Third Act: The Sister

Chapter 11: Lost And Found, Part 1

It was around noon when Gadget got up again. Somehow, she didn't feel exhausted enough to sleep that much at daylight, and having her father around her for the first time since twenty years and her mother for the first time since she can think was way too exciting, as were those moments she had had with Chip the night before. Besides, a smell from the kitchen appealed to her appetite.

On her way down, she came past the main room where she saw her parents on the couch. Geegaw seemed like still sleeping. After all, he had the least sleep the previous night, namely none at all. Stephanie, however, had slept in her cage until Geegaw and the Rangers waked her up, and then all the way from Philadelphia back to New York City. So she was awake now.

"Can't sleep, Gadget?" she asked quietly not to wake up her husband.

"No need to whisper, Steph," Geegaw said, "I'm awake. And so is my little girl, as I can see."

"Yes, Dad." Gadget gave her parents a smile. "Aw, it's so great to have you two back. Wlachally, I'll have to get used to having a mother, but it's wonderful anyhow." She sat down on the couch between them. "Finally, the Hackwrench family is reunited."

After she had said this, Geegaw exchanged glances with his wife which didn't stay unnoticed by their daughter. "What's up?"

"Gadget," Stephanie started, "our family isn't wholly reunited yet. There's still someone missing. That is, if she's still alive. I haven't seen her for years."

"What do you mean? I'm here, you're here, Dad is here, that makes us a family, doesn't it? Or do you wanna get my grandmother here?"

"Not your grandmother," Stephanie answered, "neither of them. Your sister."

"My what?"

"Your mother is right, Gadget," Geegaw confirmed her words. "You've got a twin sister. I wonder where she is right now. Steph, you should know it."

"Well, maybe she has never left Hawaii."

Gadget couldn't believe what she heard. "Did you say Hawaii?"

"That's what I said, Gadget. And that's where I saw Lawhiney for the last time."

Lawhiney. This was even more incredible. Gadget had just learned that her Hawaiian look-alike who sent her into potentially lethal tests and who tried to kill her friends, too, was her sister. Her twin sister. Although this explained why they looked almost identical, a part of her refused to accept her as a sibling.

"Is everything okay with you, Gadget? Gadget?"

"Nothing's okay, Mom! Believe it or not, but I know her. And my friends know her, too, though they may wish never to have met her in their life."

Stephanie was relieved to hear that Lawhiney had been seen alive, but confused about Gadget's reaction. "Why, what's up with you and her?"

"Lawah... Lawhiney was on her way to becoming the queen of a native Hawaiian tribe of mice. She had to undergo some tests which most likely would have killed her. I mean, they didn't have a queen then, and I'm sure they had none for a reason. That's when she met us. We were on our vacation, and she talked me into doing these tests. If it weren't for my intelligence and inventiveness, I wouldn't be here now. It was tough even for me."

"My little Lawhiney would do such cruel things?"

"Oh, she would do even crueler things, Mom. When we tried to reveal her evil plans and stop her, she kidnapped my friends, put them into an artificial marshmallow-throwing volcano which was under her control, and she was about to fry them in there. Sorry, Mom and Dad, but your other daughter is evil to the bone."

"Is that true, Gadget?"

"Mom, would I lie to you? Ask the others. Ask Chip, Dale, Monty, and Zipper, and they will all tell you the same."

Slowly, Stephanie began to realize. "Alright, I believe you. And I believe it's my fault. I left her behind all alone when she was a little kid."

Gadget was about to ask her mother how she could abandon both her daughters one by one when Monty came up from the kitchen. "G'mornin', 'ackwrench family! I 'ope yer 'ungry 'cause lunch is ready!"

"That's what I know that scent from," Geegaw said. "It's a recipe from Monty's father."

"Yes, mate, I wondered if that Brie '06 would make a good chowder."

"Well, in that case, I'm hungry, too. C'mon, let's have lunch."

As they got up from the couch, they saw two chipmunks enter the room.

"Is it already lunch time?" Dale wondered. "You can't sleep with that smell in the air."

Chip grinned. "It's still too early for you, huh, Dale? You should have adapted to Foxy's habits instead of the other way round."

"Very funny, Chip."

"Could ya save yer energy fer lunch, lads?" Monty didn't want to go between them again.

"Sorry, Monty," they said in unison, and Dale added, "I go and call Foxy."

He opened the door and saw the bat stand in front of it. "Hi cutie! I wondered how long you'll let me wait here."

"Why haven't you just knocked at the door, Foxy?"

"You'd have opened it to call me anyway. Besides, have you ever tried to knock at a door with a wing?"

Dale grinned. "Now come in, lunch is waiting."

Foxglove had gotten used to the Rangers' cuisine long ago. The very first step was becoming a vegetarian. It didn't feel right for her to go on eating insects when she knew one in person. So she had removed Zipper and all other insects from her menu. But finding a replacement wasn't too hard for her. She liked what the Rangers created in their kitchen, sometimes friends such as Tammy or Bink came and surprised with their cooking skills—Tammy was still younger than Bink was now when she already outdid her own mother—, but when Monty made lunch or dinner, Foxglove believed that he could do more magic than Winifred.

"There's no magic in doin' that, Foxy," Monty said after a marvelous lunch. "I can show ya a few things if ya wanna."

Gadget smiled. "Yes, Monty is as good a teacher as a cook."

"You can believe her," Dale said. "Since Monty gave Gadget some lessons a few years ago, her meals are edible even if you don't like the taste of motor oil."

"Guess why I've been the chef in our family," Geegaw remarked. "Speaking of which, I guess we owe you the story of our family."

Stephanie added, "And I'm sure that even none of us knows the whole story. Come on back to the main room, and we'll tell you."

While everybody went upstairs, Chip said to Stephanie, "Your family history must read like a thriller when someone writes it down."

"You like thrillers?" she asked.

"Oh yes. Mainly detective stories, that's where my passion for private investigation comes from."

Stephanie sighed. "I wish we had had one of those famous detectives to help us."

Geegaw stepped up between the two of them and laid his arms around them. "Well, we had one of the best detectives yesterday. I don't know where we'd be today if Chip and the Rescue Rangers hadn't been there."

Up in the main room, they made themselves comfortable for a long story. Gadget and Stephanie chose two teacup armchairs, Geegaw pulled the pincushion into position in front of the TV, and everyone else sat down on the couch.

Geegaw opened up the storytelling. "Are you all seated? Fine, it's gonna be a long story. Stephanie, I think it's the best when you start with your first time at NIMH."

"Does Gadget know it?"

"No, I've never told her. In fact, she knew nothing about you before she met you yesterday."

"Okay. As most of you should know by now, the story of the Rats of NIMH is true. It happened in the summer of 1968. I was living quite close to it with my family when I heard of what had gone on at the labs, and that 31 rodents managed to escape. And as if it wasn't enough that I was one of the first mice in Maryland who refused to hibernate, I was curious and went to see the labs. I didn't meet any of said rodents, neither mice nor rats, and if I did, I simply wasn't aware of it, but I did meet some of the lab staff. Kinda. Let me put it like this: I spent Christmas 1968 at NIMH. They had caught me to redo the same experiment they had done with those 11 mice and 20 rats. But they had decided to repeat it with only one animal to reduce the chances of another escape. The humans had figured out that the rodents had helped each other, but I was alone. I couldn't help anyone, and no-one was there to help me.

"The injection and the changes in me were painful, and I don't recommend having such an injection, even with the results. Which were an increased intelligence and an extremely slowed-down aging. I had yet to find out about the aging, but I could feel that I was more intelligent than ever before. Unfortunately, I found myself in that laboratory. I would have been able to open the window and escape, but they had these four guard dogs. What should I do with my boosted brains when I was locked away? Well, the humans did a few experiments with me every few days or even weeks. Some of them counted on having raised my IQ, but I played the dumb mouse for them. This was to stay a secret known by the animals only. Of course, they didn't realize a bit that I was only acting. I mean, I was able to outwit most of them.

"I guess they were a bit frustrated, that's why they didn't make me perform some experiments more frequently. I'm sure there had been more experiments to come if I hadn't been given a chance to escape by a certain pilot."

This was Geegaw's cue. "Yup. Spring '69. I was a test pilot for the Ultra-Flite Laboratories. They developed all kinds of aircraft technologies for both commercial and military aviation. A lot of know-how came from them, and, well, it's still a top secret company today like it was back then. The main reason why it was secret was that the humans should never find out that Ultra-Flite was entirely run by rodents.

"I had just been given a new test machine, the Screamin' Eagle. The Ultra-Flite folks wanted to find out how an aircraft behaves when you mount two engines almost in one line. And this one behaved amazingly well, also thanks to the rear engine mounted a bit higher. I'll never forget my first flight in the Eagle. I had lost a very good friend the year before in a plane crash. Jefferson van Zant was a test pilot like me, but a material failure had sealed his fate. And I hadn't come over losing him until I rose up into the sky in this incredible craft.

"So, on that first test flight, my task was to find out its range and see how far I can fly before the batteries wear out. Well, it was hard to believe, but after I was halfway through Pennsylvania, they still weren't worn out significantly. I felt like I was able to fly to Key West and back without recharging. As a matter of fact, these batteries were advanced even to all known kinds of human batteries, and the consumption of the two motors was astonishingly low. I climbed and descended, performed some aerobatics and tested about everything on the plane I could test. That involved a close fly-by at the National Institute of Mental Health.

"And then I saw her. The blond beauty in that laboratory. She sat there in a cage. I felt pity for her, so I landed on the window-sill. And when I had a closer look at her, I felt more than pity."

Stephanie couldn't help but smirk. "Yes, that was fun. I could open both the cage and the window whenever I wanted, but I preferred playing the prisoner when the humans were around. And there were still the dogs. But when I saw that mouse guy with the plane, I knew that he was my ticket to freedom."

Geegaw laughed. "You can't imagine what she did. Well, I couldn't if I hadn't seen it myself. She opened that cage from inside, got out, lifted the cage and pulled a piece of thread out from under it. She had made a lasso out of that thread, and she knew how to use it. I mean, a mouse, a rodent, and one from the East Coast no less, and she can use a lasso! She used it to open the window from inside. She told me her name, Stephanie Wheatfield, and asked me for mine, she gave me a hug, and I gave her a ride home to her parents and her younger sister.

"When I had another closer look at NIMH, I discovered the local RAS headquarters. It was then when I met Nick Stewart for the first time. He said that he was one of the Mice of NIMH, and that they had caught another one, so he was totally amazed when I told him how I had gotten her out."

"I continued my test flight after that. Chesapeake Bay, Delaware, but I couldn't forget her. I had always been free as a bird, especially when I had a test plane to fly, but now I felt like giving up my freedom for that mouse girl. I pondered and pondered and pondered. At some bar in Norfolk, I made my decision. I hardly knew her, but I was sure that I'll never again meet someone like her. I jumped into the Eagle and flew back to Bethesda. Non-stop. At full throttle. And over night. It was 3 am when I touched down in front of her family's dwelling-place, and I took a nap not to be too tired when I meet her again."

"Yes, that was a morning," Stephanie said. "We were having breakfast when Dad asked if anyone knew what that strange airplane is doing out there. I jumped up and ran for the door, and I saw Geegaw sleeping in his Screamin' Eagle." She snickered. "When I waked him up and he saw me, he was almost unable to speak. I've never seen a guy so in love." She sighed. "But I knew too well how he felt, I was attracted to him the same way."

"It was almost too much of an honor for me when she invited me to have a coffee with her and her family," Geegaw went on. "Well, her parents were nice, but you know, Bethesda isn't exactly New York City, and as a New Yorker, I considered it outback. And her parents were just like that. They saw what was happening between us, but they insisted that when we wanted to start something serious, we'd have to be engaged. I mean, I'd met her the day before, and there I was the next day and asking her if she wanted to marry me. That was weird, I tell you, but what was even weirder was how she said yes and hugged and kissed me. That must have been the quickest engagement of two mice in the history of Maryland.

"Well, now that I had a fiancée, I decided to move away from the Big Apple and to travel there mostly for Ultra-Flite, for getting a new test plane or so. I spent a lot of time with Jefferson's son Franklin at that time, he hadn't overcome the loss of his father yet, so I took him with me, and we found a nice place to live in Bethesda. Steph and I married the same summer, Ultra-Flite gave me the Screamin' Eagle as a wedding present since they knew how I liked that plane, and at the wedding party, Frank had nothing better to do than fall for Steph's little sister Suzanne. Steph was 22 back then, but Suzy was 17, so it wasn't quite easy for Frank to date her. It became easier a few months later when she turned 18, and her parents allowed her to get engaged with him. I swore that if I ever had children, I wouldn't be too liberal, but not as weird as Mr. and Mrs. Wheatfield either.

"Speaking of which, in June 1970, Steph gave birth to two cute little mouse girls. They looked one like the other. By the way, Gadget, you're the older one. For some reason, Steph and I hadn't found proper names for the both of them. We had ideas for one, and that was you again, Gadget. Gadget was my idea, I somehow loved the thought of a cute little living gadget that has come to bring joy to my life, but Stephanie had decided for Beatrice."