tushanshu | 001; Audio - The one where Mike tries to make sense of this.

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001; Audio - The one where Mike tries to make sense of this.

[Mike knows the rules, and he knows them by heart: When you're in a new place, and you aren't sure of your surroundings, you stay hidden to stay safe. Someone will come and find you. So when the kedan deliver him to his suite, Michaelangelo stays there.

It's only after he's lowered all the shades, explored the suite from top to bottom, and booby-trapped the front door with common household items, that Mike turns his attention to the communication console. Mike's access and familiarity with all things computer has been limited at best, with the bulk of his exposure coming in the form of play-testing what ever new video game Donatello had been coding. So it comes as more than a little bit of a shock to him that the console is as easy for him to work as the skim-milk blue guy with a similar number of fingers on his hands said it would be.

It doesn't matter that he's not home, or that the people who found him aren't quite human, or even that anyone who saw him on this vidscreen thing could easily just assume he was some sort of special effect added in post production.]

Um...hello? I.
I'm just looking for my brothers. There was a light from some sort of machine. They started to disappear without me. I just. I just want to find them.

Leo? Donnie? Raph? Please tell me you're out there. Please?

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Raph watches Donnie skulk away and glares at his shell. He folds his arms tight and gives Michelangelo a vaguely suspicious look. "I dunno what happened to you before you showed up-"

( hopefully this one didn't crack his head open on a wall because of Raphael's incompetence )

Raph falters slightly. "...but like I said, we're not the brothers you know."

"What good would trapping only one floor be?" he asks of Donnie as the other turtle moves out of earshot.

And its true, the other areas of the suite are...well, they're armed to the teeth in such a way that would make Rube Goldberg proud and Kevin McAllister envious.

Mike's been busy.

Blankets have been unraveled for string, doors have been loosened from their hinges, and heavy objects are teetering to drop from above. It'd be clear to any ninja that the traps are meant to severely injure, make as much noise as possible, and funnel anyone stupid enough to trip them down to the area where the console lives.

He then turns his attention back to Raph.

"Close enough..." he says in his own voice, before dropping it a register and finishing the sentiment in a pitch perfect impersonation of his Raph, "For horseshoes an' hand-grenades."

Mike looks at Raph. Really looks at him, and can't help but start mentally ticking off all the things that are...not wrong, but different.

"This is kind of messed up, isn't it."

Which is exactly why Don is getting out of there, to get his thoughts in order, and leaving Raph to deal with everything.

He'll take awhile, what with having to pick around Mikey's maze of severe injury and death, growing increasingly disturbed, and actually doing what he said he was going to.

Seriously, Mikey what the heck is with these traps!?

Edited 2013-03-08 22:13 (UTC)

Don't worry Mikey, Raph is doing exactly the same thing. No freckles, he's taller, his musculature is different. His eyes aren't blue. He's not even wearing his mask, for crying out loud. This is without a doubt not the same Mikey Raphael knows.

He seems a little more, uh, together, too. Especially since he booby-trapped his entire apartment in a way that makes even Raphael balk. A little bit. "You're telling me."

Raph heads over to Mikey's desk chair and kicks it to spin it around before hopping up to perch. "That Donnie's my Donnie, but there's two other guys here. Another me who's a certified nutjob, and another Leo who acts like he's forty years old. Either of those sound familiar?"

Mike pads along behind Raph, leaning up against the nearest wall when there's no longer a chair to plop into.

"Yeah, but then again...so do the two of you. Except, you know for the whole..." The word fetus hangs heavy in the air.

On the desk, near where Raph is perched, is a red bandanna-style mask. Mike doesn't make a habit of wearing his unless he has need of eyebrows.

Don't you call him a fetus again, DON'T YOU DO IT.

Raph rocks the chair side to side, growling a little beneath his breath because he is sick and tired of all this alternate version bullshit and he just would like his family please, his real family.

"Yeah, well you don't look a thing like Mikey," Raph mutters, just to be a contrary jerk. There's similarities though, loads of them. Like how Mike can irritate the shit out of Raphael like nothing else. And okay, so he's got the same doofy grin. Well, sometimes; when Mikey told them about the booby traps his grin looked a little...

-oh hey, what's that? Raph grabs the bandanna on Mikey's desk. He holds it up to the window so the light can filter in and yeah, that's definitely red. He gives Mikey another suspicious look. "This isn't yours, is it?"

Oh he won't, don't worry.
At least not until he needs to shake Raph up in order to throw him at someone else.

...

What? That's totally a valid battle strategy.

"You don't sound a thing like Raph. Plus, there's too much skin on your knuckles." Knuckle-dragger is a term of endearment.

Mike then cranes his neck to get a better look at what the other turtle is holding.

"Yeah. Why?"

Excuse you, he sounds exactly like Raphael, because he's Raphael! So shut up!

"Because it's red. Mikey doesn't wear red." He wears orange because orange is the most obnoxious color and Mikey is the most obnoxious turtle.

Aah, here we are. Far more familiar ground.

"Yes, he does," says Mike, as his lop-sided grin makes an encore performance.

Edited 2013-03-08 22:34 (UTC)

"Uh, no, he doesn't." Raph throws the mask back down on the desk and slips off the chair. "I wear red. Red's my color."

"Your color? Dude, you can't own a color."

Don't think he doesn't see you moving there, Raph. Because he does.

"We all wear red. Splinter cut our bandannas from the same kimono."

"No, Sensei let us pick our own colors." Raph throws his shoulders back and gets all aggressive in Mikey's personal space. "Red's my color. You're gonna have to get an orange mask while you're here."

Mike stays exactly as he was, knowing full well that not engaging angers Raph more than just about anything else.

"I'm sorry, I only take orders from family. And as you've made it perfectly clear: I'm not really your brother."

NO

"Oh yeah? What about people who beat you to death, you listen to them?" Raph is totally going to jump Mikey in about two seconds. He needs some stress relief so bad, and beating up on Mike and putting him into a headlock usually does it. This Mikey will just have to do.

Mike waits until those two seconds become 1.99 before he acts, and when he does...it's fast.
Damn fast.

Not only is he now behind Raph, but he's holding his bandanna as well.

"Not usually," he says as he ties the cloth around his head in a silent challenge.

Oh, that's definitely a challenge, but not one Raph is used to getting from (his) Mikey and not one he responds to in the way Michelangelo probably expects. Instead, his hackles go right up and he glares, fists clenched.

"Oh yeah? How about we put that to the test right here and now?" Nevermind that Michelangelo is already injured, and nevermind that if Donnie comes in, he'll have a cow. Something about this Mike already puts Raph on edge, and now that he sees this dynamic is different? He's even more disturbed.

What's worse is that it's the very thing that sets Raph on edge is actually providing some small sense of comfort to Mike. This, this he's familiar with. This seems right. For the first time all day something seems to click and make sense.

Even in the wake of every single one of his OTHER instincts screaming about just how wrong this is. That this isn't a rough and tumble sparring match. That this isn't Raph slowly building from frustration to anger. That this isn't Raph at all.

And yet...

"Finally picking on someone your own size?"

Raph could wonder why this is happening again; seems like whenever he meets an alternate brother, the only thing he wants to do is pound their face into the ground. ...then again, that happens with a lot of people he meets.

The fact that Raph hasn't thrown a punch yet shows that he has given some thought to what Splinter had said to him before, but hey. He's fifteen and angry; asking him to stop and think and be patient every single time someone pisses him off is a little much. ...then again, what's probably stopped him is remembering his Mikey's head cracking against the wall and seeing this Mikey's arm all jacked up, like he'd just ruined a good stitching job.

It doesn't stop him for long though.

"What's your problem?" Raphael snaps, and finally shoves forward to swipe a hand at Mikey's plastron to push him back. He's still in tussle-mode, which means he won't use serious techniques meant to actually, seriously harm his opponent, but this Mike keeps reacting in ways Raph doesn't expect. Less running and screaming, for one. A headlock isn't going to cut it.

When Raph begins to move, Mike slips into a lazy stance in preparation for...well, anything but a basic center-of-mass shove. He's so taken by surprise that he misses the gold embossed opportunity for a wrist-lock.

He can almost hear Leo's eye roll from here.

"What's my problem!? Do you want me to make a list!? Do you have any idea how much of a crap day I've had?! You wanna fight? Let's fight! It's the only thing that makes any sense right now!"

Jesus.

This is not a Mikey response, this is definitely a him response. It's really surreal to see it happening in someone he knows intellectually to be Michelangelo, but...is wearing a red mask? And acting kind of like him?

"On the roof." There's caltrops everywhere down here and Raph's not destroying his feet for this. Plus, it kind of puts it into a more controlled area, like in the dojo. This feels like when he fights with Leo, when they want to discuss things, only there's some aggression there too and it's weird because this doesn't happen with Mikey.

...but this isn't Mike anyway.

He doesn't wait for Mikey to follow him, just leaps up onto the window and crawls out to scale the building. A fight'll do them both good, get his blood to stop boiling at the first sign of an insult. He needs a good knockdown brawl, and Don won't give him that. Maybe this Mike'll be good enough for it.

The roof. Of course Raph would want to fight on the roof. Typical.

Mike makes a break first for his climbing claws, then for his 'chucks, and soon enough is out the window and scaling the wall to the roof.

However, there's a reason that Leo had insisted on finding an alternative way to break into the TCRI building. A way that did not involve scaling the outside wall, and that reason is Mike's arm is in absolutely no shape for climbing.

It's a shame when one's pride overshoots one's capabilities.

Mike makes it about half way before he has to stop using his right arm all together. He'll make it up the side, there's no doubt of that, it'll just take him twice as long as normal...

Either that, or Raph will look over the edge to see what's taking Mike so long and stick a hand out to help him.

...don't ask him why he does.

Mike sighs through gritted teeth, and not just because of the pain...though that's also a factor. No, when he looks up to see how much further he has to climb and sees Raph there with a hand extended, Mike can't help but think Leo was right. And damn if he doesn't hate it when that happens.

"On three," he says with a nod, preparing himself to leap the rest of the way up the side of the building.

This guy may not be his Raph, but he is a Raph, and there's no way Raph would ever let him fall.

"One. Two. Three..."

No. He definitely wouldn't.

Mike leaps on three and Raph grabs his hand, hooks his knee on the edge of the roof for stability and uses the other to reach over and grasp the lip of Mikey's carapace to help pull him up. Alley-oop.

Raph lets go as soon as Mikey's up and paces across the roof. He cracks his neck, his knuckles, rolls his shoulders. He'll have to be careful of Mike's arm.

Once he finds his feet, Mike shakes the claws off one hand, and pulls them off the other. His arm? Does not look good, and he knows it. One of the downsides of being the team medic is knowing what not good things look like.

Not that something as little as a sliced and diced arm is going to keep him from following through with this, because...please. Back out of a dare? Mike? Yeah, pull the other one, it's got bells.

Besides, it's not like they haven't trained with one arm tied behind their backs before, and really is this any different?

With a kick and a clatter his climbing claws and a pair of nunchucks get kicked over to an out of the way portion of the roof. Mike keeps his right arm flush against his plastron, while the left starts spinning the set of 'chucks.

Come at me, bro.

Edited 2013-03-09 21:29 (UTC)

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OKAY I THINK THIS IS RIGHT NOW? sorry. NOW don is trying not to die and can be skipped.

OKAY THAT WAS FUN

We win at organization! GO US! \o/!

FUCK YEAH WE ROCK

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totally making this shit up since we don't know yet o/

Oh good! Totally join me on the SS MakeShitUP!

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