Raphael tossed and turned as he slept, his dreams disturbed by horrific nightmares. As he tried to escape from a sleep he could not wake from, small beads of sweat appeared on his face and arms, and he clung to the blankets as he thrashed about, making distressed sounds every so often.

"Donnie, something's wrong!" He could hear Leo's voice, but he couldn't see him. Or anything, for that matter. "I don't think that's supposed to happen!" He could feel pain, incredible pain, though it was only a dream. He could barely breathe, and what air he could get in hurt like hell to keep in.

"It's not!" was Donnie's reply from somewhere above him. "C'mon, Raph, stay with us..." A searing ache forced a scream from both his dream and sleeping selves, and a particularly strong thrash sent Raphael over the edge of his bed, still locked inside his nightmare. "Agh, this isn't working! Mikey, do you WANT this stuff all over you? Get out of the way!"

Both Leo and Mikey sounded panicked. "Are you sure of what you're doing?" Leo's voice again. "You said you weren't qualified for this!"

"Leo, this is an emergency! Maybe if you'd both stop breathing down my neck, we'd have less a chance of this going wrong! Which, I might add, is a VERY HIGH CHANCE ALREADY," Donatello snapped. Then an aggravated sigh. "Mikey, there's a suture on the- oh, what am I thinking... Leo, there's a suture on the desk over there." A pause. A stinging sensation, then an air of calm. Something had definitely gone right, he was okay, though he still couldn't see.

Then another voice. "Raphael!" A hand on his cheek accompanied by the familiar voice. Slowly he came to, his father's blurred face among those of his brothers. "Are you alright, my son?"

Either it was Mikey or Donnie who started talking. Raphael couldn't quite make out voices yet. "He's been sick all day, Sensei. I think he's okay, though... Okay-er than he was earlier, anyway." The red-banded turtle groaned, propping himself on his elbows. His head hurt. "He's... well, it's a long story... I'm not sure if you'd believe it. It's literally that far-fetched."

"More far-fetched than our very existence?" Splinter helped the waking turtle back onto his bed. "Tell us, Donatello."

Donnie sighed and sat beside them, tapping the tips of his fingers together nervously and looking to Leo and Mikey. "Well... Remember the spy-roach? And how it got mutated, came after us, and then eventually Raph killed it?" He wrung his hands. This was right up there with every awkward moment he'd had dealing with his crush on April. "It came back. It exploded and then somehow came back. And when Raph was topside, it..." Raphael was waking up fully now. "It assaulted him, Sensei. And when he came back, he came to talk to me and it'd... Eugh. It'd mated with him along with that, and successfully, might I add. In short he's carrying mutant cockroach eggs."

It was safe to say, their sensei was surprised. Though, that may not have been the best word to describe the look on his face. More like disgusted. And horrified, with anger towards the creature that had done this visible in his eyes.

"The stress he's probably going through right now is probably what caused his nightmare," Donatello continued.

"How do you know I was having a nightmare?"

"Raph, you were screaming."

"I was?"

"Yeah," Mikey cut in. "You woke all of us up. Dude, we thought you were dying!" He looked towards Raphael and Splinter. "Sensei, can he be excused from training tomorrow? I mean, when he got outta Donnie's lab he was throwin' up his guts and he couldn't even walk without Leo's help earlier."

Raphael had a protest, though. "But-"

"Michelangelo has a point," said Splinter. "Raphael, until you are well enough to walk on your own, you are excused from training." Raphael's face fell, though he knew his father had a point. He couldn't spend their entire training session leaning on Leonardo. And on top of it all, he was tired, exhausted... There was a cramping feeling beneath his plastron that reminded him eerily of his partial nightmare.

"You need to rest, my son. We can talk about this when you're feeling better."

"Hai, Sensei..." Raphael yawned through his answer, curling up underneath the blanket as his family left the room.

The next few days were going to suck.