[LN] Dangerously Genre-Savvy [closed to Nico]

[othersdestructive]

"Inspector!" Rafa cried out, as the Inspector's ship crash landed in the purple jungles of Khalafross. Clad in his traditional animal skins, he was an imposing figure, even despite the fact that the Inspector was taller than him. "The danger light blinks! Rafa can see with the eyes of the ship! Our most hated enemy comes for us: Blorgons!"

Native to the planet Tumantis, Rafa was one of the Tessujex, a subgroup of the people known as the Suveteem. In the Inspector's adventures, he had discovered that the Suvateem were actually descendant of a crashed space exploration survey team. (Their name, in fact, was what "survey team" had devolved into over the centuries). The Tessujex had evolved from the animals on board that had accidentally been exposed to mutagens during the crash and developed human intelligence. (Hence the name Tessujex, a twisted version of the words "test subjects.")

After the Tessujex were used as slave labor for centuries, the Inspector was responsible for making the Suveteem realize that the humanoids among them were not the superior species they'd once thought they were and that their claim that they were descended from the gods was false, the Tessujex finally had a chance of being treated equal in their society. After that, Rafa, one of the Tessujex's most noble warriors and resistance fighters had declared that he would follow the Inspector to the end of time until the debt could be repaid, especially if it meant the Inspector could teach him the ways of peace after a lifetime of battle.

"We must leave! Quickly! And fight them in the jungle. Rafa knows the way!"

They had no way of defending themselves on the ship and there was no way to repair it while the Blorgons were on board.

Comments

[staff_and_wielder]

The Inspector dug furiously into the Makintosh she -- yes 'she', Rafa was going to need to be made to understand about the Infinity Knights' ability to partially survive death once their immediate circumstances were less immediate -- was nearly swimming in. Though she was still taller than her constable, she was much shorter than habit told her she was, and there were any number of pockets in this coat anyway. Perhaps she ought to have swapped it for something shorter, perhaps made of black leather...

"Rafa, surely the concept of locking the door to the BOOTH behind us is not entirely unfamiliar to you? Ah!" Finally, the bloody key to the bloody thing! She jammed it into the lock, twisted it, and then jammed it back into another pocket entirely. "Now we run!"

[othersdestructive]

The two ran into the woods, barreling through the underbrush.

"Once they chase us into forest, we can fight from the trees," said Rafa. "Rafa knows how to make war from hidden places from his fighting with the non-Tessujex Suvateem."

They broke through a ring of bushes.

"Rafa can even set a -" as they tripped over a tripwire, a cage suddenly sprung up around them, hoisting them into the air. "TRAP!"

From the surrounding bushes came strange warriors, with blue skin, and two heads that seemed vaguely like they were possibly made from paper mache and hot glue.

"Uh oh," said Rafa, catchphrasishly.

[staff_and_wielder]

"Mmfff!" said the Inspector, due to a combination of oversized coat and small space having driven her face into her constable's shoulder. She levered herself slightly more upright via the application of pointier elbows.

"I say," she addressed the surrounding aliens, "I seem to have caught my coat on your trap. Would you mind terribly assisting me?" As she spoke, she dug for her quantum spanner just as furiously as she had earlier for her BOOTH key.

[othersdestructive]

"Rafa can help," said Rafa, trying to help her rifle through the pockets she couldn't reach, which, considering they were already nearly pressed nose to nose, was awkward.

Definitely awkward.

His hands stopped, as a strange flutter came into his heart from being so close to the Inspector, like the kind that came from the sting of a narflebeast.

"Rafa can - he can -" he stuttered and then more words than he could usually speak came to him as he looked into her brown eyes. "I -"

[staff_and_wielder]

While the Inspector had developed affectionate feelings for many of her constables before -- something similar if not identical to 'friendship', due to her lack of a heart -- the sensation she felt now was subtly different. It would be fascinating to examine later, providing there was a later. Rafa's eyes were very green, and they strangely made retrieving her quantum spanner seem simultaneously less and more important than pure logic would dictate. Her hand had, without orders from her, come to rest on the hard shell protecting Rafa's chest, over where his heart would be.

"Rafa..."

[morethanmyth]

A Blorgon suddenly came rolling through the bushes.

"E-RAD-I - wait." Its voice suddenly changed from the robotic voice of a robot to the...slightly robotic voice of a young man. "That's simmering romantic tension. The Inspector and his constables aren't supposed to have simmering romantic tension. What. The hell."

There was a confused pause. "Also, I thought I was the Inspector -"

For just a moment, another figure appeared there in the Blorgon's place, a tall man dressed very similarly to Nico.

The world suddenly shifted.

[othersdestructive]

Raphael, aka Raph Solo, and Luke Skywalker were dragged into an audience in front of Jabba the Hutt by his guards.

Standing behind the grotesque monster as he stroked Leia's hair like she was a pet cat, was Threepio, who translated for the captives.

"Oh, dear. His High Exaltedness, the great Jabba the Hutt, has decreed that you are to be terminated immediately."

"Good," quipped Raph, "I hate long waits."

"You will therefore be taken to the Dune Sea and cast into the pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlacc," said Threepio.

"Doesn't sound so bad," Raph said to Luke.

"In his belly," Threepio, "You will find a new definition of pain and suffering, as you are slowly digested over a thousand years."

"On second thought, let's pass on that, huh?" said Raph.

Chewbacca barked in agreement.

"You should have bargained, Jabba," said Luke, "That's the last mistake you'll ever make."

Jabba only cackled evilly in response.

[staff_and_wielder]

Princess Nico Organa had lost entirely too many people in her short life, she was not about to lose those two idiots too -- especially not after she'd put all the effort she had into rescuing Raph. Luke might have a plan, but Nico had an opportunity now. Luke would just have to adapt.

While the boys had all been trading chit-chat, Nico had been shifting her weight on the dais, getting her feet under her. Jabba's eyes slid closed as he chortled with laughter and she sprung, driving a fist as hard as she could into his nearest eyeball. As the room erupted into chaos, she scrambled up and around behind him, dragging her chains with her.

He'd thought putting a collar on her would make her docile? All he'd done was make her angrier.

[othersdestructive]

Luke adapted, clearly panicking as he did so, using his Jedi powers to slam everyone else back. Lando, clearly disliking being used as a pawn in all this, cried out, "It's about time! I'll help you get out of here" and took out his blaster, helping Luke dispatch the guards.

Raph could only stand there, eyes bugging out slightly as he watched Nico, clad in only a chainmail bikini, choking an evil alien to death.

"Uh."

Glorious.

[morethanmyth]

A nearby alien, one of Jabba's guards, chirped in alarm, the chirps resolving into something they could understand, using that same young man's voice from earlier.

"Not cool, not cool," the alien said. "Wrong order of events. Luke and Han get taken to the sarlaac pit first, then Luke starts his rescue. Leia chokes Jabba to death when everyone is distracted by the spectacle. Not canon. This isn't canon."

They both briefly got a glimpse of the same tall man as before, only rather than being an alien, for a moment he was dressed like Han Solo.

Then the world shifted again.

[staff_and_wielder]

This was Nico Mori's first time in a Jaeger. She'd dreamed about this day for years, that she'd find someone with whom she was drift compatible and she'd be allowed to do this. She'd never expected that it would be this Jaeger, with this guy.

The amount of hair she'd had to stuff inside her helmet meant that she could see the red streaks she'd dyed in it out of the corners of her eyes. But she'd known that before she put her helmet on, and so had secured it so that it wouldn't be getting in her face and obscuring her vision. She looked beyond her hair, to the young man inside the Jaeger with her.

"Ready?"

[othersdestructive]

"Hell yeah," he said with a wicked grin through the clear pane of his helmet. "Let's send this squid-monster packing. In a bento box."

Their jaeger was called the Shell Raiser, a turtle-like Jaeger with heavy armor that his younger brother had insisted on naming. Due to the fact Raph Becket and his other brother, his copilot Leo, were so damn good they'd let them actually use the name. It had made operations easier, anyway, since the two of them refused to use any other name on the comms.

They'd seen it as good luck to have Mikey christen the thing.

That luck, however, hadn't lasted. Raph had seen Leo die, felt it, and because of it, he thought he'd never find someone else to pilot with again. He'd walked away from the program altogether.

Until Stacker Pentecost had dragged him back in and he'd met Nico Mori. Then everything had changed.

This was their first time going up against a kaiju together, and the first time he'd be facing one after losing Leo, but he couldn't have been more confident about it with Nico at his side.

She was the one. After thinking he'd never find someone else again she was the one and now the Shell Raiser was back in action.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico flashed him a grin in return before turning her gaze toward the screens in front of them, double-checking that her boots were locked into place, and trying to prepare herself to engage in the neural handshake.

She wouldn't embarrass herself. She'd prove that they were right to give her this chance.

And, yeah, she'd help Raph cram this thing into a bento box no matter how much it wanted to get to shore instead.

A voice came on over the comm, informing them that they were within seconds of arriving on-site and that it was time to engage in the neural handshake so that the could hit the water running.

She could do this. She would do this.

[othersdestructive]

As Raph and Nico left Bunny to talk to Abed - who was now hiding his face while curled on the floor next to the couch - Raph could only make a slight grimace.

"I don't know, Nico. I know the one guy apparently stabbed you in the leg and got hit by a car but I'm really wondering if this guy might've been a worse choice on the part of whatever the hell brings us here. How's he going to manage here if he's that confused about what's real? This place doesn't exactly go easy on your suspension of disbelief."

He felt sorry for the guy.

He knew how that kind of thing could be confusing to people not used to it. April had originally been terrified by everything going on, until she got to know them and got used to it. Her dad had never really adjusted and now the poor guy was probably still wandering around the city as a horrible mutant.

[staff_and_wielder]

"If he can't handle this, we'll just keep him here at the Pole where he'll be safe until he snaps back to his reality," Nico said, glancing unhappily over her shoulder at the guy. Where he was from sounded way less fantastical than where she and Molly or Raph and Mikey were from. This place probably looked totally and completely nuts to him.

"The way I understand it, we don't really get 'chosen' so much as somehow yanked through because kids identify strongly with us, or we make them feel safe," she said. "I don't know how it works either, but it's at least better than 'you might have been made-up whole-cloth'."

[othersdestructive]

Raph shuddered slightly at the thought of that, of being truly fictional. That meant that unless the kids imagined up his other brothers, April, Casey, and Karai they'd just never exist.

It meant if they stopped Kuk and the kids no longer had the power to do that, they might all stop existing.

"If people were here and then pulled away there was probably somewhere they were pulled to. We're real. Little kids wouldn't be imagining complex people with all kinds of thoughts in their heads and enough emotional problems to fill entire seasons of teen dramas."

The alternative was them fading out of existence and that...that just wasn't something he wanted to think about.

"That guy back there, he seems...complicated. It's more likely some older kid with problems of their own brought him in than a kid managed to imagine that real."

He tilted his head slightly to look at her.

"Your chin's still bleeding. Why don't we go get everything cleaned up in the kitchen? It always heals faster that way."

They never had to worry much about infection but getting debris out of wounds and setting bones properly and all that meant they healed up a whole lot faster.

[staff_and_wielder]

"Molly went back home, remember?" Nico said. "She was only there for a couple seconds before she came back. So I'm going to assume that I'm real and you're real and all our friends are real and work from there."

She frowned and reached up to wipe her chin. Her hand did indeed come away with a little blood on it.

"Huh, wow, I must have gotten something embedded in it or something if it's still bleeding like this," she said. "All right, kitchen it is. Celebratory cookie time."

[othersdestructive]

"I'm not touching the cookies anymore unless they're fresh out of the oven. I saw one of the elves slobbering on one of them the other day and sticking it right back on the plate."

He stuck out his tongue.

"I didn't warn Mikey in time and he ate it and then I told him where it'd been and it turned out he saw it happen and ate it anyway. My brother, I swear..."

Raph bustled around and got one of the first aid bags from one of the shelves and set it up on the counter.

Then, rather thoughtlessly, grabbed Nico by the waist and lifted her up to sit her on the counter. It was very gentle and about as effortless as a ballerina lifting his partner.

[staff_and_wielder]

"Your brother's immune system must be amazing," Nico said, shaking her head, then eeped when Raph casually picked her up and set her down on the counter like she was a mobile bag of groceries. She was too surprised to do anything else.

"Uh." She blinked, licked her lips. "That's more handsy than usual."

[othersdestructive]

He didn't like when she licked her lips. Her lips were already distracting all the time even without her licking them.

At her words, a stricken look stole over his face unbidden and his hands - which had initially lingered at her waist on unconscious impulse - quickly left her sides once she was seated.

"Uh. Well, you know. High counter. I was just saving you a jump."

It'd have been a pain for her to get up there, right? She was kind of tiny.

Inwardly, Raph grimaced, careful not to let it show outside.

Idiot. Don't be like Donnie, don't be like Donnie, don't be like Donnie...

"Lemme get a look at that chin. It looks like you have a piece of glass or gravel stuck in there."

He got out a pair of tweezers and, with the utmost care, dabbed at the blood with some sterile gauze so he could get a better look, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.

[staff_and_wielder]

"I didn't say I objected," Nico mumbled mostly to herself as he turned away to root through the first aid kit. When he turned back around, she sat up straighter and thrust out her chin for cleaning.

She probably could have done this on her own, but it was nice of him to take care of it for her. He'd probably do less damage than she would with the tweezers and a mirror.

Not that it still didn't sting though, no matter how delicately he handled things. Nico breathed through her nose and tried not to flinch or grimace and she cast around for a distraction that didn't involve turning her head. Unfortunately the most immediate distraction were Raph's eyes, which were very green and very intently focused on her face. And that was not a very good distraction, because she'd been trying to distract herself from noticing things like that.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. Best case scenario, things were weird and awkward and they went back to being friends so that it didn't suck quite so badly when one of them died or when they had to go back to their respective worlds and never see each other again. And there were so, so many ways it could go worse. Which is why she'd just been trying to ignore it, and just take whatever she could out of their friendship.

It was a bad idea, no matter what Abed had said when he came across the two of them in that cage.

[othersdestructive]

Okay, he was going to ignore that, her saying she didn't object. That was just...it was just a friend reassuring a friend that something hadn't bothered them, that's all.

"Piece of gravel," he said, picking it out. "Think I got it."

He put the little tiny, bloody gravel chunk down on a piece of paper wrapping and broke open a little ampule of sterile water to wash out the wound, letting the water run down her chin into another piece of gauze. After dabbing it dry and cleaning off the worse of the blood, he unwrapped and put a little bandage on her chin.

"There. Already started closing up a little soon as I got it out. Man, is our myth healing quick or what?" he smirked one of his goofier smirks. "I don't think you're gonna need anyone kissing it to make it better."

Oop. No. Why did he say that? Why did he say that?

Don't be like Donnie, I said. Listen, mouth, start listening to my brain right quick or so help me...

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico resisted the urge to rub her hand over her chin so that it would stop tingling where he'd touched her skin.

'Kiss it better'. Wow, thanks Raph, totally helpful.

"Yeah, well," she said absently, more to keep silence from falling than to actually say anything as she pushed her way off the counter -- and into his space if he didn't move back. "That's probably not sanitary anyway. Human mouths are filthy."

And so are some of the human brains they're attached to.

[othersdestructive]

He didn't move back. He didn't want to move back. He tried to will his feet to move him back but they weren't budging.

For a second, his brain couldn't even think. Her talking about mouths being dirty sent his brain to places he tried to never let it go to. Then he tried coming up with a weak joke about turtle mouths and salmonella but he didn't want to say anything else that had to do with his mouth in relation to her, in relation to kissing or anything of the like.

He needed to back away. He really, really needed to back away.

And yet his feet still wouldn't budge.

His Adam's apple bobbed visibly as he swallowed, the talk of tongues making him extra aware of his own in his mouth.

"Yeeeah," he said dumbly, having trouble finding something else to say. "I never really got why that was a thing."

Move! Would you just move already?! said his brain.

Kiss her! also said his brain.

Don't be like Donnie! said the other part of his brain again.

Don't be like Donnie, the pro-kissing part of his brain said enticingly. Don't be like Donnie and kiss her. No stupid music boxes and being too corny, no charts, no following her around unless she wants you to follow, no nudging her around like she's a piece on a game board and a prize at the same time. Kiss her. Show her what she is to you and if she doesn't want it, tell her friendship is enough and reign it in where it needs to be. Even if it hurts.

Okay, technically that's not being like Donnie but it's still wrong.

Show her. Even if she turns you down. She deserves to know that she's worth that. Give everything you can to her and tell her she doesn't owe anything back.

As both parts of his brain were locked together in deadly combat all he could do was hover there, the two of them standing in each other's space.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico was taller than Raph when she was barefoot; heels added enough height that she could probably tuck his head under her chin, were she so inclined to try and ruin everything that way. It was a little dizzying. She was so used to the act of ducking her head meaning an increased distance between two mouths that she wasn't quite sure what to do when it actually brought their mouths closer.

She really needed to stop thinking about mouths. Especially Raph's mouth. Wasn't helping anything.

She lifted her hands to push him back a step, but there wasn't really room to get them between the two of them easily. Instead they ended up on his shoulders, and failed to push him away. Yeah, that had been a terrible idea, hadn't it?

"No idea," she said, not entirely remembering what they were talking about. "The placebo effect is a hell of a thing, I guess."