Chapter Text
Stealth.
What an odd concept, stealth being one’s primary defense and chosen weapon. Oh sure, his family could , but it was never a necessity, more just an option they never picked. Drax had summed it up perfectly once.
“With power like yours, what need is there for deceit and deception?”
Leo was going to blossom in this world— lies, trickery, strategy, they seemed so much more prevalent here.
Maybe because everything was… weaker, for lack of a better phrase.
For example, the bots he was currently watching. What a normal meeting this was, two men walking home from work late at night, not a wire or light to be seen despite what Donnie knew. Minions of this world’s purple dragons, perhaps? His technopathy was fairly weak if he wasn't touching something, but he knows an energy weapon by fucking taste.
He’s half tempted to leave them be and keep his search up for any actual threats, but just as he’s standing to do just that— some part of his brain, overreactive and petty as it is, listened to perhaps too frequently, whispers the image of his own dragons finding out he left them be without so much as a cuss thrown their way, and knowing those bastards they would find out about it.
By god, they’d take it as a win, and then he’d never get rid of that unearned ego of theirs.
It would be quick, just a tap and they’d be bricked, nothing more than slag heaps. It would have to be considering his counterpart was already sniffing suspiciously close to their trail not even a week after they ran.
He sighs at that internal gluttonous petty side and spins on his heel, dropping off the roof in front of his targets.
As soon as he lands, the two men’s heads snap towards him, arms held straight out and shifting like a transformer to reveal the energy weapons Donnie had been sensing. He raises an eyebrow, tech now leaning on his shoulder.
“That’s new, also chrome? Really? What year is it 2012?” he snarks, after all he’s got a title of the funny one to defend.
The bots, assholes they are, ignore him and turn to each other.
“Krang, Krang sees a turtle that is enemy of the Krang in front of Krang, but the turtle does not look like the enemy of the Krang turtles.” His mind grinds to a stop.
“Krang agrees Krang, the turtle must not be the enemy of the Krang turtle.” What—
“Perhaps the turtle is the source of the energy the Krang is searching for.” —in the actual—
“Brilliant idea Krang, Krang will scan the turtle for energy sources.” —name of William Bullokar, was that ??
He’s not even thinking as his staff wacks a device out of the left’s hands, ripping the entire arm off to the clavicle and sending it flying across the street with enough force that he hears the brick across the way crumble.
“Are you two fucking braindead?” he spits out, a sort of fury starting to well up past the baffled confusion, like when he saw some new nonsense from a flat earth group on reddit, or an anti vaxxer made it onto his twitter feed— because honestly , how do you fuck up basic grammar that fucking badly?? “Genuinely, is there perhaps a glass of water where your hard drive should be? Peanut butter slathered on your RAM? Maybe some cockroaches managed to wiggle their way into your processor, I feel like I just had some sort of brain aneurysm!”
“The Krang demands that the—” he cuts it off with a glowing purple utility knife to the skull.
“No, no shut up, right there, you can’t use ‘the’ as an article so many times in a row like that, what the actual fuck, who does that? Why would you do that, it’s so fucking unnecessary!” He’s stalking forward now, wacking the other bot into the wall with his staff. “And you’re not even using proper nouns, I didn’t think there was really such a thing as an improper noan but I think I fucking found it, by fucking tenjin you’re a fucking disgrace to the english language!”
He’s about to continue when the one he’d stabbed steams, the middle pops open, and some fleshy chewed-gum creature barely the size of a basketball crawls out, tendrils dragging it along the ground in an almost limping manner as it squeals. He tilts his head in fascination for a few moments before the name they said finally struck, glancing at the one he had slammed into the wall and watching with muted curiosity as familiar green blood oozes from the cracks around the torso, staining the suit and wall.
“Huh,” he muses to himself, summoning yet another utility knife and, without looking away from the dead one, pins the escapee to the concrete, noting absently the sound of the walkway cracking apart, and the (he assumes terrified and pained) scream it lets out. “You're awfully weak for claiming to be Krang. Small, breakable, your tech folds like wet paper, but I will admit…”
He pauses his musing, flicking his staff to the side and following the body that's whipped to the ground, firing off a blast of energy that melts a hole straight through where the Krang would have sat if it’d managed to survive the first battering.
“…you’re smarter than your counterparts,” he finishes with a smirk, listening to the echoing screams and shrieks from the one left alive as it witnesses the fate of its brethren.
“Now now,” he tsks, turning to the one he had pinned, gently nudging the knife embedded into its side, “quiet down, that won't help you, and stop trying to run, you'll only die hunted like the rest of your kind.”
Its screams peter out, terror in its wide eyes as each attempt to curl up and protect itself only served to agitate the knife buried in what had to be some sort of important organ.
He hums, standing from where he’d crouched, and making his way over to the suit the thing had worn; laying a hand on its chest, he smiles to himself when he finds what he wanted nestled within. With little hesitation considering how easily these things had fallen apart, he pierced the neck of the bot, claws sinking into it like a bloated carp’s belly, fingers wrapping around his target— and with a precise and calculated yank, the part came free, wires dangling and dripping with oil like some sort of intestine pulled from a rotted corpse.
With false care, he gently placed the sensors over the pinned ball of flesh, simply shushing it again when it cried out at the lubricant dripping into its open wounds. Satisfied that the translator would work in its current state, he sat back on his heels, tech bo across his lap an innocent warning, letting energy pulse to his markings and swirl in his eyes.
Then, tauntingly, he smiled at it, doing the best he could to copy Leo’s friendly grin when talking to an enemy.
“But if you tell me what I want, your atoms won't end up turning negative like your buddy over there— and let’s use proper english this time, shall we?”