author's note | the old power ranger seasons are so much better than the crap airing right now. they should just rerun all seasons of mmpr, in space, ninja storm, dino thunder, rpm, and bring back tori because she's such a bamf in everything (lol jk) and be done with it. and yes i mooched the title off from that legend of korra game shut up ;_;
Dark Into Light
Canon. Takes place Megaforce-era–ish.
NS/slight DT. | After they defeated Lothor, the three Wind Rangers could not have been closer. But in the midst of an ongoing battle with a clan of dark ninjas, the death of a dear friend causes their friendship to fray and then irreparably snap—to the point when one of their number is banished from the Wind Academy...forever.
Tori/Blake.
cover image credit to codedzer0
(carry your world, i'll carry your world)
prologue
atlas
.
.
He stumbles towards her, his voice garbled and almost inarticulate as he babbles madly away, clawing at her black sleeves.
"N-no—Tori, get Cam—get him out of the goddamned way!"
Wide blue eyes blink in alarm while long blonde locks spin through the air, their owner trying to disengage herself from a ragged figure dressed in black clothes. "What are you talking abo—"
A wet and thoroughly nauseating ripping sound cuts through the air.
One primal snarl and an anguished wail cut short later, Tori Hanson is attempting to not trip over her own shaking feet as she turns away to promptly empties her stomach of their contents.
Through a mouthful of bile, she splutters incoherently, "Holyfuckwhatjusthappened."
.
.
"There was no army."
"What?"
"What do you mean, 'what'?" she snaps back in disgust and maybe there's a little bit of frustration there, too. "We had no chance; we had one ninja to their every ten."
There's a heavy pause as the black-haired man sitting opposite to her narrows his eyes in disbelief.
Her eyes flash at the pointed look he's giving her. "And...I suppose that this is all my fault?"
"Damn straight."
Her lips twist into a gruesome approximation of a pained smile that's more of a grimace than anything. "But it's not."
The man sitting across from her smiles back, his eyelids hooded. "That's what they all say, Tor."
And her eyes widen at the promised implication behind the words. "Shane, you can't do that—"
He silences her with a withering look. "What 'can't' I do?"
The unspoken word hangs in the air between them before Tori stands up so violently that her chair skids back six feet and probably would have gone another few lengths more had the wall not been there to obstruct its path.
Dustin, whose warm chocolate brown eyes are flicking back and forth from both of his best friends, nervously tries to mediate. "Dudes, maybe we shouldn't be—"
Tori's lip curls in distaste as she meets Shane's smoldering glare.
"...Go to hell."
.
.
She doesn't know when it starts, but by this point there are rumors flying around all four corners of the Academy and very nasty looks are being thrown towards her from every direction imaginable.
Dustin tries to comfort her, to turn her away from all these disgusting accusations spilling out of nameless mouths.
"It's okay, Tor. You did nothing wrong. I won't let anything happen, I promise."
She stares back at him with a blank and sad blue gawk, and they taunt without words, I have no one left who loves me.
Dustin's jaw tightens as a short Asian man hurries by them, who shoots the water ninja a patronizing look before carefully averting his gaze. Two girls, one of them dark-haired and the other a blonde so similar to the water ninja standing next to him that he has to blink twice, trail after the thunder ninja slowly; respectively they are dressed in the colors of navy and cerulean.
The latter girl's light blue eyes flick to the duo standing to the side of the path, and Tori can catch a glimpse of a sea of betrayal and hurt swimming in them before the girl pointedly looks away to scamper after her father.
Dustin's hand gets tighter and tighter on her shoulder until the black fabric encased in his grip has gotten hopelessly crimped and wrinkled.
To her credit, Tori somehow manages to not break out into a fit of hysteria-induced giggles.
.
.
Her carefully constructed stone wall exterior promptly falls into quite a few dusty pieces at the funeral.
.
.
She tries to retain control over her emotions when in public but that sure as hell doesn't happen when her head is half-buried into an abrasive pillow that is her crossed arms and she's sitting on a bed of red-orange autumn leaves below an old maple tree near the waterfall and she's simply bawling her eyes out like a baby.
The difference is that where the baby has a mother who loves him, she has only the whispers on the wind to comfort her.
.
.
"We're kind of like kindred spirits, you know."
Yeah...fuck you, Blake.
She lets out a choked, half-insane burst of involuntary laughter as she breaks the seal on the top of a bottle of 151.
.
.
When Dustin finds her, she's nursing her third bottle of rum and has jumped off the deep end and into the realm that consists of hopeless drunks.
.
.
Dustin loses it and slaps him right across the face.
"You're killing her, can't you see that?" the normally happy-go-lucky earth ninja sharply points out in the middle of the common green. "Dude, listen to me. I get that you're hurting—we all get it—but you can't heap all the blame for Cam's death onto one person."
The air ninja's eyelid twitches in turn. "She was the only one who was close enough to save him."
"So, what?"
"So it's her fault that he's dead."
An ugly pause fills the air before Shane speaks up again, and this time, his voice is fractured and broken and simply frustrated.
"...You didn't see they way he died, Dustin."
.
.
A scroll is being slowly crushed into bits in her unrelenting, shaking grip, the sound of crackling paper the only sound in the still and overly stagnant air. She can feel numerous pairs of hostile eyes on her, and she slowly turns to face the bringer of what she sees as the end of everything she had ever known in her entire life.
In a low and deadly voice, even though she had been half-expecting it these past few days, she manages to hiss out, "I'm what?"
end notes | welp. ._. i'm really sorry for killing cam, but he has to die for this story to go on.