Son of War
So a new year, a new story…
Actually, I wrote this one a while ago, before I really watch the seasons, so if things don't match up, tell me. I'm thinking about changing the title, but I haven't thought of a new one yet.
Disclaimer: Anything you can google is not mine.
War is destined to destroy Earth,
Until one can be unearthed.
Magnetic, Assisting, and always Kind,
That is the one you must find.
Evil and sin, tolerating none,
That shall be the Chosen One;
That shall be the Son.
Chapter 1 – Reefside
"Lori Kellen…Lori…Miss Kellen!"
"Huh?" Lori asked, jumping in shock.
"If you're going to sleep during class, then why bother coming to school at all? Why don't you stay at home and sleep in your comfortable little bed?!"
"S-sorry, Mrs. Rush," Lori apologized, sitting up straight.
The history teacher could be described with the subject she taught: ancient history. She was old and wrinkled; you could barely see her eyes under her heavily folded skin. Her hair was grayer than the lead from Lori's pencil and she reeked of old people smell. She hobbled feebly on a cane, bent over like the hunchback of Notre Dame. As she walked back to the front of the room after rudely breaking Lori's train of thought, it looked as if her hip was about to give out any second. Lori wondered how easily it would be to push Mrs. Rush over and have it look like an accident. It wouldn't be hard.
"All right," the aged woman rasped, turning around to face the class. "Thanks to your new friend, Miss Kellen, you all have a test on Christopher Columbus' expedition to the New World tomorrow. It will consist of three essay questions, each worth 50 points. The test will be counted for half your quarter grade."
"What?!" the class cried.
"Plus, I want a report on whether or not you think we should celebrate Columbus Day due on my desk as you enter the room tomorrow. Class dismissed!"
"Uh, thanks a lot, Kellen," groaned the students, pushing roughly past her as we all got up out of our seats and headed out the door, muttering all sorts of different nasty stuff.
Today was Lori Kellen's first day attending Reefside High School. She was the only preteen, at the age of 12, and a foot shorter than everybody else in the freshman year. The other students were even bigger, and Lori made sure to stay well away from them. She was only following in the footsteps of her best friend, Justin Stewart, who was an 11-year-old freshman at Angel Grove High eight years ago. She had met Justin at the Little Angels Haven Children's Shelter in Angel Grove when she was five. Lori learned from Justin and became smart like him, accelerating in academics as well as physical talents (especially at martial arts, becoming an expert by the age of 10). Because of that, she was isolated from the others kids her age, but that didn't mean she didn't make any friends. Actually, Lori made loads of friends, all of which were a lot older than her, but that didn't matter. She made friends with Justin's friends (who were also several years older than he): Tommy Oliver, Adam Park, Katherine Hillard (Kat), Tanya Sloan, Theodore Jay Jarvis Johnson (TJ), Carlos Vallertes, Ashley Hammond, and Cassie Chan. The next year, she also met Andros, Karone, and Zhane. Those last three came from somewhere far away. Although they had no accents, they had different customs (like having no last names).
Lori was really close to these people, who were all in their late teens when she first met them several years ago. For her seventh birthday, Zhane became her god-brother. However, on her 11th birthday, Social Services transferred her (did I mention Lori was an orphan with no idea who her parents were?) to Blue Bay Harbor. There, she met another gang of friends: Shane Clarke, Tori Hanson, Dustin Brooks, Cameron Watanabe, and Hunter and Blake Bradley. Those guys are in their early twenties and Dustin, Hunter, and Blake work at a local extreme sports store called Storm Chargers. The three of them rode dirt bikes while Shane was a skate border, Tori was a surfer, and Cam, a computer whiz. Lori learned to master each of her new friends' hobbies here, at Blue Bay Harbor, like back in Angel Grove where she played soccer with Adam, Carlos and Justin, baseball with TJ, sang with Tanya and Cassie, too bad she wasn't old enough to race with Tommy (and sometimes Justin, but the latter usually just fixes the cars). But Tommy became Lori's god-father on her 12th birthday and invited her to go live with him in Reefside.
"Hey kid, aren't you in the wrong place?" asked a tall white guy sitting across from her. Lori looked him up and down and knew at once what he was: a jock. She pondered about saying something back, knew better than to get herself into the would-be mess, so she adopted an innocent look and just shook her head.
The bell rang and the students slowly filling up the classroom. Lori had fourth period science and was sitting as far back as possible on a stool at a black-topped counter, with lab equipment dividing the table horizontally in half to allow two sets of partners (four people) to sit there. Again, Lori sank as low as she could, placing her cheek on the cold plastic countertop, closing her eyes. Hopefully, the only thing she'll have to say in this class is "Here" when the teacher calls her name for attendance. She didn't even notice when the teacher stepped into the room and class began.
"Are you okay?"
Lori groaned silently in her mind when a voice broke into her withdrawn peace. She opened her eyes, head still down, and saw that a girl, a white one with long wavy brown hair, was bending her head to look at her.
"I'm fine," I grumbled, sitting up.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You're eyes are really red," she noticed
"I'm albino," Lori retorted.
"But your hair's super black."
"I dyed it," Lori lied.
"Can you do that?"
"I did, didn't I?"
"You seem a little…crabby are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine!" Lori was getting irritated now.
"A--"
"She's fine!" a black guy sitting across from her hissed over. "Let it go!"
"What's going on over here?"
"Dr. O!" The three teenagers sitting at the table gasped, the girl turned around and the guys looked up to see the teacher that was standing behind the girls. "We were just, uh…."
"Why aren't you guys working?" the man asked.
"We were!" the black guy insisted. "But then Kira started--"
"Hey!" the girl exclaimed.
"Okay guys, just get started," the teacher said.
"Yes, Dr. O," the three teens chorused.
Then it was Lori's turn to gasp, shocking her tablemates a little bit.
"Tommy!" she cried, spinning around in her seat.
"Lori!" the teacher replied.
Lori had to admit, she was pretty surprised when she saw her teacher. He was a man in his late twenties. He wore thin glasses and his hair was gelled up into spikes, a thin line of facial hair divided his chin vertically in half.
"Tommy? Wh – you – I can barely recognize you!" the little girl exclaimed.
"I was wondering when you'd show up," said the man. "I thought you had refused my invitation."
"Are you kidding me?" asked Lori. "You got me out of Social Services…even Santa Claus couldn't do that!"
They both laughed. The three teens stared at the two of them, confused.
"What…?" the white guy began to ask.
"Lori, these guys are Connor McKnight, Ethan James, and Kira Ford. Guys, this is my new god-daughter, Lori Kellen," Tommy introduced.
Lori and the others exchanged greetings, which was always how Lori got her friends. She went to lunch with Connor, Ethan, and Kira. She was right; Connor was a jock, a soccer jock. Ethan was a video gamer, and Kira, a musician. It was kind of hard to believe that these three had anything in common, but you had to have some shared interest to become friends, right?
"What do you guys think of Dr. O's kid?" Connor asked his friends that afternoon after school. The three of them were seated at their usual spot at Hayley's Cyberspace, Reefside's local hangout for teens. It was everything its name was. It was a cyber café, nothing simpler than that. Coming in from the double doors, on the left was a small stage, and on the left was a red couch for those to watch the TV facing the big window behind the couch. In between were the little round metal tables that could seat around four people. Directly across from the entrance were double doors leading to the back kitchen and next to those was the bar (of course, it sold no alcohol).
"She's not his kid," Ethan pointed out. "He's her god-father."
"Whatever, she's gonna be around anyways," the soccer player said, shaking his head.
"I don't really understand why he suddenly decided to bring a little kid into the middle of everything that's going on," Kira said, sipping her drink. She leaned in and lowered her voice, "I mean, especially with…Mesogog and his goons terrorizing the city."
"I know," Ethan agreed. "I don't understand it either. How's he going to take care of the girl of he's always out fighting a crazy dinosaur from turning the Earth back to the prehistoric ages?"
"Finally, something Brainiac doesn't understand," Connor said sarcastically. His friends shot him looks of disapproval. "I'm kidding!" he cried. Then he grabbed the waiter that was walking by with an empty tray. "Trent, what do you think about the new girl?"
The Latino teen wearing white on white stopped and leaned to answer in hushed tones, "Look, Dr. O knows what he's doing. If he thinks now is a good time to bring a kid in, then it's a good time." Then he straightened up and walked away, going back to work.
"Kiss up," Connor muttered, shaking his head as he turned back to Ethan and Kira.
The owner of Hayley's Cyberspace (as you can guess from the name) Hayley, walked up to the counter next to them. "He's right, you know," she said.
"So how was your trip?" Tommy asked Lori after giving her the tour of his house.
Lori plopped down on the bed that was to be hers, staring up at the ceiling. "Okay, I guess," she shrugged.
"How did you get here from Blue Bay Harbor?"
"My friends got me a bike."
"A bike? You rode a bike all the way here?"
"It was a motorbike."
"Where'd your friends get the money to buy you a motorbike?"
"I never said they bought it."
Tommy looked horrified. Lori laughed and propped herself up on her left elbow. "Relax Tommy, they built it."
"Built?"
"Yeah. Three out of my six friends in Blue Bay Harbor are motocross riders. They fixed up an old bike and gave it to me…as a goodbye present."
"That's nice of them."
Lori nodded. "They're really nice," she agreed.
Tommy smiled. "So how was your first day of school?"
Lori groaned and dropped back down on the bed. Tommy laughed.
It didn't take Lori very long to settle down. Tommy had given her, her own room (complete with a TV, computer, and stereo), her own bathroom across the hall, and basically access to the whole house, except for his room of course. Lori didn't care if he had confined her to the limits of her room. She had already been given a lot more than she had dreamed. After 12 years of living in a group home, she would've been glad just to have a room to call her own, whether it even had a bed in it or not.
At school, she also soon got acquainted. She had four new friends: Connor McKnight, Ethan James, Kira Ford, and Trent Fernandez-Mercer. They were all seniors and did well with helping her out whenever she needed (especially in the bullying department). Lori went to the school counselor and moved her classes up to senior classes to match her level. She smiled when Mr. Elliot handed her new schedule. Now, she was a 12-year-old senior. She had surpassed Justin…just as the student always surpasses the teacher.
After school, Lori went to Cyberspace with the others. She finished her homework quickly and was once again, out looking for a new leisure pursuit. She chose Trent as her new target. He was the only one who had a hobby she wasn't very familiar with: drawing. She had done soccer with Justin, Adam and Carlos, did the musical thing with Tanya and Cassie, and the computer thing with both Justin and Cam. Drawing was the one thing she hadn't attempted yet.
"How do you draw her if she keeps moving?" Lori asked one Saturday afternoon while sitting in Cyberspace next to Trent, sketching in a notebook. Kira and her band were on stage performing a song that she wrote and she was posing as their subject.
Trent looked up from his own sketch and peered over at his apprentice's. "It's not that bad," he said encouragingly.
Lori stared down at her paper, covered with smudges and paper crinkled from all the erasing, then over at her master's. "Mine's horrible, I suck as drawing," she pouted, throwing down her pencil.
"Come on, you can't give up that easily," Trent said, picking up the pencil and handing it back to her. "Drawing can't be harder than skateboarding or motocross, right?"
"Do you skateboard or race?" Lori asked hopefully.
"No."
Heaving a heavy sigh, Lori grudgingly grabbed the pencil and started over on a clean page. Trent smiled and went back to his own drawing, his pencil flying rapidly all over the paper. Suddenly, there was a beep that made them all jump in shock.
"What was that?!" Lori demanded.
"Uh…nothing!" Trent replied, his right hand quickly hold his left wrist. "Go back to drawing."
"But Kira left!" Lori said, pointing up to the empty lone mike stand.
"Draw from your memory, that's how you do it when your subject is moving. Draw from you memory!"
"Are you okay?" Lori asked. "You seem kind of…tense."
"No, I'm fine!" Trent said, his eyes darting this way and that. Lori could almost see beads of sweat rolling off his face. "I gotta go. Keep drawing!"
"O…kay," Lori said, but Trent was already out the door. She looked around the café, Connor, Ethan, and Kira were gone as well. Weird, she thought, but Lori shook her head and went back to her drawing, brow furrowed and tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in concentration.
Around the corner, the four teens checked both ways to make sure no one was around.
"Ready?" Connor asked when they were satisfied.
"Ready," the others nodded.
"Dino Thunder, Power Up!" cried Connor, Ethan, and Kira.
"White Ranger, Dino Thunder," summoned Trent.
Their cuff-like Dino Plates with their Dino Gems set in the middle turned into a wrist-mounted morpher in the shape of a dinosaur head. With a flash, the four of them transformed, dashing out of the alley to fight evil as…the Dino Thunder Power Rangers!
That's the first chapter. Nothing's really happened yet. What do you think? Should I keep posting or just delete it?
