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Raph

THEN, SIX MONTHS AGO

Nothing spoke more ordinary than a pair of dudes playing soccer together in Central Park. The weather was perfect. The energy was perfect. And there weren't that many people around on this particular day. There was no way the conditions for today turned out to be in Raph's favor, but it was and Raph had to thank that at least for why his moody levels were low (at least for now).

He was sweating it out with his best bud, Casey. Casey certainly looked like he had the advantage here at first— having passing and agility skills he acquired being captain of his university's ice hockey team— but Raph was something Casey wasn't: a martial artist with agility five times sharper than most. Raph managed to swipe the ball away from Casey, run like the wind without losing control of the ball, and kicked the ball into Casey's soccer net with the power of his all-mighty foot.

"And he scores!" Raph laughed victoriously, parading a victory dance around Casey.

Casey folded his arms, scoffing, "You only won because I let you."

Raph smiled. "Or because I'm the better player between the two of us."

"Whatever. But I'll be flattening your ass at ice hockey next time! How are your ice skating skills, huh?"

Raph gladly gave him the finger. "Touché."

A little background about Casey before you met him. Casey and Raph had been best friends since Raph was eight, despite the three-year age gap, so they pretty much knew everything about each other. Well, almost everything. They rolled down hills to see who could get to the bottom first, peed in the same pool, broke bones while riding their bicycles, had pancake-eating competitions (one instance almost ended in a disaster, but that was a story for another time), and this one time put mayonnaise on the slip-n-slide instead of water and brilliantly called it the 'Miracle Whip-N-Slide.' Good times.

"Where the hell do you get so much energy, man?" Casey asked once they found a bench to sit down and cool off. He tossed a water bottle to Raph. "And all that strength and speed?"

Raph made an 'I don't know' noise, popping off the bottle cap with his teeth and gulped the water down. "Maybe I was born with it?"

"Nah, that ain't it. Tell me: what's your secret, bro? Help me out here!" Casey pried.

"Nothing you won't find on the internet, Case. Just dieting and exercising. Building that stamina." With a side of ninja training, Raph added in his head.

Casey frowned. "Bullshit. I saw you eat a donut the other day."

Raph rolled his eyes. "If Mikey is allowed to have cheat days, so can I."

"Except Mikey's cheat days are everyday."

"I know."

"So how is he not fat?"

"He doesn't have the metabolism of a dying cow."

"True." Casey sunk into his seat as if it were a beanbag chair, chugging the rest of his water.

Nearby, Raph heard the perky chatter belonging to a group of pretty teenage girls in their cropped tees and ripped jeans and hair styled like the hairstyles celebrities wore from TeenVogue Magazine. As they walked past him and Casey, they giggled and twirled their hair around their fingers. One of the girls' stares lingered on Raph especially, and he would be lying if he said his face didn't feel like somebody set it in front of a portable heater. The girl shyly looked away, biting her lip and whispering to her friends.

Casey being Casey, whistled. "Did you see the way she looked at you? She totally imagined you only in your underwear! Go talk to her before she gets away, dude!"

Raph shrugged. "If I were her, I'd want to imagine myself in my underwear, too."

"You can get her phone number, the two of you can go to some fancy Italian restaurant, she then invites you back to her house where you two will—"

"Okay, Jones!" Raph cut his sentence short. "I am not like you where I can get things to move quickly on the first date."

"You're right; it's a Jones' specialty. The ladies' just somehow always come running back to me."

"Maybe because you put some hypnotic magic on your penis."

"Aww, don't be jealous. You can get yourself a fine ass piece of a woman! And speaking of women— you still haven't told me why things ended on a sour note between you and your date a few weeks ago. What, no sexual tension?"

Raph dashed a sarcastic smile. The tension between Raph and his blind date was anything but sexual— it was almost like a Jerry Springer Show. "I told her that her eye makeup looked like a raccoon's mask."

Casey looked at him with slight disbelief. "You didn't—"

"She got super offended and hit me with her too-big-too-fit-anything clutch and threatened to tell her 'voodoo-queen' aunt to put a curse on me."

Casey only continued to stare, blinking every so often.

"And I told her 'that shit won't work on me because I don't believe in curses' and that of course caused her to inadvertently reveal that it worked with her last boyfriend. With all the cursing and fwop-fwop-fwoping, security had to escort us out. At least the food was good."

Casey groaned. "Raph, for fuck's sake you have to stop pissing off every girl I set you up with! The first rule about a woman is to never insult her looks!"

Okay, it wasn't like Raph didn't know about that (he had a sister who educated him and his brothers in the ways of a woman), but he wasn't about to lie to a girl's face and tell her she looked great when she really didn't. "But she really did look a raccoon," he said.

"Regardless, you couldn't have at least started with an ice-breaker like 'how was your day'?"

"I did, and then I commented about her eyeshadow. But that girl was C-R-A-Z-Y! Like, how was I supposed to know?!"

"That's kind of the purpose of a 'blind date', Raph— you don't know anything about the person until the actual date."

"You couldn't have done a background check on her for me?"

"I'm not a damn cop, Raph. She was pretty as pie and seemed like a good fit for you."

"Pretty but psycho, you mean."

Casey threw his hands up, defeated. "Alright, I get it! If it will make the little princess happy, I'll do background checks. Deal?"

Raph crushed the water bottle in his hand. He considered flinging it at his bonehead of a friend's head, but he then retracted that idea. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, Casey, but this whole blind-date thing isn't working out. I prefer to meet someone the old-fashioned way," he admitted.

"Like the girl who passed us for instance?"

Wow, all of a sudden Raph's hand felt tired.

"Fine," Casey concurred reluctantly. "You want to meet Miss. Right at the grocery store or at a soccer game. But at least tell me what was wrong with the other girls I set you up with."

"They weren't the right fit," Raph stated.

"I need to know how."

"That's private."

"So you expect me to be left in the dark after clearly enticing my curiosity?"

"Pretty much."

"There goes our bro code."

Raph shook his head. Bro code or not, part of him decided it was best to keep his reasons to himself. He didn't know how to explain it, but it was like every girl he was set up with was trying way too hard. The conversations and the general vibes felt forced; spurious. He didn't want to go all cheesy and romantic here, but if he was going to be with someone, he wanted that person to remain true to themselves. None of that artificial crap.

Raph and Casey didn't add anything else to the conversation for a few minutes. They watched the park flood with more people, jogging or walking their dogs. A couple set up a picnic on the lush grass. Packs of wild-frenzied kids chased one another while blowing bubbles. It should be like this every day; why wasn't it?

Another minute passed when Casey suddenly announced, "I'll be going away soon."

Raph instantly looked at his friend with parted lips, but no sound came out of them. "Where are you going?"

"An assignment," Casey said. He had his complete focus forwarded to the cluster of oak trees in the distance. "Real serious. I don't know for how long."

Raph's head spun a little. If it was just an assignment, then why did Casey sound like a soldier telling his family that he was about to go to another country for some deadly-secret mission? "An assignment for school?"

"Something like that. But you won't be seeing me for a while. Phones are off-limits, too, so I won't be getting any of your texts or calls or anything, just in case you try to reach me."

How serious was this 'assignment', anyway?

"Um, okay?" Raph said. "I didn't know professors gave some special end-of-the-year assignment to their students studying law enforcement."

Casey didn't retort with an Ethan Hunt remark or some other quote from the spy action movies he loved so much. His expression was almost somber,  like maybe he wasn't looking forward to this 'assignment' as anyone hoped.

". . .Tell me about it." Then after those several long seconds, Casey's face changed and he reverted back to his familiar attitude and smile. "But anyway, when I come back, we'll celebrate by going to the new club that opened on Bleecker Street. And don't worry about us being minors— that's what fake IDs are for."

Raph chuckled in an unbelievable manner. "Where do you find the people to do this kind of stuff for you?"

Casey grinned. "When you're me, you make friends with a lot of people."

"Just don't ask me to bail you out when a cop busts you for that."

Casey tsked and wagged his finger, putting his arm around Raph and bringing him closer. "You know how I know that's not true? Because we have been best friends for eight years and you always come back to me one way or another."

"You sound like a toxic boyfriend."

"You're my partner in crime, Raph. My brother from another mother. My ride or die. I know if it was the other way around, I wouldn't pass the opportunity to be there for you and laugh over the memory looking back twenty years from now."

Raph thought about every bundle of mischief he and Casey ever gotten themselves wrapped into. They knew each other's strengths and weaknesses, the good and the ugly. A bond forged so powerfully that no force on this planet could ever break it. As much as this guy's teeth sometimes shone brighter than the sun and said the most powerful obnoxious things, he knew he couldn't ever imagine a reality where him and Casey weren't side-by-side and walking through hell together.

"Who wants to laugh with you?" Raph's face remained indifferent to try to contain his escaping smile.

"It's true what they say about you," Casey remarked, "you really are a big softie."

***

NOW

The mission was called off early. Raph and his siblings were back in the dojo, probably as disappointed and confused as he was. Not only was their time wasted, but as it turned out Casey— Raph's best bud and the last person he expected to see tonight— was mingling with Russian gangsters?Was that why he hadn't heard shit from him this whole time?!

Raph pinched the bridge of his nose. Dear God, Casey, don't tell me you've bitten off more than you can chew.

"I am so confused right now!" Mikey declared, throwing down his mask. "Did we just saw who I think we saw?!"

"I recognize that mullet anywhere," Donnie muttered, wiping his glasses he modified; he'd be blind without wearing any kind of vision eyewear. "I wonder what he did this time." He said a little louder, dosed with a high level of sarcasm.

"Maybe he delivered pizza to the wrong house and those guys made him pay for it?" Mikey guessed.

Donnie crossed his arms. "That was a rhetorical question, Mikey."

"A question is still a question."

"So Casey's hanging out with the Russian Mob, eh?" Miwa chuckled. "Ain't that a shocker."

Raph gave his sister an unamused glance. "Happy to know you find this funny."

Miwa held up a hand. "No, no, Raph. It's just you know and I know that trouble has a way of finding Casey. Like, the only way you get involved with something like the Mob is if you badmouth them, screw the same person they're banging, or owe them a favor after they helped you out."

"But Casey is smart enough to know that you don't fuck around with that kind of people. If anything, him helping me fight that Foot soldier/buyer proves he's not conspiring with the Russians."

"Even so, this whole thing just got more interesting."

"Or more problematic," Donnie interjected.

"If he's not on the bad guys' side, then let's get him to help us!" Mikey suggested. "We'll make him our inside man!"

"You want to enlist LadyKiller's help? No way," Donnie refused.

"We could finally be ahead of Shredder and The Count for once!" Mikey reasoned. "We could stop their deal with the Russians and destroy their bad juju before it reaches anybody!"

"A deal we could've ended had Raph waited and listened to Leo's orders."

Raph whipped his head around, sneering, "You're gonna blame me for throwing that smoke bomb to get Casey out of there?"

"He certainly didn't look like he was in danger to me."

"And he certainly didn't look like someone who wanted to relish scoring a big drug deal."

"The most logical thing you could've done in that scenario Raph, was to leave things as they were. Casey was not our objective. I think you made things worse."

"Why you—"

"Enough!" Snapped a harsh voice. Raph and Donnie's argument ceased almost altogether. They and Miwa and Mikey turned to see Leo, standing with his back facing them, clenching his fists. Raph realized that up until now, Leo had chosen to remain silent; he had enough. "I know all you guys want to do is argue after coming back empty-handed, but we don't have time for that."

Leo took a deep breath. It just made Raph wonder how many times Leo recited 'fuck, I need a break'  to himself whenever he had to stand as peacemaker between the five. "Although I wish things had gone differently—" Raph noticed the little side-eye his big brother gave him— "clearly, that ship has sailed now that Casey is in the equation. How does he fit?"

Raph frowned when Leo locked his stare at him like he expected him to have an answer. "Hey, don't look at me. Casey never said anything about this the last time we spoke."

"What did he say exactly? Maybe he said something you didn't think was significant but—"

"Nothing except the 'assignment'. He didn't give any details and I didn't ask." Raph paused like he thought about something. Then he proposed: "Let me talk to him in uniform."

"Absolutely not, Raph. We can't get him involved in our affairs."

"We need to know how much he knows. This could be the difference between victory and defeat."

"While compromising our family secret?"

"Secrecy went out the window the night we saved Talia and April. He won't know about my true identity."

"Enough people already do. We'll find another way to extract information about Shredder's operation, but we will not be using an innocent civilian— one whom we've known for a long time, in fact— to complete our agenda. It's too risky."

Raph grind his teeth. Leo knew damn well that every lead they had gotten their hands on was now sucked dry. Raph also didn't like toying with the idea of putting Casey in danger, but it wasn't like he was asking Casey to take a deep dive into The Foot. If they were to make any progress, some risks had to be taken.

"So if we don't have anything, does this mean more free time?" Mikey asked. He was rocking himself side to side sitting on the mat.

Leo shook his head. "No. We'll come up with something. We'll train harder than ever before. Donnie will re-check Genesis's hard drive and see if we missed anything. We'll be ready." On that serious note, he left. Having nothing to add, everyone but Raph did as well.

Standing as if he were staring down at some disgusting cesspool, Raph clutched his mask in his hand. How long until a plan would be set in motion? What if by then it would be too late and the drugs manufactured in that lab had already taken lives? What if Shredder and this Count bastard get cocky and decide to put another drug showstopper after their first success?

Raph didn't think he could look at himself and bear weight the guilt if he saw his city in ruins, knowing he could've done something in the first place. There was no telling how or why his best friend came to the position he was now, but over his corpse was he going to let another catastrophic event happen.