Disclaimer: The characters you recognize belong to Saban. Anything else is mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: The Aftermath
"Check it out!" Wes swept his hand in a grand gesture as the eleven rangers stepped into the belfry of the clock tower. Carter grinned, having seen it already, but enjoying the reactions of his teammates.
"Dana, don't tell your dad," Kelsey whispered to her best friend, "but this place is cooler than the Aquabase!" She looked up at the huge bell and smiled. "Does that thing still work?"
Katie clapped her fellow ranger on the back, pleased her new friend liked their new home. "Once," Katie told her, with a glare at Wes.
Wes shrugged. "Hey, someone had to ring it once."
"Yeah, but not at five AM," Lucas groaned at the memory.
"Up there's the bell, see?" Trip pointed it out excitedly to Joel. The Sky Cowboy looked up at the bell, and around at the rest of the tower. "I thought you guys were from the future?" he asked after a moment.
"We are," Lucas replied, confused.
Joel glanced around. "This place is kinda…old."
Kelsey smacked him in the shoulder. "Shut up, Joel."
"Hey!" A mechanical voice protested. Joel ducked as a football-sized blue owl flew past his face, looking mildly annoyed. The flying owl rocketed past Carter, narrowly missing his ear. Circuit buzzed past Chad and Jen before settling on a perch. "Some old things are cool," the owl informed him hotly. "Anyway, we like it!"
"Yeah Joel," Ryan teased. He poked his head out the windows on either side of the clock. Carter stuck his head out the other one, looked over at him, and gave him a thumbs up. Ryan laughed.
"What's that?" Chad asked, pointing to Circuit.
"That," Trip said, sounding mildly offended, "is Circuit."
Chad grinned as he walked over to the owl. "Blue looks good on you," he told the owl, and Circuit laughed a happy mechanical laugh. Trip grinned and gave Chad a one-armed hug.
"Well, anyway," Jen said, shifting awkwardly on her feet. "We just wanted to tell you guys thank you, for all you did."
"You guys are doing a great job," Dana assured her fellow pink ranger. Her brother nodded in agreement.
The Time Force rangers exchanged glances, before Jen opened a big old-fashioned trunk in the corner. Chad looked at Carter. The Lightspeed leader shrugged. He didn't know what was happening now.
"We have something for you guys to remember us by," Wes told them, as the rangers came back over to them with something in their hands. Jen handed Dana a white jacket, made of material Dana had never seen or felt before. Embossed on the left pocket was the Time Force logo.
Wes, Lucas, Katie and Trip handed Time Force jackets to Carter, Chad, Kelsey and Joel. Then, Jen gave one to Ryan as well. "The Time Ship comes with a spare in the emergency supplies," she said by way of explanation when Wes looked at her, confused as to where the jacket had come from.
"In case you end up in a time that doesn't have clothes?" Ryan asked. He grinned to show Jen he was teasing.
"How come I never got that one?" Wes asked Jen.
She shrugged. "It wouldn't look good on you," she replied seriously. "You look better in red."
Kelsey and Chad looked at their new jackets, then each other, then at Carter. Carter nodded, a quick unspoken conversation with his blue and yellow rangers. But Jen caught it. "What?" she asked them. "You don't like them?"
"No!" Kelsey said honestly. "They're great."
"It's just," Chad added quickly, "we have something for you guys too." He shrugged out of his Lightspeed jacket and handed it to Lucas. Kelsey, Carter, Dana and Joel did the same, handing their jackets over to Katie, Wes, Jen and Trip.
"Wow," Katie breathed happily. "Are you sure?" she asked Kelsey. Kelsey nodded with a wide smile.
Ryan shrugged out of his jacket. "I was gonna give mine to Eric," he told Wes.
"It'd be like pulling teeth to get Eric here," Wes said. "He's not a fan of our headquarters," he explained. "But I'll make sure he gets it," he told Ryan. Ryan nodded appreciatively.
Carter clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "Well, you've got the jackets," he said. "Now do the dance!"
The five Time Force rangers laughed. "And we'll do it better!" Lucas said.
"Riiight," Joel drawled. The Time Force rangers stepped forward. Wes glanced at his team. "You guys ready?" he asked them. His team nodded. Wes glanced back at Carter, then, with a laugh, threw his arms out. All five rangers called out, "Lightspeed Rescue!" and did a passable imitation of the Lightspeed morphing sequence.
The Lightspeed rangers laughed. Wes turned and lowered himself into a karate stance in his new jacket, then turned slowly to Carter. "You know we can't keep these," he told Carter. "These are just as much a part of you as the morphers are." He shrugged out of the jacket and handed it back. "We don't need these to remember what you guys did here." He held out a hand and Carter shook it hard. "Thank you," Wes said seriously.
"Anytime," Carter said, meaning it. He handed the white Time Force jacket back to Wes. "Just in case," he said with a nod.
Wes smiled. "Hey, how 'bout we give you guys an escort back to Mariner Bay?" he asked.
Carter glanced at his team, who were all nodding. "It'd be a honor," he said. "But first, I'm pretty sure I heard you say something about pizza." He looked at Joel. "We'll take a slice to go. I have a guy who has a ship to catch."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, we really can't wait much longer," the cruise ship check-in employee was telling Angela. "We really need to get underway."
Angela had pulled the "My husband is the Green Lightspeed Ranger' card, and bought them an extra hour. Ship check-in was normally three hours, and they had arrived at the pier extremely early because Angela hated being late or rushed into anything she didn't have to be. She'd been hoping they could save their cruise by waiting until the last possible minute to board. Now, it was approaching 4:00 p.m. and Joel still hadn't returned from Silver Hills.
"I know," she said finally with a disappointed sigh. She shook his hand. "Thank you, I know you tried."
"I wish we could've accommodated him," the guy was telling her. "A guy who saves the world is worth waiting for, in my book. If I didn't have 2,998 other folks waiting…."
"I know," Angela said. She shouldered her purse, and took their passports back. "We'll cruise with you some other time."
He nodded. "I hope so," he said. "Good luck, Mrs. Rawlings."
Angela heard screeching tires, and looked outside the cruise terminal. A yellow humvee had rolled to a stop, and she saw Joel toss something to Chad, and then come running into the terminal. "Am I late?" he demanded breathlessly. He pointed. "The ship's still here. Can we board?"
Angela looked back hopefully at the cruise ship employee, who was speaking with a young woman in uniform. When they both smiled, she handed Joel his passport. "Welcome aboard," they said, and sped them through the line and up onto the ship.
The Lightspeed team waited a few moments on the road, watching. Pretty soon, Chad heard a loud whistle, and pointed. "They made it!" he cried, pointing to one of the upper decks. Behind the blue glass railing of a balcony cabin, Joel and Angela waved to them, Joel waving his hat wildly.
"Yes!" Kelsey cheered. "Have fun!" she yelled at them, waving back.
Carter looked at Dana in the passenger seat and grinned. "Just in time," he said. She nodded, and Carter could see she was happy for Joel, but still upset with him. He had a feeling he knew why. They said their goodbyes to Chad, dropping him back by the beach to pick up his stuff he'd asked his replacement to watch, and then dropping Kelsey and Ryan by Kelsey's place.
"We need to talk," Carter told her, and Dana didn't say anything, just nodded. The two of them drove in silence to a small park, and Carter parked the Rescue Rover. "You wanna sit here and talk, or go for a walk?" he asked her.
Her response was to get out of the Rover and slam the door. "Walk it is," Carter translated dryly, and unbuckled his seat belt. He got out and locked the Rover, then followed Dana, who was walking through the grass. "Let me see if I can figure it out," he said as he caught up to her. "You're upset because we didn't bring you in on Vypra sooner."
She didn't say anything. "Dana, you have to talk to me, or I don't know how to fix whatever it is that's wrong." Carter reached out and grabbed her arm, spinning her back to face him.
"I'm upset," she growled at him, "because I told you not to get into any trouble before our wedding!" She shrugged out of his grip. "Do you realize you could have died- again?" she demanded of him. "If we hadn't gotten there when we did-"
"But you did," Carter argued. "Dana, we couldn't have just left Time Force to Vypra and Quarganon, you know that."
"I don't care about Time Force," Dana told him. "I'm not marrying Wes!" She leaned against a tree, completely exhausted. The stress of the day had taken its toll. She was thankful she at least didn't have to go back to work. "If something had happened to you, Carter…." She felt him put a hand on her shoulder. "I can't stand the thought that something could've happened to you. I didn't want to wear this stupid thing again," she said, ripping the morpher off her wrist and shaking it in front of his eyes. "All I wanted was a normal, happy life with you." She glanced back and up at him. "Is this how it's going to be?" she asked him, her voice distraught. "A new threat attacking Earth every year and us having to go chasing monsters?"
Carter wrapped his arms around her, lacing his fingers together over her stomach. "No," he told her, resting his chin on her head. "I promise. This was a once in a lifetime recurrence." He closed his eyes. "God, Dana, I was so scared. If you guys hadn't shown up when you did…"
"I would've been widowed before we even walked down the aisle," she told him, still angry.
Carter opened his mouth to say something.
"Carter…" She turned around to look at him. "I don't want to get married in the spring."
The breath went out of him, and he grabbed the tree to steady himself.
Author's Note: Aaannd ladies and gentlemen...this is the most I have written. Updates will come a little slower as I write the ending. I know where it's going to go so it's just simply finding time to write. Bear with me. Thanks for reading/reviewing/lurking!