#“whats up my genetic freak. my freak of the year” -my black coworker after i told him about running naked across a neighborhood

[potuzzz]

Sorry im saying retarded so much the moon entered sargento and im on my swag beastmode edgy gamerstyle chadcel bloomer white boi arc

#all my black workers insist i have n word pass #but i politely decline #for now #gotta wait for my presedential bid 2028 #bust out the big guns for the big fucks #purely metaphorical guns #down with white supremacy #ku klux klan jacket on me its revenge #17 #17mode #bad vibes forever #die yuppie die #tatted #doin his funky white boy best #his freaky white boy finest #“whats up my genetic freak. my freak of the year” -my black coworker after i told him about running naked across a neighborhood #face hands legs covered in period blood #hair down and insane #covered in twigs leaves bugs and dirty #covered in deep scratches oozing blood

[quietpagan]

TMNT Call of the Void 8

The stink would have been absolutely unbelievable for anyone who had never smelled a dog quarantine room filled with puppies. Puppies, despite their cuteness, where some of the nastiest little shits on the planet. Admittedly, Ruby had never waded through puppy crap in flip-flops, but at least human waste and refuse didn’t smell like coccidia.

“We need to let Sensei know,” said the turtle – actual turtle – to her left. There was a slight glow coming from various devices and instruments on the tallest one, and an illuminated…was that a hologram?...suddenly shone in the darkness.

“Hello, Master Splinter?” Odd name, Ruby thought. And what is the sensei thing about?

“Yes, we-we’re okay, it’s just – “

The tall one glanced back at Ruby and began speaking rapidly in Japanese. Ruby felt a hint of insult, but she knew this wasn’t a regular situation. Raphael hadn’t told his brothers about her, and hadn’t told her much about them, so she could forgive them about being wary of her. She – five-foot-three, four-eyed, and out of shape – was dangerous to them.

Ruby saw the shadow that was Raphael reach forward and smack the tall turtle on his shell, making several instruments quiver.

“We’re taking her home, genius, she’s gonna find out anyway. We can trust her.”

‘Genius’ turned off the device with a quiet word, turning around to glare at Raph. He spoke again in Japanese.

“Quit that,” Raphael said, before being interrupted again. He glanced at Ruby and she knew he wanted to do the same, to talk in the privacy of her lack of comprehension, but he stuck to English.

“Well, she ain’t freaked out yet, has she?”

“Don, I think she’s pretty cool with it,” piped up the smallest one, nudging Ruby on the arm. The tall one watched them for a moment, and then turned away, continuing down the tunnel.

“Um, can I ask who ‘Sensei’ is?”

The little one started to answer before Raphael actually shoved a hand in his face.

“He’s our…well, he’s our sensei. He’s like our teacher and father at the same time.”

“I thought sensei was like a martial arts thing,” Ruby said.

“It is,” said the little one, on the opposite side of the Ruby as Raphael. “We’re ninjas, girlfriend.”

Ruby stopped dead, turning to Raph and shooting him with a scandalized look.

“Ninja? You couldn’t have mentioned that in your eHarmony profile?”

Raphael spluttered and glared at her, as she knew he would. Even the tall one chuckled a bit, and the tension in the tunnel lessened.

“Ninjas,” she scoffed. “Imma ask you to prove it tomorrow.”

Which reminded her.

“’Scuse me, I need to call my supervisor.”

Ruby pulled her phone out of her bag and punched in a speed-dial. The light from the screen illuminated the tall turtle’s face as he turned towards her; she ignored the distrust there. The line picked up on the third ring.

“Imogen, hey, my apartment’s burned down and I won’t be in to work tomorrow,” said Ruby quickly. “Possibly the next day.”

“…What?”

Her supervisor sounded tired and groggy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I wake you up? Sorry. But I just wanted to tell you that I wouldn’t be in to work tomorrow. I need to find a new apartment.”

“You apartment burned…are you okay?”

Ruby’s hands and shoulder stung, her limbs were trembling, and she was walking through the sewers with four giant turtles with shit up to her ankles and feeling more than a little shell-shocked.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she said.

“You sure? Do you need somewhere to stay?” “I’m crashing with a friend,” said Ruby, glancing up at the shadow she knew was Raphael. They passed under a sewer grate and sharp light illuminated the grin he struck at her.

“’Kay…I’ll, uh, I’ll call someone to come in…” “You go back to sleep,” Ruby said, “I’ll call someone. Okay, thanks Imogen, see you around. Wow, I did not know it was one in the morning.”

The light from her phone glared painfully and she tried to dial without looking directly at it.

“You gonna be okay with work?” “Oh, it’ll be fine,” Ruby said, pushing the phone back against her ear. It took her two tries to wake up one of her coworkers, and nobody was happy about being called at 1 AM, but she got a cover for her shift for two days, maximum.

“Do you mind if I see that phone?” Ruby looked up at the tallest shadow, which loomed discomfitingly in the dark. She handed him her cell and he fiddled with it for a few seconds before slipping it back in her hands, offering no explanation.

“Thanks,” Ruby murmured. “What’s your name?” “Oh, er, Raph…didn’t tell you?” Something dripped on her head and she shivered, skirting a little to the side and bumping into someone.

“Um, no,” she said, not sure how much detail she could go into. Would they be relieved he hadn’t talked about them, or annoyed?

The big shadow to her right shifted a little, his arm brushing against hers, as they turned a corner and stepped onto dry ground.

“Oh. Well, uh, I’m Donatello,” the tall one said. “Well, Donnie, really, but…” “Another Renaissance artist?” “Yeah,” he said with a quiet laugh. “There’s a bit of a theme.” “Is there a Leonardo here?” “Present,” said the shadow behind her, the one who had been arguing with Raphael on the rooftop.

“Don’t forget about the best and brightest,” said the smallest turtle to her left. “Michelangelo here, but the ladies like to call me Mikey.” He turned around, walking backward as he picked up her hand and bowed.

“Is that so, Michelangelo,” Ruby teased. “I’m Ruby Richards. How do you do, good sir.”

“Oh, madam –“

The faint light given off by Donatello’s instruments showed him putting a hand to his chest.

“You wound me!”

Ruby giggled at his exaggerated swoon, the lightness of his voice clearing out some of the smoke and darkness inside her head, and a memory suddenly hit.

“Wait, we’ve already met, haven’t we?” Michelangelo turned around the look at her, as did Donatello and Leonardo; Raphael stiffened a bit. “The alley, just before New Year’s, I almost got mugged and…”

“Yeah, dudette!” Mikey’s grin was illuminated by the farthest efforts of a street lamp, as were the other’s rather angry faces. “I was so stoked that I finally got to meet Raph’s girl! I mean, yeah, probably could have been under better circumstances, but still!”

Leonardo grabbed Mikey by the arm and pulled him behind the group, holding him back for a minute as they all turned down another tunnel. Ruby ignored the ‘Raph’s girl’ bit in favor of worrying. She really hoped she hadn’t gotten the poor kid in trouble. Raph fell behind after a moment to join the other two, and Ruby and Donatello paused for several minutes until the others caught up with them.

Ruby took the opportunity to have an internal WHAT THE FUCK moment. Her friend was a fucking turtle! A vigilante, six-foot-five turtle, with three turtle brothers. Were they aliens? Genetic experiments? Were they always turtles, or humans first? Donatello stood on the opposite side of the tunnel from Ruby and she couldn’t see him very well from the light of his instruments, but she knew he was studying her as intently as she was studying him.

Eventually the others came back up the tunnel and they continued on their way. There was a distinct tension, but even though Leonardo huffed angrily Michelangelo still linked his arm with Ruby’s and walked with a bounce.

They moved on, continuing onto mercifully dry ground, although Ruby distantly heard rushing water. Raph’s hand on her back steered her around another corner and she noticed the stink of the sewers had faded. The tunnel they were in branched off, but they paused by a stretch of bare wall. Ruby was about to ask what they were waiting for when one of Donatello’s instruments started blinking, and part of the wall seamlessly opened. The light coming from the round tunnel beyond was faint, but Ruby still had to squint, relying on Raphael to guide her until her eyes adjusted to the light. They emerged into a huge space, the absolute coolest place her exhausted mind had ever seen. Raphael let her slip forward and she turned on shaking legs in a wide circle too see where they were. It was immense and dizzying, an abstract mishmash of color and light and shadow. There was too much to take in quickly, and she only had a very short time. Her circle turned her to face Raphael and the brothers who were stalking through the entrance behind him.

The light of the – she hesitated the think lair, but Batcave really wasn’t fitting – was bright and multicolored, springing from all sorts of screens, lanterns, flow-lamps, and neon signs, soft enough to not be jarring on her eyes, and for the first time Ruby could see her friend. Actually see her friend, not just from flashes of fire and dull streetlamps through sewer grates.

She’d certainly been right about one thing: he was stacked.

And green.

And very, very big. She’d call him a brick shit-house, but she didn’t think they even made brick shit-houses that big.

Actually all of them were huge and green and stacked. But Raph was downright intimidating. Ruby would probably be scared if she hadn’t known he could cable knit.

She was sort of just standing there, looking him over. Of course he noticed her staring, a confrontational frown on his face; Ruby shook her head with a tired sigh. Gigantic turtles and an underground moshpit were a little too much on top of losing her home and everything in it.

“I’ll do this in the morning,” Ruby muttered. “…It is the morning. I’ll do this when I wake up. Is there a place I can collapse for a while?”

“You can take Raphael’s room,” called a voice from behind. “He and I will be talking for a very long time tonight.”

Ruby turned around to see who had spoken and was suddenly very glad she had several years of customer service under her belt, because although her mind was screaming GIANT RAT GIANT RAT GIANT RAT, her face was saying ‘Hi, how do you do?’ He was wearing a brown robe and holding a little bonsai tree, which he put down to greet her. His clawed hand was rough and firm, his eyes black, shining pits, but when he welcomed her his voice was exceedingly kind, and the hand he put on her elbow to guide her to a seat was gentle.

A mug of something hot and steaming appeared in her hand and she drank gratefully, her backpack sliding off of her shoulders as her eyes slipped closed. Suddenly she felt very very tired, and wanted nothing more than a dark bed and a warm blanket.

The latter, at least, appeared in the form of a hand-knit quilt that someone draped over her back. An inhuman hand patted her shoulder and she leaned her forehead against her mug, softly shaking her head. She was too tired to deal with giant rats and turtles. If an enormous alligator suddenly sprang from the river and started performing a jazzy song-and-dance number, she’d probably do nothing more than blink at it.

The mental image of a huge Florida gator with a top hat and spats, singing It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing amused her while the others spoke and argued amongst themselves, until she felt her mug being taken out of her hand. She opened her eyes to a green face and amber-colored eyes beneath a red mask; Raphael pulled her off of the couch and led her to an alcove, down a wide hallway and into a large, eccentrically-decorated bathroom. The sheer number of pictures pasted to the walls was overwhelming and dizzying, and she silently let Raphael lean her up against a shower wall, lifting her filthy feet into the spray of water he commanded from the tap. The room wasn’t really made to fit two giant turtles and one tiny human, but Donatello came in a few minutes later and silently began patching up the burn on her arm, slathering something cold and stinging onto it and deftly wrapping it in gauze. He touched the salve to a few other spots, too, places on her leg and cheek that she hadn’t even noticed. The bat she broke against Raph’s chest had given her a few splinters, and they were taken care of as well. They left her in privacy for a few minutes, but she didn’t feel like showering, even though there were bits of soot and grit in her clothes, and sweat-streaked grime on her skin. She knew she’d feel better if she was clean, but she was just so tired.

Raphael met her outside of the bathroom and she followed him back to the main area. It was so weird to finally connect a face to his voice and a body to his presence. She was so used to him being a shadow; now that he’d solidified into something she could see, she felt like she didn’t know him all over again.

He seemed a little uncomfortable as well, she noticed. The bandages on his arm and hand – when had those appeared? - would tighten and loosen as he flexed nervously, and he couldn’t seem to decide on whether he wanted to watch her or not look at her at all.

“Don’t worry about your room,” Ruby murmured, quietly enough that he had to lean down. Damn, but he was tall. “I can stick myself on the couch.” She hadn’t actually seen a couch and suddenly wondered how they’d fit their huge asses onto one at all. “…Or something.”

“You are a guest, miss ­­Richards,” said the giant fucking rat, coming down from what looked like a kitchen with two of the turtles on his heels. Donatello had disappeared.

“It would be inhospitable of us to just ‘stick’ you somewhere.” he said.

“This is your home,” Ruby replied. “It would be rude of me to displace anyone.”

She and the rat stood almost nose-to-nose, staring at each other for a quiet minute. Ruby knew she had an upper ground in manners; she’d been raised in the South, where ‘yessirs’ and ‘hey how you’s’ were as common as breathing. Whatever the guest wanted to do, even if it was a less comfortable situation for them, was what happened.

Finally, after a blinking contest that made her eyes water, he backed off.

“If you wish, then,” he said, with a gesture. “But if you are staying for longer than tonight, I will insist you use one of the rooms.”

“Fine by me,” said Ruby, kicking her backpack under the large chair-thing she had been led to. She shrugged off the knit blanket and accepted the pillow that…Leonardo? She honestly wasn’t sure. He had the most indistinct shape - not as beefy as Raph, taller than Michelangelo but not as tall as Donatello. He was wearing a blue mask and what was up with the masks?

She accepted the pillow that most likely Leonardo handed to her, and sat down on the chair. The others kind of looked at her awkwardly and she looked back, feeling more like an intruder than she had yet. Was there something she was supposed to do? Was she the first human who’d ever been down here?

Raphael split from the group and crouched by the side of the chair, which still didn’t put his face even below her eye level.

“I’m in the room over there, alright?” He pointed to another alcove how many did this place have and turned back to her. “You need me, you get me.”

Ruby nodded and he nodded back, rising to his feet and following the rat out of Ruby’s vision. She collapsed back on the chair, noticed the lights dimming, and was oblivious to everything else.

  “Master Splinter ream you out?” Raph rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, trying to get the tired smoke-sting out of them. Splinter had kept him up for nearly two and a half hours, which – considering the boys’ late nights – wasn’t really that long, but he was more mentally exhausted than he’d been in a long time. His friend was in danger, his friend was okay, his friend was actually seeing him and his family, she wasn’t freaking out, she was here, in the lair, and Splinter had just given him the whole Twenty Questions deal, but with two hundred questions instead. When had they met, where, why, why did he hide it from his family, was he sure she could be trusted, what did she do, what had happened with the fire, everything. He had actually been surprisingly accepting of the whole thing; his boys were growing up and growing out, he’d said, and he was happy that they were finding more people to connect with – as long as they were careful. If Raph trusted her, then Splinter would support him. But then Leo had gotten on his case, again, and then Donnie, and when Donnie bitched your ass out about something he got downright nasty and personal, and Raphael really did not want to talk about it, even though he knew that his youngest brother had gotten almost the exact same treatment, since he’d known about Ruby and hadn’t told anyone.

“Go to sleep, Mikey,” Raph just said. Curiously, Michelangelo had been the quietest about the whole night. He’d delighted in meeting Ruby again, but he hadn’t questioned Raphael at all. Raph could practically feel Leo and Donnie fuming and musing from their respective corners of the lair, but Mikey was just laying on his bunk and petting Klunk, quietly preparing for an early night. Raph decided to take the silence, and be grateful.

It didn’t last very long.

Amongst the swingswishslash of Leo’s blades from where he was angrily practicing and the tapping of Donnie’s keys from his computer bank, quiet footsteps and the sliding of cloth across the concrete floor alerted him to another presence in the room. The glow from the fairy lights illuminated Ruby’s tired face as she tentatively walked over to the bunk beds, swaddled in one of Raph’s knit blankets. She peered at the bottom bunk and then the top, her eyes, sans glasses, having more difficulty seeing in the half-light than his.

“Raph?”

He quietly hmm’ed in response, knowing that Mikey was awake anyway.

“Do you…”

She looked away from the bed, into a corner, drawing the blanket further over her shoulders.

“Would you mind if I…can I…?”

He realized what she wanted with a jolt that ran through his exhaustion like a hot wire. His shell nudged against the wall as he scooted back from the edge of the bed, and she climbed up the bunk and settled down in beside him, just close enough for her knees to brace against one thigh. She still smelled of smoke and dust and sweat, but also of Raphael himself, probably due to the blanket she was using.

“Just don’t roll over,” she muttered into the pillow. Raph half-grinned and settled back down, watching her breathing even within seconds.

“Dude-“ “Not one word, Mikey,” he growled. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of quiet laughter.

  When the hell do the guys sleep? They’re up all night, they’re up all day, I don’t know, do they have really uncertain schedules or something? I have no clue, I’m just gonna say that they go down around four or five AM and get up around one or two PM. That leaves them all of the afternoon, night, and early morning to do their shenanigans.

I am so glad I’m the crazy cat lady of my shelter, because dogs make the biggest stink ever. True, kittens often miss the box and a few we get in often have coccidia, which stinks to high heaven, and sometimes cats just enjoy being bastards and don’t cover their shit, but puppies, man. Puppies are nasty little rotters. Even if they don’t have any illness, they’re stinky. Most people let their puppies play on the grass, which is probably fine at home, but at the shelter we’ve had dogs with every kind of illness. The big one, parvo, stays on grass and until a puppy is six months old and has had its parvo shot, you can’t put it on the grass to poop. We just got in a litter of rottie-mixes, and they’re too little to go outside anyway so they poop in the kennel. God, that stink. Admittedly, I had a kitten climb on my shoulder and shit on me last week, but still.

Donnie’s being a bit of a dick because he’s being cautious. The last time they invited a girl back to their place it blew up, and this isn’t even a girl they knew previously, it’s someone his brother has been secretly visiting for an unknown length of time, who has unknown affiliations and knowledge of them, and – even though the disaster at police headquarters turned out okay – he’s still having a difficult time trusting new people.

Splinter’s always going to be concerned about his sons, but he’s also incredibly supportive and just plain a Good Dad.

It took me two hours – two hours – to go through the film and piece together exactly what was in the new lair and where. Everything’s so bright and mismatched and we don’t get many good angles and I still don’t know what a few of the tunnels and alcoves lead to, but I’ve got a general idea now. It’s COOOL as FUCK, though. There’s a random huge chair thing in the alcove next to Donnie’s computer bank, so that’s where I’m sticking Ruby.

#drabble #tmnt #TMNT Out of the Shadows #raphael #ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles