"You gotta be chill with him," Mike had said, as they heated water on the stove so they could take their turns bathing in the huge, cast-iron tub Raph had hauled in from the barn.
(The thing was damn heavy. He should have asked for help, but he'd already had enough humiliation for one day.)
"He's got some control issues," Mike went on. "Kind of like Leo. You can't just give him orders, you have to tell him why he wants to do stuff."
"I don't have control issues," Leo said, and Raph thought that was the funniest thing he had heard all day.
"He's scared," Mike went on, pouring another pot of steaming water into the tub, then refilling it from the sink and putting it back on the burner. "He's had to deal with all the same shit we have, plus more, and he's got, like, zero self-defense skills. You gotta make him feel safe."
"How do we do that on the astral plane?" Raph asked. His hands went to his trusty sai. "These do any good against spirits?"
"Only if you think they do," Leo replied. "The astral plane is all about mental energy. But if the astral representation of your sai helps you focus that energy, then yes, they should work as well as they do here."
"I don't like it, Leo," Raph said. "Not being able to punch something solid creeps me out."
"Don't worry about it." Leo dipped a hand into the tub, testing its heat. "Your job is to call Donatello. Any other spirits that answer will have to deal with me."
Raph never liked taking the back seat in a fight. Being "chill" didn't come naturally to him either, but he did his best as they prepared for their spiritual journey.
Mike had lit candles and incense, filched from their supplies at home, and turned off the softly-buzzing overhead lights. Raph had slid onto the floor to join Leo, and in a moment David had done likewise.
"Have you ever done this before?" David asked quietly.
"Not really," Leo admitted. "I've glimpsed the astral plane, but I haven't been there."
"I've never seen it at all," Raph said. "I dunno what the hell we're doing." David's level of alarm rose visibly, and Raph quickly backtracked. "But, I mean, we've been training for this forever. Trained to fight forever, too, and the first time we did that for real we kicked major ass, so, you know. 'S gonna be fine."
To Raph's relief, Mike rescued him by showing up at that moment with two plates. One had two medicine balls on it, and the other had just one. Mike balanced them with practiced ease as he knelt into seiza.
"This one's yours," he said, offering the lone medicine ball to David.
"Why is that one mine?" David asked, not lifting a hand to reach for it.
"Because you're different," Mike said, and extended the plate further until David took it.
Mike set the other plate on the floor between Raph and Leo. "You're gonna put it under your tongue and then meditate like you always do," he said. "Remember, when you embody on the astral plane, it's gonna be in your spirit guise - the way you see yourself. Don't be scared."
David was raising the hand that wasn't holding the plate. "I don't know how to meditate," he said.
"Close your eyes and breathe," Mike said. "The medicine is gonna make it real easy." He settled back. "Whenever you guys are ready."
David lifted the plate a little and eyed the medicine ball as though it might try to eat him. "I'm not ready."
"Bro." Mike smiled encouragingly. "Trust me. That's been going pretty good for you so far, right?"
Raph thought David was going to argue about whether or not Mike's point was true, but instead the kid took a deep breath, scooped the medicine ball off the plate, and stuck the glob of herbs in his mouth with one hand while putting the plate down with the other. Then, very determinedly, he straightened his posture and closed his eyes.
Leo gestured to the other plate. Raph took one ball, and then Leo curled the other into his palm.
"Keep each other safe," Mike murmured in Japanese, as they put the bitter medicine under their tongues. "Good luck."
Raphael awoke to himself in a white room - or, rather, a white something. It didn't exactly have walls, but merely a softly-defined glow that faded away to nothing at some indeterminate distance.
He blinked twice, and looked down at himself. Immediately, a grin spread across his face. "Aw, yeah!" he crowed. "Now we're talkin'!"
His body looked much as it did on the earthly plane, except he was about three times as muscular as he had ever been in real life. He flexed hugely as he turned, intent on showing off his build to anyone who might be there to see it.
The first person he laid eyes on was Leo, who looked exactly the same as he did in reality. "Typical," Raph muttered, watching Leo examine his spirit body.
"I don't have any scars," Leo said, studying the inside of his forearm. "My spirit guise has never been marked by an enemy. Never accidentally wounded myself in practice. And you're -" He raised his eyes slowly from his own skin.
"One mega-ripped stud of a Turtle?" Raph suggested, striking a pose that highlighted his massive biceps.
"… Sure," Leo said. He looked around. "Where's David?"
"Aw, damn." Raph let his arms hang at his sides - though he couldn't quite lower them all the way, the muscles were so bulky - as he remembered what they were supposed to be doing here. "He's never done this before. You think he got lost?"
"Maybe the medicine didn't work for him," Leo said. He looked around the empty space. "David?" he called. "Are you here?"
Raph turned slowly, though in the featureless space it would have been immediately obvious if anybody else was in there with them. As he scanned his blank surroundings, though, another person popped into existence right before his eyes.
A human. Facing away from him, but white-skinned and on the small side, with brown hair falling just to the bottom of their shoulder blades.
"Who are you?" Raph barked. Instinctively, he drew the sai from his belt. He didn't know much about encountering spirits on the astral plane, and he wasn't about to take any chances.
The human didn't respond.
"Hey, lady!" Raph shouted. He could feel Leo moving up behind him, watchful but not yet drawing his own weapons. "I said, who are you?"
The human turned slowly, hands raised, palms turned in. Not any kind of fighting stance. She looked up, her eyes bright.
"Raph," she said. "It's me." Her face shone with joy. "I - This is how I see myself. This is who I am."
Raph pulled his sai back into a defensive position. "David? You're… you're human?"
A fierce nod. "I told you. I'm human on the inside."
Raph squinted at the spirit form before him, with its human shape, its human clothes. The shirt was not exactly form-fitting, but it showed distinctly human curves. "You're a girl?"
"No, I'm not a girl," David replied, but he was so happy the retort had none of its usual heat. He looked Raph up and down, and his human face pinched strangely. "That can't be healthy."
"What are you talkin' about?" Raph demanded. He flexed again, making sure David got a good look. "This is what healthy looks like."
David shook his head. "No, I'm pretty sure that's what steroid abuse looks like."
Raph jammed his sai back into his belt and flicked a finger in David's direction. "And I'm pretty sure that's what starvation looks like."
David's spirit form was skinny, though not quite as sickly looking as his real body. Without a word, he pulled up his shirt and poked at his stomach. "Oh," he said, tugging the shirt back down in a hurry. "That doesn't feel like I expected."
"Can we focus?" Leo said.
"Focus?" Raph repeated. He pointed at David again. "Aren't you gonna say anything about this?"
"Say anything about what?" Leo replied. He cast a perfunctory look at their brother. "It's how he sees himself."
Raph threw up his arms, almost overbalancing himself with the unexpected weight of the muscle mass. "Then what're we doing here?"
"The spirit guise isn't static, Raph," Leo said. "It changes as your concept of yourself does." He gestured towards David. "Right now, David is suffering because his concept of himself is so different from his physical body. It's unhealthy. It's why he's contemplating extreme, life-threatening surgery to 'fix' his physical body. Our goal here is to change his image of himself, so he can accept who he really is."
Out of the corner of his eye, Raph had noticed David getting angrier and angrier during Leo's little speech. "That's what this is about?" David said, when Leo was done. "Some kind of hallucinogenic therapy to get me to think it's okay to be green and missing fingers and unable to thermoregulate? Some feel-good journey of self-discovery to show me I'm supposed to be like this?"
Leo turned to him, and spoke calmly in response to the outburst. "David, nothing can change your spirit guise except you. If your astral form changes, it's because you really believe that that's who you are. If you still look like this at the end of your journey -" He raised a hand to encompass everything about David's spirit body. "- then you'll know that you're making the right choice by going forward with this surgery. But if not…" He lowered his hand. "Then, like I said, we may have saved your life."
David crossed his arms. "You think I only see myself as a human because I've lost the part of my spirit that thinks it's a turtle."
Leo nodded. "Right." Then his expression softened. "We're human and turtle, David. Raph and I didn't embody as normal turtles; we embodied as mutants - both one thing and the other. We have dual spirits, and we've spent our lives learning to accept them. You haven't. We think you didn't lose your turtle soul, you disowned it. And we just want you to make sure - really sure - that you don't want it back, before you give it up forever."
David looked down at the toes of his sneakers. "Okay," he said. "Fine. Where do we start?"