[LN] [Locked to Mikey and Bunny]

[othersdestructive]

"It wasn't a big deal. Everything worked out fine and I had an out so I don't see what the problem is. All of you are making into a bigger thing than it needs to be."

After storming off from the argument with Bunny over Raph running off to get Winchester's brother himself, he'd dragged Mikey into playing a video game. In reality, he'd have preferred to be alone but he could tell Mikey had been bothered by the fact he'd run off alone and gotten injured so he mostly just wanted to show him his arm was okay enough to play video games with it.

The problem was Mikey was still harping on what had happened out of concern.

Rather than being annoyed at Mikey, Raph was trying his best to put Mikey's concern to rest while channeling his annoyance into kicking his butt at Mario Kart.

Comments

[othersdestructive]

"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."

[spellitonce]

"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."

[othersdestructive]

"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."

[spellitonce]

"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."

[othersdestructive]

"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.

[spellitonce]

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."

[othersdestructive]

"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.

[spellitonce]

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."

[othersdestructive]

"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."

[spellitonce]

"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."

[othersdestructive]

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."

[spellitonce]

She'd been going to quip something about nesting habits, but lost it when he reached out, apparently absent-mindedly, to pull her blanket further up around her shoulders. She hadn't even noticed that her grip had slipped.

Her brain stuttered for a moment, but she rallied, hopefully before he noticed.

"Los Angeles may have stunted my cold weather survival instincts, but I've still got some," she said. "I've got it covered. Sleep well."

[othersdestructive]

He just flashed her another smile before heading off to bed.

"G'night."

Fluttery. That was what he was feeling in his chest, this fluttery feeling setting in deep. That was what happened when you made friends, right? You had fuzzy feelings. Nothing unusual there, nothing special about her - it. Nothing special about it.

Right.

[spellitonce]

Nico counted a minute and a half after he'd left before she flipped her blanket up over her head and buried her face in her hands.

Ugh. No. That was so not what she'd come down here tonight to do.

He was just a nice guy with parallel responsible and rebellious streaks. He didn't even really get her, she'd let him make and keep a couple assumptions about her.

It was just late. She was probably more tired than she thought.

Yeah. Just tired.