"So what's goin' on with April and Don?"

Raph lowered the night-vision binoculars, but his eyes still gazed into the darkness of the street below. He and Casey had been following a few Purple Dragons for the past few hours, running across the rooftops and swinging down into alleys. Now they were waiting outside an old boarded-up store for the Dragons to come out, crouching in the icy wind and trying not to shiver too much.

It was the question Raph had been waiting for all evening. Casey was a bonehead, but he wasn't dumb enough to miss April and Don holding hands like they were trying to squeeze off each other's fingers, and standing close enough to gaze into each other's eyes. It would have taken somebody blind, deaf and utterly clueless to not pick up on how they were acting. Raph wasn't even sure they knew what they were doing.

"Well, Donnie's got a thing for April," he said gruffly, pretending to wipe a smudge from the binoculars.

Casey frowned. "I always knew he spent a lotta time around April, doing lots of science stuff. Used to be she'd spend all her free time with him doin'… whatever they did."

"Well, now it's… complicated."

"Because of the baby?"

"It was complicated before they knew about the baby," Raph said grimly.

"Why didn't you tell me, man?" Casey said, his brow crinkling. "You don't think I shoulda known that Donnie was movin' in on April?"

Raph sighed. The truth is, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, and hadn't been for a long time. Casey was his best friend, but Don was his brother — caught between them, he felt like he was being stretched in two different directions. The happiness of one could only come by hurting the other, since April didn't seem like the sort of woman to have two men at once. And if forced to choose, Raph knew he had to side with his brother. The four of them were inextricably bound, a whole only when they were together — and the bond between them was something that went deeper than blood.

He settled back against a brick chimney, and heaved a misty sigh. "Because I'm still not sure what the two of them are doin'. I mean, they ain't technically together or nothing. But they ain't exactly not together either." Raph growled, frustrated by his own struggle to describe what he had been seeing between his brother and April. "I don't know what they are right now. Or what they're gonna do in the future."

Casey sat back beside him, seemingly digesting what his friend had told him. "I didn't even know you guys liked human girls and not… y'know, turtles."

"Well, there ain't a lot of mutant turtle girls around, so we'll never know. It's human girls or nothin'," Raph said, crossing his arms. "Donnie started likin' April almost as soon as he met her. He just didn't say it."

"So what changed?"

"They got all screwed up by what happened when they were captured by the Dragons, and Donnie kissed her."

Staring down at the dark, boarded-up windows, Raph sensed rather than saw Casey gawping at the idea of Don kissing April. The vigilante seemed to be struggling to imagine such an event, even after seeing them so close earlier in the night. Finally Casey draped his hands over his knees and said, "So uh… do ya know if April, you know, feels the same way about Don?"

"I ain't sure," Raph said, raising the binoculars to his eyes again. "I've seen 'em be kinda cuddly, but never seen 'em kissing again."

"So what do I do?" Casey asked, sounding genuinely baffled by the situation he found himself in.

"My advice, you talk to April and find out what she's feelin'," Raph said. It seemed like the common-sense thing to do. Although, he thought, it might be a bad idea, for all he knew. He had even less romantic experience than Don did, having never even kissed a woman, and therefore no experience at all in love triangles. He definitely didn't know why Casey, who had actually dated various women in the past, was expecting Raph to advise him about what he should do with April.

Fighting, Raph knew all about, and could give some pointers. Romance? Women? He might as well be talking about the inner workings of one of Donnie's inventions.

"I might—" Casey began to say.

But Raph stiffened and raised a hand. A battered door was flung open down below them, and the two figures they had been shadowing emerged into the night, behind a veil of overgrown creepers and weeds. One of them was a snivelly-looking little punk with spiky orange hair and a ragged bandana tied around his neck, and the other one was short and muscular, almost square-shaped with his broad shoulders and tree-trunk-like legs. The two of them piled into a waiting van, which sputtered to life and began moving down the street.

Raph leaped down the side of the building, lightly springing between brick walls before landing on the alley floor. He could hear Casey following rather less gracefully on the fire escape, but he couldn't wait — he had to keep on the trail of the two Dragons. The Shell Cycle was tucked into the alley alongside Casey's motorcycle, and it took him only a moment to don his helmet and start the engine.

It was always a thrill when he rode his bike through the night, a streak of green and crimson swerving around corners and down the dark streets, the cool air blasting over his skin. But he forced himself to focus on the two Dragons, whose lumbering vehicle was puffing and coughing its way into a rather run-down district. Suddenly they were surrounded by old warehouses, decrepit houses and sleazy little stores lining the streets.

Casey pulled up alongside Raph, his face hidden by his hockey mask. "So we gonna beat these guys or what?" he said.

"Once they lead us to the other Dragons," Raph responded, "and we find out who's takin' 'em out."

He slowed his pace as the van stopped, and pulled over near an aged Victorian house with boarded-up windows and doors. Thin, dim beams of light were shining from between the boards. Even from out in the street, he could hear voices arguing faintly from inside — someone was having an argument, or at least too upset to keep their voices down. As Casey drove up, Raph sprang up onto the porch roof and pressed himself against one of the broken windows.

"—wasn't supposed to know! Dragon Face told us that Hun wouldn't even notice these jobs!" a high, nasal voice declared.

"And he didn't! He's too wrapped up in those Foot freaks to notice!" a deeper voice declared.

"Well, he didn't at first. He didn't notice the drugs, the guns, none of it. But then Dragon Face had to go catch that Turtle!"

A few shingles fell from the roof as Casey scrambled up beside Raph, his bag of bats and hockey sticks slung over his shoulder.

"We had no business doin' jobs like that," a reedy voice moaned.

"He said the money was too good to pass up, especially for gettin' rid of those mutant frog things," a fourth voice argued. "'Specially since the guy gave us all the stuff we needed to catch 'em. And when they were gone, we wouldn't have to deal with 'em ever again."

"Well, that failed!" the nasal voice sniped. "They came chargin' in to rescue the one we got, we lost a buncha Dragons, and Hun found out!"

A grim smile crossed Raph's face. He despised Hun more than he despised any other Purple Dragon — well, he did now that Racer was dead — but it gave him some measure of satisfaction to know that the scum who kidnapped Donnie were being taken out by their own leader. It saved Raph the trouble of taking care of them himself.

"We stay low, we keep our noses clean, and Hun'll get distracted by his Foot Clan stuff," the deep voice said.

"It's too late," the nasal voice lamented. "He's been cleanin' house, and he'll come for us soon. He's put dozens of Purple Dragons in the hospital, and when they're out, the cops just scoop 'em up. That ain't counting the ones he's put in the ground!"

The sound of a fist striking flesh. "Pull yourself together," the deep voice said. "We can get through this! All we need to do is stay outta Hun's way until he gets caught up in something else."

"Maybe we should leave town," the reedy voice whined.

"Guess I'll have to beat Hun to it," Raph said softly, pulling his sai from his belt.

"I'm ready when you are," Casey said, and Raph could tell he was grinning behind his mask.

Raph stood up and braced his heels against the rough shingles of the rooftop, before raising his leg and kicking the rotten wood covering the window. He heard cries of surprise and anger as splinters and chunks of wood came raining down from above, just before he landed in the midst of the Purple Dragons. A few dozen pallid faces, bulging fishlike eyes, hands desperately clutching makeshift weapons that wouldn't hold up a minute before the sai.

"I hear you boys messed with my brother," Raph snarled.

Casey landed with a crash right behind him, a bat already clutched in each hand. "And with April!" he said. "Goongala!"

Raph plunged into the crowd of Purple Dragons, punching and kicking his way through them with reckless abandon. This was what he had been missing for way too long — the heat, the wildfire of fighting coursing through his veins as he crashed his way through a solid wall of enemies, leaving them bleeding and broken in his wake. He could hear Casey roaring his usual battle cry, and the crash of wood and drywall as Dragons were sent flying into the walls.

And every time Raphael felt a twinge of mercy, or thought that he should pull back from what he was doing, he reminded himself that these Dragons might have been there. Might have paralyzed his brother, might have dragged him into a cell like an animal, might have stood there and watched as he was brutally raped by Racer. And he fought even harder.