[voice; action]

[seriouslytwisted]

[voice]

[Exploring and ninja-ing around is turning up a whole lot of dead ends and questions with no answers, so now Raphael is going to try his last resort.

Conversing with strangers.

Making sure he has his voice only function on (pretending that little SNAFU with it in his earlier conversation didn't happen) he reluctantly addresses his fellow...strand-ees.]


Okay, seriously. How many of you people actually buy that "you are in the in-between" story?

[the mystic new-age voice for the quote helps set the atmosphere, yes it is necessary]

---

[action]

[Before this post, Raphael will be swimming around in the Water Sector, trying to keep as hidden as possible but needing to surface to breathe and also sneak back up onto the docks occasionally when he can't cross sections in water. He's a stealthy little bugger, so the average Joe might miss him, but anybody with serious training or extra-sharp senses might find him.

...or you might catch him when he's losing his temper and angrily kicking over a barrel after talking to yet another tree-hugging native yokel, whatever.]

Comments

[seriouslytwisted]

[...yeah okay, truce accepted.]

A giant turtle. Right.

Does he uh...dock anywhere or anything? So he can rest?

[backwordscompatible]

[Funny you should ask that...]

We did, once. It was the most depressing thing I'd ever seen; the mainland was pretty much deserted. Buildings torn. Almost no signs of life at all.

I have no idea if we'll ever be going back or not, but trust me when I say you didn't miss much.

[seriouslytwisted]

Okay, so, what country was it? I'll even take just the continent.

[backwordscompatible]

[Shrug]

Don't know. Everyone just kept calling it the Mainland.

Safe to say, though, if it did have a name, it wouldn't be anything we'd recognize from back home.

[seriouslytwisted]

[oh we're back to this crazy talk again]

Uh huh. And why's that?

[backwordscompatible]

...because it's the main land out there?

[Haha?]

[seriouslytwisted]

No, I mean why wouldn't I recognize the name. Unless it's like some...stupid tiny country on the edge of Africa or Europe or the Middle East or something.

[backwordscompatible]

Well, let me ask you this: where are you from?

[seriouslytwisted]

New York.

[backwordscompatible]

[The familiarity of the answer provided a momentary distraction; her eyebrows raise with the sudden piqued interest.]

Really? What part?

[seriouslytwisted]

[how much to answer here...]

Not a part you'd know, trust me.

[backwordscompatible]

Maybe, maybe not.

I'm from Manhattan, actually, and my dad and I've traveled all over the boroughs.

[seriouslytwisted]

Yeah, I'm like a hundred percent sure you don't know the part I'm from.

So what was the point of asking? Thinking about stalking me?

[backwordscompatible]

Only if I get bored.

[Though she's deliberately rolling her eyes as she says this, evidence that she was being sarcastic.]

No, actually, my point was going to be that if you're from New York, and we're in a place that's obviously Asian-influenced and definitely not Chinatown, then you probably wouldn't recognize any of the names anyway.

Besides, how many floating turtles did you know in New York?

[seriouslytwisted]

Look, I know where Africa is and stuff, I'm not an idiot. If we're on a giant turtle swimming around, we're probably in one of the two really big oceans. Which means if I know where, I can figure out how to get back to New York. Obviously.

[backwordscompatible]

[A sigh. She'd been trying to go the logical route until now, but since that wasn't working, might as well drop the pretenses.]

You still don't get it, do you?

We're on a giant turtle. In a land really, really far away that nobody in the entire City recognizes. With different lands and different constellations and everything.

...we're most likely not even on Earth anymore.

[seriouslytwisted]

[And Raph is about to scoff at that when he remembers what Mr. O'Neil said about the Krang coming from another dimension.]

...that's not true. I'd remember if I left freakin' Earth.

[backwordscompatible]

What do you remember?

[99% chance it was the same thing everybody else remembered. Which was waking up being pulled from the water, or on the back of some cart.]

[seriouslytwisted]

I was fighting this...guy with my brother, and I got smacked into a wall and everything got fuzzy. Then I was getting dragged out of the water.

[There's no way he's in a different dimension. How the hell does he get home from that?]

[backwordscompatible]

And the part where things got fuzzy and you blacked out couldn't explain the missing memory?

[seriouslytwisted]

No, because-

[Because he doesn't WANT that to be true.]

-because that's not the kind of thing you sleep through. Besides, I've gotten hit harder than that and woke up like two seconds later.

[backwordscompatible]

What if "two seconds later" was when you were being pulled out of the water?

Magic can work instantaneously sometimes.

[And she finally used the M word. Waiting to see how he would react; if he couldn't understand the idea of alternate worlds, she had a strong sense that he would flip over the thought of her anti-science.]

[seriouslytwisted]

[AT LAST something he can use to hide his fear and worry]

Oh yeah, of course, magic. Why didn't I think of that? Magic.

[backwordscompatible]

[Nope. The sarcasm doesn't even phase her. She was expecting denial, and really, this was about as good an opening as any.]

[Smiling to herself, she pushed back in her chair a little so that he could get a better view of her full form. Not even getting up as she called out a spell--]

EMIT ROF A EGNAHC!

[--that engulfed her in a sudden gust of wind, leaving behind a decidedly different outfit all of two seconds later.]

See what I mean?

1/2

[seriouslytwisted]

[What the fuck is that like German or some shit-]