Therefore I am

Disclaimer: I deny any ownership of any adult, or adolescent, transformed shadow warrior chelonians.

Chapter Thirty Eight - Rescue Mission

Michaelangelo:

The four of us were, heading for the Foot headquarters, we had a very good idea of where home base was for the Foot clan and normally we did our best to avoid that area, unless we really had to. After all the Foot Clan did out number us, and if we headed over there too often we'd only be asking them to hand us our shells, or end up with our shells stuck on some wall as a trophy.

Then I paused picking up something from Rama, her mental skills had improved since she had come home, especially under Splinter's tutelage, course she was pretty good over short distances. The message was short very simple and I quickly called to Leo to hold up.

"What is it Mike?" he whispered.

I held up my hand, concentrating on what Rama had to say. "Just a sec. Rama's talking to me." I answered very softly.

'Dad, scientist and a band of lone Foot together. Setting trap. Catherine with me. I betrayed the clan. Forced to tell.'

The last bit came out very shaky clearly Rama was still upset about that. I reached out to her seeking to comfort and reassure her as best I could, even from this distance. 'How many Foot Rama?'

' Don't know probably less then thirty. David and Susan from the lab or here, might be others too. They branded me!'

I could hear her mental wail at that, and I felt a surge of anger of my own at the scientist who wanted to lay claim to my daughter. I recalled something else and couldn't help but ask 'They haven't raped you have they?'

'No, Susan doesn't think the time is right she wants me fertile before breeding.' Rama replied.

I sensed her fear and terror, focusing on it and trying to figure out exactly where she might be, using her mental messages and emotions to pin point her in the city. 'It's all right honey, we're coming.' I assured her kindly.

'Be careful daddy.'

Daddy, she hadn't called me that for years. She thought daddy was rather babyish and preferred to call me dad instead. Hearing her call me that now only assured me what sort of state of mind she was really in. Not that I doubted it. I knew how messed up she was from the lab to begin with and now her worst fears seemed to be coming true.

"Leo, we are going the wrong way. Rama says the Foot Clan isn't in on this but a band of Foot soldiers working with the scientist are the ones who have them."

Leo rolled his eyes, "David hasn't done much for days, we eased up on him when most of the other scientist left, figured he'd be following after his employees soon enough. Instead he joins up with the Foot to get to Ramiela. However I doubt David is smart enough to ask Yukio for help." Leo smirked and nodded his head, " This way could be even better, I wasn't looking forward to challenging Yukio on his turf. Lead on Mike, and what else did she pass on?"

I told him as we moved off in the direction I was sure the call from Rama had come from. My brothers now following my lead.

"Well, we have to expect traps and I'm sure we'll have to go through them before we manage to free Ramiela or Catherine." Leo essayed.

"The kid won't like being left out of the fighting Leo. Besides she deserves to get some back on them, especially on the scientist." Raph seethed.

"Yes, Raph. I'm aware of that, but Catherine doesn't know how to fight and we'd have to protect her. She might as well stay where she is until it is safe to get her out." He pointed out in his no nonsense, that will be the end of that tone of voice. Then he decided to add " Considering most fighting will be done by the time we reach them then there is no other way around it."

I passed the information on to Rama coaxing her to keep talking to me as it helped me get a mental fix on how close I was getting to her. Rama ranted for a bit about being left out of the action and all the fun. Then when that wore down she told me about Keith,a Foot Soldier, who knew far too much. I knew what that meant and reassured her as best I could that he would be cared for when we arrived.

Ramiela:

Trying to warn my family about what they were walking into was about the only thing I could do. It seemed to be not much of anything really, not when I thought about the fact that I had betrayed my family. I know I couldn't have stopped what I said, but I had still failed those I loved, as a kunoichi I was supposed to protect them.

My mind was running in an endless loop of my entire family getting caught. The kids and myself ending up in the lab tortured, prodded and poked, killed for the name of science. My father and Uncles dead. None of us would live to be free or know what freedom was, we'd be separated and even in the lab, we might not be able to see each other.

If any of that came to pass it would be my fault. I know what Catherine had told me, but it was my responsibility to protect my cousins. No matter what they had done, or even threatened to do. I should never have babbled about where we lived, or how many turtles lived there. That I couldn't keep my mouth shut for my enemies, meant I had endangered everyone.

That was why I did my best to contact dad. I could almost always reach dad. Sensei said it was because we were so close to each other that it made it easy for us to communicate telepathically. Sometimes I found our telepathic ability to be a bit intrusive, like when I was in trouble. But at times like this I sure was glad we were able to do it.

Dad took my warnings seriously and then warned me that I wouldn't be in the fighting part of it. I knew that had to be Sensei's call not dad's but I felt that was totally unfair. Course there would be no arguing with Sensei about it. Didn't mean that I couldn't be right ticked off at not being allowed to fight with the rest of the family. I wanted to fight. I could fight. I was a good fighter.

Dad though must have picked up on some of my rebellionous thoughts. 'Rama, you have to protect Catherine. If someone decides they need to go for a hostage situation they will use Catherine. You have to prevent that if you can, stall them whatever it takes.'

I knew he was just saying that to make me feel better. I didn't think they'd be going for any hostage scenario here. Besides they all ready had us locked up, we weren't going anywhere.

I crossed my arms over my plastron and huffed in frustration, because I realized I had no choice in the matter. I just had to wait to be rescued.

Leonardo:

It was a small warehouse. I don't know what the fascination is for the Foot Clan and warehouses, but it seemed to be their preferred base of operations. We were scanning the out side of the warehouse, keeping low and to the shadows. We had spotted a few guards out though a couple of them had been chatting with one another, we had taken the chance then to knock them out.

Raph and Mike had gone to handle the other two look out sentries. I could sense the Soldiers within the building and I knew that sneaking in, even with knocking out the guards, would be next to impossible.

There were two doors one on one end of the warehouse, the second along the side. My instinct and ninja senses said that Ramiela and Catherine would probably be as far as possible from both doors, to give an advantage to the enemy who would want to trap us. I also knew that any trap would probably be set at least a few feet from either door. They wouldn't want us diving out the door and escaping the trap after all.

I opted to go into the door along the side of the building, knowing though that we would most likely be quickly surrounded by going in that one, we might not have to fight as long if we went through the door on the end. The other door happened to be a large metal bay door thing, breaking in through it would have been possible and allowed all of us access at once. But we'd still have to push past the other door.

Go for the quickest entrance, and the fastest way to Ramiela and Catherine.

Raph kicked the door in and we leapt quickly into the room. I noted around twenty five Foot uniforms, in spite of the fact none of them were working for Yukio at the moment they were hoping, possibly, to intimidate us just by appearing in their dogis.

We were quickly pressed away from the door, and surrounded. But our weapons were out and we stood in a circle, back to back, ready to face the onslaught. Mike was to my right, and Don was at my back, while Raph was to the left of me. This was our standard position, any enemy who got close to us would be deterred by a weapon of some kind. Not only that Don and I could easier assist Mike and Raph with our longer weapons, while their weapons might better block a smaller weapon heading our way.

I focused then on the task at hand. One of my katanas raised to block a spear, another cut off the move of a sai. I moved the sword that was against the spear and forced down upon it, while I managed to disarm the other Foot Soldier of his sai.

It wasn't long before I realized that some of their number were trying to herd us towards the middle of the room. Sometimes the Foot could be too obvious in trying to obtain their objective. I had to jump up to dodge a cut of a bisento ax towards my legs, and while I was in mid jump spared a quick glance at the roof. There was ropes and a large net slung up there.

Seems they were fishing for turtle, but I hoped we could turn the trap back on them. So mentally informed my brothers to allow the Foot to move us that direction, while at the same time putting up a good fight. I didn't want them getting too eager, or worse yet figure we were making it to easy on them.

My sword blade was suddenly entangled of a chain on a gusari gama, and I had to concentrate on that for a moment or two.

As we fought on I could sense the Foot soldier's excitement as we neared the trap, I had a feeling a lot of these soldiers were probably new to the clan, as their skills weren't that impressive, plus it would make sense. Those who had been there longer, would know better then go against Yukio, unless they were totally disgruntled.

A soldier bearing the smaller wakizashi sword stepped forward to challenge me. I allowed myself to be pushed back by his first attack, then quickly rallied and counter attacked striking hard and fast forcing him further back, and giving ground to me. My brothers were using much the same tactics, allowing themselves to be pushed back now and again, only to counter and gain a little more ground or area for ourselves.

The Foot Soldiers were starting to draw back now having us almost in the position they felt they needed us in to drop the net. We stood there waiting for them to bring on the next volley of attack, then just as some charged forward my brothers and I back up bracing ourselves. The Foot soldiers rallied quickly crushing quickly toward us. In a moment my brothers and I all jumped and flipped out of the way.

The net dropped containing only Foot Soldiers. Those free of the trap hadn't been amused by our tactics and set loose a volley of arrows and shuriken our way. Our weapons worked fast and hard to deflect and drop the weapons or even hit them back to those who were throwing them in the first place. The fact that some of the arrows actually, hit and dropped soldiers near us, told me that some of them had to be poisoned tipped.

I placed one katana away and threw a couple of daggers from my knife towards the arrow shooting ninja. Then grabbed my other weapon again to do my best to deflect and beat down the weapons coming our way. It was harder for us to stay together at the moment as we had to avoid the projectiles being tossed our way.

Mike, seemed to be in his element, showing off and doing his best to use his chucks to send the weapons right back at the Foot, " Return to sender." He sang out at one point.

With so many of the tiny weapons coming our way we could not avoid them all, at best we had to try and use our shells to deflect some of the tiny weapons from finding their mark.

Our ninja training and the amount of adrenaline pushing through our systems at the moment would make it easier for us to fight off any poison that might find it's way into us. I also had a feeling that only some of the shuriken and arrow tips had been dipped in some form of poison or chemical to make us sleep. It was highly, unlikely for them all to be treated.

By the time the onslaught had been cared for there was but seven Foot soldiers standing between us and a door to another room. One of the Soldiers reached for his belt and tossed something our way. Don dived forward and struck the device with one end of his staff, yelling to the rest of us "Get down!"

None of us questioned that, we dived for the floor and back just in case whatever was in there would hit into the range that we were in. Seconds later I rose from the floor ready to continue, but saw the seven soldiers all down.

Don grinned, "A sleeping powder bomb. They might have used gas but then would have needed masks and that would have warned us, when I hit it back towards them, most of the powder broke where they were."He explained shrugging.

I checked and he was right the seven of them were sleeping soundly. I looked around and saw another room, or office area not far off but it wasn't being guarded. Besides I could sense Ramiela behind this door.

"Their last line of defense didn't work then." Raph muttered.

"Wrong Raph, we haven't seen the scientist yet. How much you want to bet there is at least a couple of them on the other side of this door with a tranquilizer gun, or some other thing, to try and drop us, if we got this far?" I asked.

The door was locked but it wasn't a difficult lock to pick. Raph grunted in reply as he began to pick the lock and the rest of us went to tie up the Soldiers we had knocked out or trapped. At the moment we wanted no escapees.

When Raph had finished with the lock he called us back over to the door. His impulsive days of just charging in were clearly gone. Mike was the first to enter the room he let his nunchucks fly one to the left and one to the right, hitting and knocking out a person on either side. Raph was in right behind him grabbed a third person and knocked them out with a hard hit.

By the time Don and I entered we saw that the scientist had indeed had a tranquilizer gun or two but they were knocked out before they could even get a shot. In the room was the cage with Ramiela and Catherine. Rama was glaring at me.

" You could have let me have some fun Sensei," she protested sharply.

I laughed at her petulant expression "Who says the fun is over Kunoichi, you may still get your chance yet. Besides you aren't as good at fighting off poisons as the rest of us are." I pointed out.

I breathed a sigh of relief, that she was all right. Yes, she had been hurt again and that would soon be rectified, but she was okay. That just left us with what we were going do with all of our prisoners.

TBC