Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Day of the Rat (A 90s Movies Story)

Chapter 13: Fraud Most Foul

A little under 6 weeks ago...

"I still say we should just throw it in the river..."

"Yeah, Raph. Great. Then you can deal with all the giant mutant fish, OK...?"

Irritated, Raphael replied "I was talking metaphorically". The other Turtles all turned to look at him slowly.

"Why, Raph, I had no idea you spoke metaphorical," said Leonardo, awe-struck.

"I meant, like 'ya didn't know already, why don't we just get Professor Perry to get rid of it."

"We took a vote. This is how it is, OK?" Leonardo leaned over to touch the sheet covering the large object in front of them. Donatello blocked his hand and steered it away.

"Leo! Have a sense of occasion!" I've been working on this for days...!"

Michelangelo swiped away the sheet, casually and with no sense of occasion at all. To reveal a large black box with a heavy door, a metal handle and a lock with numerous keys set on a board below with a range of letters and numbers arrayed on it.

"Congratulations, Donny. You've invented... the safe" said Raphael. "Oh wait- Gee – You know, I think somebody already patented that one..."

Donatello chuckled. "Think again, my friend..."

Hi, guys!" April climbed down the last few rungs of the ladder into the Turtles' home, and came over to join them. "What's all this?"

"Hi, April. Just in time..." Donatello continued. "Yeah, OK, Raph, it's a safe. Well spotted. But look at the lock. Is it a common, everyday sort of lock? I'm glad you asked. No, it isn't... The main surface is covered with a layer of molecularly bonded polymers – Thanks to Professor Perry for pulling some strings and supplying us with that – with cavities that lock together so that they can't be separated by anything but one exact set of electronic signals transmitted from the lock once we key in the release code..."

"Well, that I could've guessed," said April. The others grinned, but Donatello was still caught up with his demonstration.

"Input the wrong code, and the polymers bond together permanently. You'd need, maybe, a concentrated nuclear explosion to break in."

"That's some serious security, yeah..." said April. "What's so valuable that- Oh. Yeah..." She nodded her understanding as Leonardo brought forward the object destined to go into the safe, and gently placed it inside. Donatello shut the door with the same reverence.

"It can never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands..." said Leo quietly. "We thought about destroying it, but we just can't. It's... important. Maybe one day, we might need it..."

Donatello passed round small sheets of paper on which he had written short sequences of numbers and letters. A different one for each of the Turtles. Raphael looked askance at his. Michelangelo turned his over to see if anything was written on the other side.

"Donny... Wha'?"

"I want you all to memorize that. Then get rid of the paper – destroy it."

"What is it?" Raphael demanded.

"It's red, Raph. It's the color of your bandana expressed as hexadecimal code. If we ever want to get into that safe, we all type in our part of the code. You go first." Donatello shrugged, turning to Leonardo. "I figured, anybody would assume you'd go first, Leo, being the leader. But you're second. Then Mikey. Then me. Nobody knows anyone else's part. Even I don't know them all off the top of my head. Then there's a final release code. A short sequence of characters, at least four, less than ten. None of us will know that part." He turned to April.