*I love Raphael, because this honestly seems like something he would do. Regardless of the possible consequences. :)
The day had been a very silent one for Karina. Focusing on her own work after her updated phone call from Katherine about Brandon had been almost impossible, so she'd finally retreated to her own room. Half a dozen times she'd tried to call Brandon to no answer - and the last two times it had transferred her directly to voice-mail, as if the phone had been shut off entirely.
Raphael had been by a number of times himself to see if he could get her to come out of the room, or at least talk to him. When she wouldn't budge or say more than four words at a time for several hours, his own wheels began swiftly turning. The red-banded turtle was contemplating a bold course of action, something that he was certain Leonardo wouldn't appreciate, and was even less sure if Karina would be okay with it. But if it paid off, the risk of upsetting either of them would be well worth it.
Now that he'd talked himself into it, he didn't want to wait around any longer at the chance that he might come to his senses. He pulled out his phone and hit the speed-dial to reach Marc on the surface.
"Hey man," He said a little uncertainly when the the human picked up. "I need your cooperation with something, and you might not wanna do it. But I think it has to be done. You agree that we can't let Brandon walk away like this, don't you?"
"I don't see how it would help the family relationships. What have you got in mind here Raph? Do I really wanna know?" Marcus answered.
"Somebody else needs to, and I'm sure as heck not telling anyone down here. But I need to know a couple of things from you - the first being, whether or not you can make yourself scarce tonight."
There was a long pause on his end of the phone, and then a very guarded reply. "Why Raph?"
"You're gonna have to trust me - I just need you out of the apartment, so you don't accidently get implicated somehow. And I need you to keep your mouth shut about it. Think you can do that Marc?"
"Is this necessary?"
"I don't know, you tell me. Is he actually planning on leaving?"
"I'm not sure Raph...I mean...he hasn't said anything definite. But when he came back to the apartment from the gym, I could hear him working in his room. He was pulling stuff back together again, like he was getting ready to make some kind of move. But if you lean on him real hard, it could send him running faster!"
"Not if he's the kinda guy that his sisters say he is." Raphael said shortly. "Either way, he has to listen to somebody."
It was after 11pm when Raphael trotted downstairs, making absolutely no attempt the veil the fact that he was leaving. Leonardo was sitting in his favorite reading spot in the living area, and glanced up from his book when he heard him coming down - then saw his coat.
"You going out?" He asked obviously.
"Yeah, but I won't be late Fearless." Raphael saw the nervous twitch in his shoulders that his brother tried to hold back. "I'll be fine Leo."
"You don't want company, do you?"
"Not tonight." He replied. "I just have something I gotta do on my own. But I really won't be very long."
"You're not taking your bike?"
The red-banded turtle just barely avoided an outright grimace. "No, I'm good on foot, I need to run for awhile. I'll be back soon - don't worry about me." He finished pointedly.
Brandon had been asleep long enough that he was officially dead to the outside world. He wasn't even close to being aware of the stranger that was only inches away from him, tensed and contemplating how he was going to pounce. Brandon's first clue that there was anything unusual going on in the apartment came when something clamped down hard over his mouth.
The man's golden brown eyes shot open, just as the stranger jerked hard on his blanket, and sent him crashing to the floor. Before he'd had sufficient time to recover or react, the figure's weight had descended on his back, not crushing him, but neither was it forgiving. A shout started to escape Brandon, before something that felt vaguely like fabric was jammed into his mouth, cutting off further sounds.
Brandon struggled furiously on his chest - no way he was going down this easily! The muscular arms twisting his wrists behind his back felt like more than a match for his own strength, but that wasn't going to stop him from trying. He lashed his weight from side to side what inches he could muster, in an attempt to hamper his assailant. That only caused the stranger's legs to lever more strongly against his back, effectively pinning him to the carpet.
When his hands were bound together, the weight lessened for a moment as his attacker shifted positions, and Brandon leaped on the opportunity, lashing out hard with both feet. The shadowy figure caught one of his legs, but the other achieved a powerful blow to the face that he still hadn't been able to make out. The stranger didn't seem phased by it, but quickly snagged the offending limb out of mid-air before it could make another connection.
When his ankles were lashed tightly by the same material that felt felt somewhat like leather against his skin, his assailant hauled him off of the floor, and deposited him into a chair by the nearby desk. Brandon's heart was absolutely racing, as he had no idea what to expect next. He had his suspicions about what was going on here, but definitely wasn't expecting the figure to take two steps away from him, or to say what he did next,
"I'm real sorry about this Brandon - I didn't wanna have to do it this way, but you left me no choice." A somewhat gruff voice actually apologized grudgingly.
Brandon's enraged grunt was muffled by the gag in place, even as the man struggled uselessly against the restraints.
"Don't waste your time." He was advised. "But you don't have to be afraid either, because I'm not gonna hurt you. I could have, but I'm not going to."
Brandon stared at his attacker hard in the darkness, trying desperately to make out some kind of feature or familiar element inside of him. But the tiniest amount of light that filtered through the space was no more than enough to just see the stranger's outline. Bewilderment was rushing through his mind not only about being woken up this way, but by the idea that this person apparently knew who he was. However, confusion was quickly placing a distant second to the anger that was searing through the surface.
"I don't blame you for being pissed." The figure told him. "If somebody dragged me out of bed like that, I'd be mad too. But this right here, it's not about you and me Brandon. It's about you bein' an absolute moron, and completely screwing up everything with your sisters." Raphael told him tersely, as he lightly rubbed the eye that Brandon's foot had plowed into. "That's why I'm here, to talk about them. I'll even give you a chance to speak your own piece. But I'm not taking off that gag until I've said what I came for. That way, if you decide to yell, this won't all have been for nothing."
Brandon's racing heart had skipped a beat when Raphael mentioned his sisters. He was dying to rant and rave, to demand what this guy was doing here, and to make certain that he couldn't come near his sisters.
"Yeah, I'm feeling it now." Raphael stated over the stiffened man's posture. "Where's that protectiveness been this whole time? You ought be ashamed of yourself, hurting your sisters this way. You must think it's none of my business. What do I know about it after all? Well, I'll tell you. I'm one of the guys they tried to explain to you, before you went off on your extended temper tantrum.
Now me personally, I can't say that I was disappointed. You want to run off into the sunset, it's no skin off my back. Life would be a heck of a lot simpler if I didn't have to deal with you at all. Unfortunately, like I said before, this ain't about me. It's about the girls, and the fact that they want you in their lives.
I know you didn't expect to show up in New York, to find out that they had some secret life you didn't know anything about. But that's not the whole story Brandon, they wanted to include you. D'you think this last year has been some big party for them? They've been consumed with guilt over you. Then they try to reach out to you and make things right, and you won't even give 'em the chance.
What's that about anyway? They're your family. Sure they've ticked you off, but that doesn't really change how you feel about them deep down, does it? You take someone like Karina, who's already weighed down with enough guilt to sink an ocean-liner, and you just pile more on top of her shoulders. Is this your way of punishing her and Kat? 'They didn't need me, so now I gotta prove that I don't need them'?" Raphael stated sarcastically, and paused to take an actual breath.
"If this was just me, I wouldn't even be here, probably just wasting my breath like a whole lot of hot air escaping. But for them, for Karina..." He said more emphatically. "Do you even care about what you're doing to her? That's she's walking around so messed up that she can hardly focus on anything, and now doesn't even wanna talk to anyone? Is that the revenge you wanted, to make her feel worthless about herself? Mission complete Brandon.
As much as I'd like to let you go your own way...I care about her more than that. So I'm sorry I had to come in here all heavy like this, but you ain't listening to anybody. Do you think it's possible for you to let go of your anger for a few minutes, long enough to consider whether what you're doing is really the right thing? If you're any kind of real brother, I don't see how you could think that it is. I have brothers too, and they've ticked me off more times than I have room to tell you about. But at the end of the day, you and I have something in common Brandon. The family is all we've got.
I'm gonna take this gag off you now, and give you your own chance to talk. If you wanna yell, be my guest. I'll be gone long before anyone else gets in here, and you'll have lost your opportunity to vent."
A mighty swear was the first thing to escape Brandon's mouth when the turtle turned the fabric loose, but it wasn't a yell. Not really.
"Who are you? What are you doing with my sisters? Is this like some kind of weird cult thing whe--"
Raphael's hand cut the man off from his tirade of questions. "I said you could talk, but what I won't do is answer more than one question at a time. Think you can stick to that rule?"
Brandon was smoldering so hard that he was slightly trembling with the anger, but he wasn't going to get anywhere with this stranger if he didn't cooperate. So he nodded with extreme annoyance, and Raphael withdrew his palm from Brandon's mouth again.
"Who are you?" He asked flatly.
"Names aren't important right now." Raphael informed him. "The only thing you need to know about me is that I'm not your enemy, and I wouldn't do anything to hurt your sisters. I mean nothing. And they don't know I'm here, or that I'm doing this."
"If you're a 'good guy', then what's with all the secrecy, huh? Why won't you let me see you right now?"
"All of the ignorance you're living in is your own fault Brandon. Kat and Karina wanted to tell you - you're the one who bailed. You still have the chance to learn the truth, but not from me. If you want in on it, you're going to have to go to them."
"That doesn't make any sense. You're already here, and so am I. Let's get this out in the open already."
Raphael shook his head grimly at him. "Not gonna happen Brandon. Not everyone has the luxury of fitting into your simple version of reality. Some of us are limited by complications that you can't even begin to understand. You should know that we're not strong-arming your sisters. Nobody's asked them to sign their lives away, even if that's sort of what they've done. But they're our friends, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for them. I think tonight proves that without any doubt."
"Then what happens now?" Brandon asked, shifting what small amount of space he could manage in the chair.
Raphael looked over his shoulder, as if concerned with the time. "I've probably pushed my luck here as it is. I think it's time that I said good night."
"What, and you're just gonna leave me like this?"
"No, I wouldn't do that." He answered, as he withdrew an epi-pen from his belt that he'd "borrowed" from the Lab earlier that day just in case he needed it. "This won't hurt you." Raphael reassured him.
"What won't hurt?"
Without further warning, he injected the pen into Brandon's forearm. The man swore at him a second time, even as his head faltered, and his entire body started weighing down. The eyes were the hardest part, and the first to actually fail him. When he slumped over in the chair a few seconds later, Raphael was waiting to catch him.
The turtle transferred him back to the bed, and turned him loose from his restraints, before ducking out of the bedroom. He knew very well in the back of his mind that he could have just made things worse than they were before...but he was done waiting around for the man to come to his own senses.