Notes: Originally a post by post RP on the RRRPG board, run by me (Stainless Steel Rat) for Ronnie Rabbit, who was playing Gadget. Kudos to him, he's done a great job! The wording has been altered in places to convert it to a consistent story format. It is a side story to the main RRRPG thread, and refers to events in it.
The Treehouse was under threat at one point, and they managed to finesse the city into moving it from Central Park to the UN Peace garden (it assumes the Ranger's home city was New York). Also, Gadget had built a large underground workshop under a junkyard in the Morningside area. There a submarine, the Sea Ranger is under construction, using a stainless steel swing top bin, two bread bins, a tupperware box, and a Seadoo with it's battery replaced bya Quantum Electron Cascade Generator (Nimnul's cat-powered generator, without the cats).
Part 1 - Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Arrival
Gadget came to lying slumped on a floor. Her vision was a bit muzzy, and she didn't feel like moving yet. There were a number of lit candle stubs in her field of vision, and a strange incense smell in the air, but the room beyond was dim. She could see a number of shapes and clearly hear a voice.
"... but she's a girl!" The first voice was an alto, sassy and declarative.
It was answered by a deep rich bass voice, across between Partick Steward and James Earl Jones. "Sweetie, Chip asked me to summon an alternate version of Gadget who'd have the skills to do the job, and who wouldn't imperil anyone if they disappeared for a few moments. I didn't put other paramenters into the spell. You need to be more flexible."
There was a giggle in the first voice. "I'll show you 'flexible' or rather Elasti-Kate will, tonight."
A voice like wind chimes broke in. "Uh guys, you realise she'd conscious?"
"Yes, Speedie, and what she must think of us..." This voice was quite similar to Gadget's own in pitch and tone.
"Too roight! Well mates, we hav'ta apologise." The voice sounded Australian and was another female.
The similar voice spoke. "Just what I was thinking... Do we still need the lights down?"
A figure stepped between the candles as the room lightened, as if a large curtain being pulled back. Daylight streamed in.
The figure was a female chipmunk with blonde curly hair. She wore a fedora, a green skintight crop top, and short khaki combat pants. In one pocket was a slingshot, and in the other a magnifying glass, from the outline. She offered a paw.
"Charlotte Maplewood, but call me Chip. Whenever anyone uses my full name I feel like a darned dessert. I'm really sorry about all this, but the fate of the world truly hangs in the balance, and only you can save it."
"Gee, so no pressure!" the alto chipped in.
This turned out to be a redheaded chipmunk girl with a pig tail and matching nose, red that is, not pig-like. Perched on the aforementioned nose was a pair of circular wire frame glasses. She was wearing a yellow bikini top and dark red hot pants and was snuggled into the wing of a male bat, wearing a bow tie and nothing else. His other wing was holding a scrubbing brush staff.
The red head spoke. "Della 'Del' Oakmont, resident computer geek, secret superhero, and master of disguise."
The big bat added. "Also master of dis-guys heart. I'm Foxglove, ex-evil henchbat. Now I use my magic for truth, justice... and tomato ketchup flavoured ice cream."
The other two voices turned out to be a shapely blue fly in what looked like a red leotard, who was sitting on the shoulder of an older, rather matronly mouse who looked a lot like a young version of Camenbert Kate.
The fly zipped forward. "Speedie, at your service."
"Madison Wisconsin Colby's me name, and adventurin's me game. Maddy to me pals." The big mouse stepped forward and held out a paw. "And I 'ope you'll count yerself as one."
Chip was looking straight into Gadget's eyes. "You recognise us, but you still look surprised. Could it be that it's not just you... in your universe we, our analogues that is, are the opposite gender to what we are here?"
Gadget felt an overwhelming urge to say "...oh, boy," so she did.
She took the offered hand up, her usual curiosity and friendliness quickly kicking in, and overtaking her puzzlement and disconcertion.
"Hi! My name's Gad - um, it's fairly self evident you know the rest," she said, quickly stopping herself. "And, well actually, yes, it seems like everyone's gender is reversed, although of course this is too small a representative sample of the world at large to be sure. Hmm, some kind of DNA mutation, theoretically it would be a fairly minor alteration to protein composition to make XX and XY chromosomes express the alternate gender-" she speculated thoughtfully. "Then everything else in the world could be exactly the same, down to the last atom! That would explain the otherwise remarkable similarities."
Chip's face split in a broad grin. "You really are Gadget... my, this is odd."
She looked around curiously. "Well, the voice that sounds like me is Chip, and I don't see myself - or not myself, but rather, some male version of myself - so I assume he's gone missing, and that's why you need me?" she queried. "Golly, wouldn't it have been easier to just get Spark... Sparkie to do anything technical you need, rather than get me from a whole other dimension? That's what the Rangers usually do in my world if I'm not around," she explained.
Chip's good humour deserted her. She ducked her head and wiped a paw across her eyes, sniffing. "Sorry, this has been..." Del came over and gave her a one armed hug. "Aw... c'mon, I'm sure he's fine..."
Chip motioned to Gadget. "C'mon over and sit down, and I'll explain. I assume in your world Sparky is a male lab rat with electric powers, originally working for Noreen... your version of Nimnul. She's got the same name in our world, but at present she's... unavailable. It relates to why Gadget..." there was a catch in her voice, "... is missing."
She led Gadget over to a table with a number of chairs around it. It was actually in the cockpit area of a stripped B-25 bomber, not Gadget's own, but the one that had been across from it, if the view out of the big glass dome was correct. The summoning area, a complex circle of inscriptions with still burning candles, had been set further back in the hull.
The rest of the Rangers seated themselves around, and Chip sat across from Gadget.
.
Gadget listened attentively in her distinctive head-cocked position, one ear subtly elevated.
Chip "If you have a Nimnul in your world, we're half way to explaining what's going on. About four months ago, Nimnul was released from the Pleasant Palms... again!" She practically growled this last word.
"She ducked and covered, and we didn't keep as close a watch on her as I should have. Well, for the first part I was in Washington." For some reason she rubbed at a raised patch of fur just visible on her stomach, some sort of scar, and an astute observer would also notice the ring she wore on the paw that rubbed it.
"The next thing we knew, Sparky had disappeared from where she'd gone back to work, her lab at M.I.T. We tracked her down, and found the trail led to where Nimnul had holed up. She'd rebuilt her geodesic observatory, or so it seemed, but her defences were much better than before. We barely avoided being shot down, mostly due to Gadget's flying. Nimnul had a dozen automatically targeting lightning cannons guarding the perimeter.
"That wasn't all. We were just in time to see the whole thing lift off into the sky. The whole place must have been carpeted in anti-gravity carpets. For the last week, she's been flying around the globe, demanding money and other things with menaces. Not only is the thing equipped with lightning cannons, but some sort of teleporter ray, so she can take what she wants without ever touching ground.
"At first governments tried to resist. But the lab is normally between 20 and a couple of hundred miles up, and anything coming close, missiles, or high altitude attack craft get fried by the cannons. I hear they even tried hiding some sort of reconissance robot in a gold shipment and got back a wad of tin foil and a snotty lecture on how she'd be a fool not to include a scanner in her teleporter.
"Gadget had a plan, our own teleporter device, built out of mobile phones, a sort of modemiser mk 2 that could teleport without a phone at the far end. With that we could get aboard. But before he could complete the design, he was snatched by Sparky, under some kind of mind control. Nimnul's next lecture included some gloating about how she'd... dealt... with..." Chip put a paw to her face, muffling a sob.
"C'mon Chip luv, you know that screwy sheila didn't mean it like that. She must have our mate caged up somewhere. She'd never pass up the chance to lord it over 'er 'one true rival'."
"Oh Maddy, I hope so." Chip said. She forced back a sniffle and said to Gadget. "I'm sorry, I'm not normally like this, but..."
Del piped up. "We'll get her back. I ain't gonna let the time I spent on your dress go to waste."
Gadget put a hand on the other girl's shoulder. "I understand," she said. "Just recently, in my world, Chip told me... how he feels. How both of you feel." She smiled gently. "And I've learned a lot recently about how having some feelings is ok. If you need to cry, no one here is gonna think less of you for it, that's for sure."
Chip's face grew brighter and she sighed. "Thanks. But I'm okay for now. I'm glad you and your Chip have that kind of relationship."
She pulled out a photo, which showed the pair of them, snuggled together, with Gadget's tail curled possessively around the chipmunk girl's waist. This world's Gadget was about half a head taller than Chip, and built like a carrot. His sleeveless blue jumpsuit did nothing to hide the muscle definition in his arms. He had a blond hair with a wave and welding goggles pushed up on his forehead and an open, pleasant expression. In short he was a major murine hottie.
Gadget turned quite pink. Seeing them snuggling, first off, was weird, and - "It feels very peculiar to be looking at a picture of myself and thinking how attractive I look," she mumbled, embarrassed. She took a deep breath, and returned her mind to the topic at hand.
"That doesn't sound like /our/ Nimnul, and from what you're saying, it doesn't sound like yours, either. If Nimnul wanted to do something like that, he could have years ago - he's had access to the technology," she said, frowning. "Nimnul - well, he enjoyed being the Wacky Mad Scientist too much to do something so /practical/, if you take my meaning, despite the fact we're talking about an observatory levitating thanks to flying carpet technology."
"Not to mention he's never really taken a 'small enough' view to know exactly who we are. He knew after the Modemizer incident we were a bunch of intelligent small animals, but it's not like he bothered to learn our names, we were just 'those rodents'. But suddenly he realizes we have a tech specialist, and the best place, time, method, and person to abduct him? It's very suspicious."
She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "It almost sounds like he's gone... sane," she said slowly. "Or else someone who IS sane is pulling his strings..."
Chip interjected, "Her, remember? Though the practical difference isn't great, Noreen Nimnul is a scruffy, frizzy haired ogre. But I never considered that possibility, someone else pulling the strings. The only one who ever did that was Britanny Clordane, and she's still in Troy's, life without parole. Maybe they actually cured her, made her sane, but she stayed evil, or at least vengeful."
Chip put her paw to her chin in an identical mannerism to the male version. "Hmm... If there is a 'power behind the throne' what are their objectives, looting with Nimnul as the patsy for when it falls apart? Or is Nimnul nothing more than a distraction, something to keep us looking to the sky while someone sneaks under the floorboards. I'll think about it..."
Gadget shook her head. "Enough time to figure out who we're dealing with later. Your Gadget... Gadget2...? although I should really do the polite thing and let him be Gadget1, after all, this is his universe and I'm the interloper," she considered. "Anyway, G1 should have a bunch of blueprints and notes on what he was working on. Do you still have them? Or were they stolen?"
"Oh no, they're here... and a full set of tools. We managed to escape with them before the Treehouse got a Nimnul inspired love tap with a laser beam. But we should be safe here. This place was going to be our wedding gift, well mainly a surprise for Gadget from all of us..."
She took a deep breath, blinking back tears, "This was somewhere with room for Gadget to actually build his bigger inventions. Everyone helped, and we kept it a total secret from him. We went out via an underground route from the Treehouse, something Del and I found before we ever formed the Rangers, so hopefully Nimnul thinks she got us, and won't be searching. Neither Gadget or Sparky know about this place, so hopefully neither does Nimnul."
Gadget blinked. "The... the tree?" she said, stunned. "After all the trouble we went through to save -"
She shook her head, putting it in her hands. "No. No, we... we did save the tree... this is... I'm very sorry," she said softly. "You must be very angry."
Chip nodded, her face grim. "The badge Athene gave us, all our momentoes and stuff... we got some of it into the escape tunnel, but... Angry doesn't even begin to cover it! That place was a home to me and Del back before the Rangers existed, when we were just a pair of bachelorettes, chasing after that lounge singer, Karl. But ultimately, it was a place, and can be replaced. People can't."
Gadget frowned. "I'm more convinced than ever something's wrong. Even a completely sane Nimnul shouldn't have a clue of how to find Ranger HQ. This sounds like an animal inside job to me, and that narrows our suspects considerably. We have to seriously consider the possibility he's teamed up with someone like Fat Cat, possibly even as an equal partnership. Kind of a Ranger Revenge Squad."
"Maybe things are different where you came from, but Sparkie lived with us for a time as a technical advisor. Nimnul found out we were intelligent from the modemiser incident, and may have kidnapped Sparkie to see if it held true for her. Which it did. I can think of at least three ways Nimnul could get a location out of a mind controlled Sparkie, even without a translator device. Heck, just her coming to the Treehouse to capture Gadget would have targeted us."
"Oh! Yes, that IS new information," Gadget squeaked thoughtfully. "Well, nevermind, scratchthat. We'll work on it later." She flashed a smile at Chip. "Isn't this where you tell me what a capital mistake it is to theorize with insufficient facts?"
She changed the subject. "I'm glad you saved the plans! My other suggestion would have been to root through G1's wastebaskets, I always go through about four designs before making a final commitment to a blueprint, but... I guess that wouldn't have been possible, anyway," she said, looking briefly crestfallen again.
"But - but no time for that, now. We need to get to work! Del, I'll need the blueprints. Chip, if you can show me the main work area, and where my - his tools are? If we're going to put something this complicated together, I'm gonna need everyone's help!" she said resolutely.
"You'll get it Gadget-luv." said Maddy, a sentiment echoed by the others.
Towards the back of the plane was a complete workshop. While not as advanced as the underground lair she had built herself, it was still impressive work. There was a rather nice notepad computer in one corner hooked up to a portable disk drive, a card reader and drawing tablet, and several reconditioned human handicraft tools which did duty as lathes and drill presses.
A central area several feet square was clear, though illuminated from overhead by several angle poise lamps. Around it there were also work-benches and racks of neat tools, and a number of stacks of components and pieces of junk for raw materials. There were also a number of notebooks and reference works.
Chip waved a paw at the assemblage. "I hope you can do something with this, for all our sakes."
Del strode over to the computer and stuck an inch square memory card into the reader. "Well, we gotta a place to start, anyhow."
She tapped away at the keyboard and a CAD program popped up, loaded with complex schematics.
"Golly, I'll say!" she exclaimed. "It's so much more than I even hoped for! This'll be no problem!"
"Hmm... he uses a more computer-based design method than I do... I could never do without the feel of having wood in my hand," she mused, plucking a makeshift pencil out of her jumpsuit and playing with it. "Let me see if his paradigm is the same as mine is, and I can actually understand what he's got written here. It should be! Then we can get started for real."
The short answer to her question was _yes_. It was kind of spooky, looking at neat diagrams and equations, done in your own notation and style, which you knew you'd never done. The design was almost complete, and for someone of Gadget's genius filling in the blanks was a simple exercise.
Chip filled in. "Gadget does do his initial designs on paper, but he's started transferring everything to computer for easier storage and design changes. He's even added some sort of simulator software..." She stopped herself, shoulders slumping.
Maddy growled. "Chippah, if you don't stop beating yourself up over this, I'm gonna get Tommy to pump you full of sleeping pill, so help me. This isn't the first time we've thought we lost Gadget, and that turned out all roight. 'eck, we even saved the bloomin' president while we were at it."
"And you got yourself a new piercing." Del said, grinning.
"Are you trying to make a point?" Chip replied with a bit of her earlier spirit.
Speedie chimed in. "That when we go rescue our buddy, you leave off painting a bullseye on your chest."
Foxglove sighed. "If it will make you feel any better, I'll do a divination to try and check on him. But you know it isn't completely reliable... Oh I forgot! With Gadget-chan here I won't be able to isolate a lock."
"It's so interesting how there's all these other changes, just because the genders are switched," Gadget said absently, fingers a blur on the keys as she conjured up the missing portions of the design on the diagram. "Foxy's still doing magic, Sparky's with the group, Chip and Gadget are about to get -"
She paused, and was quiet for a few long moments.
"....there," she said finally. "That's the finished design. Let me run it through the simulator and see what we get... golly, this is a lot better than doing dry runs in the lab with a fully constructed device... think of the time savings in explosives cleanup alone!"
Chip giggled. "That didn't sound any more comforting the _last_ time I heard it." She sighed.
"Hi guys, we have lunch... what the hey?" The voice came from an open mouse sized hatch further down the hull, and a squirrel, dragging a stack of pots from an airline meal, staggered up to the group. He had red hair in a short pigtail, and a green vest.
Chip waved a hand. "Foxglove's summoning spell worked. Alternate universe Gadget, meet Thomas Chestnutt, our team medic."
"They call me Tommy, when they call me anything that can be repeated in polite company." The squirrel said, grinning. "Enchanted, milady."
"Uh oh, crush alert!", called out Del, "All hands brace for impact!"
"Unfair and untrue!" The squirrel exclaimed still grinning. "I no longer crush on girls that often..."
"What never?" asked Del, with the air of one acting out an oft repeated dialogue.
Tommy was clearly reading from the same script. "Well, hardly ever."
"Permission to leave this group on grounds of insanity, mam!" Foxglove said to Chip lightly, raising her wingtip in a parody of a salute.
"Theirs or yours?" the chipmunk girl asked.
"Take your pick!" responded the bat smirking as he gestured around.
Chip waved an indication to turn down the general laughter at this. "Okay, enough... we're interrupting Gadget."
Gadget giggled. "You guys go right ahead," she said fondly. "I've missed hearing this like I used to. Oh, good news! Simulation is running fine, and shows 99% reintegration on transport!" she said cheerfully. "And that's well with the 2% margin of error, so we could actually be over 100% intact!"
She tapped on the keyboard, and a modified, old fashioned desk calculator - no, REALLY old fashioned, the kind that actually typed onto rolls of paper when you hit the keys - by the computer dutifully ejected a finished blueprint from its scroll.
"Ooookay," she said, lifting it with an all too familiar grin, the gleaming joy of invention glimmering in her eyes. "Who wants to find out if this thing works?"
If this was anime, there would have been sweatdrops. Del piped up. "Uh... did you say 99%? There are bits of me I really don't want to lose..."
"If you loose one percent of me, there won't be anything left!" added Speedie.
"Then we do some trial runs with an inanimate object first, guys." Chip stated, arms folded. "Gadget, just tell us what you need us to do."
As they got to work, Chip said, "So it did happen to you too, the MAP thing I mean. Don't worry, whatever happens you won't be separated from your team for more than an instant. The way Foxglove explained it you're held here by the summoning spell. When he releases it you'll snap back to when and where you were on your own... timeline. They'll never know you were gone."
"Oh, good! I was worried about how the guys would be doing without me - and more importantly, if they'd worry. This magic stuff is awfully handy!" Gadget said cheerfully. "Ummm, left - no, RIGHT handed framwinkle, please."
"Speaking of which," she said distractedly, leaning over the device rapidly taking shape - alas, a view unappreciated by the large female contingent present; oh, for missed opportunities - "why DID you keep up with your magic? Foxglove always said she didn't want to be reminded of Freddie... who come to think of it is probably still named 'Freddie' here... but to be honest, I always kind of suspected she just thought I hated magic."
"She was still so nervous in those early days, around everyone but Dale - for a while after she joined us full time she acted just like she had with Freddie, desperate to please, afraid she'd somehow lose us, so careful not to offend anyone. She knew not being to figure out how magic worked bothered me... I could never get her to talk about it, even. I'm curious why you chose differently."
Foxglove looked puzzled, and in his deep voice replied,
"Del persuaded me to do it soon after Wilhelm... _Willie_, my ex-boss was defeated. Del was tired of being the only one with supernatural abilities. I was kind of nervous at first, especially around everyone else, but she convinced me to reveal what I could do, and everyone was so supportive...
"It took time, though, at first we met over at my old place at the University, Humanities department. I was teaching her how to fly. I guess there was the element of wanting to live up to some of my anime idols. I'm a bit of an otaku, and I was worried they'd find that weird too. I'm so glad I was wrong."
Chip grinned. "What you didn't know was we'd already met up with zombies, mummies, leprechauns..."
Del continued, "...banshees, shapeshifting aliens..."
And Maddy finished, "... the ghost of my great aunt and a psychotic tuna in a salvaged submarine."
"Don't forget the time Nimnul's old modemiser swapped my head with hers.", came Speedie's bell like voice.
"How could we forget?" Chip exclaimed. "We got a dose of that too."
Del grinned and nudged the other chipmunk. "Not that it was all bad, Miss 'compatible species'."
"If I ever get him... NO! we will get Gadget back, and I will kiss him and hug him and..." she blushed.
"...Show him your sprocket collection?" Del finished, smirking.
Chip went solid crimson and exploded with a "DEL!"
She turned to Gadget. "Sorry about my so called friend. When we first met up in his old B-52 bomber, our Gadget was kinda flustered. He did kind of babble and offered to show us his sprocket collection. Well I guess you probably have one too. Perfectly innocent remark, right? However the crimson hacker over there has long since decided it was roughly equivalent to getting... well... snuggle bunny."
"And ever since I realised Foxy-muffin was my one and only, I've been using it to tease them both. It's great fun seeing who gets the most red!"
At the moment, that seemed to be Gadget. "Yes, um... what an odd idea that it would mean anything like that!" she said, cheeks crimson. "Oh, well, back to work!"
"MAP?" she queried after Foxglove finished, picking up a thought from several minutes ago, as she tended to do. "Is that what Nim was calling the Modemizer?"
"No. it..." Chip looked solemn. "It can't have happened to you then, thank heavens. It started out as just a raid on Nimnul's new lab to free some test animals..." She went on to tell of Gadget captured by the FBI and supposedly put down, a secret lab and brain implants, and a joyful reunion followed by a hair raising adventure in Washington, including herself taking a hypodermic dart through the chest. How her life had been saved by the surgeon general.
This took quite a while - several hundred pages of beautifully drawn adventure story, in fact. The device made substantial progress.
At the end, Gadget said, "That's... that's wonderful, I mean, you and Gadget... I can see how that would advance your relationship much further than Chip and I have gotten, but..." she shivered. "I - I've seen human villains do awful things before, but I - I never imagined... that's - that's torture, what they did to m- to Gadget. And the things they might have had him do, and probably did!" she said, shocked.
"He wasn't responsible for anything he did while under their command. His soul was so thoroughly suppressed Foxglove couldn't sense it with his crystals. Of course when he told us that we assumed..." Chip shook her head. "Thank heavens that was why. I'm sorry someone died as a result of it, but I'm not sorry it was that lunatic dictator."
Gadget worked quietly for a bit longer, then suddenly said, "...did Gadget propose to you?"
"Oh yes, on the night he got me out of the White House. We danced by mooonlight, and that first kiss... I couldn't quite believe it, I mean Gadget is the most brilliant, caring and gentle guy I know. He could have any girl he wanted. But it turns out he wanted me. I in no way could ever match up to him, but he still loves me. And I love him so much, ever since I first saw him take off that golf ball helmet. Urr, that sounds shallow. There's more to it than that. All I know is if I had it to do over again, I'd take the dart in an instant."
She realised everyone was starting at her and ducked her head.
"Oh boy, I started babbling didn't I?"
Maddy answered. "Loike a billabong in the rainy season, Chippah."
Tommy was looking at her with a bit of wistfulness, the others with sympathy.
"Everything will be fine, buddy." Del stated quietly.
"And don't worry about the babbling," Gadget said, wiping her hands off on a rag, then squeezing Chip's shoulder. "You had a great teacher. It's to be expected." She grinned.
"Well feel free to babble a little yourself. What's my counterpart like? Do you have a picture? I have wondered what things would have been like with no MAP interrupting them."
Gadget's expression sobered again. "It... hasn't been happening, not until recently. He proposed to me about two years ago, and -- and I don't know what happened, exactly. It was like suddenly I was in a different story, and I didn't know how it was supposed to go --"
She looked down at her hands, wiping them over and over with the rag.
"And I left, and the Rangers broke up."
There were expressions of shock all round. "But.. they couldn't!" exclaimed Chip, her face aghast.
Gadget shook her head.
"Then a few days ago, we all got back together again to save the world," she said, expression brightening softly. "And... and we're taking it a little slower, this time. We're going to just date, for a while. Sort of an experiment, y'know? And we'll see how it goes."
"No picture of him... actually, right now, I don't even have my picture of Daddy. Long story. I should really get one of Chip, though." She looked thoughtful.
The atmosphere was relieved. "Now that sounds more like it." said Del.
Chip nodded. "I can understand your point of view, I know how scared I was of letting my Gadget know my true feelings. You were scared of what might change... But I can't believe the team would break up over that. So tell us, what's he like?"
"Well, there were a lot of things. Dale and Foxglove got together, and after seeing my reaction, I think they felt they'd be... distracting. They'd been thinking of moving out, anyway; Dale wanted something to call his own so much, something not half-Chip's. And Monterey, he'd never been able to stay in one place very long, and of course Zipper went with him; and Sparky hadn't joined the team, he was still working at MIT."
"Really, we didn't... break up, per se. Chip stayed in the old HQ, and kept helping people, kept solving cases; but it was just him, and he changed it into sort of a private investigations office of his own. He's done a lot of good for the city."
"Golly. Chip," she sighed. "Chip is smart, maybe smarter than he knows, and he's always confident, in charge. He's the micromolecular cohesion holding the Rangers together, keeping these repelling particles from flying off in all directions, like they did a few years ago. He has an amazing eye for detail, and stubborn in all the best ways.
"He singlehandedly taught himself how to be a detective and how a lot of my machines work, just by observation, just because he refused to give up when anyone who isn't crazy would have." She smiled. "The perfect leader of the Rangers, in other words."
Chip grinned, "So he's an obsessive, pig headed workaholic. I like him already."
"You would." said Del, as she manouvred a piece of electronics with a metal casing off a storage rack and down to the floor with a podium mounted magno-ray that sat to one side of the open area. "Don't I get a thumbnail sketch?"
"Yeah, Gadget-luv, I think we'd all like to know 'ow the other 'alf live."
The devices were finished with the parts from that machine. They looked like a pair of sleek flip top mobile phones with extra components connected to the device ports. When open the top halves folded back flat (like a Razr)
To operate it, you targeted the destination phone via GPS reference and height above ground, or an offset in metres and direction from a landline phone number and, pressed call and it would transport the other unit there. To pass through you just stepped onto the screen.
When everyone was through, you pressed the 'hang up' button on the destination phone. The origin phone could be set to stay where it was, follow you to your destination, or with call diversion set, transport to a third destination. If the phone was already at a new location, you pressed redial to connect to it.
"Oh, gosh," Gadget said, ruffling her hair distractedly as she watched the final assembly manuevers. "I hardly know where to start. How do I tell you about people who've been my family, my friends, my... everything, in five minutes?"
She thought a moment then said slowly, "Monterey Jack's like our uncle... no. No, he's like Daddy," she said softly. "I think I can say that, now. He'd fight the world with both paws tied behind his back to protect any of us. Even from a cat." She smiled. "He'd probably tell them so many stories about his adventures all over the world they'd be forced to give in just to make him stop. Or maybe Zipper would have quietly beaten all of them while they were distracted, popping up when everyone had forgotten about him, like he always does."
"Foxglove, so outgoing, so affectionate... and inside, so nervous, so afraid she'd be turned away again. I think she was hurt very badly by people she trusted and cared about..." she shook her head. "She never took up magic after we stopped Freddy and her moon rock spell. She got into computers, instead - she probably knows more about them than I do. Online, she finally has more friends than you could ever count, all over the world... it's wonderful to see how happy it makes her."
"Sparky we met while Nimnul was training him using electric shocks to pull of a bank robbing caper - he's working at MIT, too. He's helping us on the current - um, no pun intended - mission, but I think, with the Rangers reforming, he may just join us for good. He's the only one of us with 'super powers' like you'd call 'em, Del." She smiled. "He retains an electric charge that hits anything he touches. He's brilliant, and I've kind of built up a tolerance to electricity for, um... well, since I was about two, so we get along really well."
"I guess that brings us to your counterpart, Dale. It's hard to describe Dale." she grinned as dozens of memories returned to her. "I'm working out a theory of Weirdness Magnets to explain how he manages to run into alien dinosaurs, alien rocks that give rubber powers, and alien... aliens. Sometimes it seems that happens once a week. Del, it sounds like you still have his stretching powers? Dale tried to take on the human who found the rest of the meteorite he got them from himself, and lost it. We beat him later, together, but the meteorite got ground into nothing but powder in the process."
She turned to Foxglove. "That must be the difference, with the magic! Dale had no super powers, so he didn't feel a need to urge our Foxy to be 'special', too. She followed your, and her, natural otaku interests instead, and she became much more technically minded."
"Chip, our Sheerluck Jones, Indiana Smith, leader, and current dating interest I've told you about. And, well, I'm just me, just Gadget Hackwrench, that's all. I have a mind-bashingly high IQ, and I bore easily." She smiled.
Maddy spoke for all of them. "It sounds loike our other selves 'ave done us proud."
Del said, "A wierdness magnet... yep, that fits. I removed Serena's rock by jumping into it, and when it landed and shattered, I ended up in a cloud of the stuff. I breathed it in and ended up permanently stretchy. I guess things happened differently for him. I wish I'd had it when I met up with that Broxlefleebian shapeshifter... or maybe not, that would have convinced the other two I was Dita..."
As he spoke, Gadget was teasing the final connection into place.
"It looks like we're about ready," she said. "Did Gadget have a lock on the flying base? I'm sure I can get one - it has to have some kind of communications device, clearly, even if it's not a phone, and we SHOULD be able to use it with no problems-"
Chip answered. "Nimnul uses a powerful TV transmitter to send his demands. I think he also has a satellite phone, but we don't know the number. I'm not sure exactly how Gadget intended to target them. We never got that far..."
Del examined them closely. "They look much neater than Nimnut's version. I guess this time we won't loose our heads."
Speedie said, "Well, it wasn't so much loosing our heads as swapping. I think I got the worst of that deal." She winced, remembering being stuck with Noreen Nimnul's decidedly inferior body.
"Hey, I'm not complaining." Del responded. "It means Foxy-muffin and me can plan on kids one day."
Chip was examining the plans. "According to this we walk through one at a time. So there's no chance of a mix up."
Gadget, meanwhile, was standing nearby, her hand on her chin, her eyes closed, as gender-reversed chipmunks examined the equipment.
(No one's been bonked on the head yet,) part of her brain thought distractedly. (Maybe they argue over... clothes, or something. I never understood the supposed correlation between female gender and fashion clearly...)
(...well, the compensatory Garwin circuit in the transmitter is well within burnout tolerances, so unless the transporter is subject to heavy use...) ran another thought, virtually simultaneously.
(I wonder if she keeps as much cheese as Monty does. I like cheese. The potential added cheese volume in this universe could be astronomical!) Gadget thought a moment later.
...fortunately, one of her concurrent threads WAS on the problem at hand, and about two seconds later, Gadget suddenly opened her eyes and said, "Well, we'll just ask her what her phone number is, of course."
"Huh? How!" Chip exclaimed.
Just then there was a shattering of glass, and a pair of cannisters came through the big domed window, spewing vapours. Several massive metal shapes appeared behind them, big robot cats, the size of bulldogs.
One extruded a weapon from it's head and a circular saw lanced out, starting to cut a big hole in the canopy for them to enter.
Time for the ominous mechanical BGM you get with such things as Nimnul's flying carpet maker or the Cannon Laser.