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It is a truth universally acknowledged that Donatello Hamato is a man of the formula.
He is no stranger, of course, to the fact that not everyone else is. Baron Draxum is no Donatello; having left his former status as a warrior scientist to take on the far humbler title of Papa’s ever–present companion. Raphael is no Donatello; after the invasion of the Kraang some weeks prior, his oldest brother and former trusted leader had been rushed off to a makeshift medbay for aide with the scars he’d still not shaken off. Even their living situation had been swept up in the great wave of change – that part came following Shredder’s defeat, though the Kraang certainly hadn’t helped matters.
And – it was fine. It is fine. Nothing Donatello can’t handle. He’d changed a lot himself over these past few years. A younger version of himself would likely have scoffed at the idea of being in such close quarters with the mythic, and now here he is, living in a family that teems with the stuff.
And now, here he is, standing atop one of the taller buildings in the city. The world below feels even bigger without his brothers beside him (another change that tugs at a string in Donnie’s mind, an irritating little feeling that he’s been trying his best to ignore), but at least this is something familiar. This has a formula. This is something Donnie can navigate without feeling like he’s tripping over his own cerebrum.
No sticking his hands into a grody Kraang ship. No evil alien eyes staring up at him from the face of someone he’s supposed to trust. No – well, whatever’s going on between Papa and Draxum. He can deal with that whole situation when he doesn’t feel like that string’ll come loose and pull the comfort of a steady leg to stand on out from underneath him.
His inventions hum and whir as he peers down at the newspaper clipping in his hand through his goggles, a map to the scene of tonight’s crime generating in the periphery of his vision. SLEEPWALKING PLAGUE PROVES PROBLEMATIC; PROMPTING POPULUS TO PILFER THEIR OWN HOMES, the headline declares.
The culprit, of course, is obvious. Earlier that week, rumors of a miracle tea guaranteed to make one’s sleep so sound they’d hardly remember they’d fallen asleep at all had swept up New York’s most gullible octogenarians. At first, he’d speculated that it could be the work of Meatsweats; but the scheme was far too convoluted and involved far less of the man’s own cooking than it did a home-brewed cup of tea. No, invoking a trance–like state among the populous for the sake of petty crime pointed in the direction of another villain entirely – and the coordinates he’s been given are the last step he needs to finish solving for the answer.
He takes a deep breath, the musty city air filling his lungs.
(... And then hacks. Loudly.
Maybe that wasn’t the most optimal idea.)
He takes another, less deep breath, this time clicking his goggles into place and firing up the jetpack on his battle shell. The noises it emits as it does are enough to set him at ease, if only for a moment – an affirmation of sorts. Another component in tonight’s return to some semblance of – well, normalcy isn’t the exact term he’d use, but – a something. Some semblance of a something.
Then, he jumps.
The city blurs by as he follows the blinking arrow on his map, the light of windows forming a circuit-board pattern amidst the darkness of night. The wind whips at his face. He passes the old pizza place they’d frequented before they’d found Hueso’s, a row of apartment complexes, the Lou Jitsu dojo that Cassandra was currently in the process of inheriting, another row of apartment complexes, the old abandoned theater he and Leonardo used to snoop around in when they were young – and then stops, a repetitive beeping filling the air as a large exclamation point flashes before his eyes.
DESTINATION: LOCATED.
From above, Donnie can pinpoint the people trickling down the street towards it like zombies, carrying all manner of household valuables. A television cord trails behind a woman with stiff blonde hair. A man in a brightly colored suit jacket carries an inordinate amount of jewelry and flashy apparel. Someone’s even managed to procure their microwave.
A weight eases from Donatello’s shoulders as he assesses this last bit of information. This, he knows all too well.
This is familiar.
“Aw, nuts,” Hypno-Potomas mutters when Donnie bursts in, bō blazing. He turns from one of the piles of goods that litter the premises, the expression on his face affirming he knows he’s been caught red-handed.
“It appears you still are, yes,” Donatello quips.
The conspiring criminal’s brow furrows, prompting Donatello to quickly move to flick a switch on his goggles. He’s enhanced it with the ability to pop out a pair of headphones – never hurts to be prepared.
But just before his finger hits the button –
“Wait. Aren’t there usually four of you?”
Great. Something tugs again at that loose string, and he tries to shove off the feeling by jabbing one of Hypno’s sleepwalking subordinates in the stomach. They toss the golden chandelier they’d been carrying into the air as they start, and he catches it without so much as budging an inch. “Usually.”
“Then – “ Hypno’s brow creases further. He wrings his hands as another one of the mob ambles towards them, and he holds out an arm to stop them in their tracks. (Donatello notes that they don’t stop attempting to walk.) “This isn’t really a fair fight, is it?”
“Exactly when did you become concerned with fighting fair?” Donnie can’t help his incredulity. He twirls his bō and takes out a number more, pearls and glittering jewels scattering across the floor. He tries not to pull at the string, tries to keep his mind on the conversation at hand. His feet are on the floor. His bō is in his hands. He knows this.
He launches himself back into the air before Hypno can get a response in and deploys his jetpack again, running through a round of goons as they begin to crowd the hall. He hones in on the rhythmic way they promenade along, slowly making his way through them to the centerpiece of the operation before planting himself squarely between it and the mastermind of the evening.
He half-expects Hypno to attempt to ‘zonk him out’ (as Raphael would say, the reassuring face of his older brother a pleasant mental image before its eye begins to pulse with an unearthly beat and his certainty pounds in time with it, unstable again), but instead the man blocks his next move with a series of rings. A loud clash echoes off of the high ceiling as Donnie pushes back against his defense, driving Hypno further from his prize.
“I just – are you alright there?” Hypno sounds far less snide than Donatello wants him to. He sounds – “You look a little green – er, greener than usual.”
“Listen, you,” Donatello snaps. Clang. He isn’t about to let this slip away from him, too. He knows how to handle something as simple as a tiff with some costumed criminal. Clang. He opens his mouth to continue, fishing for the words that’d usually end the taunt he’d begun.
Clang.
His next strike is unsteady. He can’t find them.
“Do you –” he flounders, not about to let himself be bested. “Do you really have to bring that up right now?"
Wonderful work, Donatello. Can’t even act in the middle of a theater.
Just wonderful.
Hypno’s response comes in the form of an uncomfortable silence, retracting his rings to step back and hold up his hands in a half-surrender. The last few stragglers have long since trickled in from outside, staring slack-jawed at them like an unwelcome audience. The faded paintings on the walls of cherubs and smiling foliage don’t do much to assist in the matter, either.
“...you’re not trying to lower my guard,” Donnie finally says. It comes out more like an admission.
Hypno shakes his head. “Consider it somewhat of a truce.”
Donatello’s knees give out.
Clang.
“Fine,” he manages, after what feels like an eternity. “Trucies it is.”
Hypno’s mouth twitches with the start of a small laugh, and he waves a hand to usher the rest of the gathered crowd back home – belongings and all. Donnie doesn’t have the wherewithal at the moment to consider how morbid it is to be sitting on the matted carpeting of an abandoned theater with bodies littered across the floor. Thankfully, it seems Hypno will be following suit, folding his legs underneath himself as he sits beside him.
“...’Trucies’?” he echoes, bemused.
“Yes. I say that,” Donnie deflects, feeling a little dumb. He flicks a switch on his gauntlet back and forth idly, noting to himself that whatever it’s supposed to set off – well, isn’t. How situationally apt.
Another silence. A pearl from someone’s necklace rolls across the floor and clatters down the entryway stairs.
“Do you –” Hypno starts, then stops. “Do you want to talk about it? Or – not want to talk about it, rather?”
“I –”
Donnie isn’t sure, he finds. There’s a part of him that wants to pull at what’s left of the string, unravel the tension that’s bottled up in his mind until it’s all emptied out. There’s another that just wants something he can get a good hold on, something that doesn’t pull the floor out from underneath him whenever it can, something he knows.
Either way – well, either way, he still isn’t sure. That may as well be his constant.
So that’s what he says.
Hypno hums after he does, no doubt thinking his words over. “That’s alright,” he says quietly, and his tone makes Donnie wonder briefly if he used to perform at children’s birthday parties before the whole ooze situation. The idea is more comforting than it ought to be – a little pang of understanding in his chest at the reminder that he isn’t the only one who’s felt this way about change.
“Good,” Donnie nods sharply – though not meanly, now. Just – Donnie–ly? That isn’t a word.
He pokes one of the sleepwalkers – or, former sleepwalkers, technically – with his bō idly. Their cheek flops to the carpeting with a quiet thump.
Hypno’s next question is an echo of his first; “Do you want to talk, generally?”
“Yes,” Donnie says, sounding both sharp again and far more relieved than he intends. “As long as it’s not about it. Anything but it.”
“Aye aye,” Hypno nods. He taps his fingers on his knees as he considers what to talk about, before Donnie – in a flash of either brilliance or situationally–addled foolishness – asks;
“What was it like? When you –” he twirls a finger in the air before poking himself in the arm with it, making an exaggerated jolt. “Got oozed?”
Immediately a rush of embarrassment floods him. Double–wonderful. Can’t keep the heavy stuff down today, can you, pal? It has to be something. You’re going to break your own rules at this rate.
Hypno, however, doesn’t seem bothered. His eyes widen in surprise at the question, but he still manages a “no, no need to feel ashamed, my young friend – enemy?”
“Frenemy,” Donnie offers.
“That! That.” Hypno points a finger in Donnie’s direction affirmatively. “But – I figure, ‘what’s one mutant to another mutant,’ yes?”
Donnie nods.
Hypno takes a deep breath. He drums on his knees again, a steady one-two-three one-two-three. “Certainly took a fair bit of getting used to,” he begins, his words far lighter than Donnie’d expected them to be. “My apartment still feels a lot smaller, for one. Had to figure out how to get a handle on this, too.” He flicks his fingers together then, a spark of brightly colored magic flittering up from between them before popping in the air like a miniature firecracker. “I suppose one of the biggest shockers was discovering just how much magic was really out there beyond my little parlor tricks.”
“Mystic stuff is –” Donnie pauses. A certain moment in the Hidden City flashes in his mind. “It does take some adjusting to.”
“Awfully handy, though,” Hypno grins, a little self-satisfactorily, gaze diverting to the still-mountainous pile of furniture on the other side of the hall.
“I am sure,” Donnie warns. “So very sure.”
“Don’t fret,” Hypno laughs, looking back at him. “I’m sure you’ll see to it that I see to getting everything back in its proper place by sunrise.”
Donnie doesn’t entirely buy it, but he keeps quiet. The room still feels a bit far away and the idle conversation combined with the weight of his bō in his hand does wonders to ground him. It’s still a little less than the fight, less for Donnie to hold on to, but it’s serviceable.
“Anyhoo,” Hypno continues, “it certainly put a bit of a damper on my usual routine. The whole ‘I have magical, hypnotic powers’ thing, and all.” He looks down, then, ears drooping ever-so-slightly. “I’ve found the transformation itself hasn’t bothered me quite as much as it has others, but – well – there’s more than a few things I still find myself missing. Change is a funny thing, isn’t it?”
And there it is, a bitter voice in Donnie’s subconscious says. I told you.
“It is,” Donnie nods, the words coming far less sure than he intends for them to. “I – I know I said not to talk about it, but – well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag.” He waves his hands, a more-sad-then-sardonic little gesture. “My Papa – he had the same thing happen to him, if you haven’t already parsed it out. But he’s so – I don’t know, used to it now. Everyone is. But I’m just – I still can’t – ugh, why am I even telling you this?” Donnie finally says, dropping his bō on the ground again to set his face in his hands.
“I don’t mind,” Hypno offers. “Really.” A pause. “You did say you’d rather not talk about it, didn’t you?”
Donnie sighs. He drags his fingers down his face, pulling at his cheeks, until they fall with a slap against his knees. “...What do you still find yourself missing?” he asks, quietly.
“A good question,” Hypno says, genuinely. “My annual teatimes with the New York magician’s society, for one.”
“New York has a magician’s society?” Donnie asks, nearly flabbergasted out of his woes.
“Oh, yes! It’s a wonderful group – or, it was, before the whole –” he gestures to himself, his warm expression fading. “What else, what else – did I ever tell you I used to perform for children’s birthday parties? I so dearly miss that.”
“I was wondering about that,” Donnie nods, feeling a twinge of reassurance in his accurate analysis.
The conversation meanders as the midnight hour ticks by. It darts close to the it and then just as quickly darts away, but – it’s reassuring, that way, he finds. The string tugs out in small enough doses to keep from unspooling any semblance of sureness he has left altogether, but tugs out nonetheless. It gives him room to think – and he’s thankful that it does, because that’s what he came here to get in the first place.
He tightens his hands around his bō, before easing up with the exhale of his breath.
This is familiar, still. He’s done this before – just simple small talk.
No Kraang. No Shredder. No echoes of either reverberating through his family.
Just a moment to breathe.
The more they talk, the more he finds Hypno’s able to pick up on what comforts him. He asks about his inventions, and Donnie explains as much as he’s able without revealing all of his tricks – because “after all, a good magician would understand that, no?”
“Using my own words against me,” Hypno laughs at that. “You really are clever!”
“So I’ve been told,” Donnie preens, unable to help a grin. The tension in his shoulders eases. “Now, may I propose a query to you?”
“Depends,” Hypno shrugs, returning his smile. “What’ll it be?”
“Do you happen to have any playlists on you?” he asks, grabbing his phone from a compartment he’d made for it in his battle shell. “I know the whole makeover montage trap was – well, a trap – but that soundtrack was killer!”