A Million Miles Apart
A/N: Hi, again! Here I come with a new chapter and a new character! It's time to introduce the new character, (sort of) Professor Zayton Honeycutt, A.K.A the Fugitiod from the comic and the 2003 cartoon! And yes, I did get a lot of ideas and inspiration from a few TMNT movies, most notably Turtles in Space and Space Invaders, but don't worry, I have a few ideas of my own, so it won't be identical!
Hope you'll enjoy this chapter and please review, favorite and follow!
Chapter 3, The Fugitoid
Donnie was gone! I couldn't believe it, my brother was gone! I felt the stream of tears coming out of my eyes start to fall on my legs, arms and feet, but I couldn't care less about that right now. April had her hands on my shoulders and tried to comfort me, but she was crying too, so it didn't help very much, even though I appreciated her effort. Leo also had tears running down his cheeks, but he wasn't crying as much as I was. And Raph, he had completely lost it! He had pulled out his sai and was attacking the portal, screaming and yelling like a maniac.
"This can't be real! Donnie! Answer me, damnit! DONNIE!" Leo dried his eyes, walked up to Raph and tried to place his hand on Raph's shoulder and pull him away from the portal.
"Raph, that's enough! Enough!" But Raph just shoved him away and for a moment I thought he was gonna attack Leo out of anger and grief. Thankfully he didn't, but he still had the crazy look in his eyes and he clenched his fists, as if ready to attack someone or something. That's when I decided that enough was enough.
I stood up, ran up to Raph and before he or anyone could do anything to stop me, I threw my arms around Raph's neck and hugged him tightly so he couldn't shove me away. But just as I hugged him, Raph's body went limp and his arms fell to his sides and the sai fell to the ground with a klang. I leaned my head close to his ear and nuzzled his head with my cheek.
"Raphie, stop it. Getting angry and destroying things isn't gonna bring Donnie back. You know that, bro." Raph didn't speak any answer, but he nodded slowly, buried his face in my shoulder, and placed his arms around my shell. I felt as well as heard him start to cry. Leo walked up to us, placed his arms around the both of us and placed his head close to mine, crying into my mask. Normally I would've complained, but right now we all needed the comfort from each other. In the corner of my eyes I saw that April was hugging Casey, crying, and he had dropped his bag of weapons. After about five minutes, we all pulled away from each other and Raph dried his eyes with his arms, sniffling a little. Leo dried his cheeks with both hands and I just allowed the few tears I had left to fall. April approached Leo and placed her hand on his shoulder.
"Leo? Are- are you okay?" Leo took a deep, shaky breath and then shook his head.
"No, no, I'm not! I mean, I feel a little better, but I feel awful! How can I not? My brother's gone and who knows where he is now?! How can I feel okay or good in any way?" I placed my hand in Leo's and rested my head on his shoulder. He looked down at me, placed his arms around me and hugged me close once more. Casey placed his hand on Raph's shoulder, but Raph just slapped it away and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Raph, you don't have to act all tough right now, we're all friends here and we're all sad about what happened-" Raph glared at Casey with furious eyes and shoved his face up in Casey's.
"No, you're not! I bet you're happy about this! I bet you're overjoyed about Donnie being gone, 'cause now you can have April all to yourself, right? You scumbag!" Raph gathered up his sai, put them back in his belt and ran out of the Kraang lair.
"Raph!" Leo called out after him, but Raph just ignored him and ran out into the sewers. Leo and I looked each other in the eyes, nodded and looked over at our distraught human friends.
"Guys, if you don't mind, could you maybe leave us alone for the rest of the night? I have a feeling we have a lot to talk about at home with Master Splinter. Family business." April nodded understandingly, grabbed Casey's arm, and started their search for the nearest manhole.
Leo and I started to run after Raph, who- no doubt- had gone topside. We found him surprisingly quickly, on top of the Byerly Building. He sat on the edge of the building, one leg dangling over the street and the other pulled close to his chest, his chin on his knee. We quietly sat down beside him without saying anything and decided to let him acknowledge us first before we said anything. It took a while, but after a few minutes of waiting, Raph sighed, placed his arm on his knee and buried his eyes in his arm.
"I feel like a grade-A jerk!" Leo slowly placed his arm around Raph's shoulders and hugged him close. And, for once, Raph didn't try to shake Leo off; just leaned into his embrace.
"Yeah, I do, too. I should've been able to help him from being pulled into that portal and not just stay where I was." Raph shook his head, looked up at Leo with tear-filled eyes.
"No! Not like that! Didn't you hear what I said back at the lair?! I said he did nothing but mess up and blamed him for not being on our side! What kind of brother says that? What kind of brother am I?" His voice had started to crack as more tears fell from his eyes and he tried to dry them away, to no avail. Leo nodded, hugged Raph a little tighter and I saw a few tears fall from his eyes too.
"Yeah, I know. I feel awful about what I said, too. I didn't even try to listen to him, I just shot him down like he had nothing to say. We all acted like jerks." I shook my head violently and pointed at myself.
"Not me! I didn't say anything mean to him!" Leo and Raph looked at me, as if they had, for a moment, forgotten I was there. Then they looked at each other and back at me again.
"Okay, Raph and I were jerks. But still, Donnie was trying to talk to us, and we didn't listen. If we hadn't argued like we did before, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. Things might've turned out differently." We all nodded and sat there for a while. After what I guess was about half an hour, Leo stood up and stretched out his hands for us to take.
"Come on, we have to go home and tell Master Splinter what happened."
Pain. That was the first thing I felt when I came to. My head was killing me and I had a hard time breathing because of a sharp pain in my chest. I opened my eyes, and then immediately closed them again because of the bright light that attacked my eyeballs. I slowly tried to pry them open once again and this time I managed to fully open them without having to slam them immediately shut. I was lying on a thin mattress, under a thin blanket and with a wrapped chest and head. Other than that, I noticed no other injuries on myself.
My vision was a bit blurry, but after a few seconds I could see clearly and looked around the room I was in. It wasn't that big. In one corner there were a few machines and tools that I assumed to be lab equipment. But it wasn't any equipment that I recognised. There were a few computers and a few cords that looked like they were meant for charging, but I wasn't entirely sure. I sat up and looked around further to try and see if there was anyone here too, but the room was empty. I slowly got up from the mattress, stood up on shaky legs and started to look around the room, which I now saw was some sort of red cave. I walked up to the equipment, picked up something that looked like a pincer.
"Whoever lives here must be good with technology." I mumbled to myself and looked over the computers. There were a few papers filled with notes, but it was all written in some unknown language that made Japanese and Chinese look like first grade english.
"Where the heck am I? Some other country?" I mumbled as I looked through the notes and tried to spot anything that could tell me more about where I was.
"Oh, you are awake? That's good, I was just about to wake you." I jumped at the sudden voice, looked towards the entrance and out of instinct reached for my bō staff. But when I felt nothing but thin air I realized that it was gone. At the entrance of the cave was... a robot.
It was a tall robot (taller than me) with a head shaped like a football, big, black eyes with small orange lights that resembled pupils, a thick mouth that glowed orange every time he spoke, thin upper arms and legs, but big feet, underarms and chest, and three thin fingers on each hand. He spoke with a thick british accent. I didn't know why I was afraid of him, he looked relatively harmless, but I was in a different location now and for all I knew that could be intentional. I backed away from the tables with the notes and slowly put up my arms in a defensive position, so that I could fight if I had to.
"Who are you, where am I, and how did I get here?" The robot walked up to me, slowly, and held up his hands in a 'calm down, let me explain' way; slowly he pushed my arms down again.
"Calm down, son. I mean you no harm. My name is Professor Zayton Honeycutt, but you will most likely hear people call me 'The Fugitoid'. Call me whatever suits you." I took a few deep breaths to calm down and looked the robot in its blinking orange eyes.
"Fugitoid? What the heck's a fugitoid?" The Fugitoid, or Professor Honeycutt, or whatever his name was, sorted through the notes I had looked through and put them away before he looked back at me again.
"Well, I suppose you can say it's a bit of a nickname, of sorts. As you can see, I am a robot, or an android. And I am also a bit of a fugitive. And there came the name Fugitoid. And I guess it stuck with the Federation and other aliens." At first I didn't really get it. I had to think it over a little.
"Fugitive... Android... Fugitoid... Fugitoid... Oh, I get it! Ooh, it's like one of those horrible wordplays Mikey does when he comes up with villain names!" Honeycutt looked at me like I was crazy, but then his words hit me like a truck filled with bricks. 'Other Aliens?' I grabbed him by his metal shoulders and pulled him closer to my face.
"Wait a minute, what do you mean, 'other aliens'? Where am I?!" Honeycutt yelped a little when I grabbed him, but he calmly removed my hands from his shoulders and answered me with a calm, gentle voice.
"Well, I don't mean to startle or worry you, since I don't know where you come from, but right now you're in the Sidayom System on the planet D'hoonib, about a mile away from the city Peblak. Federation Territory, in other words." What...? D'hoonib? A different planet? The Kraang portal, had I actually fallen through? And had I landed here instead of Dimension X or another Kraang facility?
No. There is no way that was true. It couldn't be true. I must've hit my head when I lost my grip on April's hand and hit the ground, that was it. Nothing else.
"Oh God, please tell me that this isn't real." I muttered to myself and started to back away from the Fugitoid, slowly and keeping my eyes on him at all times and trying my hardest to not panic or start hyperventilating. "Please tell me that I just sustained a severe head trauma when I hit the ground back in that Kraang facility and now I'm doped up on pain killers, which are giving me bad dreams." Then, my shell hit against the wall of the cave, just by an opening revealing the outside of the cave. And, curse my own curiosity, I couldn't help but look outside.
My jaw dropped.
Because this was not something I could have ever made up, even in my own dreams.
A wide forest of mushroom like trees, spiky red-brown grass and creatures I couldn't hope to identify roaming around. And the sky was vast, full of thousands of big and small starts and even planets here and there, some bigger than the moon on Earth ever was.
My knees suddenly felt really weak and I almost collapsed to the ground, if not from the Professor catching me and leading me away from the opening, but my brain barely acknowledged that.
Because what he had said was true, wasn't it? This was a different planet, in a different part of the galaxy. My brothers were back on Earth, and I was here! More than a million miles away from home!
"Are you alright, my boy?" My head started to spin and I started to feel lightheaded, like I was going to faint any second. I placed my hand on my aching head and closed my eyes to try and get rid of the dizzy spell.
"I... I think I need to sit down." I felt his cold metal hand grab my arm and lead me over to a stool, helping me to sit down. He then raised his hand to rest on my shoulder.
"I will go and fetch you some water, would that be good for you?" I nodded and heard footsteps lead away from me and out of the cave. He came back after only a few seconds and then he put a wooden bowl in my hand.
"Drink, my boy. I will explain to you what I know about how you came to this planet." I sipped a little on the water, and though it tasted a little mucky, it was still drinkable. And the Professor did explain, how he had seen a light in the sky last night and had gone to investigate, how he had found me out cold and injured alongside a Kraang-droid and had brought me back here to his cave to tend to my injuries despite the dangers of being out at night. I slowly drank up the last of the water, put the bowl down on the desk and looked the robot in the eyes.
"So, even though it was dangerous, you got out of this cave and then saved my life? I suppose I can trust you if you're willing to do that. So thank you." He nodded.
"Oh, it was nothing. I had to help you, you wouldn't have survived if I hadn't. But I must ask, where do you come from?" I swallowed down a lump in my throat when I thought about my home. My brothers, April, Casey. Were they alright? I sighed and looked down at the floor.
"I come from a planet called Earth; it's a small, green and blue planet far away from here. At least, I assume it's far away from here. But, what's your story? How come you're a fugitive and have to live in this cave?" Honeycutt sighed and rubbed the back of his head.
"Oh, well, I suppose I should explain it to you. I owe you that much. You see, I used to be a brilliant scientist here on D'hoonib. In fact, I was the most brilliant scientist on this planet. A while back, I designed a device I call 'The Teleportal', a device that can transport any thing or being from one place to another. But my founder, General Blanque, had other ideas. See, he wants me to build the Teleportal so he can use it as a weapon for war, death and destruction. So I, of course, refused to build it." He sighed heavily, as if the next part was hard to talk about.
"But after an accident with one of the help-robots, when lightning struck the building and the machine's wiring got fried, my body got vaporised and my mind got transferred into the robot. And when General Blanque found out about that, he was overjoyed. See, on this planet, Robots have no rights and can be dealt with as those in charge of us please. So the Teleportal that I wouldn't build him when I was human, he could steal from my brain now that I was a robot. I have been hiding up in this cave for almost a week now. It's only a matter of time before they find me." As his story concluded, I started to sympathise with this man. He was on the run because people couldn't take no for an answer. Sounded like someone I had met before.
"Oh, I'm so sorry for you. But why don't you just leave this planet? I mean, you have the technology to travel to other planets, right?" He nodded, sat down on another stool and sighed heavily.
"Yes, I would leave this planet if I could. But, see, I have put up these protecting, let's call them firewalls, around this cave so they won't be able to track me. The moment I leave, I fear they will find me. And then they will capture me and bring me to General Blanque." I placed my fingers on my chin and thought over our options. I was intelligent, sure, but this was a new planet with new technology so it would take a while before I could master that. But I was still a highly trained ninja, so maybe I could help him. If we got away from here, maybe he could build that Teleportal, and then we could both be teleported away from the Federation. He could get away from this planet, and I could go home. It was a win-win! I nodded to myself and turned back to Honeycutt, who was putting away the bowl I had been drinking out of.
"Professor, if you did get off this planet, do you think you could build your Teleportal?" He looked back at me, put the bowl down and tilted his head to the side a little.
"I suppose I could do that. If I got enough distance between myself and the Federation Squads, that is. Why do you ask?" I stood up, walked over to him and placed my hand on his shoulder.
"Well, you see, I am a highly trained ninja; a warrior of sorts on my own planet. And I may be able to hold off the Federation Squads, should they catch up with us. If I help you get off this planet, will you help me find my way back to my home planet? Is that a fair deal?" Honeycutt thought it over for a few seconds, looked me up and down, then nodded.
"It sounds fair enough, and I really do want to get away from here. But what of your injuries? Will you be able to fight? I wouldn't want you to get hurt because of me." I gently placed my hand on the injuries. They still ached, though not as much as they had when I woke up. And when I breathed my chest didn't hurt, either. I just shrugged and tore off the bandages. There were some small bruises on my head and chest, but nothing too serious.
"I've had worse. I'll be fine, and as long as those Federation guys aren't too good fighters, I'll be okay. So, do we have a deal or what?" I reached out my hand for him to shake. He looked down at my hand, then at me and reached out his hand and grabbed mine.
"It is a deal."
A/N: Chapter delivered! Hope you liked Honeycutt in this chapter. I know that his backstory is very similar to the one in the 2k3 show, but I didn't know any other backstory I could borrow from, and besides I like that 2k3 backstory. Hope it was good enough for you, and you know what? There'll be even more 2k3 characters coming down this road! I hope you like that show!
Hope you enjoyed this chapter and please, review favorite and follow! G'night everybody!