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

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

"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.

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Wow. That was quite a bit more than Nico had expected. She smiled at him, and this time it didn't go to pieces after a bare few seconds. Then she looked away to wipe at her eyes.

"Well," she said, "I suppose that makes sense." A beat, another, shyer, smile. "Thanks."

He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her as tightly as his shell would comfortably allow.

"Listen, I can't say you're the toughest person I've ever met because I haven't met that many people so it wouldn't really mean anything. But what I can say is I think you're one of the toughest people I'm ever going to meet. And I'm glad I met you. And I think you've dealt with all this stuff a whole lot better than you realize."

A pause.

"In other words: you're welcome."

Then, without even thinking about it - or rather, without over-thinking about it since this was all taking place in their heads - he pressed a gentle, comforting kiss to her forehead.

Nico hugged him back, though not quite a firmly due to the awkward edges of his shell. Soap bubble memories rose and burst around them -- Nico, still wearing her glasses, posing in front of a floor-length mirror with a thoughtful expression as she examined the T-shirt she'd modified into a hooded tank top. She pulled the hood up over her shoulder-length hair and smiled.

Nico, a little older, dropping the Staff of One to throw her arms around a glowing girl in a torn but still beautiful black and gold dress. The girl flung her arms around Nico in turn, pulling her close.

Nico in her awkward early teens presenting a chubby dark-haired girl with a hand-sewn purple scarf. The girl jumped up and ran to the mirror to wrap the scarf around her neck and turned back to Nico, beaming.

Nico, still awkward, riding the escalator and the mall up and down and up and down as long as she wanted, because she was old enough to go to the mall on her own and that meant no one was there to tell her to stop riding the escalator and get a move on.

Nico, barely school-aged, carefully filling a plastic bucket with beach sand and carrying it back to a group of other children and tipping it over to build another turret on their sand castle.

Raph wasn't sure why it was happening, the good memories blinking and disappearing but maybe it was because they'd helped each other escape the painful trap that had been set for them and now good things were taking the place of the bad ones.

Or maybe...maybe it was because being with her made happy memories from times past bubble up to the surface because the feelings were so similar. But did that mean he made her feel the same way?

It flashed around them, his first view of the city above, the city lights flickering in his eyes and the eyes of his brothers, after fifteen years underground.

"It's so beeeeaaautiful," Mikey had gasped in awe and Raph couldn't help but agree. It was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

Raph's first taste of pizza, on a roof after he and his brothers picked up a dropped pizza from a pizza boy they'd frightened. He cried out, "I never thought I'd taste anything better than worms and algae but this is amazing!"

His first taste of ice cream, around the table with his brothers, after April had brought them down some. A fighter over what was left that devolved to an ice cream fight that got them all grounded for three days (alongside having to clean up the kitchen.)

The time they were eight and they'd played 'the floor is lava' and Raph had done the impossible. The goal had been to get to the entrance pool but the only way there was through a field of precarious furniture and toys. Raph managed to flip from a busted coffee table, balance on one foot on a busted up tricycle they were now all far too big for, flip onto a skateboard, and rode it backward all the way into the pool, his momentum taking him the rest of the way there.

His brothers all did that excitable "OOOOH!" thing kids do when a friend or sibling pulled off the hilariously impossible, because they actually managed to pull it off, and Raph rose from the water for a dramatic bow.

"Thank you, thank you, yes I know that I'm that awesome, thank you."

His and his brothers' first snow. Back when they were smaller and still experimented with clothes, back when they still sometimes got cold. They were eleven and they'd been playing in the sewers, finally allowed to do it unsupervised by Sensei as long as they stayed in the runoff and fresh water maintenance pipes and not the raw sewage ones, and as long as they avoided the more dangerous junctions with running water. They were bundled up in a mish-mash of discarded clothing, everything from overalls, to hawaiian shirts, to things like parts of fast food uniforms. Mikey, for instance, was wearing a tulle skirt over top his overalls and a floppy sun hat.

"What is it?" Raph had gasped as the tiny, delicate, puffs of...stuff danced its way down through a large sewer grate. It had coated the floor of the sewer in a heavy drift - apparently the storm going on above was rather fierce. So far the snow was still so fresh most of it was pristine, still not turned black by runoff. One of the little flakes landed on Raph's snout, making him sniff in surprise.

It was a moment of pure, undiluted childlike wonder.

"I saw this on TV!" Mikey exclaimed, somehow even more excitable in the past then than he was now in the present. "It's in all the Christmas specials. I think it's called..." He paused dramatically and gave a flare of his hands. "Snoo."

"It's snow, dummy," said Donnie. "I read about it in one of my books. It's precipitation in the form of flakes of crystalline water that falls -" he was interrupted by a snowball to the face, thrown by Raph. "Hey!"

As Raph laughed so hard he nearly fell over, Leonardo grinned and made a snowball himself, "Oh, it is so on."

Then things dissolved into the biggest, fiercest - and funnest - no-holds-barred snowball fight any New York sewer had ever seen.

And it was all so...appropriate. Being here with her felt like...well...

Home.

Home. That'd be nice.

And very suddenly, the two of them were back in their bodies (or in the human facsimile Raph was inhabiting) in a moment of free fall as the helicopters turned them loose into the ocean.

The ocean where a giant glowing monster waited for them.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Nico screamed. It seemed an appropriate contribution to the event.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Apparently, it was an appropriate contribution because Raph contributed it too.

They landed in a giant spray of ocean waves.

"How do we control this thing?! I've only controlled one giant mech so far and it wasn't anything like this!"

"I don't even pilot the Leapfrog!" Nico shrieked over the the progressively more furious questions being spat out over the radio from back at base. "I have no idea how to control this thing!"

So of course, that was the moment the Kaiju roared up out of the water, all claws and billowing fins and jagged fangs in a gaping mouth. Nico shrieked again, somehow even higher than before; and only one thought flashed through the frozen terror of her mind:

Hit it!

She reflexively flung a wild punch at it, even though she was inside the giant robot where there was no way for her to hit it.

The punch landed and the most it did was knock the monster back slightly but at least that meant they now knew how the robot worked.

Ignoring the buzz of command (people that probably weren't even real), Raph experimentally thew a much harder, more direct punch at the creature's...head-like appendage. It knocked it back into the water.

"Hey, I think the mech does what we do!"

And because they were linked up, they didn't even have to talk to work together on it.

"I don't know how we got here but I've got a feeling we have to go through this thing to get out."

We can do this.

The two of them, together? Of course they could do this.

"But if we're going to, you need to punch a whole lot harder."

The Raph-lead punch was definitely better than the one Nico had thrown -- her body had followed along with Raph's because of the way their minds were connected. His confidence was likewise contagious.

"I don't think it has a dead wife, and I'm fresh out of shapeshifters anyway," she answered. "So if we're gonna punch this thing back into the watery grave it came out of, I'm gonna follow your lead on this."

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

"Here it comes again!"

"And there it goes again," Raph joked as he kicked it, hard, knocking it back into the water. Then he stepped on it, pinning with the robot's foot that he was controlling and did the "one" part of a one-two punch.

Which meant Nico had to follow up with the "two." Fortunately, in Nico's head there suddenly came the knowledge of how to throw a proper punch, and it was more than just instructions, it was as if she had the muscle memory herself, zipping into her brain faster than light.

Thumb outside the fist, knuckles out to cause more damage, not the flats of the fingers, make sure your reach goes two inches behind what you're punching, keep the wrist straight -

All of his dedication (because yes, he did actually do push ups balanced on his sai handles back home), all the pride over what he could do (because he was just that good), all the lessons and experience were there for her to work with.

She had his strength to add to her own.

Edited 2015-01-04 00:29 (UTC)

Punching monsters while wearing a giant suit of armor didn't hurt Nico's knuckles nearly as much as punching her ex-boyfriend had (and it sure as hell hurt her heart less). She whooped aloud as she let Raph's knowledge lead her through the movement, aiming for somewhere behind the kaiju's head.

"HYAAAA!"

The kaiju seemed to be having less fun than she was, though. It launched itself up at them with a roar that she could hear through the crashing waves and the various mechanical whines and klaxons in the jaeger, seizing the head of the mecha in its clawed hands and attempting to yank it loose.

"AHHHHH!"

"That sounds like the opposite of good."

There was a horrible crunch above them as the head of the jaeger was torn clean off. Fortunately, the Conn-pod was in its chest, but they lost some functionality as the klaxons blared and the sparks flew everywhere.

"Nico, use the staff! You have some kinda staff thing on your side, right?"

A one-shot wonder. Enough of the false memories lingered that she might be able to use it.

It was their last shot before this thing got trashed.

Edited 2015-01-06 04:11 (UTC)

"AHHHHH!" Nico suggested helpfully. Geez, why did they make those klaxons so loud; did they think that they wouldn't notice the head of their giant fighting robot being ripped off without all that additional racket?

She fumbled around for a panicky moment before she found the controls for the staff thing. She wasn't really practiced at staffs that weren't magical, and while Raph did have some training with a staff, it wasn't his specialty -- especially not one that also had a one-shot blast that could come out of one end. Nico drove the staff forward at the kaiju with a shout, triggering the explosive at the tip as she did so.

If the damn thing was just a little slower, she would have had it!

It veered just enough to avoid the center mass but the blast took off the kaiju's arm in a viscous spray of...hydraulic fluid?

For just a moment as the lightning flashed, the kaiju suddenly looked less like a monster and more like another jaeger, in black armor with horns that made it look like a bat-eared cowl -

Not that Raph knew it, because he didn't know what Batman was, but that was what it looked like. Batman.

As the other jaeger rallied, he and Nico briefly heard a voice - a single voice - over the other jaeger's intercom.

"Troy and Abed in a jaaaeger!"

It was the same reedy voice as earlier, during that brief flash of the other Han Solo and the other Inspector, and the sound of it was jogging something in Raph's brain.

"That guy - he's that guy we saw earlier! He's - he's why we're here - I think? Either we were supposed to bring him in or take him down, but I still can't remember which or how we got into this!"

It was still too fuzzy and they had no time to untangle the situation because the other jaeger turned back into a kaiju again - and it raised a fist and shot globs of something glowing at their Conn-pod.

The front of the Conn-pod exploded, sending metal shrapnel everywhere. Fortunately, their Drivesuits were sturdy enough to take the beating, but the jaeger was already on its last legs. As the jaeger stumbled backwards, putting some space between them and the "kaiju" it turned so the exposed Conn-pod was pointing away from the kaiju, giving them time.

Wires were sparking everywhere, alarms were blaring, displays were flashing red with "CRITICAL SYSTEMS FAILURE" messages. Some of the electronics and hydraulics were failing as coolant and other fluids spewed from broken pipes and tubes.

There was no way they were going to win this, especially when they only half knew what they were doing now that the illusion was broken. So Raph did what any good ninja would do and what any good jaeger pilot wouldn't it, and ripped himself free from his mount, pulling tubes and wires away until he was free to move through the cockpit.

The moment he ripped off his helmet, the strange fluid inside spilling everywhere as he coughed the rest out of his lungs, he suddenly changed back to his true form (albeit still in his drivesuit). It was as if him no longer playing along meant the illusion was suddenly broken. Now that he no longer fully fit the mold of an unstoppable jaeger pilot that never gave up and had reverted back to being a ninja that knew when to cut and run, it was goodbye human jaeger pilot, hello teenage mutant ninja turtle.

"We need to abandon ship! Try to get out of this - this - whatever it is, like we did before!" he cried out, voice ragged from coughing, as he stumbled over to Nico to help her detach, too.

As the jaeger listed in place, he stumbled and slammed right into her. He could hear the heavy choom choom choom of the approaching kaiju. They only had a few seconds to abandon ship - a minute, tops.

Edited 2015-01-06 06:51 (UTC)

Nico hoped they were here to take that guy down. He was having way too much fun putting her in dangerous situations for her to be in much of a mood for a rescue.

She struggled out of the clamps attached to her suit with Raph's help -- a lot of Raph's help, since she'd used up most of her residual memories to get the staff to work. She fumbled with her helmet until it unlocked, the red streaks dyed into her hair running out with the weird liquid that had been inside.

When the jaeger listed and Raph fell against her, she latched onto his shell as hard as she could.

"I can't swim in that!" she shrieked over the sound of the wind and the waves below them. Scuba training had not prepared her for high dives into stormy seas.

Unfortunately, they didn't have time to get out of the suits in the jaeger. A massive kaiju hand suddenly loomed up, heaving towards the hole in their Conn-pod, about to slam into what was left of it.

"No time!" Raph screamed, yanking her along by the hand towards the gaping hole and then bodily yanking her out with him as he jumped out. The kaiju hand slammed right through the hole in the Conn-pod with a sickening crunch the moment they were clear.

"HOLD YOUR BREATH - FEET DOWN!" Raph cried over the shriek of the wind as they dropped like stones, still holding onto her so they'd plummet in together and not be separated by the waves raging around the failing jaeger and raging kaiju.

They sank like stones, too, the swirl of the waves buffeting them around wildly under the water, but ultimately failing at pushing them towards the surface. At the very least, they were ripped away from the fight, meaning they had at least a chance of not getting crushed.

They could barely see each other in the dim light under the water, but as the jaeger sank in the distance, its external lights gave them at least some light to work by. In the other direction were other lights above the surface, as if there was a coastal city not far off in the distance.

But the only chance they had of getting to it was getting their suits off and surfacing before they drowned so they could swim to it.

Raph started to tear off his suit furiously. Fortunately, now that they were away from the jaeger and the little bubble of reality around it, it was much easier to get out of the suits than it should have been.

But could they do it fast enough?

Edited 2015-01-06 07:08 (UTC)

Getting out of her suit nothing, Nico was already struggling just to stay conscious. She had pretty decent lung capacity -- thank you, tuba -- but they'd gone down and around and around, and it had taken most of her energy to not lose track of Raph. Scuba training in the Pacific Ocean off L.A. was one thing, but splashing around in the depths of where ever the hell they were now was another thing entirely.

For all that she was surrounded by water, she burned. Her lungs most of all, but also her eyes and nose from the salt and whatever else was in the water. She burned, and the only thing that could put it out was the water that would kill her.

Where was the Staff of One? Where was her power now? She weakly fumbled at her suit, hoping for a sharp edge she could scratch herself with, to summon the Staff if it hadn't been lost in the ocean depths.

Huh, she hadn't thought she'd die from drowning...

Hands were suddenly there, first ripping off huge chunks of her armor with surprising strength and then as she struggled, as she started to lose consciousness, gently grasping the sides of her face.

He wasn't going to let her die like this, panicking underwater, her hair fanning out like a morbid halo, just inches away from him.

There wasn't time to coax her to breathe out, not before she did it involuntarily and started choking down water so Raph decided to take things into his own hands.

His face hovering just an inch away from hers, he kneed her in the gut, not enough to be painful, but for enough for her to be forced to breathe out, and before she could breathe in again, he clamped his mouth over hers, made a tight seal and breathed out so she could draw his air into her lungs.

Not only was he pretty sure he probably had a bigger lung capacity, even on half a lungful of air, he could manage for almost fifteen minutes. With no air, he could probably manage at least ten. His body was made for being underwater without air and that probably meant that the air in his lungs was still mostly good to breathe, too.

Edited 2015-01-06 08:06 (UTC)

She was confused enough that there wasn't time to register 'betrayal' on her face from the knee to the gut before he'd latched his face onto her face in...rescue breathing. Yeah, that was what it was called in this situation. Not a kiss, even if it looked like one because she'd been about to drown. Having death denied would make anyone's heart act weird. ~~And she was just, you know, not going to think about how the last near-drowning she'd witnessed had gone.~~

She'd have to thank him later though, because under water rescue breathing was only going to do so much for either of them if they didn't break the surface soon. And beyond that, the cold was going to kill her fast if she didn't get out of the water. So she thrust the whole awkward turmoil to the back of her mind, breathed in what he gave her, and resumed her suit-shedding crawl toward the surface of the water.

As soon as they were both free of their suits, Raph grabbed her arms to get her to wrap them around his neck from behind.

Too slow. She couldn't swim fast enough to get to the surface before they both ran out of air. But to be fair, very few humans could have managed it. So, as soon as she had a good grip, he swam as fast as he could, powerful breast strokes and his weird padded, slightly-webbed feet causing them to zoom up to the surface far faster than any human could've gotten them up there.

They finally broke the surface just as he was started to feel the ache of oxygen deprivation himself, and he gasped uncontrollably the moment he made contact with the air, treading water hard enough to keep them both afloat despite it.

Nico gasped for breath as well, trying not to accidentally strangle him as she readjusted her grip on his shoulders so she didn't slip right back down into the water. She probably looked like a drowned rat, but the amount she did not care was as vast as the ocean she was not-quite-yet dying in.

"Docks!" she said, pointing ahead of them and slightly to the left. "I think. Night vision...awful."

He kept swimming, paddling along with her clinging to him, finally staggering up a steep boat ramp onto the docks and collapsing in exhaustion the moment he was on dry land, legs still dangling in the water.

The kind of swim he'd dragged them both through could have killed many a rescue swimmer and it was only because of his turtle-ness and the fact he was a particularly impressive specimen of turtle that he'd gotten them to land.

The entire dock they were on was devoid of people and shrouded in fog, reducing the entire world to a dim grey, dulling all colors to something close to black and white. Far off in the distance, across the river, blinked city lights, the outlines of skyscrapers creating a particularly distinctive skyline.

Raph turned his head to look at it as he lay there. Then he sniffed the air, looking at the river.

"That's - the Hudson," he gasped out. He looked over at the city skyline, shrouded by fog. "And that's Manhattan."

He lifted his head up slightly to look around, before flopping it back against the ramp. "We're at the Red Hook Terminal. How the heck did we go from that to winding up in Brooklyn?"

Nico rolled off his shell to her hands and knees -- better that one of them be prepared to do something if someone showed up, considering how exciting everything had been so far. She staggered to her feet and peered into the darkness before peeling off her short maroon jacket and wringing it out. Tt left her shivering in her sarashi wrap and knee-length black shorts, but it was better than standing there with everything dripping.

"We went from one alien planet to Tatooine to a giant robot on Earth," she said. "As long as it's not my New York, I'll take it."

She glanced back to see if he wanted any help getting to his feet but oh boy, she was already freezing, she did not have the blood to waste blushing.

"You've, uh," she gestured at her mouth, then back towards him. "You've got red--"

You know what else she ought to wring out? Her hair. It was going to start falling out of the high ponytail she'd styled it in if she didn't wring it out right now.

Red? Of course he had red, he had a red banda - oh.

On his face. Apparently, lipstick was pretty waterproof, okay. He sat up slowly and wiped at his mouth awkwardly, trying to get rid of it and trying not to think about the fact her lips had put it there. That, for just a few seconds, her lips had been touching his lips, as her hair had fanned out in the water -

No. No, he'd been giving her air. So she didn't die. Not romantic at all. She'd probably been grossed out by his gross turtle breath, anyway.

Annnd now she was back to not having that much clothing again, though not to the degree the metal bikini had been. Although now that he had a moment to breathe it meant he had a moment to reflect on the fact that she'd been in a skimpy metal bikini. And attached to him via the brain - and - and - pressed against him in a cage, looking him in the eyes -

Okay, wow, a lot had happened in the last few hours. A lot that was probably best ignored.

"Not sure what Tatooine is, but I'm guessing it was the place where you -" the pause was very subtle because Raph was slick like that, so he quickly segued away from thoughts of what she was wearing, past and present (and future? Oh boy, he wondered what was coming next...) "- strangled that blob-guy. That whole thing looked like some knock off of Space Wars."

He paused.

"A lot of this seems like knock offs of stuff. That bit with the aliens was like Doctor Whatsit - that's a sci fi show about an alien who travels through time and space back home. And the thing with the blob guy was like Space Wars - Leo's a total nerd over it it." Almost as much as Space Heroes. "And the giant robots were like a ton of mecha shows and movies I've seen, especially Pacific Rift."

He tried to think, tried to remember how this had all started.

"And I don't know about you but I don't remember how it all started. How did we go from chilling at the Pole to joining in somebody's tv and movie marathon up close and personal? And what's that tall, skinny guy we kept getting glimpses have to do with it all? Do you remember anything?"

Edited 2015-01-06 10:21 (UTC)

Maybe they weren't knock-offs. Maybe they were the versions of the stories that had made it through into that guy's reality. But that wasn't really important right now. Focus on what was important and not on the whole dashing-rescue-from-inevitable-death thing. Yes.

"I don't..." Nico frowned, pressing her fingertips to her temple. "You said something earlier about how we're here to either grab that guy and bring him back to the Pole or to defeat him? I don't remember how it got started either; but he's definitely at the bottom of all this."

She rubbed her arms and glared down at her still-wet coat. It would have been nice if whoever this guy was, he hadn't left them splashing around in the water in their new...

Wait.

"I don't usually dress like this." She awkwardly tucked her hands under her arms, both to try and warm them up and also to cover her chest a bit. Not that much was showing, but. "I have perfectly good bras--" Wait wait, no. She continued quickly, "--why am I wearing bandages? You're wearing what you usually wear, aren't you?"

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