Sup?
Man, it’s been one drag of a winter. Everybody got sick and left yours truly holding up the fort all by his lonesome. Responsibility like that can be a bit nerve wracking, ya know what I mean? We’ve got enough problems when we’re all healthy, but when everybody but me is down with the flu the problems increase tenfold, and I was left holding the bag. I did the best I could. We were lucky that the weather has been so crappy this year. Things started off nice, but man has it been freakin’ cold. As it turned out that was cool in more ways then one. Had Shredder decided to bum rush us while everybody was sick he coulda wiped us out easy. One reason we kept mum on this site was because we know Shredder monitors these letters (you’ll get yours one day, tinface), so we didn’t wanna let him know how sick we were. As I was running my solo patrols I noticed that the Foot patrols were getting thinner and smaller, so mebbe they got their own case of the flu. Who knows… had we not been sick mebbe we coulda bum rushed the Foot and taken them out. I guess this is where I should insert one of Splinter’s speeches about balance or something.
I got pretty sick for awhile, but I had to keep pushing myself otherwise we were in real hot water. One night Leo went out while I was sleeping and got himself into some trouble. I got up to puke (romantic, ain’t it?) and then found out Leo was missing, so I had to interupt my beauty sleep to find him. Fortunately he had the sense to carry his Turtle Com with him, so I could use the homing device to find him. I was feeling pretty rotten myself, so it took me awhile to clear the cobwebs from my mind and think to do that… so it took like an hour or so of hopeless searching before I thought to use the stupid Coms. Better late than never I guess.
About the time I had stopped dropping my lunch into the porcelain throne, the other guys were finally feeling better. It wasn’t a moment too soon to be honest, cuz when I got back to the sack I was out for almost 2 days. Whatever this virus was it was evil. Donny made up some vaccines, and I got the first dose. Mebbe that’s what helped zonk me out. Whatever it was, we all got better about the same time, within a matter of a week or so. Don sez that he’s gonna make up vaccines for us from now on, and that he’d really been taking for granted our good health… weren’t we all!
Been having a few tussles with some minor Foot underlings. Shredder’s clever way of chosing members is to send rookies into our turf to get their butts kicked. The ones who don’t quit after that get more training. It’s bogus to know that we’re actually helping to train his minions for him, but we don’t do anything fancy to the rookies, just try to put the fear of mutant turtles into ’em. It works pretty well for the most part. Still, it annoys me… but then, what doesn’t, right? ;)
One of those cold stormy nights I ran into Rat King. I was bit disoriented and lost thanks to being dizzy from the flu and went way off track. When I finally stopped to get my bearings I noticed that I was being followed by some rats… a whole lotta rats! I knew right away that this could be wicked bad… rats can do some heavy duty damage in large groups (trust me, I know from experience). They’re especially dangerous when Rat King is around, and I had a feeling he was by the way the rats were tailing me. So I called him out, and oddly enough he emerged outta the shadows, looking pretty haggard. He knew how sick my family was and went into a song and dance that the flu Splinter got had started in his rat community and killed over half of his minions (I can’t say I was upset over this news). But King was so depressed over it I kept talking to him. He’s done some nasty stuff to us at times (turf wars basically), but we’ve pretty much come to a truce. I was expecting him to clobber me with his rat warriors for breaking our treaty by invading his territory, but he seemed more relieved to have someone to talk to than anything else. I guess talking to rats alla time can get a bit boring. Anyways, he pleaded for me to get Don to help him. I told him Don was too sick to help us let alone him, but he made me promise that when Don got better he’d come down and see what he could do. So tomorrow we’re goin’ back down there to see if Donny can help. Don sez that he might be able to help us with a better vaccine if he studies what’s up with the rats. I’m not crazy about helping the rat population here (let’s see… if half of Rat King’s pets keeled over, that leaves only about a billion left… what a shame!) But if it helps us prepare for next winter’s viral attacks, we gotta try. Plus it might be good to have Rat King as a sort of ally rather than an enemy. Mebbe he can help us against a common foe.
Okay, I’m done jawing. Check ya.
Raph
