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Casey Jr was weird around Raph. Everyone was a little weird around Raph, seeing as it was hard to ignore his size and his sharp teeth, but that wasn't it. So, as a confused new mother, I asked him. "You act weird when Raphael is in the room." "I do?" "Yeah. You bow, you shut up when he talks, you call him Raphael-sama and Raph-sama, what's going on?" With my brief understanding of japanese, the honorific sama was reserved for gods and royalty and stuff. "Oh. I guess since Raph-sama died when I was a baby, he was kinda deified as a martyr." "Oh. Yeesh, that's dark." "Yeah, I didn't get to spend any real time with him but the stories I heard made him sound so big and powerful and he's done nothing to convince me otherwise so he's kinda stayed that way in my head. Like how I still call Leo 'Master Leonardo' or 'Sensei' sometimes." "Yeah, I guess you would. Pack a bag." "What? Why?" "You're going to spend the weekend with Raphael." "But we just spent a weekend there." "No, just you and Raph. I'll pay for a nice hotel in the hidden city and you two can explore." "What? A whole day alone with Raphael-sa- I mean Raph? But I've never been in a room alone with him, let alone an entire city!" He exclaimed, panicked. "I'll be in the room next to you with April and Sunita, you'll be fine. We'll take you home as soon as you feel like it." He seemed hesitant, but straightened up his stance. "I'll go pack." "Pack light clothes and a swimsuit! I'm getting a beach resort!"
Just a weekend with Raphael. Two days out of seven that I'm going to spend with Raphael. That's all. My heart pounded in my chest as he put a heavy hand on my shoulder and walked me through the portal behind my moms. His snaggletoothed smile calmed me for a moment before immediately making me nervous again. His tail swished behind us, tapping me in the calves while my mom hailed us a cab. The ride to the hotel was mostly Raph and my mom talking about their experiences with the Foot Clan and what they did during and after the invasion. "And did he tell you? Junior was the one who figured out that Donny was hiding injuries under his battle-shell! There was no way he would've told us and we were all more worried about Leo and Mikey than anything else, so Junior really saved his shell!" Mom let out a loud laugh and turned to me, slapping my back. I jerked forward with each pat. "How'd you figure it out, kid? Donatello is concerningly good at hiding his pain." "Well, it's in the way he stims. When he's in pain he does finger taps unevenly. Instead of both fingers tapping his thumb the same amount of times, it gets sloppy and he gets frustrated. Then he stops altogether and starts twirling his hands." "Twirling his hands?" "Yeah, instead of happy flaps or overstimulated hand shaking, he swivels his wrist like this." I lift my arm for more visibility and twist my hand around. "He keeps his hands behind his legs to try and hide it but he also scratches the floor with his left foot." "That's really specific." "You must've known Donny real well!" "Yeah. When Leo and Mom were off on a mission, he was like an eccentric uncle. He didn't do bedtime stories or cuddles but he showed his love through other things." "Like his gifts!" Raphael-sama exclaimed. "Yeah, but I was more thinking about how he always knows how to make me feel better. When I saw Usagi sensei die and I was scared my mom would suffer the same fate, he rattled off the statistics of how likely she was to survive on each mission. When the odds were low he'd distract me by finding something in his lab for me to help with." "Wow." "Yeah. The apocalypse isn't the worst if you have the right people." The moment is cut short by Cassandra shouting and slapping Raph's plastron. "We're here!"