Author's Note: This was inspired loosely by the Jimmy Buffett song "Boomerang Love". It was also my attempt to write a good development of a potential romance between Shane and Kapri, since everything I've seen for the pairing is either incredibly out-of-character or just has them together for the sake of pairing up everyone. Spoilers, obviously, for the end of Ninja Storm, and for the Dino Thunder episode "Thunder Storm".

Boomerang

The first time they met, face-to-face and not across a battlefield, he was pretty sure he hated her. He didn't know about other Ranger teams, but he had a hard time just forgiving and forgetting with former enemies, especially after all of the times she had been actively working to hurt or kill him and his team over the past year.

When she and Marah walked through the gate, wearing their own special training uniforms, he nearly froze. Then his mind went into overdrive, trying to rationalize just why those two had been allowed admittance to the Academy. No, he realized, it wasn't a trick. Sensei wouldn't have let them in if he did think that Shane – if he didn't think that they couldn't handle teaching former enemies the finer points of being a ninja.

And then she caught his eye and smirked, and Shane felt his calm, cool, collected ninja master face crumble under the burning rage that quirky upturn of her lips evoked. And he saw Marah smiling shyly at Dustin and Dustin grinning goofily back at her, and his rage subsided, not willing to destroy their new-found peace just because Kapri smirked at him.

He took a deep, calming breath and shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts, and when he looked up again, caught her gaze again, it was coolly assessing. There, he knew, was the devilish genius who masterminded all those battles and, he now knew, all of the political and literal backstabbing that had run rampant on Lothor's ship. That was the Kapri that his behind the bimbo façade she presented to the world.

That was the Kapri that found him later, on the cliff above the waterfall, watching the sun set. He heard her confident strut minutes before she appeared through the tree line – for a ninja, she wasn't terribly stealthy, though the same could have been said of him a year ago – and it took him a great deal of concentration not to snap at her.

"Can I help you?" his question still came out sharp, sharper than it would have with any other new student, even that bumbling trio that said they knew Cam and Hunter – the ones that reminded him so much of him, and Tori, and Dustin. He didn't turn to look at her, keeping his eyes on the pink-orange-red tones of the sky.

She snorted. "What crawled up your ass and died?" she asked back, and all of the rage he had been hiding all day came rushing back to the surface. He turned quickly to face her, where she stood several feet away, and his eyes narrowed in a glare.

"What. Do. You. Want." The words were ground out, somehow, between his clenched teeth.

She smirked again, as if she knew exactly which of his buttons she was pushing, and how. "What're ya going to do, Red Ranger? Beat me up?" Her tone was mocking, lilting in its feigned lightness. She stopped for a moment, looking up as though thinking. "Oh, wait. You can't, 'cause we're on the same side now." She smiled patronizingly at him, and he felt the chains that kept his emotions restrained – a ninja master is not ruled by his emotions – start to crack.

"What do you want, Kapri?" The same question again, sharper than before, angrier. "Do you want me to spill my guts? Fine." His gaze was burning in its frigidity, he could feel it himself, but found that he was beyond caring. "I don't want you here. Sensei trusts you, and that's fine. You've tried to kill me and mine too many times for me."

Her features were stone-like. "Fine," she replied, all hints of her earlier mockery gone. "Truce then? I don't kill you, you don't kill me."

And Shane found himself nodding. "Truce."

They were coolly polite to each other when he taught her classes, never saying more than necessary. Of course, she ended up with his Air students more often than not because, as she – and Sensei – said, the pink trim of her uniform did actually mean something, and pink is nothing more than a shade of red – and damn him if he didn't keep thinking of Hunter and his crimson. She wasn't necessarily skilled at Air talents; she said her ninja training was in something slightly different, but close enough that she could adapt. And if the other students noticed the way that Sensei Clarke and Kapri kept a barrier – sometimes invisible, sometimes made of the other students themselves – they never said anything.

They ate lunches together, though not by choice. Shane, by default, ate with Tori and Dustin, and sometimes Cam when they could pull him away from rebuilding Ops and upgrading the Academy security. But then Marah joined them, invited by Dustin, of course, and she dragged Kapri with her, not quite willing to face the former Rangers all on her own just yet. Shane and Kapri sat on opposite ends of the table from each other, keeping a firm barrier of friends and sisters between them.

Then the accident happened. The class was sparring, most of them beginners. Shane supervised, walking among the students, correcting forms. Then Luke tried to run on the air, but failed, fell, and landed on his arm with a resounding snap. Shane was next to him in a heartbeat, staring down at the wound, his brain suddenly freezing at what to do. A pair of slim hands grabbed his, grabbed his attention, and he looked up to find Kapri there.

"Shane, get the kids to back up, give us some space." And he did. He stood and ordered the rest of his students to back away, and they did, and he turned back to Kapri and Luke.

She had gotten him sitting up, very gently cradling his arm, and Shane winced to see a bit of bone sticking through the skin. And then Kapri held her hands over the wound, and concentrated, and a soft glow surrounded her but seemed to move to Luke's injury, and after a few moments she leaned back, and Shane couldn't see the bones anymore. Luke stared at his arm in amazement, and twisted and moved it and smiled blindingly at Kapri.

Afterwards, when the rest of the students had gone off, he approached her as she slowly packed her bag. He stood awkwardly next to her for a while, and then muttered, "Thanks." She looked at him, her eyes dark and searching, and nodded.

"Welcome." And after that, if the other students noticed that Sensei Clarke and Kapri weren't quite so cold and distant with each other, well, they still didn't say anything.

The night air was cooler here in Reefside, cooler than Shane was used to. Behind him, in Haley's Cyberspace, the party raged on – as much as a party of 15 could really rage. He'd been enjoying the party, the chance to relax after several very rough days, but the memories had started coming back. So he'd slipped out the door to try to clear his head.

It didn't help, though. Slowly, it was coming back to him: how it had felt to be selfish with his ninja powers, to not hold back and give Conner an ass-kicking, to know that he had the power to do whatever he wanted. The thought of it, the feeling of it, made him sick to his stomach.

"It's different when you're not under a spell." He hadn't even noticed her joining him in leaning against the wall, but now he looked at her in surprise, cocking an eyebrow. She shrugged. "Being evil, I mean. It's different when you've grown up with it, when it's all you've known." She crossed her arms behind her head, gazing up at the stars dimmed by city lights.

"How did you do it?" He's as surprised as she by the question, but he rushed to explain. "Go back to Lothor. Pretend to be evil again, I mean."

"Old habits, I guess," she replied with a slight smirk. It quickly fell. "I don't know if Uncle noticed, but Marah and I…" She trailed off for a moment, then took a breath. "We don't have the enthusiasm anymore, I guess. No heart for being the bad guys again." It appeared again, that self-deprecating smirk, and she tossed a glance his way. "Been spending too much time with you fuddy-duddies, I guess."

He wanted to laugh, to accept her peace offering for what it was, but he couldn't. The memories, suppressed by the sudden removal of the mind-control, continued to seep into his consciousness. "It was like...like hanging in the air and not being able to touch down again," he said slowly. "All of the good parts, the rational parts of me, were stuck up in the air, and I couldn't do anything." He sighed and looked to the stars.

Kapri's voice was quiet. "Try talking with Blake and Hunter about it. They'd know how to deal with it better than me." The bitterness in her tone was unmistakable, and it tugged at Shane's heart.

"Kapri," he said softly, looking at her. He didn't continue until she met his gaze. "I'm sorry. I've been judging you, for a while now, and it wasn't fair. You and Marah did a lot of good today, and, well, I guess I can see that you're not the person you were." He blushed a little, and was thankful both for the darkness of the sky and his skin.

Kapri's smile was soft, and her light hair seemed to glow a bit in the dimness. "Thanks. It means a lot." They stood there together, outside of the Cyberspace, for what could have been hours or could have been minutes, but it didn't matter to either of them. Finally, Kapri broke the silence. "Friends?"

Shane smiled. "Yeah, I think we can try that."