managerbehindthrone

"I appeared in your mind after I transformed, then?"

Interesting if true and potentially a game changer.

Potentially. "What else is coming to you?"

She'll back track to the Key in a second or two.

Edited 2025-08-04 05:02 (UTC)

Phrased like that, Donnie's unsure what to think. His hand tightens around his staff, but he resists the urge to step back. To step back is to show weakness.

"When I saw that symbol. But...something about you changing...was familiar, somehow."

He shakes his head, frowning. "It doesn't make sense."

"Interesting..." Esmeryl does not quite purr, but it's clear Donnie's become interesting for more than one reason now.

She could easily take him up in the sky again and shake all the answers out of him, but something makes her hesitate about it. Something tells her that might not be the best idea.

That said, she does need answers about the Key, and she is far from naive. "Any tech you have on you, give it to me."

She crouches and holds out an expectant hand.

He can't help but immediately go on the defensive when she crouches down, hugging his staff close as he looks at her. His tech? Why would someone so clearly advanced as herself want his tech?

Donnie's hand drifts up towards his goggles, but he hesitates, looking at her cautiously.

"What do you want it for? There's nothing to track these through..." he warns, not seeing why she'd break any of his things save for those earlier concerns, but he's still very guarded about letting anyone see his tech, especially given the treatment she'd shown him earlier.

Perhaps it's curiosity that allows him to continue with the motion, slipping his goggles from his head, holding it out carefully for her to take.

For a second, Esme half expects the googles to turn into a baby mimic. Yet it doesn't, and despite knowing this was to be the outcome, her wings droop.

"And the bracer. I will not destroy them. However, I know you record everything."

Again Donnie might be caught staring. How does she know? He glances down at his arm, pulling up the sleeve of his hoodie to reveal nothing but the black wraps he's taken to wearing, that match his leg wraps.

"I haven't used the bracer in over a year. I've updated the model..." he says, still looking somewhat stunned, even as he awkwardly sweeps his other hand (and bō) over his left forearm to bring up the holoscreen in demonstration.

She knows who I am, somehow. I know what she is... Why do I know??

Edited 2025-08-04 05:51 (UTC)

"Pity. Ilex was fond of the form." The words will mean nothing to him, but how many times did she listen to Donnie's aggravated grumble over the mimic's choice?

Too many. Never again.

The holotech would have been a solution to that. She would be what she stares at and not the black wraps, the colour of his stone arms. No, just wraps. Flesh and blood where stone once was. It would be easy to break it, to remove the limb, assuming the tech is inbuilt.

She'll allow him to keep it, for now. "Record anything else and I shall remove the arm. Understood?"

To back it up, she summons her naginata, blade pointed up, but ready to be used.

Illex. Latin for decoy... but somehow Donnie feels it also pertains to something more significant.

He replaces his goggles, feeling better for it, but a frown once again creases his brow at the threat. His eyes widen as she brings her naginata to being, the impression two-fold as the implications of how she means to remove his arm overlap with ...something else.

A memory.

He stands across from her, bowing as one would to a sensei before sliding into a stance, his grasp firm around the cool alloy of his modified tech-bō, the glowing energy blade that tips it almost a match for the color of his own mystic tech-

Once again his breath catches in his throat, and Donnie brings up his free hand to his head, wide eyes staring at nothing.

"Wh...what was that..."

Esmeryl squints at him. Something happened because she brought out her weapon? Or mentioned the mimic?

The Empress isn't sure what to make of this, and she can't help the concern that slips into her voice. Something softer, more open than she has so far.

"What was what?"

It's a different sort of fear that's on his face as Donnie looks cautiously back up at Esmeryl, not necessarily in fear of her, but of things he can't understand.

"I...don't know," he says carefully, shaking his head slowly. "It was like...a thought. A vision of some kind?" He frowns, confused. "Like we were...about to spar or something..."

Donnie looks down at his weapon, very much wood rather than metal.

Esmeryl stills, then cocks her head. "Describe it?"

It could be anything. It could be everything.

It had been both fleeting and yet so clear, somehow. Donnie blinks at her, then closes his eyes, trying to hang onto the memory.

"...you were standing across from me. But you were much bigger. We bowed, and then I stood..."

He shifts his position, mimicking what he'd felt, even though he hadn't seen himself, but he has a feeling he'd been mirroring the stance Esmeryl had taken, and he angles his staff the way that she had, eyes still closed.

"How?" It's a choked demand, filled with more emotion than she'd like displayed to this - this whatever this Donatello is.

Not her son, but with his memories. It doesn't make sense. No of it does, and it's only the sharpest invent that keeps her from snatching him up and shaking him until answers fall from his mouth.

"You are not him, yet you recall? Know the stance I -"

Taught him to take before spars and practicing the katas. Something to focus the mind and hone it.

A memory floats up. You did well today. I am proud and so you should be as well.

"... My true height is closer to 40 feet."

Muscle memory is stronger, tugging him to go through with the motions, a simple routine of strikes and blocks. He shouldn't know these. It's both similar and yet so very different from what he's been taught with a bō.

The difference in Esmeryl's tone is enough to have Donnie's eyes snap back open. He looks at her, shaking his head once again, lacking in the answers he's sure both of them are seeking right now.

"But you're...so small." Even then, he's sure those wings could still be suitable enough a cover. ...why does he keep thinking that?

"You keep talking like you know me. Where did we meet? We...had to have, somewhere, right? I wouldn't be remembering these things otherwise, why do I know these things???"

"The R2. Does that mean anything?"

It's another demand. A test, this time, as hands fist and wings flicking out before sitting tight against her back.

If he is her son, just returned home without his memories - she knows that can happen - then perhaps she has triggered something by coming here.

If he is not her son yet is with powers from his mystics she does not know about (unlikely), then this world, this universe, ill be down a Donatello.

"The R2..."

It shouldn't mean anything, and yet it's like the final straw that breaks the camel's back. It's a key that unlocks a door he hadn't realized had been there and sealed shut until things had started seeping from beneath the crack.

Several years' worth of memories pours into his mind, an alternate life he hadn't realized he'd lived, rushing in, and with it so many flashes of faces, a whirlwind of emotions...

It's almost overwhelming, and while only a handful of seconds pass, inwardly it seems like so much longer. Donnie's eyes go out of focus, his balance faltering as he loses all sense of where he is in that moment. His grasp slips from his staff, and the turtle doesn't look long in following suit, legs giving out beneath him as he starts to collapse like a marionette whose strings had just been cut.

The reason Esme's hands hover close is many. Yes, it is to ease the boy down. Her son would appreciate it, even if she hands are rough.

There is, after all, still the dwindling option of this not being her son, its a threat and a reminder she's not above pinning him again.

"Well?"

Oh, he does, even though he doesn't immediately register it, but he automatically clings when he feels something near him. That's about all Donnie can do until he feels the ground beneath him. Well, sitting works. For a moment he just tries to breathe.

"...I forgot everything. I...don't know if I was supposed to be able to remember it all," he says, sounding shaky. Slowly, he lifts his head to look up at Esmeryl, only lifting a hand to scrub a sleeve across his eyes once he's sure he's not going to pitch over.

"Stupid Primes..." Because that clearly has to be the reason. Donnie sighs.

"I'm sorry..."

"I do not believe we were to remember when we went home to our worlds." Slowly, the roughness fades into something far more gentle as she sits beside him.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Donnie. It is I should be sorry. I was rougher than I had any right to be."

She does regret it, in her own way. "Though I believe you have grown stronger with your mystics."

"No, probably not," Donnie grumbles, pulling his knees in, but hunching over to hug them makes his back and arms ache all over again, so he settles for sitting cross-legged as he tries to hide a wince.

"...I mean, you did practically crush me to death. That would've sucked after surviving the Kraang." Yeah, he can't not be upset about that. It did hurt!

"Have I..? I didn't get much better instruction here for it...but it still came pretty naturally once we all managed to connect. I think I was trying too hard to understand it, over there."

Edited 2025-08-05 06:26 (UTC)

"Mmmm. And no... revives here." A horrid thought - one that sends a lance of fear through her core, yet not for her but her son. For his brothers, too, she supposes. "Truth. I hurt you and you will show the marks of my callousness."

She carefully drapes a wing over him, careful that it doesn't actually touch his shell.

"Yet, I did not believe it was you, my brave son, but rather a version easily cowed to fear, only useful for information with potential as a hostage."

She cocks her head. "While I am pleased your brothers can't track you, I am also disappointed. What if you had been in true danger from me? Regardless of growth in abilities or not... I could have done much worse to you."

Edited 2025-08-05 13:40 (UTC)

The turtle huffs. "Wasn't that overdoing it just a little?" he asks flatly. False bravado, perhaps, but to think that were he any other Donnie than the one Esmeryl knows, he'd have been dead. What a stupid way to go after dealing with everything else. His brothers would never forgive him for it.

"...I know. I haven't yet worked on updating their phones to use the tracking devices I implanted them with. Everyone's still recovering..."

"I wouldn't have killed you; I likely would have kept you as a cute pet. A reminder of what I had. What I lost." Esmeryl shrugs, seeing no reason to sugar coat it. "Sentimental, perhaps. Yet I am glad that is not and will not ever be the case. You are more than that to me, Donnie."

She's soft for very few people in her life. "I understand. I do." How many times had she been confined to medbay over her long, long life? far to many. "Yet 'recovering' is no excuse for leaving yourselves so vulnerable. You are stronger here, yes. You will finish your work and ensure your family is safe."

She's worried and showing it in her own way, and this is in no way related to a twinge of guilt at the back of her mind. Not at all.

Oh the look he gives- as though being kept as a pet is any better?

Donnie sighs. Decepticons.

"...why do you think I was out here? Just for fun? I was trying to set up new relays to boost our signals underground. They're still rebuilding up here so I don't know how long a full restoration will take, but I'm doing what I can to make sure my family won't have any more surprises dropped in on us."

Esme blinks at the look; she doesn't get it. When the alternative is death? Being a pet is much better.

But moving on.

"Point." She eyes him then sighs. He has no battle shell on, so she knows he's been climbing instead of flight. "If you desire, I might be of aid in this endeavour. Though.. if I came through..."

Something else might have.

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