Trying hard not to give her a tragic Mary Sue past. But I couldn't resist this, especially after how she discussed it with Raph. I realized that if I cut it, I would lose something I would regret. So in it stays.

"I want to be an elf," Shannon said over the phone. A toilet flushed.

He smiled, but tried to be annoyed. It only seemed proper to be annoyed at girls who want to be elves. "Are you on the john?"

"No, but I was. I drank a bunch of milk today. Funny how it goes right through. If I was an elf I wouldn't go to the bathroom and I would live forever and be taller." Sound of the institutional john door slamming shut as she left the room.

He spun his sai on his palm and resituated himself and then glanced at the clock. An hour and a half. Had it been that long? What had they talked about? He explained the mutation. She advised him to sue TCRI for negligence. She asked why he didn't go out in public more since he was so gorgeous and beautiful and he became flustered and mumbled about being too ugly for the general populace to handle.

"Well, I sure as hell don't want to live forever. Only if I got stocks in Microsoft or something. I'll probably end up living alone in a swamp someplace."

Gentle orchestral music played on the other end of the line. It sounded like elevator music. "Oh, no! I'm sure you won't end up alone! I'll live with you."

"You will huh?" Couldn't help smiling and forced it off his face.

"We could find my baby and bring him too. You could teach him to fight with those forks. But he might stab other little boys at school. But me and him will be old in a hundred years, unless we're elves. The back of my dress went in the toilet water."

Baby? What the fuck? "What the fuck? You had a baby?" His stomach percolated.

"Oh, I had a baby last year. I was awake when he was born and we gave him away to another family. Some bad nurse at the other home made me pregnancy, but I wasn't awake and didn't know it. I got fat and my mother asked if I had a period anymore and I said no and I was glad because they make me hurt and stink. So she took me to the doctor and they said I was pregnant and I was really mad. I didn't want a baby without doing anything to get it."

"I hope somebody killed that fucker. What's his name?" Planned the imminent background check for his location.

"Merritt Hope. So my mom wanted to get me an abortion, but I said I wanted him to go to a nice family and learn brass instruments and we could be a band together." Some vague swishing noises. "I'm putting a red dress on my doll Chrysanthemum because I like you."

Raph sometimes hated all of mankind. Or at least the male half. They should be more like him. He couldn't help but imagine a horny male nurse climbing on her as she lay there with her eyes open, paralyzed. Walking around cluelessly pregnant for months. He would find Merritt Hope and make sure he was behind bars. Safe from him.

"Well, nobody's doing that to you now that you know me. You tell me if somebody touches you and I'll skull fuck them."

She giggled like a child. "Skull fuck?"

Growl. "Yeah, what's wrong with that? Not polite?"

"It was cute. Because you're cute. You should come see me today. I'm going to hide in the bushes and jump out at senile people."

That was actually worth watching. "What's your kid's name?"

"My baby?" She sounded like she'd already forgotten she had one. "I wanted to name him Music, but his new parents named him. I don't know his name. I should have named him Raphael."

His face mutated into shades of purple.

"My mother said Music was a stupid name and people would make fun of him. Do you have babies?"

"Fuck no!" He grabbed a half empty potato chip bag off the floor and crunched.

"Are you eating? Oh! The concert is tonight! Come in my window and turn on the CD player and I'll wake up and then I'll tell you where we're going. I have to go and…" She hung up mid-sentence.

Raph asked Don to do a background search on Merritt Hope. Don asked if he needed to make burial plans for this guy while he was at it. "The cemeteries in the Bronx are nice," he muttered as he paged through police reports. "Looks like your man is in prison. Rape or some kind of criminal sexual conduct, I guess." He tossed a hammer across the room and a shelf collapsed.

Raph stomped out of the room, thwarted.

Don called after him, "Relax! I'm sure he's being punished whenever he bends over for the soap!"


Raph knocked on her bedroom window. It felt very pervy to watch her, but he did anyway. She was dancing and windmilling her arms around. It took three knocks for her to hear him and she smiled widely and ran to the window, eager to see him. She leaned out at him and he shrugged and yelled, "What the hell! You knew I was coming! Why weren't you looking! Get your radio and come on!"

She skipped across the room and pulled her iPod out from under a heap of naked and blindfolded porcelain dolls.

He pointed at her feet. "What's up with that?"

She wore a pink tennis shoe and a ruby slipper that could have come from Oz.

"Oh, I couldn't find the other red one and I wanted to wear them, so I'm only half happy."

He looked her up and down. "You look like an Elvish whore with shoes that don't match." Not that he was complaining. She had nice little shoulders. He wondered if she could hide things up the huge sleeves. "It don't matter. Nobody will see us. Come on so we can get it over with."

They climbed out the window and she said, "I've never snuck out before. They do another bed check at midnight. Should we stuff my bed with pillows and play a tape of me snoring?"

"I'll have you back by then. Nothing we're going to do would take that long. If I don't like it, I'm just dumping your skinny ass back here. Got it!" He leered into her face and she nodded, her eyes wide. He had a strong and sudden urge to grab her shoulders under the pretense of intimidation to feel the smoothness, but felt like a pedophile and walked away.

The trip took longer than estimated because he limped slightly and he had to take back alley streets and it took them out of the way. She was also slow and stopped every few feet to point at things and gasp. She pointed at pigeons and asked if he could throw one of his sais up and spear one.

He tried, but it missed narrowly and it bounced off a television antenna.


"I picked a concert outside because you're green and blend in with the trees," she said. He waited for an opportunity to move closer to the band shell as they sat crouched in a clump of trees. As he listened of passerby he felt her fingers graze his sides.

"Hey, hands to yourself, bitch!" He pulled her hands off and held them in his own tighter than was necessary.

A few people with small children walked up the hill towards the band shell and the mother asked her husband, "What did you say?"

Shannon sat down and looked through the branches at the band shell. He took the opportunity to check out her ass while she wasn't looking and then mentally abused himself. "Well, you keep looking at my boobs and stuff. I thought you would like it. Sorry. Do you like my butt? I think it's nice." She wiggled her hips at him as she leaned over in the bushes.

He sat down and crossed his arms, counting the minutes until the ordeal ended. Took forever for the band to get on the stage. An old man with kinky grey hair and a tuxedo with tails finally walked onto the stage amid clapping from the scattered audience lying on the hillside and the screams of babies and small children out past their bedtimes. And then another guy walked across the stage carrying a violin and bowed to the audience and they made a big ceremony of that.

"Why are there two leaders?" he asked Shannon. "Don't seem fair to the first guy bringing out this second fool to show off."

Sat down and leaned against him. He leaned in the opposite direction and she fell back into the tree. His shell scraped off some bark. "The guy with the violin is Mark Stratham. He's the first chair violinist and concertmaster. He gets to do all the solos. Do you want to know what they're going to play?"

He closed his eyes, prepping for a nap. "Not really. It all sounds the same to me anyway."

Shannon tapped the toes of her mismatched shoes together as the orchestra filed out to mildly unenthusiastic applause. "Well, the first is Claire de Lune. See the piano?"

Turned his head momentarily and mumbled.

"Well, then they're going to play Rodeo, Rite of Spring: the Adoration of the Earth…"

"That better be one song. I don't want to be here all night."

"That's two songs. You'll like them. I'll dance for you during Rite of Spring. And then Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity from The Planets and last is the 1812 Festival Overture."

He heard the first few notes on the piano and closed his eyes. It sounded like prissy nonsense. Just a jumble of insipid piano notes.

"Edward Cullen listens to this song in the Twilight books," she said. "He has stupid looking hair. You remind me of him kind of."

He was too drowsy with his eyes shut and head tilted onto his shoulder to take note of the insult. It seemed like time and energy all blended into one and before he knew it, or else hours later, he opened his eyes as the spell broke with a tidal wave of applause and wailing babies.

"What did you think?" she asked, now leaning on his arm.

Raph didn't push her away. He liked the way her hair felt on his skin. "Sounded like a bunch of fairies passing gas."

He closed his eyes, preparing to sojourn back to dreamland. But the next song jolted him awake with recognition.

"Isn't that the song from those beef commercials?" he vaguely asked the branch in front of his face.

He peeked through the bushes at the band and saw the violinists' bows working up and down in unison. Pretty cool. "Makes me think of a cowboy or something." A man in a ten gallon hat trotting over the desert on a horse, the horse's mane flowing in the breeze. Raph sometimes wished he were a cowboy. He could defend Indians from scuzball prospectors and live by himself, surrounded by cacti instead of idiots. As his mind wandered and he imagined how he would have gutted all the soldiers responsible for killing the natives, he felt a tickle in the palm of his hand.

Shannon worked her fingers into his hand and stroked a little in time with the music. Instead of slapping her hand away like he should have, he teased one of her fingers with his own. Just to see what she would do.

He studied the orchestra with more intensity than he had the whole evening. No one ever caressed him in that kind of way. At least that he could remember. Well, maybe April when his head hemorrhaged. But usually her feminine strokes came accompanied by choruses of, "Don't leave us, Raph!"

And then the song ended and her fingers left his and his rib cage unclenched. It was over. Relief. No more of that. A little disappointed. No more of that.

The orchestra set off with a boom and just as he was about to comment that he could feel the music vibrating in the ground, her fingers interlaced his. Raph's fingers stood open in midair for a while. Didn't want to close around her hand. He had three and she had five. Awkward. He didn't want to fumble. But he did close his fingers and rearranged them and swallowed hard as he moved her two smaller fingers down past his, hoping it wouldn't hurt her.

Say something. "I want this played next time I'm in a fight." Cool.

"This is about little girls dancing for springtime."

Lame. Deflated a little and stroked her thumb to make up for it.

A little vibration on his belt and he jerked, his mind emptied of everything but the bombastic music and the gentle stroking in his hand. Phone. He pulled it out with his free hand, determined not to let go and held on a little tighter to her when she unclenched. Leo's phone. "Yeah, what?"

Leo's staticy voice. "Where are you? What's all that noise? Are you coming home?"

"Who is it?" Shannon asked, leaning towards him to see the screen. He playfully clapped it to his plastron, emboldened by his grip on her and teased, "Maybe I don't want you to know."

"It said Leo. Who's he?"

The swirling music of human sacrifice stimulated his hormones into a monsoon and he said, "You'll have to kiss me for that information."

She wrinkled up her nose and pulled her hand away.

"YEAH, WHAT DO YOU WANT, ASSHOLE!" he whispered viciously into the phone.

"Never mind. I don't even care." Hurt voice. Hung up on him. His heart palpated some regret.

So Raph put the phone back on his belt and then realized that the song had ended. They were now playing a number that sounded like God's theme song.

He held Shannon's hand. His eyes roamed the many couples cuddling under the stars. All the normal guys without shells and green skin and generations old ninja feuds. Must be something wrong with this girl if she wanted to sit in the bushes holding his hand.

"I'm going home. Come on." He stood up, the blasting brass nearly inciting him to declare it epically to the crowd.

"You're being a big baby!" She said, still sitting and leaning against the tree. "Sit back down and I'll hold your hand again."

He sat down and she tried to hold his hand, but he crossed his arms instead, keeping his hands under this armpits. They sat next to each other with their arms crossed through the whole of the next song and Raph felt like a fool. Why did he get himself into this situation? He wanted to go home and kick Leo's ass. He knew he could do that.

And then thankfully, the last song started. And it was long. His head drooped. Dreamed about getting lost in the sewer tunnels. Nothing special. And then something exploded and the ground rocked.

Raph's brain brought him to his feet with his sais drawn before fully awakening.

Shannon clapped her hands, bouncing up and down on her mismatched shoes. "There are cannons in this song. See! And church bells on the stage. You said you wanted to go see a concert with pyrotechnics."

Plumes of smoke issued from the parking lot as the cannons fired in time with the strings. It was like a tumbling wall of musical bricks. "They better play this at my funeral!" he yelled to her over the cacophony. "Or when I take over earth!"

Needed to run around and move. Too much sitting. So he tickled her under the arms and she squirmed away from him and ran screaming and laughing up the hill. He could have overtaken her easily, but lagged behind. Raph wanted to see what she would do next. She climbed into the bottom branches of a tree and he casually jogged over and leaned against the trunk, looking up at her.

"Do you like my days of the week panties?" she called down to him.

He couldn't really see up her skirt. "Oh, yeah! That's the view I like seeing when I look up a tree! Get down!"

The cannons fired a last time and the audience dissolved into hysterics.

"You're going to come up here and ravish me! You look really horny!" She kicked off her ruby slipper at him and it bounced off the top of his head.

He jumped into the tree in one bound and sat beside her on the branch. They watched crowd wander away to their vehicles, both suddenly too awkward to speak or look at each other.

She reached over and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. Very soft motion. He flinched and moved away. Too soft. Looked around at the ground and then jumped down. "Come on. Everybody's gone. Let's go."

He didn't offer to help her down and watched as her dress caught on a branch and he finally got a view of her Saturdays.

When her feet reached the ground, he turned her around to look into his eyes, filling up with adrenalin. "Don't ever touch me that way again. Got it?"

Her shoulders shuddered in the growing cold. "But you liked it."

"I DID NOT! AND YOU SHOULDN'T GO WALKING AROUND NAKED LIKE A WHORE IF IT'S GOING TO GET COLD! GET YOUR SHOE AND COME ON!"

Shannon gathered her shoe off the ground and carried it, limping lamely behind him as he raged at her to keep up every few steps. His body flowed with energy. He needed to get rid of her fast and find a fight to expel it.

Her bedroom window was still black and he could hear an opera singer squealing out of her iPod as she shivered behind him while he opened the window. He threw the window up and let it bang loudly in the windowpane and then didn't offer any assistance when she hung with her legs dangling out the window and her hands on the floor. But he followed her inside and watched as she sat down on the bed, pulling her headphones out.

Not a word goodbye to him. Her eyes clouded over and she stopped moving. He wasn't coming back to see her. Couldn't properly say goodbye to him. And had to put her hands on him all the time. But he went across the room, wondering if he should lock it. Keep out the nurses and other patients. No, what if something happened to her and they needed to get in. So he headed towards the window again.

But he went back to the bed to lay her down on her back. He stared into her face while she lay there immobile. Her eyes were cloudy grey. Not all that pretty. Not at all worth the worry.

He gave her cheek a cautious stroke. Her face was quite soft. Had a few bumps. Not nearly perfect. And little hairs. What a funny feeling. He went over it again to feel the tickle.

Raph pulled his hand away with a hiss. He shouldn't have done that. Touched her when she was catatonic and couldn't refuse him. He would never do it again. So he sat next to the bed on the floor, listening to her iPod and put her naked dolls back on the shelf until five minutes next to bed check, then he jumped out the window, closed it and watched as the nurse made her perfunctory check around the room.