When the teleporter began to glow and whine, Harold got up from his work to see who was coming through.
He hadn't expected to find himself eye-to-eye with Metalhead's electronic gaze.
He looked Donatello up and down, as his labmate emerged fully from the portal. "What have you done to my robot?"
Without warning – typical behavior from the ninja - Don reached out and grabbed Harold by his lab coat lapels, yanking him close. "Let's get one thing straight. It's my robot. Keep your hands off." He pushed the scientist away, hard enough to make him stumble as he tried to stay on his feet. "As I said to Professor Honeycutt when I asked him to help me put new legs on, I don't know why you made Metalhead so short, but I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life looking at people's –" An odd pause. "Stomachs."
"The rest of your life?" Harold spluttered, disregarding the end of that sentence. "And what do you intend to do with your body, which maybe you have forgotten is still taking up space in my lab?"
Don regarded him steadily. "Dissect it."
That brought Harold up short. "Excuse me?"
There was a strange glint in Donatello's LED eyes. "I've always wanted to know what's inside."
Harold would never convince anyone that he hadn't had the same thought many times since meeting Donatello, but now that the opportunity had arisen, he found himself strangely squeamish. "Well, I suppose you want to talk to your family about it first."
"Not really," Don replied. He glanced around the lab, then clenched a fist. "Let's do it right now. Before I lose my nerve."
He almost didn't flinch as Harold lowered the bone saw towards his plastron. For a moment he thought he was having one of those strange experiences of watching something horrible seem to happen in slow motion, and then he realized Harold was deliberately hesitating. Deliberately giving him a chance to change his mind.
"Just do it," Don snapped. "I'm not going back. The only value it has to me is as an anatomical specimen."
Dimly, he recognized that he was creating unhealthy psychological distance between himself and his former body, but he didn't care. Burial would provide him one form of closure; dissection another. Once his internal organs were laid out on the gleaming steel trays, there would be no more pretending he would ever be a Turtle again.
Tiny particles of bone clouded the air as Harold cut him open.
Inside, it looked much as he had always expected: a weird mix of terrapin and human. As they worked, they spoke into a recorder, just as any responsible medical examiner would.
"Heart is… three-chambered," Harold reported, as he examined that organ. "Located near midline. Anatomy otherwise human." He cut the muscle loose and placed it on the first tray.
In a similarly clinical tone, Don reported the positioning and dimensions of the lungs, then moved on to the digestive organs, liver, and kidneys. As he worked, he sensed the information being recorded into his digital memory, as effortlessly as he had learned about the Technodrome's fusion of Neutrino and Utrom technology.
He and Harold progressed through skeletal structure and musculature, excising samples for preservation and later study. Much of the body they left intact – even cosmetically repairing the fatal injuries – so there would be enough left for a traditional burial.
"Where is Honeycutt, anyway?" Harold asked, as he turned off the recorder and began to close up the final incision.
"Ah…"
"I had not intended the term shortcoming as a pun," Honeycutt commented, as he watched Donatello experiment with his newly-lengthened legs.
Don shrugged. "Either way. I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life staring at people's chests."
Honeycutt couldn't seem to respond to that.
"Which isn't even an interesting area of anatomy to a Turtle," Don clarified.
"As you say, Donatello."
Don would have rolled his eyes, if he could have. Instead, he made a mental note that his next upgrade should involve a more expressive face.
"Whenever you are ready to resume our work, I will be in the control room," Honeycutt said, and turned to head in that direction.
"I… I think I'm going to let you finish it," Don said. "It's time for me to go home."
Honeycutt nodded, understanding. "In that case, I will be in the control room… calibrating the teleporter."
"And… you?" Don asked.
Honeycutt gazed into the middle distance. "When I am done here… whatever done means… it will be time for me to go home as well."
"Will I see you again?"
"Who knows?" Honeycutt replied, not unkindly. "The universe is a vast place, and yet it seems our fates are intertwined. I would not be surprised if our paths should cross, someday." He moved towards the door. "I will look forward to it, Donatello."
Don helped Harold prepare the body and pack the dissected organs in formaldehyde. It was strangely fascinating to see himself disassembled this way, just as he had taken apart his computer, many times before. Only this time, there was no putting it back together.
"I'll download the recording onto a flash drive for you," Harold said, when the lab was cleaned up.
"No need." Don tapped the side of his head. "It's all in here."
"Ah, of course." Harold seemed a little too pleased with this information. "Truly, the melding of my genius and yours is –"
"Harold, that's disgusting."
"Meh." The scientist made a dismissive gesture. "You just dissected your own body, and you call my work disgusting?" He pressed a paper bag into Donatello's hands. "Well, here's what you wanted. Now get out of my lab."
"Ever the consummate host," Don grumbled, taking the package. "How could I not feel completely at home in Metalhead."
"Ever the picture of gratitude," Harold snapped back. "After I spared your life, saved your life, and allowed you to assist with my projects."
"I'm honored." Donatello pressed a hand to his chest, in a gesture of sincerity. "Truly."
Harold pointed to the door. "Out."
Don went, smiling on the inside. Real friends help you hide the bodies, he'd heard it said – but friends who provide you a new body are in a class of their own.