The next morning, Raph helped Emily get ready. She was still in shock, still shaking from time to time. He kept her from looking at the blood stained clothes and didn't let her into the bathroom until he got rid of the jacket and the sai. She clung to his arm as they went down the stairs, her legs shaking underneath her.

The brothers came over and gently touched her shoulders. They knew what it was like, the turmoil of the first time they killed someone. Hers was in complete self defense, but she was still taking it badly. Leo pulled Raph aside and talked to him about what had happened. When Raph told him she had been attacked by a Foot ninja with sword, Leo shook his head, glancing back at Emily. "I won't teach her." Leo sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm afraid she's been traumatized by a sword. I don't want to risk upsetting her more."

Raph nodded, looking over at Emily, who was talking to Mikey. He knew his brother was right. "I'll teach her something else. Knives maybe. I don't think sai is the best idea either. It reminds her too much of her past. I can teach her the new stuff soon if ya want me to."

Leo nodded absentmindedly. "Go ahead. Just keep her safe."

Raph nodded and walked back to Emily, gently touching her shoulders. "We're gonna take some days off, okay?"

Emily looked up at him in question, but saw the concern in his eyes. "Alright. I hope you guys haven't changed your mind about teaching me to fight like you guys."

"Not a chance." He smiled, ruffling up her hair.

The next two days were pure relaxation. Emily was back to almost normal and Raph decided to try teaching her something new. He knew a bit about knives, especially throwing them. And Emily had the arm strength to really hurl them. Unfortunately, none of the brothers had throwing knives, so he sent Casey out to get some. That night, he returned with six small but perfect throwing knives.

Emily was ecstatic. She jumped up and hugged Casey tightly, holding him around the neck. "Thank you!" she practically sang.

Raph whistled as he examined them. "How much did ya get 'em for?" Emily was thinking along the same lines and went to the table in the living room and grabbed her wallet, thick with recent prize money. She had a good deal in a shoebox under her bed. But she never used it. She never had a reason. This was a good reason.

But Casey walked over to her and pushed the wallet back onto the table. "It didn't cost me anythin'. I told the guy who they were for he gave 'em to me for free. He's a big fan of ya and won a lot on that last fight." He laughed, patting Emily on the back. "I did too, for the record."

Emily laughed along with him and patted his shoulder. "Thanks, Case."

That night, Raph started teaching her. The basics of holding and carrying knives. And how to hit and not kill, just like he and Leo did. But also how to hit and kill, like he and Leo had to from time to time.

She excelled. More than she had with Mikey, more than with Don, more than with him in the beginning. She was a natural.

He trained with her for three days, eventually teaching her how to throw, and she picked that up just as quickly. He gave her one night off, knowing she earned it. He was proud of her. The next morning, he was helping her throw, but she seemed to be having an off day, taking a longer time to aim and throw, and not all the shots were hitting like before.

"Go ahead and take a break, Em." Raph sighed, a bit worried about her performance.

"Sure Raph." She sighed, wiping the sweat off of her forehead. "Something tells me that if a Foot ninja stood still for that long, something really freaky is going on." She joked and bent down to pick up her water bottle.

In doing so, Raph saw some blood-stained wrappings on her back when her shirt rode up. "Em, what happened there?" he walked up and touched the bandages.

Emily hissed through her teeth when he touched her. "It's nothing, Raph. I fell on some broken glass going down the ladder. No big deal."

But Raph didn't believe her. He followed the raised line of the bandages under her shirt and found it ran a good twelve inches across her back. "Em, you don't have to lie to me." He told her reassuringly. He knew she had snuck out to see her father the night before.

"It's nothing, Raph." She said again, only louder.

Again, Raph didn't believe her. "No it isn't. Broken glass, probably; sewer ladder, I don't think so." He gripped her shoulder with one hand so she wouldn't squirm and slowly pulled up the edge of one of the bandages with the other. A thick gash meandered its way along the tan skin of Emily's back and was still bleeding. "You need to have this stitched up." He growled.

"No, I can't. Don will freak out." Emily shot back, slipping out of his grasp.

"Don ain't even here; he's on patrol. I'll stitch you up. Now let's go." He kept his voice slightly hard as he walked quickly to his brother's laboratory.

He beat Emily there and got to work pulling out the medical supplies from the various drawers and cabinets Don had them stashed in. That's when Emily begrudgingly entered the room. Raph heard the rustle of fabric behind him and the slight creak of the cot as Emily laid her light weight onto it. After pouring the antiseptic onto some cotton, he turned around to get to work. But what he saw almost made him drop what he had in his hands.

Emily's t-shirt lay discarded at the foot of the cot, and she was on her stomach with her head resting on her arms. Raph could see all the toned muscles of her back move whenever she took a steady breath, and he could see the definite curve from her hips to her waist that had always been covered by her baggy clothes. And he could see parts of the curves higher up on her chest around her arms.

He swallowed the lump that was rising in his throat and got to work. He took off the blood-stained bandages and threw them away. Dabbing the antiseptic onto the ragged skin, he heard her hiss in pain and saw the muscles of her back tighten up. "What I don't' get," he started, trying to break the silence and distract himself from the sight before him. "Is how you can beat me almost every day, but an old drunk can mess you up this bad." He walked back to the table to throw away the cotton and grab the needle and thread.

"That's because I don't fight back with my father. I don't want to hurt him." She told him, wincing when he began to sew the wound shut.

He barked out a laugh without humor, "Don't want to hurt him? Are you crazy, Em?" he shook his head sadly and returned to his work. When he was nearly done, he started talking again. "How'd it happen?"

"He still had the beer bottle in his hand when I went to see him." She sighed and began to sit up when Raph had tied the knot in the string.

He looked up at the ceiling again and clenched his fist. "Has this happened before?" He was losing more and more control over leaving Emily there and going to her house to deal with her father.

"Yes." She whispered softly.

That's when Raph lost it. He jerked open the door with a murderous look in his caramel eyes. "Stay here, Emily." He hissed.

"No Raph!" Emily shouted, grabbing his wrist. "Please, Raphael, don't do anything! Whatever he's done he's still my father."

"He doesn't deserve your concern." Raph growled, not jerking his hand away, knowing Emily was right. "He doesn't even deserve to be called your father."

Emily sighed, knowing his temper was back to a simmer and her father was safe for know. She let go of his wrist and walked back to the bed to grab her shirt. Looking at the clock, she saw that Casey and April would be there soon. "Why don't you talk this out with Case when he gets here?"

"Fine." He snapped and stalked off to his room.

After the two humans and other three brothers had gotten back to the lair, the customary five pizza boxes were massacred. Most had gone back to the living room to talk and play Mikey's games. "Case, I need to talk to ya'." Raph told him as they walked to the living room.

"Sure Raph." Casey nodded, still walking behind April to join the other brothers and Emily.

Raph rolled his eyes and sighed. "Alone." He hissed.

Casey shrugged his shoulders under his black leather jacket and followed Raph out the lair and down a block or so of sewer tunnels. "What's eating you, bro?"

"Emily is." He groaned, leaning against the wall and running his hand across his smooth head. "She's driving me crazy!"

Casey took a spot leaning against the opposite wall and crossed his arms in front of him. He knew his friend, and right now he just needed someone to talk to that wouldn't judge or criticize him very much. "How can our feisty little Em drive you crazy? I thought you two were like two peas in a pod."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Raph laughed. He couldn't see anything that he and Emily had in common.

Casey chuckled and shook his head at Raph's ignorance. "You two are dynamite by a fallen candle, you can kick butt without trying, and when you do something you go all the way. And last but not least, you are more loyal than April's new Retriever."

Raph growled but didn't comment. "But we're even more different. She has compassion, she has tolerance, she is so hard-headed, and she is making me so conflicted." He slammed his fist against the wall behind him.

"Raphael, conflicted about a girl? This is going to be interested. Come on, bro, spit it out." Casey chuckled.

Raph nodded and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. "She's strong enough to be my equal, but she's weak enough to need my protection. She's shown me that she's a lot more vulnerable than even you know. And she's driving me nuts! My insides are getting all twisted up with some of the things she does." He paused and looked to see if Casey was laughing yet, which he wasn't. "Last month, she told me about her father, and she had started crying. So I sat down next to her and held her until she calmed down. And when she did, she leaned up and kissed my cheek for crying out loud!" Raph threw up his hands helplessly. "And just today, we went to Don's lab so I could stitch up a nasty cut she got. And instead of rolling her shirt up, she took it off! She was so small, and curvy, and her skin looked so soft. I could barely think straight." Raph sighed yet again and sunk to the ground, shaking his head sadly at himself.

"Whoa, she took her shirt off?" Casey pushed off the wall and walked over to Raph.

"I could only see her back and a bit of her chest." Raph growled. "Emily isn't like that, Casey." He reminded him harshly.

Casey held up his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. But, over protective much?" Raph looked up to glare at him. "Fine. You want my opinion? You're fallin' for her. That's what I think. What you've been saying is exactly how I felt with April."

"What?" Raph croaked. "But she's a human!"

"A very attractive human." Casey corrected. "But who did you think you were going to fall for? A mutated turtle-girl that appears in New York out of nowhere?"

Raph shot up and started pacing the sewer. "No." he whispered. "I won't do that to her." At that he turned on his heels and walked quickly back to the lair and tried in vain to forget everything that Casey had told him.

-Simultaneously in another corner of the nearby sewer system-

"Ugh! I don't know what to do with him." Emily whined as she kicked a rock with the side of her boot.

April laughed slightly from behind her. "I know he's a pain in the neck, but I thought you two would be getting along just fine."

"I think we are, but we might be too different to get along. He's good at all of this stuff, he's caring, he's loyal, and he is so overprotective that he sometimes makes me feel like I need his protection." She huffed and slumped against the wall.

April joined her against the wall. "Are we talking about the same Raphael? You said he was caring and over-protective, that's not the Raph I know."

Emily looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "He's always taking care of me, training me, patching me up, and annoying me to the middle of next week. And all the while he makes my stomach do back flips whenever he smiles at me. And I've made some stupid mistakes around him. I kissed him on the cheek last month in some way of saying thank you. And today I took my shirt off in front of him so he could patch up a gash on my back."

"You did what in front of Raph?" April gasped.

"He only saw my back." Emily said sheepishly, recalling the feel of his smooth fingers moving across her back.

April started outright laughing when she saw her friend standing there looking absolutely smitten. "You're in love with him." She finally managed to spit out.

"I am…not." Emily tried to shout. But towards the end of her outburst, she realized that April might have been right.

Hey guys!

It's C M here.

I hope I didn't excite you guys too much about a new chapter.

Reading through the story online, I realized that I didn't put the whole intro to this chapter onto the site. OOPS! I'm sorry, my dear, wonderful, amazing readers. But I am human. And I am a tired human.

And, I promise, I'm working on Chapter 12!

Sincerely,

C M
idkaname

P.S: I have a poll up on my profile page for a possible "sequel" (I use that word loosely, and you will see why if you look at the poll). I would GREATLY appreciate it if my amazing readers could give me their two cents. Because it will determine the future of the my take on our reptilian brothers!