Part 1 – A Disassembled Gadget.
By: Stainless Steel Rat
“Oh boy, oh boy, a real magic show!” exclaimed Dale, rubbing his paws together.
Monty lifted the couch and turned it to face the open stage that had been built across one side of the main room of the Treehouse. “Reminds me of the toime I met Harry Houdini’s hamster… ‘e was always escaping ‘is cage, y’see and…”
“I don’t know how Foxglove talked Gadget and Tammy into being her assistants.” Chip said. He was not too annoyed at this disruption in their normal crime fighting schedule, surprisingly enough. Or maybe not so when it offered the prospect of Gadget wearing a magician’s assistant’s costume.
Zipper said nothing, but suspected that a dozen photos of Chip working out topless in the gym might have something do with Tammy’s willingness to participate. He would have been surprised to learn he was only half right, the other half of the photos securing _Gadget’s_ co-operation. He’d borrowed Dale’s super-spy camera and hidden in there for some real fly-on-the-wall footage.
After the Rangers had had a run-in with a evil sorceress squirrel and her cat familiar, Foxglove had been trying to learn magic, with the help of the tomes they’d salvaged from Winifred’s laundry, and hidden in the storage holes under the Treehouse for safe keeping. This had prompted Dale to express a wish to Foxglove that he could go to a real stage magic show, with ‘flashes and card tricks and girls being sawn in half and everything’. Foxglove had taken him at his word and started planning.
This led to the current scenario, which had the four male Rangers sitting in front of a stage, eating kernels of buttered popcorn, and waiting for the show to begin, which it did, with a bang. There was a dissipating cloud of smoke and Foxglove the bat stood there, dressed in a top hat, white blouse and tails (her own of course poked out through the slit between them).
Music started playing off stage. “Welcome everybody, and especially you, cutie!” she called out, winking at Dale. “I hope you enjoy our little performance.”
She dropped her wing down over the stage and lifted it away to reveal a human scale pack of cards. She waved the wing and a wand appeared in it, which she tapped the cards with. They jumped up on edge, and started walking out one by one to stand in ranks, by suit, on the stage.
“For my first trick, I will need a volunteer from the audience, an adorably cute chipmunk with a red nose…”
Dale got up on stage and got a hug and a nose nuzzle for his efforts (which had been negligible) .
“Pick a card, any card, but don’t tell me.” She turned her back to the cards. A little non-plussed he went over to the rows and tapped the six of clubs. “This one! Zowie!” This last was because it moved out of it’s column, waddling from side to side on it’s lower corners and walked over to the edge of the stage, to lie face down.
“Alright, cutie!” Foxglove said. “Now go over and stand on it, to make sure it stays where it is. And tell me when you have.”
Dale did so. “Okay Foxy-mitten, I’m good.”
“Oh, I hope not, Dale!” Foxglove chuckled, whirling her wand. The other cards all flew up in the air and came down in a stack, cutting and riffle shuffling themselves several times. Foxglove turned back to face him and the audience. She wandered over to the stack and tapped it with her wand. “And your card was…”
The top card stood up, and it was unsurprisingly, the six of clubs. “Huh?” Dale looked down at the card he was standing on. “But…”
“Let’s see what you had underfoot.” Foxglove said, and the card he was standing on lifted into the air like a flying carpet and carried him across the stage, stopping right by the bat. It tipped sideways, sliding Dale off and into Foxglove’s waiting wings. While she hugged her newly delivered plush toy, it landed face towards the audience. It was the queen of hearts, but instead of the picture of a queen in the centre, there was a stylised picture of Gadget in a red leotard.
Foxglove reluctantly put her chipmunk charmer down and motioned him off stage. “For my next trick, I will need an assistant…” Foxglove waved the wand and the card spun on it’s leading edge to face away, then again to reveal the real Gadget in a sheer red leotard. She was blushing slightly, and clearly a bit embarrassed, but smiling. The card was next to her, facing the audience again, and had changed into the queen of diamonds, but with a picture of Tammy in the centre.
“In fact, why not two?” Foxglove added.
The card spun across the stage again and left behind the real thing, a red pigtailled squirrel dressed in a skimpy green bikini and posing. The card was now the ace of hearts.
“People have divided assistants before now, and cards, but never both at once!” Foxglove stated, and gestured to Tammy, who brought out a card and balsa wood table from behind the card.
It was made up of three smaller, roughly square tables, each on it’s own four matchstick legs which meant you could see right underneath them. The main surface was balsa and card, with a thin, quilted cloth pad, quite clearly too thin to hide anything. Tammy brought the card across and laid it on the top.
“Now Gadget, if you could just check the surface is comfy…” Foxglove asked.
Gadget looked puzzled, but got up on her front, on the table. “Okay Foxglove, but I made sure it was fine before we… Hey!”
While she’d been talking, Tammy had sneaked up with a set of stocks and slid it down over Gadget’s legs, just at the top of her thighs. It locked into place with an audible click, neatly matching the join between two tables.
“Sorry, but you seemed a bit nervous in rehearsal.” Foxglove said, “Just lie down and enjoy it…”
“Golly, you could just of asked…”
Gadget shrugged and lay down. Her arms were folded in front of her, and her chin rested on them. Foxglove slotted on a second set of stocks just below the bottoms of her arms. The mouse inventor now had her head, arms and shoulders on the first table, her body from her the top of her chest to the bottom of her… well, bottom, on the middle table and her bare legs on the other end table. Her tail stuck up from the hole in her leotard like a drunken flagpole, curling over at the tip.
“And now we divide and conquer…” Foxglove waved and four cards from the stack and poised in pairs over the stocks. They dropped right into the slots in the stocks and presumably right through Gadget, who gave a little yelp. “Oooh! That tickled!”
“I bet this is a really moving experience for you, Gadget… well at least it will be!” Foxglove took hold of the head end table and Tammy took hold of the foot end (the tail end was of course in the middle). Then they pulled. The table came apart in three pieces, and so did Gadget. Foxglove brought her table forward and around, and so did Tammy, so Gadget could now see the soles of her own feet, while behind them her discarded middle bit was all alone.
“Holy Moly! It really worked!” she exclaimed and reached out to touch and cup one of her feet. “Golly, this is odd.”
Tammy gave an evil grin. “Those toes need tickling!” and she grabbed the other foot and proceeded to suit action to words.
“Ahahaha! Stop it!” called out Gadget between laughs. She wrenched her foot free and brought up her lower legs backwards, waggling them in the air to prevent the sneaky squirrel from getting hold of them. Foxglove brought the middle box to the front, showing Gadget’s body was moving slightly in sympathy.
She waved Tammy away, and caught hold of the tip of Gadget’s tail in one wingtip, bringing it down to within reach of her paw. “It this your tail?”
Gadget made a show of holding the last inch or so, and pulling on it between her paws as if testing the strength of a piece of string. She seemed to be happy to play along with this now. “Yup! Definitely my tail, unless this is an elaborate fake, right down to tactile sensation and movement, and my real tail is somewhere else being pulled by someone who’s doing it just like I am…”
“I’m sorry, we can only take your first answer!” Foxglove said in a sing-song tone. She reached under the body and slid out the middle section of the card that had been lying underneath Gadget. She showed it to the audience then slid it back in upside down.
“Anyway, time to do some E omnibus unum!” Foxglove misquoted.
She spun Gadget’s head and shoulders table so it was lined up with the front end of the middle table, and Tammy did the same at the back, not stopping to tickle her feet. They pushed the three tables together, and the cards popped up like pop tarts. At a gesture from Foxglove, they flew back to the pack, and the two girls removed the stocks.
Gadget got up and patted herself all over. “Looks like I’m all here!” she started.
“As much as Gadget-luv ever is…” added Monty quietly, smirking.
Foxglove picked up the playing card off the table and showed it. Sure enough, the middle bit was back to front.
The three girls linked paws (to wingtips) with Foxglove in the centre, and took a bow.
“Don’t go away yet, folks! In part two we’ll have even more magic, and even more fun! It’s Tammy’s turn to star...”
This caused the wide grin that had been on Tammy’s face to vanish like the Cheshire cat. “What, me? Uh oh…”