capeandcowllogs | Don't give us none of your aggravation / We had it with your discipline

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Don't give us none of your aggravation / We had it with your discipline

WHO: That one turtle (

thebadturtle) and YOU.
WHERE: Mean streets of New York (as well as their rooftops)
WHEN: Late night Saturday, becoming early morning Sunday.
WARNINGS: Violence, baby.
SUMMARY: Raphael works the patrols. Doin' his thing.
FORMAT: WORDS. Para to start, roll with tagger from there.

He had left the bar a few hours ago -- Tom's place was nice and quiet with the imPort bouncers about -- with so many of them openly freaky, they made sure a certain element stayed away. Sure, this meant wearing clothes (no shirt, no shoes, no service -- including the help) but Raphael was getting used to traversing the roofs with the heavy boots, jeans and wifebeater on.

Didn't mean he stayed in them long; he usually stashed them on the roof of the bar before he headed into the night to kick some butt and take some names, and this night was no different.

Leaping from roof to roof in search of trouble, Raph was pleased it wasn't hard to find. Still, after a workout with putting the hurt on a pimp who was getting rough with some of his girls, he found himself perched at the edge of a building, watching the city and wishing Casey was around.

Patrol wasn't the same without somebody equally crazy to hang with-- and give you a check to your balance.

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"...maybe."

He returned to where he had hunkered down, peering at Spider-Man with unabashed curiosity. "So, is my reputation already proceeding me or some shit? Cause I ain't busted anybody's chops what didn't have it comin', okay?"

He -- hadn't had a black out, lost to the rage. He'd been so good. Nothing had happened, right?

Right?

"Whoa, whoa!" Spidey held his hands up, placating. "I'm not accusing you of anything, buddy. I only meant --"

He frowns under the mask, trying to find a way to get his point across. "Look, I'm guessing you're new to the City, or this wouldn't be news to you. How much do you know about the different universes people are imPorted from?"

...he shouldn't yell at Spider-Man, should he? Mike would be flipping his shit right now if he knew Raph yelled at Spider-Man. There'd be a fanboy lecture complete with something like pearl-clutching and how could you, Raph, how could you!? all at once.

So he stops, listens, and nods slowly, giving a affirmative: yes, he's new. "Not... much?" Just that he's standing in front of one of their comic book stories, that's all.

If he were Don or Leo, he probably would have been able to figure it out by now. But this is Raph; he's not dumb, but he does think a little more... slowly then the others.

"Well. Thing is ..." He motioned broadly for emphasis. "The different universes people come from are pretty much random for our purposes, except that there is a tangential connection between a few of them. They, ah..."

Great. Get to meet a previously fictitious childhood idol, feel morally obligated to make him think you're crazy. Just a night in the life for Spider-Man.

"A lot of our universes exist in other people's universes... as fiction."

"...so you know about the comics? I mean. That you have them. And stuff."

HE DOESN'T THINK THIS SOME HOW RELATES TO HIM. Isn't that darling? Raph's so darling and innocent about the very idea, looking at Spider-Man with something like relief. Maybe he can tell Mike and it'll all be okay when they see people from other worlds and stuff and KNOW WHO THEY ARE, it'll be... okay, right? Right.

"... Wait," Spidey said now, and even through the mask his confusion was palpable, "how do you know about the comics? Unless someone told you ... but why would they, unless they were telling you about ... I was talking about the cartoons!"

He couldn't possibly mean ...

"Your cartoons."

"...cartoons? What cartoons? I was talking about The Amazing Spider-Man and..."

And he's getting the sinking feeling they're trying to tell each other about the same thing. That.

That they're fans.

Of.

Each other?

"The blue fucking hell, man."

He jumps down-- effortless, soundless, and asks, perhaps a bit harshly, "Do I look like I got a Saturday morning cartoon, pal? Great googly moogly!"

Spidey rears back a little, though he doesn't actually back up. "You're also in four different movies, if that makes you feel any better. Oh, and comics, too, though I never read those. My mom said they were too violent."

"Movies?" That might be a little strangled, as Raph has no idea how to react to the idea. "Comics? What? Okay, back up the truck pal!"

He pauses, trying to reign in his temper. He can't just flip out on Spider-Man. There are rules. That'd totally one of them, he's sure. Flipping out on one of your heroes is just not cool.

"Okay," he finally says. "You say -- in your world. We're cartoons?"

"Yep," Spidey says, popping the p. "Cartoons, movies, the requisite merchandising for the under-12 set -- you name it, it was there. The cool kids had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchboxes."

He scuffs his foot, feeling increasingly ill at ease by the second. He's been on the other side of this conversation more than once, and if he hadn’t blurted out his question on impulse he wouldn’t have mentioned the “you were my fictional idol” issue at all. Now that he’s brought the topic up, though, he feels obliged to see it through.

Raph just -- sat on the roof in one graceless, heavy motion.

This is a lot to absorb.

Especially for a very private sixteen year old. What did you say to that? Seriously? His life was cartoons! Someone made it G rated kids fare! What the hell was that, man?

After a moment Spidey flops down as well, legs folded tailor-style.

"If it makes you feel any better," he ventured after a few moments, "I'm the star of my own multimedia franchise. It's like invisible paparrazi have been following me around since I was fifteen and I never knew it."

"Yeah. I know. We collected whatever we could find in dumpsters. Mike liked you. I liked Batman better-- no offense." Raph said, head still hung. He scratched the back of his neck, mortified by this turn of events.

"Crap, man. Cartoons. Well, at least some of the shit we do won't get past the censors." Like slaughter ninja mooks en masse when needed. "Too violent? Must've made us Saturday morning safe, I guess. Can't imagine what that'd turn out like."

"Hey, I can live with coming in second to Batman," Spidey says with a chuckle and a shrug. Hmm-ing contemplatively, he taps at his chin. "Never thought of it that way before," he adds slowly. Some of the adventures I've had, I'm not sure how anyone could begin to rewrite them for a younger demographic."

Like that Wendigo incident, years ago. Or Vulture 2.0, acid-spitting edition. Or pretty much anything Venom ever got up to. But then again...

"Then again, kids eat that sutff up, especially if they think they're not supposed to be seeing it."

The whole spiel finally gets Raph to laugh, for the tension to break; he's still not really happy about it, but it's -- a start. He's not alone. There's this guy who HE read about, who HE saw on TV... that's a start. It makes it endurable.

"I don't know. We didn't get a lot of comics and stuff; we got mostly what we could get on television, when we could get television. I remember Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Never did get why you ran around with a couple of X-Men, though." He pauses, and adds, "The X-Men weren't real popular with us. We already had the world that hates and fears us gig down, so..."

Hard to love a fictionalized version of your life, only with better tech and hot ladies everywhere, you know?

"Dunno when you'll be on next, but I'm sure you'll get another shot. And Donnie's learned how to steal cable, so... we won't miss it half the time."

His mask makes his face unreadable, but Spidey is nonetheless visibly confused as Ralph goes on, progressing from an indefinable air of befuddlement to outright scratching his head.

"I wouldn't trade my friends for the world, but none of them are X-Men. Well, no, that's not quite true. Beast and I are buddies now -- but back home we were really friendly acquaintances at most, same as all the rest. Unless you mean Nate Grey or Wolverine, but neither of them are or were exactly the back-up band type, if you know what I mean. Heck, Wolvie'd claw me to pieces just for thinking of it."

"Nah, this was Iceman and Firestar," says Raph. "It was a cartoon, they're not meant to make sense. I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how to you turn our lives into kiddie fodder. In the last twelve months, we've taken on gangs, the man who murdered our master's master -- and he chose to blow himself up rather then take an honorable death-- and then went across time and space, went to a bar, rumbled with the authorities, had a gladiatorial death match..."

Yeah, he doesn't have enough fingers to tick all this off and relay just how not-kid-friendly his life is. It's just not. No story that culminates in revenge for a murder-rape is.

"Firestar and Iceman?" Spidey says, incredulous. Then he pauses, reconsiders, and snaps his fingers. "Oh, yeah! We had a regular team-up thing going for … all of five minutes. And there's a hit TV show about us? Weird."

He's not entirely sure how to respond to Raph's next words. Now that he stops to think about it, with all the things he's gone through every other week since he picked up the webs, the violence and the trauma and sheer human nastiness -- how would, or rather wouldn't, that translate into a sappy kid's cartoon? And what have the Turtles gone through that wouldn't translate into the technicolor escapades his younger self followed so avidly?

Some things are almost too unsettling to think about. Although he can think of at least one thing that's probably the same.

"If the ninjas on your world are anything as pathetic as the ninjas on mine, they probably got that part right."

"You must have crappy ninja. We have plenty of problems with them having a sizable syndicate in New York," Raph said, one brow ridge arching. "I mean, the young and the dumb they set up to fill out the ranks, they're one thing. But the guys just above 'em? They will fuck your shit up no questions asked. So will the mooks, with enough numbers."

Someday he'll eat those words when they nearly kill Leo.

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Don't give us none of your aggravation / We had it with your discipline

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