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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Nico Minoru set foot on an alien planet for the first time and promptly threw up all over it's beautiful alien flora.

Worm holes. She is going to punch this Abed person on general principle.

Then Raph started shouting at the guy, so she hastily wiped her mouth and hefted the Staff of One. Screw the rings, better to stick with what she knew.

Abed's blank expression was probably not what they were expecting. It didn't look evil, like he'd been doing everything maliciously. But since it was blank, it was difficult to tell whether he was surprised or scared himself.

"I saw you both before," he said slowly, as if only just coming to that realization himself, in much the same way they slowly had come back to themselves. He made a strange gesture with his finger, a flick and curl that seemed thoughtful in its nature.

"Back when I was Inspector Spacetime. And when I was Han Solo. And when I was jaeger pilot. And when I was ninja turtle. At first you looked like Blorgons, Jabba the Hutt's flunkies, the kaiju, and the Foot, but then I saw you both there for a second instead, in their place. You're both from the wrong canon - even in the Mirage comic world you were out of place." He pointed to Raph. "You're from the 2012 cartoon."

He seemed to be having trouble looking either of them in the eyes, as if it made him uncomfortable, and so his gaze was turned downward, his head cocked slightly to the side in a birdlike gesture of confusion and alarm.

"Why would this be a crossover? It's inconsistent. So far it's been genre-hopping, not a crossover. Not cool. Not cool not cool."

Raph's desire to pummel the guy was slightly less strong as he watched him...panic? Maybe? It was hard to tell when his affect was so flat. He did seem agitated.

But he wasn't reacting in a way that was...normal. At least what Raph considered normal.

Was he crazy? Or...special, like people sometimes were on TV?

"What's he talking about?" he asked Nico, hoping to take his cues from her on how he should react to this.

"I don't know what he's talking about, but he seems more confused than 'actively hostile'." Nico narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, then stepped closer to Abed with a hand out to hopefully keep him from taking off to another reality.

"Yeah, that'd be us," she agreed. "Though he's not so much from the 2012 cartoon as the 2012 cartoon is based on his life. Reality's leaky, we got pulled in because it was getting worse. I assume that's why you're here, too."

Either that or he was here to make the holes wider. But he wasn't acting particularly malicious. Or even particularly aggressive.

Abed didn't reach for her hand, although it seemed less a snub and more him ignoring - or not noticing - the social cue.

"Ah, the many-worlds theory - I've always hoped that was true." He briefly looked up at Nico, eyes wide and excited for a moment. "Although that definitely begs the question of whether or not The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis holds true and if it does, is it because all those universes were really inside his head or did he somehow act as a conductor of knowledge from other universes where they were real?"

A pause as he looked down again.

"But I'm not sure you're real. I'm not sure I'm real. Myself as Abed. What if I'm someone else who's been brainwashed to pretend I'm Abed Nadir who was brainwashed into being a Green Lantern? I didn't realize I was myself until now. What if this myself isn't my actual self? Or what if it is, but you're not real? It wouldn't be my first psychotic break, or even my first psychotic break influenced by pop culture."

Okay, he was mentioning psychotic breaks. That...wasn't good. This was looking more and more like this guy'd had his head messed with like they had. And more to the point, it seemed like he'd seen himself as the good guy and them as the villains just like they had in reverse.

"We're real," said Raph. "All of this?"

He gestured at the alien world around them.

"Not so much. I don't know if you remember it, but we don't know how we got here. All we know is we've been yanked from movie to movie or tv show to tv show and put in different roles in them. It took us a while to even remember who we were - and during all that, we saw you the same way you saw us. We were the heroes, we'd be fighting the bad guys, and all of a sudden, we saw you there for just a second in their place, sometimes dressed like us - or in a giant robot the one time we were in one."

Edited 2015-01-18 05:34 (UTC)

"...I have no idea who Tommy Westphall is, but I think it's the second one," Nico said. "That's what we were told, at least. But Raph's right -- our crossover isn't actually happening here. I mean," she pointed at the ring on her hand, "was talking about how I could 'overcome great fear' and stuff. Not really my forte. This place is messing with our heads a bit, and it's probably messing with yours, too. But we do have a safe place to hole up."

If they could get back there...

"Troy, what do you remember last?" Abed said, turning to talk to...someone that wasn't there. There was just empty air beside him.

He didn't realize that that was all there'd ever been. Because Troy had been the Constable Reggie to his Inspector, the Luke to his Han, his jaeger copilot, the Michelangelo to his Donatello...

Either he was crazy or there was someone there they couldn't see. Whatever the case, Abed clearly seemed to think that person was real.

Okay, that was creepy. Either the guy was seeing things or -

Or more likely, given all the strangeness, there was something there that he and Nico couldn't see.

"Uh, Abed, right? Abed, there's nobody there."

But Raph remembered, back when they were fighting in the jaegers, that one lone voice over the intercom.

'Troy and Abed in a jaeger.' It sounded like some silly thing two friends would say, but there'd only been the one voice.

"It's always just been you that we saw and heard. Nobody else," said Raph, looking suspiciously at the space Abed was looking at.

"I'm not seeing or hearing anyone but you and Raph either," Nico agreed. "Is that, uh, something that's happened to you before? Seeing or hearing things that other people don't?"

Well, this was going to be fun. She tentatively reached out to poke the area Abed had looked at, in case he just had an invisible-and-unhearable friend.

(She'd met vampires, werewolves, cyborgs, mutants, aliens, and a few different kinds of witches. Invisible and can't be heard wasn't too out of the realm of possibility.)

Abed squinted at the space he'd been looking at, then looked over a Nico.

"One time I thought the entire world had turned into a stop motion Christmas special. And another time I thought I'd had my body stolen by an alternate evil version of myself from the darkest timeline, which was created one time when I almost rolled a dice to see which of my friends went to the door to bring up the pizza we ordered. And another time, I blanked out and thought me and my friends were all in a sitcom. And then when Troy left, I thought the floor had turned to lava -"

He turned back to the empty space backing away slowly in the air, head tilting as he looked thoughtfully at the tree tops below.

"Troy left. To travel around the world." He looked up at the empty space. "You left."

All of a sudden, someone appeared there, a young black man about Abed's age. "And I came back. I'm right here. I've been here all along. Who are you going to believe, me or a ninja turtle?" The man paused. "To be fair, I'd believe every single thing a ninja turtle said. Like, religiously. But you should still believe me more."

"But they said they didn't see you. Why didn't they see you?" Abed asked, clearly alarmed.

"Because they're not real."

Abed turned to look at Nico and Raph, clearly trying to figure it all out.

Edited 2015-01-18 06:12 (UTC)

If Raph had a proper back to have shivers crawl up, they would have done it. As it stood, he had no back for crawling or even hair for standing up, but still, the young man that suddenly appeared made the base of his spine itch.

"He wasn't there a second ago," Raph said, pointing to the other man. "He just appeared. Right now. And he's lying. We're real. I'm kinda thinking maybe he isn't."

And was that a glint of yellow in "Troy's" eyes?

"You heard the mysteriously-appearing friend of yours," Nico said dryly, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at Raph. She didn't take her eyes off 'Troy' for a moment. "Believe the ninja turtle."

She narrowed her eyes slightly, just for a moment. "When I saw you back in the...Mirage, you called it? Mirage universe, you said something about how I was in the wrong canon. So you know who I am, right?" She hefted the Staff for a moment, before lowering it again. "You know how this works?"

Abed nodded and his eyes went somewhat wide and dramatic, as if he respected the awesome power of what they were currently talking about.

"It's the Staff of One. It's supposed to have made the dread Dormammu tremble." A pause. "When the writers remember it, anyway."

He looked back and forth between her and Troy.

"If she's not real, it shouldn't be able to do anything to either of us," he said to Troy. "But if it can, that means it is real, and it means anything it does or reveals is real."

It did what now? Nico tried not to react, but anyone addressed as 'the dread' anything was probably pretty impressive.

"Shall I give it a shot?" she asked, sliding a hand behind her back so she could dig her nails into her hand without Abed or 'Troy' seeing. "Real quick, just to prove we're real."

"You really don't need to do that when we already know that you're -" Troy started but Abed held up a hand.

"I'll allow it. I want to forgo the traditional heroes vs. heroes meet up fight brewing here and see what she and her magic staff have to say," said Abed. "Something strange is going on and I want to figure it out." He briefly raised his eyebrows. "Or I've gone even more crazy than usual, in which case I'll need all the information I can to escape this psychotic delusion and crawl my way back to reality."

Because, well, that was a very real possibility. Especially with Troy having left. He'd been coping but nobody could really say he was doing it well.

Nico flinched as her nails broke the skin, but that was what she needed here. At least her green gloves had unraveled around her hand so that she could dig in with her nails.

"Finite Incantatem."

Hey, he was a nerd, nerdy spells might reassure him, right?

It didn't make Troy flicker.

It made the entire world flicker.

For half a second, they were all in some small town somewhere on an empty street. Abed briefly remembered waking up in a strange town, people ignoring him - people walking through him. Then Nico and Raph coming towards him -surprise, delight that they were real? Was this some kind of present his friends had arranged for? If so, the animatronics were out of this world.

But it wasn't his birthday, was it?

Then a goading voice had echoed out of the shadows saying...something. Something ominous. He remembered Raphael drawing his sais, the Staff of One held out by Nico in his direction? Attacking?

No. Scared. Protective. Looking over his shoulder at something. Something -

And right now he was...floating? Floating a few feet in the air and he felt like he'd been stabbed in the chest. For just a moment, he looked down at his chest to see some kind of -

The flash ended and they were back on the alien planet.

Abed started making a high pitched, siren-like noise of distress, clearly unable to vocalize his fear and confusion and alarm in any other way.

"Now look what you did!" Troy shouted at Nico, reaching out his hands towards Abed's shoulders. "Hey, buddy, hey, it's okay. It's okay. That was a trick, okay? She's just messing with your head. She's an evil Yellow Lantern, and that means she can use fear as a weapon -"

Before he had a chance to place his hands on Abed's shoulders- two shuriken flew towards them. They were deflected by Troy's green aura, but they still knocked his hands away.

Edited 2015-01-18 07:24 (UTC)

"Get away from him, you monster!" Raph said, trusting his instincts now.

Troy was not what he seemed.

He remembered now. Most of it, anyway. He and Nico had been sent to pick up a new myth - a man named Abed Nadir. But there'd been a voice in the shadows as they found him - Benedict's. Saying...something. Some threat about how he was going to use the new myth to destroy the town. Use his imagination.

Then there'd been something crawling on the roof behind Abed, something dark and ugly, lunging -

The last thing Raph remembered was some kind of explosive force slamming him into the ground, hard - and then they'd wound up here, cycling through imaginary scenarios.

They were supposed to protect him. All along, that was what they were supposed to be doing, and whatever was behind all this, it'd tried to turn them against each other, tried to make it so Abed would fight them so they couldn't get close enough to protect him or help him break free. That's why they'd looked like villains to each other.

While some of it was still fuzzy, one thing Raph did remember clearly was that he and Nico and Abed had been in that street together.

Troy hadn't.

Edited 2015-01-18 07:32 (UTC)

She'd been -- she'd been on the ground. Just a moment ago, when the world flickered, she'd been flat on the ground. But now she was up on her feet, and--

"Get away from him!" she shouted at 'Troy'. He hadn't been there when they'd arrived to bring Abed back to the Pole, he hadn't been there when she'd made reality flicker, he wasn't actually here.

And that meant he was definitely not a friend.

She took a swing at the illusion guy with the Staff, trying to make him back away from Abed.

Troy loomed, the colors of his outfit changing from green to yellow, as he turned into a much taller, more menacing figure - a Yellow Lantern. He held out his hand with his power ring and blasted Nico and Raph back, so hard they went crashing into the boughs of a nearby tree. Then he trapped them there with his ring, vines of yellow light pinning them to the branches.

His ring was strong. Far too strong to be easily broken by their green rings - or even Nico's spells. Clearly, this illusion had far more power here than they did.

"Don't listen to them, Abed. They're trying to make you see what they see, they're trying to control you. And you hate that, don't you? Nobody gets to control you. Nobody's ever managed to."

Abed stopped his squealing noise and recoiled from his friend, shaking his head furiously.

"My subconscious was trying to warn me," Abed said. "That's why you were invisible to them. As much as I want you here, a part of me knew you couldn't be. You left. You went to travel around the world. If this is real, you wouldn't have been there to get dragged into it with me and if this is all in my head, none of this is real and you're still not here."

"It can be as real as we want it to be, Abed," Troy went on. "It's just us now. We can stay like this, going wherever our imaginations take us. Forever. And it'll be more real than the Dreamatorium ever was."

"What about our friends?" Abed asked anxiously.

"What about them?" asked Troy. "We can make them here, just like we can simulate everyone else. That's how you treat them anyway, isn't it? Like they're simulations. It's too hard to figure out how to be friends with them when they're not doing what you want."

Around them appeared a group of people, floating around them in a circle. A tall man texting. A somewhat overweight black woman rifling through her purse. A young brunette woman organizing her binder. An older blonde woman wearing sunglasses and rubbing at her temples, clearly suffering from a hangover. An old man fumbling and nearly tripping over his own feet.

"What about Rachel?" Abed asked, and Troy waved his hand, and a young woman appeared next to Abed, a blonde woman with glasses and a crooked smile.

"Rachel. Rachels. You can have as many Rachels as you want. Princess Leia in a metal bikini Rachel." The woman's outfit was suddenly Princess Leia's metal bikini. "Green, dancing, hot alien babe from the original Star Trek Rachel."

Now the woman was a green Orion from Star Trek.

Abed glanced sideways at her and then stared at Troy accusingly.

"But it wouldn't be the real Rachel. If she can be anything, then she's not the one from our universe."

"It's better if she's not real, Abed. You already know what's going to happen, don't you? The real Rachel will get sick of you. It'll happen eventually - you know you can't stop it. She'll get tired of all the bits and the quirks and the things you do for attention."

"No," Abed said, shaking his head. "No, Rachel said I could stop worrying. She said as long as I didn't keep secrets or manipulate her that we'd be okay. She said I wasn't screwing things up."

"She was lying," said Troy, looming, his voice getting deeper and more menacing. "Do you really think that you'll have what you want out there? It'll happen the same as it always has, Abed, eventually everyone will get sick of you, and you'll go right back into that locker like before, where everyone can forget you. I mean, look at you, you can't even take care of yourself! You don't know how to file taxes, you have trouble tying your shoes, you can't even read analog clocks, and you were arrested by campus security for trying to duct tape someone's mouth shut for saying M. Night Shyamalan is a good director! Out there, by yourself, without me to help you? You'll be nothing! Because -"

"Because I don’t get married," Abed said, interrupting him, sounding as if he was referencing something, perhaps repeating something he told someone else. He was almost rocking slightly in the air, head weaving back and forth slightly. His eyes were somewhat glassy, though what he was truly feeling was impossible for Nico and raph to tell, whether it was what he saw as the truth hurting, or hearing something terrible use the voice of someone he missed to insult him. "I don’t invent a billion dollar website that helps people have sex. I don’t make it into Sundance, Slam Dance, or Dance Pants." He added, "Troy will invents Dance Pants in 2019. Don’t tell him; he needs to stumble onto it."

"...But I'm Troy."

Abed held up his fist and green light poured out of his Green Lantern ring in a wave, slamming "Troy" into a tree - freeing Nico and Raph.

"No, you're not," said Abed, his voice filled with absolute surety.

"You heard the guy," said Raph, finally taking to the air again, free from his yellow, viney prison. "Whatever you are, he's not buying it - and we're not letting you mess with him anymore."

Nico, less gracefully, hit the ground; but gamely staggered back up to her feet. A tendril of green light reached out and picked up the Staff of One for her, from where it had been thrown when the fake had tossed her up in the tree.

"It's time for you to get out of here," she snarled. "Whatever your boss was planning is toast."

The fake Troy pulled itself up again and now its evilness was clear. Its mouth had split far too wide and it had far too many sharp teeth.

Abed's eyes narrowed as he recognized what fake Troy was supposed to be.

Parallax.

That meant that he had to overcome fear.

It was much easier to do than it might have been in the past, before he met his friends, before they made it clear they'd stick by him.

"You made a rookie doppleganger mistake. Troy would never talk to me that way. One time he even got angry and gave up a date with a really hot girl at the Valentine's Dance because she said I was weird," said Abed calmly, floating closer to the fake Troy. "The only time he's ever said anything like that was after I was a bad friend and made him cry first over a pillow and blanket fort feud. Then we hit each other with pillows for a few hours and made up."

Abed held out his hand and a green construct grew and took shape - a construct of Troy. The real Troy. All decked out as a Green Lantern like the fake Troy had tried to be.

"Hey, dick! it cried out in Troy's voice. "So I heard you were trying to talk shit about my boy here." It flew towards the fake Troy and punched him in the face. "FYI fake me, the only reason I felt like it was okay to leave on my trip was because I knew Abed would figure it all out and be okay. I knew he'd know how to get help from our other friends like Annie when he needs to and that he can handle plenty of stuff without help. Abed is fine just the way he is and he doesn't need some imaginary world for everything to work out okay. He has friends - no, a family - and maybe that's not as perfect as all the stuff me and him always imagined together in the Dreamatorium but it doesn't need to be. And even the imperfect stuff - like me being gone? That'll change. Because life always works out that way, things change and it's not always bad."

"You're even less real than I am, just a shallow illusion created by a weak mind and -"

The fake Troy couldn't even finish a sentence before the Good Troy punched it in the face again. "I'm more real than you could ever be, because even though I'm part of Abed's brain, I'm saying everything the real Troy would say if he was here." He added, "Here, I'll prove it: My name is Troy Barnes, I like butt stuff, desserts in giant form, and when people give thumbs ups in a cool way."

The construct of Troy came in close to Abed and they did their special best friend handshake, before Troy turned back to the fake, which was still reeling.

"Now me and this magical goth chick and a ninja turtle are going to look really cool and kick your ass, possibly even at the same time."

And the construct dove in to do just that.

Edited 2015-01-18 09:09 (UTC)

"What do you mean 'possibly'?" Raph said with a wicked grin, diving in to blast at the fake with his ring. He started using the ring to toss green constructs of shurikens into the fake, that exploded after impact.

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