Raphael was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't hear footsteps coming up the stairs, and nearly jumped out of his shell when the door swung open with a bang. The two other Turtles — Bo and Nunchaku — were standing in the doorway, looking expectantly at Leo. Nunchaku's face was wreathed in smiles, and he was carrying a large plate, while Bo looked anxious and kind of grumpy, as if he didn't want to be in the same room as Raphael.

"Dinnertime!" Nunchaku sang out. "Breakfast, actually. I hope you're hungry, Raphael."

Leo sighed. "That is… our brother, Michelangelo," he explained. "Beside him is our other brother, Donatello."

"People call me Mikey, and him Donnie," Michelangelo said, coming closer. "Well, except Father. For some reason he never calls us by nicknames. Dunno why. Can I call you Raph?"

Raphael watched him warily, as if some wild and unpredictable animal had somehow broken into the room. He had previously questioned how Leonardo could be a ninja if he was unwilling to kill — the idea seemed like a blatant contradiction to his mind. But Mikey seemed like even more of a contradiction — he was the antithesis of what Raphael had been shown as a ninja, with his sunny demeanor, loud entry into the room, and chattering speech.

He knew Mikey could fight — he had seen him battle his way through a dozen Foot ninja when they had first met. But it didn't seem possible that the powerful ninja he had seen before could be the same person who was coming toward him with a wide, slightly silly grin and eyes alight with eagerness. Like a puppy meeting someone new.

"I saved some of last night's dinner 'specially for you," Mikey announced. "You like pizza, right?"

"Ain't had it," Raphael said bluntly.

Mikey's eyes widened. "Seriously? You have been deprived, bro."

"Mikey," Leo began to say, "maybe now's not a good time—"

"It's the perfect time, Leo. I heated it up in the oven so he wouldn't have to eat it cold. Good thing I did — nobody's first pizza should be cold," Mikey said severely.

Maybe Mikey was insane. That was a possibility, Raphael thought, rolling his eyes.

Leo apparently gave up on talking to his younger brother for the time being, rising from the bed and swiftly moving to the next room. Donatello followed him, and Raphael heard them speaking in hushed, slightly angry tones — though he had no idea what they were arguing about, and suspected he wasn't going to find out from either of them.

Mikey settled down on the bed beside him, and began cutting a piece of the pizza with a knife. "Donnie said I should feed you with a fork. He's worried that you might try to bite me," he said conversationally. "Besides, I don't think it's too easy to eat pizza lying down, you know? The cheese could slide off. But when you're not tied up, you should try eating it with your hands. It's all part of the experience."

He held the chunk of pizza out on the end of a fork, and Raphael debated inwardly about whether he should eat it or not. It might be drugged. Then again, they already had him chained to the bed — it wasn't as if immobilizing him would make any difference now.

Reluctantly he opened his mouth, and bit the pizza off the end of the fork. It was better than he expected — soft mellow cheese blending with a tangy tomato sauce, and a soft crust that kept it from being too gooey. He thought he tasted some kind of herbs in there, but wasn't sure what they were. He wasn't exactly an expert.

Mikey watched him with obviously bated breath, his eyes round and unblinking. It finally occurred to Raph that the other Turtle was waiting to hear what he thought. He swallowed.

"It's — good, I guess," he said gruffly.

A giddy smile crossed Michelangelo's face. "I knew it!" he crowed. "I knew you'd like it. Old man Rupert has the best pizza in New York. We have it all the time. Want more?"

Raphael grudgingly allowed Mikey to feed him more of the pizza, even though he wasn't really very hungry. Mostly it was because the other turtle seemed so enthused about feeding him, even as he chattered to Raphael about himself and his brothers. If Leo had been all torment, sadness and anger, then Mikey was oddly conversational and friendly.

Raphael wasn't entirely sure what to do about that. He could snarl and tell the smaller mutant turtle to leave him alone, but something about that seemed… unappealing. The idea of Mikey's eyes and face filled with sadness and hurt made him squirm uncomfortably, even though he couldn't say why. So he simply lay there, eating pizza and listening to his brother prattle.

"Okay, open. We're living in this place because these robots chewed through our old home and everything we had, so we're camping out here until we can find someplace new," Mikey was saying. "That really sucks, but what really scared us was when Father was kidnapped and… oh, you already know about that. Right. Open."

As he swallowed the next chunk of pizza, Raphael found himself wondering how Mikey could be so nonchalant about losing his home — the home, he said, that he had lived in ever since he mutated. Hesitantly, Raphael said so.

Mikey's eyes widened. "Well, yeah, it sucked," he repeated. "But it was just stuff, you know? I'm gonna miss a lot of the things that got broken by those robots, but… what I really wanted was for my dad to be safe, and my broth… and Leo and Donnie."

It flashed through Raphael's head — imagining how he would feel if the Foot headquarters had been razed the way Mikey's home had been. He wasn't sure he would be as calm about it as the other Turtle was.

"Open," Mikey said, holding out another forkful of pizza. "And we spent months and months down there, training all the time. That was okay with Leo, because he loves training — like, it's actually fun for him to train. He's probably the most ninja-ey ninja you'll ever meet, which can be kinda hard to measure up to sometimes, you know?"

Raphael grunted.

"And then there's Donnie. He's kind of Leo's opposite, 'cause he's good at ninja stuff too, but he really likes working with machines and science. He made his own computer out of parts. Can you believe that? He took like six broken laptops, took them apart and made a new one out of the pieces. And he says he's gonna make another one once he finds some more broken laptops. Can you believe that?"

Raphael didn't know what to say, so he just grunted again.

"I wonder if that's why he and Leo fight sometimes — 'cause they like different things," Mikey said meditatively. "They get into arguments — Donnie says Leo's doing something all wrong, so Leo loses his temper, and I gotta step in and make them stop before they really get into it."

Raphael's eyes moved to the closed door behind Mikey. Leo and Donnie were still in the kitchen, and he could hear their voices during the brief moments when Mikey wasn't talking. They still sounded strained, angry. He wondered if they were arguing about him — what this machine-loving Donnie thought they should do with him.

"But they're both really good guys," Mikey said suddenly, almost pleadingly. "I mean, Leo and Donnie fight a lot because they disagree about stuff and sometimes I need to make them break it up. But we're family and so I know they really love each other, and when things really get bad they'll have each other's backs — and mine too. I just… you should think about that." He squirmed. "Because it'd be really cool if you were a part of it too."

His eyes were fixed on the floor, as if he were expecting Raphael to yell at him for daring to suggest such a thing. But Raphael found himself unsure what to think. Some part of him was sure that Leo had put Mikey up to this, trying to lure him into a false sense of security with all his chatter. That Mikey had just been softening him up with pizza and talk, and his real goal all along had been to get him to come join them.

But as he watched Mikey's unease, he found that he couldn't quite believe that the smaller Turtle was that duplicitous. Mikey's emotions were too nakedly displayed on his face — a mingling of anxiety, sadness and hope — for Raphael to think that he was just doing this at Leo's behest. He was practically squirming with those feelings. He really wanted Raphael to join them.

And Raphael wasn't sure what to think about that. Being wanted wasn't a feeling he was used to.

Mikey was still awkwardly staring at his knees, fiddling with the fork. He seemed to have lost his previous enthusiasm, or at least his volubility. Raphael watched him silently for a moment, before deciding that he'd had enough of Mikey's silence.

"More pizza," he said gruffly.

Mikey's head snapped up, and his smile slipped easily back onto his face. "Whatever you want, Raph. I mean, within reason."