This was the opposite of all of the assumptions that Tony had been making, at it took him a moment to recalculate, leaving him looking entirely stalled out as he continued to stare up at the water with just a furrowing of his brow. To him, Donnie had been a very straightforward boy-to-transformative-mutation situation. The other way around hadn't even occurred to him.

"You're actually a turtle," he eventually accepted. Then, accusatory, "I thought you were a mutant." They had clearly been going about this all wrong, too focused on their armors than baseline bodily needs--Donnie hadn't even thought to build those into his armor. Maybe being transformed from turtle-to-boy did something damaging to his basic self-preservation. How Tony managed to express that concern was, "Are you supposed to be eating lettuce or something?"