[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]

"Soooo I'm thinking this is the exact opposite of good," Raph said nervously, voice shrill and cracking slightly, as the vans drove up.

He thrashed against his arm bonds, trying to avoid moving his head so he didn't choke himself and Mikey out.

"Mikey, did they leave anything on you? A throwing star, anything? They took all mine."

[bestnamer]

"Nothing, bro."

This hurt, this really hurt. Not just the physical part, but the humiliation of being dumped in front of people who reacted to them exactly as they all knew, deep down, normal people in general would react to mutant turtle boys in their midst. Still, it hurt Mikey as much to have it thrown in his face like this as the actual beatings had. They wouldn't be freaking out this much if they just knew they were cool dudes like any other -

Except these people DID, because their lives were their stories, and having movies about their heroics still wasn't enough to make the normal people get over their initial "EW MUTANTS" once they realized they were actual, well, mutants.

And on top of it, the vans were swiftly blocking off anyone who MIGHT have actually cared that they were about to die a horrible death. The people pouring out of the vans were more heavily armed than any Kraang, and then there were a couple of folks in lab coats among them with things that looked a lot like tranquilizers.

"Dude nothing about this situation is radical."

[othersdestructive]

Raphael didn't know what to say. How could he manage the old standby of "It'll all be okay" when so much lately had shown that it wouldn't be.

After New York was a mess thanks to the Kraang and after what happened to Leo and Master Splinter he didn't know how to tell that lie anymore. Especially if it was true they were in some strange new world where somehow people knew their story...

...and hated them for the freaks they were anyway.

Despite it all, Raph tried. This was his baby brother and he'd always try for his baby brother.

"We'll get out of this, lil' brother. We just - we just need to wait for the right moment to strike. Like always."

It always came, right? There was always that moment, that last minute plan.

And then they'd...what? Try to hide in a hostile world that knew they existed and hated them for it?

[morethanmyth]

Except the world wasn't so hostile. People were trying to push between the gaps in the vans. Most of them were younger people. Some were older teens and young adults, children of the 00's, some were in their late twenties and early thirties, people that had been children of the 80's and 90's.

They all had two things in common: One, they'd all watched one of many iterations of the turtles when they were younger. Two, they'd grown up in a world where Guardians watched over their hopes and dreams and fought against their nightmares. The Guardians had protected their happy memories and had given them a sense of joy and wonder and fun. They had made them love stories. Those memories gave them courage in dark times, those dreams kept their minds open to new ideas, that fun kept them loving fun things as adults, that wonder made them curious about the unknown instead of fearful of it, and that love of stories meant they had their idols, the characters they had always wished were real. It meant they had more heroes to look up to than just the ones reality had to offer. They had ideas to look up to as well.

And now, for many of them, two of those heroes were sitting there bound and beaten, with menacing Men in Black type figures crowding around them with guns.

And they were real. They were real and they were surrounded by figures with guns and tasers and black vans that wanted to take them away.

They didn't know why they had the desire to fight, they had long since forgotten and stopped believing in the beings that had helped them grow up kind and open-minded and brave.

But one thing they did all know: nothing about this situation was radical.

"Mommy, mommy! What are they doing to the ninja turtles? What are they doing?" a little girl cried - and that was the spark.

"Becky, can you take her?" said the women's mother, handing her off to what looked like a female relative.

Then she stepped forward and got in the face of an agent standing in her way.

"Either they're dumb kids in costumes or the actual fuckin' ninja turtles, as crazy as that is. Whatever the hell is going on, they're hurt! They need to get to a hospital!"

"Ma'am, you need to step back!" one of the agents said, pushing her back.

" - What are you doing with them?! Where are you taking them?!"

That was when members of the crowd rushed in, furious.

"Let them go!"

" - is an amazing, mind-blowing thing and you're just going to drag them off and make them disappear, aren't you -"

" - got guns and tazers on them! They're gonna taze them -"

" - and they're just kids! Whether they're kids in costumes or not, they're just kids -"

"- you can't hurt them, we won't let you -"

A man jumped into the fray, trying to shove through the gap, yelling, "Cowabunga, dudes!" as a battle cry.

That was when the powder keg went off and the shoving and fighting started to turn violent. Someone threw a shoe at one of the agents' heads, then a punch, then someone dropped as they were tazed. Then it started to morph into what looked like the start of a riot.

Despite their defense of the turtles, it was still falling exactly in line with the plans of those trying to destroy the idea of them. Everyone watching on the news, from children to adults who had once been children, would have to face the dread horror of seeing something they found wonderful, something that had or still did make them feel safe, taken away to be destroyed.

And even the grown ups fighting back couldn't stop it.

[bestnamer]

"Raph, you hear that?"

Mikey had seen a lot in his life that was weird and unexpected, a lot that he'd never thought he'd see, that went against rationality. And that was just at HOME. The stuff that had happened since he and Raph woke up at the abandoned carnival were just a different kind of weirdness.

And this was the surprise that topped them all.

"Bro. We really are in their movies here. Bro, they like us for it."

Amazing. Mind-blowing. They're just kids. The same sort of people who ran screaming from them in their New York were running and screaming to save them.

Between all the pain and hopelessness that had suddenly, completely without warning, turned into hope, Mikey was crying. Not sobbing, not anything noisy, just a constant stream of tears that he couldn't have stopped if he tried.

People were trying to save them, and Mikey really, really wanted to meet the sort of people who'd try to save two mutant freakboys whose stories they thought were radical. But mostly, he wanted to meet the guy who'd yelled "cowabunga."

He scrabbled around on the asphalt below them for something, anything, any bit of the debris that New York was good at accumulating that could help free them. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the gleam of broken glass - a tiny, small shard, but still better than nothing.

"Hey, lean over to the right. I gotta grab something."

He'd neglected to say whose right.

[othersdestructive]

"This really is another world," Raph said slowly, his throat slightly choked. "And we really are in their movies or something here."

And they...liked them? Some of them were even willing to face down armed government agents to help them?

Raph could barely wrap his head around it. For so long he'd carried around so much anger, a lot of it directed at the world in general. Only the world he'd always directed it was a world where people screamed when they saw them.

It wasn't this one, where he saw a woman trying to fight past some FBI type mook, looking at him with desperation in her gaze.

He watched as she dropped to the ground, twitching as she was tazed.

"Hey! HEY!" he screamed. "Leave her alone! Just leave them alone!"

They were getting hurt trying to help him and Mikey and with how violent things were getting, it was only a matter of time before someone died.

So as soon as Mikey said he'd spotted something, he leaned, hoping he'd found something to cut them free with.

...leaned to his own right, naturally.

[bestnamer]

"No dude, your other right!"

[othersdestructive]

"That's my left, numbnuts!"

The agents were now paying more attention to the turtles again, just as Raph dove to his left, but now Mikey was in a position to get his hands on the shard of glass.

[bestnamer]

Mikey snatched up the glass shard and started sawing at their bonds.

"How cool is this? How cool are they?" he had to ask, in a whisper this time, jerking his head towards the people. All it did was jerk their neck-ties tightly, hurting them both, but hey, what was a little pain in the face of a righteous mob on their side?

[othersdestructive]

"It's pretty cool," Raph admitted. "But what we're about to do is gonna be even cooler."

The ropes tying them together at the waist snapped and Raph grabbed the glass from Mikey's hand, slitting the ropes at his neck in one very dangerous swipe that made them snap right away. Naturally, the force of it meant he'd nicked his own neck in the process, but what was a little more blood when they were already battered messes?

At least the two of them weren't tied to each other, even if their hands and feet were still tied.

"Now let's give our fans a little show."

Then he hopped to his feet, arms and feet still bound and jumped into action, flipping with both hands bound and kicking one of the agents in the chest with both feet.

[bestnamer]

None of the agents were shooting yet, probably because that would just cause WAY too much trouble if a civilian got hit at this point. All to the turtles benefit, as Mikey headbutted one agent and then flipped sideways onto several of them, knocking them over and rolling out of the way as one still on his feet tried to taze him, but ended up tazing one of the downed agents instead.

"TURTLE POWER!" someone yelled from the crowd, as Mikey flipped to his feet, the biggest smile on his face.

"Yeah!" he yelled, bouncing in place, since he couldn't really do a victory dance. "Yeah, what that guy said!"

The responding cheer from the crowd of civilians made him smile so big it was possible his face might split in half. He still anticipated the agent tackling him from behind, though, and backflipped so that the agent pratfalled right underneath him, prompting more cheers from the crowd.

[morethanmyth]

In the crowd one young woman realized she could do the impossible. She could make something that had only been cool when she'd been five cool once more. Using the lamest thing imaginable, she could transform this moment into something unforgettable.

It was the chance of a lifetime and despite the risk of sounding like a moron, she took that chance and shouted in a booming voice over the crowd:

"Go ninja, go ninja go, go ninja, go ninja go! Go, go, go, go!"

The people around her heard what she was doing and joined in, until the chant started to spread through the crowd.

"Go ninja, go ninja go, go ninja, go ninja go! Go, go, go, go!"

The entire crowd was starting to get into it now. Traffic had ground to a standstill as people crowded in, and the ones right at the edge were still trying their damndest to break through the line, taking advantage of the fact that all the reporters converging and the smartphones livestreaming made it so the agents couldn't exactly just open fire on the crowd.

[othersdestructive]

In the middle of fighting, Raph couldn't help but laugh.

"What. Is. That?" he cried out as his bashed one of the agents in the head with his bound together hands. "Are they rapping?"

[bestnamer]

"Don't be a hater," Mikey admonished. "I can dig their flow. It's great for punching mooks to."

[othersdestructive]

They did pretty well for two ninjas that were tied up, but the van doors opened and even more agents rushed out as backup - and these ones were smart enough to keep themselves at a distance.

They raised their tranq guns and fired multiple darts from all directions. Raph tried to knock them away with the thick ropes around his hands but several hit him anyway: one in the thigh, one in the upper arm, one in the calf.

"Mikey, try to - the crowd -" Mikey needed to make a break for the crowd, maybe they would hide him and free him, maybe...

Maybe...

Raph didn't have any more time to think about the maybes. As the chanting around them morphed into cries of distress and anger, the world went black.

[bestnamer]

Mikey made a break for it as best he could, but the best he could was not good enough. A flat bolt left him an easy target for the shooters, who tranqued him plenty good. He was unconscious before he even hit the ground at the edge of the ring.

"That is definitely not a suit!" a woman wrestling with an agent was yelling. "Is anyone getting this? Is anyone seeing this? What the hell is going on?"

She kept repeating the question, at the top of her lungs, into the agent's face, distracting him long enough that a kid with a smartphone was able to crawl unimpeded to the edge of the clear ring and catch some truly good footage of the prone ninja turtle, and the agents already loading Raph into a van.

All, ultimately, to plan, unfortunately for them, as the agents ripped Mikey out of the view of the kid's cameraphone and threw him in a truck too. Seconds later, people were scattering as the vans took off, leaving the scene bare of any turtle evidence.

They had all this footage, all their memories of the struggle - and of losing it.