Summary: When Donatello gets accidentally sent through a Kraang portal, he ends up in an alternate universe that may be his world's future — a future in which he has been gone for thirty years, his family has been torn apart, and the entire world has fallen victim to the Kraang-Foot takeover.
This is a TMNT 2012 SAINW story, so I incorporated the Kraang pretty heavily. While working on this story, I rewatched several episodes of TMNT to get the Kraang tech as accurate as possible. Watching several episodes back-to-back, I discovered a lot of inconsistencies in how the Kraang technology works. So I chose what made the most sense to me and embellished a little in some places.
Thanks for your reviews on chapter one!
Chapter 2
Donatello cried out as he fell through the inter-dimensional doorway. He saw a glimpse of a wild-eyed Raphael as he yelled out Donatello's name in fear, but then his brother was replaced by flashes of light and the deafening roar of wind.
About ten seconds later, Donatello fell hard onto his carapace and skidded across the ground a few feet. He only took a moment before opening his eyes to find, to his surprise, that he was not in Dimension X but still on his own planet. Relieved, he let out the breath he had sucked up as he'd fallen and pushed himself into a sitting position.
The portal had apparently sent him to the library of April's abandoned high school, and Donatello wondered if the Kraang had ever tried using it to find her at school. Papers and books had been haphazardly left on both tables and the floor; among them, a shining piece of Kraang technology caught his eye.
He crossed the room and picked up a portal device, presumably the one through which he'd arrived. Not wanting to leave his brothers alone in that fight, he tried to activate it for a doorway back, but the device wasn't responding. It looked like he would not be getting back to them the easy way.
Sighing, Donatello stored it away in his belt and withdrew his T-Phone. He dialed Leonardo's number, wanting to tell his brothers that he was alright, but it didn't even ring or go to voicemail. Though Michelangelo's rang, there was no answer. And Raphael's phone was the same as Leonardo's, leading Donatello to worry that the phones had been destroyed somehow.
The Kraang's numbers back at that warehouse should have been manageable, even without him to help, but he couldn't ignore the feeling that something bad had happened to his family. Knowing that the pizza shop was closer to his brothers than he currently was, he tried calling April, whose phone also did not ring. After the same from Casey's phone, Donatello was well and truly worried.
He shot a quick text to his brothers (Landed safely at April's school. Call when you see this. On my way to warehouse. Hope everything is okay. -D) in case his T-Phone was the one with the issue, and headed out toward the pizzeria. The quickest way back to his brothers would be to get the Party Wagon first, even if it wasn't the stealthiest option, and he would also be able to bring reinforcements, just in case.
Outside of the school, Donatello discovered that this part of the city must have been hit with much more mutagen than some others, because the Dimension X "plant life" and structures covered most of the area. Though there were no Kraang to be seen, Donatello kept to the shadows as best as he could. About three blocks from the school, he found himself hiding from a Kraang drone that was scanning for invasion survivors. He was started when a voice spoke from above him, but it turned out to be from a speaker on the building along which he was walking.
"Attention human servants who are known as the servants of Shredder Kraang, he who is your Lord and Master will now address you."
Donatello frowned in confusion. What the shell did that mean and why were the Kraang communicating to an empty city? He distantly heard the echo from several speakers further from him, suggesting that the Kraang were broadcasting throughout at least a portion of the city.
The voice that followed was not very Kraang-like at all, though. He narrowed his eyes at the cruel voice of the Shredder.
"For those of you who are still living under the illusion that you will have freedom, know this: My armies have exterminated the last pockets of resistance and I now control the entire planet. Our Kraang scientists are completing a colossal transmat device. With it, I will send forth my armies and enslave the stars, one world after another. There is no hope. There is only the Shredder."
"Remember," the Kraang-droid voice returned, "Shredder Kraang is always watching."
Donatello felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. He didn't understand what was going on, but if the Kraang were now following the Shredder's leadership, things had just gone from bad to worse. He didn't think that the entire world could have possibly been taken without them realizing it, but this transmat device mentioned could mean the faster transport of even more Kraang.
He tried dialing Leonardo again, but the result was the same. He moved faster now and narrowly missed being found by another drone flying through the air. Just as it finished passing one side of the alley he was in, he was alerted by the sound of several Kraang droids approaching the way he had come.
Donatello knew that if he ran from the Kraang and risked the drone spotting him, he might soon have even more Kraang on him, so he climbed the fire escape next to him to get the jump on the Kraang.
Five droids appeared below him, the Kraang visible in the robots' abdominal cavities, but they didn't look much like the droids he was used to fighting. These Kraang droids were black and had the same face of the Foot-bots. The sigil of the Foot adorned their red headbands. Despite their ninja-like appearance, they also carried typical Kraang laser weapons. If they were any indication, the Foot and the Kraang had indeed strengthened their alliance.
Donatello was prepared to teach them a lesson or two. He drew shuriken from his belt and aimed to embed them in the squishy pink flesh that stood out in the night. Suddenly, a pink light was on him, and Donatello found himself looking at the drone he had been trying to avoid.
"Attention citizen," called a droid below him. They were all training their weapons at him now. "Place that which is know as your hands in the air and drop your weapon."
Thrown off by being caught, Donatello's shuriken missed their mark, though one found its way into the robotic face of one of the Kraang/Foot-droids. He leapt higher up the fire escape to avoid the lasers coming toward him and swung his bo staff toward the drone.
"Kraang, it is one of the ones known as the turtles."
"Kraang repeats. Drop that which is known as your weapon." This time, the voice came from the other side of the alleyway, where several more Kraang-controlled Foot-bots appeared.
"Great," Donatello groaned. "Now it's a party."
Up was his best option. If he could only get to the roof and dispatch the drone, he might have—
A small explosion down below knocked two of the droids off of their feet as a chain wrapped around the drone and whipped it down onto the building's roof with crushing force.
"Kraang, fire at the place which is known as the roof which is the place where the rebel hides."
Donatello quickly had to pull his head into his shell as wayward laser shots aimed at the roof nearly hit him. When he came back out, the Kraang drone swung past him and into three of the droids below him. A dark figure dropped from the rooftop and took out a robot immediately upon landing in the alleyway. Donatello couldn't get a clear look as his rescuer dodged gunfire and kicked back another enemy, but he wasn't about to let him fight alone.
Donatello jumped to the platform below him and swung himself over the railing to land behind one of the Kraang, which he drove his naginata blade into. He withdrew the blade and spun his staff into the disgusting pink face of the Kraang beside it.
Out of the corner of Donatello's eye, his mysterious ally took down another with a well-aimed hit of a nunchuk and backflipped over another. "Mikey?"
They each focused on one of the last two Kraang. Donatello decapitated his robot easily a moment before a shuriken from behind him killed the alien controlling it. He turned to see Michelangelo stomping on a Kraang trying to crawl away.
Despite the unusual display of brutality from Michelangelo, Donatello was thrilled to see his brother. "I never thought I'd be so glad to have you save the day, Mikey. I was really worried when you guys didn't answer your T-Phones. Are the guys alright?"
"It's really you," Michelangelo said in a much deeper, harder voice than Donatello remembered. He stepped forward, out of the shadows. "You came back."
Standing before Donatello was a taller, leaner Michelangelo. Gone were the round chubby cheeks of his youth, and his freckles had faded quite a bit. His face was stern, though a bit of desperation shone through his eyes, blue as they ever were. He wore his vision quest bandana instead of the short-tailed one he typically favored. His body was now long, lean muscle, not a trace of lazy binge-eating on him. He now stood at just about Donatello's height. He looked like he might be decades older than sixteen.
The most shocking change of all was that his left arm was missing from just above the elbow.
Donatello gasped. "Mikey, your arm! What happened to you?"
Michelangelo settled his one nunchuk in its holster at his hip, which was also home to many of the Dimension X 'bang rocks' that he had discovered months ago in a misadventure to the freaky dimension. "You're the one who has some questions to answer. Where have you been all these years?"
Donatello's heart beat faster as the suspicion that had been nagging at the back of his mind grew. "Years?" he choked out.
"You've been gone for thirty years, Donatello."
Donatello shook his head and stepped back. "No. That's not possible. I... I'm sixteen, Mikey. You're sixteen."
"It's been a long time since we were sixteen." Michelangelo's face darkened. "We thought you were dead. You disappeared through that portal and we couldn't get it to open after the Kraang blasted it. No one ever saw you again."
"Mikey, that was only less than an hour ago for me. I fell through and landed here." Donatello pulled the portal device from his belt and showed it to his brother. "I think this is the part for this side of the portal. I guess I can't get it to activate because the other piece is broken." He put it back in his belt pocket and looked back to Michelangelo, whose face was still guarded. "What... What if you never saw me again, because I got trapped here?"
