Ding Koda, megachiroptera, terror of the skies, batty fruit bat, and punching bag of fate, is, for once, relaxing. He's found a quiet spot, a sheltered spot, an out-of-the-way spot under a bush, and is snoozing, hanging by his feet from a branch.

"Ugly bugs! I need ugly bugs! Why can you never find a really ugly bug when you need one?"

Not even the angry muttering of the passing human is enough to wake him. He's recently heard that some old friends of his have set up a sort of detective agency, and in a couple of hours he's going to go and see if they could use some air support.

"Butterfly! Gyah! I don't want butterflies, I want ugly bugs!"

The human moves closer to Ding's hiding place, and finally finds what he wants.

"Ah-ha! Ugly bugs!"

*ZAP*

It's at this point that Ding wakes up... not due to the noise, but due to a sudden feeling of queasiness.

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Meanwhile, fifteen minutes away as the bat flies, the Rodent Rangers are just waking up and starting their day. There's some interesting smells coming from the kitchen, where Kip's cooking up pancakes...

Ding tightens his hold on his perch as a sudden feeling of queasiness passes through his body, then opens his eyes and glares around, trying to find the stupid human who dares to interrupt his nap. "I'll give you a bloody bug up your ear here in a second..." he mutters as he wakes up. "What do you think you are doing, oh foolish human?" If he can't see what's up from his current perch, he'll move to another one that he can see from, even as he tries to figure out what it was that caused that sudden burst of queasiness.

The human is a particularly short one (well, for a human, at least) with bright red hair, a lab coat, and a butterfly net full of pillbugs in one hand. (Well, with three or four pillbugs in the bottom, at least). In his other hand, he holds some sort of futuristic ray-gun. He doesn't appear to have noticed Ding, but he does appear to be glad to have found the pillbugs, and is whistling a jaunty tune as he strolls away.

Ding narrows his eyes as the human walks jauntily away, and carefully calculates the distance between him and the man's skull... but reins himself in as he looks at the pill bugs and the ray gun. Where there is a mad scientist, there is a mad scientist's lab. That, experience would tell him, is where he could best make his move. Those pill bugs might not be the only ones he has captured, after all.

As it seems that the human has not noticed him, the bat waits for the human to get some further distance away, and then carefully flies off of his perch into the the air. He takes to the sky, taking advantage of the fact that humans rarely ever look up to follow the man from above, always making certain that he remains out of the human's sight and that the human always remains in his sight.

The human gets into an empty bus and drives off. Exactly why he's driving a bus around is a bit of a mystery; he's clearly not picking up any passengers.

Ding: Pilot: +5 Roll: +0 Total: +5 Target: +7

Between his queasiness (which is fading fast, though Ding is feeling particularly hungry instead) and the human's head start, Ding is unable to grab hold of the bus before it drives off. It's soon moving too fast for him to follow closely, but a bright yellow bus shouldn't be too hard to track down.

Maybe those Rodent Ranger fellows can help; rumour has it they stopped a mad scientist once before.

Grumbling something about mad scientists and animal research, Ding wings off toward where he had heard the Rodent Ranger agency office was at.

Sometime later... (I'm assuming that Ding will have heard of where it was, considering he was planning on dropping by anyway, plus it moves things along...)

There's what sounds like a muffled thump and a crash from outside the Rodent Ranger office... and then a polite knocking at the door.

Kip, tucking into a pile of pancakes, having already served the others, pauses with his fork an inch from his mouth. He sighs, looks mournfully at his plate and heads to the door to answer it.

"Good morning, how can I help you?"

His voice, as he answers the door, is chipper, despite the missed meal.

Kip sees a fruit bat, of about the right height to look him in the eye. He's somewhat dusty, as it he'd recently messed up a landing.

Ding, for his part, sees a squirrel with a whip attached to his belt. He looks alert, and gives the impression of being able to handle himself in a fight.

"Good morning. I believe this is the Rodent Ranger agency, correct? I believe I may have a case for you---"

He pauses to sniff the air.

"Do I smell pancakes?"

"Oh. Yes. We were just, uh . . ."

Kip looks over his shoulder, then back at the bat and sighs.

"Come on in. You let the others know what the case is while I make some more."

He leads the bat to the other Rangers, before disappearing into the kitchen.

"Had a case of the munchies ever since I woke up this morning, and I don't know why." When he gets into the dining room, he greets everyone in the room. "I would be Ding Koda, a megachiroptera, of the family pteropididae... or didn't I? Rather, a bat, as you can see. And you would be the Rodent Rangers who I have heard so much about. 'ello Buck. I know Avery vaguely from the gala, but that's no surprise, as Avery seems to know just about everyone in this town from what I've heard. Kip's the cook, saw him at the gala too. Hi Kip. Don't think I know you though..." He eyes Hex.

"So tell me. Do any of you know anything about a short red-headed human in a lab coat, a ray gun, drives a yellow bus, and seems to be zapping pill bugs for a no doubt dire purpose of evil mad science?"

You note that he seems to be eyeing the pancakes hungrily... well, the ones with syrup, at least.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Koda," Hex replies. "I am called Hex."
He looks at Koda thoughtfully, "A red-haired human in a lab coat?"
Then his eyes light up in recognition, "Ugh, not that guy again. I hope I am mistaken, but it sounds like the villain from our first adventure, Professor Numbskull?, err, no, maybe it was Dimbulb? No, that wasn't it, ... Oh yeah, Nimnull."

Kip calls from the kitchen.

"Help yourself! They're still warm."

A couple of minutes later he comes back with more and sits down.

"Huh. He was the guy who tried to blast the city hall with cats, right?"

Ding starts helping himself to the pancakes with a vengeance. Syrup might not exactly be nectar or fruit, but it's close enough that he's willing to go with it. In between mouthfuls, he says "Was snoozing in a bush when along comes this fellow. Said that he was looking for 'ugly bugs'. Or ugly mugs maybe. I was half awake at the time. Then I hear a zapping sound, feel queasy, and this shorty of a human in a lab coat walks off with a few pillbugs. Tried to follow him, but his yellow bus was a bit too fast for me to keep up with. Lucked out at every stoplight, I swear."

Shorty considers stoplights to be there for other people - he's never stopped as them before, why start now?