A/N- Thanks for the sweet reviews! I wanted to note that I know season 3 opened in the Spring, but I kind of wanted to play with the idea of the turtles in the snow, so I kept it wintery. :)

Val cursed under her breath as she hoisted the cleaned deer onto her shoulders. The added weight made the pain her her ankle almost unbearable. It was a lot lighter than it would have been had she not taken the time to field dress it, but then again, had she not done that, she may have not sprained her ankle. "Better just get to stepping," she muttered. "Stupid turtle and his stupid trap!" Mentally grumbling, she trudged through the snow as the sun began to set, oblivious to the fact that she wasn't alone.

Twenty yards behind her, Raphael walked silently in the shadows. He grit his teeth when he heard her comments about him and the trap. She should have been more mindful of her surrounds; that was part of the reason he was there, trailing her in the miserable cold instead of home eating pizza and beating Leo on the Atari again. When they'd gotten to the other base and Donnie and April had explained what happened, Raph told them all to go on home alone. "Why? So you can check on your girlfriend?" Mikey said, making a kissing face.

Raph slapped him hard in the back of the head. "I'm not Leo," he grumbled, "having some broad pull a knife on me isn't my idea of a good time. I'll be back in a couple hours."

"I oughta go with you," Casey said, stepping forward.

"You don't do stealth real well," Raph cited. "It's just one little girl with a chip on her shoulder."

"He's one to talk," April muttered after he disappeared into the brush. "You know," she said to Mikey, "maybe Val is the ghost you saw a couple days ago."

"Sweet! Raph's girlfriend's the ghost ninja!" Mikey said, making his voice sound spooky as he uttered the last two words. "That's so epic."

"That girl wasn't a ghost," Donnie said matter-of-factly. "But she did seem to be highly trained. It appeared that she'd killed the deer with a single arrow to the heart, and didn't seem to unfamiliar with the knife. Perhaps we ought to follow..."

"Raph can handle himself," Leo said looking into the woods. "If he's not back in a few hours, we'll go after him. Until then, give him his space." He remembered Karai; perhaps his younger brother had found a similar spark of goodness in this huntress. If nothing else, he could give him a few hours to find out.

Raph followed her up as the woods grew thicker. She picked her way over the roots a bit slower as the terrain started to slope up a hill. When she slid to her knees, he almost gave up his cover to help her when a huge shadowy figure emerged. "Val," the creature's voice grumbled in chastisement. "You should have just tied that up and come for Brice and me." The creature stepped into a small patch of moonlight and Raph saw that it was a huge mutant dog. "Or is it a wolf?" he thought, vaguely remembering April's comment about the ghost girl who rode on the back of a huge wolf. Maybe "ghosts" did grow up.

"Gotta do some things on my own, Dad," Val voice carried in the chilly air.

"Dad?" Raph thought perplexed. That mutant was her dad?

"You sprained your ankle too," her father grumbled, shaking his head as he shouldered the deer. "Nice kill, though. I'm proud of you, princess. You lean on my arm and we'll get you back home so Mama can fix you up."

Raph's mind reeled. So that's why she was so secretive. Her dad was a mutant and their family was hiding in the woods. There was a faint, sensible voice in the back of his head telling him to turn around then and go back home. (It sounded an awful lot like Lameonardo, he thought.) His curiosity was peaked, though, and hanging back a few more yards, he carefully followed the duo as they made their way up the hill to their house.

The cabin was set so deep in the woods it wasn't surprising that April had known nothing about it. The front portion of the home was small and old looking, but there was a large, seemingly newer extension to the back. The windows shone with the warm glow of candlelight, but there was also a TV set on in the living room. Through the curtains, Raph couldn't make out much, but he saw two figures moving around in there.

Suddenly, the wind changed position and Val's father spun around. "We're not alone," he growled, pushing his daughter in through the opened front door and tossing the deer onto the porch. "Lock up, I'm going hunting."

A surge of adrenaline coursed through Raphael's body as he turned and climbed up into the tree. The slippery branches were precarious, but nothing he couldn't handle as he jumped from solid limp to solid limp, trying to put as much distance between him and the furious mutant below him as possible. He froze as man ran under the tree he was standing in, waiting, secretly thanking fate that he'd had enough sense not to bring Casey along. As the man made his way back, Raph moved around the tree silently, staying in the shadows.

"I know you're here, mutant!" the man growled into the darkness. "You come back here and I'll kill you!"

Raphael waited for the man to go back into the house, then hurried through the darkened treetops until he got near the farm house, then dropped to the ground. Making sure no one was around, he hurried into the house.

"What up, Romeo?" Mikey asked between bites of pizza.

Ralph grumbled as he spun a chair around and straddled it. Reaching over he grabbed two of the last slices of pizza, folding then over on themselves, and taking a bite. Swallowing a mouthful he said, "Her dad's a mutant."

Everyone looked shocked except April. "Well, that explains why she didn't freak out when she saw you guys," she said pensively.

"She's got more family too, looked like," he said. "Up a hill to the northeast, they've got a cabin."

"Well, at least she got home safe," Leo said, watching for Raph's reaction. His brother's eyes had a far away look he knew all to well. "Did you meet her father?"

"In a manner of speaking," Raphael muttered. The rest of the family stared at him waiting for more, so he added, "He didn't see me, ok, but he knew I was there. Apparently they don't like visitors."

"What kind of mutant was he?" Leo asked.

"I don't know either a wolf or maybe a dog, like a husky or something," Raph said as he finished off the pizza.

April's eyes grew wide and he knew she was thinking the same thing he had. "So she was the ghost from the stories..." she said in almost a whisper.

Donnie's eyes hardened, "There's no way to be sure about that, April, and that guy may be dangerous."

"But think about it," she continued, "what if he got turned around the same time as you guys and has been hiding in the woods all this time, not knowing what was going on in the outside world."

"You're romanticism this," Donnie groaned, pinching between his eyes.

"I am not," she argued. "What if they don't know three are other mutants out there, and people who understand. We ought to try to..."

"You're not going to look for them," Donnie said firmly.

"You're not my boss, Donnie," April growled pushing the chair back roughly and stomping out the room.

"Smooth," Casey said, getting up and following her. Donnie watched in mute horror as he rounded the corner out the room.

"She can't go after them,"he said, almost to himself.

"I'll talk to her," Leo said, with a sigh as he got up and left the table.

Mikey looked between Raph and Donnie and whistled, "Sooo, apparently you both got a thing for the local girls."

Donnie just rolled his eyes, leaving the room. Raph smacked him in the back of the head, "Shut up, Mikey," he grumbled as he pushed his own chair and storming outside. It wasn't like that, he told himself. He had been worried about her, sure, but now he was worried that there was a murderous mutant dog living in the same woods they did. That was more important than some stupid girl.