[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."

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[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."

[fearasaurusrex]

"Good sense of story, my friend. Your newfound durability is tied to whatever unrest you have in your heads," said the voice they'd heard earlier, coming from all directions.

"I'm afraid you won't live long enough to find out the true scope of it all. That's not your story."

Something was flung out of the shadows of the roller coaster and it rolled over to their feet.

[othersdestructive]

"GRENADES!" Raph cried out, tackling his brother out of the way and trying to shield him with his body.

They did indeed look like grenades, but when they exploded, instead of blowing them up, they released a cloud of thick gas in the air. Raph started coughing, his vision starting to blur.

[bestnamer]

"Tear gas!"

Nobody had ever used tear gas on them. And Mikey was glad now they hadn't - already the pain was a special kind of, well, painful.

This guy was an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a WEIRDO who wanted to do something bad to them. Like maybe feed them to all their childhood fears.

No. Not THEIR childhood fears - but childhood fears in general. They were going to die a kid-friendly death. A story-death. Why?

"Hey!" Mikey called out, as loud as he could, though his voice was failing as the tear gas burned his eyes and throat. "Creepy story guy! What's - aaugh - genre savvy?"

[fearasaurusrex]

"Genre-savvy is understanding that all the world's a story and seeing the rules of that narrative, understanding them implicitly," said the man in the shadows. The voice sounded almost pleased that Mikey was asking about it. "Right now the narrative law that applies most to your situation is this: sometimes the villains win."

Out of the cloud of gas, through tearing eyes, they would see Trunchbull suddenly appear and with two swings of his riding crop, the world faded away.