Baxter Stockman

Name: Baxter Stockman

Former Alias: Baxter the Fly

Age: Early forties

Race: Caucasian

Hair: Light brown

Eyes: Brown

Height: 5'2"

Weight: 135 pounds

Special Skills: Inventing

Little-Known Abilities: Singing on key

Quirks: He is very clumsy, often tripping or falling, but sometimes in a burst of panic he can actually perform rather impressive feats.

Family: Parents

Twin brother Barney

Allies: The Turtles

Splinter

April O'Neil

Irma Langinstein

Vincent the Alien Computer

Enemies: Shredder

Krang

Bebop & Rocksteady

Barney Stockman (?)

Backstory: Baxter was always the favored scientist in the Stockman family, as canonically evidenced by Barney's fury and outrage over constantly being mistaken for him. They competed even as children, driving their well-to-do parents up the wall with their inability to get along. The problem came to a head one fateful day when Barney grew fed-up and snapped. After the ensuing catastrophic events, the brothers rarely argued, but a large rift began to form between them.

Baxter and Barney each achieved doctorates, but Baxter's dream of becoming an inventor could never seem to be realized. He was forced to live in an abandoned factory he used as a workshop and put up a show of being rich and famous by attending social events when invited. His prominence resulted in him being more well-known than Barney, which only fueled his twin's jealousy. His parents, disappointed that neither he nor Barney had become proper members of high society, refused to help and would not allow access to the trust funds set up for their sons unless it was a dire emergency.

Baxter continued inventing and finally came up with the Mouser, which he was certain he could patent due to the city's overwhelming rat problems. But corporate greed overpowered his good intentions and he was once again thrown out into the cold.

Baxter's bad luck continued when he almost immediately met Shredder and innocently believed the supervillain's lies that he wanted to market Baxter's Mousers. Although Baxter thought Shredder very strange and even irritating when he wanted a master control for the little robots, Baxter's good heart and his longing to be properly recognized caused him to ignore the warning signs and instead believe that Shredder simply had an obsession against rats.

Baxter was half-right; Shredder's obsession against one particular rat made him desire all the Mousers just in order to commit murder. He also planned to frame Baxter for the murder and whatever other damage the Mousers might cause throughout the city. The plan worked only too well, at least the latter part of it. While Splinter stayed alive, the Turtles believed Baxter was fully in cahoots with Shredder. Although they ironically and unknowingly saved him from being murdered by Foot Soldiers, they then tied him up and threatened him until he revealed Shredder's current hideout. They then left him for the police.

Despite Baxter's tales of what happened, or likely because of them, he was not only arrested, but committed to an insane asylum. Barney did not even try to help him, preferring to leave him to the mercy of the doctors. Whether or not he truly believed Baxter was crazy was something only he knew. But while Baxter was out of the way, Barney began fighting harder to achieve recognition of his own.

Baxter, alone and betrayed and hurt, remained in the asylum as his sanity crumbled. Bitter over his brother's insistence on distancing himself, Baxter grew out his hair into the same style Barney had chosen years ago. He still told the tale of what had really happened the last night he was free, but no one believed him aside from the other inmates. By the time Shredder finally decided he needed Baxter's services again and went to break him out of the insane asylum, Baxter had convinced himself that he had failed Shredder and was so far gone that he was even calling his former business partner "Master." In this state of being, he left the asylum and accompanied Shredder on his evil quests.

Life outside the asylum wasn't much better than life inside it, not with Shredder always breathing down his neck and insulting him and even abusing him. Baxter was meek and mild and didn't like fights or contention, but at the same time he also wasn't able to deal with the constant put-downs. He soon stood up for himself, and when a chance was presented to him to escape Shredder's rule by using the Eye of Sarnoth, he seized it.

Power corrupts, as Baxter proved again by his succeeding actions. Once he had the incredible power of the Eye in his grasp, he immediately became bold enough to lash out at someone else the way Shredder had lashed out at him. Unlike Shredder, however, Baxter didn't desire to do any serious damage to the previous wielder of the Eye, nor to anyone else. He mainly still wanted the recognition for his inventions that had always been denied to him. He crafted a Taj Mahal for his palace and created monsters to fight the Turtles when they found him, but despite threatening them with death he later offered to spare them if they acknowledged he had defeated them when Shredder could not.

Shredder was furious with Baxter after the rebellion, but in spite of making dire threats, he knew he had little choice but to use Baxter's services for the time being. Baxter, meanwhile, was frightened of the man once the power of the Eye of Sarnoth was stripped away and once again he began to meekly serve his cruel master.

This alliance kept to an abrupt halt when Baxter truly made a mistake on a plan and Shredder was fed-up with him for the last time. He sent Baxter through the portal to Krang, who wasn't interested in an Earth scientist and opted to immediately murder Baxter via disintegration.

It's hard to say whether or not it was a miracle when the machine malfunctioned and cross-fused Baxter with a fly that had followed him into the disintegration chamber. Baxter was alive, but experiencing the terror and agony of being murdered one moment and becoming part-fly the next wreaked havoc on what was left of his sanity. Suddenly his main human emotion was the desire for revenge against those who had hurt him. His memories faded very quickly due to the fly part of his mind, allowing Shredder to lie and trick him over and over again. Although for a short time he was still able to function well enough to create new scientific inventions and work out scientific solutions to his problems, it didn't last for long. The fly began to absorb Baxter's humanity, replacing it with the desires and traits of the filthy insects. Baxter eventually gained the ability to speak with and control armies of flies, yet he never ceased longing to be fully human again.

He was more fly than human when he launched his fateful final attack against the Turtles, whom he no longer even really remembered. At least, he had fallen beyond the point of being able to recall why he was angry at them. During the fight he ended up blasting himself with Shredder's rebuilt retro-mutagen ray gun, rendering him human again at last. But that was hardly the end of his story....

Personality: Meek and mild, bitter and angry, Baxter is a series of contrasts. He has felt both used and disrespected for most of his life and doesn't take kindly to it one bit. Although he tries to tolerate abuse for a while, it isn't long and he's refusing to be someone's doormat. He also handles bitterness far differently than Barney. While Barney's approach is to practically drown in it, Baxter tries to harness it and deal with it.

Albeit once naive and idealistic, Baxter has long since learned of the dark side of humanity and even participated in it. With his humanity and his mind restored, he is world-weary yet at the same time amazed by the Turtles and Splinter and the kindness they showed towards him. Believing that his instability was more a product of mistreatment rather than a chemical imbalance, Splinter felt they could help Baxter heal by showing him kindness he hadn't experienced for years. And it worked.

Baxter was so starved for kindness and recognition in the past that he vowed to serve anyone who seemed to give it to him, even Shredder. That attitude soon faded, and in the present, it hasn't returned. While he is grateful to his new friends, he doesn't want to blindly join their fight with Shredder in return for what they did for him. Still, he genuinely cares about them now and doesn't want to see them harmed. That, plus concern over his brother's actions, has driven him to indeed join the fight.

Despite Barney's desire to be estranged from his twin, Baxter still cares about him and acknowledges the bond they have as brothers. He doesn't want to interfere in Barney's life choices, but he worries very deeply when he sees Barney becoming involved in a situation that will be very bad for him at some point. He isn't about to preach, but he desires to somehow convince Barney that working for Shredder will not always go well for him.

Baxter still struggles with the aftereffects of being cross-fused with another living being for an extended period of time. He experiences bursts of sugar cravings, fascination with bright lights, and some remnant of his knowledge of the language of flies. Most of this is buried in his subconscious and it can come out without him even fully realizing at first. Now that he is aware of its existence, he tries to fight against it as much as he can. He worries and wonders if he will ever be completely human again, but doesn't want to believe he will always be part-fly in his mind.

He grappled with feelings of missing Vincent the alien computer, yet fighting against them because he felt that a computer isn't really alive and couldn't really be a friend. He has come to terms with his feelings, however, and the fact that they exist and that Vincent is his friend. He feels that he let Vincent down and experiences guilt over this. For a while he had no idea that Vincent wasn't destroyed when Donatello blew up the console it was plugged into, nor that his brother Barney now has his companionship. Now he is aware Vincent still exists and they have resumed their friendship during several meetings. While he wanted to take him away from the Technodrome, he felt he needed to stay because Barney needed his companionship while Baxter no longer does. Baxter has respected his decision and hopes Barney treats him well.

Baxter is a typical temperamental scientist in some ways, disliking interruptions and not getting to have things his way in general. That hasn't changed in recent times; he is capable of being snippy with anyone, including the Turtles. But they have accepted it as part of his personality, especially since he proved himself a loyal and trustworthy ally when he overcame his fears and traveled to the Technodrome to save them.

Also typical of many scientists, even Donatello, Baxter exhibits a certain arrogance that stems from pride in his work and knowledge of his genius. In the past he hated feeling as though he never had the recognition he deserved. In the present, that is tempered by a humility that only really started to emerge when the Turtles and Splinter showed genuine kindness to him even after everything he had done.

There was always one other driving factor in Baxter's motivations: to be important and useful. In his new life, he is finally finding that longing fulfilled.