[Open] Trying Not to Fall Apart

[purplexing]

Who: Donnie purplexing and you!
What: Oh you know, just an average week in the life of a teenage mutant ninja nerd
When: Early June before things start to really implode
Where: Central
Content Warnings: N/A, will update as needed



can't sleep something will eat me - Apartment
It's easier to sleep when you run yourself ragged and let yourself pass out. Then there's a seventy percent chance that you'd be too exhausted to dream. That hadn't necessarily been his plan but it had been more or less effective the night he, Leo and Accelerator had come back from their tech heist. Since then, sleep had been...elusive.

While it's not unusual for Donnie to pull late to all-nighters, he's been leaning on such practices extra hard lately. It's easier to get away with when he's got actual projects. Guy's telescoping stun baton gets done relatively quickly in this regard. The game systems they'd found at the recycling center have been reappropriated into a single gaming system and they now had a high-definition projector that freed them from the constraints of a flatscreen TV. Spare phones have been repaired, wiped and upgraded in the case that they might run into anyone who needed a phone or just didn't trust the ones the Guild handed out.

But even productive turtle teens need sleep, and whenever he succumbs to it, it's always fitful and ends up with him clawing his way to wakefulness, away from the blood-filled nightmares with the grasping, reaching hands and tendrils. Sometimes he stays in his room, other times he slips out to sit in the kitchen wrapped around a cup of coffee or huddled under a blanket on the couch, reading a book or poking around things on his phone. If his head's clear enough then he'll do some late night work dismantling something or another, or work on repairing circuitboards.


third time's a charm - Sewers
The whole point of having a lair deep in the sewers is so people can't get to it easily. The sewers are already a maze, but thanks to the flooding from all the rain last month, Donnie's managed to get a decent amount of it mapped out with the aid of his mystic-tech. They aren't as convoluted and full of abandoned places like New York, but he and Leo had finally found a promising location.

Moving things into a new lair is never much fun. They'd already had to rebuild their home once, after all. Here at least they don't have too much stuff to worry about, but then they are still basically starting from scratch. Priority had gone to hauling their ill-gained goods down there once basic setup had been handled, some tidying up (okay, a lot of tidying up), and initial security measures installed. With things stirring in the world above, Donnie's not taking any chances.

There's still a lot to do, but they've got this much done. It's just a shame that they have to do this at all after getting so used to living almost normally.


what a town - Around Central
Life still goes on, even when you're trying to play things cool after being mildly (?) traumatized, even when there've been drastic changes in the meta-world.

There are library books to be returned, after all, and if Donnie can't sneak-borrow more by using Leo's card, he can at least read things there, his earphones bumping some techno or K-Pop (it's catchy okay) so he doesn't accidentally nod off. It's an attempt, anyway.

Coffee runs go without saying, and there's something nice about being able to sit in a cafe enjoying an iced latte. It's a change of atmosphere and he can more or less blend in with others who are here tapping at their laptops and tablets. Kind of. Other times he'll just be grabbing a drink to go, so one might catch him all purple hoodied up on his way to or from.

It might be weird be hard to believe, but Donnie has other hobbies, which is why at some point or another one might come across him carrying a small cardboard box with a variety of plants ready to be repotted. The backpack slung over his shoulder holds a few pots and some potting soil. He's a turtle on a mission and nothing is keeping him from working on a balcony garden. Alternatively one can find him perusing the selection at a small plant nursery or shop.


that other option - Wildcard
(Got any other ideas/requests? Have at it or ping me on discord or the plork!)

Comments

sewerrrr

[faceguy]

Tech stuff may be over his head, but Leo has been through the build-a-lair rigamarole before, and he’s an old hand at it now. He helps with cleaning, and lets Donnie take the lead in setting things up, moving whatever he says to move, holding whatever he says to hold, screwing whatever he says to screw.

It’s good to have his hands moving, to have something to do. Since the quarantine, Leo hasn’t been going to school again, and as weird as it was to be going to school at all, it’s weird again to not have it taking up his time. He can fill the void with hobbies for awhile, but too much free time makes him itchy.

In that way the lair setup has been good. Even though it would be more ideal to not need it at all.

Leo supposes it’s a universal constant that his family will never truly be accepted, never truly be safe. All the “normal people” stuff he told Accelerator he was going to do this summer sits on a sad abandoned to-do list at the back of his mind that he tries not to think about. All the “normal people” stuff he wanted to do with his brother may never happen.

It’s not like Leo hates being a mutant turtle or anything. He just wishes the rest of the world saw what he sees.

But they don’t and so, the lair.

He’s just finished zigzagging string lights over the ceiling. It reminds him of the old lair that way, if less extravagant. It gives him a warm feeling of nostalgia that the apartment could never provide and he holds on to that silver lining.

“Alright, Dee.” He slides down the ladder to the floor. “What’s next?”

wildcard let's do thiiiis

[levelshift]

This is probably a dumb idea.

No, no. Accelerator is sure this is a dumb idea.

When his calculation assistance device is in normal mode he isn't a fighter, certainly not a melee fighter. He can't even walk on his own in normal mode. Esper mode is a totally different story, but the root of it is the same: he isn't a fighter. He's never been a fighter, since all of his fights except for two have been one-sided slaughters. It wouldn't be fair to the losers to call them fights, since those idiots never stood a chance against him.

That's why he should've insisted this was a waste of time and stayed home, instead of coming out to the abandoned warehouse where they had previously practiced for the recycling facility heist. But he isn't, oh no. He's here with his crutch, helpfully updated by Donnie so the cane portion can fully detach while extended, ready to learn how to use the damn thing to fight, even though he's either going to be a miserable failure or break the crutch.

But he keeps on thinking about how Kihara had nearly killed him with only his fists, and how he doesn't want to be in that situation ever again. Then he thinks about how that level 0 had knocked him out with only his right hand and how, ever since that day, he's picked up a habit of finishing off enemies by punching them out with his own right hand....

He sighs. "This is a stupid idea. That's the last time I'm saying it."

Can't Sleep

[effiomsfavorite]

Homunculus physiology is fairly straightforward: efficiency above all else. This means that, provided he isn't burning too much aura or recovering from injury, Huvrye needs to eat and sleep fairly infrequently - less than once a week on average. It's nice to try new food; it's nice to share a meal with the people he cares about; and he'd certainly sacked out hard when he'd been healing a pair of gunshot wounds; but aside from that, he's generally very much Awake.

Which makes it easy to notice that Donnie is too. The difference is, he's pretty certain Donnie needs to sleep, which makes this worrying.

It's a night when he'd thought Donnie had finally gone to bed. He's pouring himself a cup of coffee in the middle of the night (the caffeine gets filtered out of his system too quickly to have any effect) when Donnie comes out into the kitchen. If it were morning, Huvrye would simply pull down the purple mug and fill it too; as it is, sunrise isn't for hours, and he's concerned. He's situated in front of the coffee maker already, which is a good enough deterrent, and he looks at Donnie, concerned. "Everything okay?"