#reality check mention

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Psychotic System Culture is...

Being incredibly grateful that your partner is so understanding and patient

Being able to feel safe with them enough to take your medicine despite the active paranoia/delusion that's been stopping you from taking them for a few days

Knowing they won't ever cross boundaries, no matter your state of mind, and trusting them to help you reach a safe/rational decision without reality checking you/making it worse

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[slavhew]

dreaming of friends

[pose reference: Reunion by Salman Toor (2018)]

[glitcheslikeslego]

sits and stares at my laptop like it’s a camera

okay SO–

my Li Jing Parenting Analysis (this right here) has been getting many mixed replies, and i wanted to make this post to sorta explain something to everyone.

every single one of my Li Jing Analyses are based on the LMK story and LMK alone, mainly what’s shown on screen in the show. LMK is very loose when it comes to JTTW and any other mythos it's based off of, since it’s not technically a direct continuation, but instead a lego show with it’s own spin and adaptation on the original story.

that’s what i’m basing my analyses on and not anything from the original mythos and stories, since it’s been shown time and time again how these legos are completely different to the actual original versions, aside from sharing certain defining characteristics and names.

so long story short, LMK is technically it’s own very, very loose adaptation of JTTW that can technically act as a standalone story and not lean on the og mythos heavily aside from characters that show up, and that's the version i use for my LMK analyses since……. it’s LMK characters i analyze. 

and i want you to sit and think for a second

y’all are arguing over this ^

a literal piece of plastic that sells for $36 at the highest, and $25 at the lowest

literally the only way this piece of plastic can hurt you is if you step on it, and i think that says more about you than anything :/

[jumpingintothefrey]

I'm legit done with the Earth ass kissing tbh. She befriended the person who abused Lunar (Clone or not, he still has those memories and hasn't apologized, and even OWNS UP TO THEM.). Did she deserve what happened? No. Should Lunar have attacked her? HELL NO. Did Lunar have the right to be pissed off at her for befriending the abuser? YES, HE DOES. It's pure common sense to NOT TO BEFRIEND THE ABUSER, EARTH. (Before ANYONE comes at me about him being a clone, He has all the memories and claims all the actions of the original. STOP. MAKING. EXCUSES. FOR. ECLIPSE.)

I am so, so tired of these abuse apologists. I'm glad she's okay, but the brat needs to look at the bigger picture. Neither of them are in the right. Especially since they expect him to get over trauma after only a YEAR. It doesn't work like that at all- It's hard enough to get help or want to accept that they need help, why tf do they think a year is enough time?!

This arc honestly pisses me off so much because of how offensive this comes off as.

(Gonna edit this in so people know this, but this is NOT an attack on Kat herself. She isn't a terrible person, and if people are seriously attacking her over this shit, they need to straighten their ass the fuck up.)

[beanghostprincess]

we gotta start giving luffy more credit for his emotional intelligence and empathy because i don't think y'all are aware of how fucking smart this lil dude really is

[hexastitchimera]

Hey friends, I've noticed that it's that time of year where people are being nasty, specifically and especially to us madfolk. If you've gone through that personally, I'm very sorry, and you have my solidarity & support.

However, if you'd like to know something that helps me a lot, is in relation to the dreaded rhetoric of:

[ TW: reality questioning / gaslighting ]

|

"Reality is a simulation!!"

"Life is an illusion!!"

"You can't prove anybody else exists!!"

|

[ /End TW ]

And all the others exactly like them.

Though I used to be very distressed over these claims, I've found a way to cope with them that doesn't involve lying to yourself and your rightful anxieties. If anything, it can foster a better sense of trust in ourselves, as well as a confidence boost.

When this rhetoric pops up, I tell myself:

"This does not and will not change how I have been living thus far. I will continue to live my life as usual."

"Even if that was true/real, there is inherent power in being unaffected and living life as usual despite knowing so."

And, most importantly, "MY lived experience is my LIVED experience, illusion or not."

Nothing about ferociously affirming- or denying- any aspect of what is "truly real" or not. You are focusing on and validating the experience of the most important POV in your existence, which is to say yourself and your own.

Though I am fully aware that, in the heat of the moment, our brains will respond in protective albeit intense ways, practice practice practice. Personally, I had to coax myself for nearly a month's worth of episodes before this technique started digesting.

Once your brain makes the pathways and connections however, you will find that it gets easier. It doesn't have to ever be "cured"- I still get paranoid myself over reality- but it can be mitigated for YOUR safety and comfort.

Because at the end of the day, YOU are here. YOU deserve nothing but peace, safety, good health, good company, and good times. Never let anybody- especially non-madfolk and psychiatry- tell you otherwise.

Love & Solidarity to you All,

- Delta 💜

[saym0-0]

guyysss i have such a good angsty teen/human au brewing in my brain,, gem and grian's snails are involved. they're these guys

(african giant land snails)

au rambling under the cut vv

basically the au follows gem, from when her house blows up due to a gas leak when shes at a sleepover at her friends house (sausage pearl and grian) when shes 14 through her working through her trauma from that event and into adulthood

its more fleshed out than that i promise 🫶🫶

grian has two pet snails and immediately gives one to gem when he finds out she's staying with them for a few weeks because her house blew up

fwhip and gem are twins and fwhip got very blown up oops. hes an ambulatory wheelchair user and an amputee (his right leg below the knee). he doesn't get a prosthetic fr a long time bc they're not a super well off family in the first place so he prioritises a good wheelchair and you know. a house. over a prosthetic for a pretty long while (a few years at least)

sausage is their half brother but lives with pearl and grian (and impulse! hes their dad. and maybe skizz. i think it would be funny if they adopted three kids together as homies) because his dad died and their family wasnt in the right financial situation to support three children. at least he stayed close?

uh yeah theres still more to it but still. gem gets a skateboard at some point and she and fwhip race down hills to see whos set of wheels is the fastest

[cabinetduo]

there's a weird exdsmp fan renaissance going on w tik tok and twitter rn and. no one has mentioned ctubbo, like who cares or whatever but like, it's getting scary out here. I'm a little scared to say it but is ctubbo..underrated?

[lucalicatteart]

-- Poorly Constructed Enchanted Tool --

A small tool carved from a fruit tree seed. Energy to power the enchantment has seemingly run-out long ago, and the method of recharging is unknown - but, based on the appearance, it's very likely that this was once used for detecting magic. Usually, looking through the glass center would highlight areas of higher magical energy concentration present in the viewer's environment, even if they were otherwise obscured to the naked eye. While this form of enchantment itself is highly advanced, the craftsmanship of the item is far less neat or complex than what might be typically seen in similar devices. It may have been made as part of training/practice, or as a hasty replacement for a previous tool that had broken.

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Tw: Talk of reality checking & sanism

Psychotic plural culture is wanting to talk to people about your plurality, but knowing that they'll just write you off as "crazy," say it's just psychosis, and forcibly reality check you even though the reality checking is the thing that's actually harming your mental health.

<-w->

[megumi-fm]

hi i have been inactive for a while due to the chk chk boom. hope you understand.

[smimon]

Breaking: Turning fomo into sour grapes can make you lose interest in the thing that's supposed to be fun

[roseverdict]

Normally this would be the part where I put the title of the fic, but for Pacing Reasons I'm not gonna yet. Yeehaw.

In the year 2012, in a universe where adult mutant ninja turtles have an impressive world-saving resume dating back to when they were just teenagers, Mikey has a scheduled patrol as his part-time hero persona, the Turtle Titan.

In the year 2018, in a universe where magic is always plucking at the edges of the world and where a supernatural library serves as both a pillar of reality and a safe place for powerful magical artifacts, the staff of that very library all look forward to what will hopefully be an uneventful day with no danger of any kind.

It sure would be a shame if an old enemy from someplace adjacent to the turtles turned up alive, well, and ready to cause multidimensional trouble.

The Turtle Titan is an official member of the Justice Force! Of course, I'm only on duty every third Wednesday of every fourth month. And February 29th... when there is one.

- Michelangelo Splinterson, TMNT 2003 S5E6 "Membership Drive"

(You can also read on AO3 if that's your thing! I do a little fiddling with work skins in that one too so it'll look a smidge different at one specific part :D)

〜

"Where is it you are going in such a hurry, my son?"

Mikey paused in the middle of his mad dash for the lair's entrance, his superhero gear halfway between "in his arms" and "in place on his body." "It's February 29th, Sensei, so the Turtle Titan is on patrol tonight."

Splinter's eyebrows rose, and his ears fell back down from an alert position. "Ah, I see. Well, don't let this old rat keep you."

Mikey quickly wrangled his gear the rest of the way on, and the Turtle Titan gave his father a quick, tight hug. "I'll kick plenty of shell, don't worry."

"That, at least, has never been a fear of mine," chuckled Splinter, patting the Turtle Titan's shell before releasing him.

There came a distant yelp of frustration from Raph, and the Turtle Titan snickered and darted off. "Be back in the morning!"

"MIKEY, WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU-!"

"Love you too, Raphy!" called the Turtle Titan over his shoulder as he sprinted away, Raph's sais stuck in his belt right where he'd stashed them next to his nunchaku.

He left Raph's annoyance behind with a spring in his step, and he took the first opportunity he could get to hop topside and take to the rooftops. The Turtle Titan didn't need to hide in the shadows, not like Michelangelo Splinterson still did; the Turtle Titan was a known member of the Justice Force and someone people would be happy to see!

After the whole Time Travel Mess Of 2005-And-Or-2105, Mikey'd had an idea, though; if the Turtle Titan could be accepted so quickly, and if he and his brothers were supposed to wind up accepted by society by the turn of the century, then maybe the Turtle Titan was at least one reason why the Splintersons were able to walk around under the sun a hundred years into the future.

Man, his life was weird.

The Turtle Titan gave himself a little shake and started his run to Meeting Point Delta-Omega- or rather, the roof of the pizza place on Laird Avenue that had opened up a few years back.

His patrol partner was already there by the time he showed up, and the Turtle Titan broke into a grin. "Nano! How's it hanging, Squirt?"

Nano turned to greet him, a grin of his own on his metallic face. "I am still seven inches taller than you, Turtle Titan."

"Six-point-nine inches, and I'm still gonna catch up to you one of these days!" The Turtle Titan wagged his finger at Nano with a smirk. "It's my prerogative as your cool older brother-ish to butt heads with you on this, remember?"

"Don't you mean 'butt your head against my armored shoulder?'" asked Nano too-innocently.

The Turtle Titan cackled and gave Nano's back a hearty smack. "You've learned well, my padawan!"

Nano chuckled with him, then gestured out towards the rest of the city with his head. "Shall we commence patrol?"

"Sure thing, Tiny!" The Turtle Titan charged over the edge of the roof with a whoop, his grappling hook whirring as it yanked him up to the neighboring rooftop.

Nano lifted off and flew after him, and the two of them spent the first ten, maybe fifteen minutes of their shift in amicable silence, save for occasionally dropping in to stop a mugging or a bank heist they happened across.

Then Nano turned to the Turtle Titan on an empty rooftop and asked, "Wasn't the Foot Clan HQ abandoned in 2010?"

The Turtle Titan blinked, and Mikey turned a grim look to Nano. "Yeah, as far as we know. After that whole thing with too many Shredders and the multiverse almost collapsing back in '09, Karai said she was gonna have the Foot 'go back to their roots' or something. Why do you ask?"

"Because there seems to be a massive influx of energy at the top of the building," said Nano, pointing over Mikey's shoulder.

Mikey whirled around, his Turtle Titan cape swishing behind him, and he immediately caught sight of the ball of sickly energy crackling right where Nano said it would be.

"Oooooh, Mikey no likey," said he with a grimace.

The two of them shot off for the allegedly-abandoned skyscraper without another word.

There was no motion at the base- at least, not outside the usual late-night NYC traffic- and there were no lights on inside or silhouettes in the windows.

The only light came from the crackling ball of energy on what had once been the helipad.

And right as he and Nano landed on the outermost part of the roof, even the crackling ball of energy fell dim.

And

Mikey

froze.

The person standing in the middle of the array of machinery that decidedly did not belong there wasn't human, turtle, AI, or even space alien.

The person standing in the middle of the array of machinery that decidedly did not belong there was a rat that he'd last seen either less than an hour prior or the better part of a decade ago, depending on one's point of view.

The Sliver looked somehow more unkempt than the last time Mikey had seen him, with his warlord getup hanging on by a thread and his overachieving mane of fur matted in places that Splinter had never allowed to go unwashed on his own body, even in Mikey's earliest memories. Mikey would even dare to say he looked mangy.

The Sliver hadn't seemed to have noticed Mikey or Nano yet, preoccupied with taking stock of himself as he was.

At the edges of his vision, using the prototype messaging system Donny had put together as a favor for the Justice Force that Mikey kept in his Turtle Titan hood, Nano asked, You know him?

Mikey nodded grimly and subtly reached for his left glove, typing back a response: the whole Thing back in 09 wasnt my first or only brush with the multiverse. meet an evil version of my dad from a universe where my bros and me fill the role of the justice force- the Sliver. last i saw him, he was supposed to be dead, and good riddance tbqfh.

Nano's jaw hardened.

The Sliver brought a hand to his head with a groan as he pushed himself to his feet, lit brightly enough by the machinery around him that it was child's play for Mikey (in his dark Turtle Titan gear) and Nano (quickly camouflaging to the dim hues of the city below) to sneak around and get a good look at the main screen of the hodgepodge of metal the Sliver had brought with him.

At its center, there sat an oldsy-timesy compass-looking thing with a generic plane shape in place of a needle, and as the duo watched, the outer rim slowed from a wild whirling to something more easily legible, showing…a completely normal compass rim thingy.

Mikey really wished Donny was there to help identify whatever the thingy was. Heck, Leo knew enough about solo navigation that he might have had an idea.

Honestly, any of his brothers would have been a blessing right then.

He'd needed his brothers' alternates and his own to even pull the wool over the Sliver's eyes last time, and while he was several years wiser nowadays, so was the Sliver.

"Yes…yes! I am close!" the Sliver chuckled darkly as he interpreted the display. "I am finally in the correct great dimensional tree!"

What is he talking about?

well, given how he was trying to bring his sons to the dark side or kill them for refusing when we presumedly ended up killing him last time, id bet he's trying to get back for revenge reasons or something

*Presumably.

Mikey let his lips twitch into a little grin at Nano's correction before flattening them out again.

he had a machine that would eradicate all life except those lives within a specific area when i first fought him, it was a last-ditch effort to force me and my bros' counterparts to join him. we reversed it to keep the rest of the dimension from being killed, but if he was able to build it once, he could proabbly build it again

*Probably.

And if he gets back to his home dimension, he most likely will.

exactamundo. quick rundown: the alt turtles each had specific powers, but the sliver has all of them- electricity, super strength/size-changing, the ability to turn to goop/shapeshift, and grav manip. ntm he's like. THE Expert on the things. it took all five turtles including me to beat him- we're GONNA want backup.

Mikey and Nano shared a nod, and as Nano sounded the alarm back with the rest of the Force, Mikey let himself fall back into the Turtle Titan and streak forward, actually landing a hit on the Sliver's jaw.

"GAH-!" The Sliver stumbled back, but swatted the Turtle Titan away before he could attack a second time. Only once he seemingly realized what he'd done did he whirl on the Turtle Titan with a snarl. "It cannot be!"

"Can be and is!" The Turtle Titan ground out, matching the Sliver's snarl with a mirthless smirk. "Didja miss me, Slivvy? Admit it, you missed me."

"So this is your homeworld, puny ninja," mused the Sliver. "Perhaps I might stay long enough to teach you a lesson that evaded my own sons!"

He lunged, and the Turtle Titan brought his shield up to bear, catching most of the Sliver's assault against its surface and deflecting the rest to one side. As the Sliver stumbled, the Turtle Titan rushed him, intent on trying to knock him out or something-

-and a goopy green arm slammed squarely into the Turtle Titan's chest, even seeping slightly through his supersuit and reaching the plates of his plastron with a deathly chill.

The Turtle Titan squawked as he was knocked away, barely managing to remember to grab the edge of the rooftop before he flew clean over.

"TURTLE TITAN!"

Nano's panicked shout preceded a heavy thwack and a pained snarl from the Sliver, and the Turtle Titan hauled himself back onto the roof with minimal leg-kicking just in time to watch the Sliver smirk viciously at Nano. "Ah, so the weak little ninja brought a friend to play, did he?"

"If you want to call us apprehending you 'playing,' then yes!" Nano feinted as if to go for a quick kick to the Sliver's side, then hurled himself the opposite direction and slapped his hand against the side of the control panel.

Nothing visibly happened, but the Turtle Titan bit back a knowing smirk as he charged the Sliver again. He couldn't very well let the supervillain have enough time to figure out what Nano was doing, after all. "Usually we're supposed to schedule a playdate, Slivvy, and you're supposed to get my dad's permission!"

His shield-slam went wide as the Sliver leapt up into the air, hovering there for a moment before shooting back down, foot-first.

If asked later, Mikey would truthfully say that he wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten from a worm's-eye view of the Sliver's heel to caught up in some sort of goopy cocoon. However, he'd be willing to wager a guess that the Sliver had kicked him in the head hard enough to knock him out for a few crucial seconds.

He'd just call it a hunch.

The Sliver was in the middle of saying something by the time Mikey- no, no, he was still on the job- by the time the Turtle Titan realized he was trapped. "-not allow you to interfere!"

Some of the metal behind the Sliver started to move, and the Turtle Titan cracked a vicious grin. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're a bit late for that."

A haphazard metal fist with fingers twice as long as the Turtle Titan was tall came slamming down onto the platform, only missing the Sliver by the teensiest fraction of a second as he dodged.

"I would like to offer you a word of advice," called Nano from his place next to the control panel, a shimmer of silvery-yellow nanobots flowing from where his hand touched the panel and into the Sliver's machine. "Do not build weapons of mass destruction out of the same kind of thing your enemies are made of."

The metal fist lifted and came down again, this time splattering the goopy arm holding the Turtle Titan in place. The Turtle Titan quickly began flinging the goo off of himself while the Sliver recoiled and reconstituted his fur-covered arm out of what goop he had left.

(Something in the back of the Turtle Titan's mind snapped to attention: the Sliver hadn't had any issues with separated goop when last they'd met.)

"ENOUGH!" thundered the Sliver, lightning crackling from his opposite hand as he slapped it to the floor-

"NANO, PULL BACK-!" The Turtle Titan screamed, already running for his patrol partner-

-and Nano shrieked as the electricity overloaded his systems, the metal fist creaking to a halt halfway above the ground and Nano's main body convulsing by the control panel, sparks flying from every seam, joint, and outward-facing component-thingy.

The Turtle Titan bodily tackled Nano off the Sliver's platform, the two of them tumbling a short ways to the edge of the roof before coming to a stop, Nano still twitching but blessedly not shrieking in bloodcurdling agony.

"I have more important business to attend than dealing with a ninja playing dress-up!" growled the Sliver, rushing to the control panel and flipping switches along its sides.

There came the whine of power building up at the edges of the Turtle Titan's hearing, and he felt his heart stop.

"Nano, Nano, Nano, c'mon, wake up, dude-!"

"I-I am aw-wake," mumbled Nano with a shake of his head, his voice skipping and starting ever-so-slightly as he sat up. After a second or so, though, his eyes widened and he scrambled to his feet. "The Sliver-! He's-!"

"Yeah," said the Turtle Titan grimly, getting to his own feet. "Somebody needs to take him down, but we can't just disappear without any explanation."

"Turtle Titan, you stay," Nano decided. "I have a backup at HQ-"

"And it won't change the fact that you'll be lost to the multiverse if you can't get back!" The Turtle Titan tugged him back and started trudging for the Sliver's machine. "My family and me at least have the whole chi-meditation thing going for us-!"

"But what if it does not function as interdimensional communication, Turtle Titan?!" demanded Nano, yanking him away and leaping back onto the platform.

The Turtle Titan scowled and jumped after him, grabbing his arm and spinning to chuck him to safety. "Don't make me exercise my rights as the older brother-ish-!"

-and Nano screamed as the nanobots of his arm were forcefully disconnected from the main mass of his systems, which went tumbling to the corner of the helipad before finally coming to a stop.

The dimensional travel machine, the Sliver, and the Turtle Titan were nowhere to be found.

Nano felt dread pool in his processors. "This is not going to end well, is it?"

〜

In a place that was everywhere and nowhere at once, the Turtle Titan screamed as a wall of light severed Nano's arm and sent both him and the arm tumbling back into the "safe zone" of the machine.

"NO! You'll throw off the calculations, you FOOL!" the Sliver howled, already going to swipe at the Turtle Titan with an elongated, goopy arm.

The Turtle Titan dodged away from the attack, and as Nano's arm started reassembling into- what was that, a gauntlet?- around his non-shield hand, he flung the shield into one of the important-looking bits of tech, sending sparks flying. "All according to plan, you walking offense to dads everywhere!"

The Sliver roared and charged him again, and he nearly bowled the Turtle Titan over entirely. It was all the Turtle Titan could do to grab onto a piece of metal sticking out at an odd angle and hang on for dear life as-

-"Now the eye's back! Now the hand! THE EEEYYYEEE!"-

-all he could see was an ever-growing mass of turtles-

-"I thought he said 'squirrel' formation!"-

-they extended out to infinity in every direction in blues and reds and purples and oranges-

-"Doctor Delicate Touch feels nothing."-

-they extended out forever-!

-and a metal something-or-other slammed into the back of the Turtle Titan's throat, making him flinch and lurch back to relatively solid ground, coughing and hacking to get the whatever-it-was out of him.

The onslaught of voices went slightly quieter around him, with one of the voices yelling about somebody being "super fly" before fading into the masses.

"You…" hissed the Sliver. "You are lucky you do not send us careening out of the great terrapin dimensional tree!"

The Turtle Titan finally managed to hork up the thingy- some kind of jewelry, for reasons beyond him- and stowed it in his utility belt for the time being. "Me? Lucky? Perish the thought!"

"Indeed! Look around you, foolish ninja!" The Sliver broke into a downright dastardly smirk, holding his hands out to gesture grandly at their surroundings.

Surroundings which, as the Turtle Titan watched, were slowly becoming more and more solid and more and more like the Shell of Justice that he'd visited all those years prior.

"Oh, shell!" he breathed.

"Shell, indeed! Shell of Justice, indeed!" The Sliver began cackling louder and louder.

An alarm sounded in the Shell of Justice, but the Turtle Titan just turned to the Sliver and lunged.

The Sliver's head met the control panel of his device at the same moment that the superturtles came running into view, and the Turtle Titan could only manage a brief wave of greeting before the world around them erupted back into a whirlwind of color and light.

He shoved the Sliver along the control panel, setting off buttons and bells and whistles he hadn't even known were there, and the blues and reds and purples and oranges all flared into minty green with a deafening shriek before being replaced by an unfamiliar star-like pale yellow.

The Sliver shrieked in rage, and he probably said something as he did, but the Turtle Titan couldn't make it out over the worrying creaking of the dimension-jumping machine, the two arches crossed over their heads beginning to visibly warp.

The Turtle Titan's footing slipped, and he had to grab onto a metal outcropping one more time or risk being lost to the-

-"Welcome to endless wonder."-

-there weren't any turtles-

-"Let's go steal a-"

-why weren't there any turtles-

"-the Serpent Brotherhood from-"

-he'd thought the multiverse would collapse without any turtles-

-and the whirlwind vanished from all around him, leaving him with only the natural laws of physics spinning him, the machine, and the Sliver in circles as they plummeted from a clear blue sky.

"YOU IMBECILE!" the Sliver shrieked as they fell. "We are further now than I have ever been!"

The Turtle Titan hauled himself back onto the platform, pulling against the spinny force threatening to chuck him clear across the sky if he slipped. "Sucks to be you then, huh?"

The Sliver snapped his teeth furiously at the Turtle Titan, but then his eyes widened and he leapt from the platform entirely.

The Turtle Titan only managed to see the approaching sea, process that it was getting scary close, scary fast, and take the deepest breath he'd ever taken in his life before he and the Sliver's machine crash-landed into the ocean in a splash big enough that it would probably make for breaking news in a few minutes.

If this dimension even had the concept of breaking news, anyway.

As the Turtle Titan made sure what little he had of Nano hadn't shorted out in the water, and as he pushed away from the machine and started swimming for a promising-looking sewer-like tunnel in the distance, he wondered idly in the back of his mind-

-where exactly might the news of their crash-landing break first?

〜

In the annex of a library accessible from a bridge in Portland, Oregon, a book began to glow an almost panicked pale yellow, and the caretaker of the annex couldn't quite shove down the grimace that rose to his face.

"And here I thought we might, just possibly, have a quiet day."

[djsangos]

//went to the dr and all they did was take my fucking blood... again

[henryisabigfatbitch]

I'm so tired

I'm too tired to even type

Isn't that just fucking laughable

There were bugs in my skin earlier

I was a werewolf

And now I'm out of the delusions just waiting for the next one

I can't be honest with a therapist or I'll end up in the ward again

I wish I could just sleep until the next good thing