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

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

"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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The three scientists threw themselves to the floor as the room exploded, and Dipper took that opportunity to take one of them out, slamming him in the back of the head with his book as hard as he could, knocking him clean out.

He was still invisible, so to the other two scientists and the turtles, it looked like the man just suddenly slumped down unconscious (or even dead).

The other two went down with . . . kittens to the back of the head.

Seriously, kittens just exploded out of nowhere and crashed into both mens' heads with such force that they fell unconscious.

The unharmed kittens circled back, mewing cheerfully, and melded with the suddenly-visible little girl again.

She turned to the turtles, still grinning that huge, contextually creepy grin.

"Ohmygosh!"

To be fair, though, her voice no longer had the exaggerated creepiness of a little girl TRYING to be creepy.

"Hi, I'm Mabel! I like turtles, you're turtles, whaaaaat is going on here?"

Dipper was grinning, too. It was the cheerful grin of someone wimpy who just busted into a secret government lab to spring innocent people from the hands of evil scientists, and who had, for the first time in his life, successfully intimidated the crap out of someone.

Someones, even! Plural!

Unfortunately, that meant that his grin wasn't that different than earlier, even if his tone of voice was now more natural.

"Mabel, please tell me you're not flirting with them. That is, like, the last thing they want to deal with right now, from anyone," Dipper said, running over to where Raph was strapped to the table. "Seriously, though, did you see their faces when we did the teleporty thing? Oh man that was great."

He unshackled Raphael's neck and then his hands.

"Don't worry, you two, we'll have you guys out of here in a second," he reassured him as he worked. "Then we'll take you somewhere s -"

He didn't get to say "safe" because Raphael's torso was free and that meant the first thing he'd done was turn and punch him right in the face.

"Oooooow!" he said, as he flew back, landing on his butt on the floor, holding his nose as he started bleeding. "And now I'm bleeding. Bleeding on my vest. Yep."

At this point, Raph was operating on pure instinct, unshackling himself the rest of the way, launching off the bed, and staggering over to unshackle his brother.

While Dipper and Mabel and Nico'd been having fun scaring the scientists into defeat, he'd been laying on the table, helpless, watching a horror movie play out a few feet away. After nearly being cut open while still alive.

Without anesthetic.

"Terrified" was an understatement. Right now, he was so far gone he wasn't even thinking straight. It was all instinct, reduced down to: 'Hit anyone that moves that isn't Mikey, get Mikey free, go go go go go -'

Maybe they were little kids but they were little creepy ghosty murder kids. He was a pragmatist, so sue him.

Edited 2014-11-04 11:22 (UTC)

"Raph no!" Mikey yelled, as - nope too late Raph punched the small boy.

Oops. Well.

"Raph I think they're on our side. I think they were trying to be creepy to scare the scientists and it worked! If this was a movie that's how it would go, this is the twist scene! Genre savvy, genre savvy!"

He rattled all this off WHILE helping Raph unshackle him as quickly as possible, though, because he did not want to spend one second shackled in this awful place any longer than he had to.

"HEY!"

Nico flickered into visibility, planted between the twins and the two new spirit people with a white-knuckled grip on the Staff of One. She kept it pointed away from the two turtles though, she really didn't want to throw a traumatized person against a wall. Or goad them into attacking her.

"We're not going to hurt you, we're here to rescue you; and to make these scientists' day suck for doing what they did to you!"

Edited 2014-11-04 11:41 (UTC)

He helped get Mikey completely unshackled and then he stood there clinging to his brother protectively.

Even though he was the one that had nearly been vivisected, the idea of Mikey having to watch and listen to it all while waiting to see if they were going to do the same to him was the one making Raph most want to slam someone through a wall right now.

For a moment, he just stared distrustfully at Nico but, well, Mikey had a Feeling about these people apparently and it did sound like a possibility. Especially now that the mysteriously-appearing goth chick was reaffirming their intent to rescue. He was slightly more inclined to listen.

"Who are you? Who is anybody here? We've - we've run into Bloody Mary and some crazy lady linebacker and some evil British Bond villain guy and then evil scientists and apparently we're characters in movies in this world?!"

He was losing it a little bit.

"So who are you? And you'd better keep that answer short and make sure it makes a whole lot of sense or so help me..."

Because even hurt and desperate, he was ready to fight his way out of this place if he had to. And the fact that he was hurt and desperate actually made him a lot more dangerous than usual rather than the reverse.

Something that was obvious by the fact that one of the twelve-year-olds in the room was nursing a bloody nose.

"DIPPER!"

Mabel ran to her brother the minute he was punched. It wasn't the first time, but she hadn't always been around to see the people who thought hurting her brother was a dandy idea, and as much as she understood the turtle-guy was traumatized at the moment, blood was thicker.

She clung to her brother the way Raph was clinging to his, throwing a dirty look in his direction that said he had doomed himself to remain stickerless in life.

Dipper, brainy kid that he was, tried his best to do what the turtle guy was asking, despite holding a hand to pinch his bleeding nose.

"We're people just like you that got pulled here from different universes and we're fiction to this world, too," he said in a very nasally voice. "There are lots of bad people and monsters out there trying to kill all of us for a multitude of pretty terrible reasons, so we came to save you and want to get you somewhere safe so we can explain everything that's going on."

Bim bam boom. Simple enough.

Edited 2014-11-04 23:25 (UTC)

"Yeah, you're not going to get much 'sense' out of any explanations here," Nico said with a disgusted sort of sigh. "We're working with the freaking Easter Bunny in an alternate reality from our own. It's weird. But we're not going to hurt you and we've got a safe place you can get some food and information, and hole up until your shell heals."

She sighed again. "Sorry about the horror show, but it's only my third time breaking into a secure government facility to stage a rescue, and the twins' first." She assumed. She hadn't actually asked, but they didn't seem like they'd had experience at this either. She glanced back over her shoulder to make sure that they had the nosebleed situation under control. "So I guess you two can check that off your bucket lists now."

She looked back at the two turtle brothers. "Bloody Mary -- seriously, Bloody Mary? Ugh, this place -- and the others you ran into have some other buddies that I'd really prefer not to run into without additional back-up. So, what do you say?" She let go of the Staff with her right hand and jerked her thumb back over her shoulder. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"You had me at 'food.'"

Mikey started away from Raph, towards their weird rescuers.

Raph stopped him with a hand on his elbow.

"Mikey, we don't know if we can trust them! They might just one more group of people trying to mess with us."

But, well, they did need to get out of here. And food sounded good right about now. Even just a few minutes to breathe would be nice.

"We'll go with you," Raph said, "but if you pull anything shady, the second you do, we're not holding back." A pause. "...except maybe with these two. A little bit." He nodded towards Mabel and Dipper. "We'd just, you know, trip 'em or something."

And not punch either of them in the face again. Because that had been the panic.

"Unless they go all creepy murder twins for real - then all bets are off."

Edited 2014-11-05 03:28 (UTC)

"They're not creepy murder twins," Nico reassured him. "Just quirky. Do you consider magic portals shady? Because I'm not walking us to the North Pole."

"And I'm not flying us there," Mabel put in.

"Before we leave, we need to make sure they don't have any other innocent people in here," Raph said. "This was Lab four. They've got a whole facility. They might have other people like us trapped here and this might be the only chance they ever have of getting out. We need to make sure we're not leaving anyone."

Yes, he was worrying about the people that might need help. (Like a turtle do.)

"But first..."

With a dark expression on his face, he walked over to the table of tools, grabbed the nastiest looking scalpel there and stormed towards the unconscious-but-still-obviously-breathing scientists, his intent very clear.

"Is he about to very casually do what I think he's doing?" Dipper asked nervously.

"Woah."

Mikey darted forward, hovering behind his brother, knowing better than to actually grab him when he was in a mood like this.

"Woah, Raph, no. C'mon man, they're unconscious."

Killing in the heat of a fight was one thing, but they weren't fighting for their lives anymore.

"Yeah, and they're gonna stay that way. For good."

He was still bleeding slightly from where they'd sawed at his plastron - and still shaking, now that the adrenaline haze was fading and leaving him feeling weaker.

This was one of the closest calls he'd ever had and it'd been made all the more horrifying by the fact they'd been forcing Mikey to watch. That was the part he found most unforgivable.

"Dude, not like this! I know they're like, probably the worst people ever, but come on. That doesn't mean you should do something this shady because they suck so bad."

He thought frantically, knowing that he'd sleep safer if these guys were not alive anymore, but still -

"What would Sensei tell us to do right now? Pretty sure it's not this," he pointed out. If he could have thought up what Splinter would have actually said to dissuade Raph, he would have said it, but that kind of wisdom was way beyond his paygrade.

That did the trick. He froze, standing over them, then looked over at the little boy and girl that had helped save them, realizing that he'd be doing something that sick in front of them.

They did not have the expressions of children that wouldn't be upset by that kind of thing. That creepy twin thing was looking more and more like an act.

Clenching the knife in his hand and making a futile gesture with his other clenched fist, he let out a growl that he only barely kept from turning into a frustrated scream. Then kicked one of the scientists - the one that had been about to saw him open - in the side at least hard enough to crack a rib.

After that, he at least gave up on the idea of killing them.

He turned to Nico. "Did any of you manage to get your hands on a map of this place? Or see places that might have been holding cells?"

Edited 2014-11-05 06:18 (UTC)

Nico pulled her hand away from her mouth, licking away the drop of blood her chewed hangnail had left behind. Not that she didn't understand the impulse behind this guy's actions, but she hadn't exactly been eager to see three people murdered right in front of her, much less in front of Dipper and Mabel.

"There are emergency escape route maps in the hall," she said. "We can start there. Considering what they were planning on doing here, I doubt there are any rooms in the building that aren't on those maps."

They might need to peel a map off the wall and check off every room as they cleared it though, just to make sure there weren't any somehow mystically warded to make them skip it.

Dipper pulled out his book, in case he'd need it for anything, wiping at his nose one last time.

"Mabel, warm up the kitten fists. They'll probably start sending more security guys in the longer we stay here."

Mabel banged her hands together, and at once, they were adorable, mewling kittens. Pink kittens.

"Kitten fists are ready to go!" she announced, creepy image fast fading as her hands mewed adorably.

Now that was just delightful. Unexpectedly wonderfully delightful, in the middle of this totally awful day.

"Aww! Can I pet 'em?"

"No time for petting the...really creepy kitten hands, Mikey. Let's go."

Still holding onto the knife (because hey, he needed a weapon) Raph charged forward.

They found a map and searched all the major rooms. By now many people had evacuated, and the security teams they found were no match against magic, ninjas, kitten fists, and rainbows.

There was one last room to check that might have been some kind of holding area, but when they forced their way in through the door, they were greeted by the sight of something horrible.

It was a holding area, but not for anything alive. All over were huge vats and tubes of preserved bodies, of beings that had possibly once been sentient. Various magical creatures, some even preserved fully dissected.

Raph's face was filled with disgust and horror as he looked around and when he spotted one particular specimen, he shook his head in abject disbelief.

"They killed a unicorn. Who kills an actual unicorn?!"

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