Okey dokey, I'm going away for the weekend so no update til Monday :o(

But wouldn't it be nice of you to leave me reviews to read when I get back?

Raphael was up with the sun again the next morning. He stepped into the dojo and sure enough, there was Shredder at his morning workout.

Raphael's stomach knotted up, and he instantly regretted coming. He decided to turn around and just walk out when-

"Morning, turtle."

Well, he'd been noticed. There was no way to back out now. "Morning, kitchenware."

He set up a target, having already decided that with an audience he wouldn't be able to manage anything beyond his most basic sai-throwing drills. Raphael was actually quite good with most weapons – far better than Splinter or his brothers ever realized – but he tended to get stage fright when the chips were down.

Today was worse than ever, and he started missing almost right away. Each time the sai clunked in at a bad angle and clattered to the floor, he winced and tried not to look in Shredder's direction.

After the sixth miss in a row, he felt a tap on his shell.

"Hey! Don't scare me like that! I didn't even hear you." Raphael was embarrassed and it made him testy. "You know, because you're not clanking today and all."

Shredder ignored his attitude. "It's your shoulder. Relax it."

Raphael hid his surprise and just rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say, Coach." But then he noticed that his shoulder was unusually tight. When he dropped it, he hit the target on his first try.

He turned to Shredder. "How did you-"

"I train a lot of beginners who are afraid of me. I've gotten good at recognizing – and correcting – performance anxiety."

"Are you calling me a beginner?"

Shredder bent slowly and picked up one of Raphael's practice sais. "Do you think you can prove otherwise?"

Raphael's eyes flickered nervously to the doorway. "Splinter said you can't have weapons," he hissed. "Put that down."

"Make me." Shredder gestured with the sai. "First, close the door."

Raphael put his hands on his hips. "Make me."

In one fluid motion Shredder whirled and threw his weapon at the target. It hit a perfect bullseye, sinking in two inches deep.

Raphael closed the door.

Shredder would give a lot to learn how one taught ninjutsu from the beginning – especially to mutants. His own long-ago private lessons with a master gave him almost no clues about how to get through to a group of unmotivated adolescents like his Foot recruits. And he certainly had no idea of how one interacted with mutant animals.

Bebop and Rocksteady, thank goodness, had turned out with at least minimal thinking capacity. His other experiments had all been far less successful – animals treated with the mutagen seemed utterly incapable of assimilating anything new into their repertoire.

Shredder hoped that with a little careful prying into the turtles' training methods, he might learn something that would enable him to create some useful mutants. Maybe even a pack of turtles to battle his enemy's.

He and Raphael competed through a few exercises, but so far it seemed that the turtle's sai drills were only the usual ones. At this rate, he was teaching it more than it was teaching him! This was no good.

"Show me something unusual," he challenged at last.

The turtle cocked its head. "Like what?"

"I have no idea. Impress me – if you can."

Raphael gathered up six sais and walked all the way across the room from the target. "Watch this!" He threw the weapons one by one in quick succession towards the ground so that they stuck in the floor quivering, handles in the air. All six had landed in a line several feet from each other, and Raphael performed a series of one-handed front handsprings through them, picking up a sai every time his hand hit the floor and throwing it every time he was right-side up again.

Each one hit the target within a few inches of dead center.

Shredder stared.

"Impressed?"

"But…but that's no use," Shredder sputtered after a moment. "In battle you would never-"

"You didn't ask for something useful, Ironman, only something unusual," Raphael reminded him sharply. "When it comes time for battle of course I only use what makes sense. It's just…this makes practicing more fun."

"Ah. Can the others do that, too?"

"Nah – not with sais. They have their own tricks with their own weapons."

Shredder hoped he wasn't pressing too hard, but he was getting to the good stuff and it was hard to back off. "So you mean you don't all practice with every weapon?"

"Nope." Raphael seemed too busy pulling sais out of the target to notice the intensity with which he was being questioned. "Splinter makes sure we have some basic skill, you know, but after a few years of mucking around it was obvious who was good with what. You know, like, there's no point in us carrying around four sets of katanas if only one of us likes to use them."

"I see." It was something to think about. Shredder had never even considered the possibility that the turtles were trained as a unit rather than as complete individual fighters. If that was the case, then perhaps killing one of them would be enough to put the whole unit out of commission. He used to worry that killing just one turtle would backfire, infuriating the rest and setting them on a path of revenge, but now it seemed that perhaps he would be dealing a death-blow to the turtles' whole circus if he would just…

He put down the sai he was holding before the temptation got too great. Killing one now, while he was unarmed and injured in their own lair, would just not be prudent, would it? No.

He tried not to notice the way Raphael's shell stopped just shy of his fragile little throat.

TBC. Okay, so Shredder's not the nicest of bad guys. But hey, what can ya do? (Leave me a review, that's what.)

See you Monday!