XII. THE FOOT (part 3)
MICHELANGELO
For some dumb reason, Shredder decided the best way to get us out of his way was to fight mutant with mutant. Turns out he didn't know much more about mutagens than we did.
ROCKY
Word got out that Shredder was lookin' for volunteers. He said he was gonna make a couple of us real strong so we could beat them turtles. Me 'n' Bob said sure, we'll do it. We trusted da Shredder, which weren't very smart. Ends up he'd tried somethin' like this before wit' two other guys. Didn't take - they died. Shredder didn't tell us that, o' course.
DONATELLO
Shredder stole some sort of mutagen from a bio-chem lab - no idea how he knew what or where it was. Might've been the same stuff that made us. He then got some rhinoceros and warthog DNA to combine with these two guys. Instant mutant, he thought. Well, yeah, sorta.
ROCKY
It hurt, man. It hurt real real bad. Sometimes I'll wake up screamin' like a little kid, cause I get dreams that I'm mutatin' again. Anyways, after a couple days, we wake up, Bob n me, and now we're freaks, too, just like them turtles. So now I'm huge an' strong an' ugly, and I can't work nothin'. Took me forever to get used to this body. That made Shredder mad. He wanted us to go out and pound turtles, like right away, and I couldn't even stand up. Had to learn to stand, to walk, to do everything all over again. One Foot guy walks in while I'm tryin' to get my legs goin'. I'm jumpin' from one foot to th' other. He says, "Nice moves, there, Rocksteady", and soon everyone's callin' me that. They start callin' Bob "Bebop". Bebop 'n' Rocksteady. (grinning) Kinda neat. Anyway, 'bout a week after I got freakified, Shredder says we gotta go kill them turtles now. I really didn't think I was ready. I mean, I can barely walk by then, y'know? But Shredder's impatient - wants 'em dead, wants 'em dead now. He gives us some guns 'n' stuff, and has us go out huntin' turtles.
RAPHAEL
I have no idea what Shredder was thinking. Maybe we'd be fighting, and wouldn't fight these guys as hard 'cause they were mutants?
DONATELLO
We were on our way to case the East HQ when we spotted some Foot guys ducking down an alley. We decided to give chase, like the idiots we were.
LEONARDO
I should've called them back. It crossed my mind that we were being set up, but I don't know - I wasn't forceful enough. I wasn't sure. I should've said, "Let's keep our mind on the task at hand." (shaking his head) As it turned out, it wasn't that big a deal. We got through it OK. But I still kick myself about that. Starting then, I didn't second-guess myself anymore.
RAPHAEL
We turn the corner on the alley, and all the Foot guys are scrambling up the fire escape. I'm about to leap up and give chase when I hear this really weird laugh. Really deep.
MICHELANGELO
I saw this creature walk out from behind this dumpster. Huge guy, with a rhino head. Part of me was like, "Wow - a mutant like me!" but most of me was noticing the gun he was carrying.
DONATELLO
I turned to check out the way we came, figuring we could just bow out of this one, but now there's another guy there. Huge. Warthog. Heavily armed. That's when I started to worry.
ROCKY
I remember them gawkin' at me. An' I felt...I dunno. Mainly I felt tough, like "yeah, here's where you die, ya freaks". And at the same time, I felt like, "Stop starin' at me."
RAPHAEL
He said, "You're going down, freaks." Even though I was kinda feeling we were in for a tough fight, I sort of laughed at that. I said, "Look who's calling who 'freak'."
ROCKY
One o' them said, "Who ya callin' a 'freak'?" At first, I started to get mad, but then I started thinkin'. He's right, y'know? I mean, now I'm like th' turtles, right? So they should be my friends, not Shredder. And instead, I'm there tryin' to work this AK, tryin' to blow them away.
LEONARDO
They finally lift their guns up, and we dove behind dumpsters as Bebop and Rocksteady proceeded to shoot up the alleyway. Mikey was right next to me, and he looked a bit panicked. I just sort of did this. (holds up his hand, palm out) Trying to calm him down. I had a feeling this wasn't as hopeless as it appeared.
MICHELANGELO
To be honest, I'm kinda scared of guns. Well, I guess everyone is, but me more than the rest. When I first saw Bebop and Rocksteady with their guns, I kinda panicked inside. Like, "this is it - we can't compete with guns." But it didn't end up that way.
DONATELLO
Something about the scene didn't sit right with me. I only figured it out later, though. So you take this guy, mutate him, make him extremely large and strong. And then you hand him...a gun? Why not just hand him the gun to start with, and skip the mutation? I never did figure out the logic there, but I guess the Shredder didn't, either. Good news for us.
ROCKY
Ends I can't work the gun so good - my fingers are real big, and I can't get 'em on the trigger too good. And I ain't much of a shot anyhoo. I end up shooting up this store. Musta put about fifty rounds in it. Lucky there weren't no one in there, or I'da killed someone for sure.
RAPHAEL
I can see Leo from where I'm hiding. He holds a finger out, like a gun, and kinda whacks the top of it with his other hand. (demonstrates) It's the sort of thing that any other time, it wouldn't make any sense. But it's kinda weird. When we get into fight mode, it's like we have this bond, and we don't have to talk, really. We instinctively know what the other means. I knew what that finger tapping meant - he meant take out the gun, and don't worry about the freak holding it.
ROCKY
I finally look around, and Bebop's waving his arms around, so I stop firing. Ends up I almost shot him, too.
RAPHAEL
Finally, there's a break in the shooting, and I leap back out towards Bebop with my sai pulled. I aimed straight for the gun. I was thinking...I don't know, like my sai would slice through the AK. I don't know what I was thinking - it's steel on steel. It was just a really loud clank. But I hit it with a lot of force, and Rocksteady dropped it.
LEONARDO
I leapt over to Rocksteady, slammed my wooden kitana into his gun, and brought it down. I kicked it behind me, and faced him direct.
MICHELANGELO
Once their guns were out of the picture, I kinda thought, whew, now it's almost over. Nope.
ROCKY
Actually, I was kinda happy to drop the gun. I wasn't used ta guns. But bashin' things with my fists? That I was good at.
DONATELLO
Bebop and Rocksteady both pulled out bats and started swinging. It worried me at first, but we found that it was pretty easy to dodge them. They were..."lumbering", I guess is the word. No problem ducking out of the way. But that didn't make it any easier to defeat them.
ROCKY
They kept hitting me with them sticks and chucks. Before I was freakafied, I'da been out with one hit. But now it barely hurt. Just made me mad, 'cause no matter how I tried, I couldn't hit 'em back.
DONATELLO
Raph and I were taking on Bebop while Leo and Mike were on Rocksteady. Complete stalemate on both ends of the alleyway. We kept whacking them, to no effect. They kept swinging at us, to no effect. This went on for minutes. I was starting to get tired.
RAPHAEL
I was tempted to go for the jugular, literally. Pull out the sai and start drawing some serious blood. But Sensei frowns on that sort of fighting. (smiling) "Frowns" isn't the right word, actually. He told me never to draw blood, ever, if there's another way. So that thought was running through my head - "find another way, find another way". I'm hanging back a bit, letting Don get a few more licks in, trying to find an opening here. Suddenly I saw this gleam - the street light caught Bebop's nose ring. I figure, hell, nothing ventured, right? After Bebop finished another lame swing at us, I leapt up, grabbed his nose ring, and yanked down hard. Actually, I pretty much hung off of it. He squealed and fell to his knees, and I rolled out of the way.
DONATELLO
I saw Raphael do that, and part of me was like, "Ouch, that's mean". The other part was going, "Hey, why didn't I think of that?"
RAPHAEL
Donatello gave Bebop a huge roundabout smack behind the ear. That knocked him out cold.
MICHELANGELO
We couldn't get anywhere with Rocky. Leo and I kept wailing on him, but he didn't even slow down. Just kept swinging. Finally, one of my chucks caught him on the snout, right between the horns. Wasn't even a full-on hit, more of a ricochet. Apparently, he winced. I didn't notice, but luckily Leo did.
LEONARDO
That was the first reaction we had gotten from him since we started fighting. So while he was swinging at us again, I ducked out of the way and sheathed one of my swords. Then, when he started straightening up again, I came down on his snout full force with my other sword.
ROCKY
Man, that hurt. I fell like a ton o' bricks. I couldn't see, couldn't think. I was just lying there with my snout in my hands, moaning. By the time I felt good enough to open my eyes, them turtles was gone.
DONATELLO
Once they were both out of the picture, we took off. Leo said we'd skip the casing tonight, since they'd probably be on the lookout for us.
LEONARDO
Running into Bebop and Rocksteady made us realize that the Shredder wasn't kidding around. He was looking to take us out, by any means possible. That sort of provided us with the impetus to make our final move.
MASTER SPLINTER
We believed that time was precious. We were quite aware that the Foot was actively searching for us, and although our home was quite well-hidden, we could not count on not being discovered. We had to strike them before they struck us.
RAPHAEL
Time for Operation Amputation Phase Two - the satellite HQ East.
LEONARDO
After discussing it a bit, we decided we had to hit both remaining targets the same night. Not give them a chance to regroup and fortify their defenses.
CASEY
When I went to pick them up, they told me that this might be an all-nighter. They also said they might need me to join in. (smiling) Which of course I was more than happy to do.
MICHELANGELO
We brought Sensei came along, but other than that, it was pretty much the same set up as before. We'd planned it all out. There were two major ways into this building, front and back, and this small side exit. Raph and I took the front, Leo and Donny had the back, and Sensei went through the side.
DONATELLO
I went up to the roof and cut the power, but before I could leap down, four Foot soldiers swarmed around me. I'm not sure - they might have been on guard duty. I can't imagine they were just hanging out there, or that they managed to jump up there and engage me that quickly. I wasn't ready for battle - I didn't even have my weapon drawn. I had to fight them off weaponless for a bit until I could leap back from them and draw it out. And they were excellent fighters, too - took me quite a while to subdue them. All this time I'm fighting them, I was thinking, geez, Leo's down there alone.
MASTER SPLINTER
As the lights went out, I cautiously entered the side door. There was little activity in that part of the building, and I subdued the few Foot soldiers I encountered. After that point, I simply tried to find my way through the building, attempting to locate my sons.
RAPHAEL
We ran into the building, ready to kick some tail, but there wasn't much tail to kick. A few Foot came our way, and we made short work of them.
MICHELANGELO
We learned later that the Foot...well, they weren't exactly expecting us, really, but they had a plan. If it looked like they were outmatched, they were supposed to withdraw and head back to the main HQ. Apparently, our reputation preceded us - once the lights went out, most of them tried to split. Didn't even stick around to see what was happening. All their vans were parked out back, so that's the way they all headed. Back towards Leo and Donny. And it ends up Donny wasn't back there - just Leo.
LEONARDO
I entered the back door, and knocked out the first guy in short order. Then I headed down this narrow corridor into the building proper. Suddenly, I saw this swarm of Foot soldiers coming my way. There was no sign of Donatello, who was supposed to be partnered with me. I figured there was no sense in retreating. I engaged two of them and knocked them out, which bought me a second or two. I used that time to move back to the corridor. (pausing) I guess I had entered the "selfless state" already, because that wasn't really a conscious decision. "The Art of War" states that the location of the battle can greatly affect the outcome. I hadn't understood that when I had originally read it, so I'd meditated on it, and talked about it with Sensei. We discussed whether it was better to be higher or lower when dueling on a stairway, open vs against a wall, that sort of thing. (smiling) Glad I did that, because all that information must have made its way into my subconscious, and it sure came in handy. When I headed back, The Foot thought I was runnning, probably, but I was actually just retreating to a more desirable location.
MASTER SPLINTER
I had not spent much time discussing with my sons the importance of terrain to a battle. But it would appear Leonardo picked up the lesson most admirably.
LEONARDO
The corridor was just wide enough that two people could walk down it next to each other. But with weapons drawn and at the ready, they were sort of stuck going in single-file. This gave me a great advantage, because they could only attack from the front, one at at time. All I had to do was knock out the Foot soldier in front of me, move a step back, and wait for the next one. I managed to knock out about ten of them before the ones in back got jumpy, and tried to push forward. That actually made fighting them even easier, because the ones in front started tripping over the fallen ones, and I just had to knock them out as they fell.
DONATELLO
I finally managed to overwhelm the guys on the roof, and I leapt down to the back door, fully expecting the worst. I ran in, and saw Leonardo in the corridor. And he was just wailing on these guys, one after the other, pow pow pow. He must have been knocking one out every four seconds or so. He obviously didn't need any help - I'd just be in his way if I entered that corridor with him. If I had had my brain in gear, I would've run around to one of the other ways in to see if someone else needed help. Instead, I just stared at Leo - it was unreal. I think he took out fifty guys.
LEONARDO
Finally, the last guy or two turned back into the building and ran, kinda tripping over all the guys on the floor. I did a quick check to verify that everyone on the ground was down for the count. When that was done, I turned around and there's Donatello, kind of silhouetted against the back window. He didn't move for a second ,but finally he just put his bo on the ground, rested it on his arm, and started applauding.
MICHELANGELO
We're trying to maneuver through this building in the dark, keeping our eyes peeled for any Foot soldiers, and all we're finding is storage rooms, a few empty living quarters, stuff like that. We hear some commotion going on near the back, but we're not sure where exactly. We finally run into Sensei, who immediately points us towards the rear - apparently, everything's secure where he was. We start heading back that way, passing storage rooms and that kinda thing, when two Foot guys come screaming around the corner. They weren't attacking - they were running away. We took them both out in seconds flat, and then we continued along until we met up with Leo and Donny.
RAPHAEL
Donny asked us, "Anyone get out?" and I said, "Not a one." Mikey led us in that victory scream, which freaked Sensei out.
MASTER SPLINTER
I had not heard this...yell of Michelangelo's before. Apparently, they had begun doing it upon completion of a battle. It was quite...animalistic, and a bit unnerving. However, I decided it was simply their way of letting some youthful energy out.
DONATELLO
Sensei sort of congratulated us, but then reminded us that we had to get to the main HQ before these guys came around and could raise the alarm. We scurried back out to Casey's truck and headed off.
LEONARDO
Oddly, one of the things I remember most about that night is riding in the back of Casey's truck, heading towards the main Foot headquarters. It was...a really strange feeling. I'd moved into that "selfless state" for my first battle, and I was trying to hold onto it for the upcoming battle, because I knew that one would be tougher than the one we just had. I found that if I tried hard to hold on to that state, I'd lose it. So I'd meditate for a minute, and it would return a bit. It was this weird feeling of being between the two states.
MICHELANGELO
For some dumb reason, Shredder decided the best way to get us out of his way was to fight mutant with mutant. Turns out he didn't know much more about mutagens than we did.
ROCKY
Word got out that Shredder was lookin' for volunteers. He said he was gonna make a couple of us real strong so we could beat them turtles. Me 'n' Bob said sure, we'll do it. We trusted da Shredder, which weren't very smart. Ends up he'd tried somethin' like this before wit' two other guys. Didn't take - they died. Shredder didn't tell us that, o' course.
DONATELLO
Shredder stole some sort of mutagen from a bio-chem lab - no idea how he knew what or where it was. Might've been the same stuff that made us. He then got some rhinoceros and warthog DNA to combine with these two guys. Instant mutant, he thought. Well, yeah, sorta.
ROCKY
It hurt, man. It hurt real real bad. Sometimes I'll wake up screamin' like a little kid, cause I get dreams that I'm mutatin' again. Anyways, after a couple days, we wake up, Bob n me, and now we're freaks, too, just like them turtles. So now I'm huge an' strong an' ugly, and I can't work nothin'. Took me forever to get used to this body. That made Shredder mad. He wanted us to go out and pound turtles, like right away, and I couldn't even stand up. Had to learn to stand, to walk, to do everything all over again. One Foot guy walks in while I'm tryin' to get my legs goin'. I'm jumpin' from one foot to th' other. He says, "Nice moves, there, Rocksteady", and soon everyone's callin' me that. They start callin' Bob "Bebop". Bebop 'n' Rocksteady. (grinning) Kinda neat. Anyway, 'bout a week after I got freakified, Shredder says we gotta go kill them turtles now. I really didn't think I was ready. I mean, I can barely walk by then, y'know? But Shredder's impatient - wants 'em dead, wants 'em dead now. He gives us some guns 'n' stuff, and has us go out huntin' turtles.
RAPHAEL
I have no idea what Shredder was thinking. Maybe we'd be fighting, and wouldn't fight these guys as hard 'cause they were mutants?
DONATELLO
We were on our way to case the East HQ when we spotted some Foot guys ducking down an alley. We decided to give chase, like the idiots we were.
LEONARDO
I should've called them back. It crossed my mind that we were being set up, but I don't know - I wasn't forceful enough. I wasn't sure. I should've said, "Let's keep our mind on the task at hand." (shaking his head) As it turned out, it wasn't that big a deal. We got through it OK. But I still kick myself about that. Starting then, I didn't second-guess myself anymore.
RAPHAEL
We turn the corner on the alley, and all the Foot guys are scrambling up the fire escape. I'm about to leap up and give chase when I hear this really weird laugh. Really deep.
MICHELANGELO
I saw this creature walk out from behind this dumpster. Huge guy, with a rhino head. Part of me was like, "Wow - a mutant like me!" but most of me was noticing the gun he was carrying.
DONATELLO
I turned to check out the way we came, figuring we could just bow out of this one, but now there's another guy there. Huge. Warthog. Heavily armed. That's when I started to worry.
ROCKY
I remember them gawkin' at me. An' I felt...I dunno. Mainly I felt tough, like "yeah, here's where you die, ya freaks". And at the same time, I felt like, "Stop starin' at me."
RAPHAEL
He said, "You're going down, freaks." Even though I was kinda feeling we were in for a tough fight, I sort of laughed at that. I said, "Look who's calling who 'freak'."
ROCKY
One o' them said, "Who ya callin' a 'freak'?" At first, I started to get mad, but then I started thinkin'. He's right, y'know? I mean, now I'm like th' turtles, right? So they should be my friends, not Shredder. And instead, I'm there tryin' to work this AK, tryin' to blow them away.
LEONARDO
They finally lift their guns up, and we dove behind dumpsters as Bebop and Rocksteady proceeded to shoot up the alleyway. Mikey was right next to me, and he looked a bit panicked. I just sort of did this. (holds up his hand, palm out) Trying to calm him down. I had a feeling this wasn't as hopeless as it appeared.
MICHELANGELO
To be honest, I'm kinda scared of guns. Well, I guess everyone is, but me more than the rest. When I first saw Bebop and Rocksteady with their guns, I kinda panicked inside. Like, "this is it - we can't compete with guns." But it didn't end up that way.
DONATELLO
Something about the scene didn't sit right with me. I only figured it out later, though. So you take this guy, mutate him, make him extremely large and strong. And then you hand him...a gun? Why not just hand him the gun to start with, and skip the mutation? I never did figure out the logic there, but I guess the Shredder didn't, either. Good news for us.
ROCKY
Ends I can't work the gun so good - my fingers are real big, and I can't get 'em on the trigger too good. And I ain't much of a shot anyhoo. I end up shooting up this store. Musta put about fifty rounds in it. Lucky there weren't no one in there, or I'da killed someone for sure.
RAPHAEL
I can see Leo from where I'm hiding. He holds a finger out, like a gun, and kinda whacks the top of it with his other hand. (demonstrates) It's the sort of thing that any other time, it wouldn't make any sense. But it's kinda weird. When we get into fight mode, it's like we have this bond, and we don't have to talk, really. We instinctively know what the other means. I knew what that finger tapping meant - he meant take out the gun, and don't worry about the freak holding it.
ROCKY
I finally look around, and Bebop's waving his arms around, so I stop firing. Ends up I almost shot him, too.
RAPHAEL
Finally, there's a break in the shooting, and I leap back out towards Bebop with my sai pulled. I aimed straight for the gun. I was thinking...I don't know, like my sai would slice through the AK. I don't know what I was thinking - it's steel on steel. It was just a really loud clank. But I hit it with a lot of force, and Rocksteady dropped it.
LEONARDO
I leapt over to Rocksteady, slammed my wooden kitana into his gun, and brought it down. I kicked it behind me, and faced him direct.
MICHELANGELO
Once their guns were out of the picture, I kinda thought, whew, now it's almost over. Nope.
ROCKY
Actually, I was kinda happy to drop the gun. I wasn't used ta guns. But bashin' things with my fists? That I was good at.
DONATELLO
Bebop and Rocksteady both pulled out bats and started swinging. It worried me at first, but we found that it was pretty easy to dodge them. They were..."lumbering", I guess is the word. No problem ducking out of the way. But that didn't make it any easier to defeat them.
ROCKY
They kept hitting me with them sticks and chucks. Before I was freakafied, I'da been out with one hit. But now it barely hurt. Just made me mad, 'cause no matter how I tried, I couldn't hit 'em back.
DONATELLO
Raph and I were taking on Bebop while Leo and Mike were on Rocksteady. Complete stalemate on both ends of the alleyway. We kept whacking them, to no effect. They kept swinging at us, to no effect. This went on for minutes. I was starting to get tired.
RAPHAEL
I was tempted to go for the jugular, literally. Pull out the sai and start drawing some serious blood. But Sensei frowns on that sort of fighting. (smiling) "Frowns" isn't the right word, actually. He told me never to draw blood, ever, if there's another way. So that thought was running through my head - "find another way, find another way". I'm hanging back a bit, letting Don get a few more licks in, trying to find an opening here. Suddenly I saw this gleam - the street light caught Bebop's nose ring. I figure, hell, nothing ventured, right? After Bebop finished another lame swing at us, I leapt up, grabbed his nose ring, and yanked down hard. Actually, I pretty much hung off of it. He squealed and fell to his knees, and I rolled out of the way.
DONATELLO
I saw Raphael do that, and part of me was like, "Ouch, that's mean". The other part was going, "Hey, why didn't I think of that?"
RAPHAEL
Donatello gave Bebop a huge roundabout smack behind the ear. That knocked him out cold.
MICHELANGELO
We couldn't get anywhere with Rocky. Leo and I kept wailing on him, but he didn't even slow down. Just kept swinging. Finally, one of my chucks caught him on the snout, right between the horns. Wasn't even a full-on hit, more of a ricochet. Apparently, he winced. I didn't notice, but luckily Leo did.
LEONARDO
That was the first reaction we had gotten from him since we started fighting. So while he was swinging at us again, I ducked out of the way and sheathed one of my swords. Then, when he started straightening up again, I came down on his snout full force with my other sword.
ROCKY
Man, that hurt. I fell like a ton o' bricks. I couldn't see, couldn't think. I was just lying there with my snout in my hands, moaning. By the time I felt good enough to open my eyes, them turtles was gone.
DONATELLO
Once they were both out of the picture, we took off. Leo said we'd skip the casing tonight, since they'd probably be on the lookout for us.
LEONARDO
Running into Bebop and Rocksteady made us realize that the Shredder wasn't kidding around. He was looking to take us out, by any means possible. That sort of provided us with the impetus to make our final move.
MASTER SPLINTER
We believed that time was precious. We were quite aware that the Foot was actively searching for us, and although our home was quite well-hidden, we could not count on not being discovered. We had to strike them before they struck us.
RAPHAEL
Time for Operation Amputation Phase Two - the satellite HQ East.
LEONARDO
After discussing it a bit, we decided we had to hit both remaining targets the same night. Not give them a chance to regroup and fortify their defenses.
CASEY
When I went to pick them up, they told me that this might be an all-nighter. They also said they might need me to join in. (smiling) Which of course I was more than happy to do.
MICHELANGELO
We brought Sensei came along, but other than that, it was pretty much the same set up as before. We'd planned it all out. There were two major ways into this building, front and back, and this small side exit. Raph and I took the front, Leo and Donny had the back, and Sensei went through the side.
DONATELLO
I went up to the roof and cut the power, but before I could leap down, four Foot soldiers swarmed around me. I'm not sure - they might have been on guard duty. I can't imagine they were just hanging out there, or that they managed to jump up there and engage me that quickly. I wasn't ready for battle - I didn't even have my weapon drawn. I had to fight them off weaponless for a bit until I could leap back from them and draw it out. And they were excellent fighters, too - took me quite a while to subdue them. All this time I'm fighting them, I was thinking, geez, Leo's down there alone.
MASTER SPLINTER
As the lights went out, I cautiously entered the side door. There was little activity in that part of the building, and I subdued the few Foot soldiers I encountered. After that point, I simply tried to find my way through the building, attempting to locate my sons.
RAPHAEL
We ran into the building, ready to kick some tail, but there wasn't much tail to kick. A few Foot came our way, and we made short work of them.
MICHELANGELO
We learned later that the Foot...well, they weren't exactly expecting us, really, but they had a plan. If it looked like they were outmatched, they were supposed to withdraw and head back to the main HQ. Apparently, our reputation preceded us - once the lights went out, most of them tried to split. Didn't even stick around to see what was happening. All their vans were parked out back, so that's the way they all headed. Back towards Leo and Donny. And it ends up Donny wasn't back there - just Leo.
LEONARDO
I entered the back door, and knocked out the first guy in short order. Then I headed down this narrow corridor into the building proper. Suddenly, I saw this swarm of Foot soldiers coming my way. There was no sign of Donatello, who was supposed to be partnered with me. I figured there was no sense in retreating. I engaged two of them and knocked them out, which bought me a second or two. I used that time to move back to the corridor. (pausing) I guess I had entered the "selfless state" already, because that wasn't really a conscious decision. "The Art of War" states that the location of the battle can greatly affect the outcome. I hadn't understood that when I had originally read it, so I'd meditated on it, and talked about it with Sensei. We discussed whether it was better to be higher or lower when dueling on a stairway, open vs against a wall, that sort of thing. (smiling) Glad I did that, because all that information must have made its way into my subconscious, and it sure came in handy. When I headed back, The Foot thought I was runnning, probably, but I was actually just retreating to a more desirable location.
MASTER SPLINTER
I had not spent much time discussing with my sons the importance of terrain to a battle. But it would appear Leonardo picked up the lesson most admirably.
LEONARDO
The corridor was just wide enough that two people could walk down it next to each other. But with weapons drawn and at the ready, they were sort of stuck going in single-file. This gave me a great advantage, because they could only attack from the front, one at at time. All I had to do was knock out the Foot soldier in front of me, move a step back, and wait for the next one. I managed to knock out about ten of them before the ones in back got jumpy, and tried to push forward. That actually made fighting them even easier, because the ones in front started tripping over the fallen ones, and I just had to knock them out as they fell.
DONATELLO
I finally managed to overwhelm the guys on the roof, and I leapt down to the back door, fully expecting the worst. I ran in, and saw Leonardo in the corridor. And he was just wailing on these guys, one after the other, pow pow pow. He must have been knocking one out every four seconds or so. He obviously didn't need any help - I'd just be in his way if I entered that corridor with him. If I had had my brain in gear, I would've run around to one of the other ways in to see if someone else needed help. Instead, I just stared at Leo - it was unreal. I think he took out fifty guys.
LEONARDO
Finally, the last guy or two turned back into the building and ran, kinda tripping over all the guys on the floor. I did a quick check to verify that everyone on the ground was down for the count. When that was done, I turned around and there's Donatello, kind of silhouetted against the back window. He didn't move for a second ,but finally he just put his bo on the ground, rested it on his arm, and started applauding.
MICHELANGELO
We're trying to maneuver through this building in the dark, keeping our eyes peeled for any Foot soldiers, and all we're finding is storage rooms, a few empty living quarters, stuff like that. We hear some commotion going on near the back, but we're not sure where exactly. We finally run into Sensei, who immediately points us towards the rear - apparently, everything's secure where he was. We start heading back that way, passing storage rooms and that kinda thing, when two Foot guys come screaming around the corner. They weren't attacking - they were running away. We took them both out in seconds flat, and then we continued along until we met up with Leo and Donny.
RAPHAEL
Donny asked us, "Anyone get out?" and I said, "Not a one." Mikey led us in that victory scream, which freaked Sensei out.
MASTER SPLINTER
I had not heard this...yell of Michelangelo's before. Apparently, they had begun doing it upon completion of a battle. It was quite...animalistic, and a bit unnerving. However, I decided it was simply their way of letting some youthful energy out.
DONATELLO
Sensei sort of congratulated us, but then reminded us that we had to get to the main HQ before these guys came around and could raise the alarm. We scurried back out to Casey's truck and headed off.
LEONARDO
Oddly, one of the things I remember most about that night is riding in the back of Casey's truck, heading towards the main Foot headquarters. It was...a really strange feeling. I'd moved into that "selfless state" for my first battle, and I was trying to hold onto it for the upcoming battle, because I knew that one would be tougher than the one we just had. I found that if I tried hard to hold on to that state, I'd lose it. So I'd meditate for a minute, and it would return a bit. It was this weird feeling of being between the two states.