tushanshu_logs

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Characters: Raphael and others
Date: Threads backdated from 3/14 through the month of April
Location: Wood Sector (primarily the dojo), and lots of sulking around the Water Sector
Situation: Raph's trying to take his mind off things after this little fiasco.
Warnings/Rating: Probably

((This post serves as two months' worth of catch-all. Feel free to use the post as a lead-in or come up with your own scenario. Or you can hit me up at

willowslament for plotting. I'm open to pretty much anything.))

It's been a bad week. A bad couple months if Raph really thought about it. And he did. Way too much. Replaying the fight with Leo, the thing with Monet over and over in his mind, his memories soaked with red-spattered fury.

It can drive a guy crazy; thinking like that. Letting it play over in your mind until it twists itself into something that makes you ache inside. Makes you feel sick. Makes your thoughts race at night and dark things flash through your dreams.

Raphael hates this. He hates fighting with Leo, with any of his brothers, but he definitely hates fighting over this same old crap more than anything.

But now Leo's taken a page out of his book and disappears completely. Leaves only traces of himself behind--food missing from the pantry, a window left ajar. His brother's turned into a ghost. Made it really freakin clear he has no interest in changing his mind.

He doesn't listen. He never listens. No one ever understands...

So Raph stays home; too afraid to venture out to his usual rooftop haunts, even to the Fire Sector, where you'd think the lure of the fight ring would be irresistible. But the possibility of running into Leo makes him too sick with bitter anger to swing it.

Without a tangible one, Mike becomes his verbal punching bag. He lashes out for no reason over the stupidest things. He breaks things... plates, the bathroom sink, the front door...

His anger at Leo has become generalized. More mad at the world than anything specific. Because it's easier than having to deal with any kind of real feelings. It just is.

Mike gets tired of it after a while, grapples to find something to distract him. He drags him to the dojo one day. He teaches kids there, and he's good with them. Of course he's good with them.

The dojo brings Raph a type of peace he wasn't expecting. A shadow of home and belonging that soothes some of the rawness inside. So he comes back. Sometimes with Mike, sometimes on his own to use the space to practice sai kata or to spar with whoever's willing.

And when he finds Korra there, he almost never wants to leave.

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His hold did finally break, but Korra was half drug down when he fell. If there's one thing Raph had, it was a hell of a grip. Massaging that out with some healing along with that ice pack felt like a wonderful idea now. Sprawling out her fingers, Korra wiggled them to get out the tingling sensation from the punch. They were both hard headed in the metaphorical and physical sense.

But she won.

Satisfied, Korra crouched crouched down on her haunches and smiled; blood still in her mouth from that uppercut she took earlier. With all that aggression out, she was content and moved her head to get a good look to see if he was visually orienting just fine.

Anger aside, of course. "Now that's what I call a sparring match." She held out her arm to offer help up, but Korra wasn't sure if he'd take it this time. That was a close match and she had a rough idea of how focused he was on winning.

Teasing about the bet could wait until they weren't looking like a complete mess.

The glower on his face is toxic enough to peel paint off walls. Sitting up, he runs his arm across his sweat and blood-soaked snout, ignoring her offered hand.

It's nothing against her personally. Not really. But Raphael has never been much of a gracious loser, and his competitive streak is a force to be reckoned with.

"Rematch," he snarls, scraping himself off the floor. "Best four out of five."

There's no way he's scrubbing floors as a loser. No way.

"I thought this was the rematch."

Sour grapes weren't going to ruin this one for her, she was pretty happy now that she got to hit someone and be hit in return. More than made up for the workout session she had planned.

"I can’t look like I've been in a bar fight before I go to work at the bar, pretty sure my boss wouldn't like that." Actually, knowing Jim, he’d just sigh and shake his head.

"So I’ll show you where everything goes with the time I got left. Or patch you up, your choice." Either way, she wasn't letting Raphael wiggle out of this one and she watched him get up. Korra put back on her boots and put a hand on her hip after she stood up.

There will always be a rematch, so long as Raph keeps losing. Some day he'll win it. Some day.

"Bet's a bet," he grumbles, fiddling with his elbow pad so he doesn't have to look at the smug look on her face. It'd only piss him off more. "Just show me what I gotta do."

He'll be sore in the morning, but he's suffered through way worse. She doesn't need to patch him up every time he gets a bruise. That's not how being a tough guy works.

A part of her was expecting him renege on the bet considering how different it was from their usual noodle bowl deal, so Korra was excited to hear it.

"Sure!" Energized at that, she grabbed his arm to drag him throughout the dojo.

Mike once said Korra could talk a mile a minute and give even the best New Yorker a run for their money. "Towels are easy, just pick up any stray ones laying around and toss them in the big bin. They get washed in the morning, so you don't need to worry about that. Pick up and fold any mats. Same with any equipment that's left out, just push them against the walls. Dusting's easy, I think you can figure that one out. Mopping's simple, just get some soapy water and the mop from the office. Refilling the water dispenser pretty simple, I always make sure there's extra jugs so you don't have to worry about them running out. I'll take care of cleaning the office clean and restocking the tea and snacks. You can help yourself. Oh, there is a hammock rolled up in the bottom cabinet to use outside if you want a nap. I use it sometimes. Pay's five juulan an hour. I figure I can give two more than the usual three you can find anywhere else in Keeliai. We've got a lot of students, but you know that already."

And Mike wasn't just blowing smoke.

Exuberant and happy, one could hardly tell she and Raph just had a rather rough encounter minutes ago.

"Did I forget anything?"

Raph lets her drag him all over the dojo with little resistance. It's an odd thing, considering his personal bubble is usually the size of Keeliai itself. But between Korra's healing sessions and beating the stuffing out of each other on a regular basis, he makes a rare exception.

Korra might talk a mile a minute, but her energy rubs off on him in the same way Mike's does. Makes him feel way better about losing the bet and the fight.

(Though he's getting paid. It really isn't that much of a raw deal, anyway. He's much more used to losing bets with a heaping dose of humiliation on the side.)

"I don't think so," he says, absent-mindedly rubbing the top of his head. He's still trying to sort through the huge amount of info he just got bombarded with. "I gotta clean the dojo alone a lot back at home. Master Splinter likes to use it as punishment for screwin' around during practice."

He says it with a proud little twist of smile. Cleaning was always everyone's responsibility in the Hamato household. But him and Mikey usually got to shoulder almost all of it for messing around during sparring. Too bad it's so worth the price.

“Previous experience a plus.” Said with a richly playful tone after they finally wind up in the office. Korra leaned against the counter of the cabinets near the sink and raised an eyebrow at Raph, her eyes slightly narrowing with a small smile growing on her face.

“You mess around at practice?“ That wasn’t too easy for her to picture, not when they had went head on with each other and made sure not to hold back any punches. She was a showboater after giving her all during practice, something she assumed Raphael may have done. But now she was curious. When she practiced pro-bending, they made time to goof off after getting actual practice out of the way.

All Korra knew of Splinter was what she had learned from Mike and little Leo, a mentor and father figure, and that he was more strict than Tenzin was with her. Clashing with her airbending master was a given, so she was sure Raph had done so himself.

"Yeah, sure," he says, casually leaning on office door frame. "Let's just say me and Mike like to get a little creative during sparring. Mike's got his Bruce Lee crud, and I like tryin' out moves I borrow off watchin' the UFC."

Then it dawns on him that she probably has no idea what he's talking about. "It's a, uh... really intense kind of wrestling. Mixes all kinds of martial arts with wrestling holds and all that. You'd like it. Some of those guys got a lot of talent."

"That does sound fun! I don't know who Bruce Lee is. But there's a lot of Lees back home, so..." In fact, it sounded pretty close to what the underground fighting ring did. "Is there any way to watch the," It took a small moment to remember the exact lettering, but she got there. "UFC here?"

"Nah," he drawls with the wave of a hand. "Gotta have a TV for that. And we'd have to be on Earth, I guess."

Crossing his arms, his eyes wander around the office in that almost nervous, reflexive way that all Turtles do. Taking stock of exits routes, orienting himself with the layout of the room, making a mental list of the nick knacks and smaller things. It's a subtle thing, and hardly interrupts the casual slump of his shoulders, the way he still leans, almost unguarded, on the door.

"At least we got the fightin' ring. That's way better than just watchin' it on the tube." His smile twists into something devilish. "I always figured it'd be great to deck a bunch of low lifes for money. Not that I mind doin' it for free."

"Well, you've got the fighting ring anyway." Said in a lower tone with a shrug of her shoulders. Not that she had any plans to go back on her promise, but Korra wouldn't lie about missing it. Her sessions with Raph were an excellent alternative though, one she looked forward to.

"Hey. Maybe we'll find some of that UFC stuff at the next landfall. I'd buy one of those television things from Stark Industries in a heartbeat if that happened." They were only useful for video game consoles and video games made by the company, and she knew Zatanna would let her borrow the-

"Zatanna!" Blurted out in surprise, not even Korra was expecting that brainwave. "She has movies and things at her place, so I can see if she had any of those!"

He was just about to egg her on and try to wheedle her into going back on that promise, but her sudden outburst derails his train of thought like nothing else.

"Yeah? I guess I didn't know they got stuff like that here."

They had the consoles, sure. Radios. A whole bunch of other stuff. But he's never seen an actual TV. And finding UFC stuff during a landfall sounds about as likely as it raining chocolate bars.

(Though it did rain zombies once. Stranger things have happened.)

"I doubt she's got anything like that, but hey, ya never know."

“I’ll check with her on my way to work. Couldn’t hurt to ask.”

Work.

Crap! “I need to get to the Brazen Turtle!” She had completely forgotten about it in the tizzy of having Raphael become her new nightly employee. As she hurriedly grabbed her bag and jacket from the table and chair, Korra spun and pointed at Raph.

“If you can’t wash up properly, then you can hang out at my suite until I get back so I can heal you up.” One thing she preferred to avoid was having Leonardo ask too many questions. Since the leader had chosen to keep the source of his injuries a secret, she felt that should extend to the fighting her and Raphael did.

"Eh, I'll be fine," he says, probing the sore spot on his jaw with a one-shouldered shrug. It's gonna be one hell of a bruise, but Fearless knows better than to meddle too much with his affairs. He'll just be glad he didn't come home bleeding. And if he needs anything, he's always got Mike.

There's fondness in his smile as he waves her off on her way out the door. "Now get outta here. I'll see you around."

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