I don't own PRNS or any of the characters, nor do I make any money from this work of fiction.
Pairings: Hunter/Cam (I'm not even going to pretend that I know when it'll happen), Blake/Tori
Summary: Hunter and Blake check-in with the Thunder Academy and get a surprising reception from some of their classmates, while Cam talks to a sensei and a student, and gets a not-so-surprising reception.
Notes: A kind of bridge between establishing the Winds and Thunders and the path that will eventually lead Cam to his Ranger powers.
The Choices We Make
Chapter Twenty-One: Check-Ins
Hunter was restless. It was a pretty common event, normally, but he had been so busy lately that he hadn't felt like this in weeks. Now, with everything now settling down, he was kind of…well, at loose ends. Sure, he could race or train, but he could only go for so long before getting bored. He and Blake, after some debating, had applied for positions at Storm Chargers and although he knew they had gotten the jobs, they still had to wait for Kelly to file the appropriate paperwork and whatever before they could officially start.
It was a Saturday. No training today; and he had clocked enough time at the track yesterday to put him off racing for a day or two. The Winds had invited him and Blake to a movie, but it had looked kind of lame, so he'd opted out. No sense in wasting his time or his money. Blake had considered going but he wouldn't have been able to spend much time alone with Tori, so in the end he had declined too.
They were lounging on the sofa in their apartment when Blake asked him, "Want to visit the Thunder Academy?"
Hunter considered it. He wanted to see Sensei Omino, to tell him about what had happened with the Gem of Souls (although not everything, since no one knew he had the remaining pieces of the Gem), and Leanne was supposedly back in town for a little bit, so they could catch up. Yeah. He could get behind that.
"Alright," he said, nodding. "We should probably leave soon, then." Sensei Omino didn't teach classes on Saturday afternoons, but he sometimes led evening meditations.
So a half hour later they ducked into the alleyway behind their apartment complex and streaked away. Hunter hadn't realized how homesick he'd felt until they stepped through the stone walls—stone, not water—and they found themselves on familiar territory.
"Man," muttered Blake, echoing his thoughts, "I didn't think I'd missed this place that much until now."
Hunter nodded in agreement and they set off toward Sensei Omino's office. But as they began to encounter other students milling about, they realized that something had definitely changed—everyone was staring at them.
"Okay, so this seems familiar. Sure we aren't back at the Wind Academy, bro?" asked Blake, watching their onlookers warily.
"Dunno. Sure feels like it," muttered Hunter, taken aback by the scrutiny. It hadn't been that long since they left—what was everyone's problem?
"Hunter! Blake!" exclaimed a familiar voice.
"Hey," greeted Hunter, glad to see Leanne hurrying toward them.
She hugged them both in turn and smiled. "It's good to see you both," she told them. "How are you?"
"We'd be better if everyone would stop treating us like a freak show," Blake told her, as the three of them began walking toward the main building. "What's the deal?"
Leanne winced momentarily and told them, "It's been years since anyone at the Thunder Academy has visited the Wind Academy, and it's never been an extended visit like yours. Half of them are expecting you to come back in primary colors with Wind Academy badges on your uniforms."
"No way," said Blake, shaking his head.
"Yeah, we're Thunder ninjas all the way," agreed Hunter, frowning.
"People will always think what they want," Leanne said, sighing as she opened the door to her father's office.
It occurred to Hunter suddenly that Leanne and Cam were both children of sensei, and that they had both grown up in ninja academies. He paused, considering the similarities between the two. There weren't many. They were both intelligent, but Cam was obviously a diehard science geek whereas Leanne had always liked philosophy and psychology. They were both serious when the situation called for it, but Cam was pretty much serious all the time while Leanne knew how to loosen up and relax. Leanne had a teasing, easygoing sense of humor where Cam was dry and witty. Leanne liked almost everyone, and Cam liked close to no one. They were both wicked fighters, but Leanne was an Academy graduate and Cam had never even been formally taught.
Had they ever met before? Hunter decided to ask as soon as he got the chance. But as Sensei Omino walked in, a stern look on his face, Hunter quickly forgot his curiosities.
"Hunter, Blake. Has something happened at the Wind Academy?" he asked.
"No, Sensei," said Blake, glancing at Hunter briefly in bafflement before answering. "We were just coming to visit. We wanted to talk to you."
Sensei Omino frowned. "I am sure that the sensei at the Wind Academy are capable of answering your inquiries," he said.
What the hell? Hunter spoke this time. "We've made certain…changes…to our attitudes, Sensei. We see things differently now. We just wanted to talk to you about those changes. We've encountered the Gem of Souls, and…and it showed us our parents. We wanted to talk to you about that."
Sensei Omino sighed, his stern countenance fading for a moment.
"Hunter, Blake…when I told you that you would be staying at the Wind Academy…I meant until Lothor is defeated," he said. "I did not mean that you could come visit whenever you felt it necessary."
"Sensei…are you kicking us out?" asked Blake incredulously.
"You are Thunder ninjas. But right now, you are not my students," Sensei Omino answered. "And your visit disrupts the school. I must keep the Thunder Academy united and at the ready should the Rangers fail in your mission. I cannot allow distractions like this."
His serious gaze returned. "Leanne will escort you off-campus. I am sorry, but until Lothor is defeated you are to stay at the Wind Academy. You must learn to depend on your teammates there."
Before Hunter or Blake could even react, he turned around and left.
"Don't be angry with him," said Leanne immediately, as the door shut behind her father. "He's not doing this to hurt you."
"He told us not to visit!" snapped Hunter, incensed. "He's pretty much kicking us out, and for what? I know we made mistakes, but that doesn't give him grounds to boot us out of our home!"
"He's not doing it to punish you guys," Leanne told them sympathetically. "He's doing it to preserve the harmony within the Thunder Academy."
"What do you mean?" asked Blake, frustrated.
"Look, my father sent you to the Wind Academy because he knew that you two needed to work with the Winds in order to have a fighting chance against Lothor," Leanne told them. "But not everyone in the Thunder Academy sees it that way. The schools have never been enemies, but they're not exactly friends, either. There is a depressingly large amount of people who see you working with the Winds as a betrayal of our principles. That's why you got such a cold reception. When I said that half of them expected you to come back as Wind Ninjas, I meant it. Father really does care for the two of you—but with the Wind Academy so divided; he can't let the Thunder Academy fracture as well. That's why he told you that you couldn't visit."
"So basically, we're being punished for something that we have no control over," muttered Hunter angrily.
"I'm sorry. I wish that it wasn't this way," said Leanne. "You two are family to me, and it hurts me when you're so upset. I wish I could do something, but Father is the final word on who can access the Academy."
Her words would have been meaningless and insincere from most other people, but Hunter knew Leanne. She was being painfully honest.
"This sucks," muttered Blake, sighing. "But…all we can do is show them that they're wrong, right?"
"We will," Hunter told him. "I'm sick of the attitudes we keep getting. Everyone's acting like we have some kind of control over this stuff, and really we don't have a clue. We just try to keep our heads above the water…"
"And right now, it feels like you're drowning," finished Leanne. She gave them both encouraging smiles. "I know you, Hunter, Blake. You don't lie down and let the world walk all over you. You're fighters, both of you. I know that you'll prove the dissenters at both Academies wrong. You have each other, and I know that together you'll make us proud."
"Thanks," Blake told her. "I mean, we're still not happy, but…I'm glad someone still believes in us."
"You two are great warriors. And if you need me…well, I'm not a student anymore, so I don't have to live by the Academy rules," Leanne told them, smiling mischievously. "I'll be in Nepal for awhile, but you know how to reach me."
"We do. Thanks, Leanne," Hunter told her, as they each hugged her in turn. Then he glanced at his brother. "Come on, bro. We should go before they riot."
Blake nodded and the two of them walked out of the main building. "Well, that didn't go like I expected at all," commented his younger brother.
"I know. I had wanted to talk to Sensei Omino…about what happened," said Hunter, sighing. "And I think part of me wanted his forgiveness."
"I know," said Blake, feeling similarly. He mulled it over for a minute, and said slowly, "But…the Winds forgave us, and Cam forgave us, and our parents did too…so maybe we're chasing a ghost, bro. Sensei Omino isn't really a part of this, is he? How will his forgiveness make this any easier? We still won't be allowed on the Thunder Academy grounds. I say…maybe we should take a page from Cam's book, and stop relying so much on our teachers."
"Cam didn't just stop relying on the sensei, he openly defied them," pointed out Hunter.
"I'm not saying we start a rebellion or anything," refuted Blake. "I'm just saying that…of all of the people we need to work with right now, Sensei Omino falls lower on the list than he used to. I don't think we can depend on him anymore, and that means that we have to stop seeking his approval."
Hunter considered this. "You and me against the world, right?" he asked.
"You me, and the others, now," replied Blake, as they rapped knuckles. "We'll figure it out, bro."
"We always do," replied Hunter, sounding more confident than he felt.
Cam had always had a vague idea of how much work it took to run the Wind Academy, but now, with the burden on his shoulders, he wondered how his father managed to keep his sanity and still manage to hold the school together.
Disciplinary hearings, classes, meditations, screening for new students…Cam was lucky that he didn't have to deal with those on top of everything else. But he did have to keep a running tally on which students were on missions, and of those students, which needed cover stories, and of those students, what kind of cover story would be deemed acceptable.
He supposed he had lucked out in that sense, having grown up at the Academy. He didn't need to keep its existence a secret from his family. No, Cam got to keep it a secret from other people's families. Honestly, he wasn't sure which was harder.
Creating a cover story meant that you had to study the student's history, their habits, their family…any and every detail could be questioned at any moment, and now Cam knew how his father managed to know every single student at the Academy by name. He had to, because should a student ever need to go on a mission that required a long period of absence, his father had been the one to make their excuses.
Right now there were four graduates doing some scouting work, trying to find out if Lothor had a base of operations on Earth, and Cam had just finished taking care of their covers. There was another student on a meditative retreat, but that was easily passed off as a weekend camping trip. The Academy itself was usually passed off as a dojo, with his father running it. People had to keep it separate from their outside lives, of course.
Cam didn't have a life outside the Academy. The fact was making itself painfully clear. Not that he had been particularly extroverted before Lothor's attack, but he had gone to college, once. He had lived in town. He still enjoyed running along the beach and checking out the latest electronics in the central business district.
He hadn't done any of those things in ages, it seemed.
Before he could go too far down that train of thought, Sensei Nakamura entered his office.
"How are you, Cameron?" he questioned.
"I'm fine, Sensei. And you?" questioned Cam, the politeness feeling mechanical.
"I am well," answered Sensei Nakamura. "I came to inform you that the other sensei and I have come to a decision regarding punishment of Alexander Grey."
Alexander Grey? Who was that? Cam had to wrack his brain until the name came to him.
"The student that attempted to steal the Wind morphers," he stated. It seemed like years had passed since that had happened.
"Correct," confirmed Sensei Nakamura. "Ordinarily the punishment would have been severe. However, that incident was Alexander's first offense, and since he has shown remorse for his actions, we have demoted him from advanced to intermediate, and he is on probation."
Cam knew that if his father had been the one to decide, Alex would have been suspended or even expelled. But the sensei definitely weren't his father, and it wasn't like they could afford to lose a student at this point anyway. So he bit his tongue and merely nodded.
"Thank you for the information," he said simply. Sensei Nakamura nodded at him and walked out. Cam worked for another half hour before locking up and leaving.
He was halfway to Ops when he found his path blocked.
"Are you happy now?" sneered Alex, standing in his way. "I got demoted. All because of you. Do you have any idea how hard I worked to become an advanced student?"
Cam's eyebrow rose of its own accord. "I didn't make you try to steal the Wind morphers," he pointed out, crossing his arms. "That was your own idea, and it's your own fault that you got caught."
"And who reported me?" retorted Alex. "You know the real reason the sensei didn't punish me more harshly, right? They knew I was only trying to make sure that the morphers ended up in the right hands. They knew I would have made a better choice than you did."
Cam knew that he was being baited, but that didn't stop the words from ringing with a certain amount of truth.
Then a shadow fell over his shoulder and a familiar voice said irritably, "You know, if you're looking for a fight I'd be more than happy to help out. I'm having a really bad day."
"This is none of your business. You're not part of the Wind Academy," retorted Alex.
"That's fine, because aside from Cam and the Winds, I haven't really been impressed with what I've seen here," replied Hunter, crossing his arms. "And when you're dissing my teammates? Yeah. It's my business. Got anything else to say?"
"Yeah. I don't care if you have Ranger powers or not," snapped Alex. "I'm the same rank as you are, so don't think you can intimidate me."
"You were the same rank as me," retorted Hunter. "And if you want to pick a fight with me, go ahead. Really, make my day. I'm sure the sensei would love that, the student they went easy on turning around and pretty much spitting in their faces."
Alex glowered at him and stalked off, and Hunter snorted derisively.
"I was actually hoping he'd throw a punch," he muttered. "I could use the outlet."
"I could have handled that," Cam told him.
"Didn't you hear me? Bad day," replied Hunter. "It had nothing to do with you." Not entirely true—he did consider Cam a friend—but whatever.
"What happened?" asked Cam cautiously.
"Apparently Blake and I are banned from the Thunder Academy," muttered Hunter. "I don't really want to talk about it."
"…I fixed your Tsunami Cycle," offered Cam, after a moment. "It would be helpful if you could test out the shocks."
They both knew what Cam was doing, but Hunter decided not to comment. He could appreciate an unspoken favor.
"Yeah," said Hunter after a moment. "Lead the way."
More Hunter-Cam interaction, more build up to Cam getting his powers--still haven't decided how I'm going to do that, by the way...but there's progress. As far as Sensei Omino and the Thunder Academy go; they're fighting the fight where they are, it's not like they're just sitting around and twiddling their thumbs. But Lothor is in Blue Bay Harbor, and that's where Blake and Hunter need to stay. One of the tenets of this story is that authority is sometimes necessary, but sometimes fallible. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter!