Chapter 4: A Colorful Captive
The two Rescue Rangers aircraft touched down on a roof opposite the infamous cat food factory. From inside the oversized feline figure on its top, a much less but still oversized feline reigned over his empire. The casino was about as legal as gambling could get; although it was almost without an exception frequented by all kinds of crooks only, he did what he could to ensure that neither his staff nor the visitors cheated. It still earned him a certain amount of wealth, however, most of his prosperity had been gathered illegally. He loved to show it, but he refrained from spending it. On the one hand, he might have to since the Rescue Rangers had helped send his "owner"—some cats referred to the humans they lived with as can openers, but he didn't—into jail, but cash was mostly useless for an animal when it came to getting things from human society, and it was the Rescue Rangers, too, who had put an end to almost each and every of his plots since that day. The main reasons why he still went on were first just because, and second the times when the Rangers were somewhere else and couldn't stop his success. But he had no informant who could tell him where the Rangers were and what they were doing, in fact, he didn't even know where they were based, so the only way to find this out was trial and error. Nevertheless, he had to admit that even if they always won in the end, it was less fun and much less challenging when there were no Rangers to fight.
"Alright, Fat Cat," Chip snarled, "this time it's not five against five."
"Yeah," Monty said, "it's gonna get ugly this time. We've always defeated 'im when we were five, an' now we're nine."
"Do you know why we've always been victorious, Monty? What we have what he doesn't?"
"Mere luck?"
"He's got thugs. We've got friends." Chip stood up from his seat and shouted, "And friendship is stronger than any gang of criminals! They fight for Fat Cat, but we fight for each other!" He suddenly found himself surrounded by applause.
"So what's your plan, Chip?" Tammy asked. The times when she called him Chipper were long gone.
"I don't have one yet. We need to know first where the parrot is and under which circumstances he is held captive—and if he is even somewhere in there. Zipper, Foxy, can you take over this task?"
Zipper saluted and remarked that it would be fairly easy because there would most likely not be more than one parrot in there.
"That's true, but the building is large, so you'd better split. Foxy, you search the factory, and Zipper, you check Fat Cat's empire in the cat figure."
Obeying the leader's words, the two winged Rangers flew over to the old industrial estate and split up right before it. Zipper entered the giant cat through the open window in the janitor's room. Fat Cat didn't really have a janitor at his place, he rather made his henchmen do that work like he made them do all kinds of work. It was quiet, but the housefly was uncertain whether this quietness was good or bad. The gambling saloon was empty, but it was still before noon, and the casino didn't open its doors until the early evening. Zipper flew on through the halls and rooms, using the knowledge he had gained on countless cases which had led the Rangers into and through this place. But even Fat Cat's large office was devoid of any of the gang's members, let alone the rotund feline himself. Hoping that Foxglove would be more successful, he left the strange structure again.
Foxglove was indeed more successful. As a small bat in a human factory into which she had slipped through a broken pane, she was practically invisible as long as she stayed quiet. But this meant that she could only use her eyes and reflections of some ambient noises to examine the building's interior. An earlier case in which she had met Fat Cat taught her the hard way that cats can hear a bat's sonar pings.
She realized how lucky she was when noises led her right to what or rather whom she was looking for. And this time it had nothing to do with echolocation—she simply heard Fat Cat, his goons and the parrot speak. Right beneath the ceiling, she flew to a place where she could hang and observe the situation much better.
"So you want outta there, huh, Polly?" Fat Cat asked a rather rhetorical question to the parrot. The colorful bird was sitting in a cage which was hung up on a steel cable reaching down from a winch which was part of a trolley running above the hall for maintenance purposes. "To be so honest, I'm not fond of keeping you longer than necessary either. But before I give you your freedom, you have to give me something in exchange."
"My name is Raoul, and not Polly!" the parrot yelled back with a slight latino accent. "Is it just a rumor that cats have such a good hearing, or what? And for the umpteenth time, no, I won't tell you the combination!"
"This is not very cooperative, I fear." Fat Cat turned to his goons. "Gentlemen, it's swing time again!"
"Ssswing time?" Wart hissed. "Alright, bosss!" The lizard took the cage, pushed it aside as far as he could, and let it loose while everyone else went some steps away. It started swinging all through the place, and in it, Raoul started screaming and fluttering, trying to brake or at least steer it.
The five crooks just stood and watched. Snout said, "I wonder how long he'll take this time to stop the cage."
"Yesss," Wart remembered and grinned, "he usssed to be fassster. It takesss him more and more time."
By now, Foxglove had seen enough. She took off again and flew back to the broken window. Outside, she met Zipper who asked her if she had seen anything.
"Yes," she replied, "the parrot's in there. And he's being tormented."
As soon as she and Zipper were with the other Rangers again, Foxglove described what she had seen—the crooks, the parrot, the cage, everything. She used the experience she had gained by helping the Rangers with surveillance.
"Sounds like a routine job," Chip commented. "The right difficulty level to get our new members used to casework. I've got a plan. Listen, everybody."
Eight Rescue Rangers gathered around the ninth one, the leader of the group, a chipmunk in an aviator jacket and a fedora hat. This time, Chip had to take some more things into consideration in his plan which he explained to his team. First, the Rangers were nine now instead of five. Some of the new members had already met Fat Cat, Tammy had even encountered him and the Rangers for the first time on the same day; her, her sister Bink and the Rangers more or less had to rescue each other. But for LaWahini, it would be the very first time to meet any villain with the exception of the villain that she herself used to be to the Rangers on their Hawaiian vacation in late '89. She was actually the only one who had never worked together with the Rangers on any case whereas they took on Fat Cat with Tammy, on Norton Nimnul with Sparky, and on the wannabe witch Winifred with Foxglove. Her meeting her family and leaving Hawaii may have "turned her good", but she still lacked experience in crime fighting.
And the second reason looked almost the same as the first. Gadget. Chip knew how tough she was. He had witnessed her take on and take down Bubbles and his army of ninjas all alone. He knew that taking LaWahini's place at the tests when she still was evil Lawhiney didn't strain her beyond the moments in which she had to face the dangers, and even then she coped with them. She even traveled into space to rescue him and Dale. And he had been there to watch her on countless other occasions from liberating the cats from Nimnul's laboratory to liberating the mice from the National Institute of Mental Health—and getting into trouble with guard dogs in both cases. But despite all these previous cases where she showed her strength, this plan of his involved an extra safety and protection for her. He wanted to keep her away from the main action. After all, every case brought a certain risk with it. And if there was something that Chip tried to avoid, it was having already had his last date with Gadget. No, tonight was to be the night, their very night, and he wouldn't allow anybody or anything to get into their way.
He took a glance around at his teammates while he went on explaining. And that included them and their matchmaking schemes.
"That was it," Chip concluded his plans. "Everyone knows what to do?"
"Do I?" Sparky asked.
"You should know that, not I. Gadget, LaWahini, you tell him again what to do when you're there."
"Roger Wilbury," Gadget said with a smile that almost got Chip melting away into a puddle of liquid chipmunk. He was more receptive to her signs than usually.
"Alright, let's show Fat Cat how much stronger nine Rangers are, compared to five." At Chip's sign, everybody got on board the two aircraft. Gadget, LaWahini and Sparky took the Rangerplane to fly into the factory's roof structure, and the Rangerwing with the other Rangers was to land on street level. The very moment they took off, all Rangers except LaWahini shouted out the famous battle cry, "Rescue Rangers away!" The former Hawaiian mouse simply didn't know it yet.
The Rangerplane wasn't slow, but the Rangerwing was still a bit faster, and soon it flew ahead. The speed difference grew bigger when it started to descend to a landing location which Foxglove had spotted on her way to the factory.
While steering the twin-engined aircraft to a large waste bin in front of the factory, Chip gave the little bat the praise she deserved. "That was a good idea of yours, Foxy, to look out for a place to hide the Rangerwing."
"Thanks, Chip!" Foxglove blushed slightly, so slightly that her blush stayed invisible underneath her reddish facial fur. "You know, Dale, your buddy can be a really nice guy." She went on talking by whispering into Dale's ear, and he whispered, too, when he replied to her. Even though he felt tempted and challenged to deciphering their whispering, and even though he had a hunch that he was the subject, Chip had to concentrate on getting the Rangerwing into the narrow gap behind the waste bin without hitting the bin or the wall.
As the Rangerwing finally finished its difficult landing maneuver and touched down on the concrete floor, Chip watched from the corner of his eye as the Rangerplane, piloted by Gadget, disappeared through where the pane of a broken window would be if it wasn't broken. For a moment, his imagination created horror scenarios involving the balloon being torn by the sharp glass and the Rangerplane getting out of control and crashing. But he cleared his mind, shook them off and, as the propellers stopped spinning, jumped out of the plane. Tammy, Monty, Zipper, Dale and Foxglove followed him silently on his way to the closest entrance. Before she had met the Rangers 18 years ago, Tammy might have minded entering a human building, especially through a rough and dirty hole in the wall which had most probably been dug by rats. But now that she not only knew the Rangers but was one herself, she accepted it as a part of her task, her adventure.
Sneaking through the factory, the team of six tried hard to stay as quiet as possible. Foxglove walked instead of flying, and Zipper had sat down on Monty's shoulder. They hid wherever they could hide on their way, and so they managed to stay unnoticed by anyone even when they made it to their final hiding place behind a pillar which carried the upper structures of the building. As they were as close to Fat Cat as they could get, they carefully peeked around the pillar to see what was going on.
Raoul's sense of balance had meanwhile been stirred so much that he had to hold on to the cage with his wings. Fat Cat put on the nicest faked smile he could come up with. "Ah, I see here's someone who's got something to tell me, right?"
"Wrong!" Raoul shouted out with what was left of his power. "You can do what you want, but you'll never get me to tell you the combination!"
"Oh, really? Well, never is a long timespan. And time is precious in my business. I'm afraid I can't wait for so long."
"So what are you gonna do? Kill me?"
Fat Cat stepped up a bit closer to the cage, still keeping enough distance not to give Raoul a chance to snap at him. "Polly, Polly, Polly. Are you really expecting me to say, 'Yes, that'd be the next option,' so that you can say, 'When you kill me, you'll never get the code'? You're so predictable that for a change it's getting boring with you. No, I've got much more efficient methods."
"For example?" Raoul was too exhausted to take another futile attempt at correcting the furry gangster about his name.
"Pluck you. Pluck each and every of your beautiful, colorful feathers. Mepps, the key!"
The parrot was visibly appalled by that thought. Yet, he knew he would be unable to do anything against this fate once he was let out of the cage. Normally, he'd just fly away. But he was too weak to fly, and Fat Cat and his goons knew that and counted on it as if it was part of a plan of some sorts. So he just fell over backwards onto the floor of the cage when he saw the shabby red cat hand over the cage key.
He wasn't the only one, though. The Rangers had watched everything, and Chip had paid attention to the trolley up above under the roof. The Rangerplane crew had left their aircraft behind somewhere in the rafters, and as they made it to the trolley, Gadget laid down the plunger crossbow she had taken with her and gave the other Rangers down on the floor a sign.
Now that everyone was ready, it was time to act. Chip and Dale were the first Rangers to leave their hiding and encounter their nemesis once more. "The game is over, Fat Cat!" Chip shouted. "I demand you to free this bird!"
Fat Cat replaced his false friendliness with real sarcasm. "Lo and behold, the Rescue Rodents! And why do you think I shall do as you demand?"
"'Cause we've always won against you," Dale pointed out. "How 'bout that?"
Neither Dale's point nor Monty, Zipper, Foxglove and Tammy revealing themselves didn't convince the criminal mastermind. "You believe that changing your cast improves your chances even further? Where's that mouse girl that's usually with you?"
"The answer is high above you," Chip replied.
This was the cue for the three rodents on the trolley. Gadget had opened the lid to the engine compartment, and now Sparky was tinkering with the contacts to get the trolley under his control. LaWahini sat next to them, watched and kept the plunger harpoon which Gadget had brought in the likely case it would be needed.
Gadget heard Chip's words and took over Sparky's part to remember that it was the cue. "Sparky," she ordered, "pull up the cage!"
"Okay, Gadget!" the lab rat's voice came from inside the trolley. A few sparks were visible, the corresponding noises were audible, but the humming of the motor seemed a bit far away. Besides, the motion underneath her told Gadget that something was wrong. Awfully wrong. The cage wasn't moving upwards, but instead, the bridge on which the trolley ran moved along the hall for a few seconds until it stopped as abruptly as it started to run.
"Whoops, wrong set of contacts," Sparky apologized. But Gadget was unable to hear him. When the bridge had started up, she had lost her balance, and she had failed to find something to cling to.
And now she was falling down and screaming for help.