Work Text:
Mikey's sense of time has never been very good. He wishes that he could estimate how long it's been since he entered Dimension X, but to be honest aside from the occasional rumble of his stomach he has nothing to clue him in on how long it's been.
He's slept… once? At most, once. His fight or flight instinct has kept him overly aware of his surroundings.
In the last however long it's been, Mikey's learned a lot about this dimension. Anything that looks even vaguely manmade is most likely a Kraang structure, which he needs to avoid. Everything else is alive to some capacity, or at least everything he's tested has been. So basically: everything's dangerous. Which is a problem, because like, Mikey does not want to die here, thank you very much.
Safe areas are few and far between. Mikey's crouched behind many rock structures with only 50% certainty that they're not alive, and over time he's come to the unfortunate conclusion that until he tracks down a proper cave, it's the best he's going to get.
As for food? Uh… don't worry about it.
⠀
⠀
It may have been a week. Or less, or more, the illusion of a sun or moon here doesn't really move. Mikey's count is based around how many times he's slept, and since those moments are either brief or from him literally passing out from exhaustion, it's hard to keep a clear count.
He has food now! There are these cool little worm things, and if he presses them in the right spots he gets this mediocre clunky liquid to come out, which so far has kept him decently well fed. It is green, which scared him a bit the first time, but it's not glow-y like the mutagen so it's safe. It also comes out of the worms… butthole… but hey, food's food! Even if it's all chunky and weird-looking, it's cool! Mikey's chunky and weird looking, anyways.
Another thing about the worms, if you push closer to their heads, their tongues are really long and sticky. They work sort of like grappling hooks, which helps avoid the issue of needing to jump really high to readjust gravity. Plus, it makes Mikey feel like he's Spider-Man, which automatically adds points.
He has three rules here, at the moment.
One: Don't touch anything if you don't know what it is. – That cute little meeping thing (which Mikey is calling Meeps, fittingly) had been really deceiving, and the giant hidden underneath him almost broke his leg. Off. He doesn't want to go through that again.
Two: Only eat and drink stuff that comes out of the worms. – Something around here makes mutagen, and Mikey doesn't want to find out what that thing is the hard way. He's injured several different creatures, most of which bleed either glowing magenta or bright green, and if you combine those you get glowing green, right? Bad news.
Three: Be quiet. – Almost everything here has different responses to different pitches of sound. The quieter he makes himself, the less stuff around him reacts.
So far, Mikey's kept himself within a few islands of where the portal is, to the best of his ability. There was one time where he got chased away from it and it took two naps before he managed to find his way back. There's a severe lack of worms in the immediate area, though, and so he's had to branch out. At least the Kraang haven't caught wind of him yet, that'd be 10 times worse than anything this dimension can throw at him.
Then, of course, is the issue of his brother's whereabouts. He hasn't spotted them coming out of the portal, or any signs of them in the area, and the portal still hasn't closed either. What's taking them so long?
They wouldn't… they wouldn't leave him alone here, right? They don't hate him that much.
Pshh… this is probably him being silly. All the stress is getting to him, or something. It's fine. Mikey's fine. Great, in fact. For once in his life, he doesn't feel like a complete idiot.
⠀
⠀
After 12 'rest periods', Mikey gets the courage to scout a nearby Kraang base for any signs of Leatherhead or his brothers.
He's really prepared. He's got two worms strapped to his belt, one for each hand, next to his nunchucks. He's loaded up on more worm juice than he'd usually dare, so his head is a lot clearer than it has been for a while now.
Mikey's entry point is what looks like a steam grate at first glance, but when he slips fully inside, he's grateful to discover that either it's a regular Kraang vent, or whatever steam or chemicals are in this air are being filtered by the filter straw thingy that Donnie gave him before he went through the portal.
Below him, he can hear the occasional Kraang chatter. None of it's in English, which is both weird and annoying. How is Mikey supposed to spy if he doesn't know what they're saying! He's practically going in clueless!
Ugh. He just needs to keep going.
Mikey digs his elbows and knees into the cold metal so that he can awkwardly crawl through the cramped shaft without pressing the worms against the ground. There's a grate to peer through every 11 panels, all of which just showing the same Kraang architecture and essentially empty hallways. Once upon a time, the concept of alien architecture would be enough to keep Mikey eager, but now he's quickly getting bored as nothing changes.
Has he mentioned his internal clock isn't very good? He could be in the vents for 5 minutes or 5 hours, and he honestly wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But when he makes it to the other end of the base without any signs of anything interesting, he's beginning to crave a bit of action, something thrilling to distract him for just a while.
Eugh, that's such a Raph thing to think.
Mikey awkwardly twists until he's facing the opposite direction, doing the same awkward crawl until he finds himself over a hallway that he's pretty sure is empty. He lowers himself carefully until his hands can feel around the grate, but the metal is cold and smooth just like everything else in the shaft and in Kraang stuff in general. No screws? Is this thing like, glued in place or something? Magnetised? Hopefully it's not bolted sideways, like into the other panels, because then he won't be able to break into the actual hallways from here.
Welp. Hopefully it's not the latter, then.
With one deep breath, Mikey bashes on the grate as hard as he can. The metal caves under the force, the grate falling from the bottom of the shaft and clattering loudly against the ground. Without even checking if any Kraang responded to the noise, Mikey drops down through the hole left behind. He lands atop the grate, causing the metal to slide against the overly smooth floors and sending Mikey toppling over.
He barely gets a few seconds to collect himself. Right as he's back on his feet, he can see the glow of blasters coming from both ends of the hallway he's standing in, and can hear the no longer distant chittering of Kraangs who don't even bother with their translators.
Crap.
Mikey takes off in a random direction, even though he knows that he's probably running himself right into a Kraang sandwich. He grabs one nunchuck off of his belt, extending the chain until he can swing it like a heavy whip. He leaps into the air, using the wonky gravity to his advantage as he hurls the chain down and wraps it around two droids. As gravity begins pulling him back down, he swings the chain and knows the two droids into the wall.
Alarms are blaring. Some lights are flashing red, but not a lot of them. They must have not been expecting an attack directly on their home dimension, because usually the entire hallways would be lit up red if Mikey so much as leaned on the wrong wall.
He retracts the chain and mindlessly appreciates the lack of recoil. The physics here are awesome. He clicks open one of the hidden blades before running forwards for a close range fight. He slashes the gun until it stops glowing, before attempting to drive the blade into one of the brain blobs themselves.
The Kraang he's attacking jumps out of its suit unexpectedly, wrapping itself over Mikey's face and blocking out his vision. Mikey lets out a surprised yelp, instinctually attempting to claw the sticky disgustingness off of his beautiful face and very important cloth mask.
Wrong move, he realises a moment too late.
With the woosh of a blaster charging, pain erupts through Mikey's shell and sends him tumbling over before he can really think. Mikey lets out a loud cry, eyes squeezing shut despite all the gunk trapped underneath his lids from the sticky brain blob. He tries to push himself back to his feet, but his shell aches too much for Mikey to bear and he collapses back to the ground, his knees and elbows that he'd been crawling on earlier now too rubbed for him to try and push on them instead.
He blindly feels the ground until he gets a hold of the nunchuck he'd been swinging a moment before. He manages it, but barely. But then he leans too much on one of the worms on his belt and the tongue extends and retracts rapidly, sending Mikey rocketing against the nearby wall.
Then everything goes black.
⠀
⠀
Mikey wakes to find his non-existent ears ringing, his head pounding with his heartbeat. His shell feels like it's on fire, while at the same being too restrained to wiggle at all.
He peels his eyes open slowly, finding them to be clouded and sticky. He feels something rubbing against them as he begins looking around, but when he tries to reach up and rub them he finds his hands to be similarly restricted.
He's in some sort of black and blinding purple room, all four of his limbs strapped down along with his shell. He can work his jaw, so luckily there's no muzzle on top of the rest of his restraints. If Mikey couldn't at least talk to himself, he'd go crazy!
Uh. Go crazy where, exactly? This is… he can't really tell by looking around… what's going on—
Right. He's in the Kraang dimension, dimension X. He probably got captured because he fell asleep… somewhere, again.
That brings the day counter to… to… ugh! Mikey can't remember.
⠀
⠀
The food that the Kraang gives him is a lot worse than the slightly chunky juice that came out of the worms. It's bland, like how he imagines oatmeal, and it's sort of like a slice of bread but there's the bad part on all sides. The liquid – he can't really call it water, it's green – he gets is what he's pretty sure is a diluted version of the worm juice. So it tastes a bit like mediocre worm, and a bit like salt water. Mikey's made some weird food choices in his life, but the meals he's getting are definitely the worst things he's ever had to eat.
He eats it, though. Not by choice those first three naps, because he's being force fed, but then he's finally unstrapped, and instead of any Kraang entering his cell, the food is slid into his cell every so often on a tray through a small flap, and hovers for about a minute before loudly crashing to the ground and usually spilling his liquid in the process.
After what he's elected to call four days in the cell, he's found himself making tiny doodles in the crust left on the floor from his spilt liquid. It's the only thing he really has to do in here, and the only alternative is probably trying to escape which might mean getting shot again.
Getting shot hurts, by the way. Mikey's shell aches.
Suddenly, the door to Mikey's back slides open and Mikey spins around, ignoring the way his still aching head protests at the quick motion. He reaches for his belt, where his nunchucks should be resting, but remembers a moment too late that he doesn't have either.
All of his gear is gone. His mask, wraps, weapons, belts, name it, he's naked right now. The only thing he's got covering his skin aside from his shell is a metal collar that he discovered is helping him breathe after he tried to pry it off and started suffocating. He hates the collar, a lot. It makes him feel less than human, and like, he's a mutant and all, but he feels like a dog with this stupid thing on! What was wrong with the filter he was wearing before?
"The one known as the orange turtle will follow Kraang to the room which is known as Kraang interrogation room. The one known as the orange turtle will not leave the vicinity of Kraang, or he will be that which is known as injured."
Mikey hesitates around the strange speech pattern for a moment longer than he should, and one of the three droids outside his cell comes forward and harshly grabs his arm, yanking him forward. Mikey's bare feet struggle to get a grip on the smooth flooring, and it's only the strong hold of the Kraang robot that stops him from falling right over.
The sudden bombardment of bright white makes Mikey squint, his already blurry eyes blurring even more until he can only see colours. Bright whites and magentas are contrasted by dark grey rock support beans, just like every other Kraang structure. The robots tug and shove Mikey forward and he's too hazy to consider struggling. After being shot by a Kraang for the first time not even a week ago, Mikey doesn't want to find out how many threats the aliens make aren't actually idle.
Eventually, a panel opens and he's shoved into a room with more glowing magenta but with the white replaced with metallic grey. Mikey's struggling begins only as the door closes behind him, the concept of an alien interrogation room not sounding very pleasant. Unfortunately, with only knock from what could either be a robot arm or blaster, Mikey is shoved into a cold table, and suddenly there are cold robot hands all over him and—
⠀
⠀
He doesn't want to talk about it.
5 'days' have passed.
⠀
⠀
After the 9 day mark, Mikey loses hope.
His entire body aches, he can feel his heart beating in so many places that he definitely shouldn't. His wrists are thinner than he can remember, even when his family ate a strict diet of algae and worms he looked healthier.
April never mentioned Kraang captivity being like… this. Then again, April was probably kept in better conditions, considering they needed her alive at the time. Plus, she hadn't actually done anything to the Kraang yet, especially nothing that would mean she'd be considered a violent enemy like Mikey definitely is. Mikey really hopes she wasn't kept in conditions like this, she or her father.
The concept of saving Leatherhead is so distant, now. If Mikey's friend were here, he'd know by now, right? Yeah, probably. But it doesn't even matter. Mikey can't even save his own lazy shell, how would he go about rescuing an alligator mutant that's nearly twice his height!? It's impossible.
In the present moment, his… interrogation… was a while ago, probably. He's not really sure, his internal clock continues to betray him. But if he had to say, he's probably just been sitting here for a (not) good hour.
Tears slip down his cheek and plap against the smooth floor, hopefully taking some of the Kraang gunk still stuck in his eyes with them.
The stupid collar digs into Mikey's neck, with it bringing oxygen that smells faintly of flowers. Maybe it's some sort of drug, and that's why Mikey's never considered escaping seriously. It's not like he'd ever get to know, if he removes this thing he's done for. He knows this for a fact, he's tried. The breathing tube could probably be used as a weapon, he realised some while ago, that's why he can't have it anymore.
In conclusion: everything sucks.
Mikey slowly curls in on himself, loud whimpers escaping his throat. The Kraang don't care if he cries. If they had any understanding of humans and human-esque mutants, Mikey can imagine them mocking him for his stupid emotions. It's not like the mockery could make his situation any worse.
He wants his brothers. He wants Raph, the steady wall who could keep Mikey from getting hurt. He wants Donnie, he'd probably be able to hack this cell open and get Mikey out of here. He wants Leo, his steady big brother who could keep himself safe from… everything. He wants them. He wants them all so badly. He doesn't even know if they're okay—
"Leo?" He chokes out, voice small and weak. "D–Donnie? Raph?"
Nobody responds. It's not like he was expecting them to.
"I… please. Please be okay."
Yet again, nobody responds. Nobody is listening, anyways.