Raph looked around the room. He and his brothers had arrived home from patrol a while ago and they each were relaxing in their own way.
Mikey had been engrossed in completing a game on his T-phone the moment he settled onto one of their beanbag chairs. He had made it his mission to complete any new game Donnie had installed onto their phones as fast as he could. He had been working on this particular game for the past two days.
Donnie was working on finishing a book that April had loaned him called To Kill a Mockingbird. He seemed to enjoy it - he made sure that April knew of that - but Raph was curious as to why his brother was fascinated by a book about killing small birds.
Leo, of course, was watching Space Heroes. Raph didn't understand how his older brother loved that dumb show. He especially didn't get how Leo thought of Captain Ryan as a great hero. To Raph, he came off as smug jerk who thought that he was always right. He might have listened to Leo more often if he didn't try to be like that dumb TV show character.
Raph had immediately headed towards the punching dummy as soon as they got home. They had only taken down the Purple Dragons for trying to rob an old lady that night, and he needed to do something with all his extra energy. After an hour of punching the useless thing, Raph proceeded to feed Spike his nightly leaf of lettuce.
The atmosphere in the lair was peaceful; a rare occurrence in a home of four rowdy teenage boys. It gave Raph the notion to do something that he rarely ever did in his spare time: think. Ever since Master Splinter had allowed him and his brothers up to the surface, their lives had been non-stop action. Fighting bad guys, hiding in the shadows, saving New York; the entire package. If Raph had heard this a few months ago, he would have ran straight to the nearest manhole and would've welcomed the adventure with open arms. He had always wanted to be a crime fighter when he was little (the cool kind of crime fighter, unlike Captain Ryan), and he was finally getting his chance to do something useful, instead of hiding in the sewers all his life. But now, it felt less like an adventure, and more like fighting for their lives. It seemed like nearly everyday, someone or something was trying to kill them.
Master Splinter had told the turtles many times that the Shredder wanted them dead. He wasn't the only one with that goal in mind. It seemed that everywhere the brothers turned, there was a new villain intent on destroying them. The Kraang, Baxter Stockman, Spiderbytes, Snakeweed… Raph shuddered at the memory of his little brother's head hitting the sewer wall. The few hours that he had been unconscious for, were agonizing. The lair didn't seem the same without Mikey's occasional giggling or his lively presence. If Raph hadn't known any better, he could've sworn that Mikey was gone…
Raph glanced over the room again. Mikey was still playing his game, Donnie was still reading his book, and Leo was still watching his show. Nothing had changed, but something felt different. When Mikey was knocked out, it gave Raph the worst feeling he had ever felt. And he swore not to ever let that happen again. There may be alien freaks and ninja psychopaths trying to kill his brothers, but if one of them is gonna die, Raph swore on his life, it was going to be him.