A/N: So sorry for the late update. I was in Amsterdam with my friends and didn't have a converter for my computer charger, or my computer charger, or internet connection (was not risking going into a coffee shop). I tried to make this one a bit longer, and I'm going to lengthen out my chapters from now on. I do hope you like it, and as usual all reviews, ideas, ANYTHING would be nice. You could even put down what you had for breakfast! Just write it in the reviews, and I'll try to respond! Enjoy!
Antonio is yelling, frustrated at the black box. It is not responding to anything he tried. The others were outside training, and listening in to Antonio's rant, though it was mostly in Spanish. Mia sighs and walks over to Mentor.
"I know you know that I could help him AND speed up the process." she whispers into his ear.
"Then, I know you know that I can't allow that despite the fact that you could POSSIBLY help." he whispers back.
Mia glares at him and then responds, "I don't think that HE should have much of a say in this anymore, plus you know that was a big misunderstanding! He totally over reacted!"
"But I still have my orders." Mentor's calm tone and undaunted disposition irked Mia even more.
"Yeah, but because of those orders I paid the price! And might I remind you, IT REALY HURT!" she whines. Mentor glances over at the other rangers who are still training. Mia got the message and quieted down again. "I understand that he was important to you, but I really don't care about him, I care about the sake of my friends! You know that! I'm not seven years old anymore, Mentor. Now, I know a bit more about common sense."
"Mia, if this is about removing the symbol, it's not gonna happen." Mentor taunts. "As I said before, that symbol's not coming off unless you somehow defeat Master Xandred! Not just seal him away, but DEFEAT!"
"It has nothing to do with that! We need the black box, and I can help program it. You know that I can, but because of some stupid…"
"Don't disrespect Jayden's father, the previous red ranger, the man who gave his life to seal away Master Xandred…"
"Didn't do a very good job of it!" she hisses. "If he truly was looking out for us, he would have known better than to persecute members of his team for such trivial means!"
She strikes a chord when she says this. Mentor becomes even quieter, "He had his reasons."
Mia smirks and shakes her head in disbelief. "Reasons? Name one."
"Tradition, Mia, tradition. Your mother knows the rules about military involvement for Samurai, and yet she defied it." Mia rolls her eyes at a lecture given to her several times before. "So did your brothers, and so do you. John was given the authority to…"
"Not to attack a kid for being born! Nobody has the authority to do that!" The air is thick between the two. Mia looks him right into the eyes, unafraid. Mentor is not used to being challenged. Usually Jayden just blindly follows whatever order is bestowed upon him, and a yes is a yes and a no is a no. Mike is a pain, but listens to reason, but Mia is much more stubborn and daring than all of the rangers combined. While Mia is responsible, kind, and protective of the others, sometimes she just rubs him the wrong way.
"We will discuss this later. Get back to training, NOW!" She narrows her eyes and goes back to sparing with Emily. When Emily raises a questioning eyebrow, Mia just shakes her head.
Deep in the night everyone is asleep. Well, almost everyone. There is a girl with raven hair stalking through the night. The girl approaches the door of the room set aside for Antonio's work on the black-box. She slides open the door without creating a sound and tiptoes into the room. She finds the gold ranger slumped against the wall and the black box set up on a podium. She quietly sets down a computer on the ground and opens up her samuraizer. She focuses all of her energy on the small box and begins writing a wall of symbols in the air. It translates to basic programing code. By the time she is done writing, the symbol reaches from the ceiling to the floor.
Then, with a swipe of her samurizer, the symbols are sent into the black box. She stands expectantly for only a few seconds until golden symbols burst from the black box, and line every wall. With the swipe of her hand she can scroll through them all, analyzing each one.
"Antonio, what mess did you get me into?" she sighs. Then the girl goes about her work, editing, erasing, and changing all of the inappropriate symbols, and changing them to the correct one. As she goes on she begins to realize something and mutters to herself, "Thank you, Cam, for those boring nights we spent together when Mom needed you to watch me. If you didn't put me to sleep with your programing lingo, then we wouldn't have a black box," the hacker glances over to Antonio, "or a gold ranger. One more wrong symbol, and he would've blown himself up."
Once she finishes the edits, the hacker sends the symbols back into the box. Then the hacker creeps over to Antonio's sleeping form, and slips his samurai morpher out of his hand. Then as she looks into its history (the first thing he made easy for her), and saw that he had placed the dragon zord's symbol into the box already, but since she'd redone everything, she would have to do it again herself. The girl places his morpher on the ground and writes more symbols in the air to format it to the black box. The hacker sends them into the morpher, and then walks over to pick it up.
"So, I guess his is kindof like texting?" she thinks to herself as she stares down at his device. The hacker types a few symbols into the gadget, and then points it at the dragon zord disk. She plants her feet and braces herself just before she hits enter. The symbol flies out and hits the disk. The girl grunts, not anticipating the extra symbol power it would take to execute this task. Because her symbol is not water or light, she struggles with this part, having to get down on her knees to make sure she does not fall over. Sweat drips down from her brow, her hands shake, and she is panting. She does not know how much longer she can continue. Her vision blurs for a few seconds, but clears quickly. The disk's symbols fly into the black box, and finally she sees a hologram of the dragon zord flying into the box. A huge grin is painted onto her pallid face.
She looks over at Antonio, who is still sound asleep and whispers to herself, "Well, looks like you've got your work cut out for you buddy." The hacker hobbles over to the sleeping figure and places his samurai morpher back into his hand, and quietly creeps out of the room, and heads to her own. As she slips on her pajamas and washes her face. She looks up into the mirror and sees the smile is still plastered on her face. Despite her aching bones and the lack of the ability to keep her eyes open, she is happy knowing that because of her, it will only be a day or two until they have their new weapon. "Today, I made Cam proud."
In the morning, Mia wakes up with a splitting headache and is sore from head to toe. She groans as she trudges out of bed and grabs a sweatshirt to slip on over her tank top she wore to sleep. As she puts it on, she hesitates, turns around, and looks at the old scar on her left shoulder blade. It was slightly faded and distorted through years of growth spurts and healing, but you could still clearly tell what it was. Burnt into her flesh was the symbol of silence. The reason she is unable to tell Jayden or the others the full truth about her or her past and how it is intertwined with so many other rangers, and allies. She shakes her head in disgust remembering how it got there. "If only he could see me now. He'd regret what he had done tenfold!" she seethes.
She slips on the black sweatshirt and walks out of her room, only to be greeted by a chorus of screams, laughs, and utter confusion. This just made her head pound even more. Mike and Kevin were battling about some trivial issue (Mike probably was the instigator), Antonio cheering himself on as he makes more progress on the black box, Jayden is slugging a punching bag, and inadvertently beating up Emily who is holding it up. Emily spots Mia, and drops the punching bag, dodges Jayden's fist, and runs up to her and grins, "Hey, sleepyhead! I was about to go wake you up! What took you so long?"
"Headache." Mia mutters.
"Oh, okay. Let's go to the kitchen, and I'll make us some tea, but first, you might want to go get changed. While the fluffy ninja turtles pajama pants look comfy, I don't think that they're proper samurai training attire." Emily giggles. Mia smiles and nods. As she walks out she silently curses herself for wearing the pj's that Cassie bought her. If Mentor saw, then she'd be dead.
She painfully slips on her uniform, triple checking that the scar isn't showing, and returns to the kitchen. She sits down at the counter and smiles as Emily slides over a plate of chocolate chip pancakes and tea.
"Mentor made breakfast. You don't know what it took to make sure Mike didn't steal your plate. When he couldn't get yours, he got Kevin's. That's why their fighting out there." Emily informs Mia as she slides onto the stool next to her. "Mentor is going out to get more pancake mix, while Kevin pummels Mike. He told me to make sure that you were up, and to train with Jayden for the time being." Mia nods as she stuffs her face. After the previous night, she really was hungry. Emily looks shifts in her chair, and glances back at Jayden. Mia took notice.
"What's wrong Em?" Mia asks.
"You haven't told them, have you?" Mia doesn't know what she's talking about at first, but then it hits her. She shakes her head. "Mia, you've got to tell them. You sure that you don't want me to do it for you.
"No, I've gotta be the one to tell them, but you know the rules. The moment the word 'military' leaves my lips they're gonna go bananas!" Mia replies. "Mike and Antonio probably will just shrug it off, but Jayden and Kevin? Not so much. Currently, I like my head where it is. ON MY SHOULDERS."
Emily laughs, remembering Jayden and the punching bag. "I don't know, maybe you'd look good with the whole headless horseman look." Emily teases.
"Really? Yeah, maybe I can see it. On Halloween!" The two girls burst out laughing. Mia stuffs the last bit of pancakes in her mouth, right as Mentor walks in.
"Good morning, girls. Nice to see the both of you finally up." he says as he looks over at Mia, "I hope that you both are well rested. Once you two are done, meet Jayden outside and start today's training. You two will be sparing, while Jayden will be working on symbols. Mike and Kevin will be doing some 'special' training due to their behavior this morning." The two girls lock eyes, nod their heads, and head outside.
Each grab a kendo stick and begin to spar. Jayden walks over to the easel and picks up a brush and a jar of paint. Mia's eyes glance his way. She curiously looks at the easel. The kanji she sees is 雷光 raikou (lightning). The page erupts with electric currents. Eventually it begins to char up, and Mia looks back to her opponent just in time to nearly dodge a swing at her shoulder, barely blocking it. She shakes her head trying to stay focused. Her vision blurs for a second as she ducks from another attack. She tries to stay on her toes, but the weight of her own body is taking its toll on her. "I knew first hand that using too much symbol power drains you, but this is ridiculous!" Mia thinks to herself, "Better not let it show, or else Mentor will know."
The girls' kendo sticks clash for only a few more beat, when Mia lets her guard down slightly out of exhaustion, giving Emily an opening to whack her upside the head.
Mia rubs the back of her head with the palm of her hand. Emily just stands there trying not to laugh. "For Peat's sake Mia! Did you get any sleep last night? You know, if Mentor sees you you'll be dead."
"Yes, but obviously not enough."
"Well that's a given! Today you're slower than a sloth." Mia smirks at her friend's comment and whacks Emily in the shin with her kendo stick.
"Ow!" Emily howls.
"Emily did you get any sleep last night, or what?" Mia sarcastically imitates her friend. Emily takes a swing at Mia's head, but she blocks it with her kendo and the two girls go on sparing. Each rhythmic clash of the sword pounds on Mia's head. Each step they take is a key being pressed on Antonio's morpher, draining Mia's energy. Each second that passes is a small battle won in the internal war to stay awake while all her body wants to do is sleep.
Mentor walks outside with Mike and Kevin in tow. Mentor clears his throat and waits a beat to start talking, "As I have been informed that I have things that need to be attended to, Mike and Kevin will be doing all of your chores for a week instead of what I had previously planned. Emily and Mike will spar, and Jayden and Kevin will spar." he turns to the pink ranger, "Mia, it is later."
A/N: I hope you liked it, and seriously write what you had for breakfast, or the grossest breakfast you've ever eaten in the comments. The most disgusting/funny/both meal will make it into one of my upcoming chapters! Can't wait to hear from you guys!