Raphael didn't get out much. When he thought to the racism, sexism, you-name-it in New York City, it made the too-familiar rooms of the lair seem even homelier. He had pro and con'd going to the surface several times.
Con. He was a giant mutant turtle, that practiced ninjutsu and would make the bodybuilders in the city get weak in the knees if he ever got around to joining a competition. He would be hated and discriminated against. Pro. He could get some fresh air, or as close as one could get to fresh air. Con. He had to wear an itchy trench coat that clung to his massive limbs, and it was probably too small for him. Pro. He wore the coat with a Duluth hat that he found in the trash; he knew it was thirty or forty dollars in the store and the closest he felt to fashionable was when he wore it. Con. His brothers were always wondering why he left the lair so often, almost every night or every other night. Leonardo had even tried following him a couple of times. Pro. Master Splinter never discouraged him from going out. A ninja must be a skilled practitioner of blending through the crowd unnoticed...the old rat only barred him from revealing his identity or his home to outsiders.
Con. He had to stand against the wall when he went to the local MMA cage fights, which were every couple of weeks. They were about four hours long, and while his legs were strong, he would've liked to sit down with a hot dog to watch the fighters. Pro. By attending the tournaments, he could see one of his favorite fighters kick her opponents in the face with a move he taught her himself.
Her name was Jude Ellis, and Raphael had been watching her fight for about six months before he began to train her. She was a boxer, originally, one of the best of the New York women's bantamweight class. They nicknamed her "Ellis Island", because being proving yourself to her was considered a rite of passage into the title picture. Only difference between her and a trialhorse is that she was successful. And instead of hotshots moving through her to get to the top, she was turning more than a few back to where they came from before she moved up to MMA.
Many of the others in her class were arrogant and disrespectful to each other during the post-fight fan signings, but Ellis never raised her voice, never said a word when someone got in her face. Even if Raphael would never let that fly with him, he understood why: anyone ballsy enough to step into a cage to fight someone who intended to hurt them deserved respect. But it wasn't until Ellis' coach died that Raph saw a change. There was a short tribute to him, and that was when Raph learned that her coach was her father.
She refused to fight for four straight weeks. The streak ended with one match, Raphael saw, where she put down her gloves and let the other girl hammer her fists at her face. She wasn't having fun anymore, she was punishing herself. He knew what that looked like because he'd done it so often himself. After that fight, when she showed up to do post-fight signings, Raph built up the nerve to ask for an autograph.
She was smaller up-close, though Raph suspected that was because he was so tall. Her short pixie hair was disheveled, pulled to one side because she'd needed stitches along her hairline and the blood had tinged the ash blonde hair an odd red-brown color that Raph found often under his fingernails. She wore her boxing trunks and a black tank top over her sports bra, and a swollen goose egg on the top of one of her already angular cheekbones. There were a few studs pierced along the tops of her ears, a ring around the left side of her lower lip, and her hands, which Raph had never seem gloveless, had tattoos on the digits too small for him to see. Her sun-starved pale skin was purpling slowly under her jaw, and when she sat down at the signing table, Raph saw her temple flex as she gritted her teeth against the pain. He was the only one at her table.
He dropped a torn section of his bandana about four inches long in front of her, and she opened up a new Sharpie without looking at him or batting an eyelash at the fabric she was signing. "Who do you want this going out to?"
"Raphael," He said, scaly hands shoved in the too-small pockets of his trenchcoat. He wanted to say something Leo would say, about there being more to life than hardship. Only problem was that he didn't buy that shpeel himself. Life was hardship. So why would he try to peddle it to someone who might be of the same mind as him?
She signed it with her left hand, which was still wrapped and her other hand was propped against her face. "Raphael with an 'F' or a 'P'-'H'?"
How the hell else do you spell it? Raphael thought for a second, before answering, "'P'-'H'."
"I remember you, you know," She said as she wrote his name carefully in blue ink, "You've been coming to all my matches for a while now…"
Raph felt that reliable instinct nudge his shell to run, as it had several times in the past and subsequently kept him out of the Hashi. For the first time, because he wasn't in any apparent danger and small talk wasn't going to kill him, he ignored it. There was a kind streak buried in him beneath the broken black concrete of his abrasive personality, and lately, watching a fellow fighter struggle, that streak was unearthing itself. "Yeah, I have. You been noticin' me?"
"Hard not to notice a big guy in a trench coat standing a little ways off in the crowd," She handed the strip of fabric back to him, interlacing her fingers on the table. The corner of her mouth cocked up, and she winced as it pulled at a cut on her lip, "Even with blood in your eyes." She suggested, her voice quieter, "Makes me wonder whether you're a stalker or a fan of my work."
"I'm no stalker," Raph clarified gruffly, but noticed something, "Though, watching you fight tonight makes a guy wonder...Is it just 'work' to you?"
Jude stared at him for a beat, and her battered face was haunting to look at for a second. "It becomes work when the reason you started isn't around anymore."
Without another word, she shifted her chair and got up. Raphael watched as she struggled not to limp her way to the back and the door closed behind her. He shrugged his shoulders, shoving his autograph into his pocket and briskly walked to the exit.
A boom of thunder clapped overhead as Raph's feet found the city sidewalk again, and he looked up to the blackening sky. On a good day, he actually liked the rain. Most of his time below the surface was spent training, and when his skin was hot after hours of work, all he thought about was cold rainshowers. He stood on that street in front of the gym a bit longer, feeling the coolness of the air.
Finally, the clouds busted open and their entire load drenched New York in thick droplets that soon made heavy rivulets of water flow down Raphael's coat and slick it to his scaly skin. Streams fell off his hat when he tilted his head. He rolled the toothpick in his mouth over with his tongue, and his breathing slowed as he relaxed under the rain. One of the few moments of peace he found in the chaos and crime of New York City.
He glanced around, crossing his arms. He wasn't in much of a rush, he didn't have to be back in the lair for another couple of hours. Just had to find a manhole and dive in it when he was ready, walk back home.
Not even ten feet from his left, he saw someone running after a bus that had just pulled away from the curb, a duffel bag in one hand and no umbrella. Sweats, a hoodie, and sneakers. Small, feminine form, and he heard her swear under her breath as she straightened; she turned around and Raph saw that it was Jude Ellis under the hood.
She saw him and he saw her, and slowly, she went to stand near him to wait for the next bus. Instead of being out under the rain, she chose to stand in the doorway of the gym.
Raph stared when she reached into her duffel and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Jude hesitantly asked him, a smoke between her teeth, "I don't suppose you have a lighter on you?"
It wasn't that she was young and his guess placed her as a few years out of her teens. A bit older than him. It was that he used to do that. Smoke. He was barely fifteen and found a pack someone had thrown out, half-smoked in the sewers. He'd seen people do it in movies, and the next time he was alone after finding a lighter, he tried it. He'd since quit cold turkey. After Michaelangelo found him smoking, he made Raph promise to quit in exchange for keeping it a secret from Splinter...Part of the reason he kept a toothpick in his mouth was to suppress the urge...but a lighter was still a useful thing to have. His huge reptilian fingers fumbled in the inner pocket of his jacket, and landed on the plain black BIC lighter he used to smoke with, tossing it to her.
"Thanks," She caught it, and flicked it a few times. Each time it flared up, illuminating her face, Raphael caught sight of the tear stains under her eyes. He was reminded of how lucky he was to have brothers that gave a damn enough to tell him that smoking was self-destructive to your life. She gave it back and he stowed it away, both of them listening to the rain.
"Probably heard this a ton," He said suddenly, his voice raised over the rain, "But smoking's a slippery slope to all types'a problems."
Jude winced, whether at what he'd said or her injuries - he didn't know, "I know."
"How long?" He wasn't sure why exactly he cared, but he figured they weren't doing much else. Might as well talk.
"Month," She said, tapping off ash.
Raph realized that's the extent of her hiatus, meaning she'd started right after her dad died. "I'm-uh...sorry about your-"
"-my loss?" She shook her head, her jaw set as her eyes drifted down to her cigarette, "...you know, my old man? He'd be ashamed of me if he knew I was doing this. Smoking, throwing fights...just because I felt low." Her knuckles whitened, "Letting them go to town at my face, just so I can feel something - anything."
Raphael felt like he shouldn't be hearing this. It was personal, and he wondered if she'd forgotten he was listening... but he found himself relating to her, sympathizing with her. He'd been in her position enough times.
One time, Leonardo had been injured during one of their spars. Raph had nearly dropped him on his head. They were both young, and he'd wanted to try a move they saw on TV. He just didn't have the strength to keep his brother on his shoulders, and his knees buckled at the wrong time. While Leo recovered, Raphael almost tore himself to shreds training and he never stopped. He gained so much muscle in such a short span of time that by the time he was sixteen, he could do a several push-ups with his brothers sitting on his back. He would never drop them again.
"I get that," He said at last, and her gaze snapped over to him, his green face partially hidden by the rainwater coming off his hat. "I'm a fighter too, see...Loss changes people, don't matter where it is - life or death situations, family, friends, whatever."
She was silent for a few moments, the rain growing louder as it drew on. She said, "It's not just work to me, fighting...it's like I said before: my dad was why I started, fell in love with it. It's in my blood. It's just…"
"...you aren't sure if you can continue without him?" He finished, then added, "Or if you even should?"
Raphael would never admit this aloud, but he felt that way about ninjutsu sometimes. He would always be fighting, but without Master Splinter to reinforce teachings, he wondered about the pragmatism of staying in the shadows in the face of things like hostages, sieges, and violent crime. He knew that he loved the rat father who raised him and his brothers, but this was one thing he wasn't sure he would follow in the long run.
"I know that the spark's in me," She confessed, her finished cigarette under her shoe. "I just need to find it again…"
Raphael didn't think this was at all a good idea. He knew this was crossing Splinter's line, but then again, April hadn't sold them out. And she was a reporter of all things, it was beyond easy for her to just tell everyone. Jude? She was an MMA fighter who's lost her will to fight. Raph wasn't good at comforting people and would never hold any illusions like he was. But he was good at soul-searching, or at least he thought he should be by now.
He exhaled through his nose, twisting his toothpick with his fingers. "I'm pretty sure this is a bad idea, but uh...I might be able to help."
Jude looked at him first in the face, then up and down. "You said you were a fighter. What do you know?"
She meant styles of fighting, he figured. Raph couldn't keep the smugness out of his smirk. "You want the short list or the long one?"
"Whichever."
"Ninjutsu, boxing, judo, kickboxing, Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, BJJ, wrestling," His eyes moved across the street, to a TV outlet store showing a newsfeed. He saw that it was about his brothers and his latest exploits, and made an addition to his short list, gauging her face, "Vigilantism…"
"Vigilantism?" She repeated, her eyebrows - one with a scar through it. He nodded over towards the TV outlet, and she followed his gaze. She squinted, and then her eyes went wide, turning back to him, "Wait...the Sacks incident a few months ago, that was…?"
"Us," Raph said, smiling fully now, "We saved you from a lotta crap, I'll tell ya that much."
"...Thanks," She said, and slowly, held her hand out in the rain between them, "Okay, uh...Raphael, you said your name was-"
"-Raph."
"-Raph," Jude's face brightened.
He regarded her hand like it was a poison snake for a second, but forcibly relaxed himself. He took a breath, held it as he outstretched a green, three-fingered hand out to clasp hers gently, "Jude."
She saw his...interestingly green hand, felt the scales in her palm, but gave it a firm, businesslike squeeze. It didn't last long, and when they let go, she said, expression placid, "So...hypothetically, if we were to start training...I have a gym in upper Harlem, called Gym Pugilist, closes at eight. I live right above it. If I waited for you there after eight, would you be able to come by then? Hypothetically, of course."
"Hypothetically," He parroted, a silent laugh passing his mouth. "If you were to be there tomorrow night…"
They saw the lights of the bus poke out from around a corner and start down the street through the rain. Jude readjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and stepped out from the doorway, "I might be ready."
The bus stopped where it had earlier, and Jude got onto it, tossing a wad to the driver. Raphael saw her weave through the seats until she slumped in the bench seat at the back, and lifted a hand when she waved at him as the bus drove off.
