Part 3 - Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Action Sequence
Gadget came too with a bit of a headache, which turned into a bit more of a headache when she saw the situation she was in, and that of the other Rangers. All of them were in seamless, clear plastic boxes, arranged in a row on a workbench in the main lab. The big screen was in full view, and an automated camera on an arm was hovering near by.
Nimnul was standing there, giggling maniacally.
"Yehahaha! At last, I have the Rangers in my power! Now I not longer need that annoying mouse or my traitorous rat assistant! I'll even destroy his clone, or whatever the other one is." She glowered for a moment. "If only that fly hadn't been sucked out of the vents. Then I'd truly have the full set."
The goon with the Sher Khan voice was standing off to one side. "Professor, you should have destroyed them straight away. They are too dangerous to let live!"
"They'll be destroyed soon enough, but on world wide broadcast TV! For years I was ridiculed because I said they foiled my every scheme. Now everyone will see I was telling the truth. And because this room now has my voco-modulariser active, everyone will hear it too!"
She leaned over Chip. "Speak wretched rodent, or I will kill one of your little friends right now!"
Chip stood silent for a moment, then growled. "Grrr! You haven't gotten away with this yet, you second rate, scientific shmuck!"
Her voice echoed around the room, and the guy looked around in surprise. "Remarkable. I've heard it before and I still don't believe it. It's one thing to see them acting intelligently, another to hear them speak. You have a delay circuit in the line so I can cut them out if they mention our organisation?"
Nimnul nodded. "I see they're waking up, so it's showtime!"
Gadget quietly slipped a soda can's pop-top out of a pocket of her jumpsuit. A few deft moves shaped it into what she needed, and she tucked it away again for the right moment.
Her work done, she stood up, attracting the humans' attention. "Golly, I just built a vocalizer recently myself, as it happens!" she squeaked cheerily. "Of course mine also allows limited mind-to-mind communication, but still, it's very impressive!" she said encouragingly.
"So," she continued conversationally, "what sort of fiendish demise do you have planned? You've been waiting for this moment a long time, I know, so it must be REALLY impressive. I mean, you only get to destroy us once! I know I'd want to make it really, really incredible."
"Well aren't you the inquisitive one, little miss clone?"
G2 spoke up, shaking his head as if still clearing it. "Actually she's another me from an alternate dimension, identical except for her gender... oops."
He looked a little embarrassed, as he looked around at the others. "Golly, I just can't stand to see a mis-conceived hypothesis, or take credit for work that I haven't done, and I never explored the concept of cloning, let alone engaged in any practical applications."
Nimnul mused. "Another dimension? I was going to destroy her out of hand as a demonstration to keep you all in line, but it appears I'll need her as research material. Nucleating neutrons! That means I can't destroy any of you yet, as you all have to be alive for the big showdown."
She took out a remote and waved it. "As for destroying you, I adapted a transporter beam to teleport a target a little at a time. Each of your enclosures is equipped with a one way grid. It will strip you away molecule by molecule over about 10 seconds and reassemble you as hamburger. Since it will start at your feet, you should be conscious for most of that time. The pain should be exquisite! And I can even sell the remains as high quality cat food, so say 'chow!'"
She waved her remote and the camera moved to cover her.
"But first, I have my public..."
She pressed a button and the camera's transmit light lit up. Her face appeared on the wide screen, obviously currently used as a feedback monitor.
Gadget slipped the cunningly reshaped pop top from her jumpsuit, and ... blew into it.
A very high-pitched whistle, well out of human hearing range, shrilly broadcast over the newly broadcasting feed. It was not, however, out of the hearing range of a very large number of animals who happened to be nearby every monitor showing the mad scientist's face all over the world: an enormous variety of dogs, cats, rodents, bats, and certain insect life, among others, capable of hearing sounds in an upper register.
The quick, chirpy tune was well known to many creatures the world over:
o/~ Ch ch ch chip and Dale's, Rescue Rangers o/~
Gadget tucked the homemade whistle away again. Now she had to wait, and hope, and give anyone whose attention she'd just gotten as much information as she could... fortunately, the one thing Noreen still didn't have was subtlety, and the lab didn't appear to bother with any sort of stealth. It was just going to float overhead, gloating.
Nimnul moved Gadget and Sparkie's cases over to a side table, and pressed another button on her controller and a transparency flashed on with 'Suggestifier Active'. The stroboscopic subliminal waves riding the TV signal couldn't yet be made strong enough to simply turn everyone watching into obedient zombies, but anyone watching would be more than usually suggestible.
She had long hypothesised that the reason most people couldn't see what was so obvious to her, was the effect of social framing and indoctrination. Even she'd suffered from it, unable to believe the creatures were intelligent until she'd had her head bashed into the truth, or rather transported onto that icky fly's body. That had broken her conditioning, and her little story tonight would do the same for everyone watching.
Speedie heard the whistle and knew something was wrong. She followed the sound to a air vent overlooking the main lab. What she saw froze her ichor... insects don't have blood. She frantically looked for a way to get her friends out, but couldn't see any obvious way... so she flew in closer just as Nimnul started her speech.
"Hehehee! Once again, I Noreen Nimnul, greatest evil genius scientist in the world am talking to the world. For years people laughed at me, called me mad, because I insisted a group of animals were responsible for fouling my brilliant schemes! But now I'll have the last laugh!"
She stepped to one side and the camera zoomed in on the cages, sweeping across them and showing close ups of the Rangers.
"They call themselves the Rescue Rangers, and they've made a career out of stopping honest criminals and helping people, and generally being disgustingly dogooders! You people may recognise Elasti-kate and the Masked Bat, since they're already known as 'super zeroes', but the others are just as annoying to all decent do-badders like myself!"
She pointed them out.
"Charlotte 'Chip' Maplewood, their self righteous leader and supposed detective. Della Oakmont, computer geek, better known as Elasti-kate. Madison 'Maddy' Wisconsin Colby, an overweight Australian muscle mouse, Foxglove, ex-witch's familiar, bordering on annoying, now sneaking around as the Masked Bat, Tomas Chestnut, who bandages their boo boos, and finally a mouse who had the effrontery to believe he had the intellect to match wits with a genius such as me, Gadget Hackwrench, inventor of junk, such as this."
A table opened up to one side and a number of artifacts rose on a large work surface. How Nimnul had gotten some of these, they didn't know, but Gadget's orbiter was there, and the Gyrotank, the supposedly destroyed Rangerwing, and the Rangermobile, all with the double R symbol. The camera swept across them.
"And they're not the only ones! There's a whole society of intellient animals, protected by the fact that some mental block prevents humans from seeing what they really are! Even a genius such as myself thought they were no more than mindless animals, despite the way they thwarted me at every turn. When my brilliant modemiser malfunctioned due to that pesky fly, my head was swapped for hers, and I was forced to see the truth. And thanks to my brilliance, you all will too!"
Then the screen started to run a five minute VT sequence. It might almost be entitled, 'The Rescue Ranger's greatest hits'. A lot of it was from a first person point of view, Gadget 2's, but there was obviously a number of pieces of security camera footage, as well as some hand held video camera footage.
Landing the Spaceplane was there, and saving the Global Gold Reserve, stopping Serena the Travel Agent from stealing ancient monuments, stopping the theft of the flying tank, and returning gems and jewels from various robberies. Even saving the president from a poison dart.
Various other vehicles, interior shots of the Ranger HQ, certainly enough information to make any unbiased observer realise they were the real deal, and that Nimnul's invidious appellations were, once stripped of their vitriol, more or less right. Oddly enough it showed them each at their best, probably because Nimnul wanted nothing to detract from the impression they were serious opponents.
Nimnul seemed bound to explain. "A lot of it, I downloaded straight from that annoying blond mouse's memories, but it's amazing what people kept, and didn't reveal for fear of being called a fool. Oh, and the fly, one Speedie, got blown outside, so she won't be joining us for the rest of her life."
"Your worlds greatest 'heroes'," she practically spat out the word, "and none of you knew! They foolishly snuck aboard and attempted to bring down my fortress. And now on global TV I will destroy them, and you will know there is no hope left!"
While this rant had been going on, Speedie had been scouting carefully. The controller seemed to be the key, but she was nervous about messing around inside it and setting off something that could hurt her friends. Instead she snuck up to Gadget's case and pulled the hermetic seal, unlatching it and then moving on to Sparkie's.
"What can we do?" she whispered, as Nimnul ranted on.
Gadget hastened out of her cage. with luck, Nimnul wouldn't notice for quite a while; she was the odd girl out, here, outside of the main group. Nimnul would be sure to focus on her primary nemeses first.
"Um... working on it..." she whispered back to Speedie. "Make sure you stay out of sight -- she's certain you're dead! You're our biggest advantage right now. I don't think you can free anyone else without her noticing, unfortunately. If you see a chance, though, take it."
For her part, Gadget scurried closer to Ms. Nimnul. She had to get that remote... even a few seconds would be enough to disable it, she was sure (knowing Nimnul, for one thing it probably ran on batteries which could simply be removed.) And if she could get a little more time than that, she might be able to rewire it to teleport the Rangers all at once, instead of a molecule at a time -- teleport them right outside their cages!
And once the Alter-Rangers were free... well, Nimnul had thoughtfully provided the Gyrotank...
The side table they were on being one in Nimnul's lab, it was full of half finished or discarded inventions, litter and empty pizza boxes, so she had also thoughtfully provided just about any kind of junk a super-genius inventor might need for a daring escape and rescue plan.
Sparkie was released, still shaking her head to clear it, then massaging her temples. Of course this meant that just before she touched them, a spark leapt from her fingertips to her head, making a double Jacobs ladder. Her hair poofed out in the style known as 'the Einstein permanent'. She bounded down to land beside Gadget.
"Uhhh... so what's the plan?" she asked, relying on the fact that Gadget already seemed to be working on something.
The VT sequence was almost over at this point, and whatever they were going to do, they'd have to do it fast.
"I'm going to get that remote. Speedie, once I'm on it, get to the other Rangers enclosures and release them. Sparkie, we need to stop his broadcast, and disable his defenses. See what you can do with his control panels…"
Nimnul was winding down, and preparing to zap the remaining Rangers, when Del called out. "Hey! Before you fry us, something you might like to know! That 'antidote' the Black Table guy is feeding you, it's a fake! I found it when I hacked their network on his computer! It's a bunch of stuff inside a pill that takes about a day to dissolve, and that's what makes you feel ill."
The 'Black Table guy' had punched his edit button as soon as the redheaded chipmunk had said, 'Black Table'. Now he swore and pulled out a large and nasty gun, aimed at the case containing Del. There were two things wrong with this picture, one the case itself was made of the toughest stuff Nimnul's insane genius could devise, and Del herself was immune due to her rubber band powers.
Not that it mattered, because the gun didn't fire. The guy frantically tried to get it to work, swinging it to cover Nimnul. She seemingly ignored this, exclaiming, "Egad! No wonder I couldn't find a poison agent, no matter how hard I tried! But why would they fake it?"
Chip was ready with an answer. "Maybe they figured any real poison, you'd figure an antidote, and the fact that he tried to stop Del proves her stories true!"
BTG wasn't used to people ignoring him, especially when he had a gun. "darn! Why won't this thing work?" He'd dropped the cutout switch to free his hand to try and fix it.
Nimnul put her hands on her hips, giving him a 'look'. "Oh please. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid. Let you walk around my lab with loaded firearms? The first night you were here, I irradiated your room with a catalyser ray that inactivated the primer in your bullets' percussion caps. Your ammunition may as well be spitballs. And forget the self-destruct systems you built into the structure of the base, I found and deactivated them long ago."
He advanced on her, reckoning on intimidating her physically. "I can still pull you to pieces with my bare hands, you ugly little science geek!"
Nimnul giggled, stepping sideways and pulling a lever. "Nyahahaha! Pity I don't _use_ my bare hands!" A pair of giant white gloved waldo arms reached down from the ceiling, grabbing the guy's shoulders and lifting him up in the air. "At last! I am free of acting as a lackey for the Black Table! Now I can start my own reign of terror until the nations of the world call me their mistress!"
She turned to the Rangers on the main table. "You've been most helpful. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to let you go. With the Black Table unable to thwart me, you are my last obstacle to complete domination of the world! I'd say farewell, but since I'm about to mince you on a molecular level that would be rather pointless!"
She raised the remote, just as Gadget jumped from the top of the camera currently providing a close-up of the mad professor to the entire planet. She landed, bit Nimnul's hand, and jumped onto the remote as Nimnul released it. She had the catch released and the batteries out before it hit the ground.
"Owwwww! It hurts!" screeched Professor Nimnul, as she clutched her abused hand.
Speedie had been watching and didn't miss her cue. She zipped across the table, flipping each sealing lever to open as she did so. The cases rose up, releasing the Rangers.
Chip was ready to take advantage of it. "Speedie, nice work, stay loose and provide support! Del, Foxy, take down Nimnul! Tommy, Maddie, the Gyrotank, Gadget and I will take the Rangerwing!"
There was a chorus of "Rescue Rangers, away!" and they scattered.
One of the first things Foxglove did, was hold out a wingtip and call out in some ancient language. His toothbrush staff flew from the discarded debris to his wing (anyone who's ever completed a decent Defense Against the Dark Arts course will tell you the first spell you learn to cast wandless is one to summon your wand - SSR).
Del stretched out and grabbed the edge of the table with her forepaws, and Foxglove dropped his staff into a foot claw and rushed over to climb piggy back onto her. Del let herself relax, and her arms snapped back, flinging the pair straight at Nimnul like a catapult.
"Minions! Cybercats! Mechahawks! To mmmmph!" Del expanded into a wide sheet as she approached, wrapping round the screaming scientists head. Foxglove, meanwhile, was gesturing with his staff, and a length of cabling sprung from a nearby table and tried to wrap itself around the scientist like a snake.
Meanwhile, the 8 seater Rangerwing was dusting off, Chip extending the grappler claw, even as the male Gadget jazzed the bottlecap controls. Beside it, the Gyrotank rolled into action with a whine, as it drove off the edge at high speed and spun it's sucker ring round to attach to the wall and climb down. While Gadget's machinations in the machine room had taken the inactive robots out of action, the ones that had been patrolling were still very much functional. A dozen of them bounded in through the door, as the same number of mechanical hawks flew in through vents in the ceiling.
Sparkie had made a small mistake, due to nervousness. Nimnul had dozens of secondary camera points set up, in order to cover the demise of the Rangers in as many ways as possible for her own private enjoyment. As she traveled across the camera control panel, rather than switching the external feed to 'off', she flipped it the other way, creating a composite signal of all the various feeds. The result was that the world ended up seeing the Rangers at their butt kicking best in high definition.
Even as the cable started to wrap around her, Nimnul's flailing arm grabbed something off a table and brought the device up to her face, activating it. Del released her hold and fell off the mad madam scientist's face, her cloth thin form vibrating uncontrollably before she shrunk back to her basic chipmunk shape. Foxglove ceased controlling the cable, and swooped in to catch the red nosed chipmunk girl and tow her out of the danger zone.
"Attack the creatures!" yelled Nimnul, her voice cracking. "Let's see you try that again with a harmonic oscillator to resonate you off my face!"
The mecha-hawks dove on the Rangerwing, and only Gadget's improbable basic flight manouvres saved them from being fried by a half dozen beak lasers. These caused a certain amount of damage to the floor underneath them. She hauled the Rangerwing up in a tight loop de loop, allowing the echelon of jet powered hawks to sweep underneath. While the main laboratory was a big room, it was not huge for the purposes of even foot long fliers, and the Rangerwing's agility counted for much more than the mecha-hawks' speed.
In the time it took them to loop round, the Rangerwing went to ground, weaving between big hunks of machinery and storage units. The hawks followed, but a couple were unable to match them and smashed into obstacles, blowing up as their fuel tank ruptured and highly explosive jet fuel vapour flooded into internal spaces filled with electrical circuitry. Gadget spotted something on a table and took a chance of climbing up over the edge, skimming across the surface in the open.
"Chip, get that!" He indicated to Chip what he was after, and the grappler claw snatched it up, rotating the device back towards the chasing hawks. Their beams blasted tools and devices all around them, but the Rangerwing kept performing unexpected evasions. It suddenly changed mode, flying straight up, and from the device in it's claw came several bolts of lightning, each spearing a hawk and making it crash out of the air and into more vital equipment.
While the Rangerwing was the focus of the aerial battle, the Gyromobile was facing equally ludicrous odds. A group of three mecha moggies were bounding after it as it boosted along on full blow dry power. Maddy headed it down a walk way between two solid benches, and found too late that it ended in a wall and a freestanding shelving unit full of tools.
"Tooraloo! It's a bloomin' dead end!" Maddy yelled.
Tommy put paws to some secondary controls. "We can run a Jericho play!"
Maddy spun the wheel. "Bonzer idea Tommy-lad!"
As the Gyrotank spun in a boootlegger's turn, Tommy pressed a button and the plunger ring swiveled and adjusted pitch, first shooting two cable linked plungers out into the bench walls either side, while another pair shot out behind and upwards plunking into one of the upper shelves. The Gyrotank came to a sudden halt, and the mecha cats sprung forward, eager to make a kill. The cables on the shelf plungers tautened, and the shelf unit started tipping forwards, even as the hair dryer went into overheat.
As the cats sprang, Tommy released the side plungers, and the Gyrotank shot forwards, pulling the shelving unit with it. The cats overshot, landing where it had been, just in time to receive a shelving unit full of heavy tools from above. Speedie flew in through the window slit as another pair of mecha cats bounded over the benches to chase them. She whispered in Maddy's ear, and the big Auzzie mouse nodded. "Gotcha!"
The fly buzzed out, and the Gyromobile zoomed after her, the cats in hot pursuit. It turned down a side path that ended in a blank wall, a seeming mistake, but Maddy ploughed forward. As they reached the end, she J-turned, decelerated and Tommy flipped the vehicle over to gyro mode, climbing backwards up the wall. Even as this happened, Speedie levered a can of oil off a bench and it hit the floor, popping open and spraying it's contents over the tiles.
The cats were still running at full tilt when they reached the slick, and skidded helplessly at full tilt into the wall. One tried to rise to it's feet after a few seconds, only to be landed on by the Gyromobile. It's electronic eyes flickered and died.
The Rangerwing was still flying a running battle with the remaining hawks when Chip saw that Del and Foxglove were held at bay by Nimnul, the mad scientist having picked up a flashlight-like hilt and switched it on. A beam of energy extended from it, terminating in a grid of glowing green energy threads.
Vwooom! Vsst! Each place he struck the surface was embedded with a smoking grid of lines. The two Rangers were fully occupied avoiding his attacks, so there was no time for Foxglove to set down and cast a spell, or for Del to stretch in and disarm him.
"Gadget, go help them, I'll distract our playmates!" The blonde chipmunk stood up, holding on to the windshield with one paw as her other drew her grapnel line. She ducked down and kissed Gadget's forehead, causing him to colour slightly.
"For luck!" she said. She flung out the grapnel at a vertical stanchion they were passing and the extended bobby pin hook caught. Jumping off, the Rangerwing's forward momentum caused her to whip around like a stone on the end of a string, bringing her all the way round just as the mecha hawks passed underneath. She let go and dropped down on the rearmost, jamming a dress makers pin into a crack in the fuselage. She pulled herself forward and repeated her earlier trick, opening the access panel and hauling on the control cables.
Suddenly, the rearmost bird started blasting away at it's cohorts, smashing two before the others scattered, and dispersing the pursuit of the Rangerwing. Gadget dived on the professor and held his dive with one paw as he triggered the lighting gun with the other. The shots missed, but the bombardment made Nimnul hunch up and duck, which meant she was no longer menacing Del and Foxglove.
The bat struck out with his staff, and called out a spell, and a blast of golden energy knocked the beam swatter out of Nimnul's hand, sending it spinning through the air. A mecha cat, circular saw blade extruded, was about to leap from a piece of machinery onto the Gyromobile, which was passing underneath. The beam swatter sliced into it, causing it to pause with a puzzled expression before falling into two pieces.
"I didn't know you played dice, Foxy-muffin!" Del commented with a grin.
Foxglove snickered, "It's the cats bane, an Expeliar-mouse spell!"
Two hawks had designated Chip's hawk as a threat and were chasing it, blasting away. She led them in a slalom between the rams that held the Black Table goon, who was still struggling to free himself. One clipped a support and spun away tp explode against the wall, but the other got a line on Chip's bird and shot it's tail, causing it to shudder and freeze up. Now Chip could no longer dodge and the next shot would be dead on target…
The Gyrotank climbed up the wall level with them and shot a plunger from it's ring, hitting Chip and snatching her off the back of the bird just as the second shot hit. She had to grab her hat to avoid it being incinerated. The hawk spiraled out of the sky, crashing into a mecha-cat that had been chasing the Gyro tank, and exploding with enthusiasm. A second plunger shot out to snag the chasing bird and let it swing round on the end of the cable, smashing into the wall in front of them.
"I figured you might need a mite of help, Chip-lass!" called up Maddy.
Chip smiled in sheer relief, but said in a mock annoyed tone, "Just what are you incinerating by that?"
The Rangerwing had come under fire from the last remaining mecha-hawk, which managed to hit the lightning gun carried underneath it on it's initial pass. Gadget pulled away from harassing the Professor, and dived for a mess of cabling that hung from the ceiling, trusting to the Rangerwing's superior mobility.
But the mecha-hawk dogged, or rather, birded his tail, and one of the stray shots freed a cable the swung down, forcing Gadget to roll wildly to evade it. The hawk came up on a catenary, and it's red eyes glowed as it tracked target...
Then Speedie buzzed in on a head to head pass, barrel rolling over a laser blast that would have otherwise incinerated her. She flung the bottle-cap she carried at the mechanical raptors camera lenses, and the oil it was filled with splattered them. The cap stuck on it's beak, and the bird tried to clear it away by blasting it.
Bad move, the plastic cap melted and ignited, and set fore to the oil. Sight gone and guidance circuits damaged by the heat, the hawk failed to evade the cables, clipped one, and went into a flat spin, trailing greasy smoke and buzz sawing into one of the mechanical arms holding the Black Table goon, where it exploded, showering him with debris.
The workshop, initially a mess, looked more like a disaster zone. There were fires here and there, and laser damage was all over the place. Shelves and storage units had fallen over and scattered their contents, adding to the disarray. The last of the mecha cats was being chased down by the Rangerwing, and the Rangers were forming up. Chip flung out her grapnel and caught a ceiling projection, then signaled Maddy, or rather Tommy to release her. She swung across the lab, to land on the table across from the main control panel where Del and Foxglove were making their stand.
"Why won't you just die!", screamed Nimnul.
Del expanded herself to face her, calling out, "Because good always triumphs over evil!"
A Timothy Dalton voice called out, "Warning, overload in defense systems…" A secondary screen lit up showing the underside of the base, dominated by a big weapon of some kind, mounted on an under-slung mechanical arm… but not for long as parts of it glowed brightly and then the entire thing exploded, falling away from the hull trailing vapours. The entire base lurched, causing more things to tip over.
Professor Nimnul screeched, "Yeaaah! No, not my beautiful super-laser!"
Female Gadget and Sparkie emerged from a grille in the main control panel. "Golly, if that isn't your super laser, we're going to have to do it all over again."
Foxglove swung his staff, and the cabling rose up again.
Nimnul's nerve broke and she ran for relatively undamaged teleporter bay. On her way she snatched up a bracelet from the panel. She jumped into the bay, calling out, "You may have beaten me, but I'll have the last laugh! With out an electrostatic modulator bracelet you have no way out!"
She was jumped by the Black Table goon, who'd freed himself after the mechanical arms holding him were damaged. "That is my way…" The teleporter flashed, and the pair disappeared.
"Darn! They got away!", exclaimed Chip. Then she noticed some things left in the teleporter bay, an empty lab coat and a suit, "… though without their clothes…"
Male Gadget dropped down in the Rangerwing and carried Sparkie and female Gadget across to the table where the others were.
"Well actually, they haven't.", female Gadget said, "… gotten away that is, though they did get transported with out clothing. You see Sparkie and I came up with some new protocols for the transporter while we were in there. We figured that they've been terrorising the world, so we should let the world deal with them…"
&&&
The General Assembly of the United Nations was in full emergency session when Nimnul's latest broadcast started. They had watched the rant, his presentation of the Rangers prowess, and the heroic battle. By the end of the last, there were cheers every time a robot went down, and a massive cheer when the super laser, Nimnul's primary weapon, was destroyed.
As the two villains vanished from the screen, there was a flash on the Speakers podium, and Professor Noreen Nimnul, and the Black Table guy, appeared, au naturel. They tried to run, hampered by the need to cover themselves, but were quickly brought down by security guards and several of the more athletic members of the assembly. Not many people can say they've been dog-piled by America, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The crazy professor, and the agent were led away, the professor still spouting her message of vengeance. "And I'd have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those wretched Rescue Rangers! I'll get even… uh oh!" She suddenly looked as if she'd remembered something important. "On second thoughts, I'm guilty, please lock me away, as far underground as possible…"
&&&
The White House was a similar state of shock. President Logan, along with his wife, the Surgeon General, and the head of the secret service, were watching the broadcast, hoping it wasn't some twisted scheme.
An aide ran up, carrying notes. "Sir, it's been confirmed! Nimnul and the man from this Black Table organisation have appeared in the General Assembly building in New York. It's really over!"
Branson, the black guy with the buzz cut who was in effective control of the President's security, had a mobile to his ear. "The security office is still getting those downloads as well, and they're dynamite! Names, locations, financial records, minutes… they're still getting things organised, but it looks like we'll be able to crack the Black Table wide open, finally! And the files have the header, 'Courtesy of Elasti-kate'. It seems before they were captured, she did a number on that guys computer security."
The president sighed. "I'm finding it hard to believe that after everything we've been through, those endless sessions with the chiefs of staff, our salvation came from a group of talking animals. For that matter, the talking animals on their own is enough of a stretch…"
Mrs Logan replied, "_You_ think it's a stretch? Intelligent, self aware animals..." She shook her head, "This means half the textbooks on mental function will have to be rewritten. And if there are other ones out there, things get even worse."
"Well Mrs Logan, with the existence of Elasti-kate and the Masked Bat, we knew some animals were more than they seemed, and the whole MAP business confirmed there were others. But I agree, it's one thing to read about it, another to see it."
Tress Logan, the first kid, as it were came dashing in. "Dad, it's Chipette, she's Chipette, the one that creepy lady called Charlotte!"
"Now hold on there slugger!" the president said. Tress knew nothing about the reports the Secret Service had recorded for the president on the MAP incident, or seen the film of Charlotte taking the dart and Gadget kicking butt. As the Surgeon General, and the one who had operated on Charlotte, the First Lady been interviewed and knew some of the truth.
Tress wouldn't be stopped. "And the mouse that was flying that plane... the night I let Chipe... Charlotte go, it was because that mouse came into my room to see her. It seems kind of screwy now, but I could tell they were a couple. But I only just remembered, the guy, Gadget, was wearing clothes! I think I recognise some of the others too from when they were on the podium. I mean you saw those video clips."
The president nodded. "I did. It looks like those really _are_ the same animals from back then."
Mrs Logan added. "At least it explains who did the neat job of bandaging that kept your Chipette alive until I could operate on her."
"She was never mine,she was always his." The girl pointed at the screen where Gadget was hugging Chip close, his tail wrapping around her. The camera viewpoint was close enough to see the expressions on the Rangers faces. Del had taken the more direct approach of grabbing onto Foxglove, and giving him a smooch that was making hs tail curl.
"Shouldn't they get medals or something? They stopped me opening the box with that rat and the syringe in. That could of hurt us, or you.... maybe there's bad smart animals as well as good ones and that was some kind of assassin."
Branson shook his head. "There goes operational security..."
"I can't wait to see what the PETA forums are saying. Us animal rights 'nuts' have been saying all along that animals were people too. I can just imagine what this proof is going to do."
The president looked rueful. "So can I. Great! And all I had to deal with this morning was an insane professor backed by a global conpiracy in a flying fortress. Now I've got real problems."
On screen they could hear Charlotte wondering about what the human authorities would do now Nimnul had been de-fanged. Maddy put in worriedly, that since they did't know how it happened, they might decide to blow the thing up with missiles while Nimnul was not there to defend it.
"Daddy!" Tress was looking towards him, expression pleading.
The president pulled out his mobile and pressed the speed dial. "Get me the Secretary of Defence, and our UN representative." He turned to Tress.
"Don't worry slugger. I owe those 'Rescue Rangers' three times over. I was one of the main sponsors of the Space plane program, back in Congress. If that first one had crashed, my career would have been wrecked with it. As well as saving you, and possibly me, they just saved the entire United States. The least I can do is..."
The phone beeped. "Ah good, Jeff? I'm speaking as Commander in Chief. No-one is to take any kind of offensive action against that thing. Pass the word down to every operational station. I know you had Auroras prepped for an attack window. Recall them if they've launched... Good. Give my best to May."
He pressed a couple of buttons, and spoke again. "Hello... Ambassador Wilson."
On screen, there was an inset as Stan Blather started telling the populace of America about the events at the UN. Video footage, carefully pixellated, was included.
"Yes, it's on TV right now." A few seconds passed. "A nice tackle. I didn't know you were a Running Back on your college team. Anyway, I want you to spread the word, especially to the Security Council. Until I say otherwise, those animals up there, the Rescue Rangers are under the protection of the United States of America. Diplomatic immunity, the works. With it's guns down, the fortress is no longer a threat. Nobody's going to get trigger happy. Right. You do that. Goodbye."
As he put down the mobile, he was hugged by his daughter. "I love you Daddy!"
&&&
Back on the fortress, the Rangers had gathered to decide what to do next.
"All we an do about that is hope no-one gets trigger happy...", said 'Ms' Gadget. "I made sure that laser was completely wrecked. Sorry, but I figured neutralising the threat was job one."
"Well, golly, no-one blames you for that!" The male Gadget stated. "But we can't just leave this thing up here, or even destroy it. It's full of Nimnul-tech, and from what I've seen she had help, and that means the Black Table may well have it, and other humans could reverse engineer it. So we can't just put the genie back in the box, we have to make sure it reaches responsible people. But where to land it? We'd do too much damage at the UN buildings."
Chip shook her head, "We can't land it anywhere. Some idiot is going to get all grabby wherever we go... Could this thing reach orbit?"
The two Gadget's and Sparkie looked at each other and nodded, and Sparkie spoke. "Uh, yes, if we're above the atmosphere. From the controls, the contra-gravity carpets are much more powerful."
Chip grinned. "Then we take it up and co-orbit it with the International Space Station. That's definitely international territory. And it's awkward enough to get to that no-one gets an exclusive peek. It should also keep it away from other crooks. I'm sure with all this stuff we can recondition the Ranger Orbiter and launch it out the airlock type door."
Del had been fiddling with the TV control panel, aided by Foxglove, who'd flown her over there. "Hey, everyone, I've managed to get a feed from a broadast satellite. I figure the news people must know Nimnul's been kicked out by now."
She flipped a switch, to hear and see Stan Blather, declaiming the news in Kronkite tones. "... Rescue Rangers have just been granted diplomatic immunity by the United States. An on-line poll shows President Logan's aproval rating has just jumped by 5 points. Footage of events on board Nimnul's battle fortress continues to come in, and a world breathes a sigh of relief at the ending of a menace to humanity, by these small all-American animal heroes, these chipmunk crusaders these Rescue Rangers!"
"Hey, I dis-resemble that bloomin' remark!", Maddy exclaimed. "Me place may be with you blokes, but me heart is in the Outback."
"I'm sure they'll correct that... seeing as how they're seeing everything we're doing right now!" Chip exclaimed. "But how... darn, that nut Nimnul said something about a voco-modulariser... it must be translating or something."
"Uh... I guess I flipped the switch the wrong way." said Sparkie.
The lady chipmunk sighed. "Well, it can't be helped. Let's set the flight controls..."
Girl Gadget had made a walkway of junk while they talked, and lowered it with a mechanical arm to provide a bridge to the main controls. She started examining things, and there was a worried expression on her face.
"Uh oh... "
"Guys we have bigger problems." She started dancing on the controls and schematics appeared on the screens. "There must have been some kind of trigger in that bracelet. The molecular regurgitator on the transporter has fused, I mean utterly wrecked. And the whole time it's been running a transport sequence. I think Nimnul didn't mean for it to act for this long, but his cut out failed. I've shut it down manually but it's already overloaded."
There were gasps from the other two engineering types. "The whole time?" Sparkie squeaked.
Seeing the other Rangers looking puzzled, Gadget explained. "The whole time it's been transporting in ionised matter, but without the molecular regurgitator, it can't rematerialise it. Given that it started when Nimnul transported, there's a lot of mass energy in the superposition buffers. It's already way overloaded. And given Planck's constant is invariant for a metric... I estimate 20 minutes before that energy erodes the continuum metric and the whole mass is restored as pure energy, in an instant."
"You mean like a nuclear bomb?" asked Speedie.
Gadget shook her head. "That would be a firecracker compared to the energy we're dealing with."
The other Gadget was looking at the readings. "10 gigatons, at least. Enough to turn the whole Eastern seaboard into a glowing crater! Not to mention the secondary effects..."
Chip asked grimly. "Could we find a way to destroy this place right now?"
Gadget shook her head. "It's too late. Destroying the transporter would release the energies. This could really be the end of the world as we know it!"
Just when you thought it was all over bar the tickertape parades... Well, I had to up the ante somehow.
