[LN] Beat of His Own Drums [Open]

[othersdestructive]

As soon as the yeti finished that beautiful, beautiful brand spankin' new not liberated from the trash drum kit, Raph had swooped in and commandeered it, dragging it off piece by piece to the room he'd also commandeered as his own when he'd first arrived.

"You can make another one," he'd shot back at the pouting yeti, who'd sighed and gotten back to work as he stole the cymbals.

It was a Pearl Export kit. Not exactly top of the line but solid, had a good sound just like the real thing (talk about trademark infringement, right?), and most importantly of all, it was new. Like so few of Raph's belongings were. In fact, the only belongings he had that weren't, ahem, "recycled," were things April and Casey had given him. Everything else was junk scavenged from the surface by Splinter - and then by him and his brothers when they started going up.

New drums. Actual new drums. And a new cd player. And new cds. He'd managed to grab a few new things, actual new things. For the first time in his life, he was playing on a new drum kit.

All the "you have to save all of existence" stuff aside, this place rocked.

That was why he was in his room banging away, sometimes playing very recognizable drums beats by themselves, sometimes in time with the original music. If it sounded like he was crazy enthusiastic about what he was doing, it was because he was.

He'd left his door open out of a general lack of consideration for others, but the noise didn't add much more noise pollution to the busy workshop than there was - and at least he was good. Very good, in fact.

Comments

[iswayzedthatmother]

Dean had some apologizing to do, which was never pleasant, but at least Raph wasn't hard to find. Dean hadn't seen anyone at the Pole yet who looked like they might work their stress off playing the drums.

"Hey, uh."

He announced himself, awkwardly, at the door. He had tried to kill the kid, after all.

"'Hot for Teacher,' right?" He nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Good, uh. Good ear."

Or lack of them.

[othersdestructive]

Dean got a long, inscrutable stare as Raph played - made all the more impressive by the fact he was playing without looking while giving it - but he finally stopped, putting his drum sticks down so that he could get a good look at the man in the doorway.

On the one hand, the guy was an ass.

On the other, he knew his music.

On the other nonexistent hand, the guy was an ass.

One the other other hand, he could at least understand paranoia and when he really thought about it, if he'd been tossed into creepy a situation with one of the characters from Super Robo Mecha Force Five there in the flesh, he might have suspected some weird mindfuck, too, even if he would've been a little less trigger-happy.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to bust the guy's chops. He just reeked of desperate cool, from the way he carried himself to the way he dressed. Like some James Dean wannabe.

So Raph went for the low-hanging fruit, knowing that the thing teenagers were best at was making old people feel old.

"Yeah, well, you know how it is. Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Rush - the best stuff to drum to is the old people music."

[iswayzedthatmother]

Dean acknowledged the insult with an inscrutable look of his own.

OK, not so inscrutable. Raph was hitting the "teenage" part of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle" pretty hard and it was already annoying.

"Listen, I wanted to ah." Ugh. He didn't want to so much after that, but. "Apologize. I'm sorry I tried to shoot you." Pause. "And blow you up."

[othersdestructive]

As far as Raph was concerned, he deserved that annoyance and then some, as all true pains in the butt did.

"Yeah, whatever," he said, in true teenager fashion. "I guess it's not your fault. I was on edge when Mikey and I got pulled here, too, and it turned out we had good reason to be because some myths working for Kuk nearly got us killed."

Fun fun.

"So if it had been them, you going on the offensive would've been a good thing. And they would've deserved a grenade to the face."

[iswayzedthatmother]

"There's pretty much nothing back home that would try to take me somewhere in an abandoned field that doesn't deserve a grenade to the face. But, uh, thanks. I know I ain't the nicest guy to meet in an abandoned field and you were just trying to help, so . . . thanks."

Being helped, actually helped, for no reason other than to keep him out of more trouble and because it was the right thing to do, by someone other than Sam or Bobby was . . . really unusual. And Dean wasn't used to it. So not-used to it, he'd almost killed a kid, but of course if anyone was going to mistakenly kill an innocent, helpful kid, wouldn't it be him?

"Which myths?" he asked, veering away from the self-hating train of thought. He needed to know the specific threats of this world, and soon.

[othersdestructive]

"You can stop thanking me and stuff now," said Raph, vaguely discomfited by it.

Mostly because he wasn't used to it. No one even knew they did nice stuff or helped people, let alone thanked them for it. It felt...weird.

"It's weird," he blurted out before realizing that might come off like he was saying that it was weird Dean was thanking him and not that it was just weird to hear it. "I mean, I get you're trying to be appreciative. I'm just not used to it. No one thanks us back home."

Even hunters got the occasional 'thank you for saving my life.'

"Anyway, the myths that attacked us were some weird British action movie villain type guy named Benedict, Bloody Mary - as in the Bloody Mary - and The Trunchbull from that movie with the girl who can move stuff with her brain. They beat us senseless and dumped us in Times Square with these collars that suppressed our myth powers and tipped off these government agents that we were there. Then they took us to this creepy government lab and - and Nico and the twins got us out."

He didn't go into what had happened in said lab because he really didn't want to.

[iswayzedthatmother]

"Hey, it's only right," Dean shrugged, glad to be done with the niceties.

"Bloody Mary? I must've killed her once." He scratched the back of his head, looking back, thoughtful - "Nah, just a ghost pulling her schtick. What's the real thing do?"

He didn't want to ask what had happened in the lab, and didn't need to. It wasn't his business. His business was killing Bloody Marys wherever he met them.

[othersdestructive]

"As far as I can tell she was all about trying to gouge our eyes out. Luckily, she didn't do it when we were out. The Trunchbull was just the muscle. That Benedict guy, though...he kept saying stuff about giving us our fitting bad ending and knowing how stories worked. He was definitely another myth like us but he was talking about genre-savvy and stuff, like he thought all this was a story."

Super creepy.

"He was the one in charge. He said he needed to destroy the idea of us. I think that's why he dumped us like that - everyone saw us get dragged off and were all upset by it. He wanted that to be the last anyone saw of us before..."

He cut that thought off at the pass.

[iswayzedthatmother]

"Makes sense." By then, Dean had gotten the rundown. "We get our power from being believed in, so the guy tries to take down the idols behind the idolatry. Does that mean if we lose in front of kids, we lose harder?"

It was a weird concept. Almost as weird as the concept of his life as something that children watched.

"Still kinda wanna punch a parent who let their kid watch me and Sam do our work in the face though."

[othersdestructive]

"Eeeh, kids always sneak that stuff anyway. Me and my brothers used to sneak horror movies all the time after Sensei went to sleep, even when we were just eleven and twelve, and you know how TV is, with discretionary shots and stuff. They make things look less real than they would be if they were real."

Because of the censors.

"For instance me and Mikey are apparently from a cartoon and I haven't watched it yet but I bet they don't even show blood in it and do that cartoony cross-hatching thing to show when people are hurt. There'd be no way they'd show how bloody stuff really gets sometimes."

[iswayzedthatmother]

Through Raph's explanation Dean's eyes had been glazing over as he tried to imagine his life dumbed down and kiddie-fied to the level that Raph's had been when he and Sam were children.

"Yeah, there definitely was no blood," he said, looking a little distracted.

[othersdestructive]

"What one did you watch when you were a kid, the one in the 80's?" Raph looked amused. "Jack said he checked with one of the kids he's friends with to figure out which one me and my bro are from and he said it's the one that came out in 2012. But Nico said the one her parents wouldn't let her watch when she was little was out in the 80's and 90's."

He was curious what impression Dean had of him. And slightly amused by it all.

And very smug.

"I'm curious, what with me being your childhood hero and all."

[iswayzedthatmother]

Dangit, Raph could have done him the decency of forgetting about that.

Maybe if Dean hadn't tried to kill him.

"The, uh. The 80's one. Don't get too bigheaded about it. It's not like 10-year-olds are known for their great taste."

It was kind of an asshole thing to say, but then, did Raph really want to be idolized by the sort of people who grew up to be living embodiments of the entire NRA?

"Who the hell's Nico and what was her parents' problem?"

[othersdestructive]

It was kind of an asshole thing to say and Raph didn't exactly deflate but his expression became a lot more guarded and tough guy all of a sudden, nearly back to the way it'd been when Dean came into the room.

Much as he was trying to not let the warm fuzzies get too strong over it, he liked the idea that kids had known him - or versions of him - and that it made them happy. He liked the idea that he and Mikey had been brought here because he made kids feel safe. Back home, they couldn't walk down the street without people screaming, but here? Here they were liked and they had brought some good into people's lives by just existing.

But hey, whatever, it wasn't like he cared what some gun nut jerk thought of a different version of him anyway.

"She's one of the other people here. She's a witch, 'bout my age. And her parents...uh. Well, that's not really my business to share but she's made it clear they were exactly the parents of the year in a lot of respects."

Raph went and flopped down to sit on his bed, picking up one of his comics.

His tone was still conversational, but he was definitely retreating into his shell a bit - though not literally.

[iswayzedthatmother]

Having grown up with the goofy, 2-dimensional turtles, Dean was having trouble remembering the whole "teenage" part.

And the whole "actual person" part.

"Look, don't take it personally," he said, ignoring that it was, of course, too late for that. "You're probably not that guy anyway. It was kinda . . . it was for kids."

The sad part, though, was that it HAD brought Sam and Dean plenty of joy. Joy they didn't get a lot of when they were motel-hopping their way through childhood, with John always gone killing something or other.

They were outsiders wherever they went, training in the paternal art of killing things before things killed them. They'd both identified with a bunch of sewer-dwelling mutant ninjas more than the average set of children.

Not that Dean was going to admit that. Especially when this Raphael was way more of an actual person than he remembered.

"I mean, unless 'cool, but rude' is about the sum of your whole personality."

Yeah. He still remembered the theme song.

Something else grabbed his attention, though.

"Wait a minute, she's a witch? As in, sold-her-soul-to-Satan-for-magic-powers witch? We're working with one of those?"

[othersdestructive]

Raph's frowny attitude changed just a bit and he smirked slightly when Dean said the "cool but rude" part. Mostly because he was about to make a crack that his brothers definitely would've made the claim it was his whole personality but then Dean said that about Nico and his eyes immediately narrowed.

"She didn't sell her soul to Satan," he said, his tone defensive. "People don't have to do that to use magic where she's from. She has a magic staff that she picked up in a big fight to stop the end of the world. It's magically bound to her."

He'd leave out that whole "it uses blood to work" and "it disappears inside her soul when she's not using it" thing for now.

He jutted out his chin slightly.

"And she saved my life."He crossed his arms. "I don't know if you've met the twins yet but she and the twins saved me and Mikey from winding up biology experiments in a creepy government lab when we first got here. We got caught by some of Kuk's people before anyone here found us and they dumped right in the government's hands - which was what I was trying to save your sorry butt from and got grenades in the face for when I first met you."

Yes that was meant to throw a little salt on that wound, but he was annoyed. Nico was...Nico and had saved his butt and it was stupid for someone to judge someone based on the rules of their own world.

[iswayzedthatmother]

"There's nothing that doesn't have to sell its soul for magic powers where I'm from," Dean muttered.

Not that he wouldn't be glad for a magical ally when backed into a corner. He just wouldn't be turning his back to her in that corner, no matter how much Raph liked her.

"Which twins, and why a biology lab? Thought muggles couldn't see us while we're spirits like this."

[othersdestructive]

"Yeah, well where Nico's from it's different. Superheroes and magic and aliens and all kinds of weird stuff."

Yes, he was still being a touch defensive.

"And the twins are Dipper and Mabel. You'll know 'em when you see 'em, they're fraternal but they almost look identical. Dipper has this magic spell book as his power and Mabel's packing some heat with rainbow sparkle princess kinda powers. She's like one of those little girl cartoons with the magical ponies in human form."

He went on, "Me and my brother got caught by the enemy when we first showed up, some of the bad myths working for Kuk. They beat the snot out of us, put these weird collars on us that suppressed the myth powers so we could be seen, dumped us in Time Square tied up, and tipped of the Feds. After they caught us, they dragged us to this creepy government lab that looked like it was set up to study myths."

Raph pointedly looked at his comic.

"The news passed it off as some kinda PR thing for the movie about other versions of us that just came out, but the people there....they figured out we were real. They were trying to help us. The creepy guy working for Kuk said that he wanted them to see us dragged off, wanted to destroy the idea of us. The lab was -"

He cut off for a moment, still carefully avoiding Dean's gaze, his grip on his comic subtly tightening, crinkling the paper. For someone that looked so weird, he had a very human expression on his face.

"After she and the twins rescued us, Nico torched the place," was all he could finish with.