[LN] [Open] - It could work as a grappling hook in a pinch

[saisthelimit]

Raph wasn't a guy who went with the flow as easily as he needed to. The lessons he'd taken with Master Splinter about this only went so far for a guy who's anger is sparked like a wildfire. For the past few days, he's been oscillating between sleep and the training area to wail on training dummies in a broody fit.

He's off-balance. He's losing his focus. He's not used to being away from his family, away from his whole support network and he's not great at making a new one. This situation has thrown one fact into stark relief: he makes his best friends by beating them up. He hasn't had anyone to beat up in awhile.

He didn't feel like going back to the training room today...Somehow, he'd felt weaker than he usually did. He'd settle, right at the moment, for watching the yetis and elves in the workshop. It wasn't exactly cheering him up, but once or twice a yeti would drop a hammer on it's foot or an elf would put it's head through a drum. Good enough for a laugh, but it's not distracting him from his restlessness.

...What is distracting him is his last resort hobby: knitting. He's making a scarf. He got some weird looks from one of the elves when he asked for it, and the first person who laughs is going to be holding the yarn.

In their mouth.

Comments

[morescaredofyou]

Peter was, very cautiously, trying to explore the workshop. Partly because he kept getting lost every five minutes, and partly because, well, he had nothing else to do really. He was beginning to almost get used to all of the strange things he kept stumbling on.

The giant knitting turtle kinda threw him for a loop.

He stood there for a moment. He blinked. The knitting turtle was still there. He blinked again. Nope, still there.

"Are you real, or have I just finally descended into inevitable insanity?" he asked.

[saisthelimit]

Raph's annoyed grumbling sigh probably sounds pretty real. How many times has he heard that question in his life? And asking it here? In Santa's freakin' workshop, is he really the most unbelievable thing?

"No, I'm the last burrito you ate, come back to haunt you. Leave off the jalapenos next time."

[morescaredofyou]

"Great, you can join the baked beans from last month that are haunting me as well," Peter said, falling back into quipping without even thinking about it.

When he did think about it though, well, he kinda felt a little guilty. "Um. Sorry, I shouldn't really stare at you just because you're a giant talking turtle. I'm...kinda new here."

[saisthelimit]

Raph snorts. It might be a laugh.

"So'm I. 'Course if you've been here for more than a minute than you've probably seen eight things weirder than me."

He can say that because he doesn't think of himself as that weird. He grew up in a family of talking turtles and a rat, after all.

[morescaredofyou]

"Yeah, but none of those weird things were knitting. Nobody knits anymore," Peter said, grinning. Once he got over the initial shock it wasn't that weird, really, talking to a talking turtle. Different, sure, but so were mutants. And he was pretty sure Kitty would find a way to kick his butt from a whole different universe if he was being bigoted.

"I'm Peter Parker, by the way," he said.

[saisthelimit]

"Raphael."

Man, this guy has been wrong about every single thing he's said. Doesn't seem bad, but...wrong. Generally.

"And if nobody knits, whaddya call this? Hang-gliding?"

[morescaredofyou]

"I call it a throwback to the time of my grandmother," he said. "Even my Aunt May doesn't knit anymore."

But he had to admit, he didn't really talk about knitting. Not when there were so many other questions he wanted to ask. "So, um...okay I am really sorry if this is rude, but...I have to ask. Do you come from a universe of turtle people, or were you like, bitten by a genetically modified turtle or something?"

[saisthelimit]

Well, there's a shell of a subject change.

"Neither. I was just your run-of-the-mill pet turtle until me, my three brothers, and rat sensei were dropped into a puddle of alien ooze that turned us human-like." Yep. No, nothing huge there. "So what's your deal."

[morescaredofyou]

"Okay, that is both really weird and really cool," Peter said. (Alien ooze? How cool was that! And it must have some crazy properties, to be able to turn normal turtles into human-sized, talking turtles...) "Do you know much about where it came from? Was it like, meant to make animals human like?" Or alien-like? Would be odd, for aliens to invent ways of making animals like humans instead of themselves.

"Um, my deal?" Peter shifted from one foot to another. Oh man. This was not a question he wanted to deal with. Sure, he'd heard the 'your lives have become stories in other universes' spiel, so he knew that logically he wasn't going to be able to hide the fact that he was Spider-man forever. But that didn't mean he was ready to, well, say that. Out loud. To actual people.

"I. Uh. Don't think I have a deal. Not one that I know of, anyway." Please believe me please please...

[saisthelimit]

"All's I know is it was some kind of experiment or maybe the byproduct of one, never quite understood that. I dunno if it worked like they wanted it to or not, but the aliens that made it were pretty alright." The Utroms were fine. Mostly.

"Yeah? Some cosmic force went out of it's way to bring you here and you don't have a deal. You think I was hatched yesterday?" Yeeeeah, he doesn't believe you.

[morescaredofyou]

"So the people who were ultimately responsible for making you into what you are weren't psychopathic dicks about it? Wow. Now that I did not expect," Peter said. (And he wasn't bitter. He wasn't bitter at all. Really.)

"I...look, I don't know why cosmic forces do what they do! They're cosmic forces!"

[saisthelimit]

"Guess when you get stranded for thousands of years transporting the most wanted criminal in the galaxy, you get fond of the people in it," Raph couldn't blame him for thinking the worst of aliens though.

"Not that I ain't met my share of psychopathic ETs."

"...And cosmic forces, for that matter. Never seemed like the sort of guys who do stuff for no reason."

[morescaredofyou]

Oddly enough, aliens were one of the few things that had yet to ruin Peter's day. In fact if they showed up...well, he had to admit, if aliens showed up he'd probably think that was seriously awesome. But in the category of 'people who muck about with things that they really shouldn't and end up creating superhumans and/or monsters', he had a lot more experience, and very little of it good.

"So...these aliens got stranded on Earth? What were they like?" Peter asked, hopelessly curious. (Aliens. So cool.) "And what happened to the guy they were transporting? I mean, if they were stuck..."

[saisthelimit]

"However much time you have, it ain't long enough for the story, I can tell ya that right now." Hopefully the look on his face would sell his point. If you wrote it down, it'd reach "tome" status.

"I'll give you the highlights: the criminal's name was Ch'rell and he escaped into feudal Japan, took the identity of a legendary samurai, formed a deadly ninja clan to get revenge on the Utroms and became a billionaire crime lord in the middle of New York.

"As for the rest of the Utroms, they didn't have the tech to get back so they picked a bunch of worthy humans to be their guardians against Ch'rell until human technology caught up enough for them to go home."

[morescaredofyou]

Peter saw that expression, and decided not to push it. "Deadly ninja clan run by New York billionaire crime lord? You know I wish I could say that that could never happen, but really I'm surprised we haven't aready got one back in my New York." His New York. The Raphael's New York. This multiverse thing was weird.

"And okay, these Ultroms were picking humans to be guardians. Makes sense. But why turtles? Not that there's anything wrong with turtles. Turtles are awesome. But they're not really what you'd expect."

[saisthelimit]

"Kinda be shocked if you didn't, I don't care what universe you're in. It's freakin' New York." There are constants in every universe: fish swim, birds fly, New York is full of wackbags and mixed nuts.

"Nah, me and my brothers came later. It was an accident but it just happened that our sensei was the pet rat of one of the guardians, so we got sucked into the whole thing whether we wanted it or not."

[morescaredofyou]

"You know we had a guy in a rhino suit tearing up the city once? I'm not even kidding. A rhino suit. You'd think that the crazies could go somewhere else every once in a while." Of course there was also the guy swinging around, calling himself Spider-man and fighting the guy in the Rhino suit. Really, Peter was just as crazy as the rest of them. But hey, at least he wasn't psychopathic.

"Ouch. That sucks. Or..." Peter hesitated, thinking about it. Generally accidents that mutate you terribly were a bad thing, but then, when sometimes you luck out, like Peter did. "...unless you like it better this way?"

[saisthelimit]

"What, and leave New York with a crazy shortage? Couldn't happen. Wouldn't even be New York." He shrugs. "At least you don't have to go far to fight it." "You" meaning a general you. There are just a shell of a lot of superheroes and assorted vigilantes in Raph's New York.

Raph shoots him an irritated look. "If you mean I like getting to talk, think, and beat the crud out of bad guys instead of living in a fishbowl all day? Then yeah, it's been pretty good."

[morescaredofyou]

"Sorry, that was...that was a really stupid question. I should really just stop asking any turtle related questions, because apparently I'm an idiot."

[saisthelimit]

"Yeah, well...You ain't screaming in fear at least. Step up."

Denying that Peter was an idiot would be dishonest, but he came by it honestly. That was Mikey's excuse.

Raph is still a little honked off about it.