Perhaps there had been a bit of regret lurking in the bottom of that last bottle of beer.

An evening pulverizing bad guys with Casey had quickly devolved into an very early morning session of getting thoroughly sloshed. You know. To celebrate their victories. Raph didn't taste the regret until he staggered out onto the fire escape and realized he'd failed to make it back to the subterranean level before the dawn. Sunlight pissed in his face, making his already woozy head hurt and he groaned in irritation.

Aw, he'd really screwed the pooch with this stunt. Leo was going to crucify him. What for was up for debate, either the drinking or the staying out till dawn was enough to condemn him - pick your poison. One reason was as good as any for a rousing round of fraternal fisticuffs between the two of them.

Really, this was Casey's fault, Raphael decided as he made his wobbly descent to street level. Thankfully, there was quick access to a familiar tunnel just across the street, down a narrow alley, and Raphael made a beeline for it. Inebriated as he was, that wasn't anything resembling a straight line. But it got the job done.

The alley was still dim, bathed in the shadows of the towering buildings that formed its walls. He was muttering to himself as he slipped into the protective embrace of darkness. "Jus' one beer, he says. It'll be fiiiine, he says." Still grousing, Raph suddenly veered his trajectory to avoid tripping over a litter of bags and boxes spilling out of a dumpster. He careened, off-balanced and stumbled until something solid stopped him. It was a parked delivery truck. He braced a hand against it, using it to regain his equilibrium. Raphael's head was swimming in a ocean of cheap beer and, oh yeah, he could definitely taste that regret now.

"You'll be back before they even miss you, he says." Remind him to never listen to anything Casey Jones said ever again. Raph snorted, then took a deep breath to try to calm the seasick feeling of being on a rocking ship that was really starting to cramp his style..

He really needed to get below ground. The sun was breaking into the alley now, and the city would be stirring in earnest soon. Raph gathered his wits as best his drunken mind would allow and took stock of his surroundings. The manhole cover should be right about…

"what're you looking at?" Raph snarled when he turned to face the truck he'd been leaning against and was greeted by a grinning face of a moustached man wearing a chef's hat.

He whipped out his sai, his ninja instincts kicking in long, long before his booze soaked brain could process that the face was painted onto the back end of the truck and didn't belong to an actual person. This truck also happened to be parked on top of the manhole cover that he was looking for, he discovered. The magic of muscle memory had brought him right to where he needed to be despite his inebriated faculties, but he simply could not process this big fuggen…. face laughing at him and looming right there in his goddamn way. That was not supposed to be there and he didn't have time for this crap.

"Gonna wipe that look off your face, guy," he slurred with vitriol, raising a fist and pounding it against the truck right where the mouth was painted. The doors rattled; there was a loud, hollow booming sound, stark in the early morning quiet. "Shaddup!" Raph barked in response to the racket he, himself, had caused.

"and move."

The truck started. The tailpipe chugged to life, billowing smoke and the tail lights turned the rising cloud of exhaust a hazy red.

"Woah." Raphael's eyes went deliriously wide as he stared, amazed, at the now-idling truck. He heard the *klunk* of gears shifting. The engine growled. It was really gonna move! Did he do that? No. No way. He was stinking drunk, but he wasn't that drunk- god what was that sound?

Alarm bells - both actual and figurative - were going off while he struggled to string together a thought. That high pitch beeping was getting to him; it sounded almost like a garbage truck did when it was about to-

The truck was going to back up. It was backing up!

Raphael stared, incredulous. He was standing right there! Rude!

"I'm walkin' here!" he shouted in ire. Though his legs were a bit wobbly, he planted his feet and made himself big, waving his fists in the air. He felt absolutely beside himself at the audacity of that oversized bread box on wheels. He glared at the grinning face, felt booze and rage mixing in his guts like a molotov cocktail. "Stop ya truck!" he commanded, stubbornly standing his ground.

The tail lights flickered on and the tires crunched to a halt. Raphael gave a sharp, self-satisfied nod at that. He saw a hand shoot out the open window of the truck's cab. The hand adjusted the side mirror. In the reflection, Raphael met the droopy, dead-fish eyes of the man behind the wheel.

"You don't look behind ya, ya jackass?"" Raph shouted at him, shaking a fist and still refusing to move out of the truck's way. He was intent on teaching the driver a lesson. "How'dya get a license? Find one in a crackerjack box?"

Of course the sensible thing would have been to get the hell out of the way of the very big, very close truck, but sensible just wasn't on the menu right then. Raph's ugly temper was in full force and the booze wasn't helping anything. It led to things like...well, things like this.

Truly, only Raphael could manage to get into a game of pedestrian chicken with a freaking delivery truck. But this was a game he was destined to lose. And soon.

He stood there, glaring, swaying slightly, but still ready to deliver a butt-whooping. The brake lights flickered again in warning. The beeping resumed. The truck gave a backwards lurch.

Unbelieveable! This guy was still going to back up.

"Get out of the way, you freak!" shouted the driver.

He should have listened. He should have moved. He could have moved. But Raphael, the most obstinate of turtles, even on his good days, held no real sense of self-preservation. This was especially true, here, now, with liquid courage lighting up his nerves, even as the truck started to move in earnest.

He was right, and that conviction held him rooted to the spot. The pasty, flabby face in the mirror was puckered into a scowl as Raphael continued to hurl insults at the driver, as if the force of his will and ire alone would stop the vehicle in its tracks.

It wouldn't. It didn't.

The driver kept reversing, accelerating faster now, horn blaring.

Almost too late, Raph finally realized the man fully intended to run him down. At the last second he clumsily leaped into the air, intending to ricochet off the truck, using the transfer of momentum to flip himself to safety. It was a move he'd practiced often on stationary objects, but this time he misjudged. Blame the booze, blame the fact that the driver had floored it, blame his own stupidity, blame good old-fashioned turtle luck. Blame whatever. Point is, he screwed up.

Seemed to be the trend that morning.

The truck caught Raphael mid-jump and slammed the air out of his lungs as he was thrown backwards, sailing across the alley and landing in a heap amongst the scattered bags of trash. His already sore muscles protested and his head spun, but he did not pause to collect himself. Incensed, he scrambled to his feet, reeling. The truck was speeding away, billowing exhaust that made Raph choke and sputter, taking away some of the impact of his shouted curses.

The now-accessible sewer grate lay forgotten. His waiting family and impending scolding was forgotten. Even the fact that it was broad daylight out and he was risking being seen was forgotten, all of these once-important facts drowning in the red sea of his rage.

"Hey come back here you coward!" He took off in hot pursuit, fighting his tilting vision and churning stomach. The being-hit-by-a-truck thing had sobered him slightly, but he was still drunk enough to slip a few times as he quickly scaled the building, intent on following the truck from above.

It was one of those times in his life when Raphael saw nothing but red, red, and more red. He was lost amidst the throes of his legendary temper (and these sorts of incidents were what made his temper legendary in the first place). His actions were jet-fueled by adrenaline. He was not in control of his body - in more ways than one. Normally a stealthy and well-balanced individual, the unique combination of intoxication and bloodlust made for a haphazard chase across the rooftops.

He was uncoordinated, pinballing off obstacles as he fought to keep up with the truck below. He snapped a tv antenna clean in half, got snagged on a low hanging clothesline, a pink flannel nightgown slapping him in his face and robbing him of his vision momentarily. The clothesline came down in his attempt to free himself. When he finally broke away from the mess, he ran on, oblivious to the pair of knickers snagged on a jagged bit of his shell and fluttering in the breeze. All of these roadblocks only served to add fuel to the demonic fires that possessed the young turtle in that moment.

In truth, he wouldn't be able to keep this up for more than a few blocks. The adrenaline would wear off, reality would bleed in. At some point he would realize just how ridiculous he was being and he'd forget about the whole thing. This would be the ideal solution for all parties involved, seeing as Raphael was already late - a fact he'd entirely forgotten - and clearly not in possession of any powers of higher thinking required to make good life choices. Additionally, more likely than not, the driver of the truck liked his face arranged just the way it was and prefered his bones to remain unbroken.

Yes, everything might have worked out for the better. Except for the fact that Raphael didn't have to chase the truck for more than a few blocks. Apparently the driver didn't have far to go to make his delivery. Soon after the chase began, Raph was a witness as the truck turned down Bleecker and stopped just outside a bakery.

Gotchya.

It really was a blessing that he would be getting down off the roof. His balance was greatly impaired. If he spent much more time up there, the likelihood of him falling off of something would only increase exponentially. It was a miracle he hadn't broken his neck already.

Of course, none of this had occurred to Raphael. He was single-minded in his purpose, fully committed to his righteous anger and drunken idiocy, pressing ahead with all the tenacity of an injured bull.

Approaching the edge of the roof, he briefly surveyed the surroundings. The driver had pulled around to the back of the building and left the truck. He was busy stacking boxes onto a dolly. On the other side of the alley, below where Raphael perched, sat a pair of dumpsters, one green and one blue. They sat below a pipe that connected to the outside of the building.

A little hesitation might have been prudent in this instance, but he was a trained ninja and ninjas did not generally hesitate in such matters.

Thus, without a second thought, he swung his weight over the edge of the rooftop, twisting in midair, hands reaching for the pipe as he intended to climb down it. He made contact, might have even succeeded in the maneuver, but for the fact that the pipe was wet with condensation. His hands slipped. He managed to get a leg wrapped around the pipe, but he was sliding down much too fast to control his momentum, so he didn't try. He slid down the length of the pipe and let go as he reached the bottom. He dropped harmlessly down into one of the dumpsters below. In that moment, he had the hilarious thought that he was, once again, Raphael, King of the Trash. Look at him now.

Landing in a heap of garbage wasn't pleasant - many of the bags burst on impact, splattering him with who knows what - but it sure beat landing on the pavement. Besides, he was on a mission.

He scrambled to the edge of the dumpster, peeking over the rim with narrowed eyes. He could not see where the driver had gone. He craned his neck, trying to find the guy, but soon became distracted as he was made aware of another's presence. Someone was approaching the dumpster.

He whipped his head around, locking eyes with a familiar face. It was the same face painted on the side of the truck - same stupid hat, same ugly caterpillar moustache. But this time it was a real, live person. Raphael could only assume he was the owner of the bakery. The guy had a garbage bag in each hand and he was staring right at Raphael, eyes widening with alarm.

"Hey you bum!" the man started shouting then, "get outta our dumpster, how many times do I gotta chase you losers off?"

The man launched the bags of trash at Raphael, hitting him in the face and knocking him back amongst the heaps of trash. "You son of a-why I oughtta,"

There was trash in his mouth. There was trash in his mouth. That, too, tasted like regret. Had he not suffered enough indignities this day? Why must he be punished so? Raphael flailed unhappily amongst the black bags and loose refuse, lamenting his bad luck rather than his poor judgement.

"You got five minutes to get out of here or I'm calling the cops!" he heard the man say, and Raphael wanted to tell him where he could shove it, but by the time Raphael had righted himself and climbed out of the dumpster, the man had already retreated inside the back door. Growling like a rabid dog, Raphael followed.

He pushed in through the back door. His bulk blocked the exit as he stood, menacing, in the doorway. He cast his eyes around, gaze landing on the man who had hit him with the truck. "You," he snarled, before noticing he was standing there speaking the the bakery owner who'd thrown garbage at him. Anger boiled in him at the sight of the pair. "And YOU."

He advanced on them.

"YOU hit me with a truck," he accused, pointing at the driver, "and you called me a bum AND threw trash at me." He pointed at the owner. "And now I gotta decide who's butt to kick first."

His hand slowly curled into a fist. His eyes gleamed with violent intent.

Raphael suddenly got the sense that he was forgetting something. The two men stared, faces paling at the sight of him. They had really only had glimpses of him before. Now that they stood face to face, it seemed it was a whole different story.

He could only imagine how he must have appeared to them in that moment, snarling and stinking of booze, covered in bruises and trash and ...was that a pair of underwear stuck on his shell? And he was looming over them delivering a promise to pound them to a pulp. Not to mention the fact that this threat was coming from a giant turtl- oh yeah. Oh shit.

He was a giant fucking turtle and here he was standing in the middle of a bakery kitchen at 6 in the morning in plain view of humans - civilians, whom he was currently threatening. What the shell was he doing? For a moment, he heard his voice of reason and - disturbingly - it sounded like Leonardo. It was telling him to get out of there. Fast.

"What kinda freak are you?" the driver asked sharply, oblivious to Raphael's sudden epiphany. Still, he was backing away from Raph. "Some kind of escaped zoo animal? Hey Lou, call animal control would'ya"

Zoo animal?! Raphael seethed again, remembering why he'd chased these bozos down in the first place. But he was back in the driver's seat now, and he let the bite of that remark wash over him. He had to get out of there. The owner was already at the phone, fingers hastily punching buttons, then muttering into the receiver. Raphael grunted and jumped forward, ripping the telephone cord out of the wall, severing the connection.

"Hey!" the owner protested. Raphael punched him in the nose. He turned and punched the driver for good measure too, reveling in the feeling of satisfaction that comes from just desserts.

Now, he was leaving.

As an afterthought, he grabbed a cream colored pastry box off a shelf by his head and swept an armload of fresh cannolis that were sitting on the counter into the box. He tucked the box under his arm. He grabbed one more cannoli off the counter and took a bite as he cast a final look back at the two men, now groaning and nursing their bruised and bloody faces. He smiled at the sight, a bit of cannoli cream clinging to the corner of his mouth. He disappeared out the door.

Victory had never tasted so sweet.

Worth it he decided an hour later, just as Leo really started to find his stride in this lecture, tearing up one side of Raphael and down the other. He was really tasting that regret now, the bitterness of it burning in his throat. Or maybe that was just stomach acid. He had known this was coming, but that didn't stop it from being so damn annoying. And loud. Ugh.

Luckily, he still had just enough of a buzz on that Leo's voice sounded kinda like the teacher from the Peanuts. He let the words wash over him like Splinter taught him to. Water over stone. He pictured the bakery owner with a broken nose, the delivery driver's bleeding lip, remembered the soft pitter-patter of one of the guy's teeth falling to the floor. He smiled to himself.

Leo could be at this for a while.

Unless, of course, he abruptly noticed that Raphael wasn't even listening. Which apparently was exactly what had happened because he trailed off, glaring at the younger turtle.

"Hamato Raphael, pay attention," Leo snapped. Raph grunted, head popping up at the use of his full name.

"What?" he asked, returning Leo's stare, stone-faced.

"Well," Leo demanded after a long moment. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Not really. No. He had no excuses for this. The whole walk home, he had been grappling with the realization of how stupid he was, how risky his actions had been. For once, Raphael knew he rightfully deserved this lecture. Still, that didn't mean he had to tell Leo that. He still had hopes of getting away with his brothers never knowing the full story.

"You gotta relax Leo, I was just getting us all some pastries." shrugging, Raph put on his best innocent face and smiled sheepishly up at Leo.

"I'm supposed to believe that?! Try harder, Raphael," he hissed. Leo looked ready to boil over like a tea kettle. Raphael could practically see the steam pouring out of his brother's ears. He blinked at Leo placidly.

He offered up the cream-colored box.

"Cannoli?"