TMNT
1988
SEASON 1 – EPISODE 1 "Tired of failure"
Shredder skulked in his Command Deck, staring hopelessly at the ruptured viewscreen. Everything in Krang's technodrome was going wrong. His technodrome, Shredder reminded himself. Krang had long ago withdrawn into his laboratory, ever since that fateful day when the Turtles had rammed their Van into his exosuit. Shredder sighed and shook his head, rattling his rusty helmet. Everything from that point on had gone wrong. Krang had refused to come out of his laboratory until his body was repaired. He had sent Bebop and Rocksteady running back and forth from the storage room getting supplies. But the exosuit had proved beyond repair, and it had been months since Krang had left his lab. He would dissolve in fits of fury, and his angry wails of wrath would be heard all over the technodrome. The technodrome. Shredder remembered when a few weeks after Krang's body had been destroyed he, Shredder, had driven the technodrome onto earth and had launched a full assault on the turtles. He had destroyed their lair and had captured on of the turtles, Donatello. Oh that had been a great day! Shredder remembered how the shellback's screams had sung him to sleep like a lullaby as the turtle was being tortured. But that victory did not last. The turtle had escaped, opened a portal into dimension X, and blown p the Technodrome's fuel cells, sending it through the portal in a mayhem of flames and blaze. Nothing had ever worked after that, and the technodrome had lost most of its potency. Now it was just a junk heap, a tomb encasing its tenants forever. Shredder had thought about leaving, but where could he go. Where could any of them go? Shredder felt complete hopelessness, not for the first time, and then a smoldering rage against the turtles. The tables would turn one day, and then watch out mutants! It would be in these moments Shredder would stride up and down the Technodrome's hallways, contemplating strategies that would never leave the drawing board.
Suddenly
Shredder's thoughts were cut off by a wail from Krang' s
Lab.
Another fit. Shredder stomped across the command deck to
Krang's Laboratory.
The lights were all out, and the only
illumination was a single candle that threw everything into shadow.
From what could be seen, the laboratory was a mess. Soot and fire
stains coated the top of Krang's work desk, and pieces of tangled
wires and machinery were scattered all around a stretcher upon which
Krang's Android body lay disassembled. The walls and floor were
stained with month old moldy Raisin Brain, as if Krang had thrown his
cereal in a paroxysm of fury.
"Ruined!" The brain gurgled, his
back to Shredder, slapping a wet tentacle against his ex-exosuit.
"RUINED!!" The brain threw his face to the ceiling and wailed.
A
roof tile fell off the roof and hit the brain on the head. Krang
whimpered and began to cry piteously. Shredder cleared his
throat.
Noticing Shredder for the first time Krang turned his
splotchy pink face to Shredder. His eyes were red with hatred.
"Shredder! You must help me have my revenge on the turtles!"
He hissed, his face turning purple as it did when he was
angry.
Shredder sighed. He had been through this with Krang
before.
"Krang, we all want revenge on the turtles. But we can't
do it without engine power! Our plasma cells are completely
destroyed, and we're running off diesel power!" As if vegetable
oil will mobilize the technodrome Shredder thought.
"You Know
how hard it is to get Bebop and Rocksteady to farm for the
Technodrome's vegetables! We can barely produce enough surplus
power to run monthly radio-scans for a sign of General Traag, and
that alone is running us dry! Ever since you-"
Shredder stopped.
Every time he thought of the period after they had been blown into
Dimension X and Krang had dumped all the excess plasma they had
managed to salvage into trying to revive his body he wanted to grab
the brain and shake him.
Count to
ten he told himself 1-2-3…
It
would accomplish nothing to yell at Krang. Even a small rebuke these
days would make him cower and cover his eyes with his tentacles and
wail incessantly
"I have no need for General Traag." Krang
burbled. "I have found a… way to traverse dimensions!"
This
time Shredder really did grab Krang by the shoulders and shake him.
"How Krang, How?! You must tell me! I must have revenge on the
turtles!" He couldn't explain it. He felt a need to destroy the
turtles, to eliminate them. Even as Krang opened his mouth to
respond, Shredder mused:
Is my
hatred for the turtles simply an inner darkness within myself? I have
to direct it at something, yet when that object of my hatred is gone,
my hatred stays to consume me? Krang
was saying something, but Shredder couldn't listen. Because in a
doorway behind Krang Rocksteady was running to him, yelling.
"Boss!
Boss! We got Sumtin'!"
He was waving a small portable
viewscreen, out of which the opulent face of General Traag looked
out.
To Be Continued…