Chapter 3: Gadget's Blackmail

Light shone in through the skylight above him. Taryn felt like he'd been through a blender. He then remembered what had happened. He looked down to his arm in fear of what he'd see, and was surprised to see that while his arm was heavily bandaged, it was more or less intact. He let out a sigh of relief, and laid back into the bed. How did I get here? He asked himself. Come to think of it, where is here? He remembered that he had just captured a sprite…THE SPRITES! He just realized that his D-controller was gone. I hope that whoever has it doesn't plan on fiddling with it! He tried to stand up, and felt a sharp pain in his side. Must be broken ribs. Better fix that!

"Purifying Shadows!" He yelled as he held a hand over his ribs. Nothing happened. "What the…? PURIFYING SHADOWS!" He yelled again, louder, but again to no avail. "What happened? That should have worked. Dang it!"

He struggled to stand, got to his feet, and immediately keeled over backward. He stood up again, and found it hard to keep his balance, but managed to maintain it. Looking behind him, he saw a large, furry tail almost as tall as he was. He saw a mirror across the room. He slowly approached the mirror, concentrating all he could just to managed a mangled-looking walk, and saw that he had indeed been turned into a squirrel. Just another reason to find the D-controller and get home!

He looked around. He saw the bed; it was made of a few sponges and pencils for bedposts. There was a dresser made of matchboxes. On top of it was his jumpsuit…Wait! I'm naked! He looked down and remembered he was now covered in fur. I'll put them on, anyway. A little bit of normalcy.

After he modified his jumpsuit to allow for a tail, he put it on, and started to feel just a little better. He pulled a food pellet out of the belt and ate it, then took a sip of the super water. He felt stronger immediately. Gotta give those bookworms in R&D a pat on the back for that one, he thought.

Suddenly, the door to the room swung open; a blond-haired mouse in lavender coveralls stood in the doorway. She held a tray with in her hands. She looked up at him.

"Good to see you're awake." She said, moving toward him.

He reached for his staff, and demanded, "Who are you? What do you want? What have you done with my D-controller?"

"Um…let see…Gadget Hackwrench, to feed you breakfast, and, if you're talking about that device that was on your arm, it's in my workshop." The little mouse sure was peppy. He slowly sat down on the bed. "Yeah, that should cover it. What's next…Oh yeah! What's your name?" She held out her hand.

Taryn was puzzled. What was he going to do? Accept her as friend…or foe? He responded, "Taryn," electing not to shake her hand, and waited for her response.

"Well, you better eat! I brought you some breakfast." Gadget sat the tray next to him on the bed. It had a thimble of orange juice and a small plate with berries on it.

Taryn patted hit belt. "I've got all I need right here," pointing to the pouch which had the food pills in it.

"Food pills don't compare to real food, now do they?"

How did she know? He thought. "You've been through my things?"

"Well, that, and the fact that the pouch says 'Food Pills.'" She pointed to the embossed lettering on the pouch, which indeed read 'Food Pills.'

"Oh. Well that doesn't explain why you took my clothes off!"

"I had to bandage you up. I couldn't very well do that with you in that jumpsuit, now could I?"

She had a point. And she doesn't seem all that threatening, she's actually quite nice. Reminds me of my sister, he thought, and then said, "OK, I'm Taryn Corin-Johnston. Thank you for helping me, and I'm sorry about my sternness. But it seems I'm in trouble. That device you mentioned is a D-controller. It is what links me to my home dimension."

"You're an inter-dimensional traveler? Wow! Fascinating! How does it work?" Gadget's interest had indeed been peaked. She anticipated his words, but was about to be disappointed.

"I don't know, exactly. I'm just a jump jockey." He of course knew exactly how it worked, but did not want to tell her. He reached for the orange juice, to have it abruptly taken away by a now angry little mouse.

"Well, if you don't want to tell me, I'll keep my food for myself!" She spied over her shoulder at him, a smile spreading across her face.

Taryn admitted to himself, that while he wasn't that hungry because of the food pill, she was right. Nothing beats real food. "Oh…alright! I doubt you'll understand most of it, anyway. Just give me the food, please!" She handed him the tray, and he took a big drink of the orange juice. Fresh squeezed! Wow! This is good! Next thing he knew, Gadget had pulled up a chair and had a notebook and pencil in her hands, eagerly awaiting his words.

Taryn began to explain. First his life and his time with TIPA, then he went over the "short version" of how inter-dimensional travel worked, Gadget writing it all down feverishly in her little notebook. The D-controller, and all of its devices, including the bio-controller, and how he had become a squirrel. His staff, the Thunder Blaster, everything. Not that she'll remember any of this. I'll keep the neuralizer to myself, for now.

He looked up as he finished, and she looked at him and said, "Interesting. So the mainframe maintains a link between here and wherever you come from by way of the sub-atomic transducer which in turn stabilizes the doorway by negating the anti-matter turbulence, thereby creating a safe doorway to and from here?"

Huh? How did she get it? I took me three months to fully understand it. And I talked to the creator! Taryn thought in amazement. She must have a mind-bashingly high IQ! "You understood all of that?"

"Sure, I do have a mind-bashingly high IQ!" She seemed to repeat his thoughts. Now she really reminded him of his sister.

"So, if you're so smart, do you think you can fix the D-controller?" He asked, hoping beyond hope that she could.

"I sure can try."

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The HighTide Bar was a humble little place on the harbor. It had a few booths around the outer wall, four tables sat in the center, and at the back wall was the short bar. There were decorations, though nothing to flashy, just a few pictures of ships and old sea captains on the walls. It was, however, kept very clean. Tables were spotless, the windows were crystal clear: the place didn't even smell bad!

The bar was mostly empty, save a few patrons, and the hired muscle in the corner. They kept the place in line during peak hours when the rowdiest of the rowdy stopped by for a drink. But during the day, it was pretty quit, so they just sat in the corner booth of the bar.

People didn't know of its existence, mainly because it didn't serve people. It was an animal bar, and was the perfect place to start searching for a mouse.

The door opened, and a shadowy figure entered the place.

The barkeep, an aged turtle, came out from the back, and asked "What can I get you, stranger?"

The stranger sat down at the bar, his long rat tail settling to the floor. "Any information about a pilot named 'Hackwrench.'"

"Who wants to know?" The barkeep asked defensively as he waved over the bouncers.

The rat immediately stood up from the bar stool. One of the bruisers, a mole, grabbed him by the shoulder. "A very angry rat, who can easily take out your boys here, if you don't give me the information I'm looking for."

"Really?" The other bruiser, a rather muscular rabbit, chimed in. "Why don't we test that?"

"OK!" The rat said, and grabbed the mole by his arm and flung him over his shoulder, right into a set of bar stools, which broke under his weight. The rabbit grabbed him around the torso, and squeezed, which didn't even faze him. He cocked his head back, and cracked the rabbit in the nose, bloodying it. He then turned to the rabbit, and kicked him in the head, knocking him out.

The mole had just started to stand back up, when the rat turned to him and picked him up the rest of the way. He lifted the mole off of his feet, and tossed him aside like he was a ragdoll. He then turned to the turtle, which now stood in front of the bar with a steel bar. The turtle hauled up and swung the bar at the rat. The rat lifted a hand and grabbed the bar from the turtle, then bent it into a pretzel. He then swiped a claw at the turtle's shell, which didn't cut but landed so hard it knocked the turtle off of his feet.

The rat picked up the turtle by the neck. "Now, you don't want me to get angry. So I advise you to tell me what you know about this 'Hackwrench' fellow."

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"So, you're here because you were on a routine mission, and suddenly your way home went haywire?" Gadget asked as she entered her workshop.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it." Taryn responded, following behind her. "I have no idea what happened on the other side to cause this, but I have to find out."

"Well, maybe we can find something out from the D-controller." She said pointing at the busted heap of charred metal.

"Oh, tell me the capture device didn't rupture!" Taryn pleaded as he picked up his mangled D-controller. To his relief, the digimetric capture device was still functional. A few button presses revealed its precious cargo to still be intact; twenty temporal sprites, ready for containment. "Thank god! I really didn't want to have to do that again."

"It looks like your arm took the force of the blast and protected the capture device. Is it really that important?"

"You better believe it! I spent the better part of a week tracking all of those little suckers down. I'd be really ticked if I had to do that again!" Taryn turned the D-controller over to look at the damage. He had indeed been lucky his arm wasn't blown clean off. "Gotta love being a lightning warrior! Well, you think you can do anything with this?"

"It looks like the bio-controller and the return device are totaled, and I think the time bender has a short, so it's not functional either. I think I can stabilize the rest of it, though. I just don't know what this is?" She pointed to a spot on the D-controller.

"I don't know. Never used that before." Taryn responded.

"Right."

"What?"

"Nothing!"

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