Chapter 16: Cheese And Kamikaze

"Y'know, Todd, Melissa," Monty began the conversation anew, "I've been 'ere in Vegas before. But that's a while ago now."

"When was it, Monty?" Todd asked.

"1985. I was 'ere with Geegaw, Gadget an' LaWahini's father." He laughed briefly. "Well, I didn't know 'e was LaWahini's father until last year, an' I didn't know Gadget's twin until summer 1989. Anyway, we were on our way ta Portland an' stopped 'ere ta recharge the Screamin' Eagle's batteries an' our own ones, sorta. Crikey, I don't think there are so many left o' the places we went ta."

"Yes, Las Vegas is changing fast. I believe only Shanghai is faster."

"Shanghai... I remember when I got shanghaied in Shanghai on a junk full o' junk. Twice, I think. Care ta bring me up ta date, mates, restaurant-wise?"

"Sure," Todd answered. "Talking 'bout Shanghai, if it's Chinese food that you want, there's Chompsticks Palace. Their slogan is, 'Come take your sticks and chomp!' Excellent food, but stupid name."

"Well, let's leave it up ta Tammy ta judge if Chinese food is excellent. The lass grew up near Chinatown, y'know."

Dale added, "Monty and Tammy were the only ones who could eat with chopsticks before they became Rescue Rangers. Remember that evening when Gadget took us all to the Cadillac Wok, the place she found on the junkyard?"

"Ah yes, the restaurant in the ol' red '76 Eldorado. That is, back then it was under the 'ood of a golden '68 Sedan de Ville. They 'ad ta move when the '68 was scrapped."

"Oh, now I'm curious," Foxglove said. "Melissa, as a half-Japanese, do you know if there's a Japanese restaurant in Las Vegas, too?"

"Yes, there are two sashimi and sushi restaurants, but trust me, you don't wanna know where a rodent sashimi place in the middle of a desert gets their raw materials from. I'd rather have sashimi in Cleveland than in Vegas."

"What about somethin' Brazilian?" Monty suggested. "Geegaw showed me a place named Rodent Rodizio not far from 'ere."

"They're Tex-Mex now," Todd told him. "'Casa del Fuego.' They changed name, theme, and degree of spicyness three years ago when two of the three dancers became grandmothers."

"Too-ra-loo, 'as it been so long? What about the third dancer?"

"Married the owner, got divorced, and kept the restaurant. She was born in El Paso, y'know. The other two were from..."

Monty scratched his chin. "Des Moines, I think, an'... Pittsburgh?"

"Altoona," Todd corrected him.

"Right, I confused 'er with someone else." Monty dug up more memories from his last visit. "'ow 'bout the Magic Buffet Ride that was 'idden under the Dunes sign?"

"Dunes is gone, Monty."

"I see. An' the Lizard Lounge? Are those two nutty gecko lads still around?"

"It's selling sashimi today," Melissa answered, "and it's anime and manga-themed. The worst thing is that an uncle and a cousin of mine are running it."

Despite all the changes which had taken place in the past two decades, Monty recognized the area they were flying through. "Around 'ere, there used ta be a nice li'l place, Joanne's. But I guess it's a goner, too, right?"

"Oh, Joanne's is still in business," Melissa said. "I've been there often after shows." She spoke on, although Monty was distracted by a familiar scent in the air. "It's well-known in the whole city for its..."

"Chhhuhhhhhhheeeeeezzzzze..." Todd and Melissa didn't understand what was happening to Monty, also because they were sitting behind him, but Dale, Zipper, and Foxglove prepared for the worst when they noticed his warped mustache and the yellow and green rings around his pupils.

"Actually," Melissa said, "I meant the Dutch-style pancakes, but..."

"Hold on for your dear life!" Dale screamed a split-second before Monty cranked the bottle cap yoke to the left. The Rangerplane performed a left turn so sharp that it involved a barrel roll. While the four Rangers had been through this often enough, their two guests were taken by surprise, and when the aerobatics were over, Todd found Melissa sitting on his lap with her right arm laid around him. She didn't apologize, she just sat and smiled at him despite Monty's chaotic flying.

"Hi Todd," she spoke cutely. Then she turned to Dale. "Is that your usual way of deciding something spontaneously or only his?"

"No, that's a cheese attack," Dale explained. "Monty gets them when he smells cheese."

"Monty... is that short for Montgomery?"

"It's short for Monterey Jack. I'm Dale, and these are Zipper and Foxglove."

Melissa looked at the four Rangers, two of which she could only see from behind. 'So here I am in a flying bleach bottle with one of the greatest small animal crime-fighting teams ever. A fat cheese addict from Down Under who's even named after a cheese, a housefly on his shoulder, a chipmunk wearing Tom Selleck style, and a bat who's awake by day and who flies in this thing rather than on her own wings. I wonder how wacky the other Rescue Rangers are. Oh well, at least Todd is here.'

Meanwhile, Chip watched from the Rangerwing's co-pilot's seat as the Rangerplane twisted and turned and rushed away. "Gadget, what's going on there?"

Gadget sniffed. "Golly! Cheddar! Guess what that means." She placed her goggles over her eyes and slammed the thrust levers forward to the limits. The Rangerwing accelerated and pursued the Rangerplane gone wild.

"Sparky, give us a boost!" Gadget shouted.

"I can't," the former lab rat replied, "I'm totally discharged!"

"Great! Let's hope we're fast enough to get past them and arrive wherever they're heading for before them!"

In a hot pursuit, the two Ranger aircraft entered the park of a big resort hotel. Monty's reckless flying made it hard for Gadget to overtake him. He ran over plants that weren't hard enough to damage the Rangerplane, and he evaded everything else in his way tightly.

Tammy clung to her seat. "Gadget, he's flying like insane! You're sure you wanna overtake him?"

"Don't worry, Tammy, this is not the first time Monty has a cheese attack when he's piloting a plane. There's a pattern in his flying."

"You mean you're able to predict his maneuvers?"

"Well, I should be if I take a number of facts into consideration." Chip and Tammy cringed upon hearing the S-word spoken by Gadget. Thus, it was no wonder that they held their breath when she suddenly made the Rangerwing dive down. The Rangerplane was already closely ahead and flying right through the steel girders of a huge light pole filling a small gap in a tall hedge with a forest-like maze of trees behind it when its electric successor soared past underneath it, squeezing itself through the same hole in the girder. They were so close to each other that in spite of the air rushing past, the noise from the two electric motors, and the PDA hanging between them, everyone aboard the Rangerwing was able to hear the Rangerplane's clockwork mechanism.

When the light pole was behind them, Gadget still held the flashlight nose down and kept the motors running at maximum power so that the Rangerwing could build up more speed and outrun the Rangerplane. Her remaining troubles were the trunks of the trees all around and sometimes ahead of the Rangerwing. Along with the wind blowing around her, she felt LaWahini tap on her shoulder.

"What's up?" she asked, not looking ahead for a moment.

"Well, sister, it's great that your invention here is so fast, but how are we supposed to find out where Monty is heading for when he's behind us?"

"We'll follow the smell. I can't tell from the odor of a cheese half a mile away which brand it is like Monty can, but I can tell where the smell comes from. I'm a mouse, and so are you, remember?"

"I see. Now would you please look where you're flying and steer around that trunk there before we hit it?"

"Oh. Sure." Gadget turned the bottle cap yoke and performed an evasive maneuver soon enough to prevent any damage on the Rangerwing.

Led by the increasing cheese odor, Gadget steered it straight towards the wall of the resort building. LaWahini was about to panic. "I don't know if you can smell it, but there's a house ahead of us, and it's getting closer real fast!"

While even Chip got concerned about the large obstacle in their way, Gadget calmly corrected her sister, "Achally, LaWahini, we're getting closer to the house which, by the way, is a luxury resort hotel. That is, unless it is mounted on wheels or tracks and slowly moving into the opposite direction, but I don't see the point in making such a huge building movable, even less so with such a limited space available, and considering the necessary connections for water and electricity. On the other hand, you never know what marketing gimmicks Las Vegas hotel owners come up with. Electricity could be picked up from rails or overhead wires or a built-in power plant, and..."

"Gadget," Chip screamed, "the wall!"

"Oh, are we that close already?" Gadget put the hover switch into the center position so that the two motors reversed their rotations but didn't swivel upward into their vertical position. While the Rangerwing decelerated, she lowered the gears, waited for them to lock, and as soon as that happened, pushed the yoke forward. She and Chip felt LaWahini, Sparky, and Tammy bump into their backrests as the wheelless gears touched ground hard. The Rangerwing skidded along, still at high speed, but after Gadget had switched off the motors, she didn't wait for the propellers to stop spinning before she got up and jumped overboard to run ahead of the craft which stopped less than the width of a chipmunk's stripe away from the wall a few seconds later.

It wasn't before then that the four passengers discovered the rodent-sized restaurant built into the human hotel. The front door was half open and slowly closing, yet still allowing the cheese-scented fumes from the kitchen to waver out of the place. "Gadget must be in there," Chip concluded. He flipped the hover switch forward, and the shut-down motors turned upward.

"You mean you don't know for sure?" Tammy asked.

"I squeezed my eyes shut before the impact... which then didn't happen, luckily."

Inside the restaurant which wasn't as full as it would be in the evening, a lavender blur rushed along between the tables and finally came to a halt in front of a waitress. "Excuse me, but what's that cheese smell?"

"Uh... can be a lot... maybe an omelette with cheese, maybe toast Hawaii... Why?"

Gadget, still gasping for breath, took the waitress by her shoulders. "Bring out the Cheddar, and quick, this is an emergency!" She usually didn't get this close to a panic attack, if ever, it only happened along with something uncontrollable, such as one of Monty's cheese attacks. She remembered a similar scene from a dream she had a year ago, a dream so intense that she was still able to recall it after one year.

"Alright, alright, you shall have your cheese." The waitress then shouted into the kitchen's direction, "Jo, can I get some cheese?"

"Cheese?" came as the reply from the kitchen, spoken by a female voice.

"They say it's an emergency!"

The next thing Chip noticed was Monterey Jack running past the Rangerwing and almost pushing the door out of its hinges as he entered the restaurant. "Gadget," Chip thought loudly, "I hope you know what you're doing."

"Emergency?" In the restaurant's kitchen, surrounded by quite a number of dishes, pots, pans, and plates with foodstuffs in preparation and the resulting fumes, a mouse stood and took care of the meals. She was in her fifties and a bit chubby, although not as rotund as Monty and his parents. She wore a dark lilac dress and a checkered blue and white apron. Her fur was two-tone beige and tan, and her hair was maroon, shoulder-long, and currently tied up in a hairnet. A pair of gray-blue eyes twinkled with the joy one feels when a hobby has successfully changed into a full-time job. However, in Joanna's case, this had not only happened some three decades ago, her eyes also showed her confusion. "Who can have such a craving for cheese?"

She grabbed a large wedge of Cheddar, of the same sort that emitted the scent, and left the kitchen. "Okay, where and who's the case of emerge—"

Immediately, Monty lunged at her and took the cheese from her as though it was a football. Within seconds, the cheese was entirely devoured. Joanne took roughly the same time to identify her visitor who lay there on his belly and commented his meal with the words, "Some'ow, it always tastes twice as good when ya 'ave ta 'unt it."

Joanne remembered that she had seen that burly mouse and heard that thick Aussie accent before. "Monterey Jack?"

Monty looked up. "Joanne?"

Chip sat and stared at the door which was slowly closing itself again. "If Monty's in there, who's piloting the..."

The familiar sound of clockwork gears had him move his attention away from the door and to the flying bleach bottle behind him. "...Rangerplane?!" he shouted out. Seconds before it would have hit the concrete wall, the Rangerplane performed a sharp left turn, but it barely slowed down. Chip saw his best friend with his hands on the yoke, trying to drag himself from the passenger's seat onto the vacant pilot's seat. "Dale!"

"It's okay, Chipper," Dale shouted back, "I've got everything under control!"

It was rather obvious that Zipper and Foxglove didn't share his optimism when they both took off from the Rangerplane, grabbed two of the rubber bands that held the red balloon, and tried to drag the aircraft into whatever direction appeared to be the safest.

Suddenly, Sparky jumped up from between Tammy and LaWahini and ran after the Rangerplane. "Great Scott!" he yelled in alarm. "The PDA! Take care of the PDA!" Thanks to the plane's not flying a straight line, he caught up quickly and jumped up to get hold of the stand which was still tied to the small computer. "Dale, release the PDA!"

"How?"

"Pull up one leg!"

So did Dale. Foxglove corrected him, "I believe he means one of the landing gear's legs, and not one of yours!"

"Oops! Wait a second, Sparks!"

One plop later, the left landing gear leg was raised, and the PDA hung on only one suction cup. Sparky started swinging it and himself around to try and detach the remaining cup, and the Rangerplane's random maneuvers caused by Dale's trying hard to change seats in mid-air helped a lot. But since Sparky and the PDA were in full swing when they were disconnected, they turned upside-down in the air.

Todd held his breath as he saw them fly and his PDA with its display facing down. To him, it seemed as if everything was happening in slow motion now. Sparky was hurled upward, but he still clung to the stand firmly and did what he could to keep the computer below him spinning. His efforts paid off well, for when his feet touched ground again, he triumphantly held the PDA above his head with his arms stretched out.

"I saved it!" he shouted. "Look here, everyone, I sa—whooaaah!" The weight of the PDA pushed him backward and caused him to almost fall over, but he managed to stabilize himself and his payload. "Whew, that was a narrow one!"