MY BEST FRIEND IS A SECRET AGENT, Book 3: How C.H.I.P. Took on C.H.I.M.P. and...

Chapter 24: "The Urban Jungle"

Up on the mountaintop, C.H.I.P. and C.H.I.M.P. were still battling it out.

Carla had trouble with my new gadgets, so now she was just trying out every animal she could think of to turn C.H.I.P. into. She tried C.H.I.P. the ferret, C.H.I.P. the walrus, C.H.I.P. the salamander, C.H.I.P. the pot-belly pig - anything she could think of to take down C.H.I.M.P. But nothing could hold the chimp off for long, and, even worse, Gert wanted to keep C.H.I.P. the pot-belly pig as a pet.

But, fortunately, by the time I completed my experiment and made it back up the mountain, the jungle was starting to shrink! Everywhere you looked, vines were shriveling away, trees were crumbling, and even the vine mountain we were standing on started to disappear. And, since the vine mountain had grown atop Vortville's downtown buildings, we soon found ourselves standing atop the roof dome of Vortville City Hall.

My experiment had worked! I had cut back the whole jungle using the biggest, sharpest machete of all: my brain!

But this didn't stop C.H.I.M.P. It just ticked him off! After all, what was he the king of now? And what was Gert the queen of?

"Hey, what happened to my jungle?!" Gert screamed. "Nort, were you in my basement? That's breaking and entering, you know!"

"Gert, this has gone too far," I said. "It's time for you to call off your chimp and have things get back to normal."

Gert just laughed and shook her head. "Fat chance, you shoulderless wimp! C.H.I.M.P. is still king of the jungle, and I'm still queen. It's just an urban jungle now instead of a bunch of vines and stuff. And, in case you haven't noticed, C.H.I.M.P. is still getting smarter and stronger every minute."

"I certainly am!" said C.H.I.M.P.

That's right - the chimp could now talk!

I quickly calculated the ramifications of this. If C.H.I.M.P. was indeed getting smarter and stronger, then soon there would be no limit to his powers of destruction. He would become the wacky bad guy of my nightmares. And, with the diabolical, power-hungry Gert von Brugen egging him on, I quite frankly feared for the fate of Vortville itself... and the world!

The chimp climbed up to the top of the spire atop Vortville City Hall and proclaimed to the cowering citizens of the city below: "Bow down before me, lowly humans, or prepare to face my simian wrath!"

"Who's Simon Raff?" Chip asked me.

"Not Simon Raff, 'simian wrath'," I said. Realizing this was a perfect teachable moment, I explained, "You see, 'simian' means of or relating to apes or goril-"

"It means this monkey's mad!" Carla said, cutting me off. She was right, this wasn't the right time for a teachable moment. We needed to take action, and fast!

But then Mayor Mooney climbed up onto the roof and made everything worse. Seeing C.H.I.M.P., I expected him to order him out of Vortville, never to return again. But, instead, he fell down to his knees and cowered before the chimp. "Oh, please don't bury our city in a jungle again! I'll do anything you say! I'll give you my private parking spot. I'll let you use my executive washroom. I'll even let you pick your favorite donut on casual Fridays!"

Then things turned from bad to worse: My dad showed up! He and his team at McKrakken Security Systems were still decked out in camouflage and jungle make-up, but they were all loaded up with their destructive weapons, and they looked like they were dying to use them.

I could see now that, after a pitched battle between my dad's team and C.H.I.M.P., the whole of Vortville would be leveled, not just half of it. But I also knew that, with more animal skills and more new gadgets, C.H.I.P. and I could bring C.H.I.M.P. down.

I now knew what I had to do: I'd already revealed the truth about myself and C.H.I.P. to Carla and Gert. It was time to tell Dad too. I just hoped that he wouldn't do what I had expected him to do all this time: Shut us down!