CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

At the warehouse, Conduit was hard at work at the computer hub. Cue-Ball approached him

"Bebop looked a bit sore last I saw him. He's got a massive rash around his sides"

"Yeah, that's the duct tape. It had super-glue on it" Conduit replied

"You took the time to analyze the duct tape?" Cue-Ball asked

"I get bored pretty easily tending to this job" Conduit continued.

"Speaking of which, you better put the jammer in effect so Wingnut can go about his business with minimum incident, likewise with Saki and the rest"

"On it" Conduit said, and set to work on the controls, activating the jammers.

Suddenly, the phone rang, he picked it up

"Conduit here...oh, it's you" he said, his tone going from crisp to cold as he recognized Baxter's voice

In Maxwell's office, Baxter was talking into a phone being held for him, for he was still tied up. Bishop stood left to him, his arms folded

"Just...just letting you know some of the new 'foot' soldiers are on their way to you now"

"We expected a shipment this morning. Saki's had to go to the theatre without them" Conduit explained

"Well that's where you come in, let them in so you can program them to rendezvous at the desired co-ordinates" Baxter replied

Cue-Ball and Conduit observed the monitors and spotted three figures attired in S.W.A.T gear moving about in a robotic fashion

"Is that them? They're dressed differently" Conduit said.

"It's daylight. Of course they're not going to go around looking like they usually do. Just let them in" Baxter said

"Fine. Fine" Conduit said, and unlocked the door via the control console. The three entered.

"Right, they're in" Conduit confirmed. Maxwell switched the phone off. Baxter gulped.

"He cut me off" Conduit said.

"We better get this programming stint done quicky" Cue-Ball said, "Saki is expecting something more concrete for the feds to pin the blame on than just a calling card this time"

Cue-Ball and other henchmen walked over to the troops

"Help me get their helmets off" he said.

Conduit noticed something going wrong with the computer hub. He alerted Cue-Ball to the problem.

"Something's up here" he said

The hub's visuals flickered on and off, gradually, a music video begins playing over the usual imagery, it was the song 'License to Kill" from the James Bond movie of the same name.

"Is that Gladys Knight?" Cue-Ball said

The lights flickered on and off.

"Secure the soldiers" Cue-Ball said, immediately assuming authority.

One of the henchmen removed the helmet off one of them, revealing chubby green features of Leonardo. Raphael and Donatello also swiftly remove their helmets.

"You freaks, what have you done?" said Conduit, "I can't maintain control on anything from up here"

"Blame Baxter, he gave us quite the low-down, particularly on how to upload a virus to your servers"

"Serve this up" said one of the henchmen, cracking his knuckles.

A swift battle quickly broke out between them and their opponents.

Raphael jumped on the pool table, and scooped up two pool cues, put them together with some duct tape from his belt buckle, and uses hem as a custom kendo stick, knocking some of the henchmen senseless.

Donatello did several somersaults as the henchmen tried to connect with punches, on the fifth somersault, Donatello grabbed two pairs of legs and lifted them up when pulling off a sixth somersault, bringing them to the ground, as he picked himself up, he threw two arms back and brought them head-first into two men behind him.

He took out his bo staff and slammed one end into one thug and then swiftly spun around and threw the same side into the other Thug, before bringing the back end of the stick down on the thug's neck.

A previously felled thug gained a second wind and tries to rush Donatello, but he swung around and pelted him in the face with a swift punch and pushed the staff into his chin, felling him once more.

Leonardo approached Conduit and pinned him against the malfunctioning computer hub

"I have two questions for you" he said

"Wha-what would those be?" Conduit asked

"One: Where's the rat? And two: Did you happen to step on him? 'Cause I'm not very good at dealing with that sort of thing" Leonardo said

Conduit pointed to the room leading to Saki's menagerie

"He'..he's in there" Conduit said

Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello entered the room. Inside, Donatello found a cage full of trapped birds, he pried open the cage

"Fly my pretties, fly" he said as the birds swarmed all over the room. Donatello opened up his arms to embrace the liberation of the creatures, until one of them deposited a dropping on his shoulder.

Leonardo spotted Splinter chained up to the wall up ahead

"Master Splinter" Leonardo said

Splinter was weak, but still capable of movement and speech, though his voice was slurred and slow.

"Fortunate that you are here...but your oasis lies in the Mirage"

"He means the theatre" Donatello said.

"Don and I will head over there, Raph, you look after Splinter"

"Hey, I'm very likely the one everyone will have a great time reading about if you're dumb enough to get us on the cover of every major newspaper in the country, how come I get to stay home?" Raphael asked

"You've asserted yourself well in many things Raph, this is another test. Besides, if we fall, we need you and hopefully Mike to rise" Leonardo said

"Yeah, Mike only ever rises when the alarm clock goes off"

The remainder of Bishop's team soon got the ok to rendezvous with the Turtles at the warehouse and began mopping up operations

"Time for a third question" Leonardo said as he spotted Cue-Ball being led away

"The mutagen, the mousers, what's the connection?"

"Don't...don't hurt me man, I'll tell you...the mutagen is in a highly sensitive container, it's wired to explode at the very denting of the metal alloy covering it. Only one thing is designed to penetrate it, the same devices coated in the stuff"

"The mousers" Donatello said

"Uh-huh, once the alloy is penetrated, the bomb goes off and the mutagen is blown across the city, the fall-out will turn anyone within a 100 miles radius into whatever they are closest in contact with" Cue-Ball replied

"So why were you lingering so long here?" Raphael asked

Conduit, also being led away, interrupted them

"We had made arrangements to flee the city before it could go off...but if you keep us incarcerated, we're all screwed...except you freaks of course, you'll probably mutate even further"

"Pray I don't turn into a gargantuan snapping Turtle" Raphael said, "Skies will turn blood red when that happens"

"Tell Bishop to arrange a mass evacuation" Leonardo instructed to the troops

"What do you think this is? A Saturday morning cartoon? By the time you even convince City Hall of this hair-brained comic book plot, you'll all be mighty muti-animals" Conduit replied

"One last question, seeing as there's usually four of us and I like to maintain that in spirit...you said something about your boss needing more than just a calling card this time for the feds to pin the blame on...what do you mean by that? What are these 'Foot Soldiers' for?"

"They are meant to be part of the facade, we were to make the feds think they belonged to the 'Foot Clan' ..a militant Ninja outfit that killed some close friends of our boss years ago. The people he used to work for didn't' want to go after them so he figured he would find a way to pin the blame on them for something. They were after mutagen on that fateful night so he thought it'd make for irony of some sort that every federal service in the known world would go after them if they were led to believe they had arranged for the city to transform into a mass mutation melting pot" Conduit explained

"And in doing so, he also frames the people at the Technodrome since one of them created the mousers and the Foot Soldiers...so he takes revenge on the two forces that wronged him in life and makes life more difficult for them" Donatello realized.

"We've got to get to the theatre and stop this, and I mean now" Leonardo said.

As he and Donatello ran off, Raphael helped Splinter up on his back and prepared to piggy-back him out of the warehouse, he spotted something on the monitors, a first person POV of something that sounded angry, something that was snarling, something that had his eye set on a frightened old woman, someone being shielded by a familiar face

"Is that who I think it is?" Raphael said

"The fourth of us rises" Splinter said, as he recognized Michelangelo.

Outside the warehouse, Leonardo and Donatello clambered into the SWAT van and told the driver, dressed from head to toe in SWAT gear, to head to the Mirage theatre. The driver complied in a gruff pseudo-manly accent. The Turtles found that odd, but paid it no mind.

Unbeknownst to the Turtles however, the driver of the van was the furthest thing from a man, and as she titled her head up and lifted up her visor, she wondered just how long she could maintain her charade, or how long it would take for the driver she had knocked out and gagged to be discovered back at the Technodrome.

"So far, so good..." Irma said to herself, preferring to dwell on the positives.