ya_assemble | [LN] [Locked to Mikey and Bunny]

"Morality's not genetic, though. Maybe being a psychopath might be. That's a thing nobody knows yet, right? I'm not that up on my science. But it's pretty clear that's not a problem with you."

Not with how shaken up she'd been in that room in the lab with the...remains. That horrible, horrible room. He'd seen the look on her face.

That had required empathy and that meant she had it.

"Your parents raised you up different than them, right? You said you weren't even allowed to watch violent cartoons. And you have empathy. It's understandable you'd not want to think about it but not wanting to because it's not pleasant and feeling like you're at greater risk of being bad are two different things."

"Maybe not today," Nico said. "But next year? Five years after that?? Maybe the groundwork's already laid and I need just the right kind of bad day to decide everything needs to burn. Maybe I just need the right person to end up in my power. The right excuse."

Maybe it had already happened. She wrapped her blanket more tightly around herself.

"It's my head. I get to choose what risks I take with it."

"You do. That's your right. It's just..."

He didn't like that she seemed to think she was a time bomb.

"That way of thinking about it sounds like something that has to be hard to live with. Thinking you're a time bomb waiting to go off. It sounds like it has to be scary."

He peered over at her.

"Even if you do always stay away from thinking about that stuff to be safe - which is fine, it's understandable if it makes you feel safer - it'd be good to see it for what it is. Evil's a choice. It's a bunch of choices. And darkness is something that's in everybody, so at the very least, don't think you're somehow at a bigger risk than anyone else. It almost sounds like you think there's a part of you that's already rotten and that's not how it works."

He shrugged.

"Just look at me."

"Better to think I'm a time bomb and be wrong rather than thinking I'm not and being wrong."

Nico cocked her head to the side, frowning at him.

"Just look at you how?"

He was silent for a moment, as if wondering if he should even be honest about it. But hey, she'd bared her soul a bit, it was only fair he did the same. Besides, she'd seen him fighting. She'd seen him almost take a knife to those scientists in front of little kids.

It wasn't really giving away anything she hadn't already seen.

"Good upbringing by a really good father, right? And from when I was little, I was this little tiny ball of rage. Always picking fights with my brothers, always getting really vicious. I still sometimes let my temper go completely out of control. One time I kicked my brother in the back of the head when he wasn't looking just 'cause he beat me in training. And we're not talking when we were kids or anything, this happened a few months ago. Another time I lost my cool and almost -"

He paused.

"I almost put a sai through the head of the guy who's now, like, my best friend, I guess. Because I got mad at him during a fight the first time I met him. And that's all when I shouldn't be that way. I got hugs when I was a kid, I had a dad who loved me and taught me right from wrong, who was always trying to help me with that anger and it just...I don't know. It comes from nowhere and I don't know why. I might never figure out why, but one thing I do know is that I might need just the right kind of bad day, too."

He went on, "Because that's how everyone is. For everyone, all it might take is one bad day. That's a scary thing and everyone has to deal with it the way that's best for them, but you're not like some bomb waiting to go off either. Or...well, if you are, it's not different from how lots of people are."

He looked at the floor now, not really wanting to look her in the eye. "If someone raised in a good way by someone good can turn out like me, then it isn't just where you come from or how you were raised. Or from genetics - all my human DNA comes from Splinter and none of my brothers are like this. Anyone can be bad and anyone can be good."

Edited 2014-11-15 08:11 (UTC)

Nico stared down at the floor as well, less because she was horrified by what Raph had said and more because he'd just bared something secret and personal to her and she couldn't reciprocate. She could tell him what had been done to her, but she could make her lips move to spit out what she'd done in retaliation.

She didn't think having evil parents meant you had to be evil. Her friends weren't evil; Molly was sweet and would never do the kinds of things her parents had done, Karolina and Xavin tried to stop a war their parents had started, Victor was doing everything he could to make sure he wouldn't become Victorious, and Chase had proven that the only life he was willing to sacrifice -- even to bring Gert back -- was his own. Gert hadn't been evil either, she'd been all too eager to shine a light on all of the evil already in the world.

Really, it was just her. There was something wrong with her.

"Well," she said finally, "if it's something you're worried about, maybe we can look out for each other. While we're here."

"Yeah. Yeah, we could do that. I don't think I'll need to with you, but it can help having someone pulling you back a step when you're losing your head a little and helping you deal with it. Sensei always -"

He stopped and had to hold that pause for a moment in the way someone did when the reality of loss set in, when they went through life and found each and every new way that there was a hole there where something important had once been.

Sensei'd always helped him with his anger, whether it was with stern, well-deserved reproach, calm wisdom, or listening with that Look.

He'd always had that look of understanding - and love. It was the kind of thing someone could feel like a monster over, but Raph had always known that his father had never seen him that way. He'd always just seen him as a son, struggling, and never once had Raph felt like anything he said or did came from anyplace other than a place of love.

He kept looking at the floor, eyes going glassy.

"Uh." His voice was a little thick but he cleared his throat. "My brother Leo's good about calling me on it, too, but he's not here. And Mikey's always been a little too forgiving."

His voice had been steady there, right? Steady enough.

Nico's hand slipped out of the opening of her blanket to rest on top of his briefly.

"I miss my friends too," she said softly, because this was she could talk about. She couldn't talk about what she'd done, and she couldn't speak to having lost a parent who was actually a good person who helped their children grow and improve, but she could talk about missing family.

"Time's passing a lot slower in my home reality than here, if Molly's experience going back is any indication. It's probably the same in your universe. Your brother won't have to worry."

Okay, that was it. There was all this hand-touching and it was nice so he was doing something about it. Before she could draw her hand away, he held onto it, clasping their hands together. Awkwardly, given he only had three fingers, but gently. It was a hand clasp of camaraderie, warm and reassuring.

"Well if Leo's gonna be there waiting to kick my butt if I'm out of line when I get back, I need to make sure I stay in line until I get there, right? And if a lot more time passes here than there, there's a lot more trouble we can get into before we ever get back. So I'll watch your back, you watch mine, how's that sound?"

He gave her hand a squeeze. "Because I'm definitely sensing friend material here, and at this point, I know I'd at least trust you in an invasion of killer clowns, which I think really says a lot about a person. You clearly have a level heard on your shoulders: you know not to poke around the big tent that fell from space, not to eat the acid cream pies, and to outrun the popcorn gun. Also, you can basically set things on fire with a magic stick and your mind. I just feel like you're well qualified to watch my back. Anyone you could probably survive a horror movie with is someone you can probably trust to help you out."

The smirk he shot at her was indeed a smirk but it was still somehow warm and genuine and kind, like his way of beaming out kindness was always through smirks and smartass expressions. That was because the brunt of the smile was all in his eyes, green and sharp and twinkling with a sort of mirth and sincerity all at once.

"And I know all that stuff, too, plus I'm a ninja, so I feel I'm equally qualified to do the watching your back thing."

Edited 2014-11-28 12:31 (UTC)

Nico's cheeks warmed at the compliments and it was a real struggle not to turn away or hide her face with her free hand. That sounded a lot better than her usual what if he goes evil response of "we'll rip out his damned heart".

She was trying not to be flattered by all of that, but it was pretty difficult in the face of that sincerity.

"Sounds like a plan to me," she said, squeezing his hand back. Her return smirk was about as warm as her face felt, too. "I can already tell that I'm going to be safe if my going evil involves robots."

"Oh, totally," said Raph. "I'm even good at robots with aliens inside, like little wrinkly, creamy centers. The robots we fight have alien nougat - they're like evil candy bars."

His hand loosened around hers but he let her decide when she wanted to pull away.

"That sounds like the most disgusting candy bar ever," Nico said, wrinkling her nose. She retrieved her hand after a moment, pulling it back inside the blanket with the rest of her. "Metal and gooey meat? Plus an alien invasion and one of the most annoying speech patterns I ever heard? Yeah, no, count me out of that trip to the candy store.

"Alien brains with eyes and mouths and little tentacle arms. Inside the chests of robots. You wouldn't even believe some of the stuff I've seen." A pause. "Well, maybe you would, it kinda sounds like things are weird where you're from, too. Anyway, it's crazy. It's like something out of my brother's stupid sci fi shows. "

Another pause.

"Then again, mutant turtles are like something out of his stupid sci fi shows. Which makes sense - the only reason me and my brothers exist is because the Kraang were experimenting with terraforming - or I guess Kraangaforming? - Earth so they could invade from their dimension. Sensei ran into some of them when he was taking us home from the pet shop and got into a fight and that's how we all got doused in mutagen."

Edited 2014-11-29 17:57 (UTC)

"Yeah, I really wouldn't be surprised to find an article about other-dimensional ooze in the newspaper," Nico agreed. "One of the serious ones, not the ones at the check-out counter with articles about carrying Wonder Man's male-pregnancy baby."

She made a face. "Did you find out why Earth? Did they also have some sort of crazy religious prophecy promising the third planet from whatever they call our sun?"

"That's where it gets freaky. This one journalist we met was studying the Kraang, looking through historical records to see how long they'd been messing with our world and it went waaay back. Like, ancient times. Like prehistoric times."

Raph raised his "eyebrows" under his mask.

"I don't think there was anything special about Earth, I think it was a planet that was just...there and less crazy and hostile than their universe. For all we know they picked it at random. Kraang Prime said they were the ones that mutated apes to make them into humans in the first place, trying to figure out how mutate life on Earth to make it so they could live there. Supposedly they were messing with humanity all along to work out something with human DNA to make the mutagen work."

He looked over at her.

"What's creepy is I think they were telling the truth. They didn't choose a planet for a specific reason and decide to just kick out the natives. I think they chose it at random, and because they did, that's what made it Earth. Like I said: freaky. It's like we're all things growing some alien species' giant petri dish."

Edited 2014-12-03 06:35 (UTC)

"That's..." Nico shivered and pulled her blanket close around her shoulders. "That is really freaky. But it must not have been too different from what happened in my universe -- or this one either. I mean, you haven't been acting like all the people you see look weird. So they've been going really, really slow until now, which means they're probably getting desperate. And desperate people make stupid decisions sometimes."

"It doesn't matter where we came from anyway. It's our world now. And technically we were all there first, even if them messing with us made us sentient. You can't just make sentient people and then decide to mutate them into mindless monsters and steal their planet because you feel like it," said Raph stubbornly.

"They could've picked a world with no sentient life and never mutated any and figured out how to make it so they could live there. But they didn't."

He jutted out his jaw.

"Once me and Mikey help with everything going down here, we're gonna go back and then me and my brothers and April and Casey are going to go back to New York, take back the city, and send the Kraang packing."

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"And then we're gonna make Shredder pay for what he did to Sensei."

"That they don't get to screw with people even if they did make them sentient pretty much goes without saying," Nico agreed. Seriously, who'd argue the opposite? Besides the Kraang obviously, but they just as obviously didn't count.

She worried her lower lip between her teeth. That didn't sound like a lot of people to stop an alien invasion. Sure, the Avengers had, but it had taken way more of them with the one Nico had just left...

"Want help?" she asked, mostly as a joke. "We may have only made it through ours because we were lucky, but experience is experience sometimes."

"Naaah, I appreciate the thought but it's our mess. We wouldn't wanna drag anyone else into it. We'll figure something out."

He smiled at her and instead of one of his smirky smiles, it was open and appreciative.

"Thanks, though. I know you're mostly joking but I'm getting the sense it's only 'mostly.'"

Which was sweet.

Nico tore her eyes away from his smile and shrugged.

"Yeah, well, your government is a little less likely to shoot me on sight than mine is," she demurred.

"It just...seems like a pretty big task for a few people. And my plans for getting back are pretty much just 'find a new hide-out and figure out how to stay off the radar of whoever ends up in power'. Nothing ambitious like kicking an alien invasion back to their own dimension."

Edited 2014-12-03 22:15 (UTC)

"If it gets that bad, we might take you up on it, but we try not to drag other people into our messes. We're the ones that couldn't stop 'em from invading in the first place so now we're the ones that'll send 'em packing."

It was a lot of responsibility they were willing to choose to take on, which said something about him, his brothers, and his friends. It didn't have to be theirs but they were making it theirs anyway.

"That's the whole point, you know? Me and my brothers have been training since we were born and we chose to start tangling with the Kraang once we knew they were out there, Casey chose to go out there and protect people and help us, and April chose to train with sensei to be a kunoichi and fight them, too. We wanna protect people and that means trying our best to handle it on our own."

Which implied that he thought she and her friends ought to be protected and not have to deal with any extra craziness falling in their lap.

Nico and her friends hadn't had to take on the responsibility of protecting L.A. from the power vacuum resulting from their parents' deaths. They'd made it their own too, trying to make up for what their parents had spent the last twenty years doing to the place. It said something about them too, namely that Nico wasn't going to argue with Raph about whether or not he and his family were responsible for kicking the Kraang out of New York just because they hadn't been able to stop them from getting in.

"Well, good luck with that," she said, shaking her head. "And good luck dealing with people after. Some of them can be weirdly ungrateful about having their butts saved."

"You say like that we ever get to take credit at all. Nobody knows we even exist." The bitterness in his voice was kept to only the tiniest fraction of how much he actually felt over that fact. "Ninjas, remember? We go, we fight, we leave, and no one ever knows we were there."

He shrugged.

"That's just the way it's gotta be, I guess. And now Mikey and I know what the alternative is." Something horrible. He looked over at her, his expression brightening. "It's been nice talking to people here, though."

"I wish we were better at ninja-ing," Nico said, making a face. "We pretty much suck at it, so we get shot at."

She wasn't about to get into a who-has-the-rougher-deal argument with Raphael, but 'credit' was something she could do without these days.

She smiled back at him. "Glad you're getting something out of this crazy misadventure, at least. Getting some new conversation hasn't been bad for me, either."

That got him smiling at her again.

"Although, right now I'm all talked out. I think I'm gonna hit the sack." He sat up, stretching his arms, a yawn suddenly taking over. He blinked his eyes sleepily, as if only just realizing how tired he was.

"Although it's less a sack and more a nest," he said when he finished yawning. "At night, this place is colder than a city sewer in January. That is an accomplishment - and not the good kind, like most situations where you can compare something to a sewer."

He looked like he was going to stand up to go, but saw that the blanket had fallen just a bit off Nico's shoulders as she sat there, so he casually reached out and tugged it up so she was properly bundled, before finally standing up.

"Try not to freeze to death on the way to your room. I'm pretty sure that'd traumatize the twins to catatonia."

[LN] [Locked to Mikey and Bunny]

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