[LN] Raphael is cool but rude, Michelangelo is a party dude...

[othersdestructive]

"Jus' - jus' five more minutes, Master Splinter."

Come on, it'd been a busy night. Couldn't he sleep in just a little bit longer?

Except...except he wasn't in the lair.

As Raph opened his eyes, he realized he wasn't even in the city.

New York was New York and after spending the majority of his life under it, and exploring every facet of it from above after he and his brothers had started exploring at night, it was practically in his blood.

Wherever he was now, it didn't look like New York, it didn't sound like New York - it definitely didn't smell like New York.

And his head felt like it'd been cracked open and...something was rushing in. Something unnameable and shifting. It was making even his memories fuzzy. It was almost like something that wasn't himself was trying to push in and make...something else into himself. For a moment, all he could do was push himself up onto his knees and hunch over, holding his head in his hands.

"Ugh, my head."

Comments

[othersdestructive]

"It's funny how quickly you can decide to disown somebody," was Raph's response as they were both almost flung out of the car once more.

[bestnamer]

"Aww, come on."

Raph didn't mean it, so Mikey's protest was equally lazy.

"Hey! After this, we should see if they left any corn dogs behind! I've always wanted to try a corndog."

Mikey was usually pretty big on the childlike glee, but there was something about this place - creepy as the abandoned carnival theme was, once you got past the desertion, the sense of abandonment of the place, there was . . .

Well maybe there wasn't anything in the air at all. Maybe Mikey didn't need any subtle influences to go to an even higher plane of childlike glee when left to his own devices in the sort of place where other children - regular children - got to enjoy themselves as part of normal, delightful lives.

He was generally a pretty happy turtle, but he hadn't been this happy in, oh - a while.

And maybe he was crazy (he and Raph WERE having other voices shoved into their heads), but something about this place just seemed more fun even than an abandoned carnival ought to have been.

Something in the air made it feel inviting.

Not something the turtles, outcasts that they were, felt very often.

"And you know what else? We should see if they left a Ferris wheel! You know, to get a good view of our surroundings!"

Yes. Yes that was exactly the reason for seeking out a ferris wheel. That, and no other.

[othersdestructive]

"What part about one ride wasn't clear?" Raph said as the Tilt-A-Whirl came to a stop.

As fun as it had been, they had to get down to business and find out what was going on here.

He hopped off the ride and got out his sais again.

"C'mon, we need to look around."

[bestnamer]

"What better place to look around than from the top of a Ferris wheel?"

Mikey kept up his protest as he followed Raph, not bothering to take out his kusarigami. What could happen here? In a thoroughly abandoned carnival at night?

[fearasaurusrex]

"Well, isn't this just a delight?" came a voice from the shadows, one with a distinct British accent. It sounded like the erudite voice of an action movie villain. "A few new friends from what undoubtedly must be a gripping work of fiction."

A pause.

"Or an asinine one, given the children were what likely brought you in. It doesn't really matter either way. You're here and I'm here and we're all puppets cut loose from our strings."

[othersdestructive]

"Who's there? Show yourself!"

He didn't like the sound of that voice. He didn't like this entire situation.

Whoever it was sounded like he planned to toy with them and it bothered him that someone else might know what was going on when he and Mikey didn't.

[bestnamer]

Not very much of that made sense to Mikey, but it was definitely said in a forbidding kind of tone, and that meant it was ninja time.

"If I was a puppet without strings, could I do this?"

Mikey whipped the weighted end of his kusarigama into the darkness in the direction of the sound of the voice.

[fearasaurusrex]

Something caught the chain and started pulling on it with an iron grip.

Out of the darkness came a woman in white, running towards Mikey, shrieking an inhuman shriek. Clenched in one hand was the end of his chain, the other was held up as if she was ready to claw his eyes out with her long, sharp nails. Her hands were just as bloody as her face and said face had no eyes and blood still poured from the empty sockets.

[othersdestructive]

Raph had seen some freaky stuff in the last few months of his life. Some really, really freaky stuff.

But this was a level of horror movie creepy that was beyond even his capacity to be stoic.

That was why he let out a very high-pitched scream.

[bestnamer]

Echoed by Mikey's equally high-pitched shriek.

"IT'S BLOODY MARY!"

No telling how he knew that on instinct, but he did. It was like his inner child (which was only surface deep anyway) was screaming it at him from deep inside his soul.

"DON'T LET HER TOUCH YOU SHE'LL CLAW YOUR EYES OUT!"

Which was why Mikey threw his nunchuck at her, instead of using it like the weapon he was trained to use. Sheer terror had rendered him temporarily unable to use his ninja skills.

[fearasaurusrex]

"I see I'm not the only genre-savvy one here. It's such a shame you have to die, it would be such a wonderful thing to talk with someone else who sees the world through the same eyes," came the voice from the shadows.

[othersdestructive]

"Don't throw your weapons at her!" Raph chastised, now getting over his initial panic. "Fight her! It's no different than fighting a mutant like Rahzar."

He barreled in, sais raised, deflecting her clawed blows, hoping to give Mikey some time to rally - and also hoping it'd help give the impression that they could have control over this situation.

"Then we'll take down that blowhard spouting nonsense at us, whoever it is!"

[bestnamer]

"Okay! Okay I'll do it!"

Ignore the creepy nutjob, pay attention to Raph, fight Bloody Mary. Oh no what is Mikey's life.

He quickly wrapped up the kusarigama's chain, yanking Bloody Mary off balance as he flipped out of her path and raised his scythe to attack. He considered making a third eyehole joke, but nah, that was a little dark.

[othersdestructive]

Raph deflected another blow of her claws as Mikey went on the attack, trying to cover him.

"You picked the wrong turtles to mess with, lady! You're gonna wind up with a third eye-hole before the night is over!"

It was totally dark, which was why Raph made the joke.

[fearasaurusrex]

He was able to defend against Bloody Mary right up until a massive woman came barreling in like a linebacker and shoulder-slammed him so hard that if this had been a movie he'd have been knocked out of frame.

He slammed head first into the metal support beam for the roller coaster and slumped to the ground.

"Teenagers! Nasty, disgusting things! The only thing worse than small children. It's time you learned some discipline," the woman said, pulling out a riding crop.

[bestnamer]

"IT'S THE TRUNCHBULL!"

There really was no end to the number of movies Mikey had watched (and retained). Why did every single one of these bad guys seem tailor-picked to terrify someone with a skin-deep inner child?

No really, why? What was genre-savvy? Why'd this guy have it out for them, in a way that wasn't a simple "kill the freaks?"

Mikey struggled with Bloody Mary as he puzzled over this.

"I didn't even say your name," he shouted at the eyeless, bleeding ghost. "You shouldn't BE here!"

[fearasaurusrex]

She spoke in an off-tune singsong and it echoed as if she was speaking from down a long tunnel.

"Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does her garden grow? With children's tears and children's fears, and pretty skulls all in a row."

[othersdestructive]

"The Trunchwhatnow?" Raph said, as he sat up, holding his head.

The Trunchbull swung her riding crop at him before he had a chance to recover, but while he dodged the first blow, the second caught him upside the face with such force that he was knocked off his feet and in through the side of a concession stand.

It was enough of an impact that it should have killed him - and yet he was able to drag himself out of the wreckage, groaning.

Alive. How was he even alive after getting hit that hard?

[fearasaurusrex]

"It's going to be worse than the Chokey for you!" said the Trunchbull, running towards Raph at a speed a woman her size shouldn't have been capable of.

[bestnamer]

"Raph, no!"

Mikey had a feeling that sort of crash should have been one Raph couldn't get up from, yet there he was. And there was the Trunchbull, charging.

"You're not putting my brother in anything! Especially not the Chokey!"

Mikey barreled into the Trunchbull, contracting into his shell at the last minute.

[fearasaurusrex]

It did knock her over, being slammed in the side with Mikey's flying body. But she picked herself up off the ground, picked up Mikey in his shell, and shot-putted him into the corrugated metal fence blocking off the Ferris Wheel.

"We'll see about that, you loathsome little monsters!" she cried.

[fearasaurusrex]

With Mikey having been slammed, Bloody Mary turned her sights on Raph, trying to claw his eyes out.

[othersdestructive]

Mikey's attack of the Trunchbull at least bought Raph time to get his head together, so he deftly deflected Bloody Mary's clawed blows and kicked her hard in the stomach to knock her over.

"That's it!" Raph said, twisting the riding crop out of Trunchbull's hands with a sai and flinging it over the fence nearby so that it'd be difficult to get. "You think we're monsters now? I'll show you a monster."

He growled at her as he lunged forward and thrust his sais at her chest. These two were playing for keeps and that meant mercy was out of the question.

The Trunchbull blocked his blows with her hands, blood spurting as he stabbed right through them. Then she laughed and Raph's eyes went wide.

"What in the -"

He'd just stabbed her in the hands, why was she laughing?

As she grabbed his sais and twisted them out of his grip, he understood why. She pulled them out of her hands and threw them over the same fence that Raph had thrown her riding crop, then before he could fight back, grabbed him by the wrists and started twirling him around in a hammer throw.

She released him so that he went flying in Mikey's direction.

[bestnamer]

Mikey was just standing up, dazed, when Raph crashed into him.

"Ahhh! Dude you nearly cracked my shell!"

The Trunchbull had nearly cracked his shell, actually, but it didn't pay to admit that.

Though he had to wonder -

"Why ISN'T my shell cracked?"

He knocked experimentally on his plastron, which seemed no tougher than normal.

[othersdestructive]

"I don't know. She threw me hard enough to kill me and I'm definitely feeling it but somehow I'm not dead either," Raph said, climbing to his feet, pulling out some throwing stars as they approached. "Maybe it's tied to the stuff that was going on in our heads. Whatever it is, let's take advantage of it and give them a beating they won't forget."