Casey Jones resisted going to Alice's hideout, again. He'd been once since she'd gone to visit her family, out west somewhere, she wouldn't say where. The place was exactly the same as it always was, dusty, quiet, with his buttmark on the beanbag seat. So instead, he sat on top of a low building, five stories up, watching the streets below for any Purple Dragon scum that might deign show their faces.
She'd texted him twice since was gone. He wanted to call her so bad, to hear her voice, husky with that to die for Brooklyn accent. But he hadn't gotten the guts to do it yet. She hadn't called him, and didn't seem right for him to call her. Don't want her thinkin' I'm some bothersome little kid.
Keeping busy? She'd asked.
Casey Jones: Yeah. Scum never rests.
Allie D: Neither do you, it seems! You going to school?
Casey Jones: School is for wusses.
Allie D: Yeah, wusses who want to play on the hockey team.
Casey Jones: Good point. What r u up 2?
Allie D: Enduring my mom. She'd sent him a rolling eyed emoji. She's so lame.
At least you've got a mom, he wanted to type. But he didn't, instead he sent, Yeah, my dad is 2.
Allie D: Parents. Ugh.
The next set of texts, she asked her classic question. How r u and Raph?
He wasn't sure how to answer. He wanted to kick himself for even telling her about Raph. But she listened to him, understood him, like they were cut from the same cloth, as his dad would say. It was eerie, but it was great at the same time.
Casey Jones: We're good. He considered typing, Thanks for being there for me, but thought that sounded way to girly. Instead, he just texted Thanks.
He wanted to call her. For some reason, hearing her voice was like drinking tiny shots of whisky, hot and spicy right to his chest. He had little fantasies of her saying words in Italian, and he promised himself that when she got back, he was going to ask her to say something.
God, I bet that would sound so sexy.
"Who's Alice?"
Casey threw his arms into the air, twirling around to see Raph standing behind him, his hands on what would have been his hips, if he didn't have a shell. "Dude," he said. "You gotta stop sneaking up on me. I coulda squished you like a bug."
"Who's Alice?" Raph asked again.
Casey vaguely remembered being on the phone with the red-masked turtle, but couldn't recall what, exactly, he had been saying. "She's a woman."
"You called me, drunk, talking about Alice." He shook his head, "And a bunch of other really weird stuff that we're never going to repeat."
"What are you talking about?" Casey asked.
"Exactly," Raph came to stand beside him, looking out on the street below.
"No," Casey went on. "I mean, what are you talking about, weird stuff?"
Raph turned his green eyes on the teenage vigilante. "You don't remember calling me and telling me about Alice?"
He straightened his shoulders. "Of course I do," he replied. It wasn't a total lie. He remembered most of it. "We didn't talk about anything weird." Did they?
Raph raised an eyebrow. "Proclaiming your undying love for me isn't weird?"
Casey was glad he was wearing his face paint, because his cheeks and ears started to burn. He knew underneath the colors he was bright red. "I didn't proclaim my undying love for you," Casey snapped. "I was telling you what Allie said."
Raph was trying to hold in a smile, and Casey could see he wasn't doing a very good job of it. He clasped his green hand on Casey's shoulders. "I love you, man," he mimicked.
"Shut up!" Casey jerked his arm out of his grasp. "You just said we weren't going to repeat any of it. This is why I don't tell you stuff."
"What stuff are you not telling me? Like who the shell is Alice?"
Casey leaned against the water tower of the building. "She's this woman I saved from Purple Dragons," he said. "She was tagging on their turf."
"And?" Raph scowled.
"And, I might have gone out with her a few times since then," Casey admitted, putting a hand behind his head.
"Like, on a date?" Raph sounded incredulous.
I wish! Casey was about to answer. But he managed to stop himself. "No, she's like, twenty two. We just hang out and write music." He beamed his toothless grin, "I helped her write this killer song."
"Really?" Raph asked. "I wanna hear it."
"Ok!" Casey dug his phone from his pocket, going to his gallery to replay the song, but then remembered what the song was about. "Nah, you don't want to hear it. It's not that good."
"You just said it was killer," Raph's scowl deepened.
"It's killer for a first song," Casey said.
"You're full of it." Raph grabbed for Casey's phone, so quick that before the teen knew it, the phone was in the turtle's hand and the song, acoustic and rough, was playing. The red banded turtle's bright green eyes squinted. "What kind of song is this?!"
"A song about friendship," Casey said, swiping his phone back. "She was helping me, man."
"Helping you do what?" Raph asked. "Get in touch with your feelings?"
Frustration would begin to build in Casey's chest, but then it would dissipate as soon as it came, as if it couldn't catch hold inside of him. "I was mad," he whined. "She needed help writing some songs, and that's what came out."
"I don't say stuff like that about you to Slash when I'm mad at you!" Raph's voice cracked.
"What do you say, then?" Casey demanded, the anger sparking in him again, and again having nothing to fan into flames. "It doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is she's totally cool, Raph. And she wants to meet you!"
"Yeah," Raph rolled his eyes. "What did you tell her about me, anyway?"
"That you're my friend," Casey huffed. "She thinks I'm cool, so she thinks you're cool."
"Why do I find that hard to believe?" Raph crossed his arms in front of his plastron.
"Fine, don't meet her then," Casey shrugged. He didn't want to fight with Raph, he really didn't want to. Let him just blow it off, then they wouldn't be arguing.
Raph groaned. "It isn't like I can meet her anyway."
"That's just it, Raph," Casey leaned forward. "I think she'd be totally cool with you! I mean, she's totally cool. She brings beer, and she has a guitar, and when we tag, it's like..." his voice trailed off as searched for a word.
"Epic?" Raph groused.
"No," Casey shook his head. "It's not epic at all. It's like, when you're in the zone, only you're in it with someone else, and they totally get you and your art."
Raph raised an eyebrow. "You sound like you're in love, dude." His voice did not portray that he was impressed.
"I'm not in love, you dork," Casey turned to look at the street once again. "She's just really cool."
"So where is she now?" Raph asked.
"Out of town, visiting her family. She said she'd be back next week." Casey crouched, peering at the ground below. "Look," he pointed to a group of teenagers surrounding an older man walking on the sidewalk. "That's our cue."
The drone of the small plane, along with the very long day, put both Ashton and Greta to sleep in very little time. Saki was grateful, he didn't want them screaming from their ears popping, or their gums aching with the change in pressure. He remembered Karai as a tiny child doing so, and his attempts to stop it simply infuriated them both.
The day was one of the most arduous he had encountered in years—he'd spent fourteen hours at Tokyo Disneyland. While he had not, initially, planned on joining Nikka and her children on Greta's birthday outing, Nikka had brought up a very thoughtful point during one of their talks at the Estate.
"This person, who is after you," she said, holding a delicate, antique tea cup to her lips during a tea service, "I have been thinking about him or her."
"Or her?" Saki asked, taking a sip from his own jade cup.
"Are women not capable of going after someone?" she asked, her voice smug. "You haven't paid attention to your history, Saki. They're much more dangerous than their men."
He'd grunted and she'd laughed.
"I think you should come to Disneyland with us," she said. "Give the tabloids something to write about."
"Why do the tabloids need something to write about?" he asked.
"They don't need something to write about," she answered. "But they need you to write about."
He'd raised an eyebrow.
"And they need something juicy to write about. Something that will catch your enemy's attention." Her bright blue eyes twinkled mischievously, as they did when she was a girl.
"And what, pray tell, would they be writing about?" he asked with a sigh.
"About how you were out at Disneyland, of course," she said, putting the cup down. "With your business partner on your arm, and her two children trailing behind you with their Japanese nanny."
"How will causing a buzz help us with this unidentified enemy?" he groused.
"It will help us identify him," she huffed.
"How?" he growled, putting his cup down.
She pursed her lips together before answering. "Because it will cause people to talk. It might cause one of your business associates, above or underground, to let something slip." She picked up the teapot with practiced grace, refilling his cup with the aromatic liquid. "Right now we have precious little to go on."
"Why not do something in New York?" he asked. "I can take you to dinner and a concert." That would be much better than going to Disneyland.
"Because we need to do something while we're still in Japan, and this way we don't have to change our plans," she said.
"You don't have to change your plans," he said.
"We know that he is ninja, and he teaches others ninjitsu," she went on, ignoring his comment.
"How do we know that?" he asked.
"He sent ninjas after you," she said disgustedly. "Not only does he teach ninjitsu, he obviously thinks he is a much better teacher than you are, to send his students after you."
Saki growled, squinting.
"I can't decide if he is Japanese or not," she explained. "It could very well be a foreigner, who doesn't know the details of your expertise. Or, he could be Japanese and be young, and not know the details of your expertise. I am disinclined to think he is young, because he sent people after you, rather than coming after you himself."
"So it is a him?" Saki asked.
She smiled. "I am unsure of that, as well."
He picked up the teacup, scowling deeply.
So he'd ended up at Disneyland when he'd planned on another day of checking in on his holdings in Tokyo.
He glanced over the plane's aisle at Nikka, who held Ashton on her lap. The boy's head rested on her breast, his mouth slightly open like the small child he still was, his eyes moving under his eyelids in a dream. "He is getting too old for you to hold him like a baby," Saki told her.
She turned to him, drawing her brows together. "'Getting' too old," she repeated. "He isn't too old yet. Do not deny me this, of holding my son while he's still a little boy."
Saki did not reply, but turned from her, to look out of the window at the cloud covered sky.
He remembered when Karai was that age, filled with enthusiasm and eager to please. She performed her katas, beautifully, like a dancer, her muscles filled with grace and power, even at such a young age. Her mother had never moved so gorgeously, save the swing of her hips. But his little Karai had been a spice to set men and women many years her elder on fire. Each move she made was precise, yet flowed into the next, her natural ability for ninjitsu obvious. She obeyed him with little question, and the times she did not make him proud were few and far between.
Her rebellions, when she had them, tended to be with her clothing, it was always her clothing or her hair. He'd given up fighting it in her tweens, but when she was still only five or six, he had deemed her too young to make such choices for herself. But she never complained about her practice uniform. She never complained about her body hurting, unless she was truly injured. She complained about having to wear skirts, like a little girl should, or about how she was not allowed to have a puppy or kitten.
"You are too occupied to care for a pet," he had told her.
"Then I can be less occupied," she'd replied, sticking her bottom lip out.
He bent down, so he was at her eye level. She tightened, ready for a physical blow, perhaps. While Oroku Saki did not spank his daughter, The Shredder did punish his students. She was in her practice uniform, and so the line of who she was, was blurred. "There are people," he said, "who will kill you if they lay eyes on you, simply because of who you are. Simply because of who loves you. I will not have you defenseless."
"I am not defenseless, Father," she almost whined. "I can defeat anyone who tries to hurt me!"
He almost felt sorry for her. In her young mind, she believed what she said. "You," he pointed to one of his advanced students. "Defeat her."
The man bowed, a confused look on her face. "Excuse me, Sensei?" He glanced down at Karai.
"Defeat her," he repeated.
The two had bowed before each other, waiting for him to give the word to begin. "Hajime."
The match had gone on longer than he thought it would. Each move that Karai made, the pride in heart grew, threatening to swell out of his chest and into his gut and throat. But in the end, his little spice had been defeated, left with a bloodied nose and a fiery anger in her eyes.
And so no puppy or kitten had come.
Occasionally, he would put her on his lap when there was a lack of space, but that was rare. When she was on it, unlike Ashton, who took up his mother's thighs and torso, she had been tiny on his legs. She'd weighed next to nothing, his hands enveloping in her little body easily as he had held her to keep her still and safe.
He felt Nikka slide Ashton off of her own lap, his eyes still on the clouds out of the window. She slid in the seat next to him, her voice soft. "We will make her better, Saki."
It irked him that she knew what he was thinking, that he could not be alone with his thoughts after the long day. "Hnnn," he replied.
"Saki." She reached up and placed her fingers at his chin, swiveling his head so that he was looking at her. As always, she looked him in his eyes, as if he had sight in both. "We will make her better. If we have to abduct all the scientists at The Human Genome project and drain Oroku Industries dry." Her voice was like a soothing balm on a rough wound, his annoyance drained from shoulders, to be replaced by that distant gratitude that took him when they spoke closely in such a manner. "I promise."
