Chapter Two
By: Winston deLeon

"Off to see your boyfriend again?" Tammy's mother teased as they stood in the kitchen talking while Tammy prepared to set out for the Ranger's headquarters.

"Mother..." Tammy said in an unamused voice, rolling her eyes, "I've been over Chip for two years now, and even when I wasn't, it was never anything more than a dumb one-sided crush. That's joke's really getting old."

"You just seem to spend an awful lot of time these days with those Rescue Rangers, is all." Her mother commented.

It was true that she had been spending more and more time with the Rangers. Especially since she'd graduated from high school last spring, all she ever seemed to do was hang out at Ranger HQ, but there was a good reason for that. "Well, of course I'm around them a lot... If I'm going to learn how to fight crime, I should try and learn from the best, right?" Tammy asked.

Her mother fell strangely silent in thought for a moment as she stared a bit sadly at Tammy. "My daughter, out there, stopping criminals." Her mother said softly, then gave Tammy an odd look, one that Tammy had been seeing more and more of lately. Tammy supposed it was worry, but it was also mixed with something else that she couldn't identify and suspected was one of those things that only a parent could truly understand anyway. "You're growing up so fast, you know that?" Her mother lamented, shaking her head. "What happened to my little baby?"

"Well, hey... You still have Bink..." Tammy said with a smirk, knowing just how Bink, who had been listening to the conversation, would react to being referred to like that.

Exactly as expected, Bink shot Tammy a dirty look. "I am not a baby." Bink protested indignantly. "I'm eight years old!"

"Hey, relax, just a joke. Well, I've got to get going. I'll see you later." Tammy said as she walked to the front door and waved goodbye.

"Bye Tammy... be careful out there!" Her mother called back as Tammy shut the door.

The first thing Tammy noticed once she was outside was that the day was sunny and very pleasant. It was fairly typical of later spring. New leaves were on all the trees and flowers were in bloom. The sun was shining in the east, with not a single cloud in the beautifully blue sky. It made for an enjoyable walk, and Tammy almost wished that it had been longer as she knocked on the door of the Ranger headquarters a few minutes later.

Chip answered the door, looking a bit annoyed and flustered, but his expression changed to slight relief when he saw that it was just her and not another prospective case to deal with. Probably working on a big case already, Tammy thought, if he's in that kind of mood. She could tell because she was at Ranger HQ so often these days that her presence was pretty much becoming routine, and she was getting so familiar with everyone that she was beginning to be able to tell their state of mind before they even spoke. "Oh... hi." Chip said, distractedly. "Come on in."

Tammy entered to see the Rangers standing around in the livingroom, discussing something. She knew this scene fairly well, it meant that they did indeed have a case to work on, probably a tough one, and that they were at a sticky point. "So, what's going on?" Tammy asked, wondering what today's mystery was.

The Rangers all fell silent for a moment as Chip explained. "Someone picked the front door lock, broke into the house, and left this friendly message for us. We're trying to figure out what to do about it." He said, holding up the note and the newsclipping that had come with it.

"Lemme see." Tammy said curiously, walking over to read the note. Chip handed the papers over to Tammy, who read through the article and then read the note, mystified by why someone would leave something like that. "This doesn't make sense." Tammy said, thinking things over.

"It doesn't make sense to us, either." Dale shrugged.

"No clawmarks or other identifiers on the papers?" Tammy asked, mentally going through the evidence-gathering procedure list that she'd made herself memorize a while back.

"Nope. Nothing." Chip said cheerlessly.

"You know," Tammy commented as she thought about the situation, "it's like it's just too obvious. Someone wants you near the diamond at 8 PM... what if they really only want you there so that you can't stop them somewhere else?"

"That's one of the first things we considered, too." Chip answered her. "But we don't know what another target might be. That, and they might want us to think it's too obvious so that we'll be looking elsewhere, and then they really will try and steal the diamond. And the strangest thing of all, I think, is the fact that we found the note right after we got back from taking a trip to the museum to check out the security arrangements in place to keep the diamond safe. Talk about weird timing."

"Wow, that is strange. How do you plan to figure out whether to watch the diamond or something else?" Tammy wondered.

"I was leaning towards watching the diamond in either case, since we have no idea of what else to watch. But the more I think about it, I realize that there might be one way to tell. The only way I can think of to do it," Chip said, "is to check up on the usual suspects and see if any of them have plans to steal anything on the 18th."

Everyone in the room groaned, and Tammy knew why - trying to accomplish something like that would be a real pain. "Do you realize how much time that's gonna take?" Monty asked with a touch of irritation. "We only got until tomorrow before the diamond goes on display, ya know."

"Oh, but I have a plan in mind, and we don't have to check everyone, just the biggest troublemakers." Chip responded with a smile that indicated he was already ahead of Monty. "There are six of us, if we can count on Tammy's help." Chip said, looking in her direction.

"Sure you can, Chip." Tammy shrugged. "I've got nothing else to do today."

"Good." Chip replied, then turned to address the whole group. "So if we split into three groups of two, we can do this a lot more quickly. Monty and Zipper, you two see if Rat Capone's still in the city, and if he is, find out what he's up to. Dale and me will check up on Nimnul. Tammy and Gadget can take Fat Cat. Those are the three I think it's worth spending time checking on." Chip finished.

"Right. Well, let's get started, pally." Monty said as Zipper landed on his shoulder.

"Fat Cat is a tricky one, he's got security that won't be easy to get around. We'll need some time to plan this out." Gadget said.

"I'm sure you'll think of something that'll work just fine. That's why I gave you the toughest one, I'm counting on intelligence, rather than force, to find some way to crack his defenses." Chip assured her, then he turned to Dale. "C'mon, let's go find out what that loony scientist is up to."

"Right, Chip." Dale agreed as they headed out the door. The other four left, leaving Tammy and Gadget alone in the treehouse to plan for their task.

After the others had left, Gadget paced slowly in her workshop, lost deep in thought, thinking hard for a long time. Tammy was thinking too, sitting in one of Gadget's oddly comfortable chairs built from scraps with her feet kicked up on the room's central table, but try as she did, she just couldn't really come up with any good way to penetrate Fat Cat's security and get into his office without a major struggle. It would be next to impossible to get in completely unseen, because there were just too many guards and henchmen to worry about to remain totally out of sight the whole time. What we need, Tammy considered, is to be in plain sight and somehow not be recognized... That meant reusing an old trick that Chip and Dale had used with some success before. "We need to go in disguise." she said at last. "It's the only way I can think of."

Gadget stopped pacing. "We've done that to Fat Cat before, I think he'd just see through it." Gadget shook her head. "And besides, even if Fat Cat thought we were normal people who were just there to gamble, we still wouldn't be able to get into his office."

"Maybe, if we fooled them enough to just get into the casino, one of us could somehow sneak into the office." Tammy considered, pitching out random thoughts. She suddenly remembered, however, that his office wasn't all that easy to gain access to, as she'd found out the first time she had been there. "Oh, nevermind." she said with disappointment, not seeing any way of doing it without detection. "The only way in is through the elevator, and we'd get seen too easily because we won't have anyone to stage a distraction like you guys did last time."

Gadget pondered briefly. "There's more than one way to cause a ruckus... I'll bet that if..." The expression on Gadget's face suddenly changed as she looked up, and Tammy could tell that she had an idea. "Hmm... hold that thought a second." Gadget pulled over one of the files she'd gotten out on Fat Cat, flipped it open, and soon found what she was looking for: A technical drawing of the building upon which the casino was built. "I don't know if we should rule out sneaking in just yet, on second thought. Maybe we do have the distraction we'll need, after all. Or, more exactly, the distraction you'll need." Gadget smiled as she stared at the blueprints. "They'd recognize me, but since Fat Cat hasn't seen you as often, we should be able to disguise you well enough to trick him and his gang. Now, all we need to do is work out the timing and the pickup points, and this oughta be a snap..."

The plan all seemed to come together before Tammy could voice any concerns, and she started wondering, slightly worried, about just what she'd gotten herself into this time.

"I know it's in here someplace." Gadget mumbled as she dug around in a closet in her bedroom.

"Need any help?" Tammy offered as she stood outside the closet, watching articles of clothing haphazardly fly out and onto the floor.

"No, thanks, I'll find it." Gadget called back. "I know I left it right around... Here! Got it!" Gadget emerged from the closet a few seconds later carrying a beautiful red dress that she handed to Tammy. "That's about the best I've got that'll work as a disguise to get you into Fat Cat's."

Tammy took the dress and looked it over. "I don't think this'll fit me right. Not by a longshot." She said doubtfully.

"Well, not yet, we'll probably need to alter it a bit." Gadget admitted. "But it'll be faster than trying to make something new." Gadget dove back into the closet and started digging for something else.

By 'alter it a bit', Gadget had really meant to say 'change it's whole shape', Tammy thought as she considered the extensive cutting and refitting it was going to take to accomplish that. She and Gadget were, perhaps, roughly the same size, and Tammy's figure was a bit more feminine now than it had been four years ago when she'd first met the Rangers, but it wasn't close enough to Gadget's to allow them to easily exchange clothes. Still, there wasn't much choice, Tammy didn't have anything at home that would really fit in at a place like Fat Cat's.

Gadget emerged from the closet once again, carrying a large platinum blonde wig. "Fat Cat might recognize you if you go in there as a redhead, so we'll just have to hide that, too." Gadget stated.

"Gadget, why on earth do you have stuff like this lying around?" Tammy asked, barely hiding the laughter that threatened to surface at the thought of Gadget, of all people, actually wearing a wig.

"I dunno.. It comes in handy once in a while." Gadget shrugged. "Now, let's get this dress to fit on you." Gadget said as she grabbed a pair of scissors and a sewing needle, then started hunting for something else. "Now where'd I leave that tape measure?" She asked herself. "Oh, of course... in the workshop."

As Tammy discovered, Gadget wasn't all that bad a seamstress, even though it was a rush job. Tammy was a bit surprised at her talent, but Gadget explained as they worked that during the times in her life when she'd lived alone, she hadn't had much choice but to get good at sewing by trial and error. After two hours of measuring, cutting, and stitching, Gadget left Tammy alone to change clothes and try the dress on. After a few minutes, Tammy emerged from Gadget's room wearing the red dress which was now a pretty decent fit. The blonde wig covered her red hair which was rolled up and hidden underneath it, and she wore a pair of rather uncomfortable red high heeled shoes on her feet. Gadget was waiting in the hallway and as Tammy opened the door, Gadget looked her over.

"Not too bad." Gadget appraised the disguise. "They'll never recognize you."

"Good, because I really feel silly wearing this stuff, and I wouldn't want it to be for nothing." Tammy commented.

"Something's still missing, though... Oh, I know." Gadget snapped her fingers as it came to her. "Makeup. Of course."

It made sense, but Tammy felt some surprise at the idea. "Do you even have any makeup?" Tammy asked, finding herself completely unable to picture Gadget using it.

"Not much, but I think I've got some left over from last time I needed any. Let's just see." Gadget shrugged and started searching once again and soon found it, in a small case that hadn't been used in quite some time. "Here it is. We'll worry about applying it later, since we need to wait until it's dark to pull off this plan."

"Right. In that case, I'm gonna get out of this thing for now." Tammy went back into Gadget's room and got back into her pink shirt and jeans, then untied her hair and put it back in it's usual braid. The experience thus far was reenforcing her general opinion that clothes like this were for suckers - her jeans and shirt were immeasurably more comfortable than that dress, not to mention the inconvenience of wearing high heels...

In time, the other Rangers returned, first Monty and Zipper and then Chip and Dale. Monty and Zipper had discovered that it was indeed true that Rat Capone had bailed out of town some months ago and wasn't expected to return anytime soon. Chip and Dale had managed to find out that Nimnul was currently incarcerated and hadn't yet managed to break out or get himself released. The chipmunks had seen him in a prison cell with their own eyes, and they were sure he wasn't up to anything. After the other two teams reported their findings, Tammy and Gadget explained their plan for getting into Fat Cat's office, and even though it meant delaying until dark, Chip was rather pleased with it - mostly, Tammy suspected, because this time he wouldn't have to be the one dressed in drag.

After taking a break for dinner and to watch various news programs, the Rangers picked back up on the case at about 8 PM. Chip and the other Rangers decided to use the rangermobile to return to the museum and inform the security force there of the threat that the Rangers had received. Tammy and Gadget stayed behind to conduct their operation, certain that the two of them could accomplish it on their own without any help from the others. Monty hadn't liked the idea of just the two of them working alone in a place like Fat Cat's casino, but Gadget insisted that they could save lots of time by dividing their efforts, and with barely 24 hours left until the time specified in the note, time was one of the things they didn't have a lot of.

Tammy changed back into the dress, wig, and high heels (taking note, again, of how uncomfortable all of it was), and Gadget dug the makeup kit back out. After popping it open, Gadget reached in and held up an eyeshadow brush. "Now, close your eyes and hold still..." She instructed. Tammy reluctantly complied, though she was soon feeling steadily more and more ridiculous as she felt more and more goop being applied to her face. "There. Done. I'm not much good at this, but it's close enough." Gadget finally pronounced. Tammy opened her eyes and Gadget handed her a small mirror.

She had trouble believing that the person staring back from the mirror's surface was really her reflection. The features on the face were hers, yes, but the makeup made it look so strange... "I feel so... so..." Tammy struggled for the right description. "... cheap looking!" she finally blurted out, and she and Gadget both started laughing.

"Actually, that's perfect." Gadget said as her laughter died down. "You'll probably fit right in with the kinds of people who hang out at Fat Cat's."

"Oh... that's a relief." Tammy said sarcastically.

The flight to the cat food factory was quiet. When they arrived, Gadget carefully flew the Rangerwing over to the least guarded side of the building, to drop Tammy off unnoticed. Starting from below the roof level, Gadget slowly hovered the rangerwing upwards until the front was even with the raised ledge of the roof. Lucky for them, not a single guard or henchman was in sight. Tammy stood and quickly stepped onto the roof.

"Okay," Gadget said as Tammy disembarked from the rangerwing, "You've got a ten minute delay, starting... Now!" Gadget pushed a button on a small human's wristwatch whose straps had been cut off to convert it into a rodent-scale alarm clock. "Good luck in there." Gadget said as she waved and started piloting the rangerwing downwards.

Tammy nodded and gave a thumbs-up in repy, then watched as the Rangerwing slowly sank back down out of sight. She turned and started walking to the entrance of the casino.

As she approached the entryway at the base of the large fiberglass cat statue, Tammy's nerves started acting up for the first time as she approached the doorman, a tough-looking rat in a black suit. Butterflies rumbled in her stomach for a second as she got closer and closer to the door. She'd never done anything like this before. What would she say if they tried to stop her from getting in for some reason? Would she be able think quickly enough to talk her way in? Her worry faded down again, though, as the rat at the door nodded and opened the door for her, letting her in with no trouble.

Walking in the entryway, the casino was just as she remembered it from her first unfortunate visit. A bar off to one side, and a large assortment of gaming tables and slot machines off to the other. At the far end of the room was a small stage, and right next to the main entrance was the door to the elevator, guarded by two of Fat Cat's henchmen. Off in the distance, wandering around in the crowd, was Fat Cat himself. Tammy hoped he would be staying out of his office for the next - how much time was left? Probably about nine minutes. How to pass the time inconspicuously? Playing a few games at the slots would be perfect... except that Tammy had forgotten to bring a purse or any money at all, she realized with sudden annoyance at herself for being a numbskull and not thinking of it earlier. It seemed to be the one part of the disguise that they'd overlooked. Oh well, she figured she'd just have to make the best of it. What were the people who weren't gambling doing? Mostly, they seemed to be sitting at the bar...

She walked calmly over to the bar and sat down, attempting to blend in, and glad that the bartender didn't seem to take much notice of her as he went on washing glasses and bantering back and forth with the other rodents at the bar. She turned around and looked out into the gaming area, watching rodents of all species feeding coins into slot machines.

After several minutes, as she was idly wondering just how much Fat Cat could take in during a single night, the bartender's voice spoke from right behind her. "Miss?" He asked, trying to get her attention. She turned around quickly on her seat and faced the bartender again, just in time to see him set a very fancy looking mixed drink down in front of her. "Compliments of the gentleman at the end of the bar." he said, nodding briefly towards a male squirrel in an expensive looking suit and then turning away again. She glanced at the squirrel, who smiled back at her. She hoped he would look away again, but he didn't. She looked a bit doubtfully at the drink in front of her, but didn't want to do anything suspicious, like sit at a bar and not drink when one was offered for free, so she picked it up and took a small sip. To her surprise, she found that whatever it was, it tasted quite good. It was the kind of drink that was tasty enough to make you want to drink more, but she limited herself to just that one sip, reminding herself that she had no idea how much alcohol it might have in it. She spent the next few minutes nervously hoping that the squirrel that had sent her the drink wouldn't have the nerve to approach her and try to strike up a conversation. As it turned out, she was in luck - he didn't get the chance before her cue to action came not long afterwards.

The timer was running down on the wristwatch that Gadget was watching as she sat in the rangerwing, which she'd flown into the dark factory through a broken window after dropping off Tammy. As the one minute mark approached, she started up the rangerwing's engines and hovered it upwards, just underneath a smoke detector, and stayed there until at last the timer ran out and the watch beeped faintly.

"One distraction, coming up." Gadget smiled to herself as she pulled a cigarette lighter out of the backseat of the rangerwing. She stood it up, held down the gas release button with one hand, and then rolled the sparker wheel with the other. A flame burst into life from the top of the lighter. After a few seconds, it started to get uncomfortably hot, but Gadget held the button down and kept it burning until at last the fire alarm went off, filling the building with a loud ringing siren. Gadget let the button go, dropped the lighter in the back seat, and quickly flew the rangerwing back out the window and landed it at the base of the building, hidden behind a few garbage cans in the dark of the night.

The effect of the alarm on the rodents in the casino was immediate. There was a rush towards the door, chairs and tables were knocked over, people were shouting and screaming. Fat Cat's guards and henchmen seemed not much better off, most of them were fleeing for the exits as fast as, or even faster than, the customers. Tammy made her way through the crowd, dodging around people running here and there, and while no one was watching, hid herself behind a cluster of slot machines. For the next minute or so she could still hear the sounds of chaos and panic over the blaring alarm, but finally the sounds of other casino-goers faded away completely and she carefully poked her head over the top of the slot machines and saw that she was indeed alone in the casino. Even Fat Cat and the henchmen who were always hanging around him had cleared out in a panic.

Tammy swiftly crossed the floor of the casino to the elevator door and pressed the call button. A few seconds later, the elevator opened, and she stepped in. This was a piece of cake, she thought to herself with pleasant surprise as she rode the elevator to Fat Cat's office. Seconds later, the elevator stopped and she stepped out into the now unguarded lair of one of the Ranger's most troublesome enemies, and immediately began her search for anything pertaining to the Devil's Eye diamond, or any other theft planned for the 18th.

She checked the drawers of his desk, finding nothing concerning any crimes he might be planning. She pulled open one filing cabinet, but found nothing but records of gains and losses at the casino. She moved on. Other cabinets held shipping orders, equipment service logs, and all the various papers that one might expect to find in the filing cabinets of someone who owns a business. Tammy failed to find anything concerning any crimes Fat Cat might be planning concerning the diamond, or indeed, anything else. She came to the odd conclusion that although he might be a real jerk, he also seemed to make very little money these days committing conventional crime like theft. Most of his time seemed to be spent managing this casino. Maybe, Tammy mused briefly, he was drifting away from the criminal path after getting his tail so thoroughly kicked by the Rangers so many times.

At last, sensing that there was nothing to find and worried that the time on her distraction was running short, Tammy closed everything up and tried to leave anything she'd disturbed as it originally had been before she'd touched it. Standing on a chair, she pushed open a window and climbed out through it onto the outside of the fiberglass statue, then closed the window again from the outside. After dropping the few feet to the roof, she ran to the edge to the spot she'd prearranged with Gadget, and started clambering down a drainpipe attached to the side of the building. It was no easy task in the dress and shoes she was wearing, but, being a squirrel, she made it to the ground easily enough. The rangerwing was waiting a few feet away, and Tammy quickly got in. Gadget wasted no time in getting it airborn and flying away, and they were soon back at Ranger HQ where, after quickly changing clothes and scrubbing the makeup off her face, Tammy reported that she hadn't found anything on Fat Cat.

Chip congratulated her on how successful she was on getting into Fat Cat's office undetected, but wasn't especially pleased with her findings. "This makes it that much harder." Chip mumbled as he paced with agitation in the livingroom. "I guess at least it rules out the obvious, though."

"So what do we do next?" Tammy asked.

"The only thing we can do." Chip answered. "Protect that diamond with everything we've got, and deal with whatever happens."

Eventually, since it was already late at night and Tammy was eager to keep working on the case in the morning, she decided to simply stay the night at Ranger HQ. She stayed up for a while, watching T.V. with Dale, before finally going to sleep on the couch sometime around 1 AM, about the time she usually got to bed. She supposed she should try to change that, but one thing or another always seemed to come up to prevent her from keeping decent hours, and she'd gotten so used to being up late that she was finding it hard to fall asleep earlier.

Once she was finally asleep, however, the dreams she had were distinctly disturbing. She couldn't say why, because she hardly remembered them at all. The only detail she could recall was that they had grossly misinterpreted the motives of whoever had left that note. She didn't know what those motives were, only that they'd gotten them wrong. It wasn't about theft at all. The vague impression she got was that it was about exactly the opposite... but that didn't make any sense as far as she could figure out. The dream troubled her somewhat in the morning when she awoke, puzzling her. Ultimately, it was just a dream, and a good detective would never use something so insubstancial and frivilous as evidence, after all... but somehow, she couldn't stop it from bugging her.

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Disclaimer:
The charactors of Chip, Dale, Gadget, Monterey Jack, Zipper, Tammy, Foxglove and any other charactor originally appearing the animated series "Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers" are all © Disney and are used here without permission. Any other charactors appearing herein that are not © Disney are my own creations. This story may be freely copied, transmitted, printed, distributed, used as bird cage liner, or whatever, I only ask that it is not modified from it's original form and it is not used for profit in any way. I believe that that concludes the legal mumbo-jumbo for now... On to the story!

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