Yo,
So it’s been awhile again. These letters are pretty weird, seems like I just wrote one, but it’s been like forever. Weird. I guess time flies whether you’re having fun or not.
Things have been going good, though, which is nice. Y2K was a pretty quiet year… I don’t think this one will be though. I’ve been watching the Foot skirmish amongst themselves and it looks like things are gonna get nasty one way or another from that. We thought they had gotten their act together last time, but then the New York faction took a major disliking to the new Japanese leadership and civil war broke out again. I took the opportunity this provided to get us some stuff we were needing. Donny had to come with me because where we were going was too difficult to breach more than once, so he had to be the expert and figure out what we should grab while we had the chance. It took alotta planning and choreography (bite rocks, Leo… I can make plans and follow ’em as good as anyone). We had to line up several support vehicles to fill to the brim with gear and then one by one escape with them. It took all night and things went well for 90% of it. The stuff we needed was actually in Shredder’s main HQ from back in the day. It’s been going to seed for awhile seen Shredhead banished himself to that Dimension X trash planet with Krang. I’ve been keeping my eye on this place, waiting to see what would happen. The Japanese faction of the Foot isn’t as into the hi-tech crap as much as Saki was, so I figured if we bided our time, we could get our hands on some of it. As it turns out we got quite a haul.
Problem was alla the good stuff was big and heavy, so Donny had to waste valuable time rigging up a pulley system to steal… er… “borrow” the equipment. We got some big stuff out without any hassles. Oh yeah, I guess I should say that I’d taken the trouble to remove the dozen guards before we entered, o’ course. Don spent the time lining up the escape vehicles. 2 of the “guards” were Foot Elite, supposedly the best the Foot have to offer. Those bums must have been training on Twinkees because they went down without a murmur. The final leader of the rat pack was an old friend of mine named Akira, who had double-crossed me big time last year. He finally got what was coming to him. It put a nice cap on the evening’s events, even though it happened first. Definitely put me in a good mood for the rest of the night.
So we got all of the stuff Don thought would help, and then some stuff we tried to take just to cripple the Foot’s ops in case Shredder comes back (let’s face it, we know he will, he always does). As we were trying to get the last bit of hardware and software to the truck, we were waylaid by a bunch of the New York Foot. Apparently they had the same idea we had, they’d just started a few hours later! The NYFC (New York Foot Clan) was in desperate need of cash, since the Japanese faction had cut off their supply lines. I guess the NYFC figured they could steal the high tech gear in the warehouse and get some much needed cashflow goin’. Since this warehouse packed in some of the Foot’s most expensive gear, it was a natural target. Why it was so poorly defended I can only chalk up to the Japanese leader’s short sightedness or over-confidence in his/her ninja… or mebbe because they just don’t give a crap about Shredder’s stuff. Whatever, it’s ours now. And don’t get your skirt all bunched up, because Donny has already thoroughly checked out alla the stuff and removed any tracers hidden in it. There were a few.
The fight with the NYFC wasn’t as smooth as the other battles were… these guys were desperate and it showed. They fought with wild abandon and took massive risks, one of which paid off when Don went down from a risky flank attack. Fortunately the reckless tactics they took allowed for us to get away. Their training was lacking and a few of ’em were raw recruits, so I was able to grab Don and get out of there just as a huge pack of fresh ninjas arrived. There must have been 50-60 Foot at that point, some from New York and some from Japan, the latter of which had finally noticed what was goin’ down. I didn’t wanna be caught between a rock and a hard place, so I made the decision that escaping was our only alternative. Don was groggy from a minor head wound, but he was mobile. Unfortunately I had to leave that last truckload of stuff behind, so the NYFC mebbe got something for their trouble… depends on how that last battle went.
On a positive note, as we were making our forced retreat through the basement of the warehouse I spotted a nifty little metal cannister… it reminded me a bit of the mutagen tubes from days gone by, so I grabbed it, thinking it was a nice souvenir for the night’s activities. I didn’t think much of it for the next few days as we unpacked all of the gear that we’d grabbed. When I finally got back to my room to check it out, I decided it would make a nice trash can, since it had a lid and all. Well, I popped the sucker open and found that it was stuffed to the brim with cold, hard cash! Unmarked bills, the whole 9. Sweet! It must have been some kind of emergency slush fund that Shredder had kept for a rainy day. I spent the next few minutes counting it up, and got tired around 10 K… with plenty more to go! I stuffed all of the jack back into the tube and shot over to Casey’s place. I figured he’d know what to do with it better than any of us. I told him to put it away for Shadow’s college or something… mebbe invest it in the stock market, I dunno. I just knew that was too much money for mutant turtles to figure out.
So to make a long story short, good ol’ Casey takes the majority of the money and spends it on us for Christmas! He bought us plenty of stuff to refurbish the crib with and alotta technobabble crap that made Don’s eyes light up. I’d given headCase the cash to spend wisely and he went on a freakin’ shopping spree! WE coulda done that! Ah well… it was nice of him. He’s assured me that he barely dented the total, but I know that ain’t the truth. Still, he did show me a receipt for a 5 K college fund for Shadow, so that’s cool. Hopefully by the time she turns 18 it’ll be enough to buy books for a semester.
I’m still a little miffed at Case for spending so much money on stuff for us (can you imagaine? We have brand new furniture now…. store-bought, brand-spanking new! It’s freaky!) but it really made all the guys happy. It definitely was the best Christmas we ever had, and after losing all our junk a few months back, it was a welcome relief. I’d been sleeping on a pile of rags for ages, now I got a real bed. Like I said, it’s whacked… but it’s a good sorta whacked.
Casey wants to keep the story a secret cuz he doesn’t want the guys to think the presents are spoiled because he used Shrehead’s cash to buy ’em. He thinks Leo will want to return everything and take the money to the “proper authorities.” I dunno if he’s right about that, but I’ve played along up to now. But now it’s too late to send this stuff back, so I’m spilling the beans. Sometimes good things can come out of the bad that happens, and this is one of those times. I know I’m accused of being a cynic, but I think if ya can make something positive happen out of an originally bad scene, you’re doin’ alright. Makin’ lemonade outta lemons, ya know. It feels good. Real good.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go hit the sack and listen to the new CDs I got. Life is good. Real good. ;)
L8R,
Raph
