Chapter Text
He was seething.
A rage that boiled and bubbled and came out in hot shaky breaths, his internal temperature raised just high enough for little puffs of smoke to escape with each breath. He had already roared his voice raw and broken long ago, not being graced with a single response from the stagnant quiet of the prison dimension.
The buzz of electricity from the smallest turtle had fizzled from the suit's hands long ago, he had been close. So close, only to fail to conquer this planet once again. This time, there would be no more chances. Sister and brother were gone- if they were not dead they would shortly be snuffed out by the pests.
They no longer had any ship, and he was all that remained. He alone would not be enough, not when those things fought so valiantly. Why? He did not understand. Why protect the weak when they could be made to do better? The weak are to work for the strong, to make them stronger. They were not worthy of protection yet- the Krang were merciful compared to others.
The weak were given a place and a purpose, and as long as they did well they would live, assimilated with a much stronger species. They would become part of something so much greater than themselves, so why fear it? Why fear greatness when it was so graciously offered? He did not understand and it made him angry. He was not unintelligent, one did not live so long, and one did not survive the prison dimension if they were stupid. No, he was far above all other living things.
Yet this still illuded him. He was helping them- making them stronger, giving them purpose. What more could they ask for? It was for the greater good, surely they should know, surely they should see all that came with being a part of Krang. They did not, and now he was locked in this place again. The questions repeated themselves in his head, twirling around playfully as he tore them apart, searched for answers, and tried to understand, see from the pest's perspective.
They were just ungrateful.
Krang shifted in his suit, it had no answers stored in its seams and was becoming uncomfortably tight. It was good protection, although sometimes unnecessary, most creatures could not do damage to him outside of it. There was nothing to fear here, so he wiggled free of its constraints, he would remember where he left it, in case he ever needed it again.
He had begun to doubt he would get another chance out of here. But Krang was nothing if not patient. He had an eternity to wait and no competition, he could wait another thousand years, he had done so before. Though that was easier in thought than in practice. His last imprisonment had been tolerable. There was entertainment because of the infighting between the largest Krang.
Anger at their defeat led to battles that lasted centuries. The intelligent did not engage, waiting as the others snuffed each other out. Krang allied himself with sister and brother then, assuring they would survive with him. Eventually, it was only them that remained and they engaged in conversation, talking about what would occur once they escaped. Krang grew to know sister’s temper and brother’s quiet. Sister enjoyed violence and battle, it could be infuriating if potential subjects were killed but on a planet filled with billions a few losses were insignificant.
Brother was skilled at assimilating, he had a talent quite above many others. All Krang could assimilate but brother's capabilities were something to be desired. Krang would be lying if he said he wasn’t jealous. He had picked his allies well, of course he had. Now they were gone. Krang did not know if he missed them. He did not think he was sad, that was a foreign concept for him, something he had seen on the faces of other species, but he did not think he was capable of it.
He knew what it meant, he understood the basis of it, but he did not understand the point. Why be sad? Why let something so pathetic drag one down? No, he was not sad, he was… annoyed. They were good allies, they weren’t weak, and he was not weak. Yet they lost anyway. Now he was alone, and once the rage dispersed though it may take a century or two, he would be very bored. For a very long time. Boredom was not foreign, Krang knew it quite well. He despised it almost as much as he despised weakness.
A small rock floated past his vision, his eyes tracked it lazily. It traveled in an odd arc, it seemingly had freed itself from the gravity of all the moons of this place, perhaps knocked free during the technodromes explosion. He watched as it slowly turned and rounded around him as if it was circling him, like he had his own gravitational pull. Interest suddenly piqued he watched it more closely.
No, it was not circling him but it was circling a spot very close to him. Almost imperceptively small sparks formed in a tiny spot in the never-ending space of the prison dimension. He reached for it, then it grew into a large triangular pink portal in a matter of seconds. Krang’s pulse sped up, but he remained cautious. He reached into it with one tentacle feeling around, the texture of the surrounding area was odd, not organic, not the strength of metal but far from fragile.
He began to pull his tentacle back out, when the portal began to shrink, he hissed, trying to decide whether to remain safe but perhaps be stuck here permanently or to jump inside and hope something other than death awaited him. That moment of pause cost him a small chunk of his tentacle. The portal closed chopping it off.
He snarled, this frustration would take some time to simmer out. Was something toying with him? Making fun of his state of entrapment? He brought the stump of his tentacle to his face, trying to gauge how long it would take to heal when something poked at his mind.
He recoiled.
It poked again, then gripped onto him and pulled. He tried to resist and fight back but he was helpless as his consciousness was pulled from his body and plopped into something smaller, weaker.
Krang was nothing if not adaptable. Their great species could split off parts of their body to make more in the right circumstances, some more advanced, like himself, could even transfer their own consciousness to these parts if they needed to flee. It could be almost any size. Like the tiny bit of his tentacle that had just been chopped off.
He had not done that purposefully, it felt as if something had forced it. Krang was unsure. It would take some time for his body to reform all of its parts from this tiny piece of himself. Even longer for him to regain his size. His senses were muffled and dull but he could feel himself being moved, gaining new eyes was of the most importance so he focused on this.
He managed to open one eye and saw he was in… a glass container. One of this size might be referred to as a jar. He had already formed two small tentacles and poked at it experimentally, too strong for him to do anything about. Then he looked about the room he was placed in. Metallic bodies roamed and when one turned he could see a krang in one's abdomen.
One who was terribly deformed, they had a more rigid shape than he, and looking at their surroundings, they were tiny. Tiny compared to him at his full size, though quite a bit larger than him currently. It looked as if they were some… weaker subspecies ruined by millennia of being separated from his much greater branch of the species.
Had some of the krang escaped being imprisoned? Then somehow became reduced to this? Perhaps they were cowards who fled from their ranks just before entering Earth’s atmosphere. The planet had not seemed remarkably dangerous at that time so long ago, so perhaps they had split away even before that.
One noticed his newly formed eye and turned to speak to the others. His hearing was muffled not just by the jar but because his ears still needed time to form, he rushed the eye and used quite a bit of energy to do so, it would be a while before he could properly hear. He needed to make the decision on whether to hear or move, more tentacles or ears?
A not-krang stepped forward and unscrewed the top of the jar, dropping a red cube inside before firmly shutting it again. He wondered if he could open it from the inside, for now, he was too small to reach it, but not for long. His attention moved to the red cube, it was some sort of organic manner it looked almost identical to the insides of some of Earth's inhabitants. He wrapped a tentacle around it, then let a mouth form, he could do this, it was simply making an opening to his digestive organs. Not forming an entirely new, incredibly complex one.
He dropped the cube into his mouth, having to swallow it whole as his teeth would take some effort to fully form, for now, they would remain soft until they had time to harden. The not-krang watched him closely, talking to another, who was in a floating machine. He hadn’t seen a shell quite like that one before, how peculiar. Neither of them seemed to have built-in weapons, unlike the more superior ones of his line of Krang, instead they carried firearms.
Finally, it left, he was given a few more glances from other krang and he could tell they were speaking about him. The curiosity was making his decision easier. Plus, it seemed he would not be doing a lot of moving in this jar, it would be best to develop ears.
He felt his skin crawl uncomfortably, in a way he hadn’t felt in some time. Right… yes he was small, about the size of a buddling, he might not be the mental age of one but physically it looked as if he was freshly split from an adult Krang. When splitting their consciousness to a different form, most wise Krang would make their new vessel as large as possible. Bad luck meant he was just about as small as he could be.
A Krang’s instincts acted based on their size, not their age, because of those unique circumstances. The smaller the Krang the more vulnerable. A small Krang instinctually prefers small places to squish themselves into or to find a trustworthy larger Krang to watch them while they are of a vulnerable size. Some Krang would take the opportunity to eat another, he knew he would’ve been able to trust sister and brother, though they would have laughed at his current state, any others he knew from the past… well it would’ve been a terrible idea to let them be privy to an unfortunate misstep such as this.
Unfortunately, his see-through, very open, containment made him uneasy. Discomfort and disgustingly, fear, writhed just underneath the surface of his skin. For now, he resided to just pressing himself against the edge of the glass and observing, he found where doors were, he learned the patterns of the not-krang, and watched their actions with a calculating eye. What they did had no meaning to him, nothing at all familiar. They were working on something, usually, Krang did not bother themselves with inventing they were perfect as is but these ones must need it to create to defend themselves, pathetic.
Krang scoffed, blatantly ignoring that they
had
managed to trap him.