ya_assemble | [LN] Can't get to his heart through his stomach. The plastron gets in the way.

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[LN] Can't get to his heart through his stomach. The plastron gets in the way.

Well, her first unsupervised mission had gone well -- they'd located and rescued a couple more people for the fight against Kuk, none of them had gotten hurt, and there was a whole gaggle of scientists who were reconsidering their stance on how to react to aliens. Not bad for an afternoon's work. She'd turned the mutant turtles over to Jack and Bunny for the full run-down, unleashed Dipper and Mabel to go do whatever it was the two of them did in their free time, and worked the rest of her adrenaline out on her latest sewing project.

The end result was a new hat for Molly (whenever she got back home. If she got back home) and a sugar craving that she could indulge since the North Pole's usual occupant was technically more famous among his preferred audience for his sweet tooth than he was for his ability to stab things really well.

It seemed that she wasn't the only one in the mood for a snack. A whole bunch of snacks had been laid out on a table in the kitchen, all of them looking a little picked over. She blinked at them, then at the turtle half-buried in the nearest cupboard.

"Are you throwing a party or testing for poison?"

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Raph jumped at the sound of her voice, hitting his head on a shelf. The thing about being a ninja was you were usually doing the sneaking up on people, not vice versa. Except if your brothers were practicing sneaking by sneaking up on you but Raph was typically better at getting them than they were at getting him.

Also, he was still on edge in general. The weirdness going on in his head had started to iron itself out, but he was in a strange world, in a strange and dangerous situation, had no idea what was going on with his family back home, and his introduction to this whole mess had been some creepy bad guy that read like he was from a creepy storybook and nearly getting vivisected by scientists.

To say he was a little cagey was an understatement. Especially since even the place that was "safe" that was he was supposed to stay at was literally in the middle of nowhere, inescapable, and surrounded by ice and snow.

Turtles belonged in the city not in farmhouses in the country and not in cozy giant lodges full of elves and toys on top of one of the ice caps.

The one good thing about this place, though, was the food. It was all good and there was a lot of it he'd never even seen before, given their limited food supplies back home. When you lived in a sewer and couldn't safely go into stores on the surface above, it was the ultimate food desert. Most of the time they stole what they did get that wasn't algae and worms and left behind a little money in its place (usually all pocket change that fell down sewer grates) or April sometimes brought down some groceries, but it wasn't exactly like they ever had enough to get all experimental.

Not like this stuff. Cakes and pies and and cookies confectioneries Raph had never even seen before. Which meant he was trying a little bit of everything.

There was nothing else to do. He'd already worked out for a couple hours in what passed for this place's gym.

"Testing for poison." He walked over on his knees to the table and nudged a clearly not picked at plate of marzipan in her direction. "Here, try these."

They were one of the only plates not picked at yet so it was clear the joke was that he was nudging the one towards her that had the highest chance of having poison in it.

"When you complain about rescues you don't like, you take it all the way, don't you?" Nico asked with a smirk of her own. She took a piece of the marzipan and popped it in her mouth anyway -- unsurprisingly, Christmas goodies around here were delicious.

"I take it this means that you and your brother are sticking around the Pole with the rest of us misfit toys?"

"Where else are we gonna go?" he said, rolling his eyes at her slightly, as if he thought she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed if she couldn't see how obviously difficult it would be for him and Mikey to find somewhere better.

He climbed to his feet, turned one of the chairs around and sat on it backwards, looking over all the food with great interest.

"In case you haven't noticed, we're giant, talking turtles. If we weren't invisible in this place, we'd be trying to be to avoid winding up back in some creepy lab as someone's science experiment again."

He took a piece of marzipan to try it himself this time, looking absolutely delighted that it tasted as good as everything else he'd tried.

His voice muffled as he chewed, he said, "We could find a place to live in the sewers again but it takes years to build up a good lair."

He picked at the baklava, pulling it apart to see what it was made of.

"Besides, it seems like you guys are the ones diving head first into where all the action is. How else are we going to find the right monsters to punch?"

"Oh right, this place isn't like it is back home," Nico said, wrinkling her nose. On the other hand, back home they'd probably get picked up by Iron Man or his goons if they hit the 'States, and his accent sounded pretty American.

She took another piece of marzipan and popped it in her mouth. "I'll take your word for it, the lairs I've crashed all came prefabricated in case of crappy parenting or the end of the world." And speaking of, she was not looking forward to trying to find a new one when she got back home. Iron Man might have already dug out all their parents' old hidey-holes and filled them with concrete.

"Monsters usually just turn up where ever, in my experience. Punching isn't my thing, though."

"And here I thought my world was weird. What kind of 'back home' do you have if giant talking turtles actually have real estate options, and there are pre-made underground lairs, plural?"

Seriously, what?

His world was weird enough but not so weird that the weirdness was almost normal. Normal to him and his brothers and their friends, maybe, but not normal to the rest of the world.

Heck, they even still side-eyed it sometimes and they were used to it by now. They were part of the weirdness and they still side-eyed it.

Edited 2014-10-30 07:21 (UTC)

"The kind that had a growing population of mutants up until the last year, and a whole bunch of mutates, for the former," Nico answered, raising her eyebrows. "And the kind with supervillains with almost twenty years to make plans before they screw everything up."

Her world wasn't weird. It was just weird that she was the one dealing with the supervillains and the alien invasions.

"There's a celebrity out in New York who looks like a walking pile of rocks." She shrugged. "Giant talking turtles aren't really that weird."

The face he pulled was almost comical, as if he found the idea of a world where a pile of talking rocks was a celebrity almost an offensive one. Or maybe the idea he found offensive was that this world existed out there, somewhere, and naturally his family hadn't come to exist in it.

"So lemme get this straight. You have a bunch of mutants and mutates - whatever they are since I don't know the difference - and instead of being seen as freaks of nature, making everyone run screaming, and living a life in the shadows or underground in sewers, not only can they live on the surface but some of 'em are actually famous."

Celebrity. Celebrity mutants.

If he sounded annoyed that idea it was because he was. He was very annoyed by that idea.

"Mutants' abilities are encoded in their genes," Nico said, eying him as he got more and more aggravated. She just wanted to know if she'd need to dodge. "Mutates have something weird happen to them, and poof, super powers."

She grabbed a gingerbread man off one of the plates on the table and bit its head off.

"On the other hand, most people hate and/or fear mutants because they were supposedly going to replace us all as the next stage in human evolution, and now everyone who has extra-normal abilities has to work for the government or be thrown in prison." She bit off an arm. "Unless their complete failure to even slow down the alien invasion proved that was a dumb idea. So. Not exactly the best place ever right now."

Edited 2014-10-30 08:13 (UTC)

Yeah, he'd just killed a beignet as they were speaking. Killed it as in crushed it in his hand, not eaten it.

It was only when she made it clear that her world sucked anyway that he relaxed a bit, opened his hand, and realized he'd pretty much destroyed what he was holding. He looked only slightly awkward as he brushed the crumbs off his hand, as if he knew it was an awkward moment and was just pretending it wasn't.

"Why is there even a difference? A mutant is a mutant is a mutant. It doesn't matter how they wound up that way and it doesn't make a difference if you were born with it or were changed into it. And whose bright idea was it to recruit them as an army? Just because someone is a mutant or has powers doesn't mean they'll be able to handle a fight, even if they're trained. That means you could be recruiting somebody that isn't cut out for anything more aggressive than being a preschool teacher. That's just stupid."

Edited 2014-10-30 08:16 (UTC)

"It's a pretty stupid distinction," Nico agreed, politely ignoring the crumb-explosion of his beignet. "All the mutants I've met have been pretty much the same as everyone else. Normal kids, aggravating adults."

Snap-chrnch goes the other arm.

"I don't know who's dumb idea it was, our lair didn't exactly have cable news. And then we were on the run again when they came after us." She sneered. "Apparently, it's illegal to step in and try to stop a guy from murdering a couple cops, if you happen to have some ability or training or tool that makes you less likely to die in the process. Illegal to the point they almost killed us for it."

She couldn't say that she wouldn't have done it if she'd known. But she'd definitely had had Chase take Molly and gotten warm up the 'Frog.

Edited 2014-10-30 08:29 (UTC)

"Eh, I can see how they might not want people with superpowers just running around untrained acting as vigilantes, but treating you like criminals isn't the way to go about it. Especially if it involves you fighting things they can't even handle."

If someone tried to arrest or kill him and his brothers for fighting things like the Kraang when the police couldn't even stand a chance against them, they'd be getting his sais where they sun didn't shine.

"You should just leave them to deal with it by themselves and see how they like it when they're the ones facing the robot aliens or monsters or mutants by themselves. It'd serve 'em right."

"We saw how they liked it when the Skrulls showed up," Nico said. "They didn't like it at all. Which is pretty pathetic considering that some of them were professionals. Sadly, too busy fighting for our lives to gloat."

She nibbled the remains of her gingerbread person. "But regular people shouldn't have to deal with Nazis made out of bees. No one should have to deal with Nazis made out of bees, but at least we're a little better equipped to deal with him. And if they didn't want us acting as Good Samaritans, then they should have arrested our parents before they made L.A. their personal fiefdom."

"Don't say that. Don't make me imagine a universe where people can be made out of bees. Because if weird stuff like that is possible in other worlds, it's only a matter of time before it happens in mine. We already did the giant mutant wasp thing as is, and it was a lot worse than it just being giant, mutated, and a wasp, despite the fact that it being something worse than that should've been impossible."

He shuddered at the memory.

He was going to swing the conversation back to the fiefdom thing in a moment or two. Right now he was freaking out over the fact that now that he knew it was even possible, a person made of bees was practically inevitable in his world.

There was mutagen, there were bees, it was going to happen. If Spyroach could happen, a man made of bees could happen.

Nico snorted and popped the last leg of her gingerbread person into her mouth. "I suggest bug spray or electricity, in case of Bee Nazis," she said. Because she was definitely more willing to deal with the Swarm than a giant mutated wasp. Ugh.

"I guess it's better that it's all little bees than one big bee," said Raph, still looking horrified. "Did they at least give normal bee stings?"

"I think so, but you'd have to ask Vic," Nico said with a shrug. "He's the heroes-and-villains nerd. None of us got stung."

And she accidentally teleported herself and Karolina out of town.

"That makes me hate the universe a little less," said Raph. "'Cause the giant mutant wasp we fought? It stung my brother and infected him with a virus that messed with his head so he'd watch over its egg, so the larva had something to eat when it hatched. He bit me and we kept attacking each other so it spread through the rest of my brothers, but luckily Donnie got a cure started before he turned and Mikey finished it."

That. Had been. Super creepy.

"Although the scariest part of that wasn't the virus. I think the scariest part of that is everything was left to Mikey. Doing science. You've met my brother. Most of the time, science for him is experimentally eating things he finds on the ground."

Edited 2014-10-30 09:13 (UTC)

"Gross," Nico said, considering throwing the remains of her cookie at him. Mind-control wasps, ugh.

"Mikey and the elves will get along great, then," she said, shaking her head. "That's their hobby, too."

"It does my heart glad to know he's finally found friends on his level," Raph joked, holding a hand to his heart as if touched. "I'm sure they'll find a lot of common ground in eating unidentifiable substances and in touching things they shouldn't touch."

He shook his head, the smile on his face making clear that all the joking was meant to be (mostly) affectionate, and picked up a pastry, cramming it into his mouth.

"So moving on from the subject of killer bee people and the horrifying jumps my brain is making in pointing out their existence means it's possible there could be people made of cockroaches instead of just giant ones..."

Just giant ones, as if he had experience with them already.

"What did you mean about your parents making LA their personal fiefdom? How exactly does one pull that off when feudalism ain't such a thing anymore?"

Edited 2014-10-30 10:04 (UTC)

"Remind me to put him on the list of people who shouldn't touch my Staff, then," Nico said, nodding toward the weapon she'd leaned against the counter. Though Mikey touching it probably wouldn't get her permanently on Nicholas St. North's Naughty List.

Nico finished the rest of her gingerbread person, then grabbed a candy cane.

"Think crime bosses," she said, snapping the candy cane in half. "Only with magic, advanced technology, mutant and alien powers, and monster bosses as back-up. All very subtle and under the radar, mostly. But they owned the police department and the media. We ran when we saw them ritually murder a girl, and they pinned us with her death."

She snapped the candy cane again. This...wasn't her favorite topic. But then, her parents never had been.

At that there was a flicker of genuine sympathy, something that wasn't always common to see on his face even if it existed more frequently in his heart than most would think.

"That pretty much sucks beyond all previously recorded levels of sucking," he said, giving her a genuinely empathetic look. Not a pitying one, it was to be noted. It definitely reeked more of 'you shouldn't have had to put up with that shit' than 'you poor thing.'

"I'm sorry. Nobody deserves to deal with something like that. So did they just hide it all your life or something or did they try to drag you into it?"

He was curious to know if she'd been raised in it like Karai.

'That sucks' is an understatement, but it almost startles a laugh out of her. The adults she'd interacted with over it had pitied her, and the kids had all been too uncomfortable. Vic had said something similiar, but he'd been trying to convince them that he wasn't going to grow up to be a supervillain at the time, so she'd mostly just wanted to hit him upside the head. When Raph says it though, she relaxes -- just slightly, but she does.

"Hid it," she said, looking down at the candy pieces in her hands. She snapped one of the larger ones. "They tried to say that they were doing it all for our sake, though. Destroy the world so we could have something better."

Her parents hadn't tried to drag her in. Not until after Alex had failed to.

"That's good at least that they didn't try to mess you up from when you were little," Raph said. "Getting raised up in it is where it gets tough to break away. That's what happened to our sister - or our half-sister? I don't know how that works when you're related through mutating and absorbing someone's DNA. Master Splinter's enemy, the Shredder, kidnapped her way back when Splinter was human. Splinter thought she was dead all these years but really Shredder raised her as his own daughter and told her Master Splinter killed her mother when really he did it."

He raised his eyebrows in a very clear 'Ain't that some shit?' expression. For all he was a turtle guy he sure had a near normal range of teenaged "wtf" faces.

"She kept trying to kill him and us before she finally found out the truth and who her real father was and realized she'd been set against her own family by the person that killed her mother."

A pause.

"That's not to say that what you went through wasn't bad - it sounds terrible - but at least you're not as entrenched in all the craziness. She was a little..." He opened his eyes wide and made a whirly gesture with his finger at his temple. "Like, in a homicidal way."

Edited 2014-10-30 11:01 (UTC)

Raph has no room to talk about how weird her world is when his family tree apparently includes 'related via mutation and DNA absorption'. But Nico nodded in agreement, making a "wtf" face of her own.

"That would definitely mess someone up," she agreed. "But it's good she's got people to catch her now that she knows the truth."

The six of them had only had each other. And then Alex had shown his true colors.

"Some adults just really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near kids."

"Tell me about it. Me and my brothers were lucky. We would've been four little freaky mutant turtle kids growing up alone in the sewers if Master Splinter hadn't decided to take us in. And he didn't just do the minimum, he taught us how to talk and homeschooled us and taught us how to fight so we could take on whatever the world threw at us. The first time he let us go up to the surface when we were fifteen, he was freaking out worrying and telling us to be careful to look both ways when crossing the street."

He'd taught them to speak and bandaged their boo boos and done airplane to make them eat their algae. He'd read them books and fixed up a broken TV and VCR and scavenged trash in the shadows to get them cartoons to watch.

Over time, the grimy little life they lived had gotten better and better as they built their home in the sewers - and it wouldn't have been a home at all if not for Master Splinter. It would've been four voiceless, scared little freakboys hiding alone in darkness and slime away from a world that would have never accepted them.

His expression grew a little distant as he thought about it. There was a part of him that wanted to think the same thing as Mikey and Leo, that he might still be alive out there, somewhere, wondering what had happened to his sons and April.

"He was a good dad. And a good teacher."

Past tense. Because now he was probably gone.

Edited 2014-10-31 06:04 (UTC)

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