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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"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."

"Me and my brothers have, weirdly, despite being sewer mutants, been in a position to meet a bunch of both kinds. Heck, Master Splinter and the Shredder are like examples of self-deluding stupidity and being a normal, sane person. Total opposite ends of the spectrum."

He crossed his arms. "Like, for instance, Master Splinter? Most of the time? He was always pretty calm and reasonable and talked to us like people and only did stuff like ground us or send us to the hashi if we wrecked the lair or did something stupid and dangerous. But after we faced the Shredder the first time, he destroyed us and it made sensei go crazy. It was the fighting equivalent of razing a village to the ground and salting the earth and we barely got away alive. So Master Splinter got so terrified of us getting killed he wouldn't let us go to the surface until we got better and kept drilling us until we were exhausted."

He went on, "But eventually, he realized he was acting crazy and stopped and apologized. See, he lost his first family to the Shredder so he was terrified we were going to die, too. But he knew that way of thinking, giving into that fear, was even more dangerous because it was making us too afraid. And he knew it wasn't right to ground us forever and take our freedom away just because he was scared. He could admit when he was wrong, so he did, and he did what was best for us instead of what made him feel better."

He nodded his head to the side, "Then on the other hand, you've got Shredder, who, before we were born, attacked Sensei and his wife - who Shredder had a thing for despite the fact she was happily married to Sensei - and blames sensei for the fact she died during it when he was the one that killed her. He goes on and on about it, about his stupid vendetta, and makes it out to be it's all Master Splinter's fault for making him angry. He doesn't even pretend he didn't do it, he just blames Master Splinter for 'stealing' her in the first place. The guy's delusional - he sees what he wants to see no matter how crazy it is."

He gave her a little shrug. "That's how people are. We've met a whole bunch of different ones that fell on both sides of the fence with all the trouble we've gotten into."

Edited 2014-11-05 10:55 (UTC)

"Well, you already know about my parents," Nico said. "And the Avengers. I don't think I've ever heard an adult calmly and sincerely apologize to a kid. Even when it's something stupid or inconsequential, no apologies, just disapproving silence."

She took another bite of her fritter. "Maybe your universe has a higher percentage of adults who aren't stupid than mine does. It wouldn't be the weirdest difference between our realities."

"Or it could be you just were unlucky enough to run into a lot of the rotten ones but what do I know? You might be right that there's an idiot adult epidemic where you're from."

He paused, as he considered something.

"How many normal adults do you deal with? These Avengers and all that, they're superheroes, right? Maybe that just attracts people that ego trip. Do they get to prance in front of cameras after saving the day or do they do things without getting credit like the rest of us vigilante types?"

Edited 2014-11-05 11:15 (UTC)

"We try not to deal with adults at all, except for when one's behind the check-out counter when we're shopping," Nico said. "And the Avengers are -- well, were government-approved defenders of the country-slash-world. So yeah, they're not vigilantes, they get the cameras and the works. That guy who looks like a pile of rocks, he's a superhero too, with the Fantastic Four. The only ones we met who weren't complete tools were Cloak and Dagger, who used to be teen runaways themselves; and the Young Avengers, who are all dorks, but otherwise pretty okay people."

"Well, there's your problem," said Raph. "The ones you're dealing with are probably all trumped up on their own importance. And that's how you get convinced you're always right. When everything you do is pretty much thankless and just gets you into trouble anyway, but you have to do it because you're the one that's there, that's something that never stops making you feel small."

He gestured with his hands. "Because it's just you standing between innocent people and whatever or whoever that's gunning for them and that means you have to admit you're wrong whenever you're wrong or you might mess things up. And if you do mess up someone might get hurt and nobody's going to clean up your mess but you."

Edited 2014-11-05 12:01 (UTC)

A small, satisfied smile curled Nico's lips.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," she said. "But that doesn't exactly give us much opportunity to find any reasonable adults, even if we weren't already thrice burned on them."

"Yeah, but it's not good to split the world up in little categories like that. People are people. There's good and bad. There are gonna be adults that are practically saints and kids your age that'll stab you in the back the second they have a chance."

Like the many times Karai had tried before she found out the truth. (And their fronts, she'd tried to stab their fronts.)

"It's weird that you'd split it up as an adult-kid thing when it's a people thing. Everyone winds up an adult someday - if they live long enough."

"Yeah," Nico agreed, looking down at the table. "If they live that long."

She wasn't sure she expected to.

"I suppose Chase made it through his eighteenth birthday without going completely 'round the twist," she said. She smirked again. "Though I'd hardly call him a saint."

"One of your friends back home?"

Raph was interested now in the kind of people she surrounded herself with. That said a lot about people, the kind of people they had loyalties to.

"Yeah," Nico said, glad for the subject change. "He's one of the original six of us who ran away the first time; I've known him forever. Not always the smartest guy around, but he's fast on his feet and surprisingly good at getting us out of trouble. He used to be our wheel-man, but we needed to adjust to a few new things." Like his sort of falling out with the Leapfrog, and him learning how to fight with Old Lace.

"I know he's got my back, but wow can he ever cram his foot in his mouth sometimes."

"So there's six of you? But you said 'original' so there's more now? And what, you all just ran off from it and decided to stick together?"

He kept picking at the deserts and popped some kind of chewy fruit bar in his mouth.

"There's seven of us now." Nico's fond smile drooped. "Three are people we've picked up since we ran away the second time."

Raph can do the math.

"Me, Chase, Karolina, and Molly," she ticked the names off on the fingers of one hand, then moved to the other. "Victor, Xavin, and Klara." She lowered her hands.

"Alex died with our parents, when he revealed that he'd thrown in with them the previous year." She blinked furiously, eyes hot. "Gert was murdered a few weeks ago. Because some morons thought it would be a good idea to play with my parents' magical crap and brought Alex's dad forward from the past."

A friend of hers died a few weeks ago - a friend that she'd run away with after her biological family let her down.

Raph knew what it felt like the lose family but the emotional impact of her situation snapped into place with crystal clarity. The expression on her face, it was like that moment after Leo went down with the Technodrome, when they'd thought...

His brothers, Casey, and April - who both might as well have been part of the family now - were all he had left. And losing any of them now would hurt more than ever, especially after the rest of his world - and his father - had been taken away. That was what had happened to her. She'd lost her parents in one of the worst ways she could (not like Splinter, who'd always been a good parent and a good person) and then lost one of the only family members she'd had left. And from the look of her eyes, she was still in a world of hurt over it.

Though Raph was often outwardly tough and aggressive, sometimes teasing and callous, those who knew him best knew what that was covering up. He did feel for other people, he did care about other people, and if he liked who someone was, that came so easily. And once he was in someone's corner, there was no stopping him from having their back.

He owed Nico and the twins his life and how they'd acted during the rescue alone, saving him and Mikey, was enough for Raph to think they were good people. Good people didn't deserve to suffer or have to deal with loss or grief.

So, awkwardly, enough that Nico had time to tell him not to if she wanted, he reached out a three-fingered hand and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry." He shook his head. "Here we go right back into things sucking again."

It needed to be said. Just like her, he didn't really know what to say, but acknowledging the suck of it was a good place to start.

"But listen, you've got your friends you have left, and if they survived all that crap with your parents and the government and these Avengers, they'll be fine 'til you get back to them. And me and Mikey? We're gonna do all we can to help end this and get everyone back. That weird Bond villain guy was making it out to be that we were some big threat - I guess maybe because lots of people believe in us because of all those movies and TV shows."

He withdrew his hand. "So what I'm guessing is we'll be heavy hitters at this whole myth thing and now that you've got us at your back we'll do all we can to get us all back home. We're tough enough even without magical myth powers and with how tough you guys are, too, this Kuk guy doesn't stand a chance. You'll be back with your friends in no time."

It seemed the best thing he could say, reaffirming that he'd help her get back to the friends she had left.

Edited 2014-11-06 23:14 (UTC)

Nico inhaled deeply, wrapping her arms around her ribs and pulling her shoulders in as though she didn't trust her own bones to keep her from flying to pieces.

She didn't trust promises much anymore. Too many of them had broken on her since she'd discovered what kind of people her parent really were.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," she said finally.

Edited 2014-11-09 11:11 (UTC)

"Yeah, no, sure."

Understandable. Very understandable.

"Hey, uh, why don't we go do something stupid, huh? This is Santa's Workshop, they've gotta have some video game systems or stupid movies to watch - you know, to give to the rich kids."

It was a joke. Because in most universes "Santa" seemed to favor the wealthy when it came to presents. He had a feeling that this universe was a little bit different, though, but he hoped the joke was still funny.

"Yeah, sure, sounds good," Nico said, reaching back for the Staff again. "I'm not really all that good at video games, though. Let's...yeah, stupid movies, let's go."

She headed for the door -- she knew where the Yeti stored the electronic stuff around here.

One of the yetis pointed to the mess in the kitchen with a concerned "worgleblurg" and Raph just patted him (her?) on the arm.

"Just tell my brother there's food. He'll clean it up by eating it all."

Then he followed Nico as they set up a movie on a weird little TV that looked almost magical. Raph rooted through the box of bad horror movies they'd been given when Raph asked for them.

"Ooh, they're all Blurays instead of VHS. Fancy."

When you rummaged your entertainment out of dumpsters, VHS tended to be the norm.

"Okay, none of these movies are familiar to me since I guess we have different ones where I'm from. I don't see any of the Friday of Halloween or the Beltsander movies or anything, so which sounds better from the bargain horror movie bin of non-kidsafe movies they've wrangled up for us: Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Gingerdead Man, Troll 2, or -" and here he laughed so hard he couldn't stop for a moment. "Monsturd? Tagline is: 'Don't Get Caught Your With Your Pants Down.'"

"No," Nico said, shaking her head. Changing the subject and getting out of the room where it had come up had seemed to help immensely. She sat on the couch, tucking her feet beneath her and propping the Staff between her and the arm.

"No, I will never forgive you if you make me watch 'Monsturd'. My revenge will not be swift, it with the long and drawn out and all the more terrible for it. I say--" What movie titles had he read off? "--Killer Klowns. Let's go with Killer Klowns."

"I'm not exactly looking for you to get me and my little dog too, so Killer Klowns it is," he said, popping the blu-ray in and grabbing the remote. He got up and walked over to the couch, plopping onto it next to her, arms thrown across the back of the couch.

"No Monsturd. So you can hold off on the flying monkeys."

"I haven't actually used that spell yet," Nico said loftily, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. "But you've convinced me to hold off for another day, at least."

She looked around automatically to do a headcount before remembering that the only one of her friends here was one of the two she wouldn't want to sit through 'Killer Klowns' anyway. She pressed her lips together and looked back at the screen.

"How old is this movie anyway? Do I need to be prepared for eye-searingly awful clothes?"

"The cover said it was made in 1988." He looked over at her. "So the answer is yes."

Sure enough, the movie started to show people in its opening shots.

"Annnd confirmed for 80's clothes."

"Ugh. Is it too late to go back and pick 'Monsturd'?"

In spite of her words, she settled back against the couch, making no move to switch out the movies. Maybe she really did just need an hour and a half of terrible clothes and acting to distract her from everything.

And hey, the company wasn't bad.

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

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