WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #3 by Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Tom Waltz, Esau, Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop, Samuel Plata, Luis Antonio Delgado, and Shawn Lee, on sale now.
Of all of the dark futures that await the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the world of The Last Ronin may very well be the worst. The Splinter Clan been reduced to little more than a memory in the mind of a decrepit New York City, and the few resistance forces that remain don't seem capable of gaining any ground on their own. But in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #3, April O'Neil shows Michelangelo, the last surviving Turtle, something that she believes can help turn the tide of this bloody war for freedom from the Foot Clan.
Unfortunately, her solution lies in what little remains of the Turtles' old ally Fugitoid, who just so happens to the one who doomed them all in the first place.
When Michelangelo catches up with April in the old lair, he discovers her working on the severed, robotic head of Fugitoid. Michelangelo didn't know there was anything left of their old ally in the first place and is in desperate need of filling in the details of what all happened in his absence. Before the Foot Clan took over New York, its newly appointed leader Hiroto, the son of Karai, called for a parley of sorts in Japan. While Donatello and Splinter flew there to meet with Hiroto for these supposed peace talks, his soldiers in New York unleashed a deadly assault on the remaining Turtles and their allies. Ythe Foot Clan's attack one of unprecedented brutality, but it was impossibly precise as well, and all because of Fugitoid's own presence.
Originally a Neutrino scientist who merely utilized his robotic form from time to time, Professor Zayton Honeycutt had been working for Krang and the interdimensional Utrom Empire for years before he realized that their ultimate goal was genocide. While working against Krang as part of the Neutrino resistance, Honeycutt posed as a human to work alongside Baxter Stockman, where he developed his contacts and connections in the process. This all led to him pitting the Foot and Krang's forces against one another to bring an end to the latter's machinations. Honeycutt's own focus was always on helping his people and those he had come to know as friends. In the meantime, Baxter Stockman himself became obsessed with acquiring the fugitive android, and that obsession drove him to ending the Splinter Clan as we know it.
After Donnie and Splinter left for Japan, Foot Clan assassins began their assault on the Splinter Clan's stronghold, hastily taking out their guards from a distance before sending in terrifying new robotic threats of their own. These new Terminator-like Foot soldiers were deployed alongside a seemingly endless swarm of Mouser robots, and all of them had found the heroes by tracking Fugitoid's signal, which had been compromised by Stockman at an earlier time. When it became clear that Fugitoid would not be his, Stockman detonated all of the Mousers he had unleashed, ending in incalculable destruction and numerous deaths. Luckily, some part of Fugitoid survived, though whether there is anything of Honeycutt left inside of it is yet to be seen.
While Fugitoid could prove to be just the boost that the resistance needs to topple the Foot Clan's grasp on the city, April has held off on reactivating him purely out of caution. If Honeycutt was the key that led the Foot Clan to the Turtles' door many years ago, then turning him back on would be like sending up a signal flare to Stockman and the Foot Clan. But if Fugitoid is still half as helpful as he used to be, then he could also turn out to be the bait that the April and her rebels need to set one final trap for their enemies.
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