Chapter 12: The Watcher

Raph woke up the morning after his surprise party, and for the first time in what felt like ages, it was with a smile.

He pushed away his blanket and sat up, swinging his legs out of bed. He waited a moment to make sure the support splint was intact, then reached for his crutches.

And he did all of this with a smile!

Still smiling, he walked down the corridor on his crutches, something that had never happened before. Even when he had been in a rather good mood considering the circumstances, he had never smiled while walking on his crutches.

And this unusual smile was still plastered to his face when he entered the kitchen and found all his brothers hunched over some blue prints on the kitchen table.

They looked up from their blue prints – and froze.

Raph was smiling!?

And not only that! Now he was even humming some random song as he opened a kitchen unit, balancing on his good leg, and took out a bowl. And the smile didn't even fade away when he realized that it was a rather bad idea to make breakfast while balancing on one leg. So he placed the bowl on the kitchen counter and turned to his brothers.

"Hey, Mikey," he addressed the youngest one. "Would you mind helping me with my breakfast?"

Mikey's jaw dropped, and it needed a nudge from Leo to make him snap back into reality.

"S-sure!" Mikey said quickly. "I'm right there, bro!"

And with that he rushed over to Raph, preparing his breakfast for him, while Raph just stood there, leaning on his crutches.

Donnie and Leo shared a look. This was so not Raph to ask for help. And it was even less Raph to do it in such a friendly voice.

And moments later Raph sat down at the kitchen table and Mikey placed a bowl of breakfast cereals in front of him.

"Thank you, Mikey!" Raph said, and the fact that his voice was totally lacking any super-friendliness that could be a hint of sarcasm, made Mikey's jaw drop again, but he managed to snap out of his trance all by himself this time and mumbled a quick "Welcome!" before he joined Donnie and Leo again.

Raph was munching away on his cereals, and his brothers were still staring at him – a fact that, if nothing else, would usually have made Raph turn furious.

But Raph just looked at them after a while.

"You okay?" he asked, and still, there wasn't the slightest bit of anger in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah, sure!"

"'Course!"

"Totally!"

Raph just nodded. But then he grinned at Mikey.

"Sooooooo, April and I gave you and Casey a proper dressing-down yesterday, didn't we?" he said. "Still have to send Casey a text about it." He chuckled.

"Heh, how were we supposed to know that you practiced so much recently, not even April could slow you down in this video game? And she was trying, like, really, really hard!" Mikey replied.

Raph just shrugged. "Practice makes perfect. And April did her best."

He could still remember the smile on April's face when they had beaten Casey and Mikey for the first time although she had managed to kill her character twice. He chuckled at the thought.

When he looked at his brothers they were staring at him with disbelieving looks on their faces.

"Riiiiiiiiiiiiight," Leo said, and then the three of them turned back to the blue prints.

"So what are you up to?" Raph asked, craning his neck to peek at the blue prints. They looked like blue prints of a warehouse to him.

"Another Kraang facility," Leo explained without looking up. "But this one is tricky. I guess we are going to need April's and Casey's help." He was silent for a moment., but then he lifted his head and looked directly at Raph. "And maybe yours."

Raph's eyes widened. "Mine?"

Leo nodded. "Yes, Raph. I think we are going to need your help."

His task was pretty simple. It consisted of watching all the monitors on Donnie's station in the Shellraiser. They were linked to the building's security system. The good thing was that this time the Kraang were using the original security system. The Kraang didn't have the time to replace the security system in their new facility yet, so it still was human tech, not Kraang-y, and thus even easier for Donnie to hack. He had managed to hack into the security cameras in ten minutes, and now all the screens were showing what was going on inside.

And Raph was here to watch the screens, to look where the Kraang droids exactly were, to let his brothers and friends know if something unexpected popped up.

Raph's eyes darted from monitor to monitor, and he switched between several cameras to get as much info as possible. He was even watching the street with the help of (hacked) street cameras. Donnie hadn't even broken a sweat when he had hacked into them. Piece of cake.

"Is everyone on their position?" Leo asked over the radio.

Four voices outside and one inside the Shellraiser confirmed.

Raph quickly went through their positions in his head. It was Leo at the back of the building, Mikey and Donnie would go in from above, and Casey and April were covering the front door. Raph was there to watch over them, to make sure nothing went wrong.

And nothing would go wrong, he told himself. Definitely not! He was there and as long as he was watching and could warn them if he had to, nothing, absolutely nothing would go wrong.

"Then let's get this party started," Leo said.

Again, five voices confirmed.

And Raph knew his brothers had started moving in. He couldn't see them on the cameras, not even a shadow, they were too good for this. He caught a glimpse of Casey though, before April dragged him back into the shadows, but everything was okay. The Kraang hadn't realized. There hadn't even been a Kraang close to them.

The others were moving in, and he was watching. It was his task, it was what he was supposed to do tonight.

He was the watcher.