The Turtles were on time for their "invitation" from Shredder. They were to meet at a skyscraper building site right by the East River. They were armed and skilled, but they were worried. There were a lot of "ifs" in their plan.
"Do you think it will work?" Don asked Mike about his crazy scheme.
"Is, like, Schwarzenegger hard to spell?" Mike answered. Mike's confidence helped. Now, if only his plan would work as well...
Everything was dark and quiet at the building site. Too quiet.
"Shredder!" Raph howled.
Don was so startled that he jumped a foot and a half. "Gee, thanks, Raph. I may never have hiccups again!"
Then the lights went on and Shredder and Rose appeared.
"Welcome," Shredder said. The Turtles had the awful feeling he really meant it. He was glad to see them and it wasn't because he was going to give them dinner. They were going to be dinner for Tokka and Rahzar!
The Foot stood in a circle, surrounding the Turtles and Shredder's mutants.
"Let the games begin!" Shredder commanded.
It was the moment of truth. "Wait!" Leonardo said, as Mike had cued him. "First, we should observe the ancient ritual of - well, the traditional, you know, prefight doughnut."
Before Shredder could object, Mike and Leo hurried towards the eager mutants with a box of doughnuts. Tokka and Rahzar each downed a doughnut and licked their chops. They loved them! Rahzar grabbed another treat, but he was so strong that he mangled the doughnut and the antimutagen cube popped out. Rahzar looked at it curiously. Shredder, however, wasn't curious; he was furious.
"Kill them!" Shredder commanded. Tokka and Rahzar set about to do just that.
"The stuff's not working!" Leo said while Tokka did his best to squeeze all the air out of him.
"Maybe we should have brought muffins?" Mike suggested.
Before he could crack another joke, both Mike and Leo were flying across the building site. They landed right on top of their brothers. The four of them tumbled in a clump.
"Now I know what a postal package feels like," Mike joked weakly.
"Plan B?" Leo suggested.
"Oh, no," Raph said sarcastically. "Let's try that doughnut thing again." He glared at Michelangelo.
Leo took the lead. "Weapons!" he cried, urging his brothers back to the battle.
"Hey, wait, look!" Don said.
They all looked at Tokka and Rahzar. The mutants seemed decidedly uncomfortable.
"The antimutagen! It's working!" Don declared excitedly.
"Yeah, about time!" Raph remarked.
The two creatures stood erect. They had sour looks on their faces. And then at exactly the same time, they both did exactly the same thing.
"UUUUURRRP!" They burped.
Now, much more comfortable, they started snarling and snapping at the Turtles. The real attack was about to begin.
"Wow, man. Ugly and impolite," Mike remarked.
"Now what?" Raph asked Leo.
Leo reached for his weapons. "Improvise!" he told his brother.
And that's just what Tokka and Rahzar did, too. Tokka used Mike as a baseball and tried a little fungo. Mike was smashed against the wall of a nearby rock 'n' roll club. Mike learned the name of the place when he crashed through the sign. It was the Dockside Club.
Rahzar was a football fan. He practised drop kicks with Leo and Raph. They flew right through the wall next to Mike and into the Dockside Club, interrupting a rapper.
One of the customers saw the Turtles and thought they were part of the act. He started cheering. "Man, check out those costumes! I love this place!"
Leo and Raph looked around, still wondering exactly how they'd made it through the wall.
"I think we're wearing them down," Raph said weakly to Leo.
Tokka looked very rested when he stormed into the club after his prey.
"Yeah, definitely, " Leo said.
Michelangelo and Donatello flew in then, landing next to Leo. The first thing Mike noticed was the music, which hadn't stopped.
"Hey, check it out! This place is rocking!"
"Great. Now we can get pulverized to a beat!"
The audience seemed to think it was great, too.
Chairs began flying. The audience went wild.
Don spotted the professor, who had come to see the end of his experiment. The two of them took cover behind the bar.
"It would appear the antimutagen has been somewhat ineffective," the professor understated.
Out on the dance floor, Leo and Raph tried to fend off Tokka, who simply snapped everything in his way with his beak.
"Well, there is one bright side to this," Leo said. "It can't get worse."
As if on cue, Tatsu and hundreds of Foot began pouring into the club.
"You know, Leo, you should get a job on Wall Street," Raph said.
Behind the bar the professor and Don talked about the situation. Don told him about the burps.
"Hmm, very bad. Carbon dioxide is essential to the process. When they burped, they slowed the whole thing down."
"Isn't there any way we can speed it up?" Don asked.
"We have to reintroduce carbon dioxide. The problem is finding a ready supply."
The two scientists looked around them for an answer - and there it was. The bar had a full shelf of old-fashioned soda bottles. That meant an almost unlimited supply of carbon dioxide!
Within a few minutes the Turtles were ready and armed with squirting soda bottles.
"You sure about this, Donnie?" Leo asked.
"Just do it!" Don insisted. "Now!"
Mike was game for anything. "Banzaiiiiii!" he said, and rushed into the fray. Raph was by his side. On Don's signal, they each bashed into one of the mutants' stomachs. Tokka and Rahzar were momentarily stunned. That caused them to drop their jaws. That, in turn, caused Don and Leo to spray soda down their throats. And that caused Tokka and Rahzar to roar furiously when they'd recovered.
"What now, Donnie?" Leo asked. "Beer nuts?"
"I don't get it. It should have worked..."
Suddenly Tokka grasped his stomach. Rahzar paled and clutched his stomach, too.
"Tummy," Rahzar said.
"Ache." Tokka finished the thought.
And with that, they both conked out and toppled over - right on to Michelangelo. He squeezed out from under the unconscious monsters. "These dudes are copping major zs," he observed, though it was hard to hear him for all the applause from the audience, to say nothing of the mutants' snoring!
"Good," Leo said. "Now let's have some fun!"
The four Turtles turned to face their old enemy, The Foot. It seemed as if the whole club had been filled with energy. The four Turtles were fighting as one against a teeming mass of The Foot Clan - all to the beat of a rap performer on the stage.
The audience stood and cheered wildly, stomping on the floor with the tempo of the music. It was just the rhythm the Turtles needed. They were ready to beat The Foot with the beat of the feet.
"Cowabunga!" Mike cried, dispensing with two Foot at once.
"C-C-C-Cowabunga, Cowa-Cowa-bunga!" His words echoed back from the tape deck onstage.
Then the rap singer got into the swing of it all:
"Well, it looks kinda weird,
But it's plain to be seen,
The bad guys wear black,
And the good guys be green!"
Flashbulbs went off, the audience shrieked with the beat, and the last Foot met defeat. Finally, there was only Tatsu. The Turtles finished him off and howled a triumphant "Ninja Rap!" when they were done.
Mike turned to the audience. "If you liked what you saw, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the Turtles! Come on, give it up!" They roared approval in a chorus of "Uh-uh-uhs." They waved their arms while they cheered.
Then Raph held up both hands. "Show's over, folks. Show's over."
But it wasn't. For just then a long, dark shadow appeared on the stage, and then the creature that had cast it: Shredder. Rose was keeping to the shadows, allowing him his time in the spotlight.
"We're not through yet," Shredder said. "The battle is yours. But the war is far from over. Not so long as I possess - this!"
He held a familiar, and deadly, green canister in his hands.
There was a stunned silence. Then somebody in the audience turned to his partner. "Can you believe it? Music and a play? Want to come back next Friday?"
The Turtles circled Shredder and prepared for attack. Just as Leo was about to give the signal, there was a ninja howl from the rear of the audience. Keno had arrived! He raced through the crowd and leapt on to the stage.
That made two things happen. It startled Shredder so that he dropped the canister. It fell to the dance area and skittered across the floor, coming to a halt at the professor's feet.
He picked it up and saluted the Turtles. "Farewell, my friends," he said, and disappeared through the door.
The other thing that happened was that Keno kept going until he ran smack into Shredder. Shredder grabbed him and he became his hostage before the Turtles could move to attack.
Shredder threatened Keno with his razor-sharp armour. The audience booed. Shredder stood in front of a large amplifier, which protected his flank.
"You're not going anywhere, Shredder," Raphael said.
Shredder grinned slyly. "On the contrary," he said. "We're going somewhere. And if you try to stop us, I'll cover him with this!" He held up a small glass container with an unmistakable green, glowing ooze inside.
Raph, Mike, and Leo faced off against Shredder. Don had one of his famous "ideas".
"Do you think I would be so foolish as to keep it all in one place?" Shredder gloated.
"Well, sort of," Leo said, stalling for time. He could see what Donnie was up to.
Don sneaked around behind Shredder, behind the amplifier. He picked up one of the musicians' guitars. He turned the sound system up as high as it would go and strummed an E-major chord. It wasn't much musically, but it definitely was explosive. The amplifier behind Shredder blew up into a thousand pieces and the force of the explosion tossed the villain right through a plate-glass window. With a shriek, Rose flew after him.
Keno flew free of Shredder. The final battle could begin.
"Rock and roll!" Michelangelo declared.