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

Entry tags:

[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?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now Raph started laughing.

"Sounds like I've got my work cut out for me."

And yet, he wasn't exactly dreading it.

"Marching band. For gym. That's a thing you can even do?" He pointed at her. "And I could totally bench-press you. In fact, I didn't see any weights in the gym they've got set up here. If they don't get some soon, I may need to borrow you on occasion for my work outs. I was already figuring on using the elves for dumbbells."

Edited 2014-11-02 08:31 (UTC)

"It's a thing you can do," Nico confirmed with a smirk. "For those of us who really hate sports, it's a thing you can do."

She'd also done scuba, but that had been outside of school, so it didn't count toward her P.E. grade. And she hadn't wanted to do swimming when she was only just figuring out how to get her hair look the way she wanted it.

"I'm not catching the elves for you."

"I don't need help doing it. I'll probably just set out some shiny objects as a trap, shoe Mikey out of it since he'll probably get caught in there with 'em, grab two elves and start my workout for the day."

Something stuck with him, though.

"How could you hate athletic stuff, though? Especially since they cram you in those miserable schools all day. Even when we were doing lessons, we'd get up and practice ninjutsu between the academic stuff. And even with the lessons, sometimes Master Splinter combined both and we'd do stuff like act out history. Like I'm pretty sure Abraham Lincoln didn't get into a big hand-to-hand fight with John Wilkes Booth on the stage of the play before getting assassinated, but hey, at least I actually remember he got assassinated, both their names, and that it was at a play. And how to do teki otoshi right."

Edited 2014-11-02 23:24 (UTC)

"He didn't?"

Mikey's drive-by commentary interrupted them, barely legible because there was an elf clinging to his face. And everywhere else on him that the elves could get a grip.

Splinter's unusual teaching style worked great for Raph, Leo, and Donnie, but sometimes it left Mikey a little confused on what was fiction and what was fact.

"Dude. My understanding of history is a lie."

And he was gone again. Probably in search of more elves to play with.

Mikey's sudden appearance and just as sudden disappearance pretty much thoroughly derailed Nico's anti-gym-class speech. She gaped after him, then shook her head.

"Are they trying to assimilate him? Or did he just take Katamari Damacy way too seriously?"

"I think he's just enjoying the fact he has people to play with that are capable of his levels of goofing around."

A pause.

"Or he's hoping being an elf is contagious and trying to turn into one of them. He does always play as an elf when we play Mazes and Mutants." He coughed awkwardly and added, "Which is a stupid game and I only play it 'cause my brothers keep whining otherwise."

No way would he ever admit to liking nerd stuff.

"Uh huh," Nico said, her smirk from earlier resurfacing, because teasing him about his forays into nerdy entertainment is way more interesting than thinking about some of the other gamers she'd known and/or encountered.

"I'm sure nothing about it is remotely appealing to you at all."

Edited 2014-11-03 02:29 (UTC)

"Nope. Why pretend to punch stuff with your plus ten brass knuckles when you can go out and actually punch stuff? With actual brass knuckles?"

Never mind that he enjoyed winning stuff within the rules of the game just like he enjoyed creaming his brothers at any other game. Leo was always on him for rules lawyering too much because he kept wanting to win all the time.

But if he was going to play the stupid game he was going to grind their faces into the dust. So what if it technically wasn't supposed to be competitive? It was a game, right? The point of games was competition.

"I'm not going to make fun of your secret, nerdy hobbies," Nico said, still smirking. "I just got finished telling you how I did marching band for gym, didn't I? Your secret's safe with me."

Yeah Raph, she wasn't buying it.

"I don't have secret nerdy hobbies," he insisted. "I sometimes play tabletop and video games and I do have a comic collection but -"

He squirmed where he sat.

"I feel like it all levels out by me punching things and reading bodybuilding magazines. It's all about balance. I'm not a nerd."

"There's a lot of action movie stars who play role-playing games," Nico said helpfully instead of dropping it. She probably wasn't going to unless he changed the subject himself. "Big guys, with biceps the size of my head."

Raph pressed two fingers to the place that would've been the bridge of his nose if he had a proper nose.

"Is there a reason you're angling so hard to get me to admit that I'm a dweeb?" A pause. "Which I'm not. This is purely hypothetical dweebiness we're talking about here."

Why couldn't she just let him have his (imagined) coolness? What kind of life was it when you couldn't at least pretend to be cool?

Edited 2014-11-03 08:33 (UTC)

That brought her up short for a moment. Why was she still teasing him about this?

"You're acting all weird about it," she said slowly, half thinking aloud. "Like it's this super-embarrassing thing, to admit that sometimes you play this one game. Like this one thing will completely overwhelm your personality if you don't immediately put some distance between you and it."

She closed her eyes, rubbing her chest with her fingertips. There was a strange feeling beneath her breast bone, strange because it felt like it had always been there and she was just now noticing it.

"I like scuba diving, but that doesn't make me a jock." She curled in on herself a little, squeezing her eyes more tightly shut as she tried to grasp her reasoning. "It's just a thing I enjoy doing, it doesn't make me me; not anymore than sewing my own clothes does. I don't need to defend it because it doesn't take anything away from me either. Who cares if other people don't think it's a 'Goth' hobby? Screw 'em, they don't get to choose for me. I get to choose." She opened her eyes, but they didn't really focus on anything, pupils dotted in fields of golden-brown. "It doesn't define you, so why is it embarrassing?"

She shuddered, like a person on the edge of sleep, and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. She blinked and shook her head, and her eyes focused on Raph again.

"Ugh. That was weird."

"You don't look so good. Should I get someone?"

Raph reached out a hand and held the back of his hand to her forehead, looking genuinely concerned.

"Are you sick? Or were you just briefly possessed by the wandering spirit of an after-school special? It was one about being yourself, wasn't it."

Okay, so he wasn't that concerned.

Nico pushed his hand away.

"The spirit of after school specials has moved on, probably to your brother or a member of his tiny jingling hoard," she said, shaking her head. "I think it's just one of those weird 'you are a spirit' things, like how my contact lenses fused to my eyeballs or whatever."

"Ew, seriously?" He squinted at her eyes as if trying to see the grossness.

Then he sat back reflectively. "So has everyone been getting that stuff? Me and Mikey keep getting uses that aren't us's in our heads. Memories...feelings. Stupid catchphrases. I figured it had something to do with all the weirdness but still haven't figured out what."

Edited 2014-11-04 07:16 (UTC)

Kind of hard to get a good look at her eyes when she was rolling them and putting her hand on his face to shove him away. "Not seriously, it probably just fixed my vision and got rid of them, quit staring."

She shook her head. "I haven't been getting other feelings or memories that don't belong to me or anything like that. I just sometimes get weird, passionate mood-swings about stuff." She frowned at him thoughtfully. "What year is it, back in your reality?"

Raph just swatted her hand away in an equally playful fashion.

"2013, why?"

"There was a kids' cartoon about you guys in the early 1990's, I think. And a couple of movies. And maybe a comic book?" Nico shook her head. "Maybe you're getting alternate reality bleed over because you're just close enough to trigger the nostalgia value?"

"Who in their right mind would make a kids' cartoon about us? That is sick. We're ninjas fighting crazy mutants all the time and people mutate all over the place in terrifying ways. Who would subject their small child to that?"

His mind was blown.

"Worst. Parents. Ever." He paused awkwardly as he remembered who he was talking to. "Comparatively speaking. You know, when compared to lots of parents, but not all parents."

Edited 2014-11-04 08:48 (UTC)

"Wouldn't know." Nico smirked wryly at him. "My parents wouldn't let me watch it. It 'promotes violence and vigilantism and it's probably why that ridiculous Spider-Man creature is running around all over New York these days'." She shrugged. "I imagine they toned down any gore. Maybe gave you laser weapons and made the scary mutants fluffy and silly."

Raph laughed again.

"Your parents, who were crime bosses, didn't let you watch violent cartoons. Wow. That is some kinda mental gymnastics there. Gold medal caliber stuff."

It was twisted. The fact that it was so twisted had him looking at her with even more interest and wonder. What kind of person survived their world being torn down and filled with that much contradiction? How had she dealt with all that confusion and still become the kind of person willing to throw herself in the thick of it to save the sorry behinds of strangers? If not for her and the twins, he and Mikey probably would've wound up dissected and kept in many separate little jars.

"I don't see how anyone could think laser weapons are less violent than bullets. They cut through even more than bullets do. I also don't get the whole stupid idea that violent cartoons somehow make kids violent. Is that some kind of surface world thing? Having it so it's socially acceptable to let your kids get raised by the TV and not teaching them anything? At all?"

Nico held up her hands. "Don't ask me to explain adult logic," she said. "It is incomprehensible and unlike our own."

Raph was remarkably easy to talk to, for a guy from an alternate universe and a life so different from her own. She doesn't know if she's just latching onto him because he's close to her in age and acts like it, or if it's because of the way he ran to his brother to free him before going after what he'd thought were potential threats. Maybe it's just because he knows when and how to say wow, that sucks like he means it. Whichever reason it is, she wasn't planning on coming up with an excuse to leave for a bit.

"Most adults on the surface think kids are pretty stupid, I guess."

"That's not really adult logic, that's just stupid logic," Raph said. "People either delude themselves or they don't."

He crossed his arms. "So it's not adults and kids, it's two kinds of adults that people seem to grow up into. There's the ones that delude themselves and can't admit they're wrong and that their kids are smart enough to get stuff and the ones that actually have humility and because they do, they're right most of the time, and can fix it when they realize they're wrong. And they realize their kids are just younger, slightly more naive people."

Edited 2014-11-05 10:30 (UTC)

"Something like that."

Nico shrugged and picked up a fritter-thing covered in powdered sugar from one of the plates on the table and nibbled on it. "I haven't exactly met a lot of the latter, so I really can't speak for them." She chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Vic's mother seemed okay."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject