Work Text:
O'Neil Tech was a relatively young company. It put out quality goods and services, but it was only just starting to have brand recognition. Brand recognition meant more consistent sales, and more consistent sales meant stability. Stability meant they could hire more employees. More employees meant they could delegate more.
Delegating meant no more working nights and weekends.
It meant maybe Don could finally take enough time to himself to catch up with his brothers. He missed them.
(He hoped they missed him as well. That they hadn't written him off as a lost cause.)
Raph would be the easiest to get ahold of, once Don's schedule cleared up enough to take some time off. In preparation, he had started watching his brother's races. If conversation between them dried up or grew awkward, he would at least be able to fall back on talking about them.
Besides, he genuinely enjoyed watching Raph race. He was good, and it was interesting to see how he had improved since the last time Don had been able to make time to watch.
There were improvements that could be made, but that was always true of everything. And that was another thing he could discuss with Raph once he finally freed up enough time to visit his brother.
Standing at his work desk skimming over some blueprints that were about ready to be sent to Production, a flicker of green from his phone's screen caught his eye. He had been regularly keeping it propped up on a prototype phone-holder with a sports stream playing, and he eagerly turned his attention to it. They were broadcasting some kind of pre-race interview with Raph, it looked like. Grinning, Don unmuted it. He didn't usually bother with the pre-race commentary, but he was eager to see what they were talking to Raph about.
"—any concerns about the new racing motorcycle being unveiled by Dunn Industries?"
Raph scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Dunn puts out garbage. I ain't worried about a new coat'a paint on the same ol' crap."
"But what about—"
Raph waved away the question before it could be asked. "Dunn's stuff is all flash over function. I doubt he's learned any better since the last time I beat whatever poor shmuck he got ta race fer 'im."
Don snickered at his brother's blunt words as the camera switched to someone in the announcer booth. They chatted idly about "bold claims" from rookie racer Raphael "Wrath" Hamato.
"That was him being polite," Don muttered in reply, only half listening now that his brother was no longer on-screen. His eyes were back on his work, eager to wrap things up before he paused for lunch. Conveniently, right when the race was scheduled to actually start.
After a few minutes of inane chatter that he was tempted to mute again, the announcer's voice suddenly became excited. Looking up again, he caught the tail end of a sentence about Dunn revealing his company's new bike.
"Oh this ought to be good," Don chuckled to himself, grabbing his coffee cup and taking a sip of the long-cooled liquid.
There was considerable fanfare surrounding the reveal. Dunn was good at that, but the fanfare typically ended up being more impressive than whatever it was for. Like Raph said, flash over function. Don didn't have high hopes for what was about to be revealed, but he could use a good laugh.
Finally Dunn got to the point, pompously bragging about the "proprietary" specs, before motioning toward a curtain behind him. The curtain parted down the middle and pulled to the sides, revealing a tacky gold-plated motorcycle. It was ugly and ostentatious, but….
Don squinted at the small screen, frowning. Something about the design was familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. Had Dunn literally just reused an old design and slapped a different coat of paint on it like Raph said?
Reaching out, he touched the image on his phone and flicked it onto the larger screen of his work computer. At that size, it was much easier to recognize.
Staring at the motorcycle in shock, Don didn't even notice when he dropped his coffee mug, the last dregs of cold coffee splashing onto the hem of his pants.
"What…?" he whispered, eyes tracing over familiar lines and curves. His visual path kept stumbling over garish, superfluous ornamentation and shock slowly gave way to anger.
That was his design! Gilt and gaudy rather than the sleek and classic hot-rod red with chrome accents he'd planned, but recognizably his.
It wasn't just a coincidence, because he could still see the modified seat. One that would be easier on someone with a shell, but completely useless to the human riders Dunn consistently used. They obviously hadn't even had someone competent look over the blueprints and question why the seat was different, probably just assumed it was something to do with aerodynamics or reducing weight.
He'd been working on those blueprints in his infrequent free time for months! It was supposed to be an olive branch of sorts when he reached out to Raph, an offer of something to work on together that his brother could then race.
And Dunn had somehow stolen it! Stolen it and made it look cheap and trashy.
But how? Don kept those plans on his personal server, which wasn't connected to his O'Neil Tech account. If Dunn had someone hacking O'Neil Tech for corporate espionage, he shouldn't have even been able to see that those plans existed. The only way to access Don's personal server was…
Heart sinking, Don turned his head to look at the small desk tucked away in a corner of his lab, where a locked drawer held an older laptop. He had personally removed anything on it that would allow internet access, the only way to access it was in person.
No longer paying any attention to Dunn bloviating about his supposed innovations in motorcycle racing technology, Don opened up his rarely-viewed folder of lab security footage. He mostly used it for piecing together lost work, but today would be the first time it was used for its original intended purpose. Guesstimating roughly how long it would take to build a motorcycle with stolen blueprints, he pulled up the folder of footage from the correct month.
Methodically, he went through each video file and set it to play as fast as it would go. After several days worth of security footage, he finally saw someone besides himself or April enter the lab. It was the red-haired intern who started at O'Neil Tech a few months ago, Chapman or something.
Don slowed the footage and watched as the young man slipped into the lab during a long lunch Don had taken with April that had turned into a brainstorming session. He remembered his key ring, with company ID attached, had briefly gone missing that day. So April had had to escort him around the building, much to her amusement. Then when he got back to the lab, he had found it under his work desk and assumed it just fell there.
It appeared the truth was that Intern Chapel had stolen it to gain access to his lab. As Don watched, the young man glanced around to make sure the lab was empty before hurrying over to the small desk in the corner. Intern Chapson tested a few keys in the drawer's lock before finding the right one, then pulled out the laptop and set it on top of the desk. From his pocket came a small external hard drive, the kind that could hold immense amounts of data, which the intern plugged into the laptop.
The image was too small to be sure, but Don felt it was reasonable to assume that everything on his laptop had been copied onto that drive. His cheeks burned thinking of some of the non-work data that may have been copied along with his personal plans and blueprints.
(Then a spiteful little thought rose up that he hoped whoever had to go through all that data ended up opening a saved porn video in front of other people and got in trouble.)
After very little time, Intern Chaplain was disconnecting the hard drive from the laptop, turning it back off, and returning it to the desk drawer. The intern fumbled with the drawer key for just a moment before locking it back up. Then he hurried to the lab's door, opened it with Don's ID, started to turn away, then realized he was still holding the key ring and ID. From the doorway of the lab, Intern Chappell bit his lip and tossed the stolen keys underhanded toward Don's work desk. They fell short of it, but slid just far enough under the desk that Don had been able to reasonably assume they just fell out of his pocket.
Then the intern ran away and the door closed behind him, leaving the lab empty until later when Don returned with his amused business partner letting him in. April had laughed her head off when he kicked his keys with a loud jingling and discovered them under his desk, teasing him for being an absent-minded scientist.
He barely managed to get his computer chair rolled into place before he collapsed on it, staring vacantly at the continuing footage of his empty lab. His guts twisted and his scales prickled, unease creeping over his shell. He felt violated.
Someone had come to his private work space, stolen his private work, and Don hadn't even been aware until Darius fucking Dunn was flaunting a cheap, tacky version at an interplanetary sporting event. The ugly thing was surrounded by lights and confetti cannons, as if it was something to be celebrated.
He hated it.
He hated that Dunn had gotten his hands on what was supposed to be a gift and olive branch to his brother and twisted it into this…this…grotesquerie.
Don wanted to destroy it.
Spiraling thoughts suddenly came to a halt at that, latching on and exploring the idea.
He could destroy it. Not literally, with a crowbar and enough force to reduce it to scrap metal. But reputationally…he could make the theft worthless. If it never won, then that would certainly teach Dunn a lesson about the futility of corporate espionage.
And it would make him look foolish in front of all those people he was trying to impress.
Poetic justice, of a sort.
The camera switching away from Dunn and the stolen motorcycle caught Don's attention again and he turned back to the screen just in time to see someone interviewing his brother again. Don quickly turned up the volume and watched to see Raph's verdict on the situation.
"Now that you've seen the new Dunn Industries motorcycle, has your opinion changed any?"
"Just 'cause Dunn somehow tricked a competent engineer into workin' for him fer once, don't change nothin'," Raph said, stabbing a finger at the interviewer. "I'll still beat whatever racer he puts on th' thing. Anywhere, anytime."
"I'll bet you could," Don murmured, watching his brother dismiss the interviewer and walk off before the camera switched to another racer for another soundbite. "Especially with a little help…"
The beginnings of a plan were forming, he just needed to get Raph on board.
Wincing at the timestamp of the last message he had sent, Don had tentatively reached out to Raph. As originally intended, he mentioned he had seen his brother's latest races and congratulated him on the wins. Then he said he had some time off coming up and asked if Raph could use an extra set of hands in his pit crew.
Raph answered surprisingly quickly, considering the race Don had been planning to watch over his lunch was about to start. He seemed enthusiastic about the suggestion.
Letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, Don promised to iron out the details with him later and wished him luck.
Don stopped pacing and sat down on his computer chair again, then let out a giddy laugh. The pieces of his revenge plan were falling into place. It could actually work!
And if he was lucky, he wouldn't even have to tell Raph about this whole embarrassing mess.