Title: When I'm Gone

Rating: PG-13

World: This story takes place primarily in the 2007 movie-verse. However there are events referenced and characters appearing from the 2K3 cartoon, just because that series (up until the FF season) had some pretty cool stuff in it.

Feedback: Yes please! However, no flames. Flames are pointless and get deleted, not read. Use constructive criticism instead. By telling me in detail what you believe I'm getting wrong and why, I'll have something to work with to improve my writing and the fic. I could really use it since this is my first time writing in this fandom so I'm relying on feedback to let me know what's good and what could be better. But don't think every review has to be a book report or something. Even if it's just to say 'Great! Keep it going!' don't hesitate to say something. I'm being really good about updating right now, but in the next few weeks classes are going to be starting up, so unless there's a significant interest in this fic I'm not going to be so concerned about updating as often when things start to get busy for me, or consider updating more often.

Warnings: This fic does contain violence and some language (c'mon, it's Raph, what'd you expect?) And also a bit of what colloquially would be termed 'black magic'. This is a conglomeration of Hollywood-ized witchcraft, with a few real-life bits of folklore thrown in for flavor. It is not based on any one particular religion, nor are any of the rituals you see here real. They're completely fiction, so no trying them yourself or telling me I got stuff wrong.

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT, any of its characters, nor the events referenced from the 2003 cartoon or 2007 movie. This is purely a fan-work done for my entertainment, and the entertainment of any who care to read it. A big shout-out to the creators of these wonderful characters who allow us to play on their playground. Oh, but please do remember that any story-line not seen in the movies, comics, or tv shows, and any characters also fitting that description (like Callie and Moonlight) are mine. Please do not use them without getting my okay first.

***Also, my 'witch' is not based on any actual religion or belief system. She's just a girl trying to figure out what she believes in but the magic she practices as stated above is not real.***

Summary: When Raph stops a young woman from murdering a Purple Dragon, he didn't realize she was a witch trying to avenge her murdered brother. As punishment, she curses him to live in the form of her familiar, an Egyptian Mau. Now, unable to communicate and only possessing cryptic information to break the curse, Raph must divide his attention between searching for a way to restore himself to his true form, and trying to comfort his grieving family who are desperately searching for him and slowly starting to believe him dead. But if he's to be there for them and help keep them alive as they confront enemy after enemy trying to figure out who took him, he's going to have to somehow convince them not to adopt him out.

Author's Note: Welcome back everyone! Hope you all had a good week. Well, here's the next chapter, just like I promised. I believe that all of the bugs are out of it. I did a final once-over and raphfreak didn't say she found any problems, but should anyone find an error I missed, feel free to point it out so I can fix it. By now you've probably seen that the prologue's been tweaked to fix a couple of problems. But enough rambling. Review responses are at the end of the chap, please remember to feed the muse!

Chapter 1: Gunshots and Guilt

"Easy Mikey. We're almost home."

"How do you expect me to go easy when I'm bleeding and you just dragged my shell through a manhole?" Michelangelo snapped as he limped heavily down the tunnel leading to the Lair.

Donatello sighed as he shifted his baby brother's arm so its position across his shoulders would be more comfortable. "Just keep leaning on me and don't try to put any weight on that leg. So long as you don't try and do anything macho, you'll be fine."

"Psshh, macho? Please. Just get me home and get me painkillers. I don't care who sees me like this, I just want to know why it is that they always have to aim for my legs. What'd my legs do to deserve being treated like Raph's punching bag every time we get into a fight!" At the moment Mikey was trying to ignore the growing ache in his good leg that was adding to his misery as he hopped along on one foot and leaned heavily on his second-oldest brother for support and balance. With any luck they'd get home before it too found some reason to give out.

Donnie was also keeping watch out of the corner of his eye on Mikey's good leg. Truthfully it was a bad idea for him to attempt to hop along on one foot for any length of time, even with someone to lean on. The chances of him taking a misstep and injuring it grew the longer he tried to use it by itself. Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much of a choice at the moment.

They'd been out on patrol when they'd heard the scream. A couple of college-age girls had gotten themselves cornered by a group of PDs in (what else?) a back alley. What those girls had been doing in said alley Don had no clue, and truthfully he didn't care. All he cared about was the fact that immediately upon seeing them in trouble Raph had launched himself off his perch on the roof to go to their rescue, Leo had yelled at him to wait so they could coordinate their attack, Raph had ignored Leo, the three of them had to scramble to catch up to the hothead, mayhem had ensued, the girls had shrieked and taken off, and one of the punks had pulled a gun and gotten a shot off before anything could be done to stop him. In the blink of an eye Mikey had gone down with a bullet hole in his calf, Raph had attacked the shooter and pummeled him with such fervor that Don knew he'd end up at least in a coma, and Leo was calling 911 to have an ambulance pick up the Purple Dragons and bring them to the hospital once he was certain they were sufficiently knocked out.

While Leo took on the arduous task of convincing Raphael to cease beating on the now thoroughly comatose shooter, Don had used Mikey's kneepad as a makeshift bandage to hold a wad of gauze over the bullet wound. Helping his younger brother up, Don had told Leo that he was going to go ahead of them with Mikey. The sooner they got Mike back to the Lair where he could properly assess and treat the damage, the better.

"Man, I hate Raph so much right now," Mikey growled. "Would it have killed him to wait three seconds instead of just taking off?"

Don completely agreed with him. As fond as he was of his immediate younger brother, Raph's habit of leaping before he looked and then dragging the rest of them along for the ride was just as obnoxious as it was dangerous. The worst part was that they couldn't always be sure who would come out the worse for wear as a result of his rash actions. Sometimes they were lucky and got home at the end of the night in perfect condition, minus a few bruises. Other times the night would end with one, possibly multiple injuries. And as much as Raph's actions usually involved personally jumping into the worst of the danger, there were many times when his brothers would pay the price for trying to back him up.

It was a catch-22 from hell. They couldn't sit back and leave their brother to his own devices. If something happened and they hadn't done everything possible to prevent it, none of them would ever forgive themselves. On the other hand, no one really wanted to follow Raph on one of his suicide-esque attack runs.

The simple solution seemed to be to get Raph to agree to be patient and wait for Leo's go-ahead.

It was the getting-Raph-to-agree part that could be quite adequately labeled 'Mission: Impossible'.

That didn't make Don feel any better. If anything it just pissed him off more.

The sight of the wall that was actually the camouflaged front door of the Lair was an extremely welcome one. Mikey breathed a sigh of relief despite the fact he was still on his feet. Truthfully he couldn't wait to get off them. Pain aside, he was tired and starting to get dizzy. He had been lucky that the bullet hadn't nicked an artery, but it was still bleeding badly enough to be worrisome. The gauze packed into the wound was soaked through with blood, which was now dripping down his leg.

Donnie had debated for a second about stopping to add more, but opted once again for simply getting him home ASAP. Despite how bad the wound looked, he wasn't in danger of bleeding out before they got there.

That was a relief and a half.

Don let go of his hand so he could reach up and pull the pipe that actually served as their incredibly high-tech doorknob. The doors slid open, and he was hustling his baby brother through as quickly as he could.

Master Splinter met them at the top of the stairs. "I have prepared a bed for him. Let us get that wound treated swiftly."

Obviously either Leo or Raph had called ahead to let him know that Mikey was coming back wounded.

Master Splinter moved to Mikey's other side and together they managed to get him down the stairs and into the medical 'wing' of Don's lab without incident.

Mike sighed with relief when he was finally leaning back against the raised end of the gurney. Master Splinter had been thoughtful enough to set it so that he could stay sitting up instead of being forced to lie down. It was greatly appreciated by youngest turtle, who had no desire to be flat on his back feeling helpless, especially when Leo got home and he'd have to deal with his incessant mother-hening. Mike loved getting attention, but Leo in mother hen mode could ninety percent of the time be considered total overkill, and hazardous to one's sanity.

Meanwhile Donnie had washed his hands and brought the tray of medical tools over to the gurney and pulled up a stool to sit on. Carefully he removed the kneepad and gauze. A sterilized cloth dipped in clean water was used to wash away the blood caked on the wound beneath it. Mikey winced.

"Hey Bro? Think I could get those painkillers before you start poking away at that?"

"Master Splinter's getting them," Don replied, eyeing the wound critically.

Right on cue the elderly rat appeared with a hypodermic in one hand and a vial of Chloroprocaine in the other.

"Here you are, my son," he said, handing them to Donatello.

"Thanks Sensei," he put the sterile cloth down so that he could fill the syringe with the appropriate amount of the drug.

"Are you going to knock me out?" Despite the pain Mikey eyed the needle warily. Ever since being captured by Bishop he'd had a whole new hatred for the things, probably stemming from the fact that it was the one instrument that the mad scientist had menaced the brothers with that Donnie had a habit of using on them regularly.

"Nope. Not unless you decide not to sit still and cooperate," Don tapped the syringe to bring any air bubbles to the top of the tube and then pressed the plunger slightly, satisfied when he got a small discharge of liquid. "You got lucky. The bullet went straight through your calf and missed the bone, nerves, and major blood vessels. All I need to do is irrigate it, remove any shredded tissue, and cover the wound. Then a round of antibiotics and you'll be good to go. Of course you'll need to take it easy for a few weeks and I'd like you to stay off it as much as you can for the first one. I'll put a few sutures in five days from now once it's had a head start on healing and we're sure there's no infection. But as long as you keep it clean and don't do anything crazy I don't see any reason why it won't heal perfectly."

"I won't even have a limp?"

"You shouldn't."

"Well that's a relief," Mikey sighed. He then tensed as Donnie began to look for a suitable injection site.

His older brother noticed and nodded to their father. "Could you please make sure he stays still, Sensei?"

"Of course, my son," Master Splinter moved to stand next to Mike's leg, blocking his view of what Don was doing. He placed his paw gently on his youngest son's thigh, ready to clamp down and forcibly keep him still if necessary, but not wanting to cause him any further discomfort if it was not warranted.

Without the view of his big brother's actions, Mikey couldn't bring himself to care much about the pain the injection would cause. As it was everything from his knee down felt like it was on fire. He couldn't even be sure he'd even feel it when Donnie gave him the drugs. A second later he amended that thought when he felt a sharp burn like acid just below his knee, adding to the agony the bullet wound was already causing him.

"Oh, crap! What the shell!" His upper body lurched off the gurney as he tried to make a grab for his injured leg out of reflex. Master Splinter was quick to push him back down while Don held his leg steady.

"Easy my son. Just focus and use your breathing technique. Remember that pain is only in your mind. It's just your body's signal that something has happened to it." Master Splinter soothed.

"Yea well I already know what happened. So why isn't there an 'off' switch?" Mikey whined.

"Because Nature needed to make sure people like Raph and Leo weren't allowed to ignore it when they got injured so easily," Don deadpanned. Mikey would have laughed at that except that he was still pissed at Raph for getting them into the situation that got him shot in the first place. Normally he was the quickest of the brothers to forgive someone, but it was hard to be forgiving when half his leg felt like it was about to fall off and the stuff that was supposed to stop the pain hurt almost as much as the bullet itself.

"Dude, what the shell is up with that stuff?"

"It's Chloroprocaine, Mike. It'll numb your leg and also constrict the blood vessels so you don't loose so much blood when I treat the wound." (1)

"No I mean why the shell does it hurt so much? It's like acid!"

"Unfortunately some local or regional anesthetics are uncomfortable when administered," Don said. The last of the drug left the syringe and he withdrew the needle. "You should start to feel better in a few moments."

"Dude, why not just knock me out?" Mikey asked.

"Because regional anesthesia is safer than general anesthesia," Don replied.

"Smaller words Donnie, I'm me and I'm in pain, remember?"

Don sighed. "There's more danger if I knock you out than if I just numb your leg. Knocking you out means a bigger chance that you could have a bad reaction to the drugs and your heartbeat or breathing could stop. If I got the dosage wrong I could put you in a coma. If I just put your leg to sleep it means using less drugs and less overall stress to your body. Besides, I thought you didn't want to be knocked out."

"Whatever," Mike sighed blissfully and closed his eyes as the pain finally started to fade away. "As long as it's not hurting anymore."

Don experimentally pinched Mikey's ankle. "You feel that?"

"Feel what?" Mikey opened his eyes and looked at him quizzically.

"Nothing," Don responded as he pulled over a tall pole that he had set on wheels and carefully bent halfway down at a 90 degree angle, and set up a curtain between himself and Master Splinter to make sure Mikey didn't see him cleaning the wound. "Hey Mikey, while I take care of this how about you tell Sensei about tonight?"

"That's Leo's job, dude," Mikey replied.

"No my son, I would like to hear your version of events from this evening," Master Splinter said, catching on to his second-eldest's tactic for keeping the youngest distracted from what was happening to his leg. "Leonardo can share his with me later when he returns."

"Okay Sensei."

Leonardo was pissed.

Not pissed as in very irritated. Pissed as in he was going to need about three hours of kata practice in the dojo to exhaust himself and about two hours of meditation after that just to calm down. And that was after he checked in the infirmary to make sure Mikey was okay and gave Sensei his report on the evening's events. And of course gave the source of his anger a thorough dressing-down.

Said source of his anger was stalking along silently about two steps behind him. Both he and Raph had painstakingly removed any traces of blood that Mikey had trailed behind him. Well, he removed the traces while Raph stood guard to make certain nothing bothered them. Truthfully having to clean up their baby brother's blood might have done a good job in further impressing upon Raph the fact that his actions got Mikey injured, but he'd decided against it. He knew himself well enough to admit that he didn't really want to deal with the hothead at all at that moment. If Raph's volatile temper got aggravated staring at Mikey's blood on the ground, he didn't need him getting sloppy about cleaning it up because he was too keyed up on getting more revenge on a bunch of meaningless punks.

Besides, keeping himself busy would curtail the incessant urge to lecture the hothead until they got home and weren't in any danger of being noticed once they started in on each other.

Raphael was in a similar state. He was more than pissed, he was livid. He was livid with the gangster who'd pulled a gun and shot his baby brother. He was livid that no one got there in time to stop the guy. He was livid with Leo for not trusting him to take part in the cleanup so no one could follow the blood trail to their home. Even if they only got as far as the closest manhole to the Lair, that was still way too close. But most of all Raph was livid with himself. He knew he had put them in that position. He'd seen the one punk about to tear the blouse right off that chick and he'd just moved. Part of him wanted to argue that 'thinking things through' wouldn't change the fact that that guy had been carrying a firearm. But it was a hollow argument.

If he had just waited that extra minute for Fearless to come up with a plan, they'd have been better positioned to give each other cover. Maybe they'd have seen the gun and disarmed the guy before he'd had a chance to pull the trigger. Maybe they'd have gotten out with no injuries. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

He shook his head. There were too many factors that went into a fight for anyone to ever be totally sure what would happen or, in this case, could have happened. That was why he didn't spend so much time overanalyzing a situation before he leapt in. He trusted his instinct to get him through and that was it. If the occasion called for it he knew that strategizing could be just as good a friend as a fighter's own weapon. But he knew just as much that if one took too much time worrying about the small details, one missed out on the whole picture.

It all boiled down to that annoying balance lesson that Sensei was always going on about. Knowing when to analyze and when to just trust your gut. He'd admit that Leo was closer to mastering it than he was. But he still wasn't convinced that there weren't times when their Fearless Leader spent too much time analyzing and dragging his feet when he should have been leaping into action.

Thinking about who understood Sensei better wasn't going to change the fact that he'd screwed up tonight, though. And he hated himself for it.

Apparently Leo was of like mind.

Maybe it was a shift in the air, or maybe he'd just gotten really used to timing these things. Or maybe it was the change in the sound of Leo's breathing that gave it away. Whatever it was it made him tense up a split-second before—

"You're an asshole, you know that?"

'Right on cue, Fearless.'

"Nothing you planned would have changed the fact he had a gun, Leo," since Fearless was going to throw it back in his face anyway, there was no use in not using the one bit of defense he had.

"That's lame and you know it. If you had waited we'd have been prepared to defend each other, not scrambling to do damage control because you can't contain yourself," Leo hissed.

"I didn't intend for it to go down like that, Leo. What'd you want me to do, wait until those girls were already being assaulted so you could show off some fancy plan?" Raph glared

"We still would have gotten to them before anything happened. And had you followed orders, maybe our little brother wouldn't be laid up with a bullet hole in his leg! I don't know about you, but him not getting shot is more important to me than a couple of strangers who aren't even grateful to us for sticking our necks out," Leo glared back at him.

Raph growled. "Don't you dare accuse me of putting others before this family, Leo."

His older brother scoffed. "This coming from the person who's had a career as a vigilante and goes out every night by himself trying to take on every lowlife in the city. Well excuse me for mistaking your obvious concern for keeping the people fighting with you safe from your own berserker fighting style."

Raph was sorely tempted to slug him for that. "You're pushing it, Fearless."

"No, you're pushing it Hothead!" Leo snapped. "I don't know how many times we have to have this argument before you get it! You never stop to think before you do something. You drag others in with you so their lives get put in danger as well, and you care more about getting your target than you do about their safety! We never have any idea when you go out at night if you're going to come back to us alive let alone in one piece, and the worst part is that you don't seem to care! Dealing with you is like walking around with a bottle of nitroglycerin. We never know when your temper's going to go off and get yourself or someone else hurt or killed! All you care about is your freedom, and your obsession with street fighting, and getting to do whatever the hell it is you want! You don't care how it affects the people who care about you! We can't rely on you and instead of wondering why, all you do is complain about not getting to—and I quote—"call your own shots"! Well maybe if we could trust you to come back to us alive at the end of the night or actually listen when it's important, then things would be different!"

At this point Leo paused, taking a deep breath to refill his lungs as his outburst had totally depleted them of oxygen. Raph took the opportunity to interject before he could go off again.

"Are you done?" Raph's voice was low, indicating that there was a good chance that things could get ugly.

Leo noticed the tone and eyed him, on the lookout for even the tiniest sign his younger brother was about to lash out. "That depends. Have I forgotten anything?" he said mockingly, knowing and not caring that he was quite literally playing with fire. At that point in time he was almost hoping Raph would take a swing at him, just to give him an excuse to sucker punch his little brother right in the jaw. It was juvenile and completely unbecoming of a leader, but if nothing else it would make him feel better.

Raph's eyes blazed. "Yea. You did. You forgot that I live to protect this family, just like you. So sue me if I choose to extend that protection to other people who just had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time! You think I don't care that Mikey got shot tonight? Well guess again, Fearless! You think I don't get how dangerous my fighting style is? There's a reason I've never once asked you, or Don, or Mikey to follow me when I go out at night. You don't like what I do that much? Then you stay behind and let me do my thing! I don't need tagalongs to worry about who don't wanna be there!"

"We can't do that and you know it," Leo was livid. "We're a family and a team. We're all each other have! If we don't watch each other's backs, then who will!"

"Oh, like you'd really miss dealing with me if I didn't come home," Raph shot out.

"How dare you! I hope that's not just some lousy excuse you use to justify having no self control. Cause if it is then it calls your reliability to this team into serious question. Not that it isn't already," Leo growled back at him.

That hurt. "Let's hope, Fearless," Raph chose that moment to shove passed his older brother and make his way briskly towards home. Under normal circumstances he would have hauled back and made an attempt at a one-shot knockout if Fearless had dared to question if he could be counted on to do his job when they went out or not. However, he knew Sensei was going to have his shell as it was for getting Mikey hurt, and he wasn't dumb enough to provoke the ninja master's wrath twice in one night. Behind him he could just make out Leo's near-silent footfalls as the elder ninja followed after him.

The rest of the walk home was spent in tense silence. When they reached the Lair, Leonardo made a beeline straight for Don's lab.

Raph followed him as far as the door. Once he got to the frame he paused and took in the scene in front of him.

Mikey was reclining in a partial sitting position and definitely looking worse for wear. To Raph it seemed like he was desperately trying not to pass out. There was a curtain set up on a bent pole over his thigh keeping the lower portion of his leg out of his view. Donnie was bent over it at the moment, diligently working. Master Splinter had pulled up a second stool and sat at Michelangelo's side, keeping him awake by talking to him.

"How is he?" Leo asked as he approached, making sure not to walk as quietly as he normally would. He'd caused Donnie to make errors in experiments by startling him before, and the last thing he needed was to do that while the genius was working on Mikey's wound.

"So lucky it's ridiculous," Don muttered, not looking up from Mike's leg.

"Ya, Dude. For once the Turtle-Luck didn't get me," Mikey grinned drowsily.

"I wouldn't be totally sure of that Mike. You did get shot," Leo frowned.

"Ya but it didn't get anything that won't heal," Mikey argued.

"So long as you stay off your skateboard for the next month," Donnie reminded him absently, attention still firmly on what he was doing. He had to be sure that any flesh he removed was absolutely unsalvageable, and that no traces of it remained afterwards that could die off and cause infection to the wound site when they started to rot.

That put a full-blown pout on the youngest's face. "Aww man."

Master Splinter took that moment to interject. "Have you removed all traces that your brother was wounded?" he asked Leo.

The leader nodded. "Yes Sensei. There is nothing left that could lead them to our home, or be collected and handed over to someone like Bishop for scientific analysis."

"Good," Splinter nodded, satisfied that Leonardo had taken care of it. Watching from the door, Raph couldn't help the small twinge that pulled at his chest. He wished his master would treat him like that, trusting him at his word without question. Sometimes he felt like it always took Sensei an extra second or so before he'd take Raph's word that he'd gotten the job done without screwing something up. The only one who got that privilege of automatic acceptance besides Leo was Donnie, and that was because Master Splinter didn't have the technical know-how to question most of the second-eldest's actions since they usually involved some sort of gadgetry. It was a sobering thought to Raph that Sensei was almost as leery of relying on him as he was with Mikey, who acted so immaturely the majority of the time that it was no wonder.

Raph was just the hothead who didn't think things through and let his anger cloud his judgment, unworthy of anyone's trust because how could they know his actions wouldn't come back to bite them in the rear? It was the sad truth… and it hurt.

"I would speak with you in regards to tonight's events, Leonardo," Splinter's voice was quiet and reserved, and brought Raph out of his brooding. Leo nodded, and Raph was suddenly very glad he had stayed by the door. The eldest's eyes had narrowed, fixated on the curtain that prevented him from seeing the wound on Mikey's leg. Raph knew that had they been standing near one another, he would have been the focus of that glare instead, which could very well have started another argument between them. But, he reminded himself once again, raising Splinter's wrath multiple times in one night wasn't worth the consequences.

It was also his cue that he might want to get back to his room for some down time before Sensei was finished talking to Leo and decided it was time to dole out whatever punishment he was in for. Whatever it was going to be this time was likely to be a doozey.

Reluctantly he turned away from the door, and headed for the kitchen. Part of him really wanted the reassurance of hearing from Mikey's own mouth that he was okay, but if he were honest he really didn't want to get into it with Fearless again that evening, or give Sensei the opportunity to start in on him any sooner than was necessary.

Once he reached the kitchen he grabbed a can of soda from the 'fridge. A quick vault up one of the columns later, and he found himself on the upper landing. With Leo and Sensei about to go and have their little chat about him, he figured he had a good half-hour to forty-five minutes before Leo would be calling him downstairs to face the music. Might as well relax as much as he could before suffering whatever punishment Sensei decided to lay on him.

His room was its usual state of semi-disaster, exactly as he'd left it. Mikey's trumped his any day when it came to sheer messiness, but it was under no circumstances the organized chaos that Donnie lived in, and absolutely never neat as a pin or whatever like Leo's. When it came down to it he just didn't see the reason to fuss over it when he only spent a fraction of his time in there anyway. So long as his weights and bag weren't obstructed, and there was no rotting food anywhere, it could stay as-is. Hell, the most he'd ever used it was as the Nightwatcher, and then he slept the entire time he was home anyway.

Sitting down at his desk he cracked open the soda can and tried to occupy himself with a motorcycle magazine. However within minutes it proved to be fruitless and he outright abandoned it, seeing no point in staring at the same line over and over again and still not knowing what the hell it was that he'd just read. Turning his stereo on, he allowed the strains of Limp Biscuit's 'Break Stuff' to half-deafen him. Ah… wonderful song if ever there was one. No wishy-washy or emo whining, it just plain told people that the person singing was pissed and sick 'o bullshit and ready to tear into the next asshole who started in on 'em. The perfect song to listen to whenever one was pissed off at something. Somehow, Raph just couldn't stay angry after spending a good ten minutes or so screaming about doing unspeakable things to people with a chainsaw. Picturing giving Leo a bloody lip for talking shit to him definitely helped too.

Unfortunately, it seemed fate was out to deprive him of even that form of anger management. Normally, whenever he used the song as an outlet, he was only angry. Even if another emotion like trepidation or worry was involved, it was usually directed outwards, and a good session with the song and his bag helped to at least give him an adequate enough outlet to keep him from tearing apart the Lair. This time, however, everything was turning inwards on him.

Anger wasn't a factor. That was more the norm for him than the exception. No, what was thwarting his efforts at winding down was the anticipation of what Sensei was going to do to him. In a sense he felt like a prisoner waiting to be taken to the gallows. He knew it was coming, and soon, just not exactly when.

An attempt to pace and the disaster of tripping over some miscellaneous object later, and he'd had enough. He needed a run.

Cautiously poking his head out of the door, he asserted that the coast seemed to be clear enough to move forward. Of course when you lived with someone as obnoxiously stealthy as Fearless you could never be completely confident that no one was around, but he was willing to risk it. If he was going to get out he would just have to play Russian Roulette with his luck and hope no one noticed.

Nevertheless he needed to get out as quickly as possible, and screw the risks of being seen. If past experience was anything to go by, Sensei could very well include house arrest as part of his punishment. If that happened he wouldn't get another chance to get some fresh air to clear his head with for weeks at the least. God help his temper if he didn't get out for a few minutes before that could happen.

And wouldn't that be just peachy? Getting more punishment and tension with his family piled on because he didn't get his outlet before he got punished and thus started more trouble. Read 'trouble' as 'fighting with Leo'.

He shook his head and glared at nothing in particular as he walked as stealthily as possible back to the front door. As soon as it clanged open he was through and already jogging swiftly for the nearest manhole.

TBC…

Author's Note: Poor Mikey. I feel so bad. It was never my intention to torture him right off the bat, it just kinda happened that way. Oh well, his pain is my plot device. Wow that sounded mean. I blame it on the fact that I have a headache, so I'm a little too cranky to be sympathetic. Fortunately not too much to update. So, what punishment awaits our beloved hothead? Stay tuned to find out. Next chapter's mostly written. I'm going to finish it and send it off to be betaed this weekend, so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be ready to be posted on time a week from now. Thanks for reading, and please remember to review. The muse tends to stay more focused on updating when she's getting feedback.

Chapter Notations:

1. Chloroprocaine is generically known as Nesacaine. It's used for infiltration or nerve block. The description I gave was a very basic overview of the drug, but if you want to know more it's very easy to Google. As for the acid-like feeling that Mikey complained about, one thing that was mentioned multiple times in the articles I read was that Chloroprocaine could be very uncomfortable when administered, and that trying to tamper with it to alleviate this could mess with the drug's effectiveness. It also said that the drug registers a ph of 2.7-4.0 (a decent amount of acidity) with adjustments made using sodium hydroxide or hydrochloric acid. I figured that based on this that it wouldn't be a stretch to think that the drug would cause a burning sensation prior to taking effect. Glad I've never had the need to take it. /grin/

Review Responses:

MillionDollarNinja: Glad you like it. Don't know if you like pocky, so here's a big cyber-cookie for being the first to review. ^_^