Chapter 2-Athena the Master
"So? What are you doing in Ocean Bluff?" RJ asked Ena as they & Dom entered the loft.
"Well, I was in the area and thought I'd stop by. Why? Is it now a crime to want to see an old friend and end up seeing two?" Ena answered as she sat down in RJ's recliner.
"Wait, Ena! That's RJ's-"
"It's okay," RJ cut Dom off as he sat in the chair next to it.
"Thanks, Robbie," she said as she got comfortable in her friend's favorite chair. Dom, resigned to the fact that Ena was probably the only person in the world that ever got away with anything when around RJ, sat himself down on the ottoman next to the Pai Zhuq master.
"Do you have to do that?"
"Do what?"
"Call me Robbie?"
"But that's your name, RJ. Robert James Ozean. What else am I supposed to call you?"
"How about RJ? Only my mother calls me Robert."
"And only I call you Robbie. Say, how about this: I'll call you RJ in public and Robbie in private. How does that sound?"
"So long as you don't call me Robbie in front of my students. Or Fran. I have an image to maintain."
"Yeah, so that you can remain mysterious, right?" Dom joked.
"Very funny, Dominic Arthur Fuller!" RJ retorted.
"Shhh! Not so loud! I don't want the whole world know my middle name!" Dom said as he tried to shush his friends.
"You boys and your names. I have no problem with my name!" Ena exclaimed.
"Is that so, Athena Jane Christopherson?"
"So? It's a proper Greco-English name. And it goes along quite well with my animal spirit. What's so wrong with that?"
"Then why do you insist that everyone call you Ena? Hmm?" RJ asked.
"Maybe she's afraid of something," Dom added.
"Oh, that's it, boys. You're going down!"
And with that final verbal spar, the fur (and feathers and horns) went flying as the three old friends began a three-way sparring match between Wolf, Owl, and Rhino.
"So, does anyone know anything about this Ena person?" Casey asked as the four younger employees of Jungle Karma Pizza cleaned up after closing.
"I've known RJ for a year, and I still don't know that much about him," Fran said as she wiped down a table.
"You know, I noticed something a bit odd when she was talking," Theo said as he collected shakers.
"What?"
"She seems to have an owl...obsession."
"What do you mean?" Fran asked.
"I noticed the bag, but that was it," came Casey answer.
"She was wearing an awful lot of owl emblazoned clothing," Theo told the others.
"You don't think she could be from Pai Zhuq?" Lily asked.
"Impossible, Lil. She looked even sweeter than you, if that's even possible," Theo said as he finished his task and helped put the chairs on the tables.
"You're right. Maybe she's just really into owls. I mean, if you looked at everything you guys have, how much of it has a connection to your animal spirits?" Fran asked as they finished cleaning the pizzeria for the night.
"Yeah. Come one you guys, let's go upstairs and get our answers," Casey said as he headed towards the door that separated the restaurant from the kitchen and loft stairs.
"So, you gave him a ball made from used gum? Dom, that's disgusting!" Ena exclaimed from her perch on the railings.
"Well, he was the one who told me to clean the undersides of all of the tables!" Dom answered from his beanbag.
"I give him extra points for wrapping it up as a gift," RJ told the other two from his recliner.
"That's true. Hey guys! Come and join us!" Dom said to the four who had just come up from the restaurant.
"What have you three been up to?" Lily asked as she surveyed the aftermath of the three-way spar.
"Just catching up on old times," RJ told his students.
"Uh-huh," Fran, looking skeptical, said as she joined Dom on another beanbag.
"So, what exactly did this 'catching up' involve? A food fight?" Theo questioned the three adults as he picked popcorn off of the couch before sitting down.
"Well, when we end up together, it can get a little messy," RJ admitted as he helped Ena pick popcorn out of her hair since she had moved from the railing to sit on the ottoman.
"Good thing there wasn't any of Master Vark's chilibean cassarole around," Ena commented as she leaned back into RJ as he carefully removed the fluffy kernals.
"Wait, you know Master Vark?" Lily asked the older woman.
"Of course! I was at Pai Zhuq at the same time as these two lugheads!" she answered as she threw some of the popcorn that had previously been in her hair at Dom. "We used to get into so much trouble when we did three-way matches. They usually ended up with a huge mess surrounding the school," she told them.
"Oh, that's right, you were never properly introduced," RJ said as he finished picking the popcorn out of Ena's hair.
"Everyone that isn't Dom, this is Athena Christopherson, the current Master Owl."
"That explains the owls," Casey whispered to Lily and Theo.
"But everyone just calls me Ena. And I'm guessing you're Casey, Lily, Theo," she pointed to the three primary-coloured rangers sitting on the couch before turning to Fran and Dom, "and Fran."
"How did you know?" Casey asked.
"One, RJ & Dom are very good at describing people and two, you're still wearing your nametags."
The rangers and Fran looked down and noticed that they were, indeed, still wearing their plastic nametags.
"Oh, right." The four quickly removed their aprons and nametags and went back to listening in on their elders' conversation.
Okay, so really bad ending for chapter 2. I'll try to do better next time (since my laptop won't be running out of battery power then and I won't be as sleep-deprived).