A little gift for @ihavewritersblockbutinreallife cause I saw their request to put a creepy twist on their oc, Frightclaw!
Bonus lil mini-fic under the cut (Spoilers for the Frightclaw series!) Hope you like it!
Raph understood it first.
The dragon mutant they had rescued from the arena that day, the one who'd had her wings severed, fought for anfld against them and snapped the Shredder's neck, was not the same dragon they knew.
That was not Frightclaw.
It started when they got back, when Frightclaw woke up for the first time since the incident. When Raph had woken up and rushed her in a hug.
Frightclaw hadn't responded the way she normally did. Normally, she would have wrapped her arms around the turtle tightly and rested her head atop theirs. He half expected warm wings to fold around him.
This time, the dragon mutant simply stared down, curiously tilting her head and staring almost blankly with eerie neon green eyes. Shivers of some uneasy feeling ran cold down Raph’s spine, and he had quickly excused himself.
He had not tried to hug her again after that. But she seemingly relearning, and the others got hugs from her without issue. Maybe he'd been seeing things, or she'd still been too groggy to process.
Then, more little things began cropping up. Raph started counting, keeping a list, because something about Frughtclaw suddenly sent his senses ringing into small alarm bells and the urge to stay away from her.
The first thing was when she spoke. Her voice was quiet, soft, almost like that of a terrified child. Often, she simply did not speak. Frightclaw was many things, but shy and silent was not her style.
The next thing was that her glowing scales almost always seemed to be at maximum brightness, or shifted randomly to completely dark when startled. Frightclaw usually could manage her glow, and if did fluctuate with her emotions, but it never sparked out as much as it did now.
Raph had never seen all of her scales go completely dark. For certain one no longer could glow, but she had never once dimmed them completely around them.
The next thing that really made his shell itch with uneasiness was when Frightclaw began walking on all fours more often. She only did that when she was defensive or fighting, not naturally.
Even the limp from her injuries had a wrongness to it that Raph couldn't place.
And she was always watching now. Watching with those eerily bright neon green eyes, always latching onto him or his brothers with such calculation and careful observance that is made Raph feel like running away whenever the dragon's gaze landed on him.
Raph didn't run from problems. But this made him feel inexplicably chilled, how strange his sister acted now.
Mikey noticed at one point as well, and the younger turtle had come to him one day saying that Frightclaw's staring was making him, and he quoted, "feel totally spooked out, bro!"
The real kicker for Raph had come when Frightclaw's bandages had finally come off.
He knew that day that this was not his sister.
Because Frightclaw did not bleed green.
He'd seen her blood in the arena.
It had been red, leaking into the sand and feeding the dry ground with tastes of flesh it could not keep.
Frightclaw did not have green blood.
Nor were her eyes supposed to be black and green. Her eyes were white and green.
They didn't glow like that.
She started wandering the Lair at night, which seemed to be the clincher for Donnie, as he'd apparently been disrupted doing his work by catching a glimpse of the dragon mutant’s glow from the corner of his eye, scared to death until he saw it vanish from the garage doorway.
When asked, she simply said she was exploring. Always in that soft, timid voice that felt so wrong.
Raph noticed when she started wearing the cloak too. When she grew fins running her the length of her back. When he'd found remnants of her horns lying outside the Lair entrance. When she grew glowing antennae and extra glowing scales.
He saw as the eerie green of her scars seemed to grow more grotesque and deep. Carrying a light as she wandered through their home, feeling less like a comforting presence and more like a creature hunting for prey.
Raph didn't leave his room until everyone else was soundly awake anymore.
Until the night he did, and the night he finally solidified that the Frightclaw they'd brought home was not theirs.
He'd gone out for water, using his stealth to move around, when something sounded from the living room.
Every instinct the turtle had was screeching at him not to investigate, to get his water and move as quickly as possible out of the way of the dragon as possible.
But green and blue glows drew his attention, and Raph made the stupid choice to investigate.
What he saw was not what he expected.
Frightclaw standing at her full height in front of the TV, carrying that same light that always stalked his nightmares now. She was growling, lashing a thicker tail and the antennae twitching.
She turned her gaze to the side, eyes reflecting some light he could not place, the neon green sending chills down his spine.
Chills turned to a rush of freezing adrenaline as the dragon snapped her head toward something in the Lair - toward him.
And Raph saw the shadow with glowing green eyes, blinking and smiling at him dripping the neon green into some unknown abyss he would never see.
Frightclaw- no, that wasn't Frightclaw - dropped down on all fours, tilting her head and rattling the webbed spines on her back as she approached.
And Raph ran. For the rest of the night, claws were heard clicking quietly outside his door, the glowing leaking in under his doorframe. Soft growling was heard behind the door, and Raph had to force himself to keep breathing evenly to try and convince it that he was asleep.
The next morning, Leo had pulled him aside, telling him he'd seen what had happened.
Barely a minute later, Not-Frightclaw had come up to him with water, saying he'd forgotten it last night, all with that same blank look on her face. Memory of the green eyed shadow made him pause before taking it from her.
That was not his sister.
That was not Frightclaw.
Raph knew for sure now.
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