Bleh, plot bunny has officially eaten me, though it's taken two years for it to return from it's wanderings . . . AU Fast Forward fic, diverges from canon sometime after Fall of Darius; robots mostly existed in the realm of science fiction in the time the turtles hailed from, but they'd watched enough movies to know all the cliches. However, encountering one of the nastier cliches up close and personal is more than a little shocking for all involved . . .

Wolf in Electric Sheep's Clothing
by Shadow Wolf75

1: The Incident

I don't believe it. I saw it and I still don't believe it. All that bullshit about how we're a bad influence, and then he's capable of THAT all by his lonesome? I hate the future, and I hate crazy robots even more!

Oh, wait, guess I'm getting ahead of myself here . . . with how bad we screwed up, you can't really blame me. Anyway, yet another break in at O'Neil Tech, this one in broad daylight and while we were there working on something. We left Cody and Serling in the lab we were using; Leo figured the tin can might be able to protect the kid if the problem got past us. We went out in the halls to find and stomp whichever idiots decided to ruin our day, turned out it was the Dark Turtles.

Now that was a fun fight, but it was the ending where things got bad. Dark Leo decided he and his bros had enough of a shell-waxing for one day and turned to run. The other clones followed him . . . unfortunately for us, they all ran into the lab we'd been using earlier.

It was what Donnie called a 'hot lab', it had heavy locking doors and forcefields to keep the nastier experiments contained. By the time we caught up to the stupid clones, they'd already locked it down from inside and all we could do was watch through an observation window. Serling tried his best, he really did, but all it took was Dark Donatello's tail to trip him up, then Dark Raphael and Dark Michelangelo sat on him. Another whip of the evil genius' tail threw Cody across the room; the poor kid bounced off a console and didn't get back up.

"Master Cody!!" We were all pounding on that window and the nearby door with our weapons, trying to bust in well before that point, but we still heard Serling yell for the kid over all the noise. He fought as hard as he could to stand, but with Dark Mikey sitting on his legs and my evil twin keeping his arms pinned he just couldn't do it. Dark Leo saw Cody was down and smirked, then drew one of his swords and started moving in for the kill. We all kinda lost it, hacking away at the barriers for all we were worth. Serling tried to look away, but my clone must've been feeling real sadistic right then, since he grabbed the bot by the back of the head and forced him to watch.

Dark Leo reared back and started to bring his blade down, and then, holy shit! If you blinked you woulda missed it; but I swear on Hamato Yoshi's grave, Serling roared in rage so loud he almost shattered the observation window, then threw off the two idiots sitting on him like they were nothing. That robot moved so fast I almost couldn't see him, and in the next half second he was grappling with Dark Leo. Serling had him by the wrists, crushing his gauntlets with ease and probably starting to put cracks in the bones underneath. Dark Leo's sword dropped from numb fingers, but his surprise opponent wasn't done yet. By then Dark Mike and Dark Raph shook off hitting the walls after being thrown, charging to their leader's rescue. Serling didn't even blink, and we could see his eyes were glowing a flat red as he whipped Dark Leo at the other two so hard we heard the clone's arm break.

Dark Don was no slouch, he tried to trip Serling up again but it wasn't gonna work a second time. That earned him his tail getting stomped on, and the sound of more breaking bones could be heard. Serling ground his foot in and the evil genius howled in pain. The robot stepped back after a few seconds, reaching down to grab his enemy's tail. He used it to spin Dark Don around and toss him into the other clones who were just getting to their feet.

Even then, Serling wasn't finished yet. After the clones got up after their latest date with the floor, he charged at them at full speed. What happened next was swift, brutal, and bloody . . . unlike our fights there was nothing graceful about it, and every strike thrown was aimed to kill. The clones were lucky enough to dodge a lot of it, but even glancing blows did lots of damage, and the one time he really missed he put a crater in the floor.

It didn't take long for Dark Leo to decide to bail, bellowing for Dark Don to cover their escape with something. The genius clone chucked a smoke bomb, and the next thing we heard from behind the gray cloud was shattering glass. When the smoke cleared, one of the windows was broken and the clones were gone, scrambling down the side of the building to escape the insane robot.

Said insane robot didn't bother going after them, he went over to the door that was keeping us out. Serling yanked the emergency latch and the door slid open. He stepped into the hall and we jumped back a good three feet, weapons not really pointed at him but still drawn defensively. Out of the corner of my eye I saw poor Mikey stumble as he tried to back off, pointing at Serling with a shaky finger and stuttering, "K-killer robot . . . killer robot!"

Serling didn't react to that, staring us down with his eyes still glowing red. After a second, he pointed towards the room he'd left, where Cody was still out cold. "Help him," was all he said before he dropped to his knees, his eyes closing and then he collapsed completely. Hidden vents on his armor jetted steam as he laid there. I ignored it and charged in after Cody, Donnie and the others hot on my heels.

I got to the kid first and checked his pulse, and it seemed steady enough, though I didn't dare move him until Donnie gave the okay. A quick scan with his gauntlet computer and he nodded. "He'll have one heck of a headache later but there's no neck injuries; it's safe to move him."

I scooped Cody up and headed back out of the room, stopping short when I neared the still out of commission Serling. "So, what are we doing about him?"

Donnie aimed his gauntlet at the bot this time, frowning a bit at the readings. "His fusion pack's almost completely drained. If we're going to force him to explain himself, it'll have to be after a full recharge; he's not even going to boot up in this state."

Leo took command after that, handing out orders like always. "All right, we're going back to the penthouse. Mikey, Don, you two carry Serling to the Hovershell. Raph, you've got Cody. The Dark Turtles are probably halfway to their hideout by now, but I'll watch our backs in case they haven't left. Come on, let's go."

We headed back to the Hovershell. The walk there, and then the flight back to Cody's place was mostly silent. I think we were still kinda shocked at it all, not to mention wondering how we were gonna tell Cody about everything . . .