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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Nico relaxed a hair or two. Maybe the Gibborim really were all the way gone this time.

"Wow, they need their butts kicked just for that," she said. "Good luck fighting them when you get back." At least the invasion of the Skrulls had mostly wrapped when Nico got sucked into all this. "I'd give you tips, but I mostly survived our last alien invasion through dumb luck."

"It's just one of many reasons they deserve having their butts kicked, trust me."

He pointed at her with an eclair.

"And what, you're telling me you only just got by with that little sparkle princess wand of yours? Maybe you'd have had a better chance if you weren't missing the tiara that probably goes with it."

Yes, he was going to be a shit. They were actually getting along, of course he had to be a shit. That was what he did with people he got along with, he busted their chops.

Nico briefly narrowed her eyes, crunching another piece of her candy cane.

"You must have mistaken me for Glenda the Good Witch," she said sweetly. "Tiaras don't really go with magic fueled by the caster's blood."

Raph just blinked for a second or two, his eyes opening up wide.

"Your staff's magic is fueled by the power of your blood."

Here came the judgement and the being creeped out by that very obvious dark magi -

"That. Is. So cool."

- Or not.

What? He was a teenage boy and one that particularly liked stuff that was kinda metal. Magic powered by blood was super freakin' metal.

"How much more hardcore can you get? The only way that could be more badass was like if it was fueled by the blood of your enemies or something."

"'Fueling it with the blood of my enemies' reeeeeally isn't a path I want to go down," Nico said. She wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to do that. She couldn't exactly picture her mother carrying around a knife or ruining her manicures by picking at them. Maybe the Witchbreaker would shed her own blood, but she'd very (horribly) clearly had access to plenty of it from other sources.

Nico shivered and forced the memory away. Non-creepy enthusiasm was definitely better than the dire squint-and-mumble she'd gotten from the Easter Bunny, at least.

"Besides, we were just talking about how sometimes my enemies are Nazi bees. Bees don't really have blood."

"Well, I figure if it's magic, it'd only have to be a teeny tiny bit of blood. Which is a normal thing in any fight."

He paused.

"Then again, I'm a ninja. Sometimes I forget it's not normal to go into everything perfectly okay with that kinda thing. For most people, anyway."

If they didn't fight so many robots and the Kraang weren't so good at squiddling off (and weren't so harmless outside their bodies) he'd have had a hell of a body count by now. He and his brothers didn't exactly hold back when they were in the thick of it and tended to only cut losers like the Purple Dragons some slack since theywere so incompetent as to be relatively harmless. Otherwise, consensus was they'd kill Shredder the first time one of them had a chance to get in a good shot.

"Did you even get a chance to train before you got involved in all the...whatever it was you got into? Superheroing, I guess?"

Edited 2014-11-02 06:54 (UTC)

"It is only a little bit of blood," Nico said. "But from a practical perspective, I'd still have to bloody someone up and, well, I'm pretty sure that your forearm is bigger around than my thigh." She rolled another piece of her candy cane across her tongue. "And, considering my family history, it's probably best that I stay squeamish about other people's blood."

She almost choked on her candy cane scoffing at his question. "Training with who? My evil parents who wanted to destroy the world? The Avengers, who showed up just long enough to chuck me and my friends in separate orphanages after our parents died? One of the many, many magic users my parents pissed off in their extended career of theft and violence?" She shook her head. "The first time I got anything like training was a couple days before I got dragged here. We ran away the first time about a year before that."

She reached blindly for the Staff and released a shaky breath only when she felt its familiar texture against her palm. Her mouth quirked up in a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "So no, I'm almost completely self-taught. And we're not super heroes, we don't go looking for crime to fight; it mostly just happens and we do our best to stop it so we can get out of there before the authorities arrive."

"Well, clearly, this little interdimensional not-kidnapping ain't bad in every respect then," he said, taking note of the bitterness.

She had a good reason to be bitter, given what she was saying about her situation. One fight to the next, the rug yanked out from under her by the evil parent thing, and it sounded like she was being hunted and chased on top of it.

"Master Splinter trained us all for fifteen years. He knew we'd have to fight to protect ourselves; he knew the world wasn't going to cut us a break - and it sounds like yours was giving you that kinda hard time, too. I could maybe teach you a thing or two before all this is over and we go back to our respective worlds. Nothing to do with magic but special powers can't do squat for you if you don't know everything else you need for a fight."

A pause.

"Provided you think you can keep up." Yes, that was a challenge.

Edited 2014-11-02 07:58 (UTC)

Nico laughed; not another bitter one but an actual, genuine-sounding laugh.

"What part of this--" she gestured to herself, still giggling, "--makes you think that I have any level of machismo when it comes to physical activity? I did marching band for P.E. credit, I'm not about to pretend to think I can keep up with a guy who looks like he could bench-press me."

She let go of the Staff, propping it back against the wall again.

"I wouldn't say no to some endurance training, though. And some tips on how to hit people if they grab me."

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)

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