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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.

That is a concern that he hadn't considered until now, his brow furrowing with a new worry. But that universe was vast. What all could have done so?

"The space bridge usually isn't in the habit of sending people to other worlds- oh what am I saying, that is exactly what it's been doing, just...not the other way around so far as we've known." His expression twists into something bitter. "Your being here of course completely dislodges that theory."

Donnie sighs heavily. He doesn't want to deal with this!!

"Indeed." Esmeryl is silent for a few moments as she mulls it all over. She's no scientist, not expert on any kind of technologies, but she can make guesses and assumptions.

"Perhaps there is away to track if other portals have opened?"

"You just came out of one, so maybe I can pick up on the residuals..." Donnie murmurs, pulling his goggles back down to scan her.

"I picked up the spike of energy from when the portal opened, just before you came through," he continues, bringing up his computer with a sweep of a hand over his wrist. He taps at it before lifting his head to scan the skies.

"Haven't picked up anything else before then, but then this is the first I've been up topside in a while."

Donnie looks back at his holoscreen, pulling up windows and a map showing patchy areas that might be where power still hasn't been completely restored.

The residual energy is faint - similar to the spacebridge, but not. Different yet the same; perhaps a touch of faint magic, too.

"Like when the spacebridge brought in newcomers, then?" It's really all she has to compare it to, outside of when the energon shipments made the journey into the Dark Nebula. But that was more a blip, not a spike. Something designed to be hidden.

"Understandable, considering." She peers at the map before frowning. She's not seeing anything herself...

"What is that?" She points to a faint dot in an otherwise power-less sector hit hard by the Kraang invasion.

Something about the energy reading is distorted but also familiar-ish.

"Huh..." Donnie strokes his chin as he studies the scans. He's not sure that there'd been magic involved with the Space Bridge, but he's not quite sure what to classify the Primes' power as.

"Sort of? It does take a tremendous amount of energy when it does function in that manner- energy that we hadn't managed to pinpoint where it was coming from, since it would have been enough to drain the entire ship."

Donnie hits a few more keys, glad to see the last relay he'd just installed seems to be operating. He hadn't gotten a chance to calibrate things before he'd been nabbed.

"That... Hm." He focuses on that sector, toggling a few overlays, bringing up the outline of the city's map.

"...that's near Metro Tower. That was more or less ground zero for where the Kraang established their gateway to pull their ship through. Also the most contaminated area, although I think whatever the Kraang left behind should be mostly benign without their influence. No less gross though."

Esmeryl is extremely tempted to ignore it, to do anything else that doesn't have her acting like some goody two shoes Autobot. Talking science with Donnie, aiding him with his relays. Finding something she could disguise as.

(Changing her colours to something not Kraang-ish.)

She sighs silently. "Mostly is not all. We should investigate, if only to ensure we kill it should it prove to be a threat."

"..." Donnie drums his fingers against his arm as he stares at that little anomaly. Going back there is the last thing he wants to do but... This is kind of why he's got his system up.

He sighs.

"Yeah. We probably should," he grumbles, shoving his goggles up as he turns to face Esmeryl.

"First, though... Where is your tech-bo?"

She nods to the wooden one he has with him. ".... did it break?"

She hopes not.

"Ah..."

He actually winces at the reminder. Sighing again for completely different reasons, Donnie steps over to kick his bō up from the ground, catching it in hand.

"It did. Destroyed back with our home. Unrelated incident from the Kraang," he adds, his expression hard. Certainly he's learned and gained so much then, but the loss still hurts when he's allowed to think about it.

"I am sorry for its loss." Esmeryl means it. She knows well how proud he was of it, and how much it meant to him. "May this one serve you just as well."

Even so, she transforms back into her alt, and with a wry smile, settles into a cat-loaf so he may climb on for a ride, if he wishes. "You may create a saddle, if you desire."

Not that she'd ever let him fall.

Donnie smiles bitterly, not necessarily at Esmeryl, but man. He misses his tech-bō sometimes.

"This one's just as much mine," he says, giving it a spin. He lifts his head, unable to keep from a grin as he watches her transform then, and he clambers up between her wings, just behind her neck.

"I think I'll be fine." He pulls up his map again, tapping in a quick lock on their destination. "All right, ready when you are."

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