
The Shredder himself was known as Oroku Saki at one point, the same way Splinter was once known as Hamato Yoshi. The both of them had been trained in ninjutsu together, and both of them had fallen in love with the same woman, Tang Shen. When she married Yoshi over Saki, the rivalry the two of them had shared grew bitter and twisted, not helped when Yoshi worsened the problem by knowingly escalating the negative feelings. Eventually Oroku Saki attacked and killed Tang Shen and did something unknown with Miwa, Yoshi’s baby daughter. For years the Shredder assumed Hamato Yoshi was dead, but when one of the turtles accidentally left a throwing star behind, the Shredder saw the news coverage depicting it and recognized it as bearing the same marks as his old rival’s. He assumed Splinter was raising and training his own ninja army, and promptly relocated everyone to New York to try and hunt down and kill Splinter and his sons.
The one time he confronts the turtles personally, he nearly kills them. It’s only because he was briefly interrupted by the recently mutated Dogpound and Xever that the turtles escaped at all. The Kraang may be the backbone conflict to the series so far, but the Shredder is the most dangerous and terrifying of their enemies.
He eventually picks up Baxter Stockman, a run-of-the-mill disgruntled kid turned disgruntled adult out for revenge against the people who picked on him, and who happens to be a fair hand at electronics and machinery. This is pretty much the only reason the Shredder keeps him alive when Stockman ends up stumbling into the middle of his and the turtles' feud, and he's currently responsible for getting Xever mobile again.
Along with the Shredder comes Karai, Shredder’s daughter. She’s one of the true wildcards in the series at present, mostly out to entertain herself, and she doesn't even make an attempt to be anyone she's not. Leo tells her that his brother, Raph, says it’s not a good idea to trust her, and she says he’s probably right. Karai is at least Leo's equal with a sword, possibly better, and she knows it. She’s not as dangerous as her father as a fighter, being only sixteen herself, but unlike the Shredder she isn’t blinded by her obsession with eradicating the turtles and Splinter. She’s the one who notices the Kraang and finds a way to bring them to her father’s attention, and she’s the only one who shows any concern about finding out why Bradford and Xever were mutated.
Until that point, the Shredder had been oblivious and apathetic to the presence of anything out of the ordinary happening in the city beyond the presence of ninjas. He knows the turtles are mutants, but he showed only mild curiosity about it. It didn’t matter as much as killing them. So far he’s unaware that Yoshi is now a rat.
So for what it’s worth, the Shredder and his Foot clan are the most normal of the turtles’ enemies, just regular humans with a lot of training.
The turtles themselves are still more vigilantes than anything, still more reactive than active. Every plot they end up stumbling into and every enemy made has more to do with accident and coincidence than purpose, and every action taken against an enemy is only a response to something the enemy did first. This is only just starting to change, with Splinter declaring war on the Foot - or the Foot declaring war on the turtles and Splinter just acknowledging it, depending on how you look at it - the turtles are starting to learn how to close ranks and how to actively seek out weak points and plots to cripple before they have to defend against them. Things are getting tense, and while random criminals are still on their radar, their attention is more and more turning toward the Shredder, even as they try and deal with the Kraang, the captured Dr. O'Neil, and their own knowledge that they have to get so much better if they want to survive this.
As for any non-hostile humans the turtles might know, it’s probably worth mentioning that the turtles know far more people who want them all dead than they do anyone who doesn’t, and the majority of humanity runs screaming from them at first sight. It’s partly why they hide from even the people they rescue, which is why the ones who don’t panic at the sight of them are special. Mr. Murakami, a blind chef who runs a noodle place in the back streets of Chinatown and figures out the turtles are turtles due to smell, is one, and the turtles met him when saving him and his restaurant from the Purple Dragons. The Purple Dragons are a small gang in Chinatown who are increasingly involved with the strangeness of the turtles’ world, mostly because everyone and their uncle goes to them for help finding the turtles. It actually really kind of sucks to be one of those three guys. As it is. Mr. Murakami’s honestly their only touchstone with the world outside of their own life full of aliens and ninja clans.
So, yes, on the surface, the world is completely normal. It’s just a very, very thin surface.
Personality:
The first thing anyone might notice about Donatello is that he is always thinking. Even when doing one thing, his brain is likely following three or more different tracks of thought. He’s easily distracted by any subject he perceives as interesting, and even on the threshold of fight – or halfway through it – he can never quite stop himself from examining, say, the differences between fresh and salt water turtles, the load-bearing capabilities of telephone lines, or the amount of speed and agility necessary to trap up Snakeweed with his own vines. Sometimes this serves him well. Sometimes he’s fighting telepathic mad scientists and it really, really doesn’t. Sometimes he feels the need to share his observations with the class at inopportune moments and then Raphael smacks him upside the head and he deserves it.
There’s a reason Donatello thinks an acceptable form of trash talk involves informing someone else when they are wrong. He isn’t a know-it-all, not exactly. He does love to share unsolicited information, but it isn’t out of a desire to boast or to make people look at him. He knows he’s smart, sure, smarter than his brothers and maybe even smarter than his father, but his constant rattling off of facts or corrections isn’t him trying to show off. It’s that he really, honestly thinks this information is interesting and he doesn’t understand why no one else cares. Or he does, but he forgets in his excitement. One of the most important things to know about Donatello is that he is a nerd. He is a giant nerd, and not only is he highly intelligent, but he wants to learn. He wants to understand. If a pencil falls, he isn’t content just going, “oh, okay, yeah, that pencil is falling,” he has to know why. What made the pencil fall? What forces are acting on it to keep it falling? Can he estimate a rate of descent? What would make the pencil fall faster or slower?
Understanding the world around him is one of Donatello’s driving forces in life. He’s dropped hints several times throughout the show that he’s looked into the existence of him and his family – their mutation, their biology, their lives. There are posters in his lab of both turtle and human anatomy. He knows plenty about the dangers of mutations and their often unstable existence, and has almost certainly peeked into genetics. There isn’t a lot about the world – on a purely scientific level, at least – that doesn’t make sense to Donatello. If there is, then he immediately buckles down to correct that state of affairs, even if he has to create an entirely new field of biology to do so. He doesn’t get why no one else seems to care the way he does.
This is probably the cause of the majority of the disconnect between Donatello and his siblings. Leo usually has his own concerns, and his interests rarely tend to coincide with Don’s, Mikey is…Mikey, and Raph has shown often and violently how little interest he has in Don’s nerdspeak. Oh, that isn’t to say he’s ostracized or anything, far from it, but Don’s usually the one depicted alone, and even if he is in the same room as his family, he’s rarely engaged with what’s going on around him. He’s definitely one of the more awkward turtles, socially, particularly with anyone outside of their family, but with the unique position of being awkward within the family as well. So while his place in life is fairly secure, as brother, son, and member of a team, it’s hard for him to connect one-on-one with his brothers. It’s doubtful this even concerns Don overly much at most times – after all, he has a thousand and one projects and very little time as it is to work on them – but there’s still virtually no one around him able to communicate on his level. Sometimes this gets tiring, for both him and his brothers, and, like siblings do, this is often resolved with either a quick beating or some not-so-gentle ribbing.
Donatello is still one of the milder turtles, if only because he does keep to himself so much. He doesn’t feel the need to get involved in the competitions Raph and Leo are always holding between themselves, and he hasn’t dedicated his life to turning the obnoxious into an art form, like Mikey. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s mild-mannered. Sure, he’s perfectly willing to talk things out, if “talking things out” means “throw down of the vocal variety”. He rarely starts fights, but he is more than willing to keep them going if one of his brothers throws down the proverbial gauntlet. There’s a reason he ties with Raph as one of the sassiest turtles in the sewer. When he feels pushed, he’s more than willing to push back. Hard. Still, he’ll usually just stay out of the way, or at least keep his disgruntlement to himself, depending on the situation. When he's told to shut up in the show, for example, this rarely bothers him to the point of retaliating. He can get snippy if mocked or teased, but his temper is really only peaked when someone – usually Raph – mocks his intelligence or doesn’t listen when he actually has something important to say. He’s also far less patient with others’ intellectual goof-ups, particularly if they get in his way or put him or the others in danger. Donatello’s unafraid to call someone a moron if he feels they deserve it.
Actually, he isn’t afraid to take a chunk out of anyone if he thinks they deserve it, verbally or physically. On patrols, if someone is getting mixed up in something they really shouldn’t be getting mixed up in, Donatello is more than happy to send them running home in tears. He’s still the least willing of his brothers to rush into a fight, but this seems to have less to do with the sanctity of life and more to do with a healthy self-preservation instinct. Out of the four, Donatello is the weakest combatant and his fighting style the most ill-suited to their usual enemies (who tend to be made of metal or otherwise unaffected by a staff or bare fists). And he’s smart enough to know this.
Unlike certain other, previous incarnations, it probably wouldn’t be quite right to call him a pacifist, if only because his aversion to fighting has less to do with a distaste for violence and more to do with a desire to keep his and his brothers’ bodies un-mauled. He isn’t any more altruistic than his brothers, either, more content to hang back and let the pieces fall where they may than rush in and help without knowing the situation or who he’s helping. He’s very cautious, and rarely wants to do anything without having all the facts. When Mikey wanted to jump in to help Leatherhead when their fellow mutant was being tortured by the Kraang, Donatello was the one telling him to wait and see what he was getting into, then needed to be convinced to help him after the fight, and later insisted on chaining the unconscious-from-being-tortured Leatherhead up. Some people would call this callous; Don would say it's only being practical. He does have empathy for others, and is the only one along with Mikey to actually feel bad for Baxter Stockman the first time they encounter him, but it takes very low priority for him.
This isn't to say that if he's all by himself and he sees some helpless civilian getting worked over in a dark alley or something that he isn't going to help, because he will most definitely help. He can't not, but...helpless humans aren't giant mutant alligators, and that's probably a good point to mention the slight double standard the turtles have. "What measure is a non-human?" indeed, and they seem to have less problem harming other mutants than they do humans, even outright killing Snakeweed twice, heart stopped and everything. He would still be dead if it weren't for his regenerative capabilities. Don is no exception to this mindset.
He isn’t particularly torn up about violence, and sometimes even chooses it before thinking of more peaceful solutions, though usually only when their target has already made themselves an enemy or otherwise seems to be a threat in his eyes. Sometimes Don is wrong and misjudges the intentions of an opponent, seeing an enemy where there isn't one, but he’s not often going to take chances. He'd sooner fight than risk giving ground to an enemy.
Part of this can be blamed on the fact that Donatello is a bit high strung. There’s a direct correlation between the amount of danger the turtles are in and Donatello’s willingness to bite the heads off of everyone around him. It isn’t that he can’t handle stress – he can handle it perfectly fine – it’s just that it’s the way he handles stress. Heckling him to move faster is a quick way to a tongue-lashing. Underneath it he’s at least rational, if not quite calm, able to think clearly and efficiently even when things are rapidly going downhill. When Mikey was severely injured, Leo was gone, and Raph had frozen up mid-fight, it Don who found a way to delay the enemy and get his brothers out of there. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t often think too much. The one time he was in charge of an operation with only himself and Mikey and no immediate danger, and therefore no one and nothing to tell him to get on with things, he spent hours just pacing on a rooftop coming up with alternative plans. Still, he can at least make a half-decent effort when covering for an absent Leo in the strategy department, as long as someone's there to kick his ass into gear, though he would never handle a long-term leadership position well.
Mostly, Donatello just really wants things to go right. He will make plans and plans and more plans in an effort to make certain every possible contingency is accounted for, and he’s most comfortable when he’s been given the time to do so. This is partly why he falls back in the position of support and follower so well. He knows he’s fussy. He knows he’s high strung. And while he doesn’t always see why being so obsessively prepared is a bad thing, he’s still more confident when someone else has the reigns, and offers up his plans and ideas from more of an advisor role most naturally.
In Tu Shanshu: Bare bones, Donatello is not going to be happy. He’ll grudgingly accept that he’s in a different dimension, if only because that’s apparently how the Kraang travel and the evidence that he’s certainly not home is going to be too big to ignore. People claiming that he’s in the in-between of life, death, and dreaming, though?
Uh.
No.
A separate dimension is going to be about as far as he’s willing to bend. He won’t doubt that at least some of these people believe they’re in-between, but any focus he gives to that is going to mostly be toward understanding the world and the people. “What does that mean?” “Why do you believe that?”. He will never settle down and accept that there’s no getting home, but he will spend a lot of time trying to understand. Beyond his simple curiosity, this is how he’s going to cope with his anxiety and homesickness, because he is going to be homesick. He’s going to miss his family, he’s going to miss New York, and he’s going to even miss the sewers. He’s never been very far from home. He’s never been separated from his father. He’s never been thrown into a world he doesn’t understand, and that more than anything is going to rattle him pretty severely. He’ll be tense and high strung for a long while, and probably difficult to communicate with for some people, particularly if they push him on the issue, but mostly he’s going to get quiet and withdraw while he tries to figure things out.
Appearance:
Abilities:
Ninjutsu and all that entails, though here’s outlining all the more prominent areas:
Machines, electronics, and the sheer breadth of his intelligence are where Donatello’s skills truly shine. Forget ninjutsu, if Donatello had been left to his own devices he probably never would have even moved three feet from his work station. In canon there are a few examples of this, just to give some idea of what I mean:
There’s more, without a doubt, but those are the highlights. Donatello thinks too much and sometimes has trouble getting his head out of his inventions to look around and realize that sometimes they are not needed, but he loves to learn and has been in the unique position of having to actually apply what he learns to practical purpose - keeping up the Lair, keeping his brothers equipped, keeping things running smoothly. Together this has given him a practical set of skills and turned him into a walking encyclopedia about any subject he feels interested in or relates to his understanding of the world.
He’s also a turtle, and this pretty much means he can do some things humans can’t, like he can hold his breath under water for a very long time and he's very good at swimming, and he can even pull his head into his shell. Theoretically he could do the same with the rest of his limbs, but they're not shaped right and he'd probably have to break his bones in multiple locations to get them to fit. So that's a no.
Inventory:
His bō staff that doubles as a naginata when the right pressure is applied. His purple mask, belt, elbow and knee pads, his T-Phone, which isn’t going to work at all (yay electrocution!), and that’s about it.
Suite:
Metal Sector, preferably, because he’s going to want to go where the technology is and metal = technology = chance to get his bearings/find his family to him.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Don estimated he'd been out of the ocean for nine hours, give or take. He wasn't as sure as he'd like to be, but he couldn't trust his internal clock, not when he'd spent most of the ride to the city disoriented and sick before getting it together long enough to ask some questions of his chatty welcoming committee.
Or chatty until he actually wanted some actual information. Then they were about as helpful as Mikey on a bad day.
But nine hours. He'd spent an embarrassing amount of time after arriving with his head buried in the first sink he'd found (and maybe a little more time with his head in his hands as he tried not to hyperventilate against a wall, but no one was around to know), and then about an hour hunting around the...apartment he'd been given, checking the corners and the creases in the walls for wires or surveillance equipment. He hadn't found anything except a disconcerting number of brand new gadgets of the distinctly high-end variety, if Don knew his electronics, and he did. Except for the sink, he hadn't touched anything, not entirely sure what to make of it.
But that was why he'd asked to come here, right? The "Metal Sector". Technology. Because if he was going to find a way home, if he was going to find his family, he was going to need something to work with. Which was why he was now seated in front of the console one of the kedan had pointed out to him, staring at the blank screen. He'd need to check it for bugs, later. But right now, Donatello just took a deep breath.
Get organized. Wasn't that what sensei always said? Start with what he knew.
The kedan were those people who had brought him here. Not human. Not like the Kraang. Definitely more friendly - or at least, they seemed that way. But not human. He hadn't seen a single human so far.
No turtles, either.
This wasn't home. Obviously. This couldn't be the in-between, either, but maybe that was some sort of...religious idea. People did that, right, when they didn't understand something? Random turtles dropping out of nowhere probably counted, and they obviously had some sort of system in place for when people like him arrived. A regular occurrence, possibly.
So what had happened? It had to be the Kraang. Leatherhead mentioned the power source fueled a dimensional portal, right?
He remembered coming home after fighting that- that Justin. He didn't remember falling asleep, and no portals either, but he might have-
But that didn't mean anything. Who knew what going through a dimensional portal did. Maybe some sort of amnesia was normal. Maybe it was broken, and that was why he'd ended up in the middle of the ocean. Maybe that was why his brothers weren't around.
Tu Vishan, a language he didn't know. He'd have to find out. It might be important. At least if he knew the island was named "Your Death" or something he wouldn't feel completely unprepared when they tried to lynch him.
"Keep it together, Donatello," he muttered against the vaguely hysterical giggles he could feel building in his throat.
So, to sum it up, he was alone in an alien world without the first clue how the heck he'd even got there.
Right. Great. No problem, then, and what he wouldn't give for Leo right now. Or even Mikey. Or Raph, even if getting him to stay still and think about a way to work through this sensibly would be virtually impossible. Raph would probably rather just run off at the first opportunity. But not Don. Not Don, because he was going to do this right.
Donatello cracked his knuckles, powering up the console. He could do this. Leo would be nearly impossible to track, but if Raph or Mikey were around then he'd need to see if he could find any hint toward their presence, first, and maybe a map...
Network:
[There's no actual sound at first, as an uncomfortable ninja tends to be a silent ninja, but then comes the light sound of fingers clacking against keys without enough force to push them down, a nervous movement if anything, and the clearing of a throat.]
[Donatello was still so not used to just...talking to people.]
So I was thinking, and I had a- Well, I thought of something.
[No duh. Donatello hesitates and the tapping sounds louder for a moment before he continues. He isn't just rambling full speed ahead like usual, a sign of how uncomfortable this topic has made him.]
I can't be the first person who's thought of this, so if someone has an answer...
Okay, I mean. We're on a turtle, right? Who knows how much water we cross in a day. How likely is it that we just happen to arrive where the kedan can reel us in? Depending on the size of the ocean, the speed of our host, the-
[No, okay. Stop. Not a time to get side-tracked. Deep breath, and move on.]
What I'm saying is, it's not very likely, is it? So what if we don't? What if we're just...floating out there. Does anyone actually remember being in the water? Or how long? Maybe- maybe whatever force that brought us here can keep us from drowning, unless-
[Unless he's wrong, and they are lucky enough to happen across Tu Vishan when they first arrived and are rescued before they can, and the people who aren't- No. No. Not going there. It's probably a good thing this is audio, or people would have to see a distressed Donatello throwing his hands around in the air as he talks.]
Nevermind. The point is, so what if the people we want to get back to aren't home at all? What if they're out there somewhere?
[What if finding a way home doesn't fix anything?]
Name: Ricky
Age: 19
Contact: AIM - therixkeycopy
Game Cast: N/A
Character Information:
Name: Donatello
Canon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012/Nickelodeon)
Canon Point: Post-"The Alien Agenda"
Age: 15
Reference:
Donatello
Series
Setting:
On the surface, the world - the New York - the turtles know is virtually identical to the one we do. Skyscrapers, dirty streets, a wide variety of people both good and bad and everywhere in between. They have pizza and ramen and smartphones. If a stick hits a metal object hard enough, it breaks. If someone catches video of something interesting; it's going right up on the internet. Nobody ever looks up. If it weren’t for the interference of the Kraang, it probably never would have been any different at all.
The Kraang are a race of alien squid-brains who seem to operate on some sort of limited hive-mind. On their own they’re only about as threatening as a mobile brain with eyes and teeth can be, which, creepy, but not particularly dangerous. This is why they utilize a type of neural-controlled robot as both transportation and weapon, making them significantly more problematic to deal with. When they’re blending in, the robot can apparently be equipped with a “skin” of a generic, shady government official type guy. They all look the same. They all talk weird. They’re not very good at blending in. (But then, nobody’s really noticed they’re aliens from another dimension yet if they haven’t torn their faces off, so maybe they’re very good at blending in.)
They travel to and from Earth through a dimensional portal (or they did, until Leatherhead happened, but that’s for later), and virtually nothing is as of yet known about where they come from or what their ultimate goal is…except that it’s probably sinister.
The only thing we really know about their plan is that it includes the mutagen – a green and blue, so-bright-it’s-probably-radioactive, semi-solid goo – and that they’re responsible for bringing it to Earth. Except whatever they were originally going to do with it, they hadn’t counted on how, once they exposed the mutagen to the physical laws of another dimension, it wouldn’t actually do what the box says it’s supposed to do. So now it just mutates everything it touches.
Hamato Yoshi was among the first known affected in the series. During an unfortunate confrontation with the Kraang, he managed to get himself and the four baby turtles he’d only recently purchased doused in the mutagen. The way the mutagen works is it appears to meld the primary life form with whatever living thing they had touched last, turning them into what this world calls mutants. Yoshi had touched a rat, so he became a rat-man. The baby turtles had last touched humans, and so turtle-boys they became. Yoshi took the boys and disappeared into the sewers of New York, settling in one of the more abandoned sectors beneath Chinatown where he would take on the name Splinter. For the next fifteen years he raised his sons, passing on his knowledge of ninjutsu and keeping them safe beneath the city.
It seemed to be a good life, at least. They boys grew up active and healthy, developing into fairly well-adjusted teenagers, considering the circumstances. They're a close-knit family, both out of necessity and out of love.
Eventually boys do grow up, however, and on the turtles’ fifteenth “mutation”day Splinter finally allows them to go up to the surface.
Now, in an effort to understand what had gone wrong with the mutagen and fix it, the Kraang had started kidnapping scientists from all around New York. Naturally, this is the night the turtles run across April O’Neil, a sixteen-year-old girl who swiftly becomes their best friend and eventual kunoichi-in-training due to her empathy, or natural sensitivity to the world around her, and her father, Dr. Kirby O’Neil, being abducted by the Kraang. They try to rescue them, they fail, they try again, and they at least half-succeed with April. Dr. O’Neil remains a captive of the Kraang, and his rescue is the primary goal of the series up to this point. The turtles have failed twice so far. As it stands, the harder the turtles try and find a way to rescue Dr. O’Neil, the more they become embroiled within the Kraang’s plans, the more they become dedicated to stopping them, and the more the Kraang want them all dead.
This wouldn’t be half so difficult if it weren’t for all the new mutants running around. Fighting the turtles – or even being in the same vicinity as one of their fights – tends to be a really bad idea, as you run about a solid fifty-fifty chance of turning into a giant mutant monster. So far the running tally includes:
Snakeweed, formerly Snake, was unlucky right in the two-episode pilot. He was originally nothing more than a driver for the Kraang. Unfortunately for him, he had information the turtles needed about the whereabouts of a Kraang facility. Sure, he managed to escape, but only after spilling all the beans and only after unwittingly finding out that Leo actually has a rather good grasp on the concept of counter-intelligence. Rather than re-capture him, Leo and Raph tracked him to the alley he was hiding and proceeded to outline their super-ridiculously-awesome plan to use Snake’s van to drive right up the facility and pretend to have a delivery at midnight that night, by which they actually mean: "we are going to have Donnie go mad scientist on Snake’s van, then ram it into the entrance of the facility for maximum explosive potential as a diversion while we climb up the side wall". Snake immediately ran back to his employers with this information and had the unfortunate luck to be one of those waiting for the turtles that night, without the benefit of being a robot. He was doused with the mutagen carried in the truck after it exploded, stumbled into an empty field, and ended up mutating into a giant weed monster with regenerating capabilities. Now he’s one of the turtles’ most reoccurring mutant enemies, mostly because he will not die, but when he isn’t doing that he’s kidnapping people and dragging them into the sewers to use as fertilizer.
Spider Bytez started off as Vic, a really annoying man who happened to be present when the turtles and the Kraang got into it on his building’s rooftop. He also got video. As ninjas, the turtles agreed this was a bad thing, and tried to get him to delete the footage from his phone. This didn’t really go over well, and not just because Vic was kind of an obnoxious human being and got under Raph’s skin on general principle. (Lies. It was mostly because of that.) Anyway, Vic is kidnapped by the Kraang and ends up accidentally exposed to the mutagen. The last thing he touched was a spider, so that’s what he mutated into. He kicked the turtles around for a little while before Raph returned the favor, then ran off while swearing revenge and has yet to return.
Dogpound was Chris Bradford, a world-famous martial artist and one of the Shredder’s top students. Once the Shredder was alerted to the existence of the Hamato family, Shredder partnered him up with Xever and ordered them to find and eliminate the turtles and Splinter. Bradford was a formidable opponent even before his transformation, but this still didn’t work out very well for him. This didn’t work out very well repeatedly. Eventually Bradford felt so dishonored and frustrated by his repeated failures that he turned suicidal. When the turtles had once again cornered and beaten them, Bradford turned around and stabbed a container full of mutagen (without knowing what it was, admittedly, but whether that makes it better is up for debate), releasing a flood of it that swept both him and Xever away (“If I’m going down; I’m taking you down with me”). The last living thing he’d touched had been the Shredder’s dog, and so he became a very large dog mutant with rock-like points of invulnerability. He was still visibly horrified at what had happened to him, but eventually he seemed to at least appreciate the form’s strengths, which had accented his prior abilities well enough to send the turtles running the next time they crossed paths.
Xever doesn’t have a new name in the series yet, as Michelangelo hasn’t had an opportunity to give him one. Out of all the mutants on the show, Xever seems to have gotten the worst deal of the lot. The last living thing he’d touched before Bradford went nuts with the mutagen was an eel-fish-thing, and he mutated into…well…a fish. He can’t walk on land and he can’t breathe outside of water. It’s hard to feel sorry for him, however, as he’s also a sociopathic sadist with a vested interest in removing the turtles from their shells. Before his transformation he was another of the Shredder’s top guys, along with Bradford. Recent events have shown that he might be gaining mobility again with the aid of Baxter Stockman, who also constructed a breathing apparatus for him.
Dr. Tyler Rockwell and Dr. Victor Falco are more unusual cases, and neither of their mutations are directly related to turtles. For once. Though the boys do end up getting involved.
Dr. Rockwell was mutated into an empathic monkey by his partner because Falco wanted his brain fluid, believing that it, as a modified form of the mutagen, would grant him temporary psychic abilities. Which it does, actually. In this case it gives him a power similar to telepathy, the ability to read minds.
The turtles still manage to beat him and help the still-mutated Dr. Rockwell escape, but Falco gets away, too. At least for a little while. He returns later on as the Rat King after a lab accident while trying to synthesize more of his unique mutagen melts his face into a corpse-like appearance, blinds him, and drives him even crazier than he was originally. He still has his psychic abilities, but they seem only capable of affecting rats anymore. This is something he uses to great and creepy effect, setting loose a rat apocalypse on the streets of New York until the turtles stop him.
The Kraang have also taken to experimenting while trying to learn whatever it is they’re trying to learn about the new properties of the mutagen. There are only two known subjects so far, and both started off as animal:
Leatherhead was originally a regular baby alligator in the care of a boy he describes as “kind”, but when the boy’s parents found him they flushed him down the toilet and into the sewers (because apparently humane ways of relocating an animal never occurred to them). This is where the Kraang picked him up. What exactly was done to him besides the mutation is left vague, but it was bad enough to leave severe mental and emotional scars. It’s obvious very soon after meeting him that Leatherhead suffers from a severe form of PTSD that sends him into a blackout rage whenever the Kraang or anything related to the Kraang is mentioned. This makes him a danger to everyone around him, even people he recognizes as friends and allies; something Leatherhead is painfully aware of. If he had his way, he’d just keep to himself and have nothing to do with anything or anyone. Unfortunately, this is made more difficult than it should be by the Kraang themselves. When he escaped, Leatherhead took along the power source to the Kraang’s dimensional portal connecting them to Earth. The power cell is eventually passed along to the turtles’ care, but the theft has left him hunted by the now-stranded Kraang, a hunt that, it could be debated, is more dangerous for the Kraang than for him.
There’s also Pete, who was originally a pigeon before the Kraang exposed him to the mutagen. He’s a very minor character who carries a message to April from her captive father. He wants to be paid in breadcrumbs. Sourdough.
So…so far the turtles seem to be doing the Kraang’s job better than the Kraang.
But these are turtles’ enemies beneath the surface. The majority of the world isn't even aware mutants exist, much less that alien robots are running around throwing goo at people. As odd and strange as the world can get sometimes for the turtles, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the world is perfectly normal and perfectly oblivious. Though it does help explain why Leo’s so excited when the Foot finally reach New York. As he says, it’s just really nice to finally be fighting people. To Leo’s credit, he didn’t know who the Shredder was at the time he said this, or that the Foot were a ninja clan under Shredder’s control.
The Shredder himself was known as Oroku Saki at one point, the same way Splinter was once known as Hamato Yoshi. The both of them had been trained in ninjutsu together, and both of them had fallen in love with the same woman, Tang Shen. When she married Yoshi over Saki, the rivalry the two of them had shared grew bitter and twisted, not helped when Yoshi worsened the problem by knowingly escalating the negative feelings. Eventually Oroku Saki attacked and killed Tang Shen and did something unknown with Miwa, Yoshi’s baby daughter. For years the Shredder assumed Hamato Yoshi was dead, but when one of the turtles accidentally left a throwing star behind, the Shredder saw the news coverage depicting it and recognized it as bearing the same marks as his old rival’s. He assumed Splinter was raising and training his own ninja army, and promptly relocated everyone to New York to try and hunt down and kill Splinter and his sons.
The one time he confronts the turtles personally, he nearly kills them. It’s only because he was briefly interrupted by the recently mutated Dogpound and Xever that the turtles escaped at all. The Kraang may be the backbone conflict to the series so far, but the Shredder is the most dangerous and terrifying of their enemies.
He eventually picks up Baxter Stockman, a run-of-the-mill disgruntled kid turned disgruntled adult out for revenge against the people who picked on him, and who happens to be a fair hand at electronics and machinery. This is pretty much the only reason the Shredder keeps him alive when Stockman ends up stumbling into the middle of his and the turtles' feud, and he's currently responsible for getting Xever mobile again.
Along with the Shredder comes Karai, Shredder’s daughter. She’s one of the true wildcards in the series at present, mostly out to entertain herself, and she doesn't even make an attempt to be anyone she's not. Leo tells her that his brother, Raph, says it’s not a good idea to trust her, and she says he’s probably right. Karai is at least Leo's equal with a sword, possibly better, and she knows it. She’s not as dangerous as her father as a fighter, being only sixteen herself, but unlike the Shredder she isn’t blinded by her obsession with eradicating the turtles and Splinter. She’s the one who notices the Kraang and finds a way to bring them to her father’s attention, and she’s the only one who shows any concern about finding out why Bradford and Xever were mutated.
Until that point, the Shredder had been oblivious and apathetic to the presence of anything out of the ordinary happening in the city beyond the presence of ninjas. He knows the turtles are mutants, but he showed only mild curiosity about it. It didn’t matter as much as killing them. So far he’s unaware that Yoshi is now a rat.
So for what it’s worth, the Shredder and his Foot clan are the most normal of the turtles’ enemies, just regular humans with a lot of training.
The turtles themselves are still more vigilantes than anything, still more reactive than active. Every plot they end up stumbling into and every enemy made has more to do with accident and coincidence than purpose, and every action taken against an enemy is only a response to something the enemy did first. This is only just starting to change, with Splinter declaring war on the Foot - or the Foot declaring war on the turtles and Splinter just acknowledging it, depending on how you look at it - the turtles are starting to learn how to close ranks and how to actively seek out weak points and plots to cripple before they have to defend against them. Things are getting tense, and while random criminals are still on their radar, their attention is more and more turning toward the Shredder, even as they try and deal with the Kraang, the captured Dr. O'Neil, and their own knowledge that they have to get so much better if they want to survive this.
As for any non-hostile humans the turtles might know, it’s probably worth mentioning that the turtles know far more people who want them all dead than they do anyone who doesn’t, and the majority of humanity runs screaming from them at first sight. It’s partly why they hide from even the people they rescue, which is why the ones who don’t panic at the sight of them are special. Mr. Murakami, a blind chef who runs a noodle place in the back streets of Chinatown and figures out the turtles are turtles due to smell, is one, and the turtles met him when saving him and his restaurant from the Purple Dragons. The Purple Dragons are a small gang in Chinatown who are increasingly involved with the strangeness of the turtles’ world, mostly because everyone and their uncle goes to them for help finding the turtles. It actually really kind of sucks to be one of those three guys. As it is. Mr. Murakami’s honestly their only touchstone with the world outside of their own life full of aliens and ninja clans.
So, yes, on the surface, the world is completely normal. It’s just a very, very thin surface.
Personality:
The first thing anyone might notice about Donatello is that he is always thinking. Even when doing one thing, his brain is likely following three or more different tracks of thought. He’s easily distracted by any subject he perceives as interesting, and even on the threshold of fight – or halfway through it – he can never quite stop himself from examining, say, the differences between fresh and salt water turtles, the load-bearing capabilities of telephone lines, or the amount of speed and agility necessary to trap up Snakeweed with his own vines. Sometimes this serves him well. Sometimes he’s fighting telepathic mad scientists and it really, really doesn’t. Sometimes he feels the need to share his observations with the class at inopportune moments and then Raphael smacks him upside the head and he deserves it.
There’s a reason Donatello thinks an acceptable form of trash talk involves informing someone else when they are wrong. He isn’t a know-it-all, not exactly. He does love to share unsolicited information, but it isn’t out of a desire to boast or to make people look at him. He knows he’s smart, sure, smarter than his brothers and maybe even smarter than his father, but his constant rattling off of facts or corrections isn’t him trying to show off. It’s that he really, honestly thinks this information is interesting and he doesn’t understand why no one else cares. Or he does, but he forgets in his excitement. One of the most important things to know about Donatello is that he is a nerd. He is a giant nerd, and not only is he highly intelligent, but he wants to learn. He wants to understand. If a pencil falls, he isn’t content just going, “oh, okay, yeah, that pencil is falling,” he has to know why. What made the pencil fall? What forces are acting on it to keep it falling? Can he estimate a rate of descent? What would make the pencil fall faster or slower?
Understanding the world around him is one of Donatello’s driving forces in life. He’s dropped hints several times throughout the show that he’s looked into the existence of him and his family – their mutation, their biology, their lives. There are posters in his lab of both turtle and human anatomy. He knows plenty about the dangers of mutations and their often unstable existence, and has almost certainly peeked into genetics. There isn’t a lot about the world – on a purely scientific level, at least – that doesn’t make sense to Donatello. If there is, then he immediately buckles down to correct that state of affairs, even if he has to create an entirely new field of biology to do so. He doesn’t get why no one else seems to care the way he does.
This is probably the cause of the majority of the disconnect between Donatello and his siblings. Leo usually has his own concerns, and his interests rarely tend to coincide with Don’s, Mikey is…Mikey, and Raph has shown often and violently how little interest he has in Don’s nerdspeak. Oh, that isn’t to say he’s ostracized or anything, far from it, but Don’s usually the one depicted alone, and even if he is in the same room as his family, he’s rarely engaged with what’s going on around him. He’s definitely one of the more awkward turtles, socially, particularly with anyone outside of their family, but with the unique position of being awkward within the family as well. So while his place in life is fairly secure, as brother, son, and member of a team, it’s hard for him to connect one-on-one with his brothers. It’s doubtful this even concerns Don overly much at most times – after all, he has a thousand and one projects and very little time as it is to work on them – but there’s still virtually no one around him able to communicate on his level. Sometimes this gets tiring, for both him and his brothers, and, like siblings do, this is often resolved with either a quick beating or some not-so-gentle ribbing.
Donatello is still one of the milder turtles, if only because he does keep to himself so much. He doesn’t feel the need to get involved in the competitions Raph and Leo are always holding between themselves, and he hasn’t dedicated his life to turning the obnoxious into an art form, like Mikey. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s mild-mannered. Sure, he’s perfectly willing to talk things out, if “talking things out” means “throw down of the vocal variety”. He rarely starts fights, but he is more than willing to keep them going if one of his brothers throws down the proverbial gauntlet. There’s a reason he ties with Raph as one of the sassiest turtles in the sewer. When he feels pushed, he’s more than willing to push back. Hard. Still, he’ll usually just stay out of the way, or at least keep his disgruntlement to himself, depending on the situation. When he's told to shut up in the show, for example, this rarely bothers him to the point of retaliating. He can get snippy if mocked or teased, but his temper is really only peaked when someone – usually Raph – mocks his intelligence or doesn’t listen when he actually has something important to say. He’s also far less patient with others’ intellectual goof-ups, particularly if they get in his way or put him or the others in danger. Donatello’s unafraid to call someone a moron if he feels they deserve it.
Actually, he isn’t afraid to take a chunk out of anyone if he thinks they deserve it, verbally or physically. On patrols, if someone is getting mixed up in something they really shouldn’t be getting mixed up in, Donatello is more than happy to send them running home in tears. He’s still the least willing of his brothers to rush into a fight, but this seems to have less to do with the sanctity of life and more to do with a healthy self-preservation instinct. Out of the four, Donatello is the weakest combatant and his fighting style the most ill-suited to their usual enemies (who tend to be made of metal or otherwise unaffected by a staff or bare fists). And he’s smart enough to know this.
Unlike certain other, previous incarnations, it probably wouldn’t be quite right to call him a pacifist, if only because his aversion to fighting has less to do with a distaste for violence and more to do with a desire to keep his and his brothers’ bodies un-mauled. He isn’t any more altruistic than his brothers, either, more content to hang back and let the pieces fall where they may than rush in and help without knowing the situation or who he’s helping. He’s very cautious, and rarely wants to do anything without having all the facts. When Mikey wanted to jump in to help Leatherhead when their fellow mutant was being tortured by the Kraang, Donatello was the one telling him to wait and see what he was getting into, then needed to be convinced to help him after the fight, and later insisted on chaining the unconscious-from-being-tortured Leatherhead up. Some people would call this callous; Don would say it's only being practical. He does have empathy for others, and is the only one along with Mikey to actually feel bad for Baxter Stockman the first time they encounter him, but it takes very low priority for him.
This isn't to say that if he's all by himself and he sees some helpless civilian getting worked over in a dark alley or something that he isn't going to help, because he will most definitely help. He can't not, but...helpless humans aren't giant mutant alligators, and that's probably a good point to mention the slight double standard the turtles have. "What measure is a non-human?" indeed, and they seem to have less problem harming other mutants than they do humans, even outright killing Snakeweed twice, heart stopped and everything. He would still be dead if it weren't for his regenerative capabilities. Don is no exception to this mindset.
He isn’t particularly torn up about violence, and sometimes even chooses it before thinking of more peaceful solutions, though usually only when their target has already made themselves an enemy or otherwise seems to be a threat in his eyes. Sometimes Don is wrong and misjudges the intentions of an opponent, seeing an enemy where there isn't one, but he’s not often going to take chances. He'd sooner fight than risk giving ground to an enemy.
Part of this can be blamed on the fact that Donatello is a bit high strung. There’s a direct correlation between the amount of danger the turtles are in and Donatello’s willingness to bite the heads off of everyone around him. It isn’t that he can’t handle stress – he can handle it perfectly fine – it’s just that it’s the way he handles stress. Heckling him to move faster is a quick way to a tongue-lashing. Underneath it he’s at least rational, if not quite calm, able to think clearly and efficiently even when things are rapidly going downhill. When Mikey was severely injured, Leo was gone, and Raph had frozen up mid-fight, it Don who found a way to delay the enemy and get his brothers out of there. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t often think too much. The one time he was in charge of an operation with only himself and Mikey and no immediate danger, and therefore no one and nothing to tell him to get on with things, he spent hours just pacing on a rooftop coming up with alternative plans. Still, he can at least make a half-decent effort when covering for an absent Leo in the strategy department, as long as someone's there to kick his ass into gear, though he would never handle a long-term leadership position well.
Mostly, Donatello just really wants things to go right. He will make plans and plans and more plans in an effort to make certain every possible contingency is accounted for, and he’s most comfortable when he’s been given the time to do so. This is partly why he falls back in the position of support and follower so well. He knows he’s fussy. He knows he’s high strung. And while he doesn’t always see why being so obsessively prepared is a bad thing, he’s still more confident when someone else has the reigns, and offers up his plans and ideas from more of an advisor role most naturally.
In Tu Shanshu: Bare bones, Donatello is not going to be happy. He’ll grudgingly accept that he’s in a different dimension, if only because that’s apparently how the Kraang travel and the evidence that he’s certainly not home is going to be too big to ignore. People claiming that he’s in the in-between of life, death, and dreaming, though?
Uh.
No.
A separate dimension is going to be about as far as he’s willing to bend. He won’t doubt that at least some of these people believe they’re in-between, but any focus he gives to that is going to mostly be toward understanding the world and the people. “What does that mean?” “Why do you believe that?”. He will never settle down and accept that there’s no getting home, but he will spend a lot of time trying to understand. Beyond his simple curiosity, this is how he’s going to cope with his anxiety and homesickness, because he is going to be homesick. He’s going to miss his family, he’s going to miss New York, and he’s going to even miss the sewers. He’s never been very far from home. He’s never been separated from his father. He’s never been thrown into a world he doesn’t understand, and that more than anything is going to rattle him pretty severely. He’ll be tense and high strung for a long while, and probably difficult to communicate with for some people, particularly if they push him on the issue, but mostly he’s going to get quiet and withdraw while he tries to figure things out.
Appearance:
Abilities:
Ninjutsu and all that entails, though here’s outlining all the more prominent areas:
Combat: Like his brothers, Donatello has been trained in ninjutsu his entire life, meaning as many of the eighteen disciplines as Splinter could conceivably manage, with particular emphasis on the bō staff and the naginata (a staff with a blade on the end of it, basically, but more accurately a pole sword). His style tends to be more defensive, and it's usually when he pushes offense that he ends up getting in trouble, but Donatello is more than capable of mopping the floor with lower ranking members of the Foot clan (meaning anyone not the Shredder himself or his top members, like Karai or Dogpound) or other not-particularly-dangerous enemies. Against tougher enemies, Donatello relies more heavily on the group, but so long as he has that group he can hold his own.
He’s the weakest combatant of his brothers and nowhere near the level of a master, but he’s still a highly trained and dangerous fighter. (But he is the weakest of his brothers.)
Athleticism: Due to his training he’s also extremely athletic, able to run and leap between buildings, jog across wires and poles with ease, and perform flips and leaps as well as any professional gymnast. He’s quite the free-runner.
Stealth: Staying hidden is one of the most important aspects of ninjutsu to a mutant turtle. Disappearing is an art form he and his brothers have perfected over their fifteen years, and, against most people, if Donatello doesn’t want them to know he’s there, they’re not going to know. Compared to his brothers, however, he’s still a klutz, and anyone with similar training or experiences are probably going to be able to notice him.
Machines, electronics, and the sheer breadth of his intelligence are where Donatello’s skills truly shine. Forget ninjutsu, if Donatello had been left to his own devices he probably never would have even moved three feet from his work station. In canon there are a few examples of this, just to give some idea of what I mean:
Kraang technology. More than once Donatello has been responsible for picking electronic alien locks, hacking into an alien database with the least intuitive interface ever seen, and defusing an alien bomb, but we’re not talking about those. Usually one of his brothers interfered before Don could do much of anything with them, so they’re not the best example. The best example comes from that one time Don managed to reverse engineer one of the Kraang robots into another battle robot that was significantly tougher. It got the point that, when they were unable to destroy it, the Kraang ended up taking it over because it was just that good.
It’s generally safe to say that if Donatello has enough time, he can figure out just about anything. It’s just that…usually he’s lacking in time.
Anatomy/Genetics. It’s also possible to see anatomy posters of both humans and turtles in Don’s lab, hinting that he’s been attempting to learn about their own unusual anatomy, along with those couple times in canon where Don’s brought up mutation and their own genetics. At the very least, it’s something Donatello’s put a lot of thought into, and when Donatello puts a lot of thought into something, that is a lot of thought.
Metallurgy. It’s difficult to say how much of this subject Don’s familiar with, but he seems fairly confident in it. He's surprised when he couldn’t recognize the type of metal the Kraang’s used in their lair, and he's fully prepared to start a nerd throw down with Raph over the topic when his brother mocks him for it. It’s probably safe to say he knows a lot of metallurgy and related fields.
Engineering/Mechanics. Don’s responsible for a lot of the turtles’ toys, including the T-Shells (cellphones, basically), smoke bombs, vehicles (they weren’t ready yet), and once he made the most state-of-the-art music player in existence out of a military chip dug out of a military junkyard because he was grounded and bored. He's also responsible for every bit of electricity in the Lair. If there’s a problem, there’s a nine out of ten chance Donatello will be able to build a solution to it, or at least he will try.
There’s more, without a doubt, but those are the highlights. Donatello thinks too much and sometimes has trouble getting his head out of his inventions to look around and realize that sometimes they are not needed, but he loves to learn and has been in the unique position of having to actually apply what he learns to practical purpose - keeping up the Lair, keeping his brothers equipped, keeping things running smoothly. Together this has given him a practical set of skills and turned him into a walking encyclopedia about any subject he feels interested in or relates to his understanding of the world.
He’s also a turtle, and this pretty much means he can do some things humans can’t, like he can hold his breath under water for a very long time and he's very good at swimming, and he can even pull his head into his shell. Theoretically he could do the same with the rest of his limbs, but they're not shaped right and he'd probably have to break his bones in multiple locations to get them to fit. So that's a no.
Inventory:
His bō staff that doubles as a naginata when the right pressure is applied. His purple mask, belt, elbow and knee pads, his T-Phone, which isn’t going to work at all (yay electrocution!), and that’s about it.
Suite:
Metal Sector, preferably, because he’s going to want to go where the technology is and metal = technology = chance to get his bearings/find his family to him.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Don estimated he'd been out of the ocean for nine hours, give or take. He wasn't as sure as he'd like to be, but he couldn't trust his internal clock, not when he'd spent most of the ride to the city disoriented and sick before getting it together long enough to ask some questions of his chatty welcoming committee.
Or chatty until he actually wanted some actual information. Then they were about as helpful as Mikey on a bad day.
But nine hours. He'd spent an embarrassing amount of time after arriving with his head buried in the first sink he'd found (and maybe a little more time with his head in his hands as he tried not to hyperventilate against a wall, but no one was around to know), and then about an hour hunting around the...apartment he'd been given, checking the corners and the creases in the walls for wires or surveillance equipment. He hadn't found anything except a disconcerting number of brand new gadgets of the distinctly high-end variety, if Don knew his electronics, and he did. Except for the sink, he hadn't touched anything, not entirely sure what to make of it.
But that was why he'd asked to come here, right? The "Metal Sector". Technology. Because if he was going to find a way home, if he was going to find his family, he was going to need something to work with. Which was why he was now seated in front of the console one of the kedan had pointed out to him, staring at the blank screen. He'd need to check it for bugs, later. But right now, Donatello just took a deep breath.
Get organized. Wasn't that what sensei always said? Start with what he knew.
The kedan were those people who had brought him here. Not human. Not like the Kraang. Definitely more friendly - or at least, they seemed that way. But not human. He hadn't seen a single human so far.
No turtles, either.
This wasn't home. Obviously. This couldn't be the in-between, either, but maybe that was some sort of...religious idea. People did that, right, when they didn't understand something? Random turtles dropping out of nowhere probably counted, and they obviously had some sort of system in place for when people like him arrived. A regular occurrence, possibly.
So what had happened? It had to be the Kraang. Leatherhead mentioned the power source fueled a dimensional portal, right?
He remembered coming home after fighting that- that Justin. He didn't remember falling asleep, and no portals either, but he might have-
But that didn't mean anything. Who knew what going through a dimensional portal did. Maybe some sort of amnesia was normal. Maybe it was broken, and that was why he'd ended up in the middle of the ocean. Maybe that was why his brothers weren't around.
Tu Vishan, a language he didn't know. He'd have to find out. It might be important. At least if he knew the island was named "Your Death" or something he wouldn't feel completely unprepared when they tried to lynch him.
"Keep it together, Donatello," he muttered against the vaguely hysterical giggles he could feel building in his throat.
So, to sum it up, he was alone in an alien world without the first clue how the heck he'd even got there.
Right. Great. No problem, then, and what he wouldn't give for Leo right now. Or even Mikey. Or Raph, even if getting him to stay still and think about a way to work through this sensibly would be virtually impossible. Raph would probably rather just run off at the first opportunity. But not Don. Not Don, because he was going to do this right.
Donatello cracked his knuckles, powering up the console. He could do this. Leo would be nearly impossible to track, but if Raph or Mikey were around then he'd need to see if he could find any hint toward their presence, first, and maybe a map...
Network:
[There's no actual sound at first, as an uncomfortable ninja tends to be a silent ninja, but then comes the light sound of fingers clacking against keys without enough force to push them down, a nervous movement if anything, and the clearing of a throat.]
[Donatello was still so not used to just...talking to people.]
So I was thinking, and I had a- Well, I thought of something.
[No duh. Donatello hesitates and the tapping sounds louder for a moment before he continues. He isn't just rambling full speed ahead like usual, a sign of how uncomfortable this topic has made him.]
I can't be the first person who's thought of this, so if someone has an answer...
Okay, I mean. We're on a turtle, right? Who knows how much water we cross in a day. How likely is it that we just happen to arrive where the kedan can reel us in? Depending on the size of the ocean, the speed of our host, the-
[No, okay. Stop. Not a time to get side-tracked. Deep breath, and move on.]
What I'm saying is, it's not very likely, is it? So what if we don't? What if we're just...floating out there. Does anyone actually remember being in the water? Or how long? Maybe- maybe whatever force that brought us here can keep us from drowning, unless-
[Unless he's wrong, and they are lucky enough to happen across Tu Vishan when they first arrived and are rescued before they can, and the people who aren't- No. No. Not going there. It's probably a good thing this is audio, or people would have to see a distressed Donatello throwing his hands around in the air as he talks.]
Nevermind. The point is, so what if the people we want to get back to aren't home at all? What if they're out there somewhere?
[What if finding a way home doesn't fix anything?]