A couple days and what seemed to Leo several hundred shots later, the elder brothers found themselves sitting disheveled in the kitchen; Leo had been staying up nights to keep Raph caught up in his shop work, and Donnie had been busy rescheduling Mikey's gigs; they were both surrounded by bargain instant pizza boxes and generic cereal, as well as several sheets of paper covered front to back with stoichiometric equations.

Michelanglo had woken a few times for a bit of food but hadn't been up to saying much, the bump on his head making him tired and the pain-killers for his arm only making it worse, so they let him sleep and didn't worry too much. His arm had fractured cleanly and would heal quickly; as for his head, he'd hit it worse before on his skateboard.

Leo gave Donnie's current sheet of equations a cursory glance; his brother had been answering calls on the hotline while mixing various formulas, sending large data sets into his computers for analysis, in his spare time trying to help Leo regulate Raphael's temperature, which had been fluctuating dangerously over the days, and generally exhausting himself fixing the initial chemical mistakes he'd made in the formulation.

"Okay, so, let me get this straight—first we have to correct the imbalances you created with the preemptory tests, and then we can fix the real problem?"

Donnie sighed. "I didn't map the tranquilizer formula correctly, and the imbalance caused an abnormal amount of NREM sleep. So he's still not creating serotonin, and he's having a series of night terrors—thus the seizures"—

Leo started. "When did that happen?"

"Last night I detected the brain activity of two petit mal seizures during NREM sleep while you were up in the shop. It's not that serious but if they progress we could have a real problem on our hands."

Leo moaned and leaned back in his chair. "This is a nightmare, Donnie."

Donatello continued with his equations. "Don't worry, I can fix it, I assure you. It's all in finding the right combination." He looked up, as though suddenly having an idea. "And, you know, after all the data I've collected, Leo, we could really have a serious weapon on our hands if the Foot ever attacked us again. If I could make a catalyst and somehow get a recombinant airborne"—

"No. That's no honorable way to fight, no matter whom the enemy is," Leo corrected staunchly. "And even worse to use your own brother as the guinea pig. I'm surprised at you, Donnie."

"Hey!" Donnie riled. "I'm trying to help him, and I might be more successful with it than either you or Master Splinter have ever been!" He stood and began to pace, studying the sheet of equations. "What bothers me is that I can't tell what's causing what—is the fever causing the night terrors, or are the night terrors coupled with something else causing the fever?"

"You mean like the chicken and the egg?" Leo asked, his eyes closed.

"Chicken…" Raph whispered dreamily on the couch, and rolled over on his stomach. Donnie sighed in relief.

"He's moved into a lighter stage of sleep. The drip must've been successful."

Leo folded his arms. "Or maybe the sedatives finally wore off."

Donnie ignored him and cleared a few pizza boxes away from in front of one of his monitors. "He should be slipping into a period of REM sleep soon. After he's begun making serotonin, we'll introduce some that's made synthetically into his blood stream—that should slow the overproduction of epinephrine and norepinephrine without lowering the amount of dopamine. He should be able to go into normal sleep cycles again. I might also have to give him depressants as a precaution to suppress the adrenaline."

This translated to Leo as more needles; he'd never felt so bad for Raphael as he did then, and was thankful his brother didn't have to be awake for any of it. A thought occurred to him.

"How much of this do you think he'll remember?"

Donnie scratched his head. "Well, night terrors aren't really dreams—just vague but intense feelings of danger and panic—and they're known for causing periods of amnesia. Seizures can do the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if he woke up disoriented for a while, but it'll go away. Like hitting your head with a baseball."

Leo, unable to make sense of this, sat down near Raphael's head and propped it up with a pillow. "Whatever, Donnie. How's it going, little bro?" he asked Raph's sleeping form; he had begun moving again, his eyes flickering, and was making small noises.

"Leo… gotta find the peanut butter…"

Leonardo smiled and patted his brother's shell; Donnie frowned. "Just don't get in the way sitting there, Leo. If you unplug one of those drips you could really put him in danger."

Leo snorted but held his tongue, leaning back on the couch and listening to Donnie's jury-rigged heart monitor and the steady beeps of Raphael's pulse. The sound settled him, like a music box, sweeping him into a doze—winding down, slowing, lilting—he started into wakefulness, reacting perhaps to instinct or to a feeling of wrongness; he hadn't been dreaming—Raphael's heart was slowing down. His brother was very calm beside him, unnoticing; Donnie, however, had noted it too.

"Damn it—the depressant is reacting with the tranquilizer still—it'll destroy the whole process, but I'll have to give him adrenaline to keep his heart from stopping."

Leonardo stood to get out of his way, and came face to face with Donnie unhooking the depressant drip and replacing it with a fat needle full of adrenaline—and nearly fainted.

When the wave of nausea passed he found Donnie bracing his arm with one hand and holding Raphael's chest down with the other. He'd placed a fold of fabric in between Raph's teeth to keep him from biting his tongue or grinding them together too hard, while his muscles all seemed to be convulsing in different directions all at once. The heart monitor sounded like the rapid countdown to a bomb exploding. After a few nerve-wracking moments it settled down at last, and so did Raph, breathing hard in long gasps and lapsing, for the most part, back into a fitful sleep. Donnie started preparing another syringe; Leo ceased gripping the side of the couch for dear life and shoved his genius brother roughly away.

"Give it a rest for a minute, Donnie, and let the guy sleep!"

"Leo, I have to"—

"No. Let everything run out of his system before you try anything else. You're gonna kill him at this rate!"

Donatello, now breathing hard, gripped the needle. "It doesn't work that way—if you'd just let me work, I could get this right and he'd be perfectly fine! What d'you know about brain chemistry or stoichiometry, Leo? You're the one who's gonna get him killed!"

Leo stared at him for a moment. "You know what, Donnie—the Foot may be reforming as we speak, Master Splinter's gone, Michelangelo's unconscious, Raphael's been spending time having nightmares and seizures that he should have been spending training and working on channeling his anger, I feel like I'm gonna heave every two minutes watching this experiment, and from the way you're acting, I'm not sure you're ready to work with this team either! You're putting science above your family, and I never thought I'd have to see that."

Donnie stared open-mouthed. "I'm doing what I've always done—using what I know and my skills to help my family. I think you're the one having problems, Leo—you just hate being powerless when other people have the answers."

Leo rolled his eyes. "Sure, Don—you've got all the answers. That's why our brother's heart is stopping."

"That's just my point! You don't know what's going on, you hardly understand a thing I'm talking about, you don't have a clue what's wrong with Raph, and you're lecturing me! Just admit you have no control over this situation and let me handle things, okay?" Donnie angrily grabbed a towel from under Leo's hand and dried Raph's forehead. "Maybe with the introduction of synthetic adrenaline his body will think it has enough epinephrine and stop producing it."

Leo sat down, attempting to be humble. "Okay, Don—I'm willing to find out. Have you actually found an imbalance that would explain Raphael's anger?"

Donnie put his headset on, ready for calls from the hotline, and started up another drip. "Well—there's a possibility that what I found is a result of his sleep deprivation prior to the incident, but my prognosis is that Raphael routinely produces more adrenaline than he needs; he thus has trouble sleeping, produces less serotonin, and produces even more adrenaline to make up the difference. But while the two chemicals do a lot of the same things, they also have very different effects; and as we've seen in Raphael, all that extra adrenaline translates to hyper agitation and bouts of violent behavior."

Leo sighed. "So he needs sleep?"

Donnie made a frustrated sound. "No, Leo, he needs to make less adrenaline in the first place, or he'll continue these cycles indefinitely."

"And you know this?"

Donnie held up a correctional finger. "No true scientist knows, Leo, but I do seriously hypothesize."

Leo leaned into the couch again and resettled Raph on a pillow, placing the cold rag back on his forehead. "I'd rather just give him some aspirin—we could cook a pizza on his skin."

Raph tossed a bit. "Mikey—where's Mikey? The peanut butter's after 'im…"

The next morning Leo and Donnie found themselves again surrounded by old cereal and pizza boxes and equations. The previous night they had finally gotten Raphael into Leo's bottom bunk without the heart monitor and with only a shot of nutrients and sugar water; overnight Donnie had taken a few naps and gone back to his hotline and the equations, while Leo had worked in the shop in between a few hours sleep. Now, while they both concentrated on spreading Cocoa Puffs on a cheese and pineapple instant pizza for breakfast, they heard the sound of someone stumbling haphazardly down the stairs from the bunks.

Donnie smiled. "Phew. Mikey must be on his feet—that'll make things… well, more entertaining, at least."

Leo stared at the den. "Raph?"

Donnie started, blinking. "What are you doing up?"

It was indeed Raphael, walking in slipshot lines and trying to get to the kitchen, while holding onto things on the way. Leo stood and went to help him into a chair.

"Hey, Raphi—how you feeling?"

Raph sat for a minute, as though contemplating the question, while Donnie went for something in his alcove. Leo waited patiently for an answer; after about thirty seconds, Raph asked, startled, "What?"

"How do you feel?" Leo asked again, patting his shoulder.

"Oh…" Raph said, looking around and struggling. "Um… chair. Yeah. Chair."

Leo tried to keep his smile, but gripped his brother's arm, feeling a sense of panic wash up over him. Raph watched him, and he seemed helplessly aware that he'd said the wrong thing, but didn't know how to fix it.

Donnie came out of his alcove, a bottle in one hand and his headset firmly in place. He began writing notes quickly on a small PDA-like device.

"It's okay, Leo, we can work with that. Lemme collect some blood samples and we'll be in business."

Raph watched Donatello dazedly, and held onto the table edge as though he were getting seasick.

"Alright, Donnie, calm down—he's disoriented. And you get out that needle again and we're both bound to be sick," Leo said, trying to joke.

"Don't panic, Leo, I'll warn you ahead of time," Donnie chuckled, pouring a bowl of cereal; he was conscious of Raph watching as he emptied a mixture of nutrients and depressants into the bowl with the milk. He pushed the bowl towards his brother and went back to furiously writing notes. "Alright, Raph, have some breakfast. Leo, make sure he eats everything, huh?"

Leo was sure what Raphael was trying to express at that moment was a panic attack; he stared at the bowl and attempted to speak, but only managed unintelligible gasps. At intervals, he shook his head; at last, Leo pushed the bowl away, sure that he wouldn't be able to get Raph to eat from it. Instead, he handed him a slice of pizza with Cocoa Puffs.

"Here, Raph, get something in your system."

"Th-thank, Leo."

Donatello looked up as Raph took it, who was now appearing relieved.

"Leo, are you crazy? What did I tell you yesterday?"

"Look, Don, he's a little out of it right now but he's not stupid. He's not a lab rat or something—just let him have some breakfast in peace, okay? You've shot him up with enough junk in the last few days."

Raph watched them, confused; it was difficult to watch big, tough Raphael sit as though he were so much smaller, and appear that way too, and so Leo and Donnie avoided staring; while they did that, Raph, at a loss with the pizza, rolled it crust first into a tight wheel, and ate it that way. He giggled.

"Hey, Leo—pizza burrito."

And promptly dropped off his chair.

Leo and Donnie looked under the table simultaneously, to see Raph sitting under it and eating his pizza burrito rather happily with both hands.

"Pizza burrito," Leo whispered, reminiscently.

"Yeah, what about it?" Donnie asked, distracted as he wrote more notes. Leo was still watching their little brother.

"It's the way Raph and I used to eat our pizza when we were, like, five. He's acting ten years younger, Donnie."

"He's just disoriented, Leo, he'll snap out of it," Donnie placated, by rote. "Oh, shoot, I'm beeping over—IT Tech Support, this is Donnie speaking. How may I help you?"

"Jeez," Leo moaned, and looked Raph in the eye under the table. "I promise you, he really is trying, Raph. Maybe a little too much."

Raph nodded, blinking at his older brother and scooting nearer to his feet.

"Hey, guys, how ya doing?" came Mikey's voice, who bounded down the stairs with his arm in a sling. Donnie dropped his notes and ripped off his headset.

"Hey, Mikey, you're awake! How's that arm feeling?"

Mikey shrugged. "It's okay, I guess. Hey, Raph, watcha doin' under the table? Afraid I'm gonna beat ya again in training?"

Donnie smiled. "Oh, yeah—don't be worried about him going berserk on you again, Mikey. He's harmless."

Leo had felt Raph go very still under the table when Mikey had come in; he was now getting back up onto a chair to hide behind him, tugging on his shell.

"Leo—ghost—Leo!"

"Yeah, I'll say harmless—he's acting like he's five," Leonardo said, more to Donnie than anything, then took Raph's wrists to try and calm him. "Raphi, he's not a ghost, he's fine!"

Mikey scratched his bandaged head. "Whoa, what's wrong with him? I musta dragged him down with me when I tripped. Hey, Raphi, you bump your head too, bro?"

Leo and Donnie whirled. "Tripped?"

Mikey laughed. "Yeah—Raph went all schitzoid and I was getting' out of his way when I fell. Bumped my noggin pretty good, didn't I?"

Leo groaned and leaned back, still holding Raphael's wrists, who continued to squirm and panic; he calmed when his brother handed him another slice of pizza to distract him, and he rolled it into a burrito as he had the last one. Leo could hear Donnie swallow hard and tap the table nervously with his PDA device.

"Hey, pizza burrito!" Mikey pointed excitedly. "Raph hasn't done that in years"—here Mikey stopped, having realized what he'd just said—"What the heck'd he do to himself? He's all swabbed up and stuff. And acting like he's five or something."

Raphael's numerous shots were evidenced by the many gauze wraps around several veins on his arms and legs, as well as the one at the base of his head.

"Donatello happened to him," Leo said, crossing his arms. "We thought he pushed you after going berserker; Donnie figured there might be some physical problem behind it, started experimenting, and everything that could've gone wrong did."

"So—you made him five again? Bogus," Mikey said, rubbing his head. "He was, like, not sleeping and stuff."

Donnie pounded the table, making the boxes rattle. "What, so all of this is suddenly all my responsibility, Leo? You approved—you were there for every step of the experiment. It's not like I did everything alone, you know!"

Leo stood up, a hand on Raph's shell, who was watching them over his pizza with big eyes. "Oh, no you don't, Don—what happened to me having no control over the situation—me letting you handle everything because I don't know anything about chemistry or whatever? You don't get it both ways! What, you're responsible when the experiment goes right, but if it goes wrong, everything's my fault because I let it happen?"

"Don't foist it all on me, Leo—you've been standing in the way of doing this right since step one! If you'd just let me work"—

"Oh, please, Don—you're such a child! That's why even your younger brothers feel more responsible for the problems of the world than you do. Everything comes down to your experiments, your discoveries—you just have to be needed, have to have your secrets and your stupid superiority, as though it ever gets you anywhere!"

Donatello stood as well, and marched around the table to take Raphael's arm, who squeezed his eyes shut as though someone had threatened to hit him. "If all you can think about is placing the blame, Leo, then I'll just take Raph and make sure he gets the care he needs. And when you feel like helping me, you can just say you're sorry for being such an interminable control freak!"

Seeing his brother recoil, Leo shoved Donnie's arm away. "God, Donnie, can't you see he's scared of you? He knows what you're doing to him—do you even think about what's actually happening to his mind, or do the ends just justify the means? You're not curing him, you're making him sick!"

Michelangelo's eyes darted between them as though he were watching a tennis match; he'd been squinting and frowning at them increasingly, until he saw Raph drop off his chair to hide under the table, shaking uncontrollably.

"Dude, you think he went berserker? You've both gone totally whack-job!" Mikey said, disbelievingly. He squatted and led Raph out from under the table, who stared at him, now that he had a hold of his arm.

"Mikey? Not a costume?" Raph asked, now that he knew he was solid. "No ghost?"

Mikey smiled. "Whoa, my brother, you thought you killed me? You couldn't even give me a shiner that day!" He patted his brother's shell. "C'mon, man, you gotta sleep that crap off and get back to your regular psychotic self, not this weird new one."

Leo pushed Donnie back as he attempted to go around the table to head Mikey off.

"Mikey, no—you're in no condition to work with Raph if something unpredictable happens with his brain chemistry!" Donnie protested. Mikey laughed.

"You know I love ya, bro, but I couldn't do much worse with 'im than you did—no offense."

Leo gave a half-smile as Mikey led Raphael back up to the bunks, and said nothing; their youngest brother had had the gumption to do what he hadn't done, and he couldn't complain about that. Donnie glared at him for a moment.

"I hope you realize the amount of extreme danger both of them could be in! And this time, it's totally your fault if something happens—you'll be lucky if I try to bail you out like I always do!" he snarled, shoved a chair aside, and disappeared into his alcove, where Leo could hear the chem set clinking and whirring into life.

"Whatever, Don," Leo murmured, to an empty den, and sat down to his pizza. He smiled at his slice. After some contemplation, he rolled it, crust first, into a tight wheel, and thought about his brothers, alone in the kitchen.