Author's Note: I have had an idea for this story since midsummer, but just now got to writing it. It takes place sometime before "A Chinatown Ghost Story." Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all related characters, and all derived works are the intellectual property of Nickelodeon, Viacom, Eastman, and Laird. This story is for entertainment purposes and not for monetary gain. In no way should this story be taken to be anything other than a fan-based expansion of and commentary on the source material. n00btmntfan is in no way associated with the makers of TMNT.

"Look out!" shouted Casey.

Raphael looked up just in time to see the hockey- stick-propelled, squishy pink blur of a Kraang heading straight for his face. Swearing, he leaned back just in time to avoid the impact. The Kraang, squealing angrily, scuttled away behind the corner of a building.

"Watch your language there, Raph," Casey said, flashing his hockey-mangled grin.

Raph glared. "You better watch your face!"

Casey gestured to the pile of empty Kraang droids that had collected in the middle of the alleyway. "We did pretty good, huh?" He picked up one of the large laser rifles. "Heh, these things are pretty wicked. Why don't you guys just collect these things and fight with them?"

"One word: Mikey."

"Ha! Yeah, that does seem like a bad idea. Or even worse: Donnie."

Raph folded his arms across his chest. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"I just meant that from the sound of it, the dude blows stuff up a lot."

Raph shrugged. "Fair point."

"So, what do you think all of these Kraang are doing here? Just 'Kraanging out?' Eh? Get it?"

"Dude, you seriously need to spend less time around Mikey," said Raph.

Casey was about to reply when a large contingent of Kraang entered the alleyway.

"Kraang, the one who is called 'Casey Jones' must be destroyed," said one of the Kraang droids.

"Agreed, Kraang," replied another. "The turtle who is the turtle known as 'Raphael' must be destroyed also."

"Man," muttered Raph. He flung a handful of shuriken in their general direction. With a flip, he landed next to Casey. The two of them stood back-to-back in the sea of advancing Kraang. "I liked it a lot better before they figured out what our names are."

"Yeah, how exactly did that happen?" Casey asked.

"I don't know. Maybe because you constantly refer to yourself in the third person!"

"Well, duh – that's how Casey Jones rolls!"

Raph rolled his eyes. "I'll take point."

"Whatever you say!"

With a shout, Raph launched into the wall of droids with a high kick. Casey, following behind him, stayed close to the ground. The minute that Raph made impact, Casey took his hockey stick and swept the droid's feet off the ground. A quick sai-stab to the head shut down the droid's systems. Meanwhile, Casey had already advanced forward. Keeping low, he whirled his hockey stick, unbalancing multiple droids at one. Raph followed up with a fierce spinning kick.

The droids fell to the ground with a clatter.

Casey planted his potato-masher taser onto the Kraang droid that lay on top of the pile. The electrical current surged through the whole metallic mass of them. Squealing, the Kraang inside abandoned ship and made a break for it.

Raph smashed into droid after droid. Metallic body parts went flying. This was his element. There were few places where he felt so completely confident and capable, so exhilarated, as in the midst of combat. Everything that he normally had to keep locked away found release. Everything made perfect sense.

Besides that, he and Casey had gone on so many independent Kraang-hunts together, the two of them had found a seamless fighting system. They hardly needed to communicate anything; they knew exactly what to expect from each other.

It was a beautiful thing.

As they dispatched the last droid together, Raph looked with satisfaction at the pile of robotic carnage in alleyway.

"Who's awesome?" Casey asked, with an expectant grin.

"We're awesome!" Raph said, as they bumped fists.

"Yeh, I guess you're okay."

Raph rolled his eyes in response. There were times he thought about admitting that he considered Casey as his best friend, and then Casey said something like that. It was probably for the best that Raph kept it to himself, anyway, considering the fact that Casey had plenty of other long-established friends who ranked higher on the friendship scale than a giant mutant turtle did. Besides, saying it would only stoke Casey's outrageously overblown ego even more.

Casey flipped up his hockey mask. "So what do you think they were all doing here, anyway?"

"Hard to say." It was times like these that Raph wished Donnie had accompanied them. On the other hand, Donnie and Casey were pretty much oil and water. Raph wasn't sure who he blamed more – Donnie, for being so possessive of the girl he didn't have a shot with in the first place, or Casey, for being such an arrogant tool-bag most of the time.

Raph generally dealt with it by ensuring that the two were never within earshot of each other.

As he rummaged around the abandoned droids, looking for anything suspicious that they could take back to Donnie for analysis, he noticed an odd shiny slick of liquid on the ground. It looked like motor oil, but knowing the Kraang, it was anything but. He pushed a droid out of the way, and saw that a small glass vial had been smashed open. One of the droids was smeared with the stuff.

"Whoa. Raph, look at this."

The genuine alarm in Casey's voice made Raph whirl around. "What?" When he looked where Casey was pointing, he shouted.

A Kraang lay twitching on the ground, covered in the same liquid. Its eyes were still open, and it looked like it was in genuine pain. It looked like it was screaming, but no sound came from its mouth.

"Wow. It looks like it's really suffering," Raph said.

"Should we…I dunno, put it out of its misery or something?"

Raph shifted uncomfortably. He hated making decisions like this. Leo was the one who always handled decisions, and as much as Raph hated to admit it, Leo's decisions were usually the smartest. Judgment calls and strategy, anything besides the fight itself were most decidedly not Raph's element. He pulled out his t-phone and started sending a text to Leo. "The other guys should be here in a few minutes."

"I think we should put it out of its misery," Casey said. "These things are straight-up nasty, but I'm starting to feel bad for this one."

"No. Leo and Donnie will know what to do. We should just stay here and make sure nobody else gets that gunk on them."

"Is April coming?" Casey's eyebrows shot up, and a hopeful smile crept into the corner of his mouth.

"I doubt it," Raph said, avoiding looking at the Kraang. "Why?"

"Well…you know, 'cause…well, 'cause April."

Raph shook his head. "Congratulations, your English has devolved to kindergarten levels."

"Sorry, dude. It's just that April, well, she's really cool."

"And?"

"Nothing," Casey said, sighing. "Dude, I hope your brothers get here soon, because that Kraang is not looking so good."

The Kraang's eyes had rolled back. It was twitching furiously, foaming at the mouth. The fact that it was completely silent only made it worse.

"Never thought I'd actually feel sorry for the Kraang," Raph said. He didn't want to look at it anymore, but the more that the Kraang suffered, the more that Raph felt like he needed to intervene. It wasn't right to let anything suffer that way, even if it was an enemy.

But this decision wasn't clear-cut. It was knotted up with complex ethical questions – that kind of thing was more Leo's forte – and despite his dislike for the Kraang, the idea of killing this one made his skin crawl.

Wasn't Splinter always telling them not to kill unless it was absolutely necessary or unavoidable? That took a lot of restraint on Raph's part. There had been so many times that he'd wanted to stab his sai straight into a live enemy, but Splinter's voice had always held him back.

He realized the truth was that he'd never intentionally killed a self-conscious being before, and the thought of doing so now was actually frightening to him.

Come on, Raph, he thought. Don't be a coward. Just do it.

"So, uh, Raph, I've been meaning to ask you something," Casey said.

"Shoot," Raph said, latching on to the distraction immediately. He was desperate for something to take his mind off of the Kraang.

"Okay, well, I really like April."

Raph cringed. This was another one of those things that were needlessly complicated. But anything was better than the Kraang. "We all like April. So?"

"Nah, man, you know what I mean. I mean that I like April."

"And you want to talk about this now?"

"Well, do you want to think about what's happenin' on the ground over there?"

"No."

Casey adjusted his shoulder pads. "That's what I thought. So, anyway, since you're friends with her and all, I was wondering if you could do me a solid and ask her what she thinks about me."

Raph snorted. "Other than the fact that she thinks you're a loudmouth?"

"Yeah, other than that."

"Look, Casey, I'm not going to do that. You know how Donnie feels about her, right? I'm not saying he has any chance with her, but if you think I'm going to get involved in this, you're crazy. My brothers come first."

"Oh, come on! You're my best friend!"

Best friend. Raph jerked his head up in disbelief. "You've got humans all around you, and a giant turtle is your 'best friend?'"

"Well, yeah," Casey said. "A lot of my other friends don't get me."

"I don't get you."

"You get me a heck of a lot better than they do."

Raph wished he could punch something. If he had been like Mikey, Raph would have squealed in delight at the fact that he had a best friend other than his brothers. Of course, he was decidedly not like Mikey. This kind of gooey friendship emotional junk wasn't his element at all. One the one hand, he was completely floored and delighted by the fact that Casey thought so highly of him. On the other hand, the tight bond of friendship now complicated the matter at hand even more. Surely he had as much of an obligation to a best friend as he did to his brothers.

"Please?" Casey said, clasping his hands together.

"Fine," Raph growled. "But only because the expression on your face is so pathetic."

Casey laughed. "See? That right there is why you rank number one on my list."

"What, because I agreed to talk to April for you?"

"Nah, because you say stuff like that. You make cool look lame."

Raph couldn't contain a grin. "You got that right."

The groan of brakes alerted them to the Shellraiser's presence. Mikey clambered out the door first, eyes closed and headphones on. He was immediately followed by Leo and Donnie.

"Whoa," Leo said. "You weren't kidding. You guys really crushed some Kraang. "

Mikey opened his eyes and yelped. "What in the name of pizza is that?"

Donnie and Leo followed Mikey's gesture and both exclaimed.

"That would be the Kraang I mentioned," Raph said. He drew a deep breath and swallowed his pride. "I didn't know what to do about it."

"I say we put it out of its misery," Casey said again. "Just looking at it makes me hurt all over."

"What is that stuff?" Leo asked, grimacing.

Donnie stooped down and collected some of the black liquid in a test tube, then corked it. "My guess is that it's some kind of neurotoxin. The container must have gotten broken during the fight. I'll take some back to the lab for analysis."

Mikey frowned. "What do we do about the poor Kraang? It's hurt really bad. Should we take it home and help it?"

"Mikey, we are not bringing a Kraang back to the lair." Leo slapped his palm to his forehead. He sighed. "But I don't know what to do either. I mean, we smash their droids all the time, but I've never actually…you know, killed one. On purpose."

"I feel like that might be a critical flaw in your fighting strategy." Casey grinned.

Leo flashed a scowl. "Ninjas don't do more harm than is necessary."

Raph felt a wave of relief in knowing that Leo shared his hesitance. But Leo wasn't nearly as hard-core as he was. Raph should have been able to leap into this with decisive action. Who cares about the Kraang? I don't…

But he still couldn't bring himself to do it.

"April might know what to do," Donnie said. "Maybe she could talk to it for us. There was that one time she kind of communicated with them telepathically."

"Yeah, let's call April!" Casey said, grinning widely.

Raph rolled his eyes for the fifteenth time in the same hour. Casey, Donnie, and April within a fifty foot radius of each other? No thank you. "That sounds like a terrible idea." When everyone shot him a questioning look, he crossed his arms. "Do you really want April to have to look at that thing?"

"Erm, I don't think it matters much now," Donnie said. "I think it died."

Raph looked over at the Kraang. It was still now, and its eyes were frozen in place like a disturbing, squishy pink mannequin. It made him shudder a little bit.

At least it's dead now. Problem solved.

But he knew that it wasn't that cut-and-dry.

"I know the Kraang are the bad guys and all," Mikey said, "but I feel really bad."

"Yeah," Leo said. "I don't know what else we could have done, though. And I'm not sure how I feel about the concept of…mercy killing."

Donnie bit his lip. "Well, I think we should take it back to the lair. I'll perform an autopsy and study the toxin a little more closely." He headed to the Shellraiser to retrieve a container.

"I thought we weren't gonna bring the Kraang back to the lair?" Mikey said, incredulous.

"Not while it was alive, shell-brain," Leo said.

Using forceps, Donnie lifted the Kraang into a plastic container and sealed it. "Why do I get the distinctly unpleasant feeling that Splinter is going to be ticked off about this?"

As they piled into the Shellraiser, Raph found himself longing for a fight. A fight would take his mind off the sense of guilt he felt for letting the Kraang suffer instead of making the decision himself. Fighting was simple. Clear-cut. Attack enemy. Defend self and allies.

This was complicated and way out of his element.

And Donnie was wrong. Splinter wasn't going to be ticked off. He was going to be furious.