lucetilogs | (no subject)

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Who: [Bad username or site: gaijin-ninja title=Raphael @ livejournal.com], [Bad username or site: thesevencodes title=Leonardo @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: nexuschamp title=Michelangelo @ livejournal.com]
What: Raph and Mike (and Leo) at the barrier.
When: Right after this thread over yonder.
Where: The south woods and barrier and such.
Summary: Raphael is a rebel without a cause, so he makes one. Mike has a crappy persuasive argument because he is way too whiny. Leo ninjas right into Luceti unnoticed because that is how he rolls.
Rating: Uh probably up to PG-13 because of Raph's mouth.

Mike was just not cut out for this "leadership" stuff; that was painfully clear now, as he chased his probably-freezing-to-death older brother through the snow-dusted woods to God knows where that stupid barrier started. What did it even look like? A wall, a fence? They didn't know what they were looking for, didn't know what they'd do when they got there and didn't even know where it was but hell if that would stop the great wise Raphiki of Too-Much-Pride Rock, who knew everything.

Dammit, Raph. Michelangelo was cold and hungry and worried, because they were here and Raph wouldn't listen to him if he looked like Splinter. Don wasn't here to look after them if they got sick, Leo wasn't here to make a Grand Plan and Splinter wasn't here to keep Raphael in line; Mike was up the proverbial creek without a battle and with a hole in his canoe.

And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it besides chase after his big brother and hope that he was right about that blood-pumping thing keeping them from falling asleep. Otherwise they were so screwed.

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Raph's been dead on his feet for the last... well, he can't remember. He's barely aware as he clambers drunkenly through the open window and into the strange apartment. It's cozy and warm, which only makes him realize how cold his body's gotten compared to the room-temperature air.

All his previous worries about getting spotted venturing into "enemy territory" had been left behind with his brain function and awareness. When he stumbles into the living room, it's dark and there's a couch, so he wastes no time collapsing on it in a miserable, shivering heap without a word of protest.

Before he even realizes it, he's dead to the world, finally giving into sleep.

Cold. Freezing. His skin is slicked with a stinging wetness that only grows more numb by the minute. By the time they reach the window and Raph climbs inside, Leo is having a hard time finding enough coordination to follow him.

Dimly, he realizes that his fingers have been frozen around the book this entire time. It doesn't mean anything to him, but he doesn't even think to drop it; he only grasps it tighter and moves with stiff limbs.

As soon as they get inside, a slight warmth begins to charge the air. Leonardo sees Raph stumble into a couch face-first and lie still, and moves to check on him to make sure he's all right.

That's when he notices the wings.

Stretching right out of Raph's shell, a deep scarlet in the relative darkness. Wings. He blinks and wonders if this is some hallucination, and touches them. Feather-soft. Real.

"Mike," He breathes. "Raph has wings."

Dimly, watching his brothers move the way they are, Mike is coming to the realization that he's going to be the one to look after them and start warming this place up so they don't all end up sleeping for days. The prospect isn't a pleasing one, and for a moment he wonders how much harm it would do to just find a soft surface to collapse on and let fate do whatever it wants to them, but he also doesn't really like the idea of being happened upon by some freak hunter or scientist and torn to pieces without even waking up. They could just kick the door down and none of them would even twitch...walk right over and drag them out, freeze them, slice them open like Bishop had tr-

Mike gives his head a firm shake. Even half-frozen, his brain could still do this to him. It sucks. So he reluctantly drags himself over to the door, locks it and deadbolts it before shoving a chair beneath the knob for good measure. The window they just used also gets locked, the curtains drawn, and he stumbles into the kitchen to turn on the oven. Hopefully some of the heat would waft into the living room after some time, if he leaves the door open...

What else? ...blankets. Yeah. There were some in the bedroom and hall closet the last time he checked. With arms and legs that feel like lead -cold lead- Michelangelo gathers armloads of blankets and shuffles back into the living room. He hands one to Leonardo before flapping the other out and attempting to tuck it around Raphael with numb fingers, only really succeeding halfway. With any luck, Raph will wake up and finish the job himself. He's just too tired, now.

Leo's observation brings him back out of that hazy half-awareness he'd slipped into though, and he gives his head another shake. "We all got 'em, Leo. You too; look." He circles around his brother to give his wings a gentle tug when something catches his eye.

It doesn't sink in right away; it has to fight through the cold and the dreams first, but thankfully the point is sharp enough to drive itself home. A huge, ugly scar, a piece of Leonardo's carapace ripped clear off as if someone had dug a claw into his shell and just pried. The shock of it takes even longer to settle in, but once it does Mike chokes a startled cry in his throat and puts both hands on his brother's shell, checking for further injury. "Wh-what happened- Leo, your shell...!"

Raph's content to be stewing in the far reaches of peaceful oblivion. The bone-deep ache of inescapable cold still gnaws at the back of his brain, but the exhaustion is overriding it for now.

Then he feels an odd sensation stemming from a limb that doesn't even register in his memory's code of self-awareness.

Raph grunts and tenses even after the touch is gone, but is still trying desperately to hold on to oblivion. Apparently it lives somewhere in the deeper recesses of the couch.

His mind goes fuzzy again, and he sighs under the blanket that's somehow materialized on top of him, but he's not complaining.

That only lasts about a second until he hears Mike shrieking about Leo's shell. It sends off all sorts of alarms in his head, and he sits up automatically, ignoring how crappy he feels.

He watches Leo for a second, just making sure he's still in one piece. But when he sees nothing out of the ordinary, he only gives a quiet cough and sniffles, gathering the blanket around him tighter.

"What's your problem now?" He asks irritably.

The blankets are shoved into Leo's hand, jumpstarting his mind enough to let go of the book. It clatters to the floor without ceremony, but at the moment he just doesn't care. His eyes are quietly tracking Michelangelo's movements; more specifically, the small, orange wings sprouting impossibly from the youngest's shell.

Leonardo's mouth draws into a tight line. Of all the dimensions and worlds they've been pulled into, he can't ever remember them gaining an extra appendage of any sort. He opens his mouth to ask another question when Mikey circles around him.

Suddenly his little brother raises some kind of alarm, and he feels a set of hands thrust onto his carapace. The sudden bump knocks the fog right out of his mind. He turns sharply towards Mike, a palm reaching up and over his shoulder to try and locate the source of all the panic. He finds nothing but the rough groove of his ugly scar - but that's certainly nothing out of the ordinary for Leo.

"What? What's wrong?"

Edited 2010-01-10 04:06 (UTC)

Mike stares at his brothers as if they'd grown second heads. Raphael has to be able to see the scar from the position he's in, but he's either too tired to notice or- no, nobody could be tired enough to miss that. It looked like someone had tried to cut Leo's arm off.

Panic is rising and the adrenaline rush it provides is chasing away the fog of sleep, and he runs his fingers along the scar. It looks horrible. He jerks his hands away quickly when Leo reaches back though, thinking he'd hurt him; but no, he was just searching for it himself. So it didn't hurt, that meant it was either all shell (unlikely, since it was so deep) or it had healed up enough already that it didn't bother him. Which was impossible.

"What's wrong?! This! This big- thing, what happened?!" Michelangelo knows he'd remember if someone did this to his brother, but wracking his recollections doesn't bring any new information to light. No, this didn't happen on his watch.

Well, Mike's finally cracked. Raph stares at him oddly from his spot on the couch, watching him run his hands over Leo's battle scar like it was still a bleeding mess.

The fact that he seems to have forgotten the biggest battle of their life is even more concerning.

It makes Raph suddenly realize he might not be the only one suffering here. Maybe the cold was finally getting to him, or the landing scrambled Mike's brains on the way down.

Either way it's worrying, 'cause Mike never had much brains to begin with. Still, he can hope it's all just some kind of sick joke.

"You're kidding, right?"

Leo isn't liking the implications here. They all know very well where his scar came from: the same battle that saw Shredder banished from Earth and Leo alienating himself from his family for months. The whole area was pretty tender for a while; kept Leo from doing anything with his left arm for a long time.

Mikey doesn't remember any of it? Leo furrows his eye ridges, wondering if his brother was affected by the cold enough for such an important memory to go flying out the window. He swallows dryly and removes his hand from his shell, placing it softly on the youngest's shoulder.

"Mikey, I've had this scar for almost a year," he begins slowly. God he hopes that this is some kind of sick joke, or that Michelangelo's memories will catch up to him once they warm up. "Remember the battle on Shredder's starship?"

There's...really no way he could have actually forgotten that. Mike's a forgetful turtle sometimes, yeah, but a fight where they almost died? Where Shredder was ejected from their lives like old garbage? Impossible.

The way both Raphael and Leonardo are looking at him is making Michelangelo feel very anxious and on the spot. His stomach tightens into a hard, heavy knot, and he swallows past the lump in his throat. In a nervous gesture he draws his bandanna tails over his shoulder, wringing them as his eyes dart between Raphael and Leonardo.

No, he doesn't. He doesn't remember a thing.

"N...no. The last thing I remember is rescuing Angel's brother from that nasty monster thing. And- and we all went home and-" He cuts himself off when panic yet again threaten to make him start babbling like an idiot. When he speaks again his voice is very small, "Did...did something happen?"

Edited 2010-01-10 05:57 (UTC)

"Mike..."

He doesn't even know where to begin. The heaviness in the air sits in the pit of his stomach like a weight and brings a remembered ache to his ribs. He hopes, prays Mikey's lying. But the expression on his face says he's telling nothing but the truth.

Raph swallows hard, shrugging the blanket off and stands, looking gravely into his brother's eyes. "You don't just forget somethin' like that."

Edited 2010-01-10 06:23 (UTC)

Angel's brother...? Leonardo clenches his teeth; this is all wrong. A huge chunk of their lives is just missing from his little brother's memories. He lets go of Mikey's shoulder to run a hand over the top of his head, trying to think.

If Mikey really doesn't remember anything since that mansion...he wouldn't know that the Shredder was gone. He wouldn't know about how sick Don had gotten, and why finding him is so important to Leo and Raph.

He takes a deep breath, the surges of adrenaline melting away. There's...a lot of filling in to do, present matters and past, but he doesn't think he has the energy today. "Okay. Let's get some sleep first, guys. Later we can go over everything we know, and...what we don't."

There has to be a reasonable explanation. Leonardo just can't think of one; not right now.

Edited 2010-01-10 06:48 (UTC)

Sleep. "Like I can sleep now," Mike mumbles, even though he can feel the cold pulling at the corners of his mind again. He's worried to hell and back; about Leonardo, about Don, and now about himself. He doesn't want to sleep, but...

Well. At the same time he does.

Reluctantly he reaches for a blanket. Moving over to the love seat he pushes it a bit closer to the couch Raphael had claimed; there were perfectly good beds in the next room, but in light of their recent conversation Michelangelo was suddenly unwilling to leave their immediate presence. So instead he wedged himself onto the love seat as best as he could, curling up, drawing his knees into his chest and wrapping the blanket around himself and feeling much, much more inclined to rest now that he was laying down.

He would just rest his eyes for a bit, and then they could straighten this out. Everything would be all right. It'd be fine.

Edited 2010-01-10 17:51 (UTC)

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