Notes: Kendall is obviously 'Team Mom'. Knowing and accepting this does nothing for her sanity as we peek a bit into her mind. Paper-thin fourth wall and references to past (and future) episodes (some blatant, some subtle).
Chapter 4: Tart Trek: The Next Confection
"I swear, I will never feel the need to have children- ever" Kendall grumbles to herself, rubbing her temples as she tries to concentrate on her latest project. Koda has been bouncing around the lair on a ridiculous pogo stick, cheering happily all the way while Chase skateboards figure-eights around him and Tyler walking on his hands. All that was missing was music from the Big Top.
Finally, Kendall slams her tools down loudly and sighs, "BOYS!" They freeze- perfectly still as if someone hit them with a PAUSE button: Koda balancing upright and hunched like a shamed squirrel, Tyler holding the one-handed stand pose from page 47 of his Yoga manual, and as Chase turned to face her, he rolled into a stalagmite.
Eyeing them all down, she scolded "Chase, shouldn't you be on mop duty? At this point, it'll take you until 8 to do the entire museum even if you start now." "On it," said a petulant Chase as he dusted himself off rolled his eyes "mum." he mutters as he skates away. "I heard that! Don't think I won't ground you! How about no TV?" Kendall calls.
"We don't get reception down here anyway! The base is shielded, remember?" Kendall cursed herself for forgetting.
"Then- no Playstation!" "Koda broke the controllers! I just won't have to get new ones so soon!" smoothly lied Chase. He always had a spare set of wireless controllers stashed away.
ARG! Did Chase have to be so contrary and infuriating? "Then… no skateboard!"
Chase swerved into a wall- a particularly jagged one. "Whaaaa?" Well that got a reaction. "That's right! I will personally take a blaster to it myself" Rationally, Chase knew it was a bluff, but at the sight of Kendall's morpher he whimpered and scurried away like a kicked puppy. Tyler and Koda were snickering to themselves- still freeze-framed.
"Don't think I haven't forgotten about you two" she says leveling her eyes and refocusing on her other unruly children. "I need some space to work- I'm trying to finish this new charger before Snide's next attack. So both of you- OUT"
Tyler sighs and goes to put his shirt back on and heads off to the bathroom while Koda jumps off his pogo and bounds out of the base cheering "Snack Time!" A few minutes later, a frantic Riley slides down into the base with- a mixing bowl in his hands?
"Ms. Morgan, you have to help me!" Riley hisses. "I heard Koda rushing for the kitchen so I had to get down here before he found out I was mixing cookies" Kendall pinched the bridge of her nose and took a breath before starting "I sent Tyler and Koda out of the base so I could try and get some work done for once." "Oh, ok" A relieved Riley set the bowl down on a desk. "Can I help? The batter still needs to set for a bit before baking so-"
"Oh hey Riley!" greeted Tyler, coming out of the bathroom. Startled, Riley immediately spun to meet Tyler while keeping the bowl well behind him. "Hey, Tyler!" Riley said manically smiling and shooting Kendall a look that said 'I thought you said they were both gone'. Riley couldn't let Tyler know about the cookies- he's horrible at keeping secrets. And if Tyler sees the batter, Riley would have five minutes max before Koda is hot on his heels, bouncing like a Jack Russell Terrier.
Kendall, sensing Riley's desperation and the opportunity to empty the lab area piped up "Oh Riley, could you go pick up some tools I left over in the van? I'm sure I parked it up by the loading dock" she turns to Tyler "Could you go with him, Tyler? I can't leave the lab right now- this is all very delicate work." Catching the hint, Riley pulled Tyler towards the doors, turning him completely around quickly "Yeah! Could you come with me?" Tyler, with a blissfully clueless look on his face, shrugged "Ok, sure!" Riley mouthed a 'Thank you' over Tyler's shoulder to Kendall as Riley continued to tug at Tyler toward the exit.
Kendall couldn't help but smile at the beautiful mess she willingly surrounded herself with. Cracking her knuckles, Kendall got back to work "Ok," she reaches for a charger to load her morpher "now for the dino cupid charger. With a few adjustments, it should also work a neural scrambler-" A klaxon blared at Kendall from her main computer signaling an alien bio signature. Hastily putting down her morpher at an awkward position on an upper countertop, she rushed to her VR map.
But as she re-scanned, the signal was gone. She stamped her foot in frustration "I've really got to work on reducing the lag delay on the sensors!" Despite the sensors reading false alarms before – once there was a blip in the kitchen for a minute before immediately disappearing- Kendall still got very upset. She starts kicking the console for good measure in an uncharacteristic loss of temper. "Honestly! Any monster could just waltz on into the museum and out without as much as a peep from this pile of techno-fail!" With every kick, she releases a bit more of her pent up aggression. "Like with Cavity!" *KICK* Who on Earth" *KICK* could miss a chef monster manning the KITCHEN?!" *KICK, KICK-*
The last kick heavily jostled the workstations and Kendall's morpher slid from his precarious position to a lower table firing a bolt that ricochet across the base. Kendall hastily ducked down waiting for the musical echoes of the morpher blast to die down.
Unbeknownst to the otherwise occupied Kendall, the blast had reflected against the crystal geodes where the energems rested and zapped through the green energem before striking the metal mixing bowl of cookie dough. Kendall's spectacled eyes peeked over the table to confirm that the doom had passed. After a cursory inspection around the lair, Kendall sagged in relief "Well no harm done. Thank goodness no one else was here" she affirmed. "No telling what kind of trouble that could have caused" she chastised herself for her brief immaturity and returned to work.
Eventually, Riley returned for his cookie dough and ran back to the kitchen, but not before depositing the bag he went to retrieve and giving Kendall a great big bear hug. Her afternoon goes by uneventfully until her comm chirped. "Prince Phillip! What a pleasant surprise! Is everything alright?" "Everything is fine, Ms. Morgan. I thought I'd pay a visit to everyone at the museum. I had hoped to arrive earlier, but it could not be helped" Kendall composed herself "Of course! Um, I'll have Ivan meet you out front when you arrive." "Splendid! I look forward to seeing everyone again." "Take care, Phillip."
It was then that she realized the Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) log needed to be done today for the museum and Ivan was supposed to complete it. "Oh well, I'll just do them. After all, I could do with some exercise. Not like I'm constantly fighting monsters anyway- ranger or not" Grabbing the MSDS binder, she proceeded to catalogue every type of chemical container in the entire museum.
After exiting a storage closet, Kendall bumped face-first into a vested chest. "Heckyl! I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there!" she apologized into the grinning face of her disguised enemy. "No worries, what-so-ever, pretty lady. I should have been more careful" he graciously replied. "Do you think you could you let Riley and Shelby know we're having a guest -well a friend really- visiting very soon?" "Really who?" Heckyl asks, interest piqued. "Well, I suppose it's safe to tell you- Prince Phillip of Zandar" At that news, Heckyl's eyes positively lit up "That is wonderful news! I'll go tell them now!" "Thanks so much, Heckyl" Kendall nodded. As she walked away, he chuckled to himself "No, thank you, pretty lady."
Passing Ivan, she let him know that Phillip would be arriving soon and that he should go greet him. "I've got the MSDS, Ivan, just go" "Many thanks, Ms. Morgan" Ivan bowed in gratitude which got an indulgent smile from Kendall.
Walking across the central atrium, she nearly slipped in the puddle in front of her. "Chase, you need to pay more attention! There are a lot of wet patches here! Someone could fall and break their neck!" she huffed away from a still cowering Chase, completely forgetting to hell him about Phillip.
Kendall recalled she needed to catalogue the cleaning chemicals in the kitchen so she looped around through the loading dock area. Upon arrival from the back, she saw a plate of freshly baked cookies on the central island "Huh!" she chirped. Her eyes darted both ways for a moment. Shrugging, she reached out tentatively, picked up a couple of cookies and slid them into her lab coat pocket. Riley could get awfully snippy about his cookies, but what the hell- she deserved a cookie or two. To be sure, she high-tailed it to the base before Riley caught her with her hand in the proverbial and near-literal cookie jar- MSDS be damned. Safely at the base, she took out a cookie and brought it to her lips. Just then, her klaxon blared again. Slamming the cookie down on the table, she checked the console, expecting another false alarm. This time the signal was localized within the museum before it disappeared. "Could be another false alarm" Kendall supposed. "It looks like it was last in the west fire escape stairwell. Better go check it out just in case."
At the ground level, she found nothing unusual- except the sound of screaming.
"Wait, Ivan NOOO!" Kendall peeked out into the main atrium floor at Shelby and Riley talking to Ivan who looked like he was munching on a cookie. "We thought you might have been affected by the cookie. Eating one made Heckyl and Tyler each go berserk and attack Riley" said Shelby.
Immediately, Kendall darted back into the stairwell suddenly remembering the cookie batter in the center of the base when her blaster accidentally went off. She turned back and saw Ivan fighting Shelby and wracked her brain for what was going on rather than just charging in. "Think, Kendall, think!"
Her mind raced as she went over the possible scenarios. The dino cupid charger's effects were temporary, yes, but no telling how the effects could change when infused into something and ingested. She was jolted off of her furious train of thought to the sight of Riley rushing over to the fire escape entrance. She pulled Riley into the fire escape stairwell.
"Riley," she hisses "do not make a sound"
"Ms. Morgan?"
"No time to explain, but we have to get back to the base and barricade ourselves in. I think your cookies were affected by the dino cupid charger"
Still delirious and clutching the Tupperware of cookies, Riley muttered "Well that explains Tyler…" "What?" "Nothing."
Shaking her head, Kendall continued "We can't go through the internal entrance with Ivan out there. We'll have to circle back and slide down"
Running down a badly lit internal service hall, Riley suddenly stopped and looked down at the cookies. "Wait! How were the cookies affected by the cupid charger?" said Riley in a hushed tone "Now is not the time Riley! Just be glad I didn't take a bite of this-" she produces the cookie from her lab coat "before I found you!" "How did you get-"
"YOINK!" Chase plucked the cookie from Kendall's hand as he skated by. "Thanks, I'm famished!"
"Wait, Chase! Don't eat that-"
"Hmmm-whaa?" replied Chase as he stops and swallows a mouthful of cookie.
"Why me?" Riley miserably asked no one in particular.
"Because you're far too adorable for your own good, that's why" answers a smirking Chase.
End Notes: Hooray! Finally there's some #CupidChargedChiley! Yeah, Kendall was really more of a background/setup POV, but nonetheless, she was instrumental nonetheless in linking the previous chapters. I'm trying REALLY hard to plant little plot seeds that get revisited in subsequent (previous?) chapters. This chapter was riddled with winks referencing things we may not often think about in the show. Writing subsequent chapters is much like playing Timeline (The future is the past, the past is the future- it all gives me a headache. – Capt. Janeway "Star Trek: Voyager"). And MSDS is a real thing: I've had to do it before.