Yo,
Been a pretty hectic few months. Rat King had planned an attack on us for a long time and he finally jumped on us just a bit ago. He ended up using his mind control bit on Master Splinter and used the old rat’s knowledge (and body) to get the better of us (at first, anyway). I gotta admit I was impressed by Rat King’s scheme… he totally had us fooled. We didn’t have a clue what was up ’til it was too late. Just goes to show that no matter how confident ya are, there’s always someone gonna take ya down a notch.
O’ course, the main reason we didn’t expect an attack from Rat King was because we had a peace agreement with him. It was pretty stupid of us to expect him to keep it, but we were so tired of skirmishing with him and his army of rats that I guess the hope for a permanent truce blinded us to the reality. Human nature mebbe (or turtle nature, as the case may be ;)
For as bad as things went, I gotta say I’m actually kinda happy it happened. As ya know, Master Splinter and me don’t always see eye to eye… but I really missed having him around. It’s cool that he’s back. I also gotta point out that me and him tangoed while he was possessed by the King and the old guy can still pack a punch. I haven’t seen him fight in a dog’s age, so sparring with him at full tilt was cool. I was trying my best just to subdue him while he was doing his best to kick my teeth in, so it wasn’t an all out knock-down drag-out… but it was an eye opener. The old rat has some new moves (or at least old moves he never taught us). I forget alotta the time that Splinter is a ninja, so it was nice to get a reminder… although my jaw is still aching from some of those kicks he landed. My advice to you is if you ever see a 5′ tall ninja rat, run (don’t walk) away.
Worst part of this whole thing is that after Venus and me got our heads handed to us and were taken prisoner, Rat King’s minions spent the better part of a day destroying our stuff. I lost all of my CD collection, my guitar and a ton of mags and zines. Mikey lost all of his notebooks and journals (with his stories in them). Don’s lab was pretty skragged and his personal computer was totally wasted. Venus lost what little she had brought with her from China, including a bunch of herbs and roots and crap that’s hard to come by. Leo isn’t into material things so much, so he fared the best in personal loss, but I think he’s hurting pretty bad over what the rest of us lost. Leo’s cool that way. So what I’m sayin’ is the rats really whacked our place good. Quite a drag. April and Casey have been donating stuff to us, which is nice. Still have alotta cleaning up to do, though. Sucks, but such is life in the sewer.
Other bad news is that while we were busy with the Rat King, someone new showed up from Japan to run the NYC Foot. I still dunno who it is, but I can smell trouble already. So we gotta get alla our security systems back up and running. Donny lost alot of equiment in the rat raid, but he’s working triple time to get things set. Leo and Mikey are hitting the scrap yards to get Don what he needs while Casey and I are doing what we can with the dumpster diving. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of stuff you can find in a New York dumpster (and alot of it ain’t good, lemme tell ya).
Alright, enough chit chat. Tons of work to do and all that. I’m out.
L8R,
Raph
