[GIRL HE LOVES THE OPTIMISM (he doesn't, he has not the gene necessary to appreciate that) BUT,] It's not. We don't know the layout here; knowing where north is doesn't do us any good if we don't know where north leads! [Oh okay, maybe panicking is ok to do again. Donnie is going to just frantically flip through all the blueprints and plat maps he has for the sewers and tunnels in New York (there are....so many), wrist computer fritzing out but hanging in there.]
Leo! Of course- of course, Leo. You two are so much better at that mind meld nonsense, [Donnie you JUST did one with Raph, stop pretending like it's silly] right? Can you do it from here? [Grasping desperately at this pathetically bent straw]
[ Nonsense?? Wow. Rude. Right in front of the rubble that they saved Raph from using an incredible mind meld power.
But in the spirit of Donnie probably being really upset about all this, fine. Raph will play calvinball. ]
Never tried it like this. [ This far away, this out of nowhere, this roughed up. Nothing ventured, nothing gained?
He guesses. ] Gimme a minute. If it don't work... move somewhere, try again?
[ Damn. Actually Raph really hopes it works now. The idea of a lot of walking for a while and stopping and then having to get back up and go again sounds... bad. As much as the stops could be rests, they don't sound restful. ]
[Something far, far off in the distance rumbles, like thunder not having quite made its way over to them yet, but it's enough to make Donnie jump and swing the light in the direction of the ceiling, searching for any more cracks in the stone (besides, obviously, the huge fucking hole they fell through.
Even that is half-obscured by dust and stone, but maybe not so much that they can't get back up through their original entrance to at least one more floor up...maybe.] ...conservatively speaking, big guy, what does, uh. What does moving look like for you right now? [Because if any of those hairline fractures decide to become the real thing due to a cough, they could puncture a lung and they do not have the tools and expertise needed to keep Raph from asphyxiating on his own blood down here.]
[ Raph makes a sound that's mostly laugh-based. The humor is there. His timing for it is impeccable. ]
Whatever it's gotta look like. [ If it comes to it. Something tells him there's not a lot of not-moving plays left in the book if the answer is different. So he'll cut out the middleman himself. Ugh. ] Just maybe... we're gonna hope it don't gotta look fast anytime soon.
[ He'll do whatever he has to, but if it's "go fast" at any point, he reserves his right to complain about it. All the better to showcase that there's clearly nothing to worry about. That's how Leo and Mikey do it, right? If they're too quiet, it's a problem? Raph can use that metric. ]
You got eyes on a route?
[ Otherwise he might just randomly pick one. All roads will lead to home one way or another, because Raph refuses to let them not. ]
['Whatever it's gotta look like' isn't totally encouraging, but Donatello isn't in a position to make demands himself. If Raph wasn't here he'd have full meltdown'd himself into a catatonic state for at least the next six hours. Or he'd be a squished bag of bone jelly underneath twenty tons of rubble.
Not thinking about that.
Donatello stands up on legs only a little unsteady, shining the light up at the pile of rubble and the potential hole.] ...maybe. [Okay. This is literally the easiest part; they already fell, Raph is already hurt. What more could go wrong?
(So much more.)
But Donatello is channeling his inner Mikey optimism right now as his one single coping method, and is making his way tentatively up the rubble pile to see if there's a) enough room for Raph to fit in through this hole and b) a viable pathway for a person with rib fractures to climb without winding himself and/or falling down and breaking his ribs even harder.
It takes a couple pushes of some stone blocks that Donnie belatedly realized he should've warned Raph about for the noise, calling down his hurried apologies after the clatter, but then...there seems to be a path. Even better, it seems like a path that Raph might be able to traverse injured as he is.] Okay...I think we can get up to at least one floor higher this way.
[ Apologies accepted. Mostly on account of it meaning Donnie's not the thing falling down the rubble pile. He's nice and secure going up. Flashlight can attest.
That's good.
And Raph gets a minute keeping an eye on him to just kinda breathe. Pull his focus back together. Really run the what-can-he-manage diagnostic and have it in mind when he does whatever he needs to do anyway.
They'll be fine. It's gonna be fine. He'll make sure it is. ]
Good spot, bud. [ You gotta be supportive. You gotta be nice to your genius bro in these stressful times. ] One floor up's better than stayin' down here by a long shot. Stinks down here.
[ Mostly emotionally. Physically, there's not much to be done about the stink. They are in a sewer.
Time to commit. Raph grunts and starts getting to his feet. ]
[Raph isn't wrong, at least; it does stink down here, in a different way than usual. They've gotten pretty used to the relative cleanliness of the abandoned subway, and being back down in the darkest, most rotted, algae-encrusted pits of the sewer system is not helping things at all.
The noise of effort and pain has Donnie back over to his brother's side, metal arms emerging from his battle shell to act as additional poles and stabilizing limbs as he reaches out to brace his brother. The climb up the debris is...slow. Even if it was the most stable pathway, that doesn't mean much when you have a few hundred pounds of injured mutant snapping turtle trying to haul himself up it, ninja-grace notwithstanding, busted ribs in danger of just floating around inside his shell at the first slip and tumble back down the pile.
They make it up somehow, anyway.
Donatello hovers near his big brother, a hand near his shoulder even as he checks his wrist computer obsessively to see if he can connect to his equipment at home. Maybe if he can get a signal through, he can get his spare battle shells to attach to his brothers and home in on him! ...potentially running them into a hundred walls on their way here and killing them gruesomely. Okay. Maybe a different plan.] Auuugh, don't repeat this but I wish Leo was here with us. [Stupid...perfect plan bastard twin.]
[ Safe to say, Raph hates this. The slow-going. The needing Donnie's help to even manage that. The aches and pains that are gonna keep him off his game.
What if something else happens? What if Donnie needs him and he's too slow to react? There's no guarantees what happens out here, only what probably happens once they make it home. Classic turtle's lament, that.
He's starting to get the feeling that neither of them actually have any real idea what to do, which means that he needs to double down on acting like he does have one. Keep being stubborn, keep pushing. Just until he can make a safe responsibility handoff to Leo or Mikey or Pops or-- heck, maybe April, you never know when April's gonna swoop in like a boss. ]
Sure. Long as you don't tell him I agreed. [ Leo's ego and confidence must be tended to with highly specific methods. Like a finnicky plant, or some kinda exotic pet fish. ] Two minute break. Gonna try a ninpo thing.
[ See, he is so responsible. That's like resting but also working. Raph figures there's no shot he can just be like "hey fam here we are exactly come get us," but maybe there's a way to put "so things are not going good" into it? Gotta be an option, right? There's connection. ]
All else fails, maybe Raph, uh. Raph just punches out ceilings until we get sub-surface?
[Donnie will also try a technology thing while Raph tries the Ninpo thing, but he looks up when Raph mentions punching out a ceiling.] No ceiling punching. Multiple floors gave way just by us stepping on them; you punching the ceiling could bring the entire tunnel down on us. We'd be deader than dead.
[ Booooooo, ceiling punches shot down unfairly and unjustly for safety hazard reasons. Oh, wait. Those are fair and just reasons. Fine. ]
Draxum should've mutated us with sonar or somethin'. Supersoldier ninja turtles put on hold by bad floors. [ This is all Barry's fault actually. Every single thing that's ever happened ever. ] Waste of... waste of Raph's whole skill set.
[ NTS. Evolve sonar to detect bad floors and ceilings to punch immediately after this. There's probably a YouTube tutorial for that. ]
I don't think I'm gettin' our location out to anybody.
[ Enough bad vibes to get their ears perked up, maybe? He doesn't wanna say it's a sure thing. Sometimes it's hard to tell with ninpo, weirdly enough. But this sure wasn't a whole mindmeld, Raph can tell that much. ]
[Talk about someone being a waste! Tech genius bro who can make theoretically anything out of thin air provided he knows how to build it can't do shit because there's too much material between him and a data tower to get a signal.
The sonar is a great idea. Too bad neither of them can use it.]
We'll file an official complaint in triplicate the second we get back home. [Ha! Funny joke because if they even get back home, the first thing they're doing is getting Raph an x-ray and Donnie a tranquilizer. THEN complaints. Triplicate.
The sonar gives him an idea, though. He flicks his goggles back down and turns on the thermal vision.] Raph, can you hear any running water?
[ Raph will allow it. The joke. It's worth the chuckle. Triplicate????? What is he, an accountant? Absolutely not.
He's on that shonen jump shit. ]
Uhhhhh. [ Great question. Thing about growing up in the sewers is, you get really used to tuning out that sort of background noise. If you're not talking deadly whirlpool or lazy river gone horribly, horribly wrong, it's not usually a huge issue.
Where's Donnie going with this? Who knows. Raph's gonna try to trust the process and get his listen on. ] Yeah. From down that way, I think?
[ He helpfully nods even though Donnie might not be looking at him specifically in the moment. ]
[Raph hearing still superior hearing; Donnie turns and stalks over closer to the wall as if he had been looking when Raph gestured (leftover from that mind meld? he is not aware and would have no idea anyhow). Touches wall. Runs hands over wall like a weirdo.]
...yeah. It's colder. [As if that's going to make any sense. Donnie looks up like he's following the flight path of a mosquito, pacing across the small tunnel, around Raph and the rubble and only barely managing not to stub a toe on a chunk of old, moldy brick.] Running water's going to be colder than ambient temperatures. And running water has to be running from somewhere. We can use temperature gauging to both avoid being drowned, and to follow it 'upstream,' so to speak. Link back up with the main tunnels.
[ Hmmm. Sounds like a lot of smart guy stuff that's way above Raph's understanding pay grade. But in a good way. Sensible way.
Temperature gauging. Go off, king, absolutely. ]
If I had to fall through the floor and get stuck down here with somebody, Donnie, I'm glad it's you. [ Big brain. Brain and brawn alliance right here. ] 'cause Raph wouldn't have thought about the water stuff if you gave him about a billion years.
[ And probably no one else would have. Well. Maybe before the billion years, one of the others would've thought about it. But Raph? Nah. He'd have gone ahead and punched his way through, and poetically also wound up getting a rib punched through a lung or something. ]
[Busy sciencing and calculating and cannot properly string together appreciative sentences, but still wants big brother to know his praise is heard and coveted and beloved, so takes a quick detour in examining the walls to grab his brother's face in his hands and give those big jowls some squeezes and scale scratches. You are adored. Donnie is working and will be back later to do this more once he's done bye]
[ GOOD GRADE IN PRAISING BROTHER ACHIEVED. Raph will proudly accept his scritches for the gift that they are. ]
Yeah, yeah, shuttin' up for a minute, Doctor Science.
[ This counts as a free breather, anyway. Probably good to take those where they can. Getting home might be a long haul and they'll probably be annoying each other before then. ]
[Donnie ends up pacing quite a ways away from his big brother, and though the darkness mostly swallows him, the purple glow of his wrist computer never completely disappears from Raphael's view.
After a few moments Donatello returns, the eerie red-blue glow of his goggles lenses preceding his arrival.] I've made a rough map of where I think the water is flowing to and from, [is how he announces himself, crouching next to Raphael and looking over him with undisguised concern. He's in work mode, but worried-about-brother mode has not yet been disabled. Which is difficult, considering he's going to have to ask him to some hard things.] Now it's just a matter of us getting up and over. Through who knows how many feet of concrete and brick.
[ The staying in range is something that can be so important, for Raph specifically. It's most reassuring just having Donnie back in range, of course, but beggars and choosers and stuff. ]
Whatever it is, we'll get there. We got a starting point and a direction and that's two more things we didn't have before. [ We are so confident. Big WE. Making it happen. ] Maybe now instead of bein' cooked, we're just toasted.
[ Sounds fake, there's definitely an enormous distinction. Which Raph will never explain because it's one that he feels and cannot give words. ]
Yeah? [ PERKING UP. Raph smash? And it will be a helpful solution? ] Consider Raph's optimism even higher.
[ LET'S LOCK IN. Please do not ask about his ribs until he's locked back out. And he in turn will respectfully wait to ask about your health until then. ]
[DONNIE ISN'T HAPPY ABOUT IT. He is really terrified that Raph will puncture a lung somehow and that he'll have to figure out how to conduct emergency thoracic surgery to reinflate a lung through several inches of plastron in the middle of the least sterile environment in New York.]
Raph...seriously, do not hurt yourself. You collapsing a lung is a death sentence down here, alright? If you can't do it then we'll figure out something else. [Donnie can't turn on the big baby cow eyes on cue like Mikey and Leo can, but when he's got them full of sincerity they're just as good.]
Raph is weak to many things at the end of the day. Maybe nothing more so than a little brother just... very very sincerely and worriedly asking something of him. It's not fair. He's honor-bound to take it seriously.
Even if he thinks the whole point of having two lungs is so he can collapse one and use the other. What's biology, sounds like nonsense to him. ]
'ey. The last thing I wanna do is make you have to drag me the rest of the way home, you got that? [ In some way or another. Raph thinks that that might actually be worse than not being able to do anything. ] But we're talkin' high-risk, high-need right now. Everything gets a shot.
I can make explosives with my ninpo if we need it, but I can't make a new big brother. [Yet.
Donnie still holds onto one of Raph's big hands with both of his own for a moment longer, squeezing nervously, before he releases him and gestures over to a nearby wall.] ...that one. Please. About six inches thick, but it's old. It shouldn't need much.
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Date: 2025-03-19 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-19 11:12 am (UTC)And he's gonna keep relying on it as long as Donnie needs that gap bridged. ]
North goes north, Donnie. We're gonna figure it out.
[ And probably not even die. ]
Or. Or get somewhere Leo can put a portal.
[ So somewhere he knows and somewhere with like. Signal. There's probably no signals or whatever down here? Raph doesn't get paid to know that.
But, with a reluctant breath hold, he guesses he will start working on getting back up. ]
Easy.
[ So easy. Or maybe he's talking to himself like a horse? Debatable. ]
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Date: 2025-03-24 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-25 02:20 am (UTC)But in the spirit of Donnie probably being really upset about all this, fine. Raph will play calvinball. ]
Never tried it like this. [ This far away, this out of nowhere, this roughed up. Nothing ventured, nothing gained?
He guesses. ] Gimme a minute. If it don't work... move somewhere, try again?
[ Damn. Actually Raph really hopes it works now. The idea of a lot of walking for a while and stopping and then having to get back up and go again sounds... bad. As much as the stops could be rests, they don't sound restful. ]
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Date: 2025-04-01 01:53 am (UTC)Even that is half-obscured by dust and stone, but maybe not so much that they can't get back up through their original entrance to at least one more floor up...maybe.] ...conservatively speaking, big guy, what does, uh. What does moving look like for you right now? [Because if any of those hairline fractures decide to become the real thing due to a cough, they could puncture a lung and they do not have the tools and expertise needed to keep Raph from asphyxiating on his own blood down here.]
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Date: 2025-04-01 03:52 pm (UTC)Whatever it's gotta look like. [ If it comes to it. Something tells him there's not a lot of not-moving plays left in the book if the answer is different. So he'll cut out the middleman himself. Ugh. ] Just maybe... we're gonna hope it don't gotta look fast anytime soon.
[ He'll do whatever he has to, but if it's "go fast" at any point, he reserves his right to complain about it. All the better to showcase that there's clearly nothing to worry about. That's how Leo and Mikey do it, right? If they're too quiet, it's a problem? Raph can use that metric. ]
You got eyes on a route?
[ Otherwise he might just randomly pick one. All roads will lead to home one way or another, because Raph refuses to let them not. ]
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Date: 2025-04-16 03:08 am (UTC)Not thinking about that.
Donatello stands up on legs only a little unsteady, shining the light up at the pile of rubble and the potential hole.] ...maybe. [Okay. This is literally the easiest part; they already fell, Raph is already hurt. What more could go wrong?
(So much more.)
But Donatello is channeling his inner Mikey optimism right now as his one single coping method, and is making his way tentatively up the rubble pile to see if there's a) enough room for Raph to fit in through this hole and b) a viable pathway for a person with rib fractures to climb without winding himself and/or falling down and breaking his ribs even harder.
It takes a couple pushes of some stone blocks that Donnie belatedly realized he should've warned Raph about for the noise, calling down his hurried apologies after the clatter, but then...there seems to be a path. Even better, it seems like a path that Raph might be able to traverse injured as he is.] Okay...I think we can get up to at least one floor higher this way.
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Date: 2025-04-18 11:57 am (UTC)That's good.
And Raph gets a minute keeping an eye on him to just kinda breathe. Pull his focus back together. Really run the what-can-he-manage diagnostic and have it in mind when he does whatever he needs to do anyway.
They'll be fine. It's gonna be fine. He'll make sure it is. ]
Good spot, bud. [ You gotta be supportive. You gotta be nice to your genius bro in these stressful times. ] One floor up's better than stayin' down here by a long shot. Stinks down here.
[ Mostly emotionally. Physically, there's not much to be done about the stink. They are in a sewer.
Time to commit. Raph grunts and starts getting to his feet. ]
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Date: 2025-04-29 02:21 am (UTC)The noise of effort and pain has Donnie back over to his brother's side, metal arms emerging from his battle shell to act as additional poles and stabilizing limbs as he reaches out to brace his brother. The climb up the debris is...slow. Even if it was the most stable pathway, that doesn't mean much when you have a few hundred pounds of injured mutant snapping turtle trying to haul himself up it, ninja-grace notwithstanding, busted ribs in danger of just floating around inside his shell at the first slip and tumble back down the pile.
They make it up somehow, anyway.
Donatello hovers near his big brother, a hand near his shoulder even as he checks his wrist computer obsessively to see if he can connect to his equipment at home. Maybe if he can get a signal through, he can get his spare battle shells to attach to his brothers and home in on him! ...potentially running them into a hundred walls on their way here and killing them gruesomely. Okay. Maybe a different plan.] Auuugh, don't repeat this but I wish Leo was here with us. [Stupid...perfect plan bastard twin.]
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Date: 2025-05-05 08:26 pm (UTC)What if something else happens? What if Donnie needs him and he's too slow to react? There's no guarantees what happens out here, only what probably happens once they make it home. Classic turtle's lament, that.
He's starting to get the feeling that neither of them actually have any real idea what to do, which means that he needs to double down on acting like he does have one. Keep being stubborn, keep pushing. Just until he can make a safe responsibility handoff to Leo or Mikey or Pops or-- heck, maybe April, you never know when April's gonna swoop in like a boss. ]
Sure. Long as you don't tell him I agreed. [ Leo's ego and confidence must be tended to with highly specific methods. Like a finnicky plant, or some kinda exotic pet fish. ] Two minute break. Gonna try a ninpo thing.
[ See, he is so responsible. That's like resting but also working. Raph figures there's no shot he can just be like "hey fam here we are exactly come get us," but maybe there's a way to put "so things are not going good" into it? Gotta be an option, right? There's connection. ]
All else fails, maybe Raph, uh. Raph just punches out ceilings until we get sub-surface?
[ One floor at a time... Surely that will work. ]
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Date: 2025-06-20 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-29 03:25 pm (UTC)Draxum should've mutated us with sonar or somethin'. Supersoldier ninja turtles put on hold by bad floors. [ This is all Barry's fault actually. Every single thing that's ever happened ever. ] Waste of... waste of Raph's whole skill set.
[ NTS. Evolve sonar to detect bad floors and ceilings to punch immediately after this. There's probably a YouTube tutorial for that. ]
I don't think I'm gettin' our location out to anybody.
[ Enough bad vibes to get their ears perked up, maybe? He doesn't wanna say it's a sure thing. Sometimes it's hard to tell with ninpo, weirdly enough. But this sure wasn't a whole mindmeld, Raph can tell that much. ]
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Date: 2025-06-30 04:14 pm (UTC)The sonar is a great idea. Too bad neither of them can use it.]
We'll file an official complaint in triplicate the second we get back home. [Ha! Funny joke because if they even get back home, the first thing they're doing is getting Raph an x-ray and Donnie a tranquilizer. THEN complaints. Triplicate.
The sonar gives him an idea, though. He flicks his goggles back down and turns on the thermal vision.] Raph, can you hear any running water?
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Date: 2025-07-09 12:40 am (UTC)He's on that shonen jump shit. ]
Uhhhhh. [ Great question. Thing about growing up in the sewers is, you get really used to tuning out that sort of background noise. If you're not talking deadly whirlpool or lazy river gone horribly, horribly wrong, it's not usually a huge issue.
Where's Donnie going with this? Who knows. Raph's gonna try to trust the process and get his listen on. ] Yeah. From down that way, I think?
[ He helpfully nods even though Donnie might not be looking at him specifically in the moment. ]
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Date: 2025-07-16 03:47 am (UTC)...yeah. It's colder. [As if that's going to make any sense. Donnie looks up like he's following the flight path of a mosquito, pacing across the small tunnel, around Raph and the rubble and only barely managing not to stub a toe on a chunk of old, moldy brick.] Running water's going to be colder than ambient temperatures. And running water has to be running from somewhere. We can use temperature gauging to both avoid being drowned, and to follow it 'upstream,' so to speak. Link back up with the main tunnels.
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Date: 2025-07-20 04:58 pm (UTC)Temperature gauging. Go off, king, absolutely. ]
If I had to fall through the floor and get stuck down here with somebody, Donnie, I'm glad it's you. [ Big brain. Brain and brawn alliance right here. ] 'cause Raph wouldn't have thought about the water stuff if you gave him about a billion years.
[ And probably no one else would have. Well. Maybe before the billion years, one of the others would've thought about it. But Raph? Nah. He'd have gone ahead and punched his way through, and poetically also wound up getting a rib punched through a lung or something. ]
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Date: 2025-07-23 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 04:49 pm (UTC)Yeah, yeah, shuttin' up for a minute, Doctor Science.
[ This counts as a free breather, anyway. Probably good to take those where they can. Getting home might be a long haul and they'll probably be annoying each other before then. ]
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Date: 2025-07-28 05:11 am (UTC)After a few moments Donatello returns, the eerie red-blue glow of his goggles lenses preceding his arrival.] I've made a rough map of where I think the water is flowing to and from, [is how he announces himself, crouching next to Raphael and looking over him with undisguised concern. He's in work mode, but worried-about-brother mode has not yet been disabled. Which is difficult, considering he's going to have to ask him to some hard things.] Now it's just a matter of us getting up and over. Through who knows how many feet of concrete and brick.
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Date: 2025-08-02 04:13 pm (UTC)Whatever it is, we'll get there. We got a starting point and a direction and that's two more things we didn't have before. [ We are so confident. Big WE. Making it happen. ] Maybe now instead of bein' cooked, we're just toasted.
[ Love not being totally cooked. ]
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Date: 2025-08-05 03:22 am (UTC)Anyway.] Okay. Love the optimism. ...we're going to need you to smash some walls down, then.
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Date: 2025-08-05 10:53 pm (UTC)Yeah? [ PERKING UP. Raph smash? And it will be a helpful solution? ] Consider Raph's optimism even higher.
[ LET'S LOCK IN. Please do not ask about his ribs until he's locked back out. And he in turn will respectfully wait to ask about your health until then. ]
why does ur baby boy look like he has a mortgage and 4.5 kids in that icon up there
Date: 2025-08-06 03:45 am (UTC)Raph...seriously, do not hurt yourself. You collapsing a lung is a death sentence down here, alright? If you can't do it then we'll figure out something else. [Donnie can't turn on the big baby cow eyes on cue like Mikey and Leo can, but when he's got them full of sincerity they're just as good.]
bc he does next question
Date: 2025-08-07 01:37 am (UTC)Raph is weak to many things at the end of the day. Maybe nothing more so than a little brother just... very very sincerely and worriedly asking something of him. It's not fair. He's honor-bound to take it seriously.
Even if he thinks the whole point of having two lungs is so he can collapse one and use the other. What's biology, sounds like nonsense to him. ]
'ey. The last thing I wanna do is make you have to drag me the rest of the way home, you got that? [ In some way or another. Raph thinks that that might actually be worse than not being able to do anything. ] But we're talkin' high-risk, high-need right now. Everything gets a shot.
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Date: 2025-08-20 01:12 am (UTC)Donnie still holds onto one of Raph's big hands with both of his own for a moment longer, squeezing nervously, before he releases him and gestures over to a nearby wall.] ...that one. Please. About six inches thick, but it's old. It shouldn't need much.
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