It was supposed to be the best night of his life. Staring at his team in silent disbelief, his mind whirred back to a couple of hours ago. He had been ecstatic to see everyone again, after coming home from such a long time. He had had everything planned out perfectly. First, he would surprise his team. Then, he would hug everyone, reluctantly of course, and then when he got to his special blue water teammate, he would whisper the words 'meet me outside in 5'. Then he would proceed to babble out all these feelings he had for her and then they would kiss and have a happily ever after ending.

But everything fell apart when he got to RootCore. It had only taken the haunted look on his mother and father and the looks on Chip and Xander holding a crying Clare and Vida respectively. The sobbing pink ranger looked up and spoke the words that nearly stopped his heart: "Nick, Maddie's gone missing,"

It was supposed to be the best night of his life. But when he heard the startling news, his whole world came to a complete stop. He was supposed to have surprised his team, and was supposed to have gotten the water ninja who had captured his heart long ago. He had planned to take her to the beach where she always went surfing. He would arrange a picnic then chase her out into the water and then dunk her and then kiss her like there was no tomorrow. And then they would come back, endure the teasing of everyone and then live happily ever after.

But everything fell apart when he got to Ninja Ops. Cam and Sensei's grave faces and Shane and Dustin's sullen faces had set warning bells going off in his head, but it took the words of his adopted brother to explain everything. He just stared dumbfounded at everyone wishing with all his might that what they were saying was not true. That it was just some horrible misunderstanding. Or an extremely cruel joke; he honestly preferred that over the truth. But there was no avoiding this painful truth and Hunter's voice echoed in the stoic navy ranger's head: "Blake, Tori's missing,"