Raph began to panic as he realized he was not reaching the cabin. He should have reached the cabin by now, right? He hadn’t gone that far. He was sure this was the way he had come, but now, with the wind whipping around him, the rain so heavy he couldn’t see far, the thunder loud and cacophonous in his ears, he had no idea if he was going the wrong way.
Deep terror settled inside his chest as he realized he was lost in the forest. Would they ever be able to find him? Whenever Mikey got lost, Splinter could find him easily, because he was loud and their sense of smell was good. In this downpour, though, his smell would be masked, and the thunder would drown out any screaming.
“Papa!” He still shouted anyway, hugging himself. “Leo?! Help!”
It was so dark, and he didn’t want to be wet anymore. He wanted to be back at home playing Menko with Leo and Mikey, or reading and letting Donnie use him as a backrest. He wanted to be warm and cozy wrapped up in a blanket and snuggled against Splinter.
“Papa!” He continued screaming, stumbling as a particularly strong gust of wind hit him.
The sound of crashing leaves made him look up hopefully, squinting through the rain and planting his feet to keep his balance.
“Papa?” He asked.
Instead, a large shadow emerged from the rain. It was a badger mixed with some kind of hawk, grown so big that it stood over Raph, the size of a pony. To Raphael, who was barely scraping by 4 feet tall, the creature was enormous and it towered over him.
It snarled, raising a paw as Raph screamed. It batted him through the air and he hit a tree, dropping to the ground and wheezing, trying to regain the breath knocked out of him. Tears sprang to his eyes and mixed with the rain on his face.
The badger-hawk swung again, its claws scraping across his shell as he managed to pull himself inside of it right before he hit another tree, knocking him right back out.
“Help…!” Raph coughed.
Synopsis
A flashback to 7 years ago tells the story of why
Raphael is afraid of thunder. When they were younger, Raph wanted to go play outside, even though
Splinter had warned him it was gonna storm. He snuck out anyway and wandered off into the woods to play regardless.
The rain eventually started, just as Splinter said it would, and Raph tried to find his way back, but quickly realized he was lost. To make matter worse, he was being stalked by a large
mutant in the woods. The beast attacked him and left a nasty scratch on his plastron. Splinter was able to scare off the creature before anything worse happened and carried Raph back to the house to patch him up.
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