TMNT – Edge – Ch.8

I'm starting to lose my inspiration a bit, so I'm primarily cranking this chapter out in search of my muse, cuz if I let it go, I'll never find it again… Ever. Help would be appreciated if anyone wants to Beta or contribute helpful ideas or something.

Started: 1-2-13 Happy New Year (insert weird acronym or something here)

Finished: 1-6-13

Word Count: 1,636

Mikey's POV is hard for me, so ima avoid doing him for a while. Lataz!

Trampoline

Leonardo

Right now I am trying to keep my sanity while being forced to watch some kind of cartoon nonsense of Mikey's. I don't even know what is going on it is so idiotic, but Mikey seems to understand it and be entertained. However Raph appears to be falling asleep despite the chaos. Through my intense boredom, I notice Donnie going quickly to his room. He should be working with Geode, not going to take a nap. There is no real reason why he would go to his room rather than staying in his lab, he practically lives there anyway. Curiosity now eating me, I get up and go check on Donnie. I ignore Mikey's protests, and he gives up on me, refocusing on the television. I stop in front of his door, patched with duct tape from years of explosions tearing holes in it and hasty patching. I hear nothing through the thick concrete walls. Undeterred, I gently knock on the door (Knocking on Donnies door has been known to set off sound or vibration sensitive experiments or inventions, but it hasn't happened for a while. However that has not derailed us from using caution). Hearing a muted 'Come in, Leo' I enter to find Don sitting by his desk, turning over an old screwdriver in his hands.

Something is wrong… I've got no idea what, but a blind man could discern that from his current condition. He may not be as closed off as Raph when it comes to emotions, but he is generally fairly solid emotionally.

Sitting across from him on his bed, I look at his hands. They are slightly trembling. "What happened, Donnie?" I soften my gaze and look him in the eyes. Even his face is shaky.

He responds in a mechanical monotone. "I shut down Geode. The memory is still in the chip, but it will never move again." This shocks me almost as much as his physical malconformities. The pacifist going against his word and more or less killing a trusting being? Absurd. Geode trusted him to do as he said he would, and he blatantly scratched that trust by killing him when his guard was down. My face must be twisted in confusion at this point.

All I can get out in response is "Why?"

He sighs in what sounds to be suspiciously self-depreciating and says, "Even without his memory of us, he would still have been a danger to us. I saw an opportunity to take out a possible threat to us, and I took it… This way, I also don't have to go scrounging about for another suitable AI chip. And the technology won't get into the wrong hands." I simply keep my eyes on his calloused hands, continuously moving.

"Why are you upset about shutting it down, Don?" I make my voice compassionate and patient, while moving my eyes to meet Donnies. His hands stop moving, and he just holds the tool, his grip on it tightening slightly.

"I… It's just that everyone always expects me to be the peace-loving nice guy, and I just wish I really was that guy… I've studied a lot of stuff, and some of that was ways to hurt people. I know even more than Raph in that respect..." While this is not entirely surprising, it still takes my mind a moment to process it. "I see ways to hurt those around me all the time. I see intricate ways to dismember, causing the most pain possible, and know ways to extend that pain… I've read some of the journals of the criminally insane and, regrettably, some of their arguments make logical sense." This really puts me to a stop, and I stare at him incredulously. "I would never go on a killing spree or anything, but some of them took a logical truth and went off with it… I believe this is why I'm so worked up about Geode. It made logical sense for me to, for all intents and purposes, kill him. If I could do it once, who's to say I couldn't do it again, this time to a real person—or people." He clenches his eyes in frustration, the purple of his mask fading to black, matching the mood of the room.

I pull Donnie into an embrace. He limply complies, not reciprocating the action. His normally warm hands are now cool.

My voice is finally able to work, so I speak to him reassuringly, "There was nothing wrong with shutting him down. I understand your actions, and your feelings about doing them." I break the embrace, and move slowly to the door. "You know we'll deal with whatever decision you make regarding your tech, you know that best." I leave the room, closing the door softly.

Mikey notices my reentry despite his previous absorption in his show. He abandons his spot on the couch to Raph, who immediately takes over the rest of the couch, to go to the kitchen. I understand his mindset, and follow him in. This way, Donnie won't be able to hear us talking about him. Mikey is sitting on the counter, swinging his legs reading one of the comic books he has stashed around the house. Typical of him to get distracted by a comic book he has probably already read. I snatch the comic book from him and toss it to the other side of the kitchen with the rest of his kitchen stash.

"So what's up with Donnie?"

I sigh, "He shut down Geode," Mikey's face changes from questioning, to confused, and back to questioning as he digests what I have just said.

"Why would he do that? He said that he was going to take off all his memory of us, and Donnie—Donnie doesn't just go back on something like that. Did he say why?" He hops off of the table and leans against the counter with his arms crossed. His crossed arms reveal his discomfort with Donnie not acting normally.

"Kind of…" Mikey raises an eye ridge, "It's strange. He didn't really come out and say it like he normally does—you know, over examining everything. He just talked. In a bit of a roundabout way, he said that he saw that Geode would still be a threat to us, so he eliminated that threat." Mikey's look of confusion at his big brother's reasoning would have been comedic had I been paying any attention. Right now my thoughts are drawn inwards, trying to force my mind to think like Donatello to know what exactly was going through his head. "I know, right. Completely out of character. Now that I think about it, I don't think Don has ever actually killed anyone. I think he's always just given them a really good whack to the head to knock them out… I can't remember a single time when he actually killed anyone."

This causes Mikey to tilt his head in thought. By this point even he, the lackadaisical, light-filled Michelangelo had killed—Many times, in fact. But he too seemed not able to remember Don actually killing anyone. We hear him break bones and cause severe injuries, but neither of us could remember him actually killing. Neither of us ever thinks about that, so it never occurred to us. Struck with an idea, I leave the kitchen and get in front of the couch, to the side of the tv's so Raph cannot ignore me.

I keep my voice low enough to ensure it wouldn't carry to Donnie's room, but just loud enough to keep Raphael's attention, "Raph, has Donnie ever killed anyone in a fight?"

I see the unvoiced question in his eyes as he answers in an equally soft voice, "One."

"Tell us."

Raph got a bit of a far off look as he sat up from his previous sprawl, and begins speaking even softer than before, "We split up to do a patrol faster and I was with Donnie. We saw a guy torturing someone to death. The guy was really close too. His breathing was fast and there was blood all over the floor and splattered across his torturer. Worst I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot. Well, as soon as he saw them he ran over. When he got there, he first rammed the end of his staff into the guys stomach and I swear I saw blood come up around it. I didn't try and stop him, that man deserved what he got. Once the guy was down and gasping, he rolled onto his side, exposing his back. That was probably the most painful part of that bastards death. Don stabbed his staff through him. I didn't know he had that much power. I guess it's from carrying around all his crap. But once his bo was in the guy, he just picked him up by his neck, with the staff still inside, and pulled it out the other side. There was so much blood, from both the humans… To finish him off, Don rammed him in the eye. By that point, the other human was dead from blood loss. I called in a tip to the police. Don just held out his staff. We had to leave before the police got there, so I had to nearly drag him out. Once we were away, he took me to the shoreline and threw his staff into the water." Raph now had a slightly haunted look about him remembering that night.

I can't get anything out of my mouth, so I look across the room at Mikey, who was behind the couch. As he sits beside Raphael, he mutters "Holy shit." We are silent.

"Yeah." Donatello leaps down from the second floor, probably having come in while Raph was talking.

~{~}~

RANT TIME—Subject matter of the day… Crappy Pop Music

I am watching the ballet of Swan Lake on Youtube while writing the first part of this. Wherever did we go wrong in our music to come out with all this pop (Justin Bieber, Lady GaGa, Ke$ha, etc.) crap! Do people simply no longer appreciate the brilliance and beauty of Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Ferling, and all of the other brilliant composers throughout history?! It is simply insane the crap music that is being produced today. And what is worse… This crap music is popular! People cannot tell whether a saxophone is a brass or woodwind 'Because it's made of metal'! Current pop music hardly qualifies as music. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need words to convey deep thought and emotion. You can tell a story just as well through dance and music.

'I don't know what's going on if they don't say anything' – Do you REALLY always listen to the words and sometimes never just listen to the instrumentals behind it? Listen to the karaoke version of something… Go ahead, I know you can get onto youtube if you're on ff… now look up the karaoke version of some song you've never heard of, listen to it, and I bet you like the instrumental version too.

'Band people are all lonely weirdos' – I'll have you know that I am a band person (first chair flute for 4 yrs thank you very much) and the band people are some of the awesomest people I have ever met. Where else can you get a bus of people singing along to Queens 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on the way to a competition, or laugh your spleen off trying to see what instruments can fit into the bell of a tuba while someone else is on top of a table proclaiming mastery of the world or some such nonsense.

THIS is good music

watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_NfxSVw3KQY

Badda BOOM