On a Wingnut and a Prayer
Part Four
By: Stainless Steel Rat

Chip didn’t arrive back at the Screaming Eagle until past 3 am and by common acclamation was allowed to sleep late. Breakfast was simple, and the discussion was mostly about Monty and Kimiko, but at one point Gadget asked, "Chip, last night you were saying something about it not making sense that Mouseworthy was behind the sabotage of the Golden Carp. What did you mean?"

"Well examine the possible reasons. It might have been to discredit Gadget because it could look like she had a chance to do it, and _if_ he could convince people that the reason was because the Screaming Eagle and Golden Carp were the only ones this year in line for an Albatross award. This would only work _if_ the ditching occurred and destroyed the evidence, otherwise it would show it couldn’t have been her, because those strips of tape had to have been placed only the night before, and Gadget did her work on the first day. Maybe _if_ he could make people believe she did it after everyone else was exhausted from the party, it would still work, but I’d love to see him try and argue it with the Nekomi team and us all saying different. See, there’s just too many ifs.

"Or take Gadget turning back to help. Reasonable enough until you know the Rangerwing was going to be up there, which was no secret. Send in the prize winner or the rescue plane… ooh… tough choice. As it turned out it we had to convince the safety marshal to let us help at all. You think he’d consider that, after all he’s the experienced racer. Or my other suggestion as a dry run for us. Oh brilliant! All that’s done is alert us and make us lose a bit of sleep." Chip yawned and shook his head. "Nobody would risk such flimsy plans. Besides there’s no solid evidence leading to him."

"Golly, I hadn’t really thought it through that far. But if not Mouseworthy, who?" Gadget asked.

Chip looked unhappy. "That’s what I need to work out. Maybe when we get back I can find this girl squirrel who distracted Shippo, she must have been in on it… and that is another puzzle, how did our saboteur know they’d need a girl squirrel to prevent the final flight inspection? That’s a point _against_ it being Mouseworthy, because as far as I’ve seen, his crew are all mice. The simpler alternative is that Shippo’s lying, but no-one seemed to consider that."

Dale spoke up immediately. "Doggone it, Shippo’s a good guy!"

"That was my impression, but just because you get on with him doesn’t mean he’s immune to suspicion." Chip sighed. "Not that I’m condemning him either. I need more information!"

However, there was no time to get the information, because the Golden Carp was one of the first aircraft to launch. Chip continued to consider the problems throughout the second day, which was surprisingly uneventful. Gadget once again started off in the last slot and was first to the sixth checkpoint, the resting place for day two. They didn’t have another encounter with Mouseworthy, because he was too busy haranguing his staff at his own encampment. He had managed to hold his own against Gadget this time, but only at the cost of replacing his burned out engines that evening. It was quite clear he’d been running the risk of blowing the whole works, and it still wouldn’t be enough to gain back Gadget’s lead. This made the evening at the second checkpoint something of a cheery affair.

There was another reason for feeling good. They had gotten in contact with Monty. According to him, Kimiko had fully recovered and other things were progressing happily. To do this Gadget had ample time that afternoon to tinker with spares from the Rangerwing and improvised an over the horizon short-wave radio. Gadget had laid a loop of fine copper wire around both planes, brought along for rewinding electric motors, should one need it. The purpose, she told interested bystanders, was to create a powerful directional short-wave loop antenna that would bounce a signal off the heaviside layer and allow them to contact Tomodachi island. When connected to the sophisticated circuits and powerful batteries on the Screaming Eagle, it worked perfectly.

However it also had a second purpose. She’d built a basic audio amplifier that hooked into a set of headphones and the laid out loop. It would act much like a theremin, so any object crossing that line would cause the headphones to howl. It added up to a loop inductance alarm system, a backup against the person on watch falling asleep. Once again Gadget was allowed to sleep the night through, while the other three stood watches.

It was Chip’s watch and he had moved his sleeping bag under the wing of the Screaming Eagle as the sky had clouded over and a light rain had begun to fall. The others were inside the two planes, the girls in the Screaming Eagle, and Dale in the Rangerwing. The previous night’s nocturnal navigating was catching up with him, and he was half dozing when the headphones he was wearing squealed like a stuck pig. He was instantly awake and alert, heart beating as he slid out of his sleeping bag and scanned the surrounding area.

He quickly found the intruder, or rather his legs, visible under the fuselage, a dark shadow even in the clouded obscured moonlight. They were coming upon the Eagle from the far side, moving in a stealthy manner. Well, two could play that game. Chip went four paw and red-indianed his way across towards that side of the fuselage, staying in the deepest shadows he could find under the Screaming Eagle’s body. It soon became clear the guy was heading for the engines on that side, or the armature that supported them and the wing. A little discrete tampering with any of those would make the Screaming Eagle a Falling Eagle pretty darned fast.

Chip had stopped short of coming out, being half hidden behind the currently extruded tractor landing gear and far better concealed by the shadow. However, as the intruder moved within a few inches of his goal, he hesitated and Chip could hear a sharp intake of breath. Almost at the same time the cloud above thinned for a moment and he could see the shadow form more clearly, and he almost panicked. The basic shape was a bipedal animal, but the head was huge, a malformed proboscis with a glint of a single huge eye, protruding from a distorted head. One arm was equally horrible, terminating in some club-like block. It looked like no animal he’d ever met.

His red LED torch was in his hand, and activating it illuminated the figure more clearly. He heaved a sigh of relief. It was some sort of small animal in dark clothing. The misshapen head was a helmet with a boxy camera-like arrangement on the front, night vision gear. It covered the top half of the head. The lens was similar to the ones he’d helped salvage for the planes. The lopsidedness had come from a tube with a glassy bulb strapped to the side, possibly an infrared LED acting as an illuminator. The block on the end of the arm was a toolbox. Not that he’d stopped to analyse any of this, instead leaping forward to take down the creature with a loud, "Pistachio!"

He dived low, aiming for the unprotected solar plexus, but swung the LED torch high, sweeping it right across the lens. The CCD was undoubtedly a regular chip from a camera, and sensitive to regular light as well as infrared. The creature reacted as expected, flinching and throwing up his free arm to protect vision from the white out. This left his gut unprotected as Chip shoulder charged him with all his strength. It resulted in a coughing wheeze as the wind was knocked out of him, and Chip bore him to the floor, yelling for help at the top of his voice.

It was a he, that much Chip could tell, and taller but leaner than the chipmunk. Something whipped across his legs, a tail so most likely a mouse or rat. His torch had flown from his hand so he struggled in the dark, but the helmet interfered with landing a good blow. Then suddenly he was seeing stars as his opponent applied that toolkit to the side of his head with great enthusiasm. It knocked him off, the other, who followed up with a nasty kick as he scrambled to all fours. Chip was fortunately no stranger to this kind of rough housing, and had already moved, so he only caught a glancing blow, but it still hurt.

Light was already going on in the Screaming Eagle, and the villain, turned and ran, hitting four paw drive immediately from his crouch. Chip was still feeling the other’s kick and couldn’t immediately follow him, especially as the light from inside the plane had destroyed his night vision. The other three were on the scene in seconds.

"Golly Chip, are you alright?", Gadget asked as she helped him upright. Normally he would have enjoyed it but currently his side ached too much.

"I’ve been better." he admitted ruefully, "The slime-ball got away, but at least he didn’t get a change to damage anything. Your alarm system worked like a charm."

Dale was practically jumping up and down with excitement. "Who was it? I betcha it was Mouseworthy, he was trying to wreck Gadget’s plane and win that way!"

"I didn’t get a look at his face, but it could well have been." He described the attacker as best he could, then reached out and grabbed Dale by the scruff of the neck as the red nosed chipmunk started to march off in the direction of Mouseworthy’s camp. "Hold it! If you go over there and start throwing accusations around, you’ll be laughed at. Mouseworthy will have a dozen goons to say he’s been in his tent the whole time. If you throw punches they you’ll just get Gadget disqualified."

"Awww, but Chip…!" Dale had calmed down some, as Foxglove had him in a one winged hug.

Chip shook his head. "I’m pretty certain of it too, but it’s an assumption. Sureluck Jones always said ‘It’s a capital mistake to theorise in the absence of proof.’, and only the description I could give would fit dozens of creatures."

"Nuts!" Dale stamped his foot, and there was a squelch. "Ewww! What’d I just step in?"

Chip and the others looked down at the ground, illuminated by the plane interior. Chip gave a gasp and went down to his knees, examining the patch of off white as Dale stepped off it. "If I’m not mistaken…" He peeled one edge off the tarmac and it came off as a stretchy lump. "What does it look like to you?"

Dale peered at it, leaning forward. He sniffed. "By gum it’s gum!" he exclaimed. "Recently chewed by the look of it. Banana flavour, European brand, you can tell by the colour."

Chip suddenly remembered where he’d last smelled banana, and suddenly several things connected together. "Of course! Idiot! It’s so obvious!"

Foxglove frowned. "Chip! That’s no way to talk to Dale!"

Chip suddenly realised how it sounded. "Not him! Me! This is evidence Mouseworthy was the one here tonight, and was the one who wrecked the Golden Carp. It’s almost too neat…"

"I know Mouseworthy chews gum, Chip, but surely he’s not the only one who does." Gadget said.

Chip sighed. "You’re right, I still need better evidence before I have anything solid enough to take to the WAAT committee, and to be sure this isn’t a clever plant. Besides, those things I said earlier about his motive not making sense still holds true." He looked puzzled as he said this.

Gadget interrupted his reverie. "Umm… Chip, if you find your evidence, could you wait until after the race to present it? I want to win over Mouseworthy fair and square, even if he is a cheat."

He sighed. "Okay, I will. But I need to leave first thing in the morning, and take Dale and Foxglove too. Hopefully I can get what I need back at Tomodachi Island." He cautiously held out his hands to her, and equally uncertainly, she took them. She could feel the warmth of his paws, the firmness of his grip, and she felt immensely safe and warm.

Chip smiled, gazing right at her. "Don’t worry, I’ll be back to escort you during the race, though I might have to join you after takeoff. I promise." They found themselves looking into each others eyes, noticed what they were doing, and both instantly released each other and looked away in embarrassment.

Chip coughed, "As I was saying, you beat this goon in the air, than I’ll bring him to justice when he lands." He was flippant, trying to cover up his feelings. He’d decided long since that Gadget wasn’t going to see him as more than a friend, so he’d stopped chasing her, and as part of his attempt to reinvent himself, concentrated on being the best friend he could. But just then, had he seen love in those deep blue eyes, or just a reflection of his own feelings?

"Roger Wilberry, Chip!", Gadget replied, falling into old habits in her confusion. Despite her talk with Foxglove, she still wasn’t sure what she was doing, or if it was love she was feeling, and if so, whether Chip felt it in return. But just then, when she’d looked into his eyes, had she seen love there, or was it just a reflection of her own feelings?

Being Gadget, this immediately diverted her attention. The eyes were supposed to be the window to the soul, and physiologically they were a direct connection to the brain, where thoughts and feelings were processed, so it was possible, but what would be the means of transmission? She focussed on this problem, because it was easier than figuring out what had just happened. Absently she noticed Foxglove offer to take over the watch, because Chip would need his sleep for flying tomorrow. So would she, so she went back to her folded out seat bunk in the Screaming Eagle.

&&&

Chip was as good as his word. He and the others were up early, and headed off in the Rangerwing before the dawn broke, with Foxglove still dozing in the back. It had been rather lonely after that, but she’d filled in the time by checking and tuning the Screaming Eagle down to the finest point. She might have a comfortable lead, but she didn’t intend to be complacent.

The morning wore on and one after another the slower flyers took off. Professor Chinou came to visit, and was most pleased to hear that Chip had a lead. Gadget found she couldn’t exactly explain it all, since Chip hadn’t really had time before they’d gone to bed, or in the morning. She asked him to keep quiet about it until Chip was ready, and he readily agreed. She watched the Golden Carp lift off perfectly, and wished them well.

Mouseworthy appeared as his goons were moving the Cloudbuster into position. He was, as always, the second to last to leave.

"So your ‘friends’ have deserted you." he sneered.

"HumIdunno, maybe they don’t think I need any help, especially to deal with the likes of you." Gadget was a lot less worried by him this time than any other. After all, the Screaming Eagle was waiting to launch, there were several officials around, and if he tried anything, he’d be caught instantly.

He scowled. "Enjoy it while it lasts, little girl. It won’t last long."

"I don’t see any sign of it stopping." Gadget made an exaggerated show of looking around her. "Nope, no stopping there… or there, how’s your stomach?" She made the last a casual continuation, something she’d seen Chip use on a suspect to catch them off guard.

His arm moved involuntarily in a way that might well have ended in him cradling his stomach, then stopped and moved back as he noticed what he was doing. Jackpot!

"I don’t know what your talking about!" he said with far too much force, then said, "I’ll settle accounts with your pet tree-rats later. But you… today is where I win and you lose! You may think you’re winning, oh yes, but your ultimate defeat is nigh!" His voice rose triumphantly.

"Umm… shouldn’t there be a maniacal villain laugh after that?" Gadget asked. "That was definitely a villainous monologue, possibly even a rant, and it really should end in insane laughter. I mean, golly, there’s right ways of doing things after all."

Mouseworthy just stared at her, in the way people often did when she drifted off to planet Gadget, as she started to lecture him on the various varieties of villainous laugh. Then the call came from his pit crew that his plane was in position. "Very witty, or half that."

He stomped off, but not before Gadget called after him, "You should know." She watched him depart with a feeling of satisfaction. She’d managed to hold her own in a verbal duel, all by herself, and avoided warning him that he was the one with troubles. Maybe listening to all Chip and Dale’s banter over the last couple of years had been useful after all. Though she’d meant it about the laugh… She started thinking about it as she prepared her own plane and the Cloudbuster took off in a twin trail of foaming soda.

Her own turn came, and to save a few seconds and a few grams of fuel, she did a normal takeoff. As she soared into the sky, she glanced at the time display on the OLED screen, and happily confirmed her calculations. She’d be there with enough time to share a coffee and some walnut walleroo cookies with Chip before Mouseworthy finally arrived to be arrested, or disqualified, or whatever they did to cheating saboteurs. The sky was mostly clear of cloud, the wind was with her, and she was passing slower planes like they were standing still.

She zipped through the seventh checkpoint like Foxglove out of a very hot place, noting that as usual the Cloudbuster was on the ground, tanking up to feed it’s thirsty engines. The one minor cloud on her virtual horizon was the lack of contact with Chip. Admittedly she had started a bit early, but even so he should have gotten this far by now. Certainly, there were no other planes around, or marshals. Despite the reverse staggering process, the staggering speed of the Screaming Eagle had left everything else behind. The only thing that could catch her was the Cloudbuster, and it made no difference, because according to her calculations, it would just be taking off from the eighth checkpoint as she was crossing the finish line.

As she approached the midpoint of the second leg, she had one screen acting as a rear view mirror, to look for the Cloudbuster, which was several minutes overdue, and one magnifying the forward view and sweeping back and forth to spot the Rangerwing. She was flying over some foamy water that suggested reefs just under the surface, when several things happened at once. A spot appeared in the front and rear viewing screens almost at the same time, the Cloudbuster and the Rangerwing as expected.

The Rangerwing was coming in at an angle, and lower then her and Mouseworthy, just above a light cloudbank. Clearly Chip had been going on dead reckoning until he’d been close enough to use the direction finder and drifted away from the ideal line. Well, no matter. He was here now.

She switched the radio channel from the WAAT emergency channel to the Rangerwing’s private wavelength as she moved the stick slightly to veer out of the way of the rapidly closing Cloudbuster. The idiot was going to do a close pass, as if that would make any difference. She could see the silhouette clearly now… and realised there was something wrong. Those bulges under the wings, had he carried his soda JATO units all the way here? That would explain why he was overdue.

As she cleared her throat to contact Chip, she suddenly heard his voice cry, "Break right!…" before everything dissolved in a crackle of static. She instantly did so, even as she looked for whatever the problem was… The soda bottles had detached and were growing bigger, curving round even as they did so. Homing missiles! She instantly considered dropping thrust to cool the engines, but decided she’d need all the power to evade.

On board each soda bottle, attached to the front, an arrangement of heat sensitive receptors and circuits controlled two pair of vanes that acted as control surfaces, bending the path of the soda bottle to home in on the strongest heat source in their field of view, the quadruple engines of the Screaming Eagle. But they could only turn so fast. Would Chip’s partial warning and the planes own gyrations be enough to evade them? Almost. One shot past a wingtip, losing tow and spiraling off into the sea. The other barely clipped the edge of the lower port engine, but it was enough. The jolt triggered a percussion cap, and the glass bottle shattered into a thousand sharp shards, each driven by the velocity of the missile, and the remaining pressure in the soda bottle.

Many shards flew past, or harmlessly scarred the hull and landing gear pod. But several dozen ripped into the aluminum shell of the port engine, wrecking the finely crafted workings. Other fragments wedged into the rotator ring that moved the port wing and the engines, jamming it in place. In the cockpit, Gadget’s control panels started flashing red lights and the her stick movements no longer seemed to steady the plane. Trailing smoke and flames from one engine, the Screaming Eagle started to spiral down, heading for the foaming sea.

As Gadget quenched the lower two engines, and reduced thrust on the upper pair, the static in her earphones lessened, and an unpleasantly familiar voice spoke. "Victory is mine! Nyahahahaha! Villainous enough for you?"

She had to admit, it was a good villainous laugh. She immediately started saying, "Mayday, Mayday! Screaming Eagle, WAAT 1A, one engine out and port control surface jammed…"

"Don’t bother to call for help. The emergency channel is blanketed with static, and this channel will be drowned at any distance by the frequency spreading. No-one but me can hear you, and I actually enjoy it."

Gadget knew better. Chip was somewhere close, and Mouseworthy hadn’t seen him. The malevolent mouse must have tuned into the Ranger frequency when he damped the static on it, probably with a band-pass filter. She was trying to regain control, but every attempt to level out just caused her to spiral. She considered rotating the starboard engines forward and trying to decelerate or turn, but her knowledge of aerodynamics told her that without the port wing as a control surface she’d go into a flat spin, and that would definitely be that.

The only choice left was to eject the passenger cabin. She thumbed the arming switch, but the ready light didn’t go on. The ejector circuit must have been cut. That meant she was out of options, so she had to give Chip as much information as possible, because it was up to him to save her. She didn’t let her distress, or her activities, stop her from talking.

"I’m heading towards the atoll and I can’t pull out. Someone will find out you attacked me from the wreck! Disqualification is the least of your worries."

Mouseworthy’s voice dripped smugness. "I have no worries. The Cloudbuster was designed to catch up with anything in the sky, and blast it. Maybe my design choices made more sense than you thought. And the beauty is I could have a weapons system in plain view, and those idiot WAAT officials passed them as takeoff boosters! Your wreckage will never be found, and I’ll win, just as I said." His voice was getting harder to hear as the Cloudbuster moved out of range. He probably couldn’t spare the fuel to circle, for which she was grateful.

His voice turned triumphant with a vicious edge. "I’ll take the title, your life, and ruin the Hackwrench name. Knowing that, despair and die. I’d say farewell, but I wouldn’t mean it, so instead, burn in eternal torment like your father!" The static came back on.

Gadget still hadn’t figured out a way to pull out of her death dive. Her only course of survival was the desperate expedient of scrambling up to the back of the plane and jumping out the cargo door, relying on her ever present parachute. But her calculations gave that plan only a 12 percent chance of success.

Suddenly Chip’s voice was in her headphones. "Stay on your course and get ready to go to full thrust! You’ll know when!" She looked around and saw the Rangerwing in a power-dive heading right towards her. Her first instinct was to change course, but she trusted Chip.

Chip had ducked into the cloud patch just below his plane almost as soon as the missiles hit. He heard the entire exchange, and burned with anger at Mouseworthy’s words. But he had to stay silent or the malicious mouse would know there was a witness. His DF gear was still locating the Eagle, and he knew he had to get to it, so he rammed the yoke forward and pushed up the thrust into a full power dive. But what to do? Suddenly he had a crazy idea, but the more he thought about it, the more he was sure it was the only way.

There was an excellent chance that even if it succeeded, he was likely to smear the Rangerwing and himself over the atoll like strawberry jelly. ‘Better me than her.’ he thought, as he cleared the base of the cloud and spotted the Screaming Eagle. It was only a few hundred feet away from the coral, and dropping like a stone. He adjusted his course to collision, and kicked in every last ounce of thrust in his jet engine. "I hope this works…"

<Station break – Apparently you can have a cliffhanger without a cliff.>

The Screaming Eagle and the Rangerwing were diving towards an impact, their jet trails making the two arms of a V. They collided, the nose-cone of the Screaming Eagle impacting on the Rangerwing’s canopy, which bowed inwards. But the Rangerwing was moving at high speed and dragged the nosecone, and the rest of the plane as it went past. The Screaming Eagle flipped like a flapjack, turning end for end. Of course as soon as she saw clear sky, Gadget did as Chip had suggested, ramming the remaining three engines up to maximum thrust.

The Screaming Eagle hovered tail first for a fraction of a second, then shot back up into the sky like a rocket. In this case Gadget could compensate for the lack of one port engine with control of the undamaged starboard wing, but it turned out to be unnecessary. The jolt had shaken loose the fragment jamming the port actuator ring, and she had control of the port wing again.

She quickly leveled off the aircraft, and made a tight, side-slipping turn to view the direction the Rangerwing had gone. She quickly spotted the horrifying sight of a huge dense cloud of debris and spray below, stretched out on the very edge between the bare rock and sand of the atoll, and the water. "CHIP!" The word was almost a scream.

Then the Rangerwing burst out of the far side of the debris cloud, jet on full, control surfaces set for maximum positive pitch, and even the fan motors blasting downwards. Doing all that had cast up the sand and spray.

Chip’s voice was a welcome relief in her headphones. "I’m fine Gadget! Are you okay?"

"I’ve got control again, but one engine is wrecked. That was an amazing piece of trajectory calculation!"

"Uhhh… yeah. I’m just glad you’re safe." In the Rangerwing, Chip was carefully avoiding telling her it had been done by the seat of his pants, and that he was quite a bit more than just glad.

"Me too… I mean I’m glad you’re safe, not that I’m not glad I’m safe, because I am, but that particular one was meant to refer to you as the object of gladness and myself as the one feeling glad…" She looked over the displays and indicators, and a new feeling of unhappiness, far milder, went through her. "But that cheat Mouseworthy still managed a partial success, I can’t beat him on three engines with the Eagle in it’s current state, and the other engine’s thoroughly wrecked. Even I can’t fix it fast enough to make up the time. Not to mention I’ve got to land and fix the other damage. He actually scored a victory, sort of."

"He won’t enjoy his victory for long, I’ll make sure of that… Would it take to long to simply replace the engine?"

Gadget sighed. "No, that’d just take a few minutes, if you know where I can find a spare engine closer then the hangar at home."

Chip’s voice was bemused. "Well… I’m sitting on one I can do without. After all the Rangerwing was the test-bed for the Eagle’s engines, and it can fly perfectly well on fans alone." He paused as there was silence in his earphone. "Sorry, you must have thought of some reason why it wouldn’t work."

"Golly, no, it will! Rendezvous back on the atoll! Why didn’t I think of that?"

"I’m sure you would’ve. But you’ve had a stressful day. Besides, you think in engineering terms, how to fix things. I’m a detective, so I just see what’s there."

The Screaming Eagle was quite capable of VTOL even on three engines in it’s current, unloaded state. The Rangerwing dropped down beside it, and the mouse and the chipmunk got to work. The Screaming Eagle’s port engines were rotated to horizontal, the damaged one lowest. Using the Rangerwing as a tractor, and a seashell as a shovel blade, they built up a ramp of sand to the damaged engine. It de-mounted easily and a quick check showed the fittings and actuators had survived. Fortunately the mounting on the Rangerwing was also designed for quickly de-mounting and remounting an engine, but it took them both to roll the soda can engine in to replace the wrecked one.

Finally Gadget sat in the cockpit of the Eagle and spun up the new engine. In all that time they’d had neither time or breath to exchange words beyond instructions. In a way she was glad, she had things she must keep to herself for now. She wished she’d had chance to discuss Chip’s investigation, from the way he’d been acting it was clear he’d had good results. But she had time now, they could talk by radio until she was out of range. She sidestepped clear of the ramp on the Screaming Eagle’s stork legs, and dusted off vertically.

Chip waved goodbye from where he stood by the Rangerwing, as he watched the Screaming Eagle lift off. He was staying behind to cover the wrecked engine, and mark it’s location, so they could come back for it as evidence, and to repair it later. He jumped up to the cockpit and tried to contact her on the radio, but it wasn’t working. Obviously some wire had gotten dislodged when they’d been doing the move. Oh well, what he had to say would wait till the finishing line, and he needed to move as fast as possible. There was no way the Rangerwing would get there in time to see her win, but he’d be there for her victory speech. He couldn’t wait to confront Mouseworthy and deal with him once and for all.

&&&

Gadget had lied to Chip, because her figures didn’t. Even with the best speed she could make, the Screaming Eagle could not quite catch up with the Cloudbuster before the finish line, even taking into account the Cloudbuster’s last fuelling stop. It would be a close run thing, but she would loose by about a minute. However there was a way to trim that minute. The last checkpoint was on the far side of a long dormant volcanic island, worn down to a basaltic plug and now a jagged profusion of ridiculous pointy basalt spikes and fractured mesas that nature had poked out of a clear blue sea. The suggested route took a long curve around the jagged peaks, and Mouseworthy in his un-manoeuvrable Cloudbuster would almost have to take it. Going over would delay things almost as much.

There was a faster route, plunging straight through the thick of the spires, and taking under a minute, but it was dangerous. Such formations tended to make their own weather, with mists and dangerous gusts that could grab an unwary flyer and smash them into an unyielding basalt wall. However with the Screaming Eagle’s maneuverability and her own piloting skills there was a 78 percent chance she could successfully gain the needed time. There was also a 6 percent chance she would plaster the plane on the rocks, which was why she’d said as little as she had to Chip. He was, after all, the detective, and might have picked up that her worry was more than just that of losing.

The island grew before her as she raced across the sky. Deft paw movements on the Eagle’s control panel swung back the wings, and threw up magnified views on the monitor screens, as well as sonar proximity sensor outputs to her stereo headset. She scrutinised the mass ahead of her, looking for ways in. It was merely the result of the release of plate tectonic forces and millions of years of weathering by sea and wind. Any feeling that it loomed, and that it’s massive brooding presence was calling a threat and a challenge to her, were simply artifacts of hysteria brought on by the stress of competition. She eyeballed a way in and guided the plane towards it, plunging into a shadowed crevice.

She wove her way through the dim half-light, almost unrelieved by the super-bright white LEDs of her landing lights. Spikes, towers and fantastic bridges of fallen basalt loomed out of the dimness and mists. Without the enhanced views from her monitors and the ever changing hum of the sonar she would have smashed up a dozen times. As it was she veered, dived under bridges, barrel rolled to slide sideways through cracks and generally performed enough stunts for half a dozen Dirk Suave films, processing the incoming data and translating it into movement without conscious thought. Cross winds snatched at her, but she compensated even as she felt them. Her confidence grew as the flight continued, these were no worse than the junkyard canyons back home.

Then mists formed up in front of her, reducing visibility and her newly found confidence in equal measure. Her left headphone screamed as jagged spike loomed out of the mist and nearly opened up the scarred port side like a filleting knife. She spun away to starboard, heart pounding, breath gasping, and various other physiological signs of great stress doing their thing. There was no help for it. She would have to slow up and laboriously climb above the mist and narrow gaps or she would never leave them. ‘I’m sorry, daddy…’ she thought. ‘You could have done it

Just as she reached to feather the wings, she saw something she couldn’t quite believe. Ahead of her, in the mists was the vague silhouette of another plane, matching her pace, it’s running lights curiously luminous in the way that fog shrouded lights often were. It veered to one side, just before her sonar told her to do the same. It was as if the pilot was a bat, or telepathic. Her concentration was fully on flying, she had no spare attention for radioing, but she started following it’s path, certain for some reason it was guiding her. A pilots flying style was distinctive as a fingerprint and she knew this one, though she couldn’t match it to a name. Still, she started to pick her way through the murk more surely, following the guiding stars of the other vehicles navigation lights.

After a brief eternity of follow the leader, the obstacles were no longer so close packed. She was through! Suddenly the mist started to thin, and the outline of the other plane grew more distinct as it drifted back and to one side until it was almost level. It had the look of an Ultraflight labs cargo craft, monoplane, twin spars reaching back from the wings to a wide tail-plane… two in-line engines? She imagined she heard, ‘Don’t hit the silk till your fuel’s all gone. Go get ‘em, Bluebird.’ It was like one of those voices you heard when you were just dozing off to sleep, something that appeared in your mind without the ears being a part of the process. The phrase was her father’s favourite expression for not giving up, and the name his pet name for her. She was still looking at it as they shot out of the canyon and the mists, and the other plane vanished like a shadow on a cloud when a plane flies over it into clear air.

Her logical mind immediately constructed a rational explanation, with the sort of speed that would put her best inventing frenzies to shame. Under the stress of the situation and the hypnotic effect of flying through fog, her mind had constructed a hallucination, giving her the confidence to fly blind using only the sonar data and her intuition. Since her mind had been on her father, he’d formed the core of it. She blinked, wiped the tears from her face with the cuff of a jump-suit sleeve, and told her logical mind to go to heck in a hand basket.

She dropped down to over-fly the checkpoint and through the hoop that marked it, noting with happiness that the Cloudbuster was sitting there, just starting to be refueled, as expected. While she was normally not one to enjoy the misfortunes of others, it did give her a little warm glow to see the way Mouseworthy jumped up from the deckchair his crew had laid out, spilling his drink and causing the chair to fold up on him.

She rejected the idea of wing waggling, or pulling a stunt, and devoted her efforts to getting every last drop of performance and speed out of the Screaming Eagle. Under her knowing touch, the engines went to 120% thrust, 130%… and the ground speed indicator crept up to an incredible 270 miles per hour. One monitor showed engine data, which boiled down to ‘she canna take much more o’ this captain!’, the other the view from the tail camera. Less than 20 minutes after passing the checkpoint, Tomodachi island came into view. She was over the coastline and headed for the two balloons that marked the finish line, when a black speck appeared on her rear view monitor.

It resolved into the white arrowhead of the Cloudbuster with frightening suddenness. However Gadget wasn’t worried. This time the sky thronged with spectators, he couldn’t try anything else, and if he did, she was ready. She raced for the line, closer, closer, and just as she flew out over the base the white shape overtook her and shot between the balloons a fraction of a second before she did. She followed after him, her body on automatic pilot. To have come so close, only to loose out at the last second… She couldn’t cry, she wouldn’t. An insistent electronic beeping told her that her tanks were close to empty, but she ignored them.

She circled, glancing down at the runway as the Cloudbuster landed. If she was low on fuel, he had to be completely dry, and besides it was the prerogative of the winner to land first. She expected a rush onto runway, but it didn’t seem to be happening. Instead the crowd’s faces were upturned towards her. A bird marshal swooped down beside him and unmistakably motioned the Cloudbuster to clear the runway. This was odd. She glanced at the big screen in the plaza which was showing a leader board…

1) Screaming Eagle II, Pilot: Gadget Hackwrench, Aggregate time: 4 hours 51 minutes 13.45 seconds

2) Cloudbuster Mk 13, Pilot: Lord Reginald Mouseworthy, Aggregate time: 4 hours 52 minutes 51.87 seconds

Aggregate time, that was it! He’d been before her in the runway queue in the starting line-up and had gotten a head start. So that meant she’d won! Everybody’s efforts had been worth it. With a heart so light it was nearly able to support the plane in the air by itself, she went in for a VTOL landing on the runway nearest to the plaza. It cost more fuel, but everyone deserved a show.

Oddly enough, Gadget had never seen the pictures of Lindburgh being mobbed when he landed in Paris, or she would have been struck by the resemblance. She was met by a cheering mob, and carried shoulder high to the plaza. It was the tradition for the winner to get presented on stage as the winner, so that everyone could congratulate them. Once she got there, she was met by a couple of the volunteer security people and escorted into the rooms behind the stage. Someone had put a comfy chair in there and she slumped into it with relief.

One of the security people was a heavily built mouse with grease stained paws, obviously a mechanic normally. He turned to face her as they left. "Sorry about this Miss Hackwrench, but they need to get things ready up on stage. Someone will come for you when the presentation is ready to begin. Until then, if you could stay here it would help."

"Of course, if it’ll help. But where are the rest of the Rangers, my friends?"

"I’m not sure miss. I’m sure they’re being taken care of.."

Maybe she was jumping at shadows, but there was something about the way he said that which seemed off. Still she decided to sit tight and was rewarded after a few minutes with Chip coming in the door.

"Golly, Chip! You’re back already?" Gadget was slightly surprised, but mostly pleased.

The chipmunk nodded. "Couldn’t wait to get back, Gadget, oh, while you are up on the stage, don’t mention anything Mouseworthy’s done, no matter what happens. The whole thing’s tied up with propriety, and we don’t want to offend any of the committee by doing things the wrong way."

Gadget felt slightly puzzled. The first thing she’d expected Chip to do was congratulate her, but he seemed to be slightly distant, somehow, off. "Are you alright?"

The chipmunk looked nervous for a second, then said, "Just worried. Everything’s gotten very complicated. I… have to go!" He ducked out the door.

Gadget almost followed him, but she decided to sit tight. What had happened that had Chip so worried? If it were something she could help with, he’d have said to come with him. Since it wasn’t, she was better staying out of the way. She would have thought Chip could get the others in to see her, but apparently not.

It only took a few more minutes of waiting, then she was escorted up on stage. A number of notables from the WAAT committee were there to congratulate her on her achievement. She remembered a couple of them from the previous trials, when they’d done something similar for her father, and Tamaburo, the shape-shifting tanuki was among them. He had a slightly worried look, much like Chip’s… Of course, Chip had gone to him about Mouseworthy’s cheating ways. Kimiko might be a full time member of the WAAT staff, but Tamaburo was the membership section chief.

An image of the centre stage was being displayed on the big screen behind them as the Master of Ceremonies, stepped up to desktop microphone that was acting as a stage mike. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to congratulate the winner of the WAAT unlimited air race. The course this year was particularly tough, and yet it was completed in the fastest time ever recorded. Not only that, but it was done without refueling, as confirmed by our monitors at each nights stop. So let me introduce to you all, Miss Gadget Hackwrench, and her vehicle, the Screaming Eagle II, an exceptional pilot and an exceptional plane."

Gadget stepped up onto the broad stage, feeling very much the centre of attention, and more than slightly nervous. She looked out over the crowd and still couldn’t see the other Rescue Rangers, especially Chip. She noted that the screen was now split, the top half showing the Screaming Eagle making it’s over-flight of the airfield prior to landing, the bottom half tracking her across the stage. She glanced in that direction and saw a mobile camera phone on a turntable, being handled like a movie camera.

The chairman of this WAAT committee, Professor Saotome, was a respected rat engineering professor from Todai University in Tokyo, a regular contributor to Scientific Rodentia, and inventor of some groundbreaking computer modeling techniques for small animal aircraft. He shook paws with her, rather than bowing, congratulating her on winning both the Unlimited Air Race gold medal, and an Albatross award, a small trophy surmounted by a golden albatross, wings spread wide.

Gadget bowed politely, since he’d made the effort to use the unfamiliar custom, she should too. Then the chairman moved the boom of the mike down to her head level, and indicated she should make a speech. She blushed and paused for a moment, trying to think of what to say. For all her months of effort, and determination to win, she hadn’t really considered a victory speech.

"Golly, I really don’t know what to say. I didn’t really do it to show off or anything, it was just something I had to do. My father, Geegaw Hackwrench, won this honour before me, and I wanted to fulfil his promise to do it a third time…"

"And to do that, you were willing to cheat, sabotage and murder anyone you saw as a threat to your ambition." Reginald Mouseworthy revealed himself as he stormed out from the other wing of the stage, and his penetrating voice with it’s impeccable accent rung out over the hushed crowd, not that it was hushed very long, there were a number of jeers and boos at his claim.

Some of the WAAT officials were among those looking with annoyed at this blatant grandstanding, and were obviously looking around for security. Gadget herself was just too stunned by the effrontery of the guy to accuse her of the sort of things he was responsible for to form a coherent response.

"Hear me out!" the British mouse yelled as a couple of the officials, including Tamaburo moved to intercept him. "I have proof! I was going to bring it to the attention of the WAAT judges quietly, but I just couldn’t contain myself when I saw her up here, acting all humble." The last was amplified as he reached the centre stage and the mike.

"Why you… this is ridiculous!" she finally managed to stutter out.

"Indeed." said Tamaburo, frowning. "You had better have excellent proof of these incredible accusations."

"Oh, I do!" Mouseworthy said with an evil glare. "Not only did she make an attempt to sabotage my own plane, but she also wrecked the Golden Carp airship. She didn’t even want to risk someone getting an Albatross award besides her, such was her obsession with winning at all costs."

Gadget looked mad. "You’re not one to be making accusations…" she started, but Mouseworthy shouted her down.

"Deny that you tampered with the buoyancy tanks while you were ‘adjusting’ the balance sensor! It would be easy enough for you to rig some damage that would cause holes once it was in flight and under extra pressure."

Gadget fumed. She dearly wanted to tell everyone that it was him, and that Chip had proof, but without Chip, or the proof she’d sound like she was just going tit for tat. Besides Tamaburo hadn’t mentioned anything of what he must know, acting as if the accusations were new to him. That must be it, a sting to get Mouseworthy to make a mistake. Chip must have found out about this ploy. But how had Mouseworthy gotten past the guards in the first place?

For now she could only make denials. "I did not! Well I did adjust the balance sensor, because it needed calibrating to compensate for the resonance build up from the tail-fin. I’m good friends with the Nekomi Tech team, and the Rescue Rangers saved them."

Mouseworthy sneered. "Ha! And isn’t that convenient? Your plane, and your inventions just happen to be in position for a daring rescue that makes you and your little friends look all heroic, and you didn’t even have to loose a mile of headway. Plus, they still needed to re-pressurise so they lost their non-stop record. You got what you wanted."

There was murmuring from the crowd, not all of them hostile to Mouseworthy.

Tamaburo was about to step forward and carry the ranting mouse offstage bodily, and he wasn’t the only one. "You spoke of evidence, show it or leave!"

Mouseworthy nodded, and pulled two things out of his jacket. Trapped between two pieces of tape were several strands of golden hair, and another tape baggie covered a wrench engraved with ‘GH’.

"Golly, my favourite wrench, you give that…" She suddenly realised what this might sound like and stuttered to a halt, unintentionally making it sound worse.

"Nice of you to admit it," grinned Mouseworthy, nastily. "Last night I was woken by a slight noise coming from where my plane was parked. I stepped out and saw a shadowy figure reaching inside the access panel to the engine compartment. Hoping to take the saboteur by surprise, I sneaked up, but unfortunately stepped on a twig. The figure started, and pulled out of the hatch, slamming it shut. I tried to grab them and they stumbled, and something clattered, but they managed to give me a good kick in the stomach. I still have the bruises. They got away while I was still gasping, and by then it was no use calling for the rest of my ground crew.

Gadget was way into the orange zone by now. He was reversing things, the slimy stinker! She hoped Chip would make his move soon.

"I checked carefully and found some of these hairs trapped in the hatch. Obviously the culprit caught their hair when slamming it. Further investigation showed the fuel line connectors had been loosened. An ordinary inspection would have missed it, but I was very careful. If I’d accelerated to full power, the hoses would have come free and sprayed fuel all over the engine compartment. I’d have been blown out of the sky. I policed the entire area, and found this wrench. Obviously she used it to do the deed, and dropped it when I caught her. She didn’t dare try and retrieve it, and must have hoped it had fallen somewhere inconspicuous.

"Everyone knows I was her main opponent, and clearly she couldn’t bear the risk that I might beat her and spoil her precious little obsession. But she knew how to fix that, and she almost did."

Tamaburo turned to Gadget. "These are very serious accusations, Miss Gadgeto Hackwrenchu. They will have to be investigated most carefully."

Gadget started to say something, but couldn’t get the words out. Tamaburo siding with Mouseworthy? Where was Chip? What if people actually believed these lies? If she told her story about being shot down, would they believe her, given the way things looked? The stress of her flight and everything since was hitting her. There were even a couple of shouts from the crowd of. "He’s right!" "She’s guilty!" She suddenly felt very alone.

<Station Break – And things look bad for our heroine….>

Chip had arrived about half an hour after Gadget, and one of the first things he did as he over-flew the area was glance at the board. Yes! Gadget had won, but it had been a darned close run thing. Then a sparrow marshal flew up and insistently guided him into a landing path. With the radio still out of whack he couldn’t call the tower, but they had procedures for the planes that didn’t. He was waved off the runway and moved into the Ranger’s slot, to be met by Tamaburo, flanked by a couple of WAAT security volunteers.

Chip bounded down from the cockpit, saying "Konnichiwa, Tamaburo-san! Where are the others?" He expected them to have been back at camp, unless they’d already gone off to greet Gadget."

"They are helping me with this nasty business. There is something over at the Mouseworthy camp you must see!"

Chip’s good humour evaporated. "Is Gadget alright?", he asked sharply. Tamaburo was definitely worried.

Tamaburo nodded. "She is safely at the main stage, waiting for her appearance."

Chip sighed with relief. "That slime-ball Mouseworthy! He tried to shoot Gadget down! I…"

Tamaburo motioned. "You have to come at once! There is no time for talk!"

Chip wasn’t about to antagonise his local liaison, so he obeyed. Tamaburo was quietly evasive on their way there, but his concern had clearly been genuine. Chip was worried Mouseworthy had some other trick up his sleeve. At the camp there were a dozen guys standing around wearing WAT security badges, but no obvious crime scene.

"Your friends are in the tent." Tamaburo stated didactically. As Chip stepped up, he took a blow to the back of the head.

When he came to, he was tied up, looking into the grinning face of one of the guards. He yelled, "Hey! Whattcha do that for?"

The big mouse just gave a nasty grin. "’Cause I could." He said in English-accented mousese. Chip looked back and forth. The other Rangers were all in there, everyone tired up except for Zipper, who was caged, and suddenly the remaining pieces fell into place.

Tamaburo walked in looking unhappy. "You!" Chip snarled, trying to surge forward.

"Naow, none o’ that, treecrawler." said the guard, cuffing him back into a sitting position.

Chip ignored him, staring at Tamaburo. "The mysterious squirrel, the person who planted the party idea, they were all you, transformed. Why couldn’t I see it! You’ve been working for Mouseworthy from day one! No wonder he figured he could get away with anything. And the security, Mouseworthy’s goons… what did you do to Gadget!"

Tamaburo shook his head. "She is safe, as I said. I have no wish for anyone to get hurt, but Mouseworthy-san required that I keep you from interfering. Of course, if you do anything rash, such as escape, I can not guarantee her safety. I am truly sorry" He appeared to mean it.

"You….", Chip bit off the anger he was about to let go and simply glowered. "I should have asked myself why the membership secretary of the entire convention was there to meet us personally on his busiest day!"

Tamaburo pulled a leaf from his jacket and placed it on his head. With a puff of smoke he transformed into the spitting image of Chip. Then he simply turned and left.

Chip looked around. Foxy and Dale were tied up side by side, as were Monty and surprisingly Kimiko, who was back in her glasses and padding. Zipper was trapped in a thimble cage, only recognisable by his buzz of anger.

"You said it pally." Monty agreed. "Chippah, what happened with Gadget?"

"Mouseworthy tried to use his ‘booster rockets’ to shoot her down, but we fixed it. You’ll be glad to know she won, despite everything." Chip was annoyed too, but mainly at himself. But there was no time for that. "How did that rat in mouse’s clothing get you guys?"

Dale answered first. "Well, he told us that he’d found something important here, and needed us as witnesses… When we got here the goons jumped us. Sorry, Chip."

"Not your fault, he suckered me with the same trick. You too Monty?"

"No, Chip-lad, me and Zipper had finished what you were askin’ about, and went to see Kimiko was recovering, and she had some drinks ready… but it weren’t Kimiko."

The Japanese mouse nodded. "Indeed. From what we’ve been able to piece together, it was Tamaburo. Monty, or rather Tamaburo came to my place with drinks, but they had some drug in. I foolishly let my guard down. After I was knocked out, he must have taken my place."

"The bowlegged badger must have figured that having his goons jump me and Zippah were too risky."

Chip nodded. "Shows they’re not complete idiots. Mouseworthy must have been refueling when Gadget passed the last checkpoint and radioed on ahead. Now Tamaburo’s probably off to see Gadget right now and feed her some line, that’s why he looks like me. Well we can’t escape right away…"

Dale interrupted. "Aw darn, it, we can’t escape at all! You heard, they’ve got Gadget!"

Chip spoke more quietly. "Foxglove, are there any guards nearby, able to listen in?"

Foxglove’s expression grew distant for a moment, then returned to a smile as she said, "They’re way over by the main tent, though they’ve got this place in view."

"Keep listening and warn us.", he looked round. "I said right away. Once she’s up on stage, she’s safe. Mouseworthy won’t have a chance to try any rough stuff, ‘cause if he does, the entire convention is there to lynch him. Besides Mouseworthy is a grandstander. You can bet whatever he’s got planned is going to be spectacular, and that takes time. And he does have something planned, or why keep her occupied with a fake me?"

The others looked relieved, and Chip hoped he was right. "We have to wait until we hear the presentation starting over the loudspeakers. Foxglove, if you would?" He twisted his paw behind his back to reach into his jacket sleeve and pull out a piece of craft knife, bound by insulating tape along the back. He noticed Foxglove’s expression, which was distressed. "What’s wrong?"

Foxglove replied. "I was listening to the guards. According to them, we’re all going to have an accident when we desert Gadget. The Rangerwing, I think, will blow up with us in it. Then she’ll be left without anyone to protect her. He’s planning to blame the sabotage on her."

"And with Tamaburo, and the guards in his pocket, he’ll be able to back up just about anything. Ruthless people, his goons," Chip said, standing up. "but better mechanics then henchmen. They didn’t even check my jacket." He moved around, freeing the others. "I don’t get how Mouseworthy managed to get all his goons as security volunteers, or why."

Kimiko spoke. "I think I know, how at least. Just before I went to meet Monty that first time, Tamaburo came up to me with a number of roster changes, despite the fact everyone in the membership section knew I wanted to leave quickly that night. It was in character for me to gossip." she amplified. "I did not check back against the files, just changed the schedules because I had to hurry. He must have counted on that. Otherwise I would have found they were all registered as Mouseworthy’s air crew, and queried it."

"Aw, Kimi-chan, you couldn’t ‘ave known."

Chip moved over to the tent entrance and used the mirror surface of that same piece of craft knife to scan the area outside without exposing himself. "First day… that makes sense. Everything busy, and they found out the size of our team. Still there… No! They’re coming over…"

At almost the same time Foxglove said, "Music’s starting over at the Plaza." The others, forewarned, could just hear the faint sound.

Chip moved back to where he’d been tied up and sat down, hands behind his back. "Dale? Dueling Banjos to make ‘em rush in?"

Dale grinned, "Gotcha Chip," he raised his voice, "You overblown dictator!"

"It’s not like you did any better, walnut head!" called back Chip. "You should have spotted they were fakes!"

"The only fake around here is you!"

"Oh, yeah?…" About half a dozen guards raced in, lead by the guy who’d hit Chip earlier.

He raised a heavy metal spanner, obviously from a Mecanno construction kit. "’ere now, don’t get fresh, or I’ll give ya a couple of taps with this!" He surged towards Chip and dragged him to his feet by the collar, the other guards focussing on him for a crucial second. The other Rangers, and the mouse ninja, didn’t need a diagram drawn for them.

Zipper was still under the thimble, though it had been freed, and simply flew up, carrying it over his head. He then dropped it on the head of the nearest guard like an over large dunce cap and rammed it down, whacking it repeatedly with a wing-nut he’d found like a demented fire bell. The thug staggered and collapsed.

Chip let the guy haul him up, putting him face to face with the bigger mouse. This was bad… for the goon, because Chip could then swing his paw over and throw a handful of dirt from the tent floor into the guy’s face. The other paw straight armed out into the crook of the elbow of the arm holding the spanner, keeping it from being swung. As the guy spluttered and tried to rub his eyes, Chip was let go and followed it up with a leg between the goon’s ankles. He hooked a foot behind the guy’s leg and pushed. The other went over backwards, the spanner flying back over the guys shoulder and bonking another guard, right behind him, on the head. Chip rode the first one down, then made sure the bonked one joined his compatriot in unconsciousness.

Monty simply charged over to two mice, reached out, and knocked their heads together in a straightforward, easy going manner. Kimiko showed rather more finesse. When the last unengaged goon went for the soft target, she left him get as far as grabbing her lapel, then wrapped her paws around his and _twisted_. He winced as the plump little librarian half his size spun him into an Aikido hold, then used the stretched out arm to hurl him onto the pile Monty had created. When he started to move, she spun and her bow tipped tail flicked out like a striking snake, poking him in a specific spot under the shoulder blade. He slumped.

Monty’s eyebrows were raised. "Tooraloo! The Tamaguchi Tail Strike. I heard of it, of course, but I never thought I’d see it with me own eyes."

Kimiko practically glowed with pleasure. "It is not easy to do. The tail must be tough, yet supple…"

"There are more guards coming!" Foxglove called out. Dale bounded forward, jumping over and sometimes on the bodies of the disabled guards, and called out. "Foxy! Let’s try ‘Sonic the chipmunk!’"

Foxglove landed beside him. "Gotcha cutie!" Dale crouched, grabbing his own feet and balled himself up, then Foxy effortlessly scooped him up in a wing, assuming a pitching stance as she poked her nose out of the tent. Echolocation pinged off the approaching guards, and she hurtled the ballistic chipmunk in a half bowling, half baseball throw, rolling forward at lightning speed. The approaching goons would have gone down like nine-pins, except there were only six of them.

Although they were down, they weren’t necessarily out. One, a rat in cut down overalls, hauled himself up and loomed over the uncurling Dale. Of course this meant he’d turned his back on the tent, which proved to be unwise. Foxglove laid into the back of his head with a flying Bicycle kick that would have Liu Kang phoning his copyright lawyers. Dale stepped to one side as Br’er Rat did the collapsing thing again. He was getting good at it, because this time he didn’t get up.

Foxglove landed and checked behind her, where the other Rangers were securing the goons who hadn’t gotten up.

"Wowie, zowie! Nice one, Foxy!" exclaimed Dale, chuckling.

She cradled the tip of her chin with a wingtip. "Hmmm… maybe we should call that one ‘Crouching Dale, Hidden Foxglove’."

"Or how about the bowled and the beautiful!" That got him a hug.

Meanwhile Chip had already told off Monty to go find some transport. Now he called over from where he was binding one of the mechanics with cable ties from inside his jacket. "Where did you learn that?"

Dale replied. "They were having a Classics day over at the arcade and I figured, why should some hedgehog have all the fun?"

"Well we better get going. We can’t use the Rangerwing incase they already trapped it, and we don’t have time to check." He said as he worked, "You know, technically we’re in the wrong. They are supposed to be WAAT security."

Kimiko spoke as she plucked the badges form their overalls. "Easily fixed. I am part of the full time staff, and I say they’ve abused their powers." She fanned out badges for them to take.

Monty had scouted out a converted RC pickup truck that was obviously used for towing the Cloudbuster. "C’mon mates, we ‘ave to get to the plaza fast!" Zipper bugled a charge.

Chip bounded up onto the back of the pick up, "We need to get Dale and Foxy to the projector, and me to the stage."

"You gotta plan, Chippah?"

Chip nodded. "You bet!" As they moved off, Chip took off his hat with one paw, and dropped the contents, a flash memory card, into Foxglove’s lap. "Get to the projector computer and get ready to show these, you’ll know when."

They could hear Gadget’s speech start as they came close, and circled around the back to avoid the crowd. They saw three people in Mouseworthy’s livery and with WAAT security badges guarding the door. Obviously they’d not had time to change into more inconspicuous clothing, and it indicated, to Chip at least, that the amateur villain was getting desperate.

Getting past them was easy enough. Chip had Monty swing round and drive by while Dale squirted them with the sachet of ketchup that he always carried for Foxglove, who wasn’t exactly happy about it.

"No… not my last packet of Heinz!"

The Rangers in the back of the pick-up leapt on the disoriented guards and quickly started binding them, just as Mouseworthy’s voice started over the speaker.

Chip raced ahead then paused at the door into the backstage, wanting to go help Gadget, but not wanting to leave the others.

Dale waved him on. "Go! We’ll ketchup!"

That reassured him. As he turned to go he called back, "I’ll deal with the trouble at the sauce!"

&&&

Just as it seemed to Gadget that the whole world had turned against her, there was a voice from above, drowning out Mouseworthy and Tamaburo, and the rising hubbub of the crowd. "Well done, Mouseworthy, it sounds like you believe your own lies."

The voice was Chip’s and came from the speakers either side of the projector screen, but he wasn’t at the main mike on stage. Suddenly he appeared from behind the announcers booth, off to one side of the stage, and bounded down.

His first stop was Gadget, and he barely paused, turning away from Mouseworthy and the audience equally, saying in a low voice. "Sorry I wasn’t here earlier, there were complications." He really did look downcast, and Gadget couldn’t find the heart to reproach him.

He turned to face the committee while Mouseworthy spluttered in indignation. "Get off this stage! Don’t try to defend that blonde murderess unless you want to implicate yourself too."

Chip ignored him, focussing on Professor Saotome. "I apologise for interrupting, but since that guy decided to turn this affair into an open mike evening, I felt I might have a few words to contribute. With your permission, of course."

Tamaburo, who had gone white and shocked at the appearance of Chip, started to fade off into the background.

"And I’m sure Tamaburo-san will be glad to stay for the investigation he’s just been urging."

Professor Saotome clearly favoured the polite chipmunk over the ranting mouse. "Indeed. I would be most interested to hear what you have to say."

Ignoring Mouseworthy’s yell of, "Listen to me!", Chip continued, "Did you know for instance, that all the members of his extensive ground crew are currently acting as security, at the same time? Looks like our friend wanted a clear shot at his little diatribe."

A couple of people in the audience were heckling Chip, but he just said, "And stooges in the crowd to lead the mood, he really didn’t leave anything to chance..."

"But too many of one team being marshals or security at the same time is not allowed, to avoid favouritism!" exclaimed Saotome. "I notice you have a security badge too." His tone clearly required an explanation.

Chip nodded. "Kimiko Kossori, one of the WAAT secretaries discovered that they were following Mouseworthy’s orders rather than the committee’s, and stripped them of their badges. She deputised myself and the other Rangers in the hope we would do a better job."

"Hmmm… Tamaburo, as membership secretary, what do you have to say?"

Tamaburo spluttered. "I’m sure this is all just a misunderstanding…"

Mouseworthy started to stamp over, and Chip turned. "Oh stop it! Your tantrum is impressing no-one. I can prove you are putting the frame on Gadget."

Mouseworthy stopped, uncertain for a second then went into full sneer mode. "Ludicrous! I have evidence…"

Chip smirked. "Yeah, lets start with that. The hair for example. Oh, I don’t deny it’s probably Gadget’s, but if it was caught in your engine hatch, the tips would be covered in grease and stuff, and the bases will show a ragged tear under a microscope. Of course if it came from somewhere else, say the hairbrush that of Gadget’s that went missing a couple of days ago, the roots will show a neater shear plane."

Mouseworthy’s façade flickered for a moment, showing Chip he’d struck gold. "And isn’t it so convenient that she left such an _identifiable_ wrench behind, which is kinda odd in itself. I’ve helped Gadget with her jet engines often enough and I don’t remember her using a wrench on the fuel hose fittings. Gadget?"

Gadget was looking a lot happier now that Chip was fighting her side. She realised what he wanted, and that she might have something of her own to contribute. "Well, of course not. A normal wrench might jam them. It would be hard to use in a confined space… you did say the intruder was well inside the access hatch." She smiled brightly. "It sounds like a Muckleman wrench, or a right angled adjustable spanner would be right for the job."

Chip nodded. "I’m sure you have them. Where did you see that wrench last?"

"Well, I was making some adjustments to the landing gear on the Eagle after the time trials, and then that group wanted to talk about left handed framwinkles, and then there was the business with Monty and the cream cheese. When I couldn’t find it in my usual toolkit, I assumed you’d borrowed it for that adjustment on the Wing, but I just lost track and forgot to ask. It has been rather hectic, after all."

"The price of popularity. The ‘noble lord’ over here had them removed and made up a story to fit."

Monterey Jack had appeared from the wings, Zipper on his shoulder like an avant-garde parrot. He stood at one end of the stage in an attitude of loom, arms crossed in a manner which indicated if he had to uncross them it would be an unhappy time for the English mouse. Dale had simultaneously popped out of the other wing, and gave a silent thumbs up to Chip, polishing his WAAT security badge with the back of his other paw.

Mouseworthy looked ready to chew nails, nine inch ones to be precise, and exclaimed to Chip, "How dare you!"

"Quite easily." grinned Chip. Mouseworthy was angry, and making mistakes, just as he’d hoped. He then turned to the group of WAAT officials. "Saotome-sensei, I am the leader of the Rescue Rangers, and I have been investigating the sabotage of the Golden Carp on behalf of the Nekomi Tech team, and against exactly the kind of allegation against Gadget. It turns out to be part of a larger plot by Mouseworthy. But our team is at your command. We’ve accepted WAAT security badges, and we will follow your orders. However, you have heard Mouseworthy. May I be permitted to respond?"

Professor Saotome looked around, getting positive reactions from the other members, except Tamaburo who was frozen. "Continue. This sounds… intriguing." When Mouseworthy growled, he simply turned and said, "Silence! Or I will have you restrained!"

"Just say the word, Sensay, and I’ll tie the bloke up neater than a parcel at Christmas." Monty interjected.

Chip bowed again. "Thank you Sensei. The strange thing Mouseworthy’s story is sorta right, but inverted. Let’s start with the motive. Consider Gadget Hackwrench, acknowledged as one of the greatest engineers and inventors in the world. Firstly, her remarkable talent is outshone only by her honesty and generosity of spirit, as anyone who’s met her for more than five minutes can testify. It’s utterly out of character that she would act this way. Secondly, while I never met Geegaw Hackwrench, and feel the poorer for it, there are those in the audience who must have. I believe he was of the same character. Am I right?" This last was directed at the audience, and not a few people answered in the affirmative.

Gadget blushed at the praise, both for her and her father. But it seemed Chip had things well in paw.

"So her father would never condone cheating to win, and since she was doing it in her fathers honour… doesn’t make sense, does it? Finally, Gadget built a long haul transport as her race plane, rather than a dedicated racing vehicle. Many of you were at her lecture. Does anyone believe that if she’d put her mind to it, she couldn’t have built something that would make the Cloudbuster look like it was standing still? Isn’t that right Gadget?"

Gadget nodded, "Golly, yes. If I’d wanted to, I could have sacrificed VTOL capability and payload space in the Screaming Eagle for tankage and extra engines. The hull stands up to at least 550 miles per hour, 880 kph, we proved that when piggy backing to get here… act’ally, pigs were not involved, because they don’t fly except as metaphors for classical impossibilities, of course you could build a harness that would allow a pig to fly, maybe with a weather balloon dirigible… scratch that last part, it was rather off topic… Wellanyway, the hull was up to it and the extra engine power would have allowed me to do that unaided…. Fly at nearly the speed of sound, not allow pigs to fly, I mean."

Chip nodded. "So, why did you design it the way you did?"

"I wanted to win in the way my father would, in a cargo plane, the best I could build, something that we could use afterwards for Ranger work. Creating a racing plane just wouldn’t have felt right."

"Thank you Gadget." He turned back to the audience. Hardly ‘win at any cost’. Compare this with Lord Mouseworthy over there. He had been beaten twice by Gadget’s father, and to someone with his… personality it must have been intolerable. So he did build a plane just for this job, and added some very optional extras to ensure his win." He allowed himself a small glare at the British mouse, who returned it with interest.

"But let’s discuss the sabotage attempt he claims to have evidence for first. Oddly enough, something similar happened to us last night. I reported it to Tamaburo-san over there as soon as possible of course, but I’ll recap it here. By last night I had suspicions, but no proof that someone might try to sabotage Gadget, and was getting past the WAAT security patrols, so I instituted a system of watches. I can’t help think Mouseworthy must have been a light sleeper with exceptional hearing, to have heard a noise. We had something rather better, a loop induction sensor laid around our encampment.

"Early in the morning, about 2:30 am from the watch I consulted afterwards, it detected an intruder. I was on duty, so I crept under the plane to where I could observe them. They were barely visible with the overcast blocking the moon, but I could see something approaching. When it became clear it was approaching the root of the Screaming Eagle’s wing, I turned my torch on them. It was a mouse or rat, about Mouseworthy’s height, wearing a boxy helmet with lenses that must have been night vision scope, and carrying a toolbox.

"I jumped in to stop him, and managed to blind him with my torch and catch him with a shoulder in the stomach. He went down, but managed to return the favour with that toolbox to the side of the head. In short, he managed to get away. I was yelling for help the whole time, but guards were conspicuous by their absence. Later, I accidentally found this in the area of the fight."

He pulled out the mini zip-lock bag with the banana flavour chewing gum. "It was still fresh, and my opponent had exhaled pretty hard when I tackled him. This…" he pulled out a similar piece of gum in another bag, "… is the remains of a piece of gum Mouseworthy spat just outside our area on the first day. Both banana flavoured, and both showing similar tooth marks and fragments of muzzle fur. A PCR based DNA test should match the dead cells in the saliva chewed into it. I could match them against Mouseworthy himself, as well."

This stirred Mouseworthy into action. "Ridiculous! This is all a fix up, a diversion away from the real culprit!… You must have faked them, just the way you say I did my real evidence."

Chip shook his head. "I suspect we’ll find you are a habitual gum chewer, and banana is your favorite flavor. You might claim that as a detective, I would make a better job of faking stuff. But how would I set exactly this up to counter your claim, without knowing it beforehand? Besides, your own testimony throws doubt on the story. It was almost 100% overcast last night over Checkpoint 6. But you said you were alerted by hearing a noise…"

Mouseworthy scowled. "Well of course, I was resting. Even awake, with the overcast I could barely see a dark shape against the light hull of the Cloudbuster."

Chip grinned inwardly, but kept his outward demeanor calm. "It’s what you didn’t see that surprises me. Your description implied the whole thing took place in darkness. You gave no clear description of the saboteur, surely you must have had a light source available, nor did you describe them as using a torch, or any kind of vision gear. How could they see to do sabotage? But you said it was Gadget, even had ‘evidence’ to prove it. Gadget may be a genius, but even she can’t see in the dark"

Mouseworthy was clearly knocked back… but rallied. "I still say this whole thing is a ruse to divert suspicion from _that_ mouse." The venom with which he said ‘that mouse’ was a little scary.

Professor Satome interjected. "I am more interested in Maplewood-san’s determinations of the Golden Carp incident than your comments. You have had your say."

Chip smiled. "I’m glad you asked about that. Oddly enough, the situation comes down to gum again. The actual sabotage was performed by scotch taping the buoyancy tanks and making pin pricks. These were then sealed until the balloon was in mid-air. I hoped the method would point to a suspect, and it did. When Dale resealed the balloon, he used gum, and I remember him saying it would harden and peel off after some hours. And that’s exactly how the saboteur did it in the first place.

"The night before the race, the Rangers and Nekomi tech crew had a party, which no-one can remember suggesting. In the morning, the flight engineer was distracted from checking the front hatch by a convenient lady squirrel, who couldn’t later be found anywhere. The thing had been checked the day before, so he let it go. Obviously whilst everyone was sleeping off the party, the saboteur taped the hull, and plastered gum over the holes."

He called out, "Foxglove, run the first clip!" The screen stopped showing events on the stage and started replaying the view from the Rangerwing’s front camera, during the rescue of the Golden Carp, with the tense voices overlaid.

Dale called out. "Aww gosh Chip, you mean you kept that?"

"I knew Foxglove would like it, so I transferred it to a spare memory card. What flavor bubble-gum did you use to seal the holes?"

"Uh… strawberry of course." He looked puzzled as to why Chip was asking.

Chip grinned and turned to the audience. "The Rangerwing was designed as a patrol plane, and used as a chase plane. A record function for the cameras was a must. As you can see, the bubble is pink, no yellow streaks."

There were a number of awed murmurs as the scene played through. While quite a few people had heard of this rescue, it was another thing to see it in action. Dale couldn’t help but preen a bit at the admiring glances thrown his way.

"The proof is in the smell. When I examined the hull after the rescue, there was a scent of banana as well as strawberry. The Nekomi team will confirm that. Dale used only strawberry, so someone else must have smeared something banana scented on the hull. And who do we know who likes banana flavored gum?" He turned to Mouseworthy.

"Nice try chump-munk, but it won’t wash. This is so obviously a set up. Why would I use such a risky method of sabotage, and one which could be traced back to me?"

"That puzzled me too. You’re not stupid, you should have seen the flaws. Your motive was obvious, that first day you saw Gadget working on the Golden Carp as you came into land, and decided on the spur of the moment that you could not only defeat her, but ruin her reputation. At first I thought you were hoping that the dirigible would be lost, but that still left the discrepancy in times, it being checked by team after Gadget did her work. There were also the lucky breaks, the squirrel girl, our party at the right time, the absences of guards.

"Unfortunately I had to have my nose rubbed in it before I figured it out. A shape shifter was on your side, one high in the WAAT hierarchy." Chip turned to Tamaburo. "_You_ could change the rosters and make sure his mechanics were the guards in the right times and places to let his shenanigans go unseen. You could disguise yourself as one of us and plant the party idea, or be someone calculated to distract the Nekomi Tech flight engineer at the right time. You even posed as our friend so you could keep tabs on us, and sucker us into a trap while Mouseworthy tore Gadget to pieces on stage. Fortunately Mouseworthy’s mechanics are as amateur at being henchmen as Mouseworthy is at being an evil mastermind."

Gadget suddenly realised something. "It was you, not Chip!" When Chip looked at her, she carried on.

"While I was waiting to come on stage, you, I mean Chip, I mean it seemed to be Chip, came to see me and told me not to say anything on stage, said it would break procedure. But it wasn’t you, Chip, it was Tamaburo. I remember you, well not you-you obviously, but Tamaburo-you saying something like ‘I couldn’t wait to get back, Gadget. Oh by the way…" But I mis-heard. Tamaburo always uses Japanese pronunciation when saying my name. So what he actually said was, ‘Not to worry Gadgeto… By the way…’" She hung her head. "I should have realised."

Chip moved over to her and put a paw on her shoulder, giving a slight squeeze of encouragement. "It’s okay, he fooled us all. He would have also taken charge of any investigation, and made sure the results came out however Mouseworthy wanted. _That’s_ why Mouseworthy could take risks."

Professor Saotome turned on the trembling tanuki. "Is this true?"

"I… I…"

"Shut up you fool, or else!" hissed Mouseworthy.

That did it. Tamaburo straightened up and looked the mouse straight in the eye with loathing. "You will threaten me no more. Yes, Maplewood-san is correct. Please, I ask nothing for myself, but only ensure _he_ can not harm my little sister." He turned to Chip and Gadget. "I am truly sorry. I did not wish harm to anyone, least of all you."

Mouseworthy snarled, but was loomed at again by Monty and subsided.

Saotome sensei’s voice had a little more sympathy in it. "Explain."

Tamaburo sighed. "About eight months ago, human developers started building on my clan’s home. The shape-shifters among us tried to scare them off as ghosts and spirits, but they were relentless. We had to evacuate. As one of the best shape-shifters, and the most familiar with technology, I was a section leader. But during the transfer, despite all my care, my little sister went missing. I searched along the route for months but never found a trace of her.

"Then Mouseworthy came along. He knew I was membership secretary to this WAAT committee, and wanted to clear a few things. In conversation, he claimed to have met a lost tanuki, but not know her current whereabouts. He offered his resources to help search, and I was caught. At first he merely asked for a few minor things in return, increasing his air crew size, that kind of thing, but as his requests slipped over into the dis-honorable, so did his actions. He went from ‘I think I know where your sister is’, to ‘I know where your sister is’ and made it clear her continued health depended on my complete co-operation."

Professor Saotome frowned. "Your actions were shameful, but understandable. We will do all that we can to find your sister. We will decide an appropriate punishment for you later. Mouseworthy," He committed an insult by removing the honorific, "…you will be held responsible for her safety from this moment on."

"Ridiculous! This guy is making up stories to defame me, he’s in cahoots with the chipmunk over there."

Chip shook his head, slightly unbelieving. "Oh c’mon! You still want to play this game? The Rescue Rangers will help find Tamaburo’s sister too. But as for you, I have one other piece of evidence that shows you had to have accessed the front hatch of the Golden Carp. When you accused Gadget, you specifically mentioned her working on the ‘balance sensor’.

"The Golden Carp’s propulsion tail fin is a new development of Gadget’s ornithopter design, and the balance sensor is a part of that. Only the Nekomi tech crew knew about the design, and myself and Gadget only found out about it when we helped work on it. So, how did you know? The only way you could know what it was, would be if you had seen inside the hatch yourself. Since I know nobody invited you, that can only leave sneaking."

"Lies! All lies!"

"And I suppose you’ll say we faked this as well." He raise his voice. "Foxglove, the second clip please."

The big screen now showed a clear blue sky, with partial cloud cover below. Two planes were centred in the screen, the Screaming Eagle with the Cloudbuster coming up behind. The events of earlier in the day played out, the Ranger frequency traffic coming through clearly at that range.

There were expressions of shock at the missile attack, and Mouseworthy’s monologue, as Chip diced through the clouds. There were also several cheers when the rescue was shown.

"How did you…"

"Having made my preliminary investigations on Tomodachi island, I was headed back to support Gadget. It is something of a co-incidence that I came in view just in time to catch that, but they do happen. And before you say anything, there’s no way we could have faked it in the time available, and anyway, how could we risk showing a fake to the top engineers and technical people on the planet?"

Saotome sensei spoke up. "Enough, Maplewood-san. I think you’ve thoroughly proved your point." He nodded to Monty and indicated Mouseworthy. "Please take him into custody."

Mouseworthy yelled. "NO! That victory should have been mine… They all should have been mine…. The next one will be…"

Saotome sensei cut through the rant. "I doubt it. You are henceforth banned from all future WAAT conventions, and I doubt after word of this has spread that you will be allowed to participate in any air show, ever again."

Mouseworthy let out a tell of pure rage, and his cane swung up, first to point at the elder rat, and then starting to swing to point at Gadget and Chip. Chip caught on a fraction of a second before anyone else, remembering him doing something similar at the hot spring.

"Look out!" He moved in front of Gadget as his paw dipped into his jacket and pulled out a copper discus. In a continuation of the same motion, he flung it and it skimmed through the air like a frisbee, smacking into the stage in front of Mouseworthy and rebounding up, knocking his arm upwards just as the cane made a soft ‘putt’ sound. The dart it launched flew harmlessly over their heads and stuck in one of the tower speakers. Smoke started to come from the impact point.

Monty and Dale were already closing in, but Mouseworthy hurled the cane at Saotome, and Monty had to jump to intercept it, leaving a clear path offstage. Mouseworthy took it, running like all the cats in New York were after him. Zipper leapt from Monty’s collar, and grabbed onto Mouseworthy’s, hauling backwards with all the strength in his wings, but it barely slowed his headlong progress.

Gadget had stepped round the side of Chip, and she glanced around, face a study in calculation. Suddenly her eyes fixed on the far end of the boom mike. "Chip, give me a boost! Thataway!"

Chip couldn’t help think about saying how amazing she was, but he knew that wasn’t what she meant. Without hesitating, he brought his paws together to form a step which she jumped up onto. Then she leapt as he flung he forward. She reached in midair and grabbed the weighted end of the boom mike sending it spinning. The microphone end swung round, out over the audience and back across the other side of the stage to catch the fleeing mouse upside the head.

Mouseworthy staggered clear, eyes crossed and tongue lolling out. "Urggle!" he urggled as he slumped to the floor like a puppet with it’s strings cut. There was applause from the audience.

Gadget dropped off as she swung past Chip, and he caught her. There was a definite undercurrent of ‘aww’ in the applause. "That was great!" Chip said grinning broadly.

As he walked past on his way to help Monty drag Mouseworthy offstage, Dale commented, "Yeah, you really lowered the sonic boom on him!" eliciting groans from everyone on stage.

"Well I didn’t have a plunger crossbow, so I applied one of my dad’s old sayings. ‘Don’t complain about what you don’t have, use what you do.’ How about you? Where did that disc come from?"

Chip shrugged. "I was inspired by that lecture we went to on micro-aerodynamics. A couple of thumb tacks, some blue-tack for weight, even I could put that together. I figure with practice I could even skim it around corners…"

There was a cough from Professor Saotome. "You may discuss this later. Before we were interrupted, we were awarding Hackwrench-san her justly deserved reward."

Chip suddenly realised he was still holding Gadget. "Oh… yeah, right." He lowered her down as gently as if she was made of porcelain.

"Golly and a half! I almost forgot!" Gadget exclaimed. "Thanks Chip." She gave him a small kiss, just a peck on the cheek which appeared to hit him almost as hard as the microphone had Mouseworthy. His ears twitched and he staggered off stage barely under his own power, goofy grin on his face.

Kimiko and Foxglove had joined the others in the wings, and the bat sighed as she watched, cuddling Dale. "Oh my, that’s so sweet! I’ve gotta draw this when I get back."

Dale nodded. "Yeah, Chip may be the detective, but Gadget’s the one who seems to have gotten a clue."

Monty smirked as he glanced at the bindings on Mouseworthy. He had one arm around Kimiko, who was gazing up at him, lovingly. "Too roight pallies, an’ it’s about toime!"

"Zyeah!" added Zipper.

Chip joined them, and they watched from the wings as Gadget received her awards. Her acceptance speech was very Gadget.

"Thanks Saotome-sensei, everyone. Well, everyone except the people like Mouseworthy, who didn't want me to have this award. Thanking them would be rather silly. As I said before, I did this to keep my fathers promise, and to see how well I could do. Of course, when I say I, that doesn't take into the account all the people who helped me.

"First of all, my friends, the Rescue Rangers. They were behind me, all the way... except for the times they were in front of to the side, or in Zipper and Foxglove's case overhead. Without them, I wouldn't even be here to receive this. This is a tribute to all their hard work.

"I also want to thank the WAAT committee for all their hard work in giving us all a forum to show our ideas and test them. I know many of the ideas I've seen have inspired me. My future designs will be even better."

"And I also want to thank all of those people who came to our place, encouraged me and talked over technical ideas. I hope I was able to help, I know it helped me. And of course thanks for being here today and listening to me make this speech."

She saw the Nekomi Tech team filtering in sat the back.

"And I intend to give the Nekomi Tech team my Albatross award, because their design would easily have succeeded in getting one if they hadn't been sabotaged."

Professor Saotome replied. "That is not necessary Hackwrench-dono. If it can be demonstrated, that that was the only reason they required maintenance, I think the committee may be lenient in this case." There were murmurs of approval from the crowd.

When it was over she came off stage to meet them.

"Golly guys, I can’t believe it! I managed to win the Unlimited Air Race!"

Chip had recovered some aplomb. "None of us had any doubts you would. Right guys?"

There was a unanimous agreement from the others.

&&&

The World Animal Aviation Trials were over, and the Rangers were packing up to go.

"Y’know, I expected the guys holding Tamaburo’s sister to put up more of a fight." said Gadget.

Chip shook his head. "With their boss all tied up, they didn’t really have anything to fight for. Still sneaking in and securing Oyako was good practice."

They were almost finished when Kimiko arrived.

"Hiya, Kimiko-san!" called out Dale. "We saved you a seat beside Monty!"

Kimiko smiled, and said, "I thank you for your kindness, but I am not going with you."

The massed "Huh!" was a sight to behold.

Monty was the only one not joining in. He hefted a large bundle. "Me and Kimi-chan have talked it ovah, and she wants to find her family first."

"But I will keep in touch, and if I have not found them by the New Year, I will come to America. I have a whole new lifetime to decide what to do with, and I hope to have some help." She stepped over to Monty, and gave him a classic glomph.

Monty hugged her right back. "That you will Kimi-chan, that you will."

"I think my copyright’s just been infringed." Foxglove muttered..

Kimiko released Monty a bit and said, "Oh, they finally decided what to do with Mouseworthy. He’s going to be on clean-up duty here at Tomodachi Island… without help… and Tamaburo is one of his overseers."

Chip winced. "Whoa! Now that’s a punishment."

Dale chuckled. "C’mon Chip, it won’t take him more than three or four years at the most."

"I guess so long as it keeps him out of our fur, it’s okay. Maybe it’ll teach him to clean up his act too."

Dale grinned. "Well, he has experience. He sure was a washout as a villain."

Foxglove giggled, followed by laughter and a couple of groans from the rest as they got ready to go home.

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