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techyturtlePLAYER INFORMATION
PLAYER: Ni
ARE YOU AT LEAST 14 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: n/a
CONTACT: papirini (AIM/plurk)
PERSONAL JOURNAL: [personal profile] papirini
CHARACTERS PLAYED: None!
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Donatello Hamato
CANON: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 series)
CANON REFERENCE:
AGE: 17...ish
GENDER: Male
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: HS3 (for the moment)
APPEARANCE: Donatello is an olive-green-skined, 5'0'' turtle man wearing a purple bandana to obscure his black eyes, shin and elbow guards, a ninja belt and a sling for his bo. He does not look any different in this AU than he does in canon.
PERSONALITY: I am stealing and altering this from another application of mine. I think its the best personality I've written of him so. Yeah. Its sadly not as goofy as other parts of this application. >:
On first impression, Donatello, in comparison to his brothers, might seem to fall short. In between Leonardo's take-charge attitude and sense of honor, Raphael's short temper, and Michelangelo's...being Michelangelo, Donatello's own personal qualities may not seem as noticeable. Indeed, on the surface its easy to dismiss him as just another tech-obsessed nerd, given that he seems to prefer spending time tinkering with technology rather than perfecting his ninja skills or going out and doing things like his two go-getter older brothers and his sometimes annoying rambuctious younger brother.
This type of assessment, however, completely ignores many of the things that make Donatello who he is. Donatello, while a more than capable fighter, simply does not find the same kind of fulfillment that his brothers get from fighting of any kind - he finds his passion in making and studying things. He is the turtle closest to being a pacifist out of the four. Among his brothers, he rarely gets into any major arguments. In many cases, he doesn't even fight his enemies if it isn't necessary, looking instead to find other solutions to problems that his brothers would normally resort to fists for. If fighting is the only solution, or must be part of the solution, Donatello tends to try to take into account a way where the least amount of hurt, though he will stand with and defend his brothers without question if they are in danger, regardless of the situation. His tendancy towards more peaceful solutions is even seemingly reflected in his weapon, the bo. His is a weapon that lacks the lethality that the sai, nunchaku or katana can potentially offer to an opponent, but nevertheless can be used with greater tactical purpose by shifting an opponent's strengths against them.
He is what his friend Leatherhead calls a 'kind and gentle soul', intelligent, easygoing, contemplative and inquisitive, always fascinated by everything around him (even at times when his brothers are utterly freaked out by things they see), and always looking to understand and solve a problem no matter how long it takes. He can be quite optimistic, excited and even exhibit child-like awe about some of his projects and theories, and believes that every problem has a solution. Though his brothers sometimes make fun of his propensity to focus so often on machines and technology and science, they are well aware of how much they owe to his inventions and his work, and how his work has helped improve their lives in the sewers, as well as improve their odds in battle. On his end, Donatello almost never lets his work go to his head, as by the time he's finished one invention or fixed one thing, he's already off and starting on something else.
Not that Donatello is perfect or completely without darker impulses or secrets. He can become obsessive, impatient and frustrated easily over problems he cannot solve, especially problems that, in his opinion, require an immediate resolution. When this happens, he tends to shut himself in and spend days on a problem with little sleep or food, letting his desire to figure out the solution to whatever is bothering him control him and ignoring everyone and everything happening around him until its solved - or until said solution or problem has gone beyond his control and he can do nothing more. And while he rarely gets enraged, pushing him all the way to that point is a particularly bad idea - to give an example, at this point in his canon, he is the only character who has been able to permanently kill any version of Shredder due to said anger. He's also surprisingly naive, though all of his brothers suffer this to some extent, and is ignorant of a lot of the more complicated problems in society; he's only begun to learn that stopping one problem can cause other problems to rise in the grand scheme of things, and that there are people out there outside of the Shredder and the Foot who have no compunction about killing or harming him simply for existing.
Most troubling is Donatello is far less inclined to speak up about anything bothering him. Unlike his brothers, if its not a project he is working on or a threat that the brothers are facing, he is least likely to voice any personal problems, doing his best to keep an optimistic disposition, deeming his own problems and struggles as unimportant in comparison and devaluing his own worth on the team and to his family as a result. In particular, while Raphael's anger issues, Michelangelo's tendancy towards immaturity, and Leonardo's struggles with his own shortcomings (imagined or otherwise) are known to the family, most of Donatello's true insecurities, feelings of guilt and fears are implied to not even be known to his brothers. Events such as the Triceratons ripping his mind open - and the resulting trauma from it, which almost killed him - he only shared with Master Splinter, and only because he cried out to him through their psychic bond. Even after finding out just how important he truly is to his family due to a certain time-traveling event, after he is reunited with his family (and save for one remark that is almost immediately dismissed by the others), he is never shown talking about what happened to him, even to Master Splinter. Whether he is worried about being judged (not unlike how many in the outside world would - and already have - judged him based on his appearance), or whether he feels he failed his friends and family and is too ashamed or scared to talk of it, isn't entirely certain. However, it would not be a surprise if both points turned out to be the truth.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Again taking parts of this from another app:
~Mutant powers~
Turtle Physiology/Peak Human State: Both a strength and a weakness. Even if he has humanoid features and was born human, he pretty much considers himself a turtle and has many many many turtle features - several of which are decidedly advantageous. His plastron/front torso is incredibly tough, as is his skin. His carapace/back shell is even moreso, and it is difficult for much to penetrate it. Donatello also has the ability to survive in water much more easily than mammals, as he is able to breathe underwater. He's also much less susceptible to most human diseases. On the other hand, it also has its disadvantages. He's now cold-blooded, so he lacks the mechanisms that regulate body warmth. His spinal structure is basically outside of his body, so breaking his carapace or managing to rip open his plastron could seriously injure or even kill him.
Still, because of his mutation, Donatello possesses peak human/borderline superhuman agility, speed, stamina, and strength. In terms of strength, he is able to throw around several hundred pounds with ease, and can, with some effort, possibly lift close to 1 ton, though this upper-limit is not commonly attained by him.
Intuitive Aptitude/Mechanical Intuition/ Enhanced Inventing/Medical Intuition/Enhanced Intelligence: Donatello is an expert at building advanced technology, and learning and applying various advanced theories from multiple fields of science into practice, usually from scratch and with just using junk taken from sewers and dumpsters. With the junk he collects, he built a cell network/electric system/computer security system for his family, can outfit cars with hi-tech weaponry and computer systems, has hacked into various high=class computer systems, has shown the capability to defuse a nuclear device with little to no practice beforehand, is able to decipher some forms of alien technology without aid, and has devised a vaccine for certain types of diseases and even other mutations similar to his own. This in spite of the fact he's had no formal training and his only education was from a giant rat who will admit that he is anything but a mechanical genius and whose primary use of his son's technology is to watch his soaps. Then again, most of the time his brothers can't understand what he's doing until its actually finished, and sometimes Don can get a bit...obsessive and frustrated over solving problems/inventions, especially when he can't figure out the solution to one.
Related to this is his incredibly high intelligence. While Raphael's claim of his IQ being 637 is likely an exaggeration (we hope), there's no denying that Donatello is insanely intelligent in several different fields - he's able to match and beat the likes of Baxter Stockman, who is considered by most people to be one of the smartest people on Earth, for example, and can figure out advanced scientific theorems with ease.
Secondary Mutation: Transform into a Monster: Unique among his brothers, and possibly among mutants with secondary mutations, Donatello has unexpectedly acquired a secondary mutation. Unlike the more awesome secondary mutations that most people get (Emma Frost's diamond skin, Beast's awesome blue skin), Don's secondary mutation is almost entirely regressive and potentially fatal to himself (and others if they get in his way). Basically, he turns into a humungous...well, this. This is due to his being infected with a mutant virus, accidentally created from DNA partly cloned from the turtles, which interacted with Don's already mutated physical constitution and triggered the unexpected further mutation. In this form, Don is nearly unstoppable to normal humans and low-level mutants, with greatly increased speed, agility and strength. However, he loses all sense of self and becomes a mindless monster. Another danger in this form is that when he is in this form, his entire DNA structure starts to break down; if he stays mutated like this too long (the exact amount of time is unknown, but even after several hours it is known that there is a decline in Don's physical well-being in this form), his DNA will unravel and he will die as a pile of turtle-colored goo.
To make it more fun, Don does not have any control over turning into, or coming back from, this form without medical/scientific intervention. He currently has been given a vaccine to de-mutate him, though relapse is apparently possible due to the rush in creating said vaccine to help him. Its also possible that if Don's immune system is compromised again by stress or illness, it increases the chances that the secondary mutation can be triggered again.
Overall, on the Mutation Level Scale, Donatello's powers, abilities and mutation(s) ranks him as a mutant at the Gamma Level.
~Non-mutant powers~ (or at least "powers"/abilities that were developed mostly independently of his mutation)
Ninja/ninjutsu: He isn't called a 'ninja' turtle for nothing, after all. Donatello is skilled in the ways of the ninja due to his training with Master Splinter since childhood. Said training involved not only physical training to hone his body for battle, but also an understanding of a combination of philosophies and fighting and schools, military and esoteric, from various Asian writers (predominantly Japanese), as well as the Japanese code of Bushido and aspects of Zen. As such he is not only an expert in martial arts, but also in a variety of different techniques for infiltration, sabotage, camoflauge, evasion and stealth, as well as the art of battle both with and without a variety of weapons. In terms of ninja weaponry, Donatello is most comfortable with a bo.
Also important to his training were methods of perfecting control over the body and mind. Among those Donatello is shown performing include a form of meditation and psychic and spiritual bond which allows him some contact with his family, even at a distance (though of all the boys his ability in this area is the weakest due to his more rational approach to things), and the ability to harness a method of internal breathing, which, in a vacuum situation, allows him to survive for a period of time without needing to breathe. With training and focus, it is very possible that Donatello can achieve the level of ability to manipulate his own chi to further empower himself, manipulate time and space, and transform into his spiritual animal. Of course, this particular possibility would be a difficult one at best, especially since Don has little to no awareness that he can even manipulate his chi this way. Also in terms of his brothers, Donatello is perhaps the weakest of the four when it comes to pure ninjutsu prowess, due to his preference towards his scientific pursuits over his ninjutsu training. His psychic and spiritual link between his brothers can also be invaded and - one of Don's biggest fears - his thoughts and spirit can be manipulated, his memories opened up, his mind invaded.
Sleep Deprivation: Donatello can go for up to a week without sleep, only needing coffee to sustain him. However, he will eventually crash and be close to impossible to wake for several days after when he pushes himself like this.
AU HISTORY: Before we get any further into this...this is all Daredevil's fault. No. Really. Once upon a time there was an accident where Matt Murdock pushed a blind guy out of the way of a speeding truck, got hit by a canister from said truck in the noggin, and lost his eyesight as a result. Only the radiation emanating from the goop that was in the canister also gave him superhuman senses and turned him into the crime-fighting (albeit blind) lawyer he is today. Except for some reason, Matt Murdock never once is shown to wonder where exactly that incredibly serendipitous can of goop came from or where it went after.
Well, the answer is this: also on that street corner was a hobo named Yoshi Hamato. And he saw where that bottle went, and he snuck away to follow it, originally as a means of bringing it back to the scene of the accident. Unfortunately, it bounced into an alley and smashed, its contents spilling all over a cardboard box. Upon getting closer, the hobo was horrified to find that in the box were four abandoned babies. So instead of going back to be an accident witness, Yoshi cleaned them off as best as he could before bringing them to his hobo abode for the night in order to keep them warm. He intended to turn the babies into social services in the morning to find out who they belonged to, but sadly they were closed when the accident occurred.
And the next morning he woke up to find the kids had turned into turtles and he had turned into a giant rat. Social services went out, the sewer went in, because Yoshi was well aware that 99 percent of the population wouldn't exactly be thrilled to see any of them lumbering around. So he brought them underground in order to protect and raise them in secret, naming them after names he picked up from a book of Renaissance artists. Raising them was difficult, since Yoshi had never raised babies, or turtles, or baby turtles before, but he managed.
Of course, Yoshi Hamato had other things to offer to these kids aside from a sewer home and the art of dumpster diving. For Yoshi Hamato wasn't just a normal hobo-turned-giant rat. Yoshi Hamato was also a 12-degree black belt ninja master, and the former head of a ninja clan called the Foot. He'd been exiled from the Foot when his rival, Saki Oroku, framed him for the death of his wife, Tangshen. And so Yoshi Hamato became the kids' teacher as well as their father, and thus Donatello, the second youngest of these brothers, was a part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from day one. And for fifteen years, Yoshi Hamato - nom de guerre Master Splinter - managed with reasonable success to keep his kids underground and out of sight from humans. The kids were aware that there was another (human, so they thought) group competing for resources with them in the sewers, but the TMNT generally avoided them and the Morlocks did likewise; to this day the two groups have never directly met face to face.
Growing up and even to this day, Donatello and his brothers wonder who their real parents are, mainly for peace of mind, and also where the canister that mutated them came from. However, despite the strange origins of his family and his own yearning to fully understand what happened, and even the fact that they knew of the Morlocks, no one even though of the possibility that the mysterious mutagen (which, incidentally, came from an Oscorp. factory) triggered the turtles' X-genes. Yoshi Hamato certainly didn't think of it. One, the existence of homo sapien superior wasn't exactly something that cloistered secret ninja societies spoke about or were much aware of. Yes, the turtles knew about things like the Mutant Registration Act, but only vaguely and from what they gleaned from their television (which, growing up, they were still too young to understand at points). Two, it mutated Yoshi Hamato and he didn't have the X-gene. Three, in the end he wouldn't have cared whether his adopted kids were mutants from the get go or simply mutated by the mysterious goop. They were his adopted sons, they didn't have anyone else, he cared and loved them deeply, and that was that in his opinion, really. Whether or not he had ended up a giant rat.
Still, the turtles were mostly sheltered for the first fifteen years of their lives. Then came the day that Baxter Stockman's stupid Mousers destroyed their lair, and Donatello and his brothers were forced to go topside for the first time, fighting the Foot (which became criminal under the guidance of Saki Oroku aka the Shredder) and teaming up with their first human friend/ex-Stockman employee April O'Neil to beat the Nobel Prize winner. Of course April was also Donatello's first crush, but he instinctively realized he'd never be able to be her boyfriend in any capacity given his looks, which could endanger then both. Especially after Raphael met the vigilante Casey Jones, who also began to like April in that way as well. Still, Don and April are still quite close, since they share the same interests and hobbies.
Eventually the turtles managed to defeat Shredder, but it turned out that it was a Life Model Decoy! Not only that, but Shredder used his "death" to cause a huge gang war in the city, which of course Shredder and his adopted daughter manipulated to take more control over the criminal underworld from the mafia and Kingpin and other gang leaders. And then Donatello found an strange underground grotto where other mutants experimented on by the Foot had fled - and their mutations were similar enough to elicit hope from Donatello that, perhaps, it was connected to their mutations. Donatello eventually found a cure for their mutations using the grotto's energy crystals, and even found it could work on Master Splinter (he ultimately declined it). However, the cure did not work for him or his brothers, which puzzled him. Of course it later turned out the grotto belonged to ancient mutant Atlanteans who wanted to take over the world after re-awakening from their millennia-long slumber, but thankfully, the brothers put the kibosh on that plan before Namor had to get involved.
More serious threats were to come, however. A race called the Triceratons, who were totally not humanoid triceratops, suddenly appeared out of nowhere, claiming to have come from deep space to look for a fugitive and threatening to destroy the Earth if their demands weren't met. They turned Beijing into a giant floating island and even the Avengers were perplexed on how to beat them - which is a first because the Avengers always save the day. The turtles themselves fought the invaders, but Donatello was captured, tortured, and then forced to undergo an invasive mind scan that would have killed him if Master Splinter hadn't psionically intervened - an event which has given Donatello a deep fear of his mind being invaded in a similar manner again. It was only from Donatello's understanding of how the Triceratons' machines worked while being prisoner that saved Earth - and the Triceratons left forever.
Except not. Soon after the turtles were captured by a black-ops group called the Earth Protection Force, which claimed they were capturing the turtles because they had worked alongside the Triceratons, so naturally they were aliens. While under the EPF leader, Agent Bishop's, care, they were tortured and their DNA was collected, alongside another sewer-living mutant named Leatherhead, who was a mutant alligator. After that incident Don became close friends with Leatherhead, though the torture session caused the side effect of making poor, gentle Leatherhead unstable and bipolar. And it still didn't answer the long-standing question of what mutated them all in the first place.
However, Don did learn some surprising things about the Earth Protection Force. The group was formed in 1938 after (of all things) Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, and they had a history of faking alien invasions - the Roswell alien landing included - in order to further their murky claims that they were engaged in perpetual war against aliens and receive funding. In this end, the Triceratons were actually manufactured by the EPF as their latest means of trying to continue appropriations to their group. It only half-worked because the EPF failed to un-float Beijing. Instead the person who saved the day was the Shredder, who was hailed as a hero.
Deciding he could use the goodwill to his advantage, the Shredder used his money to also rebuild New York, pissing the turtles off because they couldn't attack him without being branded as evil aliens (which, incidentally, happened to Don and Raph already - only Don's skills prevented half the Adirondacks from being nuked). This also began a distrust of the American government - and specifically SHIELD, the EPF, and other groups working in a similar vein - on Donatello's part (though of course Michelangelo continued to worship the Avengers and SHIELD since, well, Mikey got all of his information from comics), as the government seemed to implicitly approve the heavy-handed and (in his mind) cruel tactics of those groups, even when it meant innocent people were hurt by them.
And then after that the turtles were captured by Baxter Stockman and forced into a realistic virtual reality simulation machine. Stockman, wanting to break the turtles for destroying his reputation and company, programmed each turtle's VR pod with individualized scenarios based on information gleaned from their digitized brainwaves in order to maximize their pain. Each scenario had one common factor: Don, his brothers and Master Splinter were all made to believe that an explosion in Stockman's labs had thrown them all across multiple dimensions. Sadly, Don just so happened to "land" in the absolute worst possible "alternate universe" ever.
In this "alternate dimension", it was thirty years in the future, the Shredder ruled the world and aimed to conquer the galaxy, Master Splinter was dead, all the hero groups were disbanded or forced underground, and his brothers were maimed and bitter and hated each other. Oh, and it was made to look like that Donatello's disappearance in the present caused this future to happen. Donatello's plan to reunite his brothers and defeat the Shredder after learning this information basically killed his brothers. Needless to say, this was an event that devastated Donatello, especially in realizing that he was so important to the team, and that his absence could have such a horrible effect on his family and even the world. Then it was made worse when he realized the entire thing was just a simulation built from invading Don's own emotions and memories - triggering memories of the Triceratons' mind invasion - and at that point, he snapped and attacked.
It was the closest Don ever got to killing someone with just his bare hands. For the very first time, his brothers and father had to drag Donatello away after he beat the mad scientist to within an inch of his life. It was also the first time Don's brothers saw just how vicious, even sadistic, Don could be when he got past his breaking point; even Raphael avoided him for a few days afterward.
Then, right after that, the Shredder and his adopted daughter, Karai, decided to take a space ship and blow up a Stark Enterprises communications satellite, thus depriving millions in the the United States of effective communication for when the Shredder took over everything. The turtles and Master Splinter lost horribly, and the only way to stop the Shredder was to self-destruct the ship before it got to the satellite and die with the dickhead. It was, ironically enough, the EPF and Tony Stark that saved the day, overriding the self-destruct button and teleporting the Shredder back to Earth. The Shredder was then turned over to SHIELD and is now on an indefinite vacation in the Colorado Supermax for terrorism, fraud, murder, extortion, etc. Because, well, he tried to blow up Tony Stark's fucking satellite. You don't fuck with Tony Stark's toys. Of course the EPF conveniently forgot to mention to Tony that there were four cold-blooded turtles on the ship, mainly to ensure that no one would interfere with Bishop's plans. So Don was forced to pilot the ship home and crash land in Bumfuck, Nowhere. This made Donatello despise the EPF and SHIELD even more.
The shitpool that is Donatello and his brother's life did not end there, however. If it were ever possible, it got even worse. Agent Bishop and the EPF engineered another alien invasion to secure funding - this time using fake aliens partly created from Don and his brother's DNA - and the turtles were tricked/forced into trying to stop it. Not only did they fail to stop Bishop's plan of "saving" the US president from the "aliens", they were caught on tape and then labeled as the very "aliens" they were trying to stop. Their public image of being "savage alien beasts" still holds to this day and there is a bounty on their heads for their capture. And then Leonardo - who was physically and emotionally scarred from almost killing his brothers and having part of his shell snapped off by Karai during the big battle with the Shredder, lost control of his newly-awakened temper and nearly scalped Master Splinter. So Leonardo was shipped off to therapy/training with Yoshi's old master, the Ancient One, in Japan.
Now surely things couldn't get any worse for Donatello and his brothers, right? Hahahaha where have you been for this of course it gets worse. Karai, the adopted daughter of the Shredder, took up the Shredder mantle herself, used her father's mystics to invade the turtles' minds to find their lair (Donatello, naturally, was very displeased when he found this out), and proceeded to nearly kill the Hamato family while Leonardo was away. Donatello and Splinter were almost killed in their underwater submarine, but managed to eject and swim away mostly unharmed from the wreckage. They hid out in a warehouse until Leonardo returned from Japan and found them. Leonardo thankfully got revenge on Karai by defeating her and then not killing her, though Karai still wants revenge on Leonardo for her father's trip to Colorado and constantly sends out Foot to look for the turtles. Aside from that, though, everything's hunky dory.
Only nope its not. It turned out that the goopy remnants of the faux aliens used by Agent Bishop and the EPF in his second "invasion" got into the sewers, animals ate it and then began to mutate into abominations, resulting in the mutagen mutating into a viral disease that the EPF was unable to control. The virus spread rapidly until humans began to become infected and started attacking the city. Unfortunately one of those infected by the virus was Donatello, who began to become progressively sicker as time went by. And once the virus completely overwhelmed his immune system, it not only mutated him into a hideous beast, it actually triggered a secondary mutation which mutated him even further until he was a eight foot tall Godzilla-esque beast.
Unfortunately, it was found that staying like that would cause his DNA to eventually unravel and kill Donatello, so the turtles were forced to make a deal with Agent Bishop for the cure - which, of course, Agent Bishop didn't actually have. He was using the Turtles to steal an artifact from the Foot that he believed would help validate his belief there were real aliens (surprise: it wasn't). Had it not been for Leatherhead overcoming his own hatred of Agent Bishop and working alongside the now-cyborg Baxter Stockman, Donatello would be a pile of goop somewhere in the Nevada desert. Still, even with a cure, the turtles are currently trying to make sure a relapse doesn't ever happen.
It is during Donatello's recovery that Master Splinter and the turtles at last heard of the Xavier Institute. So of course Master Splinter is making them all go there to make friends with other mutants so they can know others like them! Wait, no, the turtles and Master Splinter actually think the Xavier Institute is another front for either the Earth Protection Force, maybe SHIELD, or the Foot. Their reasoning (and really can we blame them at this point) is that one or the other wishes to experiment on innocent humans, mutates or mutants and force them to become hideous abominations to further their purposes. Teaching and developing the talents of gifted and talented people? Nope. Its evil. And someone should investigate it and somehow expose the truth to the world!
That someone ended up being Donatello, who wanted to prove to his brothers that he's not going to randomly monster out and eat people's heads on a mission. And so, Donatello arrives at the Xavier Institute, not as a student, but as a master ninja infiltrator determined to uncover its secrets in the shadow of night...
TD;LR I'M SORRY. I COULDN'T. MAKE THIS ANY SHORTER. BLAME DAREDEVIL THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT.
SAMPLE
1ST PERSON SAMPLE:"Brotherhood of Mutants". "What happened last weekend in NYC." Really? Really?
THIRD PERSON SAMPLE: Who'd have thought Don would actually meet someone who carried toothpaste around with him?!
PLAYER: Ni
ARE YOU AT LEAST 14 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: n/a
CONTACT: papirini (AIM/plurk)
PERSONAL JOURNAL: [personal profile] papirini
CHARACTERS PLAYED: None!
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Donatello Hamato
CANON: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 series)
CANON REFERENCE:
AGE: 17...ish
GENDER: Male
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: HS3 (for the moment)
APPEARANCE: Donatello is an olive-green-skined, 5'0'' turtle man wearing a purple bandana to obscure his black eyes, shin and elbow guards, a ninja belt and a sling for his bo. He does not look any different in this AU than he does in canon.
PERSONALITY: I am stealing and altering this from another application of mine. I think its the best personality I've written of him so. Yeah. Its sadly not as goofy as other parts of this application. >:
On first impression, Donatello, in comparison to his brothers, might seem to fall short. In between Leonardo's take-charge attitude and sense of honor, Raphael's short temper, and Michelangelo's...being Michelangelo, Donatello's own personal qualities may not seem as noticeable. Indeed, on the surface its easy to dismiss him as just another tech-obsessed nerd, given that he seems to prefer spending time tinkering with technology rather than perfecting his ninja skills or going out and doing things like his two go-getter older brothers and his sometimes annoying rambuctious younger brother.
This type of assessment, however, completely ignores many of the things that make Donatello who he is. Donatello, while a more than capable fighter, simply does not find the same kind of fulfillment that his brothers get from fighting of any kind - he finds his passion in making and studying things. He is the turtle closest to being a pacifist out of the four. Among his brothers, he rarely gets into any major arguments. In many cases, he doesn't even fight his enemies if it isn't necessary, looking instead to find other solutions to problems that his brothers would normally resort to fists for. If fighting is the only solution, or must be part of the solution, Donatello tends to try to take into account a way where the least amount of hurt, though he will stand with and defend his brothers without question if they are in danger, regardless of the situation. His tendancy towards more peaceful solutions is even seemingly reflected in his weapon, the bo. His is a weapon that lacks the lethality that the sai, nunchaku or katana can potentially offer to an opponent, but nevertheless can be used with greater tactical purpose by shifting an opponent's strengths against them.
He is what his friend Leatherhead calls a 'kind and gentle soul', intelligent, easygoing, contemplative and inquisitive, always fascinated by everything around him (even at times when his brothers are utterly freaked out by things they see), and always looking to understand and solve a problem no matter how long it takes. He can be quite optimistic, excited and even exhibit child-like awe about some of his projects and theories, and believes that every problem has a solution. Though his brothers sometimes make fun of his propensity to focus so often on machines and technology and science, they are well aware of how much they owe to his inventions and his work, and how his work has helped improve their lives in the sewers, as well as improve their odds in battle. On his end, Donatello almost never lets his work go to his head, as by the time he's finished one invention or fixed one thing, he's already off and starting on something else.
Not that Donatello is perfect or completely without darker impulses or secrets. He can become obsessive, impatient and frustrated easily over problems he cannot solve, especially problems that, in his opinion, require an immediate resolution. When this happens, he tends to shut himself in and spend days on a problem with little sleep or food, letting his desire to figure out the solution to whatever is bothering him control him and ignoring everyone and everything happening around him until its solved - or until said solution or problem has gone beyond his control and he can do nothing more. And while he rarely gets enraged, pushing him all the way to that point is a particularly bad idea - to give an example, at this point in his canon, he is the only character who has been able to permanently kill any version of Shredder due to said anger. He's also surprisingly naive, though all of his brothers suffer this to some extent, and is ignorant of a lot of the more complicated problems in society; he's only begun to learn that stopping one problem can cause other problems to rise in the grand scheme of things, and that there are people out there outside of the Shredder and the Foot who have no compunction about killing or harming him simply for existing.
Most troubling is Donatello is far less inclined to speak up about anything bothering him. Unlike his brothers, if its not a project he is working on or a threat that the brothers are facing, he is least likely to voice any personal problems, doing his best to keep an optimistic disposition, deeming his own problems and struggles as unimportant in comparison and devaluing his own worth on the team and to his family as a result. In particular, while Raphael's anger issues, Michelangelo's tendancy towards immaturity, and Leonardo's struggles with his own shortcomings (imagined or otherwise) are known to the family, most of Donatello's true insecurities, feelings of guilt and fears are implied to not even be known to his brothers. Events such as the Triceratons ripping his mind open - and the resulting trauma from it, which almost killed him - he only shared with Master Splinter, and only because he cried out to him through their psychic bond. Even after finding out just how important he truly is to his family due to a certain time-traveling event, after he is reunited with his family (and save for one remark that is almost immediately dismissed by the others), he is never shown talking about what happened to him, even to Master Splinter. Whether he is worried about being judged (not unlike how many in the outside world would - and already have - judged him based on his appearance), or whether he feels he failed his friends and family and is too ashamed or scared to talk of it, isn't entirely certain. However, it would not be a surprise if both points turned out to be the truth.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Again taking parts of this from another app:
~Mutant powers~
Turtle Physiology/Peak Human State: Both a strength and a weakness. Even if he has humanoid features and was born human, he pretty much considers himself a turtle and has many many many turtle features - several of which are decidedly advantageous. His plastron/front torso is incredibly tough, as is his skin. His carapace/back shell is even moreso, and it is difficult for much to penetrate it. Donatello also has the ability to survive in water much more easily than mammals, as he is able to breathe underwater. He's also much less susceptible to most human diseases. On the other hand, it also has its disadvantages. He's now cold-blooded, so he lacks the mechanisms that regulate body warmth. His spinal structure is basically outside of his body, so breaking his carapace or managing to rip open his plastron could seriously injure or even kill him.
Still, because of his mutation, Donatello possesses peak human/borderline superhuman agility, speed, stamina, and strength. In terms of strength, he is able to throw around several hundred pounds with ease, and can, with some effort, possibly lift close to 1 ton, though this upper-limit is not commonly attained by him.
Intuitive Aptitude/Mechanical Intuition/ Enhanced Inventing/Medical Intuition/Enhanced Intelligence: Donatello is an expert at building advanced technology, and learning and applying various advanced theories from multiple fields of science into practice, usually from scratch and with just using junk taken from sewers and dumpsters. With the junk he collects, he built a cell network/electric system/computer security system for his family, can outfit cars with hi-tech weaponry and computer systems, has hacked into various high=class computer systems, has shown the capability to defuse a nuclear device with little to no practice beforehand, is able to decipher some forms of alien technology without aid, and has devised a vaccine for certain types of diseases and even other mutations similar to his own. This in spite of the fact he's had no formal training and his only education was from a giant rat who will admit that he is anything but a mechanical genius and whose primary use of his son's technology is to watch his soaps. Then again, most of the time his brothers can't understand what he's doing until its actually finished, and sometimes Don can get a bit...obsessive and frustrated over solving problems/inventions, especially when he can't figure out the solution to one.
Related to this is his incredibly high intelligence. While Raphael's claim of his IQ being 637 is likely an exaggeration (we hope), there's no denying that Donatello is insanely intelligent in several different fields - he's able to match and beat the likes of Baxter Stockman, who is considered by most people to be one of the smartest people on Earth, for example, and can figure out advanced scientific theorems with ease.
Secondary Mutation: Transform into a Monster: Unique among his brothers, and possibly among mutants with secondary mutations, Donatello has unexpectedly acquired a secondary mutation. Unlike the more awesome secondary mutations that most people get (Emma Frost's diamond skin, Beast's awesome blue skin), Don's secondary mutation is almost entirely regressive and potentially fatal to himself (and others if they get in his way). Basically, he turns into a humungous...well, this. This is due to his being infected with a mutant virus, accidentally created from DNA partly cloned from the turtles, which interacted with Don's already mutated physical constitution and triggered the unexpected further mutation. In this form, Don is nearly unstoppable to normal humans and low-level mutants, with greatly increased speed, agility and strength. However, he loses all sense of self and becomes a mindless monster. Another danger in this form is that when he is in this form, his entire DNA structure starts to break down; if he stays mutated like this too long (the exact amount of time is unknown, but even after several hours it is known that there is a decline in Don's physical well-being in this form), his DNA will unravel and he will die as a pile of turtle-colored goo.
To make it more fun, Don does not have any control over turning into, or coming back from, this form without medical/scientific intervention. He currently has been given a vaccine to de-mutate him, though relapse is apparently possible due to the rush in creating said vaccine to help him. Its also possible that if Don's immune system is compromised again by stress or illness, it increases the chances that the secondary mutation can be triggered again.
Overall, on the Mutation Level Scale, Donatello's powers, abilities and mutation(s) ranks him as a mutant at the Gamma Level.
~Non-mutant powers~ (or at least "powers"/abilities that were developed mostly independently of his mutation)
Ninja/ninjutsu: He isn't called a 'ninja' turtle for nothing, after all. Donatello is skilled in the ways of the ninja due to his training with Master Splinter since childhood. Said training involved not only physical training to hone his body for battle, but also an understanding of a combination of philosophies and fighting and schools, military and esoteric, from various Asian writers (predominantly Japanese), as well as the Japanese code of Bushido and aspects of Zen. As such he is not only an expert in martial arts, but also in a variety of different techniques for infiltration, sabotage, camoflauge, evasion and stealth, as well as the art of battle both with and without a variety of weapons. In terms of ninja weaponry, Donatello is most comfortable with a bo.
Also important to his training were methods of perfecting control over the body and mind. Among those Donatello is shown performing include a form of meditation and psychic and spiritual bond which allows him some contact with his family, even at a distance (though of all the boys his ability in this area is the weakest due to his more rational approach to things), and the ability to harness a method of internal breathing, which, in a vacuum situation, allows him to survive for a period of time without needing to breathe. With training and focus, it is very possible that Donatello can achieve the level of ability to manipulate his own chi to further empower himself, manipulate time and space, and transform into his spiritual animal. Of course, this particular possibility would be a difficult one at best, especially since Don has little to no awareness that he can even manipulate his chi this way. Also in terms of his brothers, Donatello is perhaps the weakest of the four when it comes to pure ninjutsu prowess, due to his preference towards his scientific pursuits over his ninjutsu training. His psychic and spiritual link between his brothers can also be invaded and - one of Don's biggest fears - his thoughts and spirit can be manipulated, his memories opened up, his mind invaded.
Sleep Deprivation: Donatello can go for up to a week without sleep, only needing coffee to sustain him. However, he will eventually crash and be close to impossible to wake for several days after when he pushes himself like this.
AU HISTORY: Before we get any further into this...this is all Daredevil's fault. No. Really. Once upon a time there was an accident where Matt Murdock pushed a blind guy out of the way of a speeding truck, got hit by a canister from said truck in the noggin, and lost his eyesight as a result. Only the radiation emanating from the goop that was in the canister also gave him superhuman senses and turned him into the crime-fighting (albeit blind) lawyer he is today. Except for some reason, Matt Murdock never once is shown to wonder where exactly that incredibly serendipitous can of goop came from or where it went after.
Well, the answer is this: also on that street corner was a hobo named Yoshi Hamato. And he saw where that bottle went, and he snuck away to follow it, originally as a means of bringing it back to the scene of the accident. Unfortunately, it bounced into an alley and smashed, its contents spilling all over a cardboard box. Upon getting closer, the hobo was horrified to find that in the box were four abandoned babies. So instead of going back to be an accident witness, Yoshi cleaned them off as best as he could before bringing them to his hobo abode for the night in order to keep them warm. He intended to turn the babies into social services in the morning to find out who they belonged to, but sadly they were closed when the accident occurred.
And the next morning he woke up to find the kids had turned into turtles and he had turned into a giant rat. Social services went out, the sewer went in, because Yoshi was well aware that 99 percent of the population wouldn't exactly be thrilled to see any of them lumbering around. So he brought them underground in order to protect and raise them in secret, naming them after names he picked up from a book of Renaissance artists. Raising them was difficult, since Yoshi had never raised babies, or turtles, or baby turtles before, but he managed.
Of course, Yoshi Hamato had other things to offer to these kids aside from a sewer home and the art of dumpster diving. For Yoshi Hamato wasn't just a normal hobo-turned-giant rat. Yoshi Hamato was also a 12-degree black belt ninja master, and the former head of a ninja clan called the Foot. He'd been exiled from the Foot when his rival, Saki Oroku, framed him for the death of his wife, Tangshen. And so Yoshi Hamato became the kids' teacher as well as their father, and thus Donatello, the second youngest of these brothers, was a part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from day one. And for fifteen years, Yoshi Hamato - nom de guerre Master Splinter - managed with reasonable success to keep his kids underground and out of sight from humans. The kids were aware that there was another (human, so they thought) group competing for resources with them in the sewers, but the TMNT generally avoided them and the Morlocks did likewise; to this day the two groups have never directly met face to face.
Growing up and even to this day, Donatello and his brothers wonder who their real parents are, mainly for peace of mind, and also where the canister that mutated them came from. However, despite the strange origins of his family and his own yearning to fully understand what happened, and even the fact that they knew of the Morlocks, no one even though of the possibility that the mysterious mutagen (which, incidentally, came from an Oscorp. factory) triggered the turtles' X-genes. Yoshi Hamato certainly didn't think of it. One, the existence of homo sapien superior wasn't exactly something that cloistered secret ninja societies spoke about or were much aware of. Yes, the turtles knew about things like the Mutant Registration Act, but only vaguely and from what they gleaned from their television (which, growing up, they were still too young to understand at points). Two, it mutated Yoshi Hamato and he didn't have the X-gene. Three, in the end he wouldn't have cared whether his adopted kids were mutants from the get go or simply mutated by the mysterious goop. They were his adopted sons, they didn't have anyone else, he cared and loved them deeply, and that was that in his opinion, really. Whether or not he had ended up a giant rat.
Still, the turtles were mostly sheltered for the first fifteen years of their lives. Then came the day that Baxter Stockman's stupid Mousers destroyed their lair, and Donatello and his brothers were forced to go topside for the first time, fighting the Foot (which became criminal under the guidance of Saki Oroku aka the Shredder) and teaming up with their first human friend/ex-Stockman employee April O'Neil to beat the Nobel Prize winner. Of course April was also Donatello's first crush, but he instinctively realized he'd never be able to be her boyfriend in any capacity given his looks, which could endanger then both. Especially after Raphael met the vigilante Casey Jones, who also began to like April in that way as well. Still, Don and April are still quite close, since they share the same interests and hobbies.
Eventually the turtles managed to defeat Shredder, but it turned out that it was a Life Model Decoy! Not only that, but Shredder used his "death" to cause a huge gang war in the city, which of course Shredder and his adopted daughter manipulated to take more control over the criminal underworld from the mafia and Kingpin and other gang leaders. And then Donatello found an strange underground grotto where other mutants experimented on by the Foot had fled - and their mutations were similar enough to elicit hope from Donatello that, perhaps, it was connected to their mutations. Donatello eventually found a cure for their mutations using the grotto's energy crystals, and even found it could work on Master Splinter (he ultimately declined it). However, the cure did not work for him or his brothers, which puzzled him. Of course it later turned out the grotto belonged to ancient mutant Atlanteans who wanted to take over the world after re-awakening from their millennia-long slumber, but thankfully, the brothers put the kibosh on that plan before Namor had to get involved.
More serious threats were to come, however. A race called the Triceratons, who were totally not humanoid triceratops, suddenly appeared out of nowhere, claiming to have come from deep space to look for a fugitive and threatening to destroy the Earth if their demands weren't met. They turned Beijing into a giant floating island and even the Avengers were perplexed on how to beat them - which is a first because the Avengers always save the day. The turtles themselves fought the invaders, but Donatello was captured, tortured, and then forced to undergo an invasive mind scan that would have killed him if Master Splinter hadn't psionically intervened - an event which has given Donatello a deep fear of his mind being invaded in a similar manner again. It was only from Donatello's understanding of how the Triceratons' machines worked while being prisoner that saved Earth - and the Triceratons left forever.
Except not. Soon after the turtles were captured by a black-ops group called the Earth Protection Force, which claimed they were capturing the turtles because they had worked alongside the Triceratons, so naturally they were aliens. While under the EPF leader, Agent Bishop's, care, they were tortured and their DNA was collected, alongside another sewer-living mutant named Leatherhead, who was a mutant alligator. After that incident Don became close friends with Leatherhead, though the torture session caused the side effect of making poor, gentle Leatherhead unstable and bipolar. And it still didn't answer the long-standing question of what mutated them all in the first place.
However, Don did learn some surprising things about the Earth Protection Force. The group was formed in 1938 after (of all things) Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, and they had a history of faking alien invasions - the Roswell alien landing included - in order to further their murky claims that they were engaged in perpetual war against aliens and receive funding. In this end, the Triceratons were actually manufactured by the EPF as their latest means of trying to continue appropriations to their group. It only half-worked because the EPF failed to un-float Beijing. Instead the person who saved the day was the Shredder, who was hailed as a hero.
Deciding he could use the goodwill to his advantage, the Shredder used his money to also rebuild New York, pissing the turtles off because they couldn't attack him without being branded as evil aliens (which, incidentally, happened to Don and Raph already - only Don's skills prevented half the Adirondacks from being nuked). This also began a distrust of the American government - and specifically SHIELD, the EPF, and other groups working in a similar vein - on Donatello's part (though of course Michelangelo continued to worship the Avengers and SHIELD since, well, Mikey got all of his information from comics), as the government seemed to implicitly approve the heavy-handed and (in his mind) cruel tactics of those groups, even when it meant innocent people were hurt by them.
And then after that the turtles were captured by Baxter Stockman and forced into a realistic virtual reality simulation machine. Stockman, wanting to break the turtles for destroying his reputation and company, programmed each turtle's VR pod with individualized scenarios based on information gleaned from their digitized brainwaves in order to maximize their pain. Each scenario had one common factor: Don, his brothers and Master Splinter were all made to believe that an explosion in Stockman's labs had thrown them all across multiple dimensions. Sadly, Don just so happened to "land" in the absolute worst possible "alternate universe" ever.
In this "alternate dimension", it was thirty years in the future, the Shredder ruled the world and aimed to conquer the galaxy, Master Splinter was dead, all the hero groups were disbanded or forced underground, and his brothers were maimed and bitter and hated each other. Oh, and it was made to look like that Donatello's disappearance in the present caused this future to happen. Donatello's plan to reunite his brothers and defeat the Shredder after learning this information basically killed his brothers. Needless to say, this was an event that devastated Donatello, especially in realizing that he was so important to the team, and that his absence could have such a horrible effect on his family and even the world. Then it was made worse when he realized the entire thing was just a simulation built from invading Don's own emotions and memories - triggering memories of the Triceratons' mind invasion - and at that point, he snapped and attacked.
It was the closest Don ever got to killing someone with just his bare hands. For the very first time, his brothers and father had to drag Donatello away after he beat the mad scientist to within an inch of his life. It was also the first time Don's brothers saw just how vicious, even sadistic, Don could be when he got past his breaking point; even Raphael avoided him for a few days afterward.
Then, right after that, the Shredder and his adopted daughter, Karai, decided to take a space ship and blow up a Stark Enterprises communications satellite, thus depriving millions in the the United States of effective communication for when the Shredder took over everything. The turtles and Master Splinter lost horribly, and the only way to stop the Shredder was to self-destruct the ship before it got to the satellite and die with the dickhead. It was, ironically enough, the EPF and Tony Stark that saved the day, overriding the self-destruct button and teleporting the Shredder back to Earth. The Shredder was then turned over to SHIELD and is now on an indefinite vacation in the Colorado Supermax for terrorism, fraud, murder, extortion, etc. Because, well, he tried to blow up Tony Stark's fucking satellite. You don't fuck with Tony Stark's toys. Of course the EPF conveniently forgot to mention to Tony that there were four cold-blooded turtles on the ship, mainly to ensure that no one would interfere with Bishop's plans. So Don was forced to pilot the ship home and crash land in Bumfuck, Nowhere. This made Donatello despise the EPF and SHIELD even more.
The shitpool that is Donatello and his brother's life did not end there, however. If it were ever possible, it got even worse. Agent Bishop and the EPF engineered another alien invasion to secure funding - this time using fake aliens partly created from Don and his brother's DNA - and the turtles were tricked/forced into trying to stop it. Not only did they fail to stop Bishop's plan of "saving" the US president from the "aliens", they were caught on tape and then labeled as the very "aliens" they were trying to stop. Their public image of being "savage alien beasts" still holds to this day and there is a bounty on their heads for their capture. And then Leonardo - who was physically and emotionally scarred from almost killing his brothers and having part of his shell snapped off by Karai during the big battle with the Shredder, lost control of his newly-awakened temper and nearly scalped Master Splinter. So Leonardo was shipped off to therapy/training with Yoshi's old master, the Ancient One, in Japan.
Now surely things couldn't get any worse for Donatello and his brothers, right? Hahahaha where have you been for this of course it gets worse. Karai, the adopted daughter of the Shredder, took up the Shredder mantle herself, used her father's mystics to invade the turtles' minds to find their lair (Donatello, naturally, was very displeased when he found this out), and proceeded to nearly kill the Hamato family while Leonardo was away. Donatello and Splinter were almost killed in their underwater submarine, but managed to eject and swim away mostly unharmed from the wreckage. They hid out in a warehouse until Leonardo returned from Japan and found them. Leonardo thankfully got revenge on Karai by defeating her and then not killing her, though Karai still wants revenge on Leonardo for her father's trip to Colorado and constantly sends out Foot to look for the turtles. Aside from that, though, everything's hunky dory.
Only nope its not. It turned out that the goopy remnants of the faux aliens used by Agent Bishop and the EPF in his second "invasion" got into the sewers, animals ate it and then began to mutate into abominations, resulting in the mutagen mutating into a viral disease that the EPF was unable to control. The virus spread rapidly until humans began to become infected and started attacking the city. Unfortunately one of those infected by the virus was Donatello, who began to become progressively sicker as time went by. And once the virus completely overwhelmed his immune system, it not only mutated him into a hideous beast, it actually triggered a secondary mutation which mutated him even further until he was a eight foot tall Godzilla-esque beast.
Unfortunately, it was found that staying like that would cause his DNA to eventually unravel and kill Donatello, so the turtles were forced to make a deal with Agent Bishop for the cure - which, of course, Agent Bishop didn't actually have. He was using the Turtles to steal an artifact from the Foot that he believed would help validate his belief there were real aliens (surprise: it wasn't). Had it not been for Leatherhead overcoming his own hatred of Agent Bishop and working alongside the now-cyborg Baxter Stockman, Donatello would be a pile of goop somewhere in the Nevada desert. Still, even with a cure, the turtles are currently trying to make sure a relapse doesn't ever happen.
It is during Donatello's recovery that Master Splinter and the turtles at last heard of the Xavier Institute. So of course Master Splinter is making them all go there to make friends with other mutants so they can know others like them! Wait, no, the turtles and Master Splinter actually think the Xavier Institute is another front for either the Earth Protection Force, maybe SHIELD, or the Foot. Their reasoning (and really can we blame them at this point) is that one or the other wishes to experiment on innocent humans, mutates or mutants and force them to become hideous abominations to further their purposes. Teaching and developing the talents of gifted and talented people? Nope. Its evil. And someone should investigate it and somehow expose the truth to the world!
That someone ended up being Donatello, who wanted to prove to his brothers that he's not going to randomly monster out and eat people's heads on a mission. And so, Donatello arrives at the Xavier Institute, not as a student, but as a master ninja infiltrator determined to uncover its secrets in the shadow of night...
TD;LR I'M SORRY. I COULDN'T. MAKE THIS ANY SHORTER. BLAME DAREDEVIL THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT.
SAMPLE
1ST PERSON SAMPLE:"Brotherhood of Mutants". "What happened last weekend in NYC." Really? Really?
THIRD PERSON SAMPLE: Who'd have thought Don would actually meet someone who carried toothpaste around with him?!
