A Spanish word with multiple meanings, like hot, horny, heated, and spirited.

🔥

Time seems to slow down. Raphael feels his heart stop, her shaded eyes falling on him. He backs up, already searching for the best way out, and she tilts her head a little to the side.

"Oh..." she whispers.

His eyes widen and his mouth falls open. "Oh? OH? That's all you have to say?!"

She looks taken aback for a second, but her light smile wipes any shock away. "Well, someone's a little touchy." She turns away and rakes her fingers through her dark hair. "You're the one who was stalking me, tortuga."

"Pfft," he scoffs. "I wasn't stalking you. I was simply...uh...following the music."

He smacks his forehead and lets out a silent cuss. He should be sprinting away as fast as he possibly can. Almost every fibre of his being is telling him to run away and never return, but a single strand disagrees and here he is.

Taylor laughs. "Right, because you just casually follow strange music not once, but twice." She turns back to him and even when her eyes are covered by her dark shades, he's unnerved by her stare. "You were with Casey the other night, ¿verdad?"

He sputters for a moment. "How did you...I wasn't...I mean, I was sort of...but you were...HUH?!"

She giggles and it's breezy, relaxed, almost soothing to his ears. "You're funny," she purrs.

"Well, you're..." He crosses his arms over his chest. "You're plain weird! Who in their right mind plays music on a rooftop in the dead of night wearing freaking sunglasses?!"

She stays straight-faced. "I can almost hear those little..." She snaps her fingers. "¿Cómo se llaman? Interro...interrogarse...oh! Interrobangs. All those little interrobangs behind your words."

Part of him is enraged not only by her avoidance of his question but by the fact that he isn't sure what an interrobang is. He'll ask Donatello later. The other part of him finds her little mutterings of Spanish alluring, almost sexy if he dares to think it.

He pouts. "That doesn't answer my question."

"I don't see anything wrong with what I'm doing," she states.

"Okay, then what about the fact that I'm a freaky turtle mutant? How are you not running for the hills right now?"

Raphael, as your conscience, I'm telling you to shut up and run away. It's not too late, he scolds himself.

She waves her hand dismissively. "Oh please, I've seen mutants before. This city is crawling with them. You're not all that special, so maybe climb off your high horse and calm down, hm?"

She smirks and he growls, his entire body starting to quiver. "I don't need your sass."

"No one really needs to be sassed, but it's more fun if they are." She pouts her bottom lip a little as she shrugs. "As for the other stuff, that's my own business and I'm not entitled to tell complete strangers about my motives. Answer enough for you?"

He blinks as she crosses her arms over her chest and leans onto one leg. He doesn't say a word, his head spiralling with too many emotions to pin down and name. She swings her guitar over her shoulder and flashes another dazzling smile his way.

"Speechless. Eso es perfecto, just what I wanted, really." She adjusts her sunglasses as she places a hand on her hip. "I guess you know my name too?"

He snaps out of whatever stupefied trance he found himself in and nods. "Taylor?"

"Bingo, give the turtle a prize," she teases, clapping her hands together. She takes a few sweeping steps forward and he tenses, wondering how close she'll get. "I'd ask for your name, but something tells me you're the...dark and brooding type." She angles her body so her side profile is more visible to him and she rests a finger or two on her chin, looking off into the sky. "You probably want to stay mysterious, so—"

"Raphael."

She stops, turning her face back to him. "Perdón?"

He snorts. "You heard me. My name is Raphael."

That smirk brightens her sun-kissed face as the wind toys with her ebony hair. She swivels towards him, eyes perusing his entire body and making goosebumps erupt all over his skin.

"Raphael..." she repeats, her tongue rolling the "R" effortlessly. He feels his gut twist and warmth floods him. She gazes at him for a moment. "Encantador."

His mouth feels unnaturally dry. "I don't know Spanish."

She smirks a little wider. "Lovely," she repeats. "I said that your name...is lovely."

"That's not the right word to use, Princess." He rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck a little. "I ain't lovely."

"Nicknames already? That's funny," she says with another head tilt. "I'll say it again, but you're funny, Raphael."

"You're still weird."

She lets out a breezy laugh. "Yes, but that's better than being normal. Being like everyone else is so mundane, so boring...everyone needs a little bit of excitement in their life, don't you think?"

He swallows and tries to force all shock, all need from his face, but that's exactly what he wants: excitement. Something that will get his blood pumping, something that will make him feel like a ninja again.

He rolls his eyes, another indifferent huff leaving his body. She steps closer, only a few inches between them, and he leans back and presses his lips into a thin line. She reaches over and gently touches the lightning chip in his plastron, a playful, almost flirtatious, smirk crossing her lips. He gulps as that warm, tingling feeling socks him in the gut yet again. Her eyes are still invisible behind her shades.

"You're weird too, Raphael," she comments. She leans a little closer, making his heart rate pick up. Another fleeting smirk crosses her countenance. "But...I like weird."

She winks, turning around and heading off the rooftop before he can say another word. The red-masked turtle stares after her, his heart racing uncontrollably and his eyes wide. His legs feel like jelly and he's surprised that he hasn't fallen over yet.

Once again, he played the cat, but to a different mouse.

Only then does he remember what he was going to ask her about in the first place. He places both fists over his eyes and groans in frustration, tilting his head back to the sky. He sighs as he drops his hands, lingering with his eyes on the few twinkling stars for a moment.

"I'll just...talk to her later," he mutters.

Just as he turns to go back to the lair, wailing sirens pierce the air as police cars go streaking by on the street below. Raphael frowns as he changes his course and follows the cars. They're fast, but sirens are easy to follow.

Only a few streets away, the police cars squeal to a stop in front of a warehouse. The officers climb out and race into the building with their guns held in front of them. Raphael slips into the shadows surrounding the area, watching with blazing white eyes. The policemen and women don't emerge for a while, but when they do they look disgruntled and tired.

One officer moves to his cop car, the one closest to where Raphael is hiding, and he reaches in and grabs his CB radio. He stops for only a second to run his hand over his sepia-toned face, exhaustion carving lines at edges of his eyes and mouth.

"Break in at warehouse near Bleecker and Sullivan," he reports. "No reported missing items as of 12:47 a.m, but will conduct another thorough search at later time. Possible Purple Dragon activity."

The officer keeps talking as Raphael slinks off towards the building. He crawls inside a blown out window, landing softly within the dark space. He readies his sais with the sound of their ringing metal echoing in his ears. He slinks around the old boxes and various vacant equipment, seeing nothing of any importance.

His toe catches on a small object as he walks, sending it skittering across the floor, and he flinches as he listens to anything that might have been alerted. No one comes. He takes a deep breath and moves closer to the object, sheathing his sais as he leans down to pick it up off the ground. It's a pair of sunglasses, not that much different from Taylor's pair. He frowns as he examines them. They aren't dusty or broken, in fact, they look rather new. Why would a new pair of sunglasses be lying around in an old warehouse?

As he turns the glasses, the reflective surface catches a spot of glowing sea foam green light. He gasps and turns around, slipping the glasses into his belt as he moves towards it. He shoves a few boxes aside and the glowing gets a little brighter. His eyes widen at the sight of a puddle of mutagen laying splattered on the floor with nothing and no one around it.

"Aw, shell," he mutters.