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

[thebadturtle]

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.

Comments

[incywincyhero]

"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."

[thebadturtle]

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."

[incywincyhero]

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."

[thebadturtle]

"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.

[incywincyhero]

"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."

[thebadturtle]

"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.