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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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?"

Raph could only stare at her awkwardly after that declaration, trying to find the right words - any words - to use in response. To his credit most of the staring was at her face. Most of it. There was only the briefest, quickest, most unconscious, most ninja glimpse ever at her chest when she mentioned bras, but otherwise he was very good and kept his eyes at eye level.

"Uh. You look -"

Oh boy, dangerous territory here.

"Kinda ninja-ish? Like -" In a scantily clad way, at least. "- uh, in a 'trying to distract the enemy' way. Which is definitely a pretty standard kunoichi tactic. Karai used to flirt with Leo to get him off guard before we all found out she was Sensei's long lost daughter. She tried to do it with me a little bit too but it always just made me wanna punch her harder."

Since it was pretty obvious what she'd been doing.

Raph finally stood up, staggering weakly to his feet. Looking down at himself, he said, "My gear's a little off. Same weapons but just...different." He held out his hands, eyes widening slightly as he finally realized what looked so...off about this place. "Uuuh, is it just me or are we both lookin' a little black and white and...cross-hatchey?"

Edited 2015-01-06 10:45 (UTC)

"Great, 'skanky ninja' was totally my favorite Asian girl Halloween costume," Nico grumbled, trying to decide if the extra clothing was worth putting her wet coat back on. It would just make her colder, sure, but she'd at least look like she remembered to put all her clothes on this morning. Evening. Whatever.

She glanced back down at her coat, frowning. It had been maroon, hadn't it? She'd thought it had, but now that he mentioned it, things were looking more monochromatic than usual. She pulled her hands out from under her arms. "I'm definitely rocking the high-contrast black nail polish look right now. Trying to see the cross-hatches is giving me a headache, so I'm going to go with 'yes'. Does that mean anything to you?"

"No." He paused and tilted his head to the side. "Yes."

He briefly closed his eyes and when he opened them again, they were just white. No iris, no pupil, like how some superheroes had little see through parts of their masks over their eyes that hid them.

He drew his sais, twirling them in his hands.

"The other me's. I think this is - I think this is tied to one of the other me's. Maybe a comic? Jack said it all started with comics. Comics, then cartoons and movies and more comics. It feels like this place is - it's someplace where everything's supposed to begin."

A pause.

"And where it already ended."

He spotted something moving out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see ninjas suddenly appearing all over the damn place, on all the massive cargo containers, on the cranes, everywhere.

"Oh, for the love of -"

The Foot. Of course it was the Foot.

"It will be your end, turtle," boomed a voice from nearby, echoing around the shipping crates. "Here, at the beginning of it all."

Raph's eyes went wide. It was hard enough to face Shredder with his brothers, but now? When it was just the two of them and he was so exhausted from that swim that he was barely on his feet? Against a veritable army of the Foot?

And this Shredder didn't sound like the one Raph knew, and did, at the same time. It sounded like the Shredder that had killed his father and the Shredder that had beaten up Leo, but at the same time he could tell it was a different one, one that was more...primeval. Like he was more the idea of the Shredder.

If this had been the Shredder he knew, he'd have thrown himself right into the battle, exhaustion or not, because of his rage, because of what Shredder had done. But this wasn't his Shredder and he wasn't back home and his brothers weren't here and he wasn't even fighting fit.

His brothers weren't here and someone that'd never once tangled with the Shredder before was. It wasn't even that he thought she wasn't badass but these weren't rent-a-ninjas and right now the two of them were clearly not myth-powered even if they had their usual powers and abilities.

And this was the idea of The Shredder, at its most primal.

"Nico," he said calmly - far too calmly. Frighteningly calmly, a tone of voice she'd likely never heard him use before. "You need to start running."

Edited 2015-01-06 12:10 (UTC)

"That," Nico observed, dropping both arms down to her sides and extending her fingers behind her, "is more than the usual amount of ninjas."

Where exactly did he expect her to run to? Could he even take this many ninjas right after he'd carried her up out of the ocean? She glanced behind her, hoping for Godzilla or something to pop up and be a distraction. Where was the guy who they were here following?

She shifted backward slowly, gravel crunching underfoot as she tried to figure out if the Staff of One was anywhere nearby for her to grasp.

"RUN!" Raph screamed at her now, voice far less calm, as he jumped into the fray, trying to make himself as obvious a target as possible.

His hope was that she'd get somewhere safe, he'd be able to toss a smoke bomb and ninja away, and they could meet up later. Digging in and trying to win this thing was practically suicide, it needed to be a hit and run, and that meant it was better if one of them already started running.

But as difficult as the fight was, even while exhausted fifteen years of skill weren't anything to scoff at. Even while exhausted he could have held his own against some of the best of the best of her world.

However, unlike some of the best of the best of her world, he wasn't holding back. At all. Back when the Foot had all been human, they'd tried to knock them out with kicks and punches and the flats of their weapons. They'd had the luxury. They'd given the Foot so many beat-downs, of such magnitude, that most of them had decided a ninja life of crime wasn't for them. Shredder had run out of volunteers and had to commission all of his robot ninjas instead.

But when it was a lone ninja against, oh, three hundred Foot? And some nightmare version of the Shredder? That wasn't the time to hold back.

This was the first she ever saw him fight an enemy that wasn't a practice dummy and if it wasn't for, you know, all the blood spray, it would have been pretty majestic. Because even exhausted, he danced like lightning. He was a storm - half of the one they'd been together in the Drift - raging and flattening whole seaside civilizations. Sometimes he even gave the impression that he wasn't beholden to gravity and capable of liberating other people from it, leaping and bouncing off of crates, people, any available surface, flinging Foot ninjas around like rag dolls in complicated maneuvers that had them slamming into other ninjas and sending them also flying like errant bowling pins.

Edited 2015-01-06 12:42 (UTC)

'All the blood spray' was kind of hard to ignore. There was an awful lot of blood spray. Nico leaped backwards, clapping her hands over her mouth in horror. The ninjas seemed to be focusing on Raph instead of her -- for the moment -- which just meant that she had a better view of the carnage.

This was what he had in his head?

Pretty much.

Only he usually envisioned himself winning.

They were wearing him down. A lucky punch here, a kick to the chest there. It didn't happen all at once, but he was clearly losing control of the situation. An attempt to use a smoke bomb failed when one of the Foot managed to grab his foot as he leaped away, swinging him around and slamming him into a crate that broke on impact.

Edited 2015-01-06 12:54 (UTC)

He was going to lose.

"RAPH!" she shouted as he vanished under a veritable avalanche of ninjas as the booming voice from earlier roared with laughter. She took off toward the heap, only to be shoved aside by a second wave -- surely they couldn't all be trying to stab him at once, could they? There were two many of them, they'd stab each other!

"Oww!"

Blood seeped from Nico's arm across the gravel and sandpaper on the dock. As it did, her soul sung with a very welcome sensation.

Someone really ought to start briefing the ninjas.

"When Blood Is Shed, Let the Staff of One Emerge."

The magic was a bit more...dramatic here, possibly to make up for the lack of color. The Staff of One blossomed from her chest amidst light and smoke, and the ninjas sure as hell were noticing her now.

"Go the #$%& to sleep."

They all collapsed simultaneously, every last one of them...except for one.

He stood, staring at her and her staff, cocking his head in confusion.

"You don't belong here. Wrong canon. The big two would never be able to agree on the rights for a crossover with a small indie comics company."

The ninja's image briefly blurred revealing a tall, brown-skinned man with a concerned gaze, wearing a ninja turtle costume. He carried a bo staff. Then, as if he couldn't reconcile what he was seeing, as if it alarmed him, he bolted, running like a deer in headlights and shoving his way through a wall - which suddenly ripped apart like paper - and disappeared.

Nearby, the mound of ninjas was moving but Raph was having a little trouble climbing out of it.

The grumbling sounds at least made it clear he was probably okay.

What the...

Nico shook off her confusion. She could either chase after that guy and risk leaving Raph behind in this reality, or she could help Raph out of that pile of ninjas and hope they could catch up. She went with the latter, wading gingerly into the mess of ~~blood and~~ bodies and trying to move them aside. At least most of them were sleeping.

Most of them.

"Raph, you okay? I saw the guy, he was wearing a turtle costume and babbled something about crossovers and big companies verses little companies before he ran off, come on!"

Raph popped out between two Foot clan ninjas like a daisy, looking extremely affronted, sais in his hands as he awkwardly tried to force his way free.

To his credit, despite the blood bath of earlier, he wasn't stabbing anyone while they were down. Apparently that'd been fully reserved for that specific moment of being in deep deep sewer runoff.

"A turtle costume!" If he sounded pissed it was because he was pissed. And still breathing raggedly, what with all the fighting and such. "Like it's aaall fun and games!"

This guy was running around talking about comic book crossovers while we're stuck dodging ninjas and nearly drowning."

He stumbled the rest of the way out and joined Nico's side, following wherever she was running off to.

"What is that?" he said, the moment he saw the hole. The paper hole. In a brick wall. Whatever was beyond it was brightly colored, a stark contrast to the grim black and white world they were in, as if they were in one half of the Wizard of Oz movie and about to step into the other half.

Edited 2015-01-06 23:41 (UTC)

"That is..." Nico frowned at the hole, then scooped up a piece of trash out of a nearby bin and lobbed it through. The wadded up piece of paper immediately took on cleaner, crisper lines and the colors of the stains on it became less muddied and dark. "...really weird. Maybe now that we're aware of this being a weird situation, he had to tear his way through?"

Because really, they were chasing after a guy who was pretty much warping reality around them. There was no way that he wasn't responsible for this hole.

"Let's go, we don't want to lose him!"

"I've got a feeling that if we want any answers we're going to have to shake 'em out of the guy," Raph said, his voice a near growl as the two of them barreled through the hole. He snagged her sleeve as they did it, just to make sure they went through together. He didn't trust this place with its near-drownings, mind-fuckery, and paper holes in brick walls.

The moment they were on the other side, Nico would find herself in a very strange yet familiar world. They were in another New York City and not far off in the distance Stilt-Man was trying to make a getaway, bags of cash in his hands. He was being fought by Spider-Man and a rather deranged looking Deadpool, who was shimmying up one of his massive legs. Spider-Man looked as annoyed as someone could look when covered head to toe in spandex, which, surprisingly, was pretty annoyed, but hey, not surprising when Deadpool was there.

The people in the street were either filming the fight on their phones or grumbling about rush hour traffic as they tried to trot out of the way.

Everything was brightly colored with crisp outlines.

But that wasn't the thing that had caught Raph's attention.

"What am I wearing?"

The second he'd popped through the portal, his clothes had changed. Most significantly, he actually had clothes instead of his very utilitarian wraps and belt and elbow and knee pads. Instead of dressing like an actual ninja, wearing what was most suitable for fighting, he was wearing what a superhero ninja might wear.

That meant spandex. Clingy uncomfortable spandex, bright colors, and a dragon design on his front.

"I want to beat myself up for my own lunch money."

Edited 2015-01-07 01:22 (UTC)

"Ugh, I said I didn't want to go back to my New York!"

Nico glared at Spider-Man, Deadpool, and Stilt-Man as if they were to blame for this predicament before glancing around at Raph.

"...That really does look terrible."

She, meanwhile, was back in something much more familiar: A white and purple shirt modified to reveal more of the neckline of the lavender long-sleeved T-shirt she wore underneath it, a long black skirt, and stompy boots. She pressed a hand to her throat, finding a black choker with a silver cross hanging from it.

"And I haven't seen this outfit since I caved our Hostel in on the LAPD."

"I don't think this is your New York." He pointed up at a giant narration box over their heads that read 'MEANWHILE.' "A comic-booky version of your New York, maybe. Which makes sense when you're from a world of superheroes."

Raph looked around. Costume-man was nowhere to be found.

"That's it. Instead of being one step behind everything, we need to get a better view of this whole thing."

Which meant getting out of this little scenario and up to a better vantage point. That was why Raph walked over to a nearby white space next to the comic panel they were in and started kicking it as hard as he could.

Not far off, Deadpool called out helpfully, "If you want to break the fourth wall, you've gotta put a little more oomph into it!"

"Didn't ask you!" Raph shouted back, as the panel started to crack.

Edited 2015-01-07 02:05 (UTC)

"Today is just getting weirder and weirder," Nico said, looking around for the Staff of One so she could help Raph with the...fourth wall, apparently.

She hadn't left it in the pile of ninjas back in the last weird comic book, but it couldn't have already gone back into her chest, could it?

The paper hole back to the other reality had sealed over though, so after a few minutes of aggravated searching, she joined Raph in kicking the edge of the panel.

Eventually the thing finally snapped, making it so they could on out to...well. Whatever was out there.

"Woo! Well done!" called out Deadpool.

Raph rolled his eyes and then turned to Nico and held out his hand.

It was risky, what they were about to do. He wanted to make sure they stayed together.

"Ready?"

"Let's just get out of here before this universe decides it wants to keep me," Nico said, taking Raph's hand. She peered through the hole to try and get some idea of what they were about to step into.

"It doesn't look dangerous," she said with a frown. "There's some kind of wooden platform we can step onto, so we're not taking a leap of faith here. And I see light, but it doesn't really look like daylight..."

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