Natural Enemies

Natural Enemies is the pilot episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Netfilx TV series. It is the premiere episode of the whole show.

Synopsis
When the turtles accidentally find a mysterious canister in the lair, their rat Master Hamato Yoshi sees that as a sign to reveal the secret behind their origins.

Major Characters:
Leonardo

Donatello

Raphael

Michelangelo

Splinter

Dr. Robert Kingsley

Komodo Dragon

Minor Characters:
Tang Shen

Oroku Saki (flashbacks)

Plot
The episode begins with a narrative. Leonardo and his brothers are in the middle of a fight in the mysterious TCRI building. The four of them are fighting security robots and a big lizard creature. Amid the chaos, Leonardo starts explaining how the team got into this situation.

A flashback takes us to the turtle lair hours before the current events. The brothers are training, but durring a struggle between Leonardo and Raphael, the turtles reveal a strange cannister that was hidden into the walls of the sewer tunnels. Their Master Hamato Yoshi who is a rat mutant decides to tell them his story and how a series of unfortunate events led to their common life together.

Hamato Yoshi has just arrived in New York to start a new life. However, he is still amongst the ranks of the reformed Foot Clan. The New York branch was recently founded by his old friend Oroku Saki. The two of them and other followers had left the original Clan in Japan believing that there was no future for it with its obsolete facilities and beliefs. But Yoshi had one goal in mind: to leave the Clan and start over with his beloved Tang Shen. Leaving the Foot Clan was not easy as Yoshi had progressed so high in its ranks that Saki was not fond of letting his best soldier walk away. And so Oroku Saki offered Yoshi a deal. Help the Foot infiltrate an enemy base in New York in return for his freedom. Saki believed that the organisation that ocupied the building was more than it appeared to be. The ninja leader had done his research on TCRI and their opperations and saw them as a fit source of new gear and tech for his reformed clan. Yoshi was aware of the dark path his clan had taken, but there was no turning back. He had to accomplish the mission in order to have his new beggining. Yoshi spent a week preparing for this last task, hiding the truth from Tang Shen.

When the moment came, Yoshi was feeling ready, but he was deffinetley unprepared for what was about to happen that night. Oroku Saki and Hamato, followed by Saki's best men infiltrated the TCRI, but were quickly led into a trap. The mission was compromised. Saki was seemingly killed in front of Yoshi's eyes while the last was captured as a prisoner. The young ninja was experimented on and eventually mutated into a humanoid rat. With his new abilities he managed to escape his capturers, but found himslef alone in the huge metropolis that New York was. He had no family to return to because of his new appearance. He thought that Shen would not understand the whole situation and leave him, or worse. He was a rat now, a mutant, his Clan was no more and the only thing that he had left was a canister of four turtles. During his break out, Yoshi had managed to snatch the canister as he had seen that scientists were experimenting with the turtles too. It was just an instinct to grab the four reptiles, but Yoshi felt as not everything was lost.

In a matter of year the four turtles grew into humanoid creatures and Yoshi decided to train them in the art of the ninjas. He tought that they would need to learn how to protect themselves in this cold world. Hamato had found an old Renaissance book in the sewer drain that had become his favourite and so he chose a name for each of the turtles from it. He called them Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo after the great Italian artists.

After hearing Yoshi 's story the turtles decide to learn more about TCRI, how and why they were created. They come up with a plan to sneak out and investigate the mysterious building. When they go to the surface, the brothers decide to split up and inspect the area around the building. They find an underground tunnel acces and sneak into the building. The four turtles then find all the experiment archives and take two tapes from fifteen years ago named The Splinter Files. Taking the tapes triggers a security alarm and the brothers find themselves surrounded by security robots. They are forced to retreat into a laboratory which contains other mutant specimen. During the fitght the chamber is opened and the creature comes out of it. Donatello notes that this is a mutated Komodo Dragon which automatically makes him and his brothers its food. Leonardo slices one of its hands, but it grows back. The four brothers manage to escape and retreat to the sewers where the Komodo Dragon follows them. Donatello then uses some toxins he stole form TCRI to inject the mutant and the brothers manage to defeat him.

When the turtles return to the lair Yoshi is awaitng them with concern. Despite the partial success of their mission their master says that he is disappointed and that the same recklessness he showed fifteen years ago was what took his Tang Shen from him.

The last scene takes us to the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York where Tang Shen prepares to departure to an unknown destination.