Raph shuddered slightly at the thought of that, of being truly fictional. That meant that unless the kids imagined up his other brothers, April, Casey, and Karai they'd just never exist.

It meant if they stopped Kuk and the kids no longer had the power to do that, they might all stop existing.

"If people were here and then pulled away there was probably somewhere they were pulled to. We're real. Little kids wouldn't be imagining complex people with all kinds of thoughts in their heads and enough emotional problems to fill entire seasons of teen dramas."

The alternative was them fading out of existence and that...that just wasn't something he wanted to think about.

"That guy back there, he seems...complicated. It's more likely some older kid with problems of their own brought him in than a kid managed to imagine that real."

He tilted his head slightly to look at her.

"Your chin's still bleeding. Why don't we go get everything cleaned up in the kitchen? It always heals faster that way."

They never had to worry much about infection but getting debris out of wounds and setting bones properly and all that meant they healed up a whole lot faster.