Chapter 5: The Rescue Ranger Fan Club
As Professor Hoppernickel and Herbie re-entered the stage, they found that Tammy had long-since concluded her speech and was now mingling with the crowd. As Herbie waited, the professor took the microphone for his next introduction.
"If I may have your attention once again, it's time for another speech, by a young dove who graduated fifth in his class! Please give a warm welcome to Mr. Herbert Tanglefoot, Jr."
There was a polite smattering of applause as Herbie made his way to the microphone. Once there, he adjusted his spectacles, pulled out his notes for the speech, and sniffed nervously before beginning. "I...I've been curious about how the world worked for as long as I can remember. The mathematical formulae discovered by the great scientists to describe the physical world have at times seemed more real to me than the confusing and easily-deceived evidence of my senses..."
Seeing Tammy on the floor, the professor attempted to make his way down the staircase to greet her, but was intercepted halfway down by Herbie's father. The salesdove had just emerged from the curtains surrounding the stage. "Professor Humperdinck, just the man I was looking for!"
"Actually, that's Hoppernickel, sir. Now if I could just go around..."
Herb ignored this attempt to evade him and instead grabbed Hoppernickel's hand and shook it vigorously. "Herb Tanglefoot's the name, and storage solutions is my game. Professor, have you ever considered the many uses that a Foreverware container could have in your home?" He bowed his head slightly as if in reverence as he mentioned the name of his employer.
Less than six inches away, Herbie sighed inwardly and raised his voice somewhat so that he could still be heard above the sales pitch.
"...and so I conclude with this final piece of advice: the key to achievement is to find the one thing that comes easily to you, and focus all your efforts on being the best at that one thing that you can be." Herbie had reached the end of his speech. Tammy appeared to be the only person who was still listening to him. "Thank you," he said quietly, and then he crossed the stage to return to the wing. He was determined to read the rest of Gadget's notes before the end of the party, so he started looking around for someplace to sit. The dressing room was out, as Gadget had still not emerged from there. He decided he would just have to drag a chair over to where he was right now.
As he stepped back out to the food-serving half of the stage, he noticed Dale and Foxglove hanging a red curtain over a clothesline that had been set up on the right side of the floor. A sign on an easel nearby proclaimed "The Great Dale-dini: Magic Munk Extraordinaire! (will work for chocolate)"
Ah, the magic show, Herbie thought wryly to himself. Designed to keep the kids from going bonkers after eating all of the cookies Dad brought in his Foreverware containers.
"Cookie?" asked an excited Beth, who had suddenly appeared at Herbie's side.
Herbie jumped. "Don't do that!"
Beth smiled up at him innocently. "Cookie, cookie, cookie."
"Um...no, thanks," he said, confused. "I'm saving my appetite for later."
Beth frowned and put her hands on her hips. "No, silly. I want a cookie." After thinking a bit, she realized her mistake. "I'd like a cookie. Please. Pretty please with sprinkles on top?"
Herbie sighed. "Sure, you can have one." Taking Beth's hand, he led Beth in between the tables. His father's Foreverware containers were everywhere you turned, but most of them had already been emptied. Eventually he found one with some sugar cookies inside.
"Yay, cookies!"
"Oh, oh, can I have one too, Herbie?" At the sound of one of his favorite words, Dale had appeared at Herbie's side. Laughing, he grabbed two for himself.
Beth's mother Isabel, her plate covered with vegetables, also happened to be in the area, and she honed in on the sound of her daughter about to break one of her cardinal rules.
"No, no, Beth," she warned, "what have I always told you?"
"'No sweets before dinner'," recited Beth. She reluctantly removed her hand from Herbie's and offered it to her mother.
Isabel took it with a smile. "That's right," she told her daughter. "I don't want you bouncing off the walls."
"Not even one teensy-weensy cookie?" Of course, the cookies in the container were bigger than Beth's head.
"No. And that goes for you too, Dale. Put them back."
Dale pouted. "Aw, you're not even my mom!"
"I don't need you on a sugar high, either."
A group of kids had already gathered in front of the makeshift curtain in anticipation of the show. "We want the Great Dale-dini!" they chanted. "We want the Great Dale-dini!"
Hearing this, Dale tried his puppy dog eyes on Isabel. "If Dale can't get one, can Dale-dini?"
Isabel grinned. "If you get to your show in the next minute, yes."
Dale returned one of cookies and took a bite out of the remaining one before getting a good look at it. He then saw that all of the cookies had Rescue Ranger heads iced on them.
"Um, why am I eating myself?"
Beth fell to the ground laughing.
"But I am!"
Monty approached the table at the sound of laughter and had a look for himself. "Aw, a smidgen of sugar in your likeness won't hurt, I don't think," he said, claiming the cookie that Dale had returned.
Free of Beth, Herbie looked around for a chair. The only ones he could see were stacked against the wall at the opposite end of the hall. The young dove descended the stairs from the stage, passing Professor Hoppernickel, who was still unable to escape from Herb Sr.'s sales pitch.
Herb pulled his son aside as he tried to pass. "Now son, tell the professor here that the brochure does not lie when it claims that Foreverware will indeed protect anything sealed inside until the next ice age."
"I'm not going to say that!"
"But Foreverware is an honest company!"
"As honest as a professor looking for grant money," the professor commented dryly.
Herb nodded, misunderstanding him. "There you go! You might as well tell me that the stuff on TV is not true. I wonder," he whispered to himself, "when those poor castaways on Gulliver's Island will ever be rescued?"
"1978," Herbie replied.
Herb dismissed this answer. "Anyway! Let me give you a demonstration of the preservative powers of the patented burpomatic suction action, guar-an-teed to put your food in a state of suspended..."
Herbie found himself forced to resort to extreme measures. "Oh say, is that Gadget I see coming this way?"
The salesman froze, looking around. It just so happened that Gadget was in fact emerging from the wings at just that moment, followed by a dozen of the boys who had not been deterred by the fate of "Hematoma".
Herb quickly shoved a small Foreverware container containing his business card into Hoppernickel's hands before dashing back to his hiding spot as fast as his short legs could carry him.
Gadget, upon reaching the stairs, stopped to look about her strangely. "I sense something..." she said to herself. "A presence I've not felt since..." With a toss of the head, she snapped out of her spell and made her way over to join the chaperoned Chip in waiting for Dale and Foxglove's magic show.
Herbie walked purposefully across the floor towards the stack of chairs. As he did so he passed Tammy, who had her hands on her hips trying to think of a way to get Chip alone so he could hear her speech.
"Miss President?"
Tammy turned to see two shy and skinny British pigeons, a sophomore boy and his younger sister, members of the Rescue Ranger Fan Club. They were informally known as the "A/V Geeks" due to their shared fascination with video cameras and CD players. Although two years apart in age, they were the same height. The feathers atop the sister's head were blond in color, while the brother's head tended towards a reddish hue. Tammy seemed to almost hear "Molly" sing her a little ditty about the two of them.
Tammy smiled and addressed the fans. "You can just call me Tammy, OK? I won't bite, I promise."
"OK...Tammy," the sister replied. "We, that is, Michael and I..."
The brother in question stepped forward. "What Jane here is trying to say is that we've got this smashing idea for something the whole club can do, and we wanted to find out what you thought before we left for the trip."
"Well, what is it?" Tammy asked.
"Rescue Rangers: The Movie," the two teens solemnly intoned.
Tammy was taken aback, although it seemed like "Molly" was expecting this very development. "A movie?" she asked. "Starring the Rescue Rangers?"
"Well, not starring them," explained Jane. "We were thinking the group of us could get together to re-enact how the Rangers got together as a team."
"The first Clutchcoin Ruby Case."
"That's right," said Michael. "We've got the casting all figured out. I will play Dale, and Jane will play Gadget."
Tammy smiled. "There were a lot of humans involved in that case. Who will play Detective Drake, for example?"
"Oh, we got that all figured out," Michael replied. "We'll keep the humans off-camera and use voice effects to make them sound big and booming. We were thinking of having our parents play those voices."
"And then there's the settings," Tammy continued. "How will you portray Glacier Bay? Or the mountain of green gelatin?"
This stopped the two siblings cold. "We hadn't gotten that far, actually," said Michael. "I guess it isn't that great of an idea, after all."
Seeing them staring down at their toes at the death of their idea, Tammy reached out her hands and lifted their chins. "I wouldn't say that," she told them. "How about if you make it into a radio play instead of a movie? I'm sure we'd be able to pull that off."
"Yeah, that would work great!" exclaimed Michael. "We'll get right on it."
"Now hold on, you two," said Tammy. "I still need to see if this is all right with the Rescue Rangers. You can spend your free time on the trip working out the details, but don't tell anybody else yet, just in case."
"Alright, Tammy, we won't!" Jane said. The two doves turned and walked away, talking excitedly to each other.
Tammy smiled at a job well done. "See," she said quietly to her unseen watcher, "I told you they'd eventually find a less destructive way of using their talents."
Her attention was then caught by the voice of Foxglove.
"What you are about to see is pretend," Foxglove was saying. "A little game we are playing where we act like we have magical powers. Know that this is not real magic, which is a nasty thing that should not be practiced under any circumstances."
Tammy turned around to see the curtain and easel that had been set up. A sign proclaimed that there was to be a magic show by "The Great Dale-dini Himself", but Dale was nowhere to be seen. Foxglove, apparently acting as the absent magician's assistant, was somehow fitted into a rather tight red dress that might have caught the attention of some of the sophomore males attending the party if they weren't all at this moment trying to get Gadget's attention.
Tammy looked once more at Sandra Herzog and her two helpers, who were still maintaining a jealous guard of Chip, turning away anyone else their age that tried to approach. Seeing Tammy's look, Sandra turned and mouthed the word "mine" at her.
"Oo!" Tammy cried in frustration.
"Still mad about the Yankees?" asked the same sports-obsessed dove from an hour before.
Suddenly struck by inspiration, Tammy reached out her arm and stopped Herbie, who was re-crossing the floor with a chair in his wings. "The Rescue Rangers are the only guests at this party who don't live in the spruce tree!" she exclaimed with excitement.
Herbie turned his head to look at her. "So?"
"So, everybody else will use the back door to the stairway to leave, while the Rangers will probably be using the front door!"
"And?"
"That will be the perfect chance!"
"For...?"
Tammy sighed. "I'll explain later. I just need you to make sure the Rangers use that door. Can you do this for me? Please?"
Herbie sighed. "All right." He then changed course to plant his chair at the right side of the stage near the rear exit. Once settled, he pulled out the copy of Gadget's notes and began to read.
After saying goodbye to her grandfather, Tammy left the common room via the front door, leaned against the trunk of the tree, and looked up at the stars. She wondered how long she'd have to wait.
As he read, Herbie listened to Foxglove conclude her pre-performance spiel. "Remember kids," she concluded, "that this shouldn't be tried at home. And given that Dale's doing it...maybe not at all."
"I heard that!" Dale exclaimed, marching his way from the hall's permanent stage to the front of the magic show and trailing cookie crumbs as he went. He was wearing a standard-issue magician tuxedo and top hat, if the place doing the issuing was Las Vegas.
"Yay!" the kids shouted, "The Great Dale-dini!"
Dale quickly swallowed his rather dry cookie. "Well...(cough)...I'm glad you're all here. I wasn't expecting such a crowd." He pressed the play button on a portable tape recorder, and a tinny version of a dark fanfare was heard. "I'm...Dale-dini," he said, dead-pan, imitating his current favorite cartoon character.
"Yay!" the kids shouted.
Dale leaned in close to Foxglove. "We may do better than I thought," he whispered.
"Always nice to exceed expectations, sweetie," she said, kissing him on the nose.
Dale leaned back with a start. "Well! Ladies and gentleman, please have a seat, for the show is about to start!"
The kids launched into a vigorous game of musical chairs, despite the fact that there were no chairs, before ending up sitting cross-legged on the floor. Chip, Gadget and the other adults decided to remain standing.
"Alright," Dale said, rubbing his paws together, "so what trick would you like to see first?"
"Pull a rabbit out of your hat!" yelled a young dove at the back of the audience.
"'Hey Rocky'," quoted Dale, "'Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!'"
"My name's not Rocky, it's Sammy!" the kid yelled back.
Foxglove gently tapped Dale on the shoulder. "Sweetie, I don't think these kids are old enough to get that joke."
"Fine!" Dale said. "Anyway, here is my hat!" He removed his top hat and placed it on the table. "Nothing up my sleeves!" he added, rolling them up.
Reaching deep into the hat, he pulled out a full-sized lion's head, filling a significant portion of the hall.
All but one of the kids screamed; Sammy response was "That's not a rabbit!"
Dale jumped up and down on the head a few times until it was sucked back into the hat. He got up off of the ground and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Sorry, guys," he said, replacing the hat on his head. "I guess I'm a little rusty!"
His beak buried in Appendix A of Gadget's paper, Herbie didn't notice a thing.
The show went quite well after that, although the ending was a bit inexplicable. Chip was quite impressed by the part when The Great Dale-dini brought the entire audience back to the meeting hall. Which assumes that he had made them disappear, which Chip wouldn't swear to.
"Again! Again!" cried the child audience. The adults just blinked uncomprehendingly.
The crowd of children rapidly dispersed as Dale and Foxglove started packing up their "magic stuff". Chip and Gadget emerged from the crowd to complement Dale on the show. "That was absolutely amazing!" Chip exclaimed. "How did you get the saw to spontaneously combust like that?"
"I really wish I knew," Dale said sheepishly.
"So do I!" Foxglove added indignantly.
"Well regardless," Chip said, "just an amazing show, buddy!"
Dale grinned. "Thanks, but it's much easier to do when you have a wonderful assistant."
Just then, Zipper flew over and signaled to Chip, Dale, Gadget and Foxglove. "Monty's in trouble," he buzzed.
Standing nearby, Ken Herzog, the Rescue Rangers self-proclaimed "biggest fan", looked around in annoyance. "Alright, who let a fly into this party?"
Chip sighed. "Please don't tell me it involves, let's see, um..."
"Cheese," Dale completed the sentence. "Don't tell us it involves cheese!"
Zipper shook his head. "No, this is serious."
The four of them headed up to the stage, Foxglove stumbling for a moment on the hem of her dress.
Monty was sitting on the edge of the stage, stunned. Various guilty-looking parents were offering him cheese off of their plates. He accepted, just to be polite.
"What happened?" asked Chip.
"Well," said one squirrel father, "we asked Mr. Jack here if there were any stories he could tell to entertain us. The stories with Professor Nimnul are Will's favorites, so he asked for the story of your latest encounter with him." The father named Will, a dove, glared at the one speaking.
"...And I can't remember a single thing!" Monty said.
This caused quite a commotion in the crowd, so Chip did his best to defuse it. "Dale, you didn't pull any tricks with Monty's brain did you?"
Dale looked inside his hat to see if a brain might be hiding there. "Wasn't me!"
"Well," said Will, "it's not important. I'm sorry to cause such a fuss. You wouldn't even know it was me if blabbermouth Frank here hadn't offered that extra little tidbit of a name." The two fathers glared at each other, which caused the two young sons standing beside them to do the same. Will's son was Sammy, the same smart aleck from the magic show.
"Oh, but it's a reasonable request," said Chip good-naturedly. "Dale, you're the second-best storyteller among us. Why don't you tell these good people the story, while the rest of us help Monty get some fresh air."
"Oh," said Dale, daunted by the task before him, "um, I guess...Chip!"
"Yes?"
"Could you help me tell the story?"
Gadget indicated that she, Foxglove and Zipper could take care of Monty without further assistance, so Chip replied, "Sure! What do you need?"
Dale positioned Chip in front of a column on the stage that was a little out of the light. He pushed Chip's shoulders slightly so that he was leaning against the column, then crossed Chip's arms in front of him and lowered his hat so his eyes were covered from view.
"I'd give you a coin to flip if I had one..." Dale muttered. Turning back to the audience, he said, "Okay, Chip will be my cool sidekick, and correct me if I make any mistakes. Isn't that right, Chip?"
Chip tried to get into character. "Right. Um, right-e-o?"
"Don't push it. And Chip, pull up your pants a bit 'k?"
"Why?"
"Dramatic effect! Anyway, our story begins a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away."
Chip rolled his eyes. "More like back in February at Ranger HQ."
"Fine, I'll tell it your way." With amazing chipmunk speed, he began again. "Well, one night there was thunder and lightning. I got up to see what was happening, 'cause I like that sort of stuff."
"A little slower, Dale."
Herbie had rushed through the rest of Gadget's notes. He studied the photographs Gadget had claimed as proof of her claims for several minutes, stopping finally to remove his glasses and rub the top of his beak wearily between two wing feathers. After staring at the packet of notes for a few moments, he tore off the back page and started working through some calculations on the back with a golfer's pencil stub. In the corner of his eye he caught Foxglove, Gadget and Zipper shepherding Monty towards the outer exit. He returned to his work for a few seconds, before realizing that the party was not yet due to end and Chip and Dale were not with them. Looking around, he saw most of the guests surrounding the two chipmunks. He glanced back down at the figures, but he wasn't particularly happy with what they were telling him, so he put them and the notes back in his chest pocket and quietly joined the crowd. He asked his mother, the most expert gossip he knew, what he had missed. She quickly filled him in.
Not long after he had caught up, Herbie saw that Gadget, Monty and Zipper had returned to the party. Monty had a cold compress on his head.
"Gadget said the machine was a capacitor of sorts," continued Dale, "and that we couldn't really stop it unless we wanted to risk being fried animals. So we just watched as Nimnul yelled about going to some 'new world' or something. Then he set the machine off and part of it melted, but it was supposed to do that, so he ran right at the machine like this."
Dale make a quick run at Chip's pillar. Chip got out of the way just in time as Dale slammed into it and mimed wooziness. The kids laughed loudly.
"See!" Dale explained. "It didn't work!"
"Luckily for us," Chip said, "the police came up at that time to clean up everything like they always do. They took Nimnul away, although he seemed delirious from the fall. His failure made him so crazy that they put him into a mental asylum, where he's been ever since." He pointed at the child who was waving her arm in the air. "Yes, Beth?"
"Chip, what does 'deli-eerie-oos' mean?"
"He seemed very out of it, very nuts."
"Isn't that a constant state of his?" said Frank.
"More nuts than usual," Chip replied. Several adults in the crowd chuckled.
"Anyway," added Dale, "having vanquished Nimnul once again, we headed home for a great night of fancy detective stuff."
"Namely Clue: Master Detective," Chip said. "I won."
Dale stepped forward in a heroic stance. "And the world was safe once again thanks to the..."
"Rescue Rangers!" the crowd cheered.
"Exactly," said Dale.
Chip saw another hand up, from a familiar teenage squirrel. "You have a question, Sandra?"
"That was a great story you just told, Chipper."
"The name's Chip. And that was Dale telling the story, not me."
"Whatever. Anyway, my question is, if I was in mortal danger, would you save me? Because you could. Save me, that is. Anytime." To complete the question, she fluttered her eyelashes at him.
"Are there any other questions?" Chip asked desperately. The hands and wings of the half of the female sophomore class went up, several accompanied by squeals of "Pick me! Pick me! Don't pick her, pick me!" "No more questions then," Chip quickly concluded.
The crowd began dispersing, all except for Beth, Isabel and Herbie. Gadget turned to Dale. "Actually," she told him, "you forgot the part about finding the Dimensional Viewer at Nimnul's lair, but that would probably act to disrupt the flow of the narrative, so it was better if it was left out. It actually happened, mind you, but you don't need to know that if the goal is to know how Nimnul was defeated. If on the other hand you wanted to know about the history of the D.V., which even I don't know in full...Hey, where did everybody go?"
Isabel checked the wall clock. "The party's just about over, anyway."
Chip snapped his fingers. "I can't believe I nearly forgot!" he exclaimed. He climbed up a chair to address the crowd. "Everybody, I have an announcement to make! Gadget, could you get Foxglove?"
