revivalproject | Connect This Space Between

Entry tags:

Connect This Space Between

WHO: Donnie and you..?!
WHERE: The Warrens
WHAT: Taking things one step at a time...
WHEN: Post volcano eruption
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: Will match tag format.

i. hanging in there
The trip down had more or less been a mechanical process. Just follow everyone down, one foot in front of the other. For all that he's observed, the whole matter of a volcanic explosion happening somewhere overhead was still a difficult thing to process, or perhaps it was just everything else with that just topping it all off. He'd traveled in uncharacteristic silence, just waiting for that last straw that would possibly make him snap.

Thankfully he's been able to hold it together. Fresh water helps, and having other things to mind has kept his thoughts from spiraling completely out of control. It might be an odd sight to see a humanoid turtle carrying a makeshift tank with some kind of local alien turtleish creature in it, but Donnie's clung to it like a lifeline. And then there's DATA, Tony's strange little robot-spy-camera who's apparently been demoted to a cantaloupe as Donnie's chosen method of carrying him along is by a net-like bag. But now there's space and they can rest, so they're set down while the teenage turtle tries to get some feeling back in his fingers as he slowly allows himself to start assessing their new surroundings. Data collection usually helps him relax.

ii. like mapping out dungeons
Being underground isn't really a problem for him. He's more or less lived underground all his life, and compared to the sewers of New York, this is far less complicated to navigate.

Donnie takes to mapping things out, wandering the strange tunnels. He hasn't yet managed to cobble together a replacement computer for the one he sorely misses wearing on his arm, so he's doing things the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper. He's tackling things in sections, intent on working out every possible direction down one way before he'll commit to the next. Which will explain his absence from the main area at given times. This may not be some technical project to work on, but he's approaching it the same way, completely caught up in his findings.

Someone might want to make sure he remembers to eat or you know, sleep.

iii. no time for idle hands
If he'd been completely without some sort of access to tech he might have lost it by now. At least here the atmosphere is much more inviting than Calibrations. But it also means there's no doors he can close when he wants to keep to himself and work on things. Not that he's finding himself too bothered by people.

His main concern is potential fire hazards, and what with moss and mats everywhere, at times Donnie gathers up some of his things and relocates himself down some tunnel or another where there's less of a risk of burning anything when he tries to do some circuitry work or welding.

iv. aces wild
Choose your own adventure! Throw me a starter or whatever.

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It took Tony a beat to do as he was expected, clearly reluctant to ever do such a thing and glancing over his shoulder like he could find some reason to go along that wasn't just because he was basically told to. With a huff, he had to push himself along, rolling his eyes at no one in case they thought he was being obedient. "Three," he corrected. "Three hidden places. They're not stingy about them. There's more." Tony was less inclined to believe they had been allowed to wander into some central hub of secret underground torture chambers. "Third one was full of spiders," he provided belatedly, in case Donnie was wondering if it was relevant.

"Spiders?" There was no missing the note of disgust there, nor the way his shoulders lifted as he cringed at the thought of a place full of spiders. He could handle them in reasonable, preferably singular quantities, and only slightly better than beachballs.

"And how about that room with all the screens? It was down one of those other mine passageways, there's like... a ridiculously tiny opening to it...."

Donnie shrugged, stepping over towards the machinery. "Have you seen this yet?" He was assuming Tony had, but he wasn't sure how much exploring the man had been doing himself. Lifting a hand towards the equipment, he moved it slowly until his fingers pressed up against resistance, an invisible wall.

Tony hadn't considered the strange observation room as part of the same manner of facility, making him cock his head thoughtfully, slowing to a stop to scratch at his beard as Donnie investigated the machine. That had been a kind of control room that they had just walked into. Okay, it hadn't been that easy to gain access, but the same could be said of this place.

"We've met," Tony acknowledged icily in reply, giving the machinery an unimpressed once-over like he wasn't down here just to listen to it in the dark. "We could touch those screens, in that little room. There's similar ones, if you head out to that radio tower. More in the spider-place. Someone really cares about these ones."

"Here," Donnie said, passing over his precious goggles. "You're right though. No one wants them tampered with. That's not even the weird part." He pointed at the goggles before once again applying his hand to the invisible field.

Through the goggles, there was...nothing. They were clearly on and functioning once looked through, but the moment they were turned towards the machinery, it was like all readouts instantly died, the display coming up blank until Tony would look elsewhere.

"It was the same back in...the other place. Whenever I looked where the door was supposed to be or tried following power lines and water drainage."

Tony looked hesitant, eyebrows raised to ask if Donnie was sure, before accepting the goggles and just raising them to look through, watching Donnie's hand. At first, he wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to be looking at, before giving an experimental spin in place, swinging around on his toes and landing with a curious, "Hm," as he considered the machine once more.

It was probably pointless to run through possibilities like disruptive radiation, but Tony was still trying to find the logical path even as he provided, "They knew how to shut down my suit." Instead of holding the goggles up, they were suddenly very fascinating just to look at as he juggled them restlessly in one hand against his chest. "When I flew out, to see what was out there. They kept getting in. A virus that I couldn't root out." His mouth twisted to the side with an apology, cradling the goggles more gently then for the violation.

Completely fine, Donnie wasn't watching anxiously as Tony bounced his goggles around, nope, no sirree!

"Shut it down? Wh- how far did you try going? Did you crash?" He supposed that was the more immediate concern, although Tony had looked perfectly fine, physically anyway, and that armor had looked more than sturdy, at least. His fingers twitched a little, relaxing at least once his goggles weren't being tossed about.

"Whatever's generating this kind of...force shield? Refuses to be registered on a technical or magical level, something's blocking it. But whatever it is, the intent's pretty clear. These are things that they don't want messed with. If we can figure out what's generating them, then maybe...?"

"What?" Tony replied, because they were supposed to be talking about the goggles, and his misguided mission hadn't been anyone else's concern. "No--I mean, a little. It was fine. Listen, that's the thing, it only started happening after I got out passed the mountains. They have boundaries, stuff they don't want us to see." He wiggled the goggles pointedly before handing them back. "The only system they seem to have a hard time cracking is our wetware. They have to play games to get us to react a certain way." With a tap to his temple, he concluded, "For the foreseeable future, more reliable. Now's a good time to let me know if you're clinically insane."

The thought that something was tampering with his tech makes his eyebrow twitch. "I can't even do any hardware check on the code because I haven't put a computer together yet," he sighs. Still, he took his goggles back, turning them over with some suspicion before he set them back on his head.

"I have never been to a doctor so you'll only have my word, based upon whatever medical texts I have read and practices I have taught myself. And anyway, it's been said that there is but a fine line between genius and insanity."

That would have been a problem anyway, Tony suspected, and he made a frustrated gesture with both his hands, only to blow out the argument in a sigh and cross them over his chest. It still would have been nice to have a computer, as unreliable as it would have been.

"I'm very sane," Tony insisted. He might have also been very stupid and thus more insane than he had ever properly accounted for, so he was proving a lot of exceptions either way. "Never?" he continued quickly, with some disbelief that even the lunatics mutating animals wouldn't have put them through rigorous checks afterwards. He tried not to look too worried as he looked Donnie over, like he could see the inevitable cancer from his mutating cells from here, and offered lightly, "I've got someone to introduce you to, when you're ready to go back to the bullpen."

The reminder for the lack of a working computer or even his phone did not help the ever lingering urge to pull them out and find nothing there. The only reason he hadn't outright went into withdrawals was because they had tablets, and even those were more or less bricks at the moment, which he was trying hard not to think about.

Tony's surprise received a similar reaction before Donnie frowned at him. "Uh, yeah, on account of this whole situation," he said, gesturing to himself if it wasn't obvious. "Humans have this weird tendency to overreact- no offense but it's true. Actually I'm not sure how dad got by with all four of us when we were smaller..." That...must have been difficult.

Not that Tony meant to deny how difficult life must have been for someone with obvious physical mutations, but he had to counter, "I know someone bigger'n'greener than you who managed regular physicals." Even accounting for a reasonable lack of trust in the medical system, though, that did leave a pretty wide gap in where exactly Donnie had come from, if they were managing to teach their mutated child soldiers karate but not following up on any broken bones. 'Dad' was not making a very good impression. "Is that...who made you...?" Tony tried to posit lightly, despite the tense way he held out a flat hand to figure out just how insane Donnie might actually be before he let the trained professionals make that call.

Donnie absently leaned against the invisible wall; look, if it was going to be an obstruction then he was going to use it.

"What? No- well. No." He frowned, pulling his thoughts together. He could explain that, at least. "Dad was a human- an amazing martial artist and actor, by the way, but it seems no one's heard of Lou Jitsu so far as people from Earth that I've spoken to here go." He sighed.

"Anyway. Did I mention that we have yōkai living under New York City? I am losing track of who all I talk to about this. But there's this...warrior scientist by name of Baron Draxum who had some beef with humans or something and wanted to make an army of unstoppable mutants to protect yōkai kind against them. So he figured, by using the DNA of a great warrior and combining it with creatures that already had built in protective capabilities, he could accomplish this. Sooo that's where my brothers and I come in. But dad, he saved us so we wouldn't have to become soldiers for this guy. Unfortunately he got exposed to the ooze that made us and was mutated into a rat man but...yeah. Basically, that's our story."

An actor who took it upon himself to rescue underground demon science experiments...wasn't that weird. Maybe Simon knew him. The part that Tony appeared to tap out was right at the end, when a man was mutated into a rat, making him frown in disbelief, sure there were at the very least some big gaps yet to fill in this tale.

"Have you considered that you're more insane than genius?" Tony proposed, as though this whole story had been a fantasy and Donnie wasn't standing before him obviously a karate turtle. At least he wasn't in some profound denial about the sadists who were dunking turtles in ooze.

"...are you trying to make me question my sanity? Because right now we're stuck underground in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption and I don't have my phone or the internet so admittedly I am probably very close to losing it."

Donnie sighed, moving to sit over by an actual wall that wasn't invisible. He had no idea what he should be doing here and it was beyond frustrating. That Tony seemed to only question any of his explanations just made him feel like he was doing something wrong, not giving the right answers somehow, not that it made sense in the context of his or his family's origins because how could he get that wrong.

Even as Tony was saying, "That would be pretty funny," he was aware he had done something wrong, and the square of his shoulders melted a sheepishly as Donnie dropped down, not entirely sure which part was the major misstep. After a beat of restlessly tapping against his chest, he managed to offer, "Sorry," then, "I'll stop asking." He didn't really like to talk about his dad, either. "You wanted to show me something," he tried to encourage, making an aborted movement like he would zip his mouth closed, promising, kind of, not to talk. Too much.

"It's...not that. I love my family. I want to show you their pictures or even dad's movies but my phone's not here so. ...and I know it might sound bizarre but...well truthfully we just learned everything I just told you within this past year. And it's a lot, but it hasn't changed anything. If anything, it's made dad that much more cooler now that we know who he used to be. And we've always been together but now...we're not."

Donnie hugged his arms around his knees. "Anyway, I showed you already. I thought maybe it could be a link, the shielding, the response from my goggles but yeah, guess it doesn't prove much of anything. We're still stuck here and can't go any farther than where someone wants us to."

Missing someone was definitely worse than preferring to think about them as little as possible, and Tony was pretty sure he couldn't really understand the loss that Donnie was feeling. He never really had someone he relied on that much. Hesitantly, he shuffled closer, waiting for any sign that he shouldn't before dropping himself down against the wall as well, arms hooked loosely around his knees.

"Pictures aren't going to show me much more than you already do," he said, tone just a little condescending like Donnie should have known well enough that he was already the best and worst parts of his family. Tony hadn't worked out how to escape that trap, either. "Whenever my friends had kids, you know, that was the best, I'd learn so much more about them than I could have seen otherwise through those little freaks." He drew his knees a little tighter, forgetting he was just supposed to me a facsimile, feeling a sick tug in his chest that he had to quickly talk over, "Besides, you're not going to show me anything better than the giant green rat pulling Iron Fist moves I've already got in my head." He pushed out one hand, palm flat in a strike he was pretty sure he had seen Danny do before.

He could no longer reassure anyone that they would be out of this place soon, they weren't stuck and it only looked like it was worse than ever. It really was worse than ever, and Tony was pretty sure it was his fault.

He didn't much like that tone, but it didn't quite match the words that Tony said then. No, Donnie hadn't thought of it that way. He'd never had to, because there was usually at least one other brother along, and it wasn't like they had much company outside of April.

"I don't know... My brothers are all very different. They're not into any of this tech and science stuff. And dad's not...green." He had to reconsider correcting whatever image Tony had in his head of Splinter, deciding to omit the part of him being only about three feet tall. "-but yeah, he'd probably kick your butt pretty easily." While Donnie wasn't sure who Iron Fist was, that maneuver was standard enough and he'd seen his little ratman father send people twice his size flying with such blows.

It didn't much ease the homesickness but sharing about his family seemed easier than swallowing down any false reassurances about their current situation. Truthfully Donnie felt like it was his fault for not doing enough, not pulling his weight in terms of their objectives. It was why he'd been brought here, right? To fix things? To figure it out? Maybe they were lofty goals for a fourteen-year-old to have but in the end it all circled back to him ultimately just wanting someone's approval.

See, Donnie was already ruining that perfect image Tony had, making him wrinkle his nose in disappointment and from his next best guess that this rat-man was hairless. He definitely preferred the green. "Are you kidding me? I've been handling New York City rats since before you were born. I'd wipe the floor with your dad," he argued, chin raised with pride and not even glancing Donnie's way to make sure he was properly annoyed by that. He'd have to stew in it, too, because Tony was already moving on with a nod toward that infuriating machine that Donnie probably understood better than he did to point out, "They're using all of that tech and science stuff that you taught them to figure out where you went right now. If you haven't been doing the same, you've been leaving valuable assets on the table."

...probably a good thing Tony didn't bring that up verbally, because Donnie couldn't not confirm that his father's new recent pastime was to shave himself and try to pass himself off as a human teenager when he went 'undercover.' Sonic thought it was a riot, but Tony was clearly a man of different tastes and expectations.

Donnie was however quite confident that his father could beat up anyone, and by proxy they could too because they'd learned everything they knew from him and his movies.

The thought of his brothers trying to use any of his tech back home made him cringe. "Oh I hope not, they should know better than to tamper with my tech- do you think they'd do that?" Thanks, now he was horrified at the thought of his stuff getting messed up and him not being there to do anything about it. Maybe if they still had his brain capacity, but he'd since restored their IQs to their dumb-selves after realizing that living with three of him was going to be more than insufferable.

Tony breathed a laugh and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling to relinquish the evidently ineffective point he was trying to make, then gave a nod of understanding with a tick of his own grimace, yeah, he could understand not wanting anyone going through the shop. Maybe that was the more effective path. "Anything else you're glad you don't have to worry about anymore?" he asked. Plenty of things to miss and feel homesick about were never going to be overpowered by the relief from petty grievances, but Tony had convinced himself pretty well that he was better off here and sometimes that helped him sleep. "I don't miss taxes. Accountants, in general."

That...was a tough one, Donnie would have to admit. "Thankfully I've never had to deal with either. Guess that comes with living in a sewer, which I guess I don't miss the smell..." Unfortunately he didn't have much to compare to for the better when it came to living in a sewer and living...here.

At least he'd stopped hugging his knees, instead drumming his fingers against his purple kneepads.

"......"

It was telling when he was coming up short with answers. He'd been pretty content with his life. Go figure it took being dropped on a practically deserted alien planet to realize these things.

Okay, maybe that was worse. It didn't look worse. Was it worse? Tony was still holding his knees so his restless tapping wasn't so obvious as the silence stretched on and it became clear that there really wasn't anything that Donnie could think to dislike that much about life on Earth compared to a weird alien tunnel with sparse food and communal showers.

Abruptly, Tony tried to spur on, "That bodega at 16th and 8th that has the hole in the floor. Pretty sure that's where they get the water for their coffee." Maybe Donnie didn't know anything about those kind of things either. "This gal I knew in grade school who called me a sissy after hitting me in the face with a baseball. She was twice my age, I mean, please. I think I was doing alright."

"There's this one pizza place, claims it's New York pizza but it so isn't, I think they're from out of town, you can tell," Donnie attempted, half-heartedly. "...I'm not sure I follow this chain of events- was it because of whatever reaction you had to getting a baseball thrown in your face that she called you a sissy and why'd she even do something like that?"

"Oh! Things I do not miss- The Purple Dragons. Those guys really get on my nerves but I usually get the upperhand on them for the most part."

Now there was something Tony could get passionate about, hands already up in clawed frustration to commiserate, "There's one of those right at the edge of Little Italy, shameless, always full of tourists, and this wizard I know down there insists on still ordering. I hope it gives him the runs. Wizards."

He had much less passions about the girls who tortured him in his life, and a lot more resignation that took some of that heat out of him to tip his head back against the wall and explain, "She was pitching. Can't even really blame her aim, I was pretty small, she was kind of right. Still don't miss her."

Very slightly, he tilted his head to give Donnie a sidelong look, taking another wild swing in his life and asking, "Do you have a nemesis?"

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