[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

[spellitonce]

"I'll get you guys a copy of it when I'm not about to burn the lace off my skirt, MOVE!"

Nico shoved at them all from behind, trying not to think too hard about how the last time she'd escaped from a burning building, someone she loved had been dying.

There were times she might appreciate out-right admiration of her spell-casting creativity, but now was not one of them.

[captainbuzzkill]

"Hey, Mabel, I think this is the first time we've helped someone commit arson against an evil government conspiracy," said Dipper excitedly as they were rushed out through the fire escape. "As soon as we're back, I can scratch that off my bucket list along with breaking into a secret government facility to rescue someone! I have both on there."

He actually did.

And he had that bucket list in his vest.

What he didn't have in his vest right now as the book, which he had in his hands, in case they needed it.

Which was why as some armed med rounded the corner, one of them froze. He was wearing strange goggles with symbols carved on the sides - goggles that apparently allowed him to see them whether they were invisible or not.

He shouted, "The boy! The boy has the book! Artifact 1453k! Take him down!"

[bestnamer]

"Oh, something's going down!"

And it was that guy. By a fire extinguisher to the head. Thrown by Mikey. With ninja accuracy.

"Booyakashaaah! Maybe THAT'LL work to save you from rad fire witch magic! You're welcome, you giant jerk!"

[captainbuzzkill]

It knocked off his helmet, which rolled to the floor, making the strange signs painted inside visible.

The moment it was off, it was clear what those symbols were meant to block, because Nico's "take out the trash" spell suddenly made him disappear.

"Those symbols, they - they could see us and were immune to your spell," Dipper said as he ran out on the fire escape. "And he knew about the book - how did he know about he book?"

[othersdestructive]

"Seeing as we're not currently in a library and are about to be shot at, can we stop the chit-chat about books and just get out of here?" Raph said, tossing the scalpel...thing at another soldier, hitting him in the leg as he ducked out the door of the fire escape. (A miss, because he wasn't used to the weight of it, but at least it downed him. "You had some way out of here, right?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"Oh yeah." Dipper reached into his vest pocket and took out the snow globe, shaking it and saying into it: "The Pole."

Then he tossed it down the stairs of the fire escape, where it formed a swirling portal.

"Come on, this'll get us to Santa's Workshop!" he said, waving them on and grabbing Mabel's hand so they could jump through together.

[bedazzledmyface]

"Aaaand access DENIED!"

Mabel's kitten fists went soaring at the ceiling over the armed medics, collapsing it around them. Nico's fire sprang up amid the rubble as the big jerks went sprawling. Mabel was not particularly inclined to feel bad for them at this point.

"Go ahead!" she shouted, shooting off kitten fists like a pink, glittery machine gun. "I'LL HOLD THEM OFF! AAAAAAAAAUGH!"

She let out her warrior's howl, overwhelmed by power. It sounded a lot like a one-woman boy band concert audience.

[spellitonce]

Little white girls who thought they're indestructible would be the death of Nico one day, she was sure of it.

"Let's GO!" she shouted, reaching out with her free hand to try and grab Mabel by her sweater. Mabel can continue providing cover fire as long as she can do it while she's being dragged backward, because there was no way that Nico would be jumping through that portal until both twins were on the other side.

[bestnamer]

"Is that like a theme park? Or a theme store?"

It hadn't entered Mikey's mind that they could mean the actual Santa's workshop, because actual Santa didn't exist.

Not for freakbabies in a sewer in another world.

Nevertheless he jumped through, dragging Raph with him.

[othersdestructive]

After they all went through, the portal closed, as if it could sense they were the only ones coming and that anyone coming after them might be less than welcoming, leaving them in...

In...

This couldn't be real. This couldn't be an actual place. Because this was a place in stupid holiday specials. There was no such thing as Santa and there was no such thing as Santa's workshop. But here it was, fresh from some corny Christmas special.

Bigger and brighter and better and more real than it'd looked in any Christmas special Raph had ever seen.

"You have got to be kidding me."

He had to lean heavily on the back of one of the nearby chairs, he was so bowled away.

[captainbuzzkill]

"Crazy, right? It's exactly as real as it looks," said Dipper. "And why we're here is a long story, but let me help you with those collars first. We all got powers when we were pulled here, including ones that help us heal faster, and those collars are probably blocking them. You'll heal faster if they're gone."

Dipper held up his book, opened to a certain page, then made the book float, held open to the page he needed, as he walked over to Mikey, holding out his hands towards his neck, gesturing for him to bend down.

[bedazzledmyface]

"Do you think they'll be solar-powered? Because turtles like the sun? What I'm getting around to is, congratulatory beach party maybe? We just burned down our first evil government torture lab!"

Mabel held her hand out to Dipper for a post-collar-removal hi-five. It was all right. She'd wait.

[spellitonce]

"They're standing right here, Mabel," Nico pointed out, tipping the Staff of One back so it rested on her shoulder. She looked to Raph and Mikey with a raised eyebrow. "What, did you think I was kidding when I said that we work with an alternate universe Easter Bunny and it's weird?"

She had definitely mentioned that. After Raph had bloodied Dipper's nose, before they'd gone exploring and found a dead unicorn.

"Welcome to the North Pole!" she said, gesturing at the enormous lodge around them. "A.K.A. where we're crashing. Sadly, the jolly old elf himself is not around, for the same reason we're all here."

[bestnamer]

They were there, but a little distracted by sheer, absolute wonder. Mikey was inhaling, had been inhaling since they jumped through the portal, and now the inhalation was resolving itself into a high pitched wheeze that suddenly, with Mikey's lungs at max capacity, became a screech of absolute delight.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

Silence fell - BRIEFLY - as Mikey inhaled again and every eye in the pole stared at him.

"THIS IS EPIC!"

Mikey's whole person had suddenly become reduced to yelled questions and pointing. He pointed at at the tiny scurrying people. "ARE THOSE ELVES?" The giant walking moustached carpet-people. "WHAT ARE THOSE?" Out the window at the deep canyon and jagged fields of endless snow and glacial ice. "ARE THEY FRIENDLY?" At the cookies. "CAN I EAT THOSE?"

[othersdestructive]

"Santa's Workshop. We're in Santa's Workshop, in another world, where we're fiction. With government labs. And people have raps about us. I'm gonna - I'm gonna just sit down now."

It was just a little too much to take in. Normally, if Raph was overwhelmed, he'd have just shrugged it off. He certainly wouldn't have sunk down against a couch to sit on the floor because he was feeling faint.

But then normally he hadn't been beaten to a pulp and had his shell cut open. It fortunately hadn't cut deep, only breaking just past his shell into flesh, but it'd been a slow trickle of blood the entire time he'd been running around. Ideally, the second it had happened, he should have been resting, but their situation hadn't exactly been ideal.

"Gonna take a look around."

Now he wasn't sitting, he'd slipped down to lay the floor.

"From the floor," he said faintly. "Yep. Looking around."

[captainbuzzkill]

"Those are elves, the furry guys are yetis, yes they're friendly, and I recommend the peanut butter ones," said Dipper as he worked on Mikey's collar, working it almost like a puzzle box, pressing certain symbols and scratching out others.

It suddenly dissolved into black dust that disappeared into nothing and he went to work on Raph.

"Hang in there, big guy," Dipper said, immediately moving over to the now-horizontal turtle. He wasn't looking so good and despite the bloody nose of earlier, Dipper didn't have any hard feelings. "Soon as I have this off, you'll be yourself again in no time. You'll still need lots of rest but you'll start healing faster once your myth powers kick in."

[bedazzledmyface]

"They're a little busy being transfixed by wonderment to discuss vacation plans," Mabel said, waving her hand at Nico. As Mikey pointed to the cookie table, she trotted over to start helping him get the immediate best out of his Santa's Workshop experience.

"Wanna help me decorate?"

[spellitonce]

"I'm going to let Bunny and Jack know that we're back and that they should come give these two the run-down, Nico said instead of answering. She shot Raphael a sympathetic look. "Like I said, you guys are safe here. So 'look around' all you want, I guess."

[bestnamer]

Mikey was out of the gates the moment the "look around" was fully out of Nico's mouth, from one table of working yetis to the next, screeching in unbridled delight. The occasional shout of "SANTA'S WORKSHOP" reached them from somewhere deep in the bowels of Santa's workshop.

[othersdestructive]

Raph lay there quietly as Dipper worked on the collar, sighing in relief as it melted away into dust, feeling a strange energy flow back into him. With it came that strange feeling of feeling fragmented, like there were reflections of himself in his head, but he also started to feel better immediately.

They weren't dead. They weren't dead thanks to these two kids and witch girl there.

"Hey, Glinda," he called out to Nico, before she managed to walk away, his voice still slightly breathless. "Thanks."

[bringinghopewithme]

"When did she get a new name?"

Bunny burst through the wall of the workshop, trailing Jack, the one directly embedded in the cliffside.

They'd been on a mission, but judging by the grins on the pair, this one had gone much, much better than prior ones.

"G'day Nico. We got the artifact." Bunny's grin widened, as he held out a black lump of something that looked half like coal, half like an elephant in agony. "Think you can whip up a spell to get rid of it? Who's the turtle - sorry, turtles?" Bunny asked, sniffing the air, catching Mikey's scent (and the sound of him, as another echo of "SANTA'S WORKSHOOOOOP" filtered up from below). "They the new folks y'went out to pick up?

[spellitonce]

Nico paused, glancing back at Raph. He already looked better, now that the the collar was off and his myth healing abilities could kick in.

"Any time," she answered with a small smile, just as Bunny and Jack came through the wall.

"I'll figure out something," she said, eyeing the black lump in his hand. She hadn't heard all the details on this thing, but she knew enough to know that she didn't want to touch it in case she accidentally absorbed it the way she'd absorbed the Staff of One. "This is Raphael. We got him and his brother Michaelangelo out of a government lab. I wiped all their data on mythical things and set the place on fire before we snow-globed out of there."

She turned back to Raph. "This is the Easter Bunny and Jack Frost. Yes, it's weird, but they know what's going on here and can give you the run-down better than I can."

[letskicksomeice]

At Nico giving their names, Jack looked over at the turtle on the floor, his eyes going wide with surprise and then with absolute delight.

There was no way you were a Guardian that played with kids without picking up on the fact that the Ninja Turtles were pretty much some of the most beloved children's characters of all time. What had it been, the late eighties, most of the nineties, and another series in the 00's? And he was pretty sure he'd heard some kids gushing about a newer series. And a movie.

Three decades. Three whole decades, barring a few gaps.

He laughed a belly laugh, the kind of laugh that was borne of delight and happy surprise, when something unexpectedly wonderful came along.

He bit his knuckle for a moment, as if he couldn't hold his delight in, then exclaimed, "Ninja Turtles!" He turned to Bunny. "I should've seen this one coming." He turned back to Raph. "Of all characters everywhere of course it'd be a few of you guys. I'm surprised we didn't get the full set! But then you two were always the fan favorites."

Leaping into the air and bouncing off the back of the couch he landed next to Raph, gently helping him up.

"Here, let's get you to the couch, big guy, that'll be more comfortable. Dipper, can you go wrangle his brother?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"On it." Dipper gave Raph one last reassuring pat on the shoulder, and went off to find Michelangelo and redirect him.

[othersdestructive]

"Thanks for everything kid," said Raph. "Sorry about, uh. You know. Your face."

With Jack's help, he dizzily climbed to his feet, so that he could be helped to the couch.

"We're characters here, right? That's what the creepy guy that nearly got us killed said. He said in this world we were fiction, like - like we somehow got pulled from ours because of the kids here. People recognized us."