Hamato Samurai

Episode 24: Operation Breakout

*This means a line is dramatic, emphasized, or in the background*

In the lair, the turtles, April, and Jason are in the dojo watching Donnie and Raph spar each other. They circled each other as they prepared themselves.

"Don't worry, Donnie." Raph said slyly. "I'm in a good mood today. I'll go easy on you."

"Don't do me any favours, Raph." Donnie countered. He glanced over at April, who watched with interest. His crush on her was once again driving him to look cool. "In fact, maybe... you'll be the one... who gets gone easy on. By me. So, yeah."

"Worst smack talk ever." Mikey whispered to the others.

Splinter gave the signal to start, and Donnie did pretty well, as he managed to knock Raph off his feet. "Hey, I got him! April, did you see?" But Raph took advantage of his distraction and swept his legs out from under him. The red-clad turtle soon managed to pin Donnie's arm and used his sais to move them.

"Say hi to Sammy." Raph taunted, making Donnie wave and imitating Donnie's voice. "Hi, Sammy."

Sam giggled giddily. "Ha, Raph! That never gets old!" Jason blushed as he watched her laugh. He didn't really notice before, but her laugh was contagiously pretty, and he started chuckling too. "I don't know why it's funny, but it is!"

"Yame!" Splinter called. "Raphael, that is enough." Raph listened, but he judo flipped Donnie and sat on top of him first.

"Thanks for going easy on me." He said teasingly. He got off Donnie, who had to lay there for a while, moaning in pain and embarrassment.

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Later on, the training session ended, and everyone left the dojo. Donnie hung back a bit to talk to Raph. "What the heck was that?"

"What? Just having fun." Raph answered. "You know how much Sam loves the Donnie puppet."

"Dude. April was watching!" Donnie gestured to the redhead in exasperation.

"Pretty sure she liked it..." Raph paused when he saw the sad look on his younger brother's face. "...to. Wait, do you still think you have a shot with her?"

Donnie felt sweaty as he tried to answer. "Well. I mean, I..."

"Wow. That is so adorable." Raph chuckled. "And sad. It's "saddorable." If you wanna impress April, you better leave me out of it." Donnie drooped a bit as Raph walked away. His crush on April was going to be the death of him.

April sat on the couch with her laptop when she received a weird audio message. When she played it, a static, sort of musical sound came through that didn't make any sense.

"Not bad!" Mikey commented. "Needs more drums!"

"What was that?" Leo asked when the message ended.

"I don't know." April answered. "Some random email I got. It just started playing by itself."

"Sounds like some kind of telemetric signwave subcarrier." Donnie said. Everyone blinked at him.

"Can you dumb that down a notch?" Jason asked.

"It's an interference modulation used to encrypt covert trans--" Sam put a finger on his lips to silence him. "Not enough notches." "A secret message!"

"Who would be sending me a secret message?" April asked.

XXXXXXXX

That night, the turtles and Jason stayed up to watch movies and fell asleep with the TV on. As the TV played static and everybody slept, Donnie was wide awake in his lab, trying to decode the secret message April got. Eventually, he finally managed to hear what the message said.