Chapter 24: Old Acquaintances

Clarice didn't move. She didn't say a word. She just stood and stared at the two chipmunks who looked back at her and anticipated any form of reaction from her. She saw the bat lay a wing around Dale. She watched the mouse in the white dress exchange apologies with Chip and help him up. No matter how obvious the facts, she refused to accept them.

"Chip... Dale..." she finally spoke. "That bat..."

"Oh, you mean Foxglove?" Dale said. "Foxy, this is Clarice. Clarice, Foxy."

Foxglove extended her free wing. "Nice to meet a star like you, Clarice. You can be mighty glad that a guy like Dale used to be after you. I wish I'd had it that easy back then."

"You mean you're..." Clarice didn't dare speak further.

"I'm his girlfriend, yes. I met him at a drive-in in summer 1990. He was on a case, and I saved his life." Foxglove nuzzled Dale gently. "I was part of that case, but it was well worth all the trouble."

"I see... And..." Clarice shifted her view to Gadget.

"Hi, I'm Gadget. I've been Chip's girlfriend since last fall. I take it this is what you wanted to know." She smiled and extended a hand, too. "Let me reassure you I enjoyed your show very much, and I'd offer you to improve your public address system if there was anything to improve."

"She's our technician," Chip explained. "And she's a founding member of the Rescue Rangers, a part of the team since we joined in 1988. I fell in love with her pretty much on the first day, but it took us a while to establish our relationship."

"So she is the tinkerer the rodent press writes about?"

Chip, Dale, and Gadget nodded.

"Let's see if I got it right. Chip, your girl is a geek who seems to spend more time in her workshop than with you, not to forget that she's a mouse?"

"You'll like her a lot more, once you've gotten to know her better," Chip defended Gadget.

"And Dale," Clarice pointed at the red-nosed chipmunk, "your girl is a fluttering thing that's not even a rodent, that's got wings for hands, and that scares humans senseless?"

"Aww," Dale said, "Foxy's too cute to scare anyone senseless."

"With the exception of Nimnul and Mom," Gadget added, "but otherwise, Dale's right."

Clarice crossed her arms. "Alright, will you guys now please explain me what your girls have that I'm lacking?"

"Clarice," Chip pointed out, "didn't we already have enough cases of jealousy tonight? Besides, as I already said, there's a case to be solved."

"Then solve it without me. I'm outta this... case." She turned her back on the Rangers and was about to walk away, but looked over her shoulder and asked, "What did you want in the vault anyway? If you think I'll help you go Oakmont's Eleven and empty the palace so you can beef up your team and your lifestyle?"

Dale laughed out. "Oakmont's Eleven. Heh, I like that!"

Chip stepped forward and placed himself into Clarice's way. He looked around if anyone was within earshot, and as he didn't see anyone, he told her, "As a matter of fact, yes, Clarice, we think you'll help us go Oakmont's Eleven, especially because this'll be Dale's case as he's our heist expert. But we don't want to 'empty the palace' as you said. We're only interested in the content of one particular locker."

"Well, a burglary is a burglary. I thought you were the crime-fighters and not criminals yourself."

"We are crime-fighters, and what you call a a burglary is part of our case. Listen, Clarice. This locker contains a box with fourteen different gems. These gems were stolen in New York City yesterday, and our job is to bring them back to their owner."

"Besides," Gadget continued the explanation, "the gems are practically in the hands of an insane scientist named Professor Norton Nimnul who's disguising as an Elvis imitator. This Professor Nimnul was able to build a mobile laser cannon powerful enough to cut an iceberg into pieces with one single ruby, now imagine what he could do with fourteen gemstones! And that was nineteen years ago, today's technologies allow for far more sophisticated constructions. If you help us tonight, we might save Las Vegas or even the whole world!"

Clarice tried hard to grasp what she had been told. "A crazy scientist. Building an iceberg-cutting laser cannon with one ruby in it."

"That was it, yes," Chip confirmed.

"And... what did he do then?"

"If I told you that he worked for a criminal mastermind and used the ice from the iceberg to make a giant Jell-o in a cave under New York City with which he created an earthquake to crack a vault from underneath, would you believe it?"

Clarice remained silent for a few seconds, then she answered, "I have to believe it. I don't have much of a choice. I've got the newspaper clippings from that case, you know. That gangster claimed some chipmunks had spoiled his plans, and I knew few chipmunks who were crazy enough to pull that off. So if it's him this scientist worked for, if this scientist is really that dangerous, and if you're the only ones who can stop this madman, I'm back on your case. C'mon, we're going to my apartment. Oh, and don't forget your equipment." She pointed at the two Ranger aircraft and the large filled bags inside of them.

Clarice went ahead, Todd was second, and the Rangers followed them. On their way to Clarice's place, Todd and Sparky picked up the PDA and carried it with them. It was safe from Sparky's charge because he carried it by the wooden stand. Todd mentioned that it would be of importance for their mission. The other Rangers carried their personal bags, LaWahini took Sparky's back voluntarily, and Monty had heaved the large field headquarters bag onto one shoulder.

The group of small animals marched—and flew, in one case—through alleyways in the walls and ceilings of the Versailles Palace unknown to and well hidden from the humans, and after a while, they stopped in front of a tall door with a golden star on it. Clarice unlocked and opened it and motioned the others to enter. "Entrez!" Once again, like before in the show, she demonstrated her flawless pronunciation of the French language. Most of the Rangers neither fully understood nor spoke French, yet they knew or guessed at least what she meant and entered.

Next to the record table, Clarice made way for the PDA which Todd placed there. The Rangers just stood and gazed around. They had seen a lot, including luxurious facilities of a dog actress who worked for humans, but they had never seen a place like this, let alone belonging to an animal star of whose existence the humans were probably not even aware. An entire floor of the Rescue Rangers Headquarters back in New York City would fit into the room they were in. "Um," Clarice said, "I know we've got enough time not to rush things, but would you please close your mouths and come here?"

The nine Rangers felt like awaking from a trance. As he regained his common sense, Chip answered, "Uh, sure. By the way, what do you mean with, 'we've got enough time not to rush things?'"

"What I mean is the answer to one of the questions the preparation of tonight's mission requires to be answered, and that is the schedule of the security personnel. One of my secret ways between the stage and this here place leads me through an air duct and past several air vents from which I can see when the security people do what. Roughly, that is. And I know that security is at top level as long as the palace grants its customers access to what they've stored in the vault."

"And that's how long?" LaWahini asked.

"Until midnight," Clarice answered her. "Heh, I still need to get used to two of your kind being around." She leaned back in the armchair in which she was sitting. "Which leads me to a question for a change. Who are you, the Rescue Rangers, and what led you together?"

"Well, as the leader of the Rescue Rangers..." Chip started, but Dale interrupted him. "But not the mission leader tonight, 'cause that's me..."

"Sure you are, Dale... Anyway, it was that Klordane case Dale and I stumbled upon in 1988. We were friends with a police dog named Plato who retired after the case together with his guide, Detective Donald Drake. What we believed to be a simple case of a stolen ruby turned out to be far more complicated. Klordane made the police believe Drake had stolen the ruby after he had retrieved it from one of Klordane's henchmen, so Drake and Plato were arrested, and we promised Plato to take over. Fat Cat, Klordane's pet who had already been a gangster boss himself back then, snatched the ruby from Klordane and showed it off at his casino. We followed him to the docks where we met these two fellows," Chip slapped Monty on whose shoulder Zipper was sitting on the back, "Monterey Jack and Zipper."

Monty bowed forward towards Clarice. "Monterey Jack's me name, an' adventure's me game." He gently took her hand in his and kissed it, supporting himself on the table with the other hand. "Lady, I've been everywhere in the world an' then some, an' I've seen a lot on me journeys fer sure, but calln' you an' yer show amazin' would be an understatement."

Clarice smiled at Monty. She had recognized his slang easily. "Ah, so you're the Australian muscle mouse? Well, how do you say down under? G'day mate!" Of course, her Aussie dialect wasn't half as well-trained as her French. "Or don't you say that?"

Monty snickered. "Actually, no, we don't say that... this late in th' evenin'. It's a cliché anyway, an' I guess we say it jes' 'cause it's one, an' 'cause everyone expects us ta. Oh, an' this is me ol' pally, Zipper."

Zipper greeted Clarice, too, but she didn't understand what he spoke. He took her hand and shook it with a strength she would never have expected from a housefly. "Wow, you're surely strong," she said. "Nice to meet you, Zipper."

"Well," Chip took up again, "Monty and Zipper helped us foil one of Fat Cat's criminal plans, but we couldn't get our hands on the ruby. Fat Cat took it back to Klordane who flew to Glacier Bay with it. It was there where Nimnul cut an iceberg with his laser cannon with that ruby in it. Monty took us to where an old friend of his lived who should fly us to Glacier Bay in his plane, but all we met there was his daughter, Gadget."

A bit reluctantly, Gadget shook hands with Clarice. "Golly, sorry again for all the jealousy."

"It's okay," Clarice replied, "guess I stick to the past too firmly and too often. I need to kick that habit in a case or two and get used to my old friends having girlfriends. So, what did Gadget do for you?"

"She flew us to Glacier Bay with her dad's plane," was Chip's answer. "It was destroyed there, but she built the Rangerplane, the one with the red balloon, as a replacement. We couldn't stop Nimnul and had to ride his flying iceberg back to New York."

"So these people in Canada who claimed they had seen a flying iceberg according to the newspapers had no hallucinations," Clarice said.

"Nope, they saw a real flying iceberg. Astonishing how little Nimnul cared for having witnesses. He might have hoped they'd be declared as loony as he himself is. Well, you know the rest of the case, I think, and now you know the story behind the five original Rangers. We were about to go separate ways after that case, but there was immediately another one to solve. So, as there was a lot of work of that kind to do for a team of our kind, we stayed together and rebuilt Dale's and my place in the park into our headquarters. And last year, we welcomed four new members, all of whom we had already known before. First of all," Chip stretched out an arm towards the red-headed squirrel, "this is Tammy. We met her the same year on another case. She was living in a tree right outside Chinatown with her parents and her little sister Bink when we literally crashed into their place. Tammy helped us fight Fat Cat and solve the case even though she was only a 15-year-old teenager back then."

Dale added, "She only helped us because she had a crush on Chip."

Both Chip and Tammy turned towards him. "Dale!"

"What? I only said the truth."

Clarice giggled about Dale's comment. "Chip, you're such a heart-breaker."

"You're so right," Tammy said as she shook hands with Clarice, "but you can't blame him for being cute."

Chip blushed for a few seconds. "Ahem. Okay, the next we met was Sparky here. He and his guinea pig friend Buzz were misused as lab animals by Professor Nimnul who had brainwashed them into cracking bank vaults with a giant mechanic guinea pig. We put an end to this, too, and Buzz and Sparky left for Boston, Massachusetts, in the mechanic guinea pig. They came to visit us from time to time, and Sparky stayed in New York City after the MIT had no use for him in contrast to Buzz who's a mascot there. Oh, please understand you'd better not shake hands with him unless he's wearing insulating gloves. He generates his own electricity."

"This explains his hairdo," Clarice supposed, "or what he has got instead."

Sparky waved at her. "Allow me to give you a good advice. Never try to stop a motivated guinea pig. Because that's impossible."

"He might be quirky at times, and his short-term memory is anything but reliable," Chip explained, "but he's clever, he knows a lot about science, and you never know when a living, breathing power plant comes in handy, or someone who handles electricity as easily as he does." He then went over to LaWahini. "Clarice, you've already noticed that we've got two Gadgets in our team. Of course, we don't really. Can you imagine that Gadget's twin sister LaWahini used to be a villain and one of our opponents?"

Clarice noticed LaWahini's particular expression, the way she looked, it was somewhere between mischievous and malicious, but certainly not as overtly nice and friendly as Gadget. Yet she didn't say more than, "Hardly. Given you've been through a lot of cases, nothing seems to be really impossible, but this is hard to believe."

"We met her on our Hawaiian vacation in '89. Back then, she was called Lawhiney, and not even Gadget knew she was her twin sister. LaWahini—that is, rather Lawhiney talked Gadget into taking three highly hazardous tests in lieu of herself which were required for her to become the Queen of the tribe of mice she lived with. Gadget was almost killed three times, Dale, Monty, and I were almost grilled in a propane-burning artificial volcano which Lawhiney controlled, but we made it in the end. Seventeen years later, Gadget's dad came back, we freed his wife and Gadget's mom, long story, by the way, they told us that Lawhiney was Gadget's sister, and they went to Hawaii with Gadget to bring her back. Instead of evil Lawhiney, they brought back a Gadget look-alike named LaWahini who swore never to set a foot onto Hawaiian soil again."

"I spent most of my life in a village inhabited by the stupidest mice you can imagine," LaWahini explained, "and this did include my boyfriend in whose head there's room for hardly more than surfing and crafting surfboards. Granted, I wasn't as nice to them as I might be expected to. I had my share of struggle with the Rescue Rangers, and one day in the mid-90s, I got banned from the village and had to move onto a volcano, so I was glad when my family came to take me home. I had never seen my father before, I had lost my mother when I was five, and my only encounter with my sister before that day was when she and her Ranger friends spoiled my plans of being crowned. I'm trying to make up for everything by being a Ranger myself."

"And I must say she's pretty good in it... in her own way," Chip said before he walked over to the red bat. "Last but not least, this is Foxglove, the other Ranger who can fly without the help of any contraption. She had been the familiar of a cleaning woman and wannabe witch for some time when we met her. Needless to say we had to battle that woman. That is, in the end, Foxglove and Dale did most of the battling, and they got what they deserved for their victory, namely each other."

Foxglove took Clarice's hand with her wing and shook it. "I hope we'll get along although I'm together with Dale."

Clarice smiled. "Oh, don't worry about that, Foxglove. I think I've learned not to go between couples as happy as you and Dale, or as Chip and Gadget." She leaned back again. "Well, since I know now who you are and where you came from, it's just fair to tell you my story so you get to know me better. Is it okay with you?" The Rangers agreed.