~Editted~

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"I wish they would only take me as I am." ~ Vincent van Gogh


"They are doing well with collecting the jewels," the leader said.

"They are not disrupting anything, are they?" the peacemaker inquired.

"Of course not!" the lead voice sounded offended. "They simply take the jewel and then put everything back just as they found it.

"Do we still know that we can trust them?" the voice of doubt sounded suspicious.

"As I said before, we have no choice but to trust them for now. When they collect five of the six, we shall leave them."

"Then how will we bring the Shredder back?" the wise spoke up.

"When we have five of the jewels, we will have some power to recall prophets to carry out the duty," the leader replied.

"Then what is the Shredder for?" the uninvited inquired.

"He will restore our shrine. Then when he is done, Maysa shall help restore the sixth jewel and use her power to ban The Shredder. She will call upon more prophets and spread our good news to the world," the lead confirmed.

"What if she is unable to bring down The Shredder?" the doubtful still remained skeptical. "You said so yourself, that the world has much more advanced technology. What if it can be used to be more powerful than the jewels?"

"She will be. The powers of the jewels, if used correctly, cannot be stopped by anything," the leader sounded impatient. "You yourself should remember that."

"What about the people? Have you not thought that perhaps their greed has carried out too long and that they desire no leader but themselves?" the fifth voice was strained.

"The human race has an empty spot where we were, always have. They have tried to fill it with many things, but to no prevail. When they hear of the news, their hearts shall truly be filled," the lead argued.

"What if they refuse?"

"We shall take them by force. Like a parent, we know what's best for them."


The next night, Raph calmly walked out of his home, knowing Leo was bound to follow him. In fact, he half awoke the night before to hear Leo muttering to Don about how he was suspicious of Raphael doing something else on his 'walks'. Proud of himself, Raph gave way to a smug little smile. Leo would follow him, yes, but he couldn't keep up with Raph from where he was going. Raphael had to work harder to get to Cally that night, but he enjoyed the challenge of getting to confuse his older brother.

Raph took off in the opposite direction of the usual way he took. He was running, splattering stinky water up around his feet as he went. Turning down tunnel after tunnel, his mind read the map in his head of the sewers.

The water splashing under his feet gave way to his position, that's what he wanted, for now. He grinned, coming up with a plan like this made him feel like one of those cool street fighting teenagers from the movies that they watched. He wanted to be a street fighter like Mikey wanted to be a super hero. No normal nine year old- almost ten- could come up with this kind of plan; then again, he wasn't a normal nine year old. For Raphael, this was his indestructible plan, like one a plan we come up with when we think everything is crashing and we get this one great idea that builds everything back up.

Coming to a large cylinder-like room that dropped down, he stopped, listening. The sewer water went around his feet and fell below him in a large, pot-like pit. Several holes opened on the round wall, each of them contributing water to the pit. The edges of his toes curtly brushed the edge of the tunnel, hidden by a steady stream of water. In front of him was the end of a rusted pipe, it was bent and broken. As it came up the cylinder wall, one section bent so that it shot out right in front of the opening Raph stood before. The top of the pipe that hadn't broke off the wall, still hung, feet above where the pipe bent over.

They would use this pipe to grab and swing to the tunnel beside the one

he was in. The pipe was not one long pipe, but it was many small pipes connected by shorter, but greater in diameter, sections.

Raphael jumped out, grabbing the pipe. Instead of swinging across, his grip changed to the lower portion of the pipe still on the wall. Slowly sliding down, he kept his eyes on the opening he came from; to make sure Leo wasn't watching. Coming to a lower opening, Raph gripped the round side, and swung himself in.

A bit of pride built inside as he ran against the water down the tunnel. Raphael came to a ladder that let up two levels of the sewer. He started climbing up, taking his time. He only went up one level because going up another would leave him at the surface buildings down from where he was supposed to be. Glancing around, Raph reminded himself where he was. To the right just led to a dead end, but left led to a T-way. Running to the left, he knew he was late. Cally would probably be gone by the time he got there.

When coming to the T-way, he turned left, because going straight across would lead home.

Going straight the rest of the way, he came to the usual ladder. Raph gave way to a stupid smile, suddenly thinking of Cally. For some reason, he didn't need Cally's smiles or frowns to know what she was thinking. He had only known her for two nights, yet he knew that her eyes seemed crisp when upset, soft when sad, and bright when happy.

Griping the cold ladder tightly, so much his strained hands turned pale green from his usual forest-like color, Raph sighed. What was he getting himself into, liking her so much? He had only seen love in those scary movies Mikey adored. Theirs, if she even knew he liked or that she even liked him as well, wasn't like that. Besides, could they even be like that? He was a mutant. And to add, they were only nine and eight.

Raph bit his bottom lip. How? Could it? Why? Why not? And if? So many doubts and hopes ran through his mind he grimaced. The sudden mix of emotion twisted his stomach. Too many emotions can cause a person to become ill, if Raphael wasn't careful, it would happen to him. It's like a girl who hasn't gotten over her boyfriend. They were best friends and dated, he hurt her. It's agony if she ever sees him again. Sadness, anger, and the little smudge of love that still lives in her. It happens to everyone in one form or another. For Raph, it'd be happiness mixed with doubt.

But no matter how twisted he felt, he made a promise to Cally. Raph had told her he would be there every night. And he wanted to keep his promise. Raphael liked keeping his promise anyhow.

Cally was the one he could talk to, that was his age without being scoffed at, laughed at, or being replaced by "science". Well, that happened only sometimes, but Raph could go to her and talk to her all the time; or actually when he could, at night. In a child's mind what they like is fair and what they don't isn't, if that puts it into simpler terms. That's why Raphael liked talking to Cally. She was an outside source of letting out, as he with her.

As Raph climbed up that ladder to the surface, he smiled; whether it worked or not, they were friends. He slipped up into the dark alleyway. The sloppy men were there again, but Raphael didn't worry because they never saw him. They called each other names and couldn't stand or walk right. They talked funny too, like all their words were one.

Raph hoisted himself to the top after climbing up the fire ladders on the building. Looking away into the city, he almost knew he was going to see a roof, a small house-shaped building with a door, and nobody there. It gave him an empty feeling.

That's probably why he almost killed over form a heart attack when he heard, "There you are!" Instead he jumped, causing a hand to slip. Grabbing the top again, Raph hoisted himself up all the way.

"Yah, go ahead, kill me, no one'll miss me!" he muttered sarcastically, loud enough for Cally to hear, though sometimes he really felt like this. Raph tended to be very pessimistic on his bad days with thoughts that nobody liked him or wanted him around, but he covered it well with anger.

Cally giggled, "Of course someone will miss ya!"

Raph shook his head. "I was bein' sarcastic," he remarked.

"Sure," she grinned. "So where were you?" For the first time in a long time, Cally was actually happy. She had a purpose in her broken life now. She had something to look forward to every day and someone who her age who would talk to her and not call her a freak.

Raph frowned, but not at her, "I had to take the long way. I thought my brother was following me…" On the inside he was actually rather proud of himself. He had successfully avoided Leo despite his brother's probable attempt to track him down.

Cally bit her lip. "Don or Mikey?" Those were the only two that Raphael had mentioned the names of.

Raph shook his head. "Neither, it was my older brother, Leo…"

"Hm," Cally nodded in thought. Then she smiled, her eyes dancing. "I accepted your challenge."

Raph looked at her in confusion. "What challenge? If it was trying to kill me, it didn't work. Plus, I don't remember challenging you to that."

Cally giggled again. "No, the one where I actually talk to people."

Raph grinned, "So you weren't as scared as I thought you were. How'd it go?"

"It was alright, the nuns were pretty shocked when I talked to them outside of lessons." Cally smiled, not mentioning one part. The nuns had been shocked yes, but the other children had simply ignored her when she came to breakfast with them. They had cut in front of her in line to get their breakfast and had left her at a table by herself. When she tried to talk to them, they ignored her, not even looking at her.

Raph smiled back, not seeing what Cally had hidden. "What about those adoption interview things?"

Cally shrugged. "They scheduled one for tomorrow, that I'm still nervous about." Surprisingly, since she had made such sudden progress, the nuns didn't see why she couldn't try for an adoption interview. But Cally was still scared of being rejected.

He smiled at her gently. "Hey, don't be. So what about friends?" Raph was the only person- even if Cally didn't know it- that could relate to her on being rejected, though he didn't know that she feared rejection, he did know that he even feared it himself. Raphael's own physical appearance had rejection written all over it.

Cally frowned. "They still think I'm weird, they don't understand how I felt…" They didn't know how Cally felt. Where most of them felt angry towards their parents for abandoning them or dying, and others tried their best to forget their past and look for a better tomorrow, Cally sat on her old life and wished for it to come back.

"Not many people can, Cally." Raph sighed, placing a hand on her shoulder. "If people saw me, they'd treat me worse." It was true. Instead of being rejected, Raphael would be snatched up and studied by scientists all over the world, or be put in Area 51 if it truly existed. Some would riot saying it was like killing a newly found endangered species, just to see what's in it, but it most likely would do nothing to help but instead just simply cause public unrest. His life would go down in the history books as a freak of the world and he would never be known for who he truly was on the inside, of course no one is. It's always our actions that define us and never our personality. People think they know our personality through our actions. But we're always wrong to do that to people because we all do it every day. Robbers are robbers, murderers are murderers, drug addicts are drug addicts, and they are never treated as people with a heart when perhaps it was that treatment from the beginning that made them what we label them as.

"I don't," Cally frowned. "So why can't other people treat us like I treat you?" Why couldn't other people treat her the same way he did? The thought silently slipped through her head.

Raph looked down at his feet. "That's the way the world goes, I wish it didn't." But whether he knew it or not, Raphael was completely right. It is how the world goes.

Cally hugged her knees to her chest." I wish it didn't either." she sighed. A moment of silence passed between the two friends, both wishing in their hearts for things that they wanted to be.

He smiled at her. "At least the whole world isn't like that."

She smiled back and nodded, not saying a thing. Cally was glad she had someone that accepted her. Finally, there was something slowly, but steadily breaking through her damaged soul. It gave Cally hope but most of all it gave her a friend.

To a child, the perfect world is one where everybody thinks just like them. That's why destiny's masterpiece was looking more and more beautiful as Cally and Raph's friendship flourished. Because both Raphael and Cally wanted a world that would accept them for who they were they complemented each other perfectly.

"What does it feel like to be all alone? No one to talk to." Raphael let the question spilled, his curiosity getting the best of him. He had thought about it earlier. Raphael was never alone, even when he wanted to be. How did it feel to be alone even when you didn't want to be? His brothers always seemed to bug him when he just happened to want to be alone, but what if you didn't want to be alone? What if you wanted someone to be there when there was nobody?

Cally stiffened a little, not as if she were upset, but as though she was sucked into the memories of her loneliness, reliving it in her mind. "It hurts to feel like nobody wants you. That nobody loves you. I'm eight years old and I'm on my own sort of."

Raph frowned, trying to understand. He had his brothers and Master Splinter; he had never really felt that rejected. Raphael knew that some of the world would reject him but his family never would. They always wanted and loved him. He bit his lip. He realized through Cally's words that he abused having brothers. He had someone when he wanted nobody, but it sounded worse to have nobody when you wanted somebody.

Call abruptly stood up. "I-uh-I have to go…" Her voice sounded like it almost cut off at last word. The more she thought about her loneliness the more the tears began to threaten. She didn't feel secure crying in front of Raphael so she decided to leave quickly so she wouldn't.

"Uhm, okay." Raph bit his lip, feeling a bit guilty. Could it be because she was upset by the question? The thought hit him.

Cally glanced back at him, and the next thing he knew, he was being hugged.

"Thanks." She smiled, letting go.

"For what?" Raph asked, curious.

"Everything." She grinned, then turned and ran in the black door.

After a minute of standing with a burning red face that matched the color of his bandana, Raphael climbed down the side ladder of the building, then into the sewer. He smiled as he walked home in the stenching sewer water because he was thankful to her for everything too, but mostly for accepting him for who he was.