Legal: I do not own Power Rangers or the associated names, places, events, characters etc. Anything that is not covered by the above rights should be considered purely the creation of the author.
Rating: T – May be some mild adult themes including violence and language.
Monday rolled around, and the Rangers were returning to school. Sarah was just packing her bag when she heard the doorbell.
"Who could be calling this early?" Ellie asked. Sarah just shrugged her shoulders. Ellie, who was checking out job listings online just glared at her daughter. Sarah didn't take long to realise it was a rhetorical question. Sarah went to the door to check who was there. She found Preston standing outside.
"Preston?" She asked, a little curious to see her best friend standing on her doorstep so early. While they were close and he had stopped by occasionally, it wasn't as though he wasn't patient enough to wait until she got to school to speak to her.
"Hey Sarah." Preston said, shifting a little nervously. "Um...I was just wondering if you'd like to walk to school together."
"You want to walk to school?" Sarah asked him. Preston just nodded. She had a feeling there was more to it than that. A lot had happened over that weekend. Her dad was still in the hospital, and while he was stable, the doctors were still more than a little vague about when he would be ready to leave. Sarah wasn't really keen on going to school at all that day, she wanted to stay in case there was something she could do to help the family or more importantly in case there was any change in her dad's condition, but there were other things going on that she knew she needed to concentrate on, and she had a feeling that was the real reason for Preston's early visit.
Aiden, Brody's brother, long thought missing, probably dead, had returned to Summer Cove. It was a development all of them had hoped for, especially Brody, though with it there were also a lot of questions. Where had he been? What had he been doing for ten years? Why did he only return now? The biggest question of all though was, could he be trusted?
Sarah had a little bit of experience with miraculous returns, or more accurately, her friends had. She had briefly served in a supporting role with the Amber Beach team, and some of them had some pretty wild tales that quickly led her to realise that the word 'miracle' had a whole different meaning in their world. Among her close friends were Koda, a man who had literally been frozen in ice for over 100,000 years, Ivan, a man who had spent 800 years trapped inside the villainous Fury, and lastly, but probably most applicable to this situation, James, who had returned after being missing presumed dead for ten years, just like Aiden.
In James' case, he had been lost on an archaeological dig during a cave-in. His team could never find their way back to the island, and so they had presumed he had to have perished. It had transpired that in that cave-in, he had found the Aqua Energem, which had given him the power that he needed not only to survive the cave-in, but also to return to the mainland. His story was unlikely, but it did bear the most resemblance to Aiden's, and so it did in Sarah's mind lead her to think that it was POSSIBLE he had survived in hiding all that time.
Of course that still left a lot of questions. James was an adult when he went missing; he had a lot more means at his disposal. Also, James had bonded to the Aqua Energem, which meant not only did he have the strength and power that went with being a Ranger; he also hadn't aged since he bonded to it. To this day, he and Tyler looked a lot more like brothers than father and son.
Since from what little she knew Aiden appeared to be an adult now, and none of what Preston told her indicated he had any powers to speak of, which did cast a few more doubts over his story of survival. Then again, he was trained in survival techniques by a man that was said to be one of the greatest ninjas that had ever lived. None of them wanted this to be fake. For Brody's sake, all of them wanted more than anything for Aiden to have really returned to them. Of course caution was also always advisable, and their enemies were always deceitful and cunning. Kendall still had to weather the occasional joke over the fact she had unknowingly not only hired her Big Bad to work in the museum, but had briefly dated him!
"The uh...guys were going to meet up before class." He told her. "We had that thing to uh..."
"Right, that thing!" Sarah answered. "Mom, Preston and I are just going to school now."
"I'll see you later!" Ellie called out as Sarah picked up her belongings and headed out of the door. She returned to her job search, looking at the options.
Levi was just arriving in the parking lot, and was just about to open the trunk of his car when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun around, preparing to defend himself, only to hear a shriek and see someone falling away from him. He looked to the ground and realised that it was Mrs Finch.
"Mrs Finch! Oh God, I'm so sorry!" He exclaimed as he closed and locked the boot, which was carrying a large amount of his training gear, including his new uniform, things that would be kind of hard for a music teacher to explain owning. He offered her a hand, helping her up. "You just startled me, I never meant..."
"It's my fault I guess." She replied, using his hand to pull herself up and straightening herself out. "I suppose that's what I get for being spontaneous. I was just surprised to find someone else here so early."
"Yeah, I was always an early riser back home." Levi answered, looking to her with a smile. "I figured I could spend the next couple of hours watching trashy morning television or come in and get some work done."
"That definitely sounds familiar." Mrs Finch agreed. "So, you're settling in alright?"
"It was a struggle at first, but I think I've started to get used to things." He told her. He noticed Mick poking his head out of the gate to the yard, looking around for him. "If you'll excuse me, I have a few things to discuss with Mr Kanik before school starts."
"Oh, alright then." Mrs Finch answered. "Well, I guess I'll see you around the teachers' lounge."
"You most certainly will." Levi answered. "I believe I still owe you for that fantastic carbonara."
"I'll look forward to that." She replied as he headed towards the yard outside the Shop Class. As Levi approached, Mick saw him coming and ushered him inside.
Up on the Warrior Dome, inside Cosmo's office, Madame Odious was watching events unfolding on Earth on a viewing device, and she watched with interest as the Rangers started to slowly but surely arrive, no doubt to plan what their next move was. Odious found it amusing to think that mere humans, creatures that had nothing like the mental capacity of her species could possibly think they could keep ahead of the likes of her. Among her kind, even the children quickly advanced in intellect to the levels many scholars of other species only aspired to. For humans, a species that was still comparatively speaking at an early stage of their kind's evolution to think that any plot they could come up with could match her intellect was as laughable as a worm thinking it could outwit a human.
She put her viewing device away as she heard the door to his office opened and Cosmo entered. He was still smarting after the ratings dip that Ripcon had cost him. He had spent most of his time trying to think of how to ensure that next week's broadcast would at least be back to respectable figures, and right now he was willing to try just about anything that was ready to go while he planned the long-term recovery. He came into the office, taking a seat.
"Odious, I believe you had a talent you wished to pitch to me." He began in an off-hand way. Odious just started laughing.
"I have so much more to offer than any mere talent. I offer you what you always love, a story, a tale. A tale of drama, a tale of suspense, and a tale of sacrifice."
"That sounds interesting." Cosmo answered. "So, what do you propose?"
Odious just clicked her fingers, at which the door opened and her newest talent acquisition entered. It was a strange looking creature that looked like...well...it looked like a teapot, with the rest of its body appearing to be made out of steam. Madame Odious gestured to the creature.
"Allow me to introduce Toxitea." She stated. Cosmo just sighed and shook his head.
"Your poisoner." He commented. "Odious, my audience just watched a slapstick show, and I only managed to preserve barely respectable ratings by billing it as a comedy show. Even if you could somehow trick the Rangers into drinking her tea, what makes you think that our viewers would want to watch the Rangers slowly die of poison instead of a good fight?"
"Because what could be better than watching the Rangers die slowly and painfully than forcing them to watch their friends do so, and give them the agonising choice...their Power Stars for their friends lives."
"Interesting." Cosmo stated. "But that still doesn't get over the small difficulty of how you poison them in the first place."
"Oh, don't worry, I have that in hand." She told him.
"Really?" He asked, suddenly sounding interested. "So what is this in-road?"
"You know better than to give too much of the story away at once." She answered. "So, shall I tell Toxitea to get ready for make-up?"
"Prepare your poisoner." Cosmo told her, waving her off. "Let me worry about the promotion."
Down at the school, the Rangers, Aiden and Mick had assembled in the yard outside the Shop Class. One of the things Mick had insisted on was that the Ranger Base was off limits to anyone other than the Rangers, which is why they were meeting out here instead of in the Ranger Base.
The whole thing was being kept pretty cordial, and everyone was quite positive about it, at least part of this was down to doubt and suspicion. It wasn't as though everyone hadn't considered the rather convenient nature of Aiden's return. They had all seen some pretty unlikely and almost impossible things in the last few months, but that didn't mean that sometimes coincidences were entirely innocent.
Aiden, for his part, didn't seem to take it personally that Mick had set up this get-together more or less so they could grill him and interrogate him on what had happened to him and why he was only just returning now seemingly out of the blue. Although the implication was that they believed at best he was a spy and at worst some kind of Trojan Horse designed to destroy them from within, he did seem pretty jovial and light-hearted about their questions.
"So when I got the train originally I went to Blue Bay Harbour." Aiden told them. "My dad had told me all about the Academy there, and I had kind of vague memories of it, so I thought if there was anywhere I could get help it would be there. Unfortunately, the one thing dad never told us was where exactly the Academy was."
Levi looked to Mick, who seemed to nod at this detail. Aiden had brought this detail up on his own, without any prompting from the others. It did seem to fit that he would attempt to go there, and it did answer the question why he hadn't gotten the other Ninjas involved.
"I was there a couple of weeks...maybe a month before I gave up looking for them." Aiden informed them. "I figured if they didn't want to be found, there was no way I would be able to find them. After that, I travelled around a bit. I kept moving, never staying anywhere too long while I kept my head down, waiting for a sign that it was safe to come out. Then, one day, while I was in a homeless shelter in Harwood, I saw a news report about the new Power Rangers team."
"So you spent the last ten years hopping around homeless shelters?" Calvin asked him.
"I got into homeless shelters when I could. A lot of the time I had to sleep rough." Aiden told him.
"How...how did you get by?" Hayley asked. "How did you feed yourself?"
"Mostly I lived off the land when I could." Aiden told her, before producing her wallet and Calvin's. "Sometimes...I admit I had to do a few things that I wasn't exactly proud of."
"HEY!" Calvin protested, snatching the wallets back. Aiden just looked to them.
"Look, I know that all of this sounds...pretty insane. If I didn't live through it, I don't think I'd believe it either." Aiden told them. "I want to help you all, however I can."
"Aiden..."
"Look, I know there's not much I can do. I don't have any powers, but...Brody's my family. However I can help him, I'll do it." Aiden continued.
"Aiden, this thing we do, there's really not much room for civilians." Mick told him.
"Well...there were a few civilian assistants on the last team." Sarah chipped in before she could stop herself. The others all stared at her. "What? There was!"
"The point is, you already know quite a bit, but you said it yourself, you don't have any powers. That makes you vulnerable." Mick reminded him. "The more you know, the more danger you're in. No one can force you to divulge any information you don't have."
"If you're worried about the Ranger Base, you don't need to worry; I've got that message loud and clear!" Aiden assured them. "Have I even asked about it since the first time? You're the one that brought it up."
"He...kind of has a point." Hayley answered.
"Besides, there are other things I can do to help." Aiden said with a smile. "I mean, from what I've seen my brother's been teaching you all pretty well, but maybe I could help out with some lessons."
"Lessons?" Calvin asked. "Look, Aiden, I don't mean to be disrespectful but..."
As Calvin reached out for him, Aiden took him to the ground, his arm twisted up behind him, and a knee on the back of his neck, driving his face into the ground.
"A dojo is great and all, but the practical lessons of the street are a pretty good teacher." Aiden told him. "A twelve year old kid wandering the streets alone...there's a lot of sick people out there that see that and see a victim."
"He...makes...a good point!" Calvin grunted as Aiden held him down. Aiden finally let him up.
"So, what about it?" Aiden asked him. "Mind if I train with you guys? Maybe see if I can teach you a few things?"
"That would be OK." Mick answered. "Now, there's some stuff I need to do, there's a couple of hours before first bell, so...I'll leave you to it!"
"Come on then Aiden." Brody said with a smile, happy that his friends seemed to finally be coming around to the idea that his brother was back and genuinely just wanted to help. Perhaps in time they would share more of their world with him, but for now, it seemed that they were happy to allow him into their world. He punched Aiden a couple of times softly. "Let's see how much of what dad taught us you remember!"