[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

[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."

[othersdestructive]

With nowhere else to go, his hands settled lightly on her waist. It took Raph a moment to even realize they'd made their way there.

"Yeah," he said, without really saying anything. His eyes were now fixed on her lips, and he found himself wondering how difficult it would be to get that dark reddish purple color off his face if it got smeared on like before.

Kiss her, said the pro-macking voice.

How many scenarios had they gone through? And every time they'd settled into...into something. The same track. And it wasn't Abed's imagination that had caused it if his distress over the Inspector and his constables and their long tradition of not having romantic tension had been any indication.

But had that just been his imagination influencing it by itself or had hers had a hand in it?

All he knew was that he was filled with an overwhelming desire to give her all of himself. All of the feeling he kept stuffed away, that he pretended he didn't have, that came out during late night talks sprawled on various floors and beds around the Pole. Always at 2 am, always when everyone else was asleep so the little things they whispered in each other's ears wasn't overheard - and still they whispered them anyway. They crept up in each other's space, breathing the same air, eating up each other's words and feeding each other a steady diet of understanding.

He wanted her in a way that wasn't about his wants. Oh, he wanted her to want him back, but more than anything, he wanted to make her feel good. She deserved so much to feel good, especially after all the terrible things other people had made her feel.

But the riddle was this: What if that kind of attention was something she didn't want from him? He didn't want to make her uncomfortable with yet another person pressing her into closeness she didn't want. She deserved to have all of the care and affection that she wanted and if that was just from a friend, he wanted her to have it. Just that. Just exactly what she wanted. No more, no less.

But he wanted her to want more instead of less so badly because then there was that much more he could give. A whole new avenue, a different track. He wanted to give her everything he could and even if it wouldn't replace the things that had been taken away from her, maybe she could still be wrapped in the sliding silk of something different and still wonderful in their place.

Wrapped up safe. Cherished. Wanted for who and what she was. Not something to consume, to leech dry. They'd both done that, Alex and the vampire. Sucked out all the affection and understanding and given nothing back. Her parents had sucked away her trust.

And still she wasn't empty. She had a whole universe inside her, one that'd intersected with his long enough for him to see how infinite it was.

Kiss her.

This time he listened, his reaction instant, his body moving before he could stop it, leaning up and in for the obvious. To her, at least, it would be obvious. To him it was the same kind of reaction he had to a blow during practice. Unconscious, fluid, instant. Solid and real.

Then his brain caught up with his body (and the other sneakier part of his brain) and put the brakes on.

ABORT! ABORT! You'll ruin everything.

He quickly veered away, withdrawing his hands from her waist, expertly ducking out of her arms.

"Yeah. So. I've only got a few scrapes. So I'm good. And you're good. I'm gonna go - Mikey - video games - something -" That was totally incoherent.

BAIL. JUST BAIL.

"...Bye!"

And with that, he moved towards the door in a way that looked like he was trying very hard not to run.

[staff_and_wielder]

Huh? What?

Nico stumbled half a step forward, as if to fill the vacuum left by the speed of Raph's fleeing the room.

He'd been about to kiss her. She wasn't exactly familiar with the move-to-kiss from this particular angle, but she was sure he'd been about to kiss her. So what the hell did that mean? Why had he changed his mind?

Bewildered, Nico cupped her hand over her mouth and nose for a breath check. No, it wasn't that, her breath smelled okay. So, what had just happened? He'd have mentioned some sort of ninja vow of chastity or something, wouldn't he? No, he definitely would have mentioned a vow of chastity when he was talking about his brother Donnie and his crush.

She shook her head and gathered up the Staff of One, heading for the door. Maybe she shouldn't press this. She already knew it was a bad idea to begin with. They could just...not talk about it and pretend it never happened, right?

[othersdestructive]

Raph didn't go to Mikey because that was a bald faced lie.

No, he bolted for his room as soon as he was out of sight of Nico, slamming the door shut and locking it. Then he started banging his head against the door for several minutes.

"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Good going, Raph!" he said to himself. "Way to keep things cool and not be a creep!"

He'd just pulled a Donnie. Crossing boundaries when he didn't even know if she liked it. Now what was he going to do? What if he'd already made her uncomfortable?

And what had he done to himself by almost kissing her? He couldn't ignore it now, pretend it wasn't real, that he wasn't feeling it. By going in for a kiss like that, he'd made it real. It was real and now it wasn't going away.

Frustrated with himself, he let out a "ragh!" noise and kicked over his stand of cymbals, so that they tumbled with a cacophonous crash to the floor.

He'd needed to not think about it, to keep it buried so deep even he couldn't find it, but it was there now. He couldn't ignore it anymore. He had feelings for her, all kinds of feelings he didn't know how to deal with. And now he couldn't pretend they weren't there. Now they were just going to chew up his insides where he couldn't do anything about them.

Because she was never going to like him like that. It wasn't even that there was anything wrong with him. He was good looking for a mutant but there was no way a girl like her would want to date a green guy that'd crawled out of a sewer. No way.

Heck, she probably wouldn't want to date even a lot of normal human guys after everything she'd been through. And after everything she'd been through, he'd made a move on her when she probably was sick of guys doing it.

He'd messed up. Messed everything up.

He hated having feelings.

Throwing himself face first on his bed, he bit into his pillow and screamed for a solid minute before going silent, wishing more than ever that his father was still alive, that he was there for him to talk to. His father wouldn't have had all the answers - he'd never had them all - but he would have at least been able to help him get on the right track to figure them out for himself.

When he finally stopped screaming, he sat there with his face pressed in his pillow, half-heartedly (and dramatically) hoping he'd suffocate himself to death. Then he rolled over sideways and pulled the pillow over his head to hide his heartsick grimace away from the world, as if that would somehow make it not really exist.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico poked her head out of the kitchen, but Raph was no where to be found. Against her better judgment, she heaved a sigh of disappointment and ducked back in to retrieve a handful of Christmas cookies. Then she grabbed a plate and heaped more cookies on for Raph and Mikey.

See, no hard feelings. Nothing had changed.

Balancing the Staff of One and the cookie plate, she maneuvered her way out the door and into the hallway.

[bestnamer]

She ran pretty quickly into Mikey, who was fresh out of a shift in the Wrapping Department, judging by the amount of tape and ribbons stuck to his shell.

"Heeey, Nico!" He brightened up (not that he'd not been bright before) at the sight of her (and the cookies). "How'd the mission go? Are those for sharing? Am I igonna get smacked if I take one? I'm gonna take one."

[staff_and_wielder]

"Mission went fine, Bunny's talking to the new guy," Nico said, holding the plate out to him. "Go ahead, I was going to bring them to you and Raph anyway. He said you were going to play video games or something."

Or he'd jabbered something mostly incoherent before running off because she was invading his space and he'd wigged. Whichever.

[bestnamer]

"He did?" Mikey asked, words muffled by his mouthful of cookies. "Oh, that's totally weird, because we're not. Playing video games. Yet, anyway. Maybe I should go wait for him by the video games? He's in his room right now."

He waited patiently for Nico's relocation advice.

[staff_and_wielder]

"He's in his room?" Nico repeated, brows furrowing. That didn't really make sense. Why had he gone to his room? "Did he not see you when you saw him?"

[bestnamer]

"Haha, yeah, he did," said Mikey. "So it's weird that he didn't tell me we were gonna play games, right? Are you coming too?" Mikey's demeanor turned abruptly serious. "Don't let him trick you onto Rainbow Road."

[staff_and_wielder]

That didn't... Nico frowned in thought, gazing over Mikey's head into middle distance. Okay, so, he'd been about to kiss her, and then he'd disappeared to go see Mikey, but he'd ignored Mikey in the hall...

Huh. Hmm...

She thrust the plate of cookies into his hands. "Thanks for the invite, but I was in the middle of a sewing project when we went out, and I'd like to get back to it."

She needed a little time on her own to think -- and she certainly had things to think about.

Like whether Raph would completely lose his mind if she showed up in something backless.

"You're the best, Mikey!" she called back over her shoulder, heading toward her room with a spring in her step.

[morethanmyth]

Back in the dark palace around Kuk's door a young man watched a window hanging in the air. At the moment all he saw was a pillow and a bed and a green hand but before that he'd seen...so much more.

Santa's workshop. A familiar face.

"Is it working?" asked one of the others, one of the ones he'd been told he'd be working with. Benedict was his name.

The young man recognized him. The movie Benedict was from had been terrible but he recognized him. He recognized most of them, on his side and on the other side. He knew that'd give him a tactical advantage in every respect and he could always read or watch the canons he wasn't familiar with.

"The link is holding," said the young man watching the window. "Even though the Pole is warded we can see everything that he sees."

"How long will it last?"

"As long as he doesn't find the spike in his shell." The young man grinned a wicked grin. "Considering the magic I put into making it, that'll be a long time. As long as he's there when they're planning things, we'll be able to anticipate their every move. They won't even see it coming."

Just like the turtle wouldn't see it coming when the young man used the ability to see through his eyes to hurt him.

For trying to take something that wasn't his.