revivalproject | [open] I'm too sleepy to have something witty to put here

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[open] I'm too sleepy to have something witty to put here

WHO: Leo and anyone!
WHERE: Temba
WHAT: just post Mermay things + EVENT THINGS
WHEN: the days following the mermaid event
WARNINGS: none

A: Reunion (closed to Donnie)

It's very odd to be so sure you've always been a sea turtle one minute, then wake up and realize you were always a semi-aquatic red-eared slider. That's the feeling Leo is having now, as he wakes up in the workshop where he's been living alone and the world is no longer under water.

As he blinks and adjusts to his memories correcting themselves, he realizes what woke him up: a series of pings from his communication advice. Many pings from his communication device, actually. Rolling over and grabbing it from the side of his bed, he blinks blearily at the flood, then sits up straight and throws himself to the floor.

The messages are all from Donnie.

He scrolls back and sees that they cover weeks, the first a big batch as Donnie asks what happened in Temba and desperately tries to get Leo to answer, the rest becoming more periodic over time. Donnie's been trying to get through to him the whole time he was a semi-fish.

Donnie is still here.

Leo's already out the door by the time he sends a return message.

hey
where are u?

He left the factory so fast he forgot to change masks, his sleep eye mask pushed up on his forehead.

B: Stuck in the Suburbs (open)

So everything's okay now; Donnie's back, and the two of them are reunited. A happy ending for everyone!

Except for the part where they're still stuck on an alien planet lightyears from home, with no clear idea of how to get back.

Those are just details, though. Surely they can figure something out - they just have to find clues.

Thinking Donnie had gone home hadn't exactly made Leo eager to go out the last few weeks, something he's kind of regretting now that he has to walk most places. But now that things are okay again, he's out exploring, looking around all the places he hasn't seen in Temba yet. And this exploration leads him to the subdivision, and all it's semi-intact but still functionless and empty houses.

It's kind of creepy. It reminds Leo of those old movies where they'd build a town in the desert for nuclear testing.

He doesn't really have any clear aim, he's just wandering around. Though he does pause at one point and pick up a rock, then lob it through a window for a satisfying crash.

Perhaps you witness this act of petty vandalism. Do you say something to the Youth?

C: Sk8er Boi (open)

One of the good things that happened at the space port: Leo got a new skateboard! And he hasn't gotten much chance to ride it yet, thanks to spending the last several weeks as a sea turtle, but now he has his land legs back and it's time to test this baby out.

He sticks to the main parts of town where the roads are better, meaning, of course, that he is skateboarding around more populated areas. Well, populated being relative, but maybe you'll see the turtle zipping and zooming around, grinding off of the fountain or doing kickflips by the diner.

Or maybe he'll be looking the wrong way and accidentally run into you. Whoops!

D: Cheese Grater (Event/Open) (CW: violence, death (mostly off screen))

Leo didn’t mean to get caught in the storm, but when Donnie didn’t come back before it started he went back into it. Admittedly not his finest idea, but it’s the only one he had.

The memory that he, and you by extension, has stumbled into is a chaotic one.

He’s in the underground lair, but it’s crumbling, and there’s something attacking, huge and made of metal. It roars and swipes with massive, savage claws, and it’s all Leo can do to grab on to his little brother, popped in his shell. Across the room, his older brother protects Donnie from certain doom.

Whether you take a spot in this memory or just watch it play out, things are clear: this is a losing battle.

E: Something Lighter…? (Event/Open)

The New York skyline moves by fast, seen from the rooftops and not the street. Leo and his family are jumping the gaps together, and they’re moving fast.

Leo is truly in his element here. He’s been doing this for years, and he’s good at it. He knows exactly how much force to put into the jump, exactly how to angle his feet for a smooth landing. If you take his place, you can feel how it is for him: freeing and exhilarating, every jump as exciting as the last. He enjoys this feeling, the swoop of his stomach in midair before he comes down. With his brothers laughing and jumping beside him, and his dad out in front, he’s about as happy as he’s ever been.

If you aren’t taking his place, well, try not to get motion sick as the memory rushes to keep up.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The lack of proper punctuation and spelling is the biggest red flag Leo could possibly get. Donnie's freaking out. Leo can't blame him, because he's also freaking out.

we got put under a dome and everyone turned into a mermaid

Does it sound crazy? Yes. But it is what happened!

Leo pulls up the map and turns to head toward the shuttle terminal, going as fast as he can. He wishes he could portal, but he doesn't know what it looks like so he'd probably end up in the wrong place.

im fine, u good?

what

Of all the things Donnie figured could have happened, people turning into mermaids isn't anywhere on the list. Briefly he wonders if Leo's pulling his leg, but he doubts his brother would do that, not after the better part of a month has gone by without saying a word.

He closes his eyes, trying to calm himself down, blaming the coffee and lack of proper sleep and not at all some weird onset of complicated, messy emotions. He's got fifteen minutes at the very least, fifteen...okay, fourteen now, fourteen minutes to pull himself together before this stupidly slow thing finally lands.

At the next ping, Donnie looks back down at his communicator, feeling like he's all thumbs as he hesitantly taps out a response.

yeah
Yeah, I'm fine. I just
no one knew what was going on. We culdn't get back to the city

I dont kno how else to explain it dude

~~I thought you were gone~~

Leo slams the delete on that and just sends the first part. Okay, so he thought Donnie had gone home and he hadn't. He's been here the whole time. So all that depression and loneliness Leo was feeling the last few weeks was for no reason and that means he can totally drop it now and just go back to normal!

Sure.

yeah we couldnt leave either
couldnt even try
they altered or memories or smth

Whoever "they" is in this situation.

A few minutes later Leo makes it to the shuttle terminal. He can't help but pace while he waits.

It'd be much too convenient if they had an explanation. As annoying as it is, Donnie finds himself unsurprised. Why would Leo know what had happened? The following message only further unsettles him.

Altered how?

Surely they're no longer altered if Leo can figure that much, right? Donnie bounces his feet as he glares down at the screen in his lap, like that would make it give up the answers and explanations they want. He checks the time, whittled down ever so slightly. It's going to be the longest ten minutes ever, but one can bet that he's standing by the door the moment Temba comes into view from the cockpit.

I thought I had always been a sea turtle
everyone else thoight they had only been mermaids too
it was weird

He can hear the noise of the shuttle approaching now. He bounces in place and tries not to look too panicky, watching for Donnie to appear. The rest of this can all be ironed out later, once he knows his brother is really here and safe.

No, that's not concerning at all. Warped reverse dimensions, memory alterations, what can't these guys do??

Donnie does his best to push those questions down. That's another problem, another thing to think about at another time and right now, he does not have the capacity for it. Or rather more simply, he just does not care- not until he can confirm that his brother's actually okay and he's not just being messed around with. When are they ever not being messed with?

"Come on, come on, come on," he mutters, restlessly tapping at the side of the hatch as he waits for the landing procedures to finish up so the door will open.

And then they're landed, and the door does open. And there's Leo, and for all that Donnie had been prepared to bolt off the shuttle, he finds himself standing there, caught up in that pesky little moment of uncertainty. He smacks the sides of his face to physically dislodge his notorious overthink before it dives down the rabbit hole, and then all at once he's lurching through the hatch, barely catching himself from a stumble as he hurries over to Leo.

The door opens, and there’s Donnie.

Who… smacks himself, for some reason, and that’d be funny if circumstances were different. Right now, Leo feels like doing the same himself.

He thought Donnie was gone, but there he is. Probably real and probably solid.

Donnie scrambles out of the shuttle towards Leo, and Leo lurches to cover the rest of the distance. And he’d love to be cool about this, but screw it; he’s hugging Donnie whether he likes it or not.

Turns out Donnie is both solid and real.

“Hey Dee.”

He sounds cool and unemotional! Really! (Not really.)

Edited (accidentally a word) 2024-06-02 06:59 (UTC)

AGgggggh no don't do that

He was meaning to be all cool and professional about this and he'd been sure he'd had all the safety locks down on his emotions. But then Leo has to go and catch him in a hug, not that he was feeling like he was about to fall over or anything (no, certainly not!) and it's like that contact shatters any of his carefully constructed (okay, haphazard at best) walls.

Donnie tenses under Leo's arms before he sucks in a breath and brings his own arms around to hug his brother back. It's not him being sentimental, this is for scientific proof that he's not hallucinating from poor sleep and nutrition.

"Hey Leo."

He is totally not choking up, he's just super tired. Which...isn't a complete lie.

The face man and the emotionally unavailable bad boy, attempting to pretend they aren’t emotional to an audience of only each other.

Leo hugs Donnie until he’s satisfied he’s really there, which is a little longer than a normal Leo hug but nowhere near the average Mikey hug. Then he pulls back, enough to look Donnie over.

“Are you okay? Were you in Sh’ka the whole time?”

Donnie leans a little against Leo while he's still latched on, feeling weeks of tension wick off of him as he finally allows himself to relax. He's not alone again, Leo's here, everyone should still be here.

"I'm...yeah, the whole time," he sighs, sidestepping the first question. Now he just looks exhausted and only slightly miserable for it. He rubs at his eyes, no, not time to sleep yet. "As soon as the barrier went up around the city I tried getting in contact with the Agrii to see if they knew what was happening. All signals into the city through the network were cut, but I was still getting the usual pings on my other tablet so that was the only reason I knew you all couldn't be completely gone."

Where would the entertainment be then, if they were all gone?

Donnie leaning on him is the second red flag. Leo fully understands it when he pulls back - Donnie looks exhausted. Leo hasn’t been sleeping well himself, other than the periods where whatever reality warping magic turned him into a sea turtle and back put him to sleep, but Donnie looks fully ready for nap time.

(A bold thought when he still has his sleep mask on.)

“For us, it was like… we knew we weren’t home, but everything else just felt kind of vague. I don’t think contacting the Agrii even came up. And I didn’t try to message you, ‘cause…”

Leo trails off, wondering if he should even bring this up. But he doesn’t want Donnie to think he wouldn’t have tried, if he thought it was an option.

“We just… forgot Sh’ka was even over there. We thought you guys all went home.”

This is a neutral way of saying that Leo thought he was alone. Which he was totally cool with, by the way!

The sleep mask is one of many questions that spin about his head but at the same time, one of the reasons Donnie hasn't questioned too hard if this is really Leo or not. Who else would wear such a silly thing? Hanging onto that thread, brief as it is, Donnie can piece together enough and it makes him all the more glad he's there. Leo had missed him too, Leo had thought-

Oh.

Neutral as it is, the main point isn't lost on Donnie. He does a poor job at keeping it from his face but he's too tired to manage it. The thought that Leo had been convinced he was gone twists something deep in his gut, an all too familiar feeling that makes him queasy.

Oof, of course Donnie was able to put it together. He’s smart, and he was alone for a year, after all.

“Hey, don’t get mushy over it,” he says quickly, holding Donnie by the arms. “You’re here, and we’re both okay!”

He shoots Donnie a big smile, starting to coax him back toward the exit of the terminal. “Let’s go back to the warehouse, okay? You seriously look like you’re going to keel over - you didn’t work the whole time, did you?”

Donnie's face quickly twists into a scowl. "Eyew, I'm not mushy!" he insists, moving to pull away, but it's probably better that Leo keeps a hand on him as he almost loses his balance in the process. "...n-no, not the whole time. Just...most of it." He allows himself to be led off then, stopping only for a moment.

"Wait, my stuff-" he starts, looking back towards the shuttle. He hadn't brought everything but his bag's there with what he could grab on short notice and he doesn't want to just leave it there.

Leo snorts at his reaction to that, even if the subsequent stumble is not encouraging. Eugh boy…

“Your stuff?” Leo turns, looking over his shoulder. “Here, I can go get it.”

He’ll leave Donnie by one of the benches so he doesn’t fall down.

For a moment he looks like he's about to protest, but then Donnie relents, bracing the back of his legs against the bench once he's there. "Okay..." He's reluctant to actually sit, even though he'd spent most of the trip on his feet in his restless pacing. Mostly he's afraid he might actually doze off.

At least his things aren't hard to find. The transport shuttle's not the same as the ones they'd dismantled parts of back aboard the Agrii ship, smaller and with only the barest of comforts for a trip to and from the city. Donnie's bag is where he'd left it beside one of the seats. The only other thing there that happens to be perched on a seat beside it is a somewhat creepy looking robot, if only for the fact that it's all inner frame and no external plating, giving it a skeletal appearance.

Leo leaves Donnie on the bench, then hurries into the shuttle. If this thing starts trying to take off while he’s inside he’s gonna-

“Gah!”

Why the heck is there such a creepy robot skeleton here? Leo wasn’t expecting it, so it makes him jump.

It doesn’t move, though. Jeez, this whole situation is making him jumpy. He grabs the bag and heads back out.

“Got it!” he calls, holding the bag aloft.

Hearing your brother shout like that isn't concerning in the least. "Leo-?" Donnie calls out, taking a couple steps away from the bench. He breathes out a sigh when Leo pops back out again.

There's an unsettling metallic clicking behind him as Leo steps off the shuttle. The bot hadn't been moving but it had apparently been watching, and now Leo's got company as he disembarks, the robot following along behind him on spindly crablike legs.

“It’s cool,” he says in response to Donnie’s concern. “I just got jumpscared by the-“

Click click clack.

Leo whirls around and yelps again, nearly fumbling the bag. Why is it following him suddenly!?

“Is this a good robot or an evil robot?”

Oh. Oops. Donnie'd forgotten about that. He waves a hand dismissively, stepping past Leo to pat the weird bot on its bare head.

"Good...ish. I've been reworking a bunch of Robotnik's robots that he left behind but I haven't been able to replate them."

Good… ish. Well, that’s about on par for Donnie.

“Is that someone who was here before?” He doesn’t think he’s heard that name, but given the robot thing he’s guessing he and Donnie got on like a house on fire.

"Yeah, he was Sonic's arch-nemesis or something." Because that's so very reassuring.

"I was working with him in trying to figure out alternate power sources for whenever the Storms hit, and on the side I was helping him with setting up bots for security. Although to be honest his designs were kind of lame- I mean, what's the point of making robot animals intended to blend in for monitoring the area when they aren't even native to this planet?"

Oh no, science stuff. Leo is rapidly losing interest in this line of questioning.

Leo is guessing that if Donnie was able to be friends with Sonic but also help this Robotnik guy that they were more friend-nemeses. Or something. Not that it really matters if neither of them are here.

“Sooo, you want to build robots that look like those little frond guys?”

It had not been a fun time playing mediator for the two.

"-what? No. There's a few creatures in Sh'Ka that might be more ideal though. I don't think it'd hurt to keep up the camera network he'd had there. I mean, Stark has his own network here in Temba."

Donnie holds a hand out for his bag unless Leo plans on keeping a hold of it, although maybe that might not be such a bad idea given he's trying to be subtle about leaning against the robot.

Yeeeaaah… He thinks he’ll just hang on to it for now. To make this clear he hikes the bag up on his shoulder, letting it hang back on his shell.

Eyes glazing over… Networks, robots… oh!

“That reminds me,” says Leo, trying to direct them out of the terminal again. “Stark made me a Gameboy.”

Not that he has it in his possession, though. It’s the thought that counts?

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I laughed

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