2000-09 – Letters from Leonardo

Hello!

Summer went along pretty smoothly once we got back from our little trip to visit and help out the Mighty Mutanimals, but we eventually ran into trouble… that’s our middle name, afterall!

The Rat King once again proved to be a difficult foe and he nearly got the best of us this time. If Donatello hadn’t had a platoon of Mousers that he’d salvaged from back in the day, I’m fairly confident that we wouldn’t be reporting to you anymore. The Rat King’s plan to take over Master Splinter’s body and infiltrate our defenses worked perfectly. Venus tells me that she covered much of the details in her letter, so you may want to read her account of things first.

I’m not sure why Rat King attacked us. When Donatello, Michealangelo and I fought our way to the new “shelter” we discovered that the rodent ruler was holding our family hostage. Rat King muttered something about vengeance and returning our dishonor tenfold, but he wasn’t clear enough for me to understand what he was talking about. We’ve had a truce with him for a long time now, and I have no idea what he thinks we did to break the peace. Donatello had even changed our security force fields to deliver non-lethal charges to rats, just to appease the King. Apparently something happened that destroyed our pact, but Rat King fled before filling us in on any details. I’ve been running patrols with Michaelangelo trying to unearth him, but he’s gone back into hiding. No one knows the sewers as well as Rat King, thanks to his minions, so I doubt we’ll ever find him. I want to know what’s going on though, so we keep trying.

I suspect that the Foot have done something to sabotage our agreement with the Rat King, but judging by the attack, the Foot haven’t formed an alliance with RK yet. If the Foot had attacked in unison with the rat hordes, I’m afraid to even consider what may have happened… and that’s what I’m worried about now. Rat King has never been sympathetic to the Foot and has rarely allied himself to their cause, I’m thinking now that the Foot are trying to set up a scenario where RK will cooperate with them and together they’ll attack at some point. Gaining Rat King’s trust is extremely difficult and the Foot are aware of this, so a devious plot to drive a wedge between the King and us would be a solid beginning for Foot treachery.

Of course the major problem now is that Rat King not only knows all of our defenses, he also fully comprehends our weaknesses. I think the only thing that has saved us from further onslaughts is the damage Michaelangelo inflicted on the King before he fled. Mikey doesn’t think his blows had any effect, but I’m sure had he not landed them we’d still be knee deep in an army of rats. Hopefully whatever happened to Rat King will buy us enough time to get our defenses realigned and prepare a new shelter/homestead. How ironic that this trouble began back when we were preparing what we thought would be a secondary shelter! Now we’ve got to find a new spot altogether!

There’s still some indecision within the group about where we should go and what we should do. April and Michaelangelo have been fixing up our existing space, but doing so sparsely. No one wants to leave, but I see little choice at this point. Don has always been hesitant to leave because he put so much time into the security systems, but thanks to the rats most of those are comlpetely ruined, and we don’t have the time or resources to repair all of them. I plan on talking to April and seeing if she can find us some temporary shelter topside. It’s been a long time since we’ve lived above ground, but maybe it’s time that we tried it again. I’m even thinking that we should consider moving back to Massachusetts, maybe for good this time. The only thing keeping us in New York is sentimental reasons, but I think things are heating up too much for us to survive right now. The Foot have finally gotten organized again and quite frankly I’m beginning to feel like it’s a hopeless battle fighting them. It’s difficult to admit this, but I just don’t see any end to the conflict… we’ve done all we could in the past to destroy the New York branch, and yet it keeps going. I don’t know…

Okay, obviously I’ve got alot on my mind, so I have to go meditate on things. Perhaps seeing all of our worldly possessions destroyed has weighed more heavily on my heart than I realized and I’m getting a little depressed. I’ll do my best to come up with a solid plan and let you know what we decided to do ASAP.

Talk to you soon!

Be well!
Leonardo

Master Splinter

Leave a Reply