He Was Manipulated By an Evil Prune

Unawares of the goings on at the dojo Michelangelo has taken to veering towards the living room like area where he spends most of his time second only to the kitchen in appeal. There are not many folks lingering around today which is odd. A shrug of shoulders the turtle enters the room in search of the remote which may have been eaten by the couch cushions again. The couch is possessed. Least that's what he thinks considering it's ate keys, socks, a maganize, a video game controller and the remote several times. In truth people that live in the building find Mikey asleep and take all of those things away to put back in their proper places.

Well, the couch seems to be in the process of devouring a Jedi Master. Obi-Wan Kenobi's seated on said couch, the remote is in his hand, a steaming hot cup of tea on the arm of the couch, and a tremendously baffled look on his face as he looks toward the television. There is a young boy on his lap, the kid trying without success to get the remote out of his hand. “That is not appropriate to watch for your age,” he says mendaciously as he turns off something rather mindless and violent. “No. Not that. Wait… do they actually think this is educational, talking down to children like that? No. No. This might be interesting. Look, there's a droid and… by the Force, do I really look like that?” The channel is swiftly changed until something fun comes on named 'Mythbusters'. “How about this? Look, there's an explosion, those are fun, right?”

A fuzzy faced human fighting off one of the little ones? Not just any fuzzy faced human either and 'lo the man's on the tv as well. Completely disregarding the show, and the little one save for a high three Mikey drops down onto the couch tapping at his knee with a hand. “Kenobi…” Not quite sure what he should say. “Erm…you don't want to watch the you who is the not-you do the butt kicking of a billion droids? Wierd? Don't know why you don't like flying either because the not-you is pretty good at it. Well, when the droid let's you fly.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi slides his gaze over toward Michelangelo, absently noting the differences between him and the two other turtles he's met, like filing away a human's face for future reference as someone to recognize. “I've already lived through all of that and don't care to repeat the experience,” he replies calmly, realizing that this must be the one whom Leonardo mentioned. That one. “And I don't like flying because until I came here, I tended to get shot at more often than not. Arfour does less of the piloting than you may think from watching those… things.” And because Mikey didn't actually introduce himself. “As you're aware, I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi… and you are…?”

Michelangelo is the shortest, youngest, and loudest of the brothers. He's also never grown up which will be easily noticeable over time. At the moment there are no weapons on him nor is there much in the way of clothing save for a long orange bandana that is wrapped around his head with space for his eyes to be seen cut out of the fabric. “Well, if you're in a ship at least you have bigger weapons to use. Hrm, or they just pack more of a punch. I dunno.” A finger points up towards his face, “Michelangelo, that's me! Or you can call me Mikey. Pretty much everyone calls me Mikey. Nice to meet you!” He glances at the tv show noting the project that is being worked on then laughs, “I shouldn't watch this. I've been told not to explode things for at least a week which is totally crimping my style.”

“Try flying one of those against a cruiser sometime,” Obi-Wan replies a bit ruefully, the kid in his lap clapping gleefully and making explosion noises in time with Adam and Jamie's demonstration on-screen. It might be worth noting that the Jedi's robes are carefully draped over the back of the couch, and his lightsaber is perched out of the child's reach on said robes. “A pleasure to meet you, Michelangelo,” he adds with a nod of his chin. Then the young boy makes an expansive gesture in time with the instant replay of the explosion, and his elbow hits Kenobi right in the sternum, causing the Jedi to wince and react as if it hurt far more than it should have. “Please be mindful of that… I got stabbed there earlier today, mm?” he entreats the youngster.

“Sorry, Master Obi-Wan,” the boy singsongs contritely, but is swiftly engrossed in the explanation of the next myth. Or perhaps by Kari.

“Yeah, I see your point. I'd love to give it a go but I don't think they made spacecrafts turtle friendly.” The turtle even sighs unhappily for that. The kid seems to be having a good time though and Mikey seems to settle more comfortably on the couch as everyone else seems to have done. “Injury? Are you alright? I'm not the best in the fixer-uper department but I've some skills. Do you need anything? More tea? Meds? Ice pack? Pizza? Kid removal service? I'm you're guy…turtle..guy-turtle.”

“Perhaps not specifically, but you've seen those things, you know how there are many non-humans out and about in the galaxy,” Obi-Wan replies with a slight smile. “I'm sure we'll find a way to get you up in space sometime if you wanted to. It might be a tight squeeze in my Delta-7, but I could ask Captain Solo to take you for a ride in the Falcon.” He shakes his head to the offer of all of those things. “Thank you, no. I came here earlier at Leonardo's request to help you with your infestation of nightmares,” he says a bit quietly, not wanting to get the kid in his lap all riled up and focused on anything other than the telly. “The situation has been resolved, so you should all sleep better from now on, but the when the dream-child stabbed the evil bear that was haunting our dreams, I happened to be holding the bear, so I was stabbed in the dream as well. It's just an ache,” he says with a shrug. “I'll have it checked out later by a friend with some medical skills.”

Solo is around too? Leo hadn't mentioned him! This is like …like…geek paradise! The joy radiates off the turtle and can probably be felt in space! “Oh….” Mention of the nightmares deflates Mikey's previously joy filled state considerably. “Evil Care Bears. I didn't sleep for days. I honestly thought I saw them everywhere. Even in my beloved bag of porkrinds. You've…taken care of it?” Mikey moves quickly for a moderately big guy and hugs onto Kenobi and squirming kid. “Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU! You've no idea!!! I could kiss you but …eww.” MIkey lets the humans go. “The last one was really bad. I've got a wicked scratch in my shell from it. Ding dong the bear is dead….” he hums.

Kenobi is fairly sure he doesn't want to know what Mikey's 'beloved porkrinds' are. And then he's equally sure that he doesn't want to be hugged by the turtle either, especially when it jams the kid's elbow into his sternum again. “Yes… ahhhhgk, please let go of me,” he gasps breathlessly, then takes a few deep breaths, one of which hurts considerably, but he doesn't say anything about it. “We lost the little girl,” the Jedi says quietly, sorrowfully. “But she saved you all… you don't need to thank me. Just make sure her mother and any of the rest of her family are all right.”

Mikey does peel away from the hug and apologizes for squishing the humans and causing Kenobi some pain. It wasn't what he intended as it was a rather impulsive decision based upon his like of hugging people. “The little girl? The one in the others dreams? Aww man…” Mikey hangs his head then gazes across his shoulder at the Jedi Master. “People were out looking for her. I'd hoped she'd get found and be alright. This seriously blows! I'll see what I can do for her mom. I'm pretty good at taking care of people.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi nods, quickly resettling the boy so that no flying elbows can catch him in the breadbasket again. And with the ease of long practice helping Yoda with the younglings, he rescues his rebreather from the kid and puts it back into its usual pouch. “Be mindful, young one, or I'll make you watch the news,” he murmurs into the boy's ear, and the kid starts settling down and watching Adam and Jamie again. “The little girl was dead before we even got to her tonight, I'm sorry to say. But some aspect of her arose out of the netherworld of the Force to strike at the villain at the last second and save us all. Your brother Raphael will probably need more help than Leonardo, but still… I'd suspect both are rather shaken by the events of the evening. I offered to put Leonardo in touch with an acquaintance of mine to possibly help with his old injury… it's a terrible shame that in the dreamscape, he could walk and fight normally. We may be able to help him, but he's got to be willing to try.”

“That's incredible! Do you think the Force is out there in other places? I mean…Leo said that you think he has some Force ability. I never thought it could really exist. It's so bodacious!” Mikey folds his hands together laying them against his plastron as he watches Kenobi more so than the experiments happening on the tv. “What happened in the nightmare? How did you get sucked into it? Those bears hadn't been nom'ing on anyone outside of our family for over a week now. Well, least that's what I know. Leo? Yeah, he needs time and with stuff happening around here he's not getting it. It's not his fault! Raph though…” Here he pauses squishing up his face then waiting for Obi-wan to fill him in on the deal-e-o.

“Bo… what?” Obi-Wan queries, but then waves that off, not 'waves' that off in favor of the more important explanation. “I came over at Leonardo's request, and when he and Raphael fell asleep, I was in meditation. I sensed the arrival of the entity, this bear… and shifted my mental pattern into sleep, so the creature latched onto me as well.” His brow furrows as he considers what he saw and experienced in the nightmare. “I dreamt that Brainiac 5 had managed to secure a way for me to go home… and that's where it was twisted. My apprentice, Leia, had become corrupted by Darth Vader and had tried to take some kind of revenge for abandoning her.” As if he ever would willingly. “The entity controlling the nightmare wasn't prepared for someone well-versed in mental disciplines and with the Force as his ally.” He glances over at the turtle again. “I'm not entirely sure about ability in the Force for Leonardo, but in some fashion, he can alter his sense in the Force. You do not share his ability to stealth?” he queries curiously.

“Bodacious, radical…AWESOME…” Michelangelo helpfull explains to Obi-wan with other words instead of a definition. Either way the poor man didn't want a respons as it is. “Neat trick, that! Glad you went in there willingly and had control. The times the bears got a hold of me were awful and I couldn't do anything.” The last nightmare had really rattled him to a point that he refused to sleep at all for fear of what would happen next. “Leia would never do that!” Mikey is aghast! There's just no-way dude! No way! “Man that bear was unprepared.” Shaking his head he settles some then shakes his head again for a different reason. “I can hide like my father taught me but not like Leo does. Never have been able to do that. Annoying too! I can't get away with stuff when Leo's around. Raph and Donny on the other hand? Heh-heh, I get into trouble playing jokes on them all the time.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi smiles gently and rather humbly. “I knew Leia would not serve the dark side. That was the truth I clung to. It served as my focus and allowed Leonardo to link up to me in my dream, and then we found Raphael in his nightmare. There, we discovered the perpetrator and I and the child dealt with him, while Leonardo bought us some time to do so. You have a strong family, my fine young friend,” he says warmly. “You look out for each other, like my fellow Jedi and I did together… but there is a facet you have that we do not… the whole notion of family and being willing to do for family what you didn't think you could do.” He smiles whimsically at the description of what this particular turtle would use his stealth for, but doesn't comment on it.

There's a smile and a clear strengthening of his posture when the comment is paid upon his family. Mikey's always though his brothers, and their father were strong but it's nice to hear someone like Kenobi think so as well. “Why does it have to be different? Family is everything. It's something you'll have no matter where you are or what you're doing. Aren't the Jedi a big family? You all live and work together and face many dangers. Is it the whole Vulcan emotions thing? Leo's kinda like that but deep down he has the feels. Everyone does no matter how hard they stuff'em down. Hell, stuffin'em down makes things worse. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. Sorry, Master Kenobi.”

“I'm not sure what a Vulcan is,” Obi-Wan answers honestly. “But attachments have long been forbidden to us. Attachment to things, to people, to everything except service to others.” When he gets all quietly lecture-y, the kid in his lap promptly falls asleep, slumped back on his shoulder. Obi-Wan rescues the cup of tea with a swift reach with the Force, carefully shifting the mug so it's under the tea and not vice-versa. “And there is a great difference between allowing yourself to feel and allowing yourself to be overcome by your emotions. Your brother Raphael is a prime example. He's become attached to his losses and lets them control him in ways I'm not sure he's fully cognizant of. But the Jedi way teaches a means to allow your emotions to flow through you like the Force, to let you understand what you feel and why you feel it, but to leave it behind so it doesn't control you. So my sorrow about what happened because Anakin fell to the dark side… it controlled me for so long after I got here… but your brother and my friends helped me realize that I was ignoring my own training. So yes, I feel sorrow about what happened, but it no longer controls who I am and what I must do. That is why the nightmare had no control over me.”

“Alien race…I'll tell you about it again some time. This attachement thing? People form attachements even if they try hard not too. There's no way to not form attachments. You have attachments don't you? You care for your students. You care for kids, and people in need, and it goes on and on and on. The people who have no true attachements to anything sept greed and power n'stuff are the people who are so totally screwed.”

“Raph's always struggled with his feelings and our father helps…helped him through it as best he could. You shouldn't leave your feelings behind. What happens happens for a reason and it helps you learn. It shouldn't control you …feelings…even if you're not a Force user. Nothing wrong with stuffing your face with a bag of chips when somethings gone wrong then you move on. You know?” Mikey listens about Anakin and shakes his head. “Anakin got messed up because no one could understand his feels. No one really tried to and he got manipulated by an evil prune because of it. If you struggled through what you felt you did the right thing. People came to help you and now you're in a better place. That's how it's supposed to be. Feel and move on. Feel and move on.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi can't help but weakly smile at the description of Palpatine as an 'evil prune', but his internal thoughts on the mastermind of the end of the Republic doesn't warrant more levity. “There's a difference between caring for someone and allowing that caring to fester into something that can be used against you,” he says quietly. “I'm not saying 'don't care', because you're right, it's impossible not to care for your friends or to be compassionate for those in need. It's more of a possession thing, when you feel you have to own something or that you care /so/ much that you can't let it go… such as when Anakin couldn't let his mother go, and then his wife.” He shakes his head. “It's still a very strange concept in my mind, you know… Anakin having a wife. I only found out about it shortly before I arrived here, so it's still so very new to me. Padme was or… well, I suppose /is/ now… a sterling example of humanity at its finest. One of the few politicians that I actually like and respect for not letting the system corrupt her. You see, there is an analog of both of them here in the City. The Anakin here never fell to the dark side. He and Padme openly revealed their relationship and it was eventually accepted by the Jedi Council. However, there is also a Padme here from /my/ reality, or one very close to it… only she's from the very beginning of the Clone Wars. It's all so very confusing to this old Jedi.”

“There's that. I think the problem comes in that the Jedi are supposed to not have anything and if they do they have to hide it and then it gets much much worse. Maybe they ought to teach how to handle emotional things so that it doesn't get to a point where a person can't talk about something or feels that they can't live because of whatever's happened. I know I'd be a mess if I didn't have my brothers helping me through things.”

“I like Padme a lot. Anakin too at times. He's stupid sometimes but he manages to sort things out. Oh my God when he saved Luke and owned Palpy I was jumping all over the place ask my brothers. Sorry, I know hearing about stuff like that is difficult. I had a girl flail on me because I'm apparently a cartoon character to her so I know how it is.” Didn't know there was an Anakin about either! “An older Anakin is here? That's wicked! And whoa…that's got to be a mess. Padme from your time, Anakin from another future entirely, and Han and Leia are from there's yeah? How're yall even dealing? My bro's and I are from different places too.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi musters a better smile for Anakin being stupid, as if he secretly agrees but cannot actually say so. Then he corrects the turtle with a gentle shake of his head. “That's the thing… we /do/ encourage talking about one's feelings and how to handle emotional issues. And no one is forcing someone who cannot commit to the Jedi way to stay in the Order. It is always a choice, but it is not always an easy decision.” The mention of Anakin saving Luke and taking on Palpatine causes him to nod. “I didn't know about my Anakin's eventual fate, you know, not until I came here and was told that I was wrong, that there /was/ good in him. As for the mix and match group I have found myself in… the hardest issues to deal with involve the alternate Anakin and young Padme… because our Anakin is still married to /his/ Padme. Thankfully, they both seem to be handling the fact that Leia is here fairly well… it's more of a shock for Padme, since she was apparently taken from right in the middle of the battle on Geonosis where I lost the Delta-7 I now have again. But overall, I think we're dealing with it fairly well. Anakin and I are in the process of building a new Jedi Order here in the City, one that incorporates my, shall we say… conservative teachings, with his more progressive ones. Already, there have been changes made in how I'm teaching Leia based on Anakin's example. And folks such as yourself and your viewpoints are being carefully considered. I don't cling to all the truths I used to in the past. I cannot, things have changed, and if I cannot change with them, then this effort will be doomed to failure.”

“I think you knew there was good in him to and that's some of the reason you couldn't kill him. That's just a thought and if I shouldn't have said that my bad.” Mikey honestly hopes he hasn't offended the Jedi Master. “Well, in his defense it was forbidden to have a relationship with Padme. Hiding things always leads to bad business. Or like the time I hid a box of pizza in my place at home and forgot about it and well it nearly grew legs and walked off.” Remote grab! Mikey goes into the saved programs and puts on a program about the ocean.

“A new temple? Cool. Teaching Leia ought to be fun! Most of the training she went through was in the books and they didn't say much about it just that she trained with Luke and blah blah blah stuff you don't want to hear. I think you and Anakin teaching anyone that ends up here would be awesome. It's like having two different perspectives to look at. Mr. Conservative Bad Ass and Mr. Bad Ass. It's good to see differences. Yup.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “I'm sorry to disillusion you, my friend, but I didn't kill Anakin for any noble reason… I /should/ have killed him for one… granted him mercy. But I'd seen too much death just then, and I thought he was dying anyway.” He shrugs once to dismiss his old mistake to the past. It's something he has to live with. “If I faced him here and now, I would have given him that mercy, or at least made his death cleaner. But perhaps even that wouldn't have stopped Palpatine… he'd just find himself another apprentice.” He musters a slight smile at the notion of this pizza, probably something resembling food based on the description, walking off. Then he gives up the remote without question, glancing at the TV. “Reminds me of Kamino,” he remarks absently. He's not about to comment on his being a badass.

Sad eyes are cast Obi-wan's way. Not cool! Though…“Don't think I could take out one of my brothers if they flipped out either. Dunno what would happen if Anakin were given mercy. What-if's are a bitch. Things sure would be different which isn't a good thing if your world follows the story one.” The ocean film reminds Kenobi of Kamino? “How? It's not dismal and pouring rain! See? Happy fishies!” Mikey loves this program for he can watch all sorts of strange sea creatures in different environments. “So why didn't the people of Kamino have an indoor docking place? Gees…if they can make clones where was their common sense man?”

“I was wondering that myself,” Obi-Wan confesses with a lighter expression on his face, absently shifting the sleeping boy into a more comfortable position. “I caught a cold because of that little adventure. That's why Count Dooku more readily defeated me before Master Yoda showed up, after all.” And not because Dooku was such a badass in his own right.

“Uh-huh…blame the torential downpour for what happened. You still punked Jango Fett which was awesome by the way. Dooku was decent but he totally couldn't take Yoda and ran like a coward.” Mikey sighs for that then flails his hands about for it. “Want me to take the munchkin so you can rest? The movie can put you to sleep by the time it gets to the sea lions.”

“I do need to rest, thank you,” the Jedi Master answers gratefully. “And before Leonardo nags me like an old Coruscanti shopkeeper of my acquaintance, do let him know when he awakens that if he needs any further help here, or any trouble arises due to bad dreams, let me know, and I will return. Are you going to remain on watch for the evening? If so, I should return to my quarters at Brainiac 5's and have a proper rest.”

Michelangelo giggles or something akin to that. “I don't think I wanna know but I'll let Leo know when I see him again. I'll be up for a good long time so please feel free to go back to your home and get some rest. I hope you get to feeling better and thanks again for helping out my family with the bear thing. If you need anything please call. I'm pretty handy with cooking and a paint brush.”

“You might wish to be a touch more careful about what services you offer, my friend.” Obi-Wan says as he rises to his feet and retrieves his robes and lightsaber after handing the sleepy kid off to the turtle. “I might make you help feed the younglings Anakin and I discover.” His eyes twinkle with mischief as he bows to Michelangelo. “May the Force be with you,” he offers and then makes his way out. Upon departing the premises, his footsteps take him in the general direction of the spaceport.