While Bob retrieved the Temporal Sprocket, Uncle Murray had to retrieve the pieces of the Gravity Encabulator - another lost piece of the time machine - back from a group of penguins. After that, Uncle Bentley was going to go tag Grizz with a tracer dart...but when he was assembling the Encabulator, there was a short and for a brief time he...he wasn't. None of us had any idea what that meant, but we knew we couldn't risk him on any field assignments until we did. It felt too much like what had been happening in the other time periods when briefly it would be someone else in Uncle Bentley's place...someone I can't even remember right now.
As such, I went into the ice caves to tag Grizz, with Deik-Beck as back up for computers. I was better suited anyway, what with being able to regulate my temperature on my own accord. I just hope whatever's going on with Uncle Bentley gets resolved soon...
The ice caverns proved to be a series of large chambers connected via narrow tunnels blocked off by artificial rockfalls and ice walls. The thermal visor Bentley had developed allowed Coco to track footprints, in order to follow the paths Grizz had taken to know which paths to break open with a well placed kick. In addition to the 'local' thugs at Grizz' beck and call, there were a few of Le Paradox troops in their hazmat suits and gas masks with their gas sprayers. Coco made sure to take those out before they even caught sight of her, knowing that reports of a sighting would go back to Le Paradox rapidly, and could cause problems for them all. She was quite distinct, after all.
It didn't take long for Coco to find Grizz painting a massive mural on the wall of the cavern. "Oh yeah!" he was rapping eagerly. "They say I'm like DaVinci, a master with the brush! When my art is on the wall, it makes the crowd hush..."
Coco quickly managed to tag Grizz with a tracking dart...but decided to follow after him for a time anyway. The painting had switches for a door, which led her along a narrow path with large Pterodactyl eggs rolling down it like boulders. Coco was able to evade on the way up, eventually finding her way to another large chamber with mammoth guards, in time to see Grizz toss some gems to the guards before passing through another door.
"Gem keys?" Coco asked Deik-Beck thoughtfully.
"Beep!" Deik-Beck piped up in affirmation.
It didn't take long for Coco to filch the keys and open the door, following another long path in time to hear Grizz rap out his plan. "The Grizz gonna put some art on ice! Gonna dig it up later for a big fat price! Le Paradox is a stinky dude, and I'm getting real sick of his attitude!"
"So that's it," Coco murmured thoughtfully. "Planting fake cave paintings to sell in the present..." She shrugged. "Well, at least it's nothing complex." Turning, she returned to the hideout.
After that, Dad tailed Grizz to get the code to enter his Fortress, so we could take him down hard. As much as T-Bone wanted to, the Turbokat wasn't repaired enough to do a bombing run...and besides that, we still needed to try and retrieve Bob's cane.
While that didn't pan out...it turned out Mom had been doing her own reconnaissance without bothering the rest of us. Managed to get security codes and schematics too. When asked how she managed it, all she said was she 'met someone who spoke the same language'.
Carmelita smiled as she finally caught sight of the quarry she'd been looking for. After seeing the pattern with Rioichi and Tennessee, she honestly wasn't surprised to find that Bob fit the bill as well. Right where she'd expected, she spotted the saber-toothed vixen, lean and wiry...and punching holes through ice to get at edibles. Approaching her would have been problematic...except that she apparently smelled Bob on her, and not in a bad way.
No words were actually exchanged. They stared at each other for a time, and the larger vixen had eventually used one claw to draw an image of Grizz in the ice. Carmelita had responded by shooting it. The vixen had grinned widely, and proceeded to sketch out the entire schematics of Grizz' fortress in ice, scraping a layer away each time Carmelita had scanned it into her tablet. She had finished by sketching a keypad - no numbers, since the concept didn't exist yet - and pressed the buttons in order to show the code.
Carmelita had turned to leave with the information...only to be stunned as she realized the vixen's loose garb had been holding two infants - one raccoon, one fox - against her, and they had been actively nursing the entire time. She decided not to mention that to anyone.
...for some reason, that made Bob really happy.
Still, this meant we were now ready to take Grizz down hard. The plan was simple and straightforward. Charge in, smash everything, shut down the security systems, and take Grizz down hard. The only minor issue we had was Uncle Bentley being upset that he was still being sidelined, but everyone was firm on that.
Almost disappointingly, the plan went off practically without a hitch. Not only did shutting down the factory go perfectly between Uncle Razor and my work on the egg vats and Bob's breaking the pressure valves, but even the momentary hitch - when it looked like Uncle Murray and Uncle T-Bone took a wrong turn in an egg lift - worked out as it led them both right to Grizz. Grizz tried to fight by ice skating...but it turned out Uncle T-Bone's equipment included pop-out skate boots he'd been wearing in the ice and snow, letting him match Grizz on the ice while Uncle Murray took pot shots at him whenever he got too close. It was almost painful to see him trounced so bad...
"Stop hitting yourself!" T-Bone declared as he slammed Grizz' left fist into the bear's face.
"Stop hitting yourself!" Murray echoed as he repeated the action with the bear's right fist.
"Stop hitting yourself!"
"Stop hitting yourself!"
...almost. Still, it was nice seeing Uncle Murray and Uncle T-Bone bond like that.
While we were doing that, Uncle Bentley managed to fully repair Turbokat, Time Machine, Van, and Communications device. As a result, we were ready to head to our next destination...Medieval England, and Grizz's crown was the perfect ticket. Hopefully, we'd get some answers about what was going on with Uncle Bentley soon. It looked like he was starting to go stir crazy.