Work Text:
Podfic Here: (Would love a new reader!)
Once within a sewer pungent, the darkness deep and abundant,
Emerged a soft fluorescent glow beneath a laboratory door.
Here, a turtle, purple-banded, pleaded, entreated, nigh commanded
A small heap of metal, to be candid, slumping sadly on the floor.
“Why won’t you wake?” Donnie implored, flipping the switch just one time more.
Then the turtle softly swore.
“Robot,” pled Don, “My creation, for whom I’ve laid a strong foundation
Of wired neural pathways replete with sensors and nodes galore,
Please don’t tell me of the waste, the anguished hours I spent in haste
With only bitterness to taste, on this poor pile of bolts and ore.
Like Sisyphus, my work means nothing but a vast, unending chore?”
Stillness met him, nothing more.
Metalhead, in silence sitting, never blinking, never transmitting
Any signal or indication that to life it was restored.
With dark circles under his eyes, Donnie leaned back, leaden with sighs,
And cast the switch and other supplies into the dark of some deep drawer.
The processing chip– the brunt of that last power surge must have bore,
Damaged to its very core.
Donnie’s sleepiness grew stronger, eyes could open not much longer,
He, weary on his workbench, laid his heavy head down, sad and sore.
With his brothers out on patrol, alone in the lair, Don felt the toll,
A need to rest body and soul, and soon gave a gratifying snore.
So none saw the pulse of power that from the robot did now pour.
Or hear the words: "SYSTEM RESTORE"
Gears in fluid motion whirring, reddish glow of eyes concurring,
Metalhead turned its face with a hydraulic grace unseen heretofore.
A systems check from head to feet, weapons both online and replete,
But what enemy to defeat? A glitch its coding could not ignore
“EMERGENCY SEQUENCE COMPLETE” and then four ominous words more—
“PROCESSING… FLAWED DATA CORE"
This grave phrase, though softly spoken, had its maker then awoken,
Who, in jubilant exultation, now a grin of triumph wore.
“Metalhead!” Don gasped, delighted, “I knew you’d work!” he cried, excited
To see that, eye visor lighted, it rose to face him from the floor.
But in a breathless moment on the turtle’s chest its laser cannon bore.
As it fired: “FLAWED DATA CORE”
Though the genius was astounded, in a backwards flip he bounded
Over the sun-bright burst of laser where he‘d been a bare moment before.
With ninja skill Donnie o’er his workbench dove, ducking lower
All to avoid the flame thrower from which a blazing heat now tore.
Metalhead, emotionless, bent on turning him to blackened gore.
Stated the ‘bot: “FLAWED DATA CORE”
Donnie’s cover then was melting– now a hail of bullets pelting
Turning wood and metal of the workbench to a pile of smoking ore.
Leaping for his bo, Don tried to recall the code for “override”
But his panicked brain denied him access to that memory store.
As he vaulted behind the ‘bot, Don’s own foolishness he did deplore–
This burden he could not ignore.
Wheels screeching, the robot turned– facing Donnie, its red eyes burned,
The twin flames like those of Cerberus, Hades’ great hellhound of lore.
Prepared for the final assault, a sound behind him made Don halt,
And his heart did leap and exalt as into the lab his brothers tore.
Returning late to the lair, they’d heard the cacophony of war
From behind Donatello’s door.
“Donnie?!” Leo’s voice was thunder, katana ready to tear asunder
Whatever threat to his brother, whatever danger lay in store.
Relieved to see Don alive and well, though several scorch-marks on his shell,
The brothers then turned to dwell on the robot raising weapons galore.
And now Mikey’s head was the target on which its laser cannon bore.
Again, the words: “FLAWED DATA CORE”
Donnie, thoughtless, stepped in front, desiring then to take the brunt
Of whatever doom and destruction his creation could outpour.
But Mikey’s peril had so shocked, that a key memory was unlocked.
His hands raised, as the others gawked, Don to the robot did implore,
“Emergency Override,” he breathed. “Two-Beta-Six-Delta-Four.”
Metalhead clattered to the floor.
Then came a pause between held breath, the robot dark and still as death.
With a sigh and a snort, Raph asked, “Bro, couldn’t ya have done that before?”
The genius shrugged. “Brain freeze,” he said, but his brothers were not misled.
Don’s offhand tone belied the dread that his shaking hands did underscore.
Mikey wrapped Don in his arms, “We’re okay– nothing to worry for.”
“It’s not a threat anymore.”
When Don’s breathing grew quite steady and Mikey thought he was ready,
His brothers led him to a chair that had survived the great uproar.
Arms around him, firm and bracing, they guided Don in retracing
The story of his night facing a foe he could not well ignore–
“My own hubris,” said the turtle, and his face a sad smile wore.
“Icharus on the sun’s bright shore.”
“I sought to make something special, something that could help us wrestle
With the myriad of dangers in their innumerable score.”
A robot to defend the lair, one that for battle we could prepare,”
Here he held a far-away stare, “A robot that could our conscious store,”
Don’s voice, a whisper, “In case of fatal injury in this boundless war,”
“At least our minds might be restored.”
Awed by their brother’s ambition, but frightened by this last admission,
In simple silence they sat, grateful to be together, all four.
Raphael it was that spoke up first, breaking the quiet with a curse,
“Hell, Donnie,” his voice rough and unrehearsed, “We’ve missed YOU, more and more.”
“These last few weeks with you lost in your lab working on this eyesore…”
“We miss how it was before.”
“Come back to us,” Mikey chimed in. “This lab’s no place to be confined in,”
“Let this one go,” Leo offered, nodding to the robot on the floor.
“Erase the hard drive. Walk away. You’ll make something great another day.”
“Something not set out to slay,” Raph teased– Leo’s glare he did ignore.
Donnie smiled weakly, “Thanks guys,” he said as they led him to the door,
Back to the life they’d fought hard for.
Behind the brothers, a blacker shadow lay contorted on the floor.
And from it, a faint pulse of light, a whirring motor soft and slight…
A mechanized moan in the night. It said, simply: “FLAWED DATA CORE”