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Some TMNT stuff really isn't for little kids. |
Chris Burnham returns to art duties this issue as we finally learn the fate of Donatello! Trapped in a mutant zoo and forced to fight rich men looking for a thrill, his mind is still broken since last we saw him. As mysterious forces gather against him, can Donnie gather himself to defeat these enemies and set himself free? Superstar writer Jason Aaron continues his exploration of the individual Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, setting the stage for their reunion.
Appearing in Grit & A Stick[]
Major characters[]
Minor characters[]
- Foot Ninja
- Hieronymus Hale
- Hunters
- Leonardo
- Michelangelo
- Park guards
- Raphael
- Various mutants
Species[]
- Humans
- Mutant ferret
- Mutant frog
- Mutant panda
- Mutant rabbit
- Mutant turtle
- Rats
Locations[]
Objects and vehicles[]
Synopsis[]
Donatello walks along a winding, empty road, heading for New York City. He thinks about how, since he came back from his last trip through time, everything about himself feels off-kilter. His body aches, he can’t keep food down and the artificial shell feels like an anvil. His body is withering away and he frequently gets fierce headaches. It has gotten so he can’t stare at a screen more than a minute without feeling like his head will burst. For him, that’s even worse than the pain. He’s trying to stay away from the mystic arts because he’s worried that he’s paying the price for how much he’s tampered with those kinds of forces.
He's not sure where else to turn. He and his brothers have grown distant since the thing happened that none of them want to talk about. They have all gone their separate ways and he guesses he’s still searching for his way. A sign shows him that New York City is one-hundred fifty miles away. Donatello figures there is only one place left to look.
Donatello continues walking and musing to himself. He walked out of Northampton a couple of days earlier. He’d been spending all his time alone in the wood, talking to a grave. He misses Master Splinter. Just then, a rat darts out of the bushes in front of him, and runs across the street to a gas station. Don chuckles. For a second, he thought about following that random rat, as though it was some kind of omen. He hopes he’s not that crazy yet. Suddenly, he here’s someone call out for help. When he asks where they are, an arm reaches through an opening in the side of a cattle trailer to flag him down. Don runs over and looks through an opening. He is shocked to see the trailer is full of mutants. The one who called out to him says that they were abducted and begs Don to unlock the door. He tells them not to worry, that he’ll get them out. Before he can do anything, someone stabs him in the neck with a syringe. The drugs take effect quickly, but before he passes out, he realizes that since he saw that rat, his head stopped hurting.
It is months later at the Sunshine Safari Park somewhere in the deep south. The park has a closed for business sign at the front gate, but lights spill from a large barn inside. The barn has metal doors on the entrance and inside is a guard station just outside a fence topped with razor wire. On the other side of the fence is a large open space surrounded by individual cages. This is where the kidnapped mutants, including Donatello, are kept. A guard ushers a man inside and tell him it’s two thousand dollars upfront and he can choose any pen. Once it’s opened, the man will have five minutes safari time.
Lying on the floor inside his pen, Donatello has no idea how long he’s been there, but it’s long enough so that he’s lost track of whatever there was to life before this place. He mutters the next part of the guard’s speech, that if the hunter can’t finish after five minutes, they go back in the pen. If he wants another round, it’s another two thousand and there are no refunds. Sometimes Don forgets who he is – until the gate clanks open and then he remembers that he’s the guy made of frayed wire and fried processors… who still gets up when it’s time for a fight.
He thinks about the hunters who come and go and how he makes himself appear to them so that they will choose him. Sometimes he doesn’t even have to try because a look through the bars tells him they want to kill him. Maybe they just want to put him out of his misery, but he can’t die anymore than he already has. However, he has to live so that he can make sure that it’s always him they choose. Pan around to the other caged mutants. This hunter carries a bat with nails sticking out of it. He locates Donatello’s cage and stops with a grin, saying that all the hunters talk about this one and this is his choice.
The hunter strikes quickly, hitting Don’s arm and drawing blood. Don counters with a chop to the bat that breaks it in half and then kicks the man in the face, dropping him to the ground. With the unconscious hunter at his feet, Don turns and stares at the guard shack. This unnerves the guards, who don’t like how he just stares at them after each fight. As one guard stuffs his face with a sandwich, the other uses the loudspeaker to tell Don that he knows the drill. Get back in his cell or he’ll get the firehose.
For a moment, Don does not move. He has been watching and listening for months as he tries to crack the codes to the cells, the electrified fence and the main gate. He’s studied how long it takes the guards to charge their tasers, and which days they come in sluggish from eating a big breakfast. The guard warns him again to get into his cell. Don turns, realizing that once he’s outside of this cage, he has no idea what’s waiting for him, so he needs more time. The hunter groans as he begins to come to and just before entering his cell, Don murmurs “no refunds”. He needs one more fight, if they can make it that long.
As Don is wrapping his injured arm, one of the other mutants asks how he’s doing. He replies that he’s just getting ready for the next fight and not to worry about him. He then asks how they are doing. The mutants, all emaciated, stare out of their cages. The little one talking to him says that they’re all right thanks to him and the food he’s managed to swipe for them. He says that they want to do whatever they can to help them all get out… to help him. They are worried because they hear him talking to himself sometimes. Don looks down at a little rat who has come right up to him and smiles. He tells the mutant in the next cell that he’s been trying to figure out the codes for the doors and that he always tells everything he learns to Splinter. He reminds him who he is because sometimes he forgets. To himself he repeats that he is Donatello. He then tells the mutants not to worry. One more fight and he thinks he’ll be ready, so if someone is sick or hungry, he’ll do everything he can to help. The mutant says he’s already done so much for them and they do want to get out because they are worried about him.
The next morning, Don is awakened by the sound of a guard telling someone that they know the rules and it will be four thousand upfront. As Don struggles to stand, he wonders at the new price. He hears the guard say that he doesn’t have to guess which animal the hunter is choosing. Don goes to the cell door and sees the hunter from the day before is back. The hunter acknowledges this and then says that they all are. Behind him are over a dozen hunters – every one he’s ever faced in the pit. They are all armed with some type of weapon other than a gun. Don guesses the guards have finally gotten tired of him. This is proved fact when the guards announce there is no time limit and sometimes you have to thin out the herd. Don turns to the little rat, addressing it as “Splinter”. He says that if he doesn’t make it, he needs him to lead the other mutants out of here and to tell his brothers… He doesn’t get to finish before the cell door opens.
Don comes out to meet the mob, immediately breaking the first hunter’s arm. He has beaten all of them before, but they have rage on their side – and numbers. He is shriveled, raw and tired and sometimes thinks he might be a little deranged. Don is hit on the head with a club and drops, and the crowd closes in on him. Realizing this is no time to lose his mind or be weak, he jumps back up again and plows through the hunters. When they are down, he rushes to gate and uses the grease left by the guards on the keypad to figure out which numbers they use. He tries the dumbest combinations first and soon has the gate open. The guards freak out that he’s coming at them and grab their tasers. Observation has taught Don that they are lazy and forget to prime their tasers, which take a full twenty seconds to fully charge. He only needs two to take the pair of guards out of commission.
Having listened to the guards talk for hours, Don knows all kinds of personal information about them. He sits at the control desk and starts trying the names of everyone they’ve mentioned. Some of the hunters are up and coming at him, so to buy some time, he flings a broken pipe at the firehose mounted in front of the gate. It unerringly hits the wheel that opens the hose. A thick, hard stream of water sprays the hunters and drives them back. Don manages to guess the code that opens the front doors and for the first time in months, nothing stands between him and the world he left behind.
However, he looks out to see ninjas from the Foot Clan crowding into the entrance. Don thinks they’ve been behind this all along. The guards wake and are surprised to see the ninjas. As the ninjas all fling shuriken at Don, he shouts for the guards to get down and quickly covers them so that the shuriken bounce off his shell. The fact that the guards are in danger tells Don that they are just old-fashioned mutant haters, not in collusion with the Foot. Don leaps up and tells the hunters, who moments ago were trying to kill him, to get back. He has to protect them because he remembers who he is – the boy of Clan Hamato and the man his father raised. He grabs a wooden stick from a nearby table and leaps, spinning it quickly to deflect more incoming shuriken. He remembers that he is the Turtle who fights no matter the odds… with nothing but grit and a stick.
A pair of Foot helicopters sit outside of the building and several mutants dash out through the open front doors. The other Turtles have arrived and are not pleased that the Foot Clan already made their move. Michelangelo taunts them for not getting here quicker in their private jet and Raphael tells him to shut up. Leonardo tells Raph to take the back door and for Mikey to stick with him. Raph tells him to shove the orders as being here to save Donnie doesn’t mean they’re going back to being one big happy family. They reach the door, weapons drawn, only to see Don standing over a bunch of fallen Foot ninja.
Striking a pose, Don tells them that the mutants out front need to be brought to Mutant Island and the guys locked in the cages can be turned over to the authorities. The other Turtles just stare at him and then Leo asks what all he’s been through. There is a slightly crazed look in Don’s eyes as he tells them it hasn’t been all bad and to look who came back to them. The rat, whom Donnie believed to be Splinter, is perched on his shoulder, but it is dead, with a shuriken protruding from its back. Mikey starts to say something about the rat, but Raph shushes him. Don then guesses the Foot Clan’s trying to kill them again, just like old times. He grins widely and Leo carefully repeats that he’s right… just like old times.
Inside the District Attorney’s building in New York City, the newly elected DA, Hieronymus Hale speaks of his youth to a group gathered in his office. He grew up in New York, swam in the Hudson and played stick ball in the middle of 42nd street. All of this he claims made him tough enough to be DA. He then talks about how much of the city is a joke and it’s gone soft. He tells the group that as members of his personal task force and that is to save the from itself. A view of his audience shows that it is made up entirely of Foot Ninja. He tells them to open old wounds, earn new scars and remind New York how to be mean. His final order is for them to carve out the mutant sickness that’s keeping the city week. Tacked to the board behind him are wanted posters of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello.