Rumours of Thunder Epilogue
By Mintaka14
Kira walked down the empty weekend hall of Reefside High, feeling nostalgic. She hitched her bag further up her shoulder, hooking a thumb through the strap, and did a slow turn, taking it in. The fluorescent lights overhead shone on the greasy handprints that someone had left on the trophy case, and there was still a trail of Starry Night Prom 2004 posters wandering into the distance along the walls. The vinyl floor squeaked under her combat boots as she walked, and echoed in the emptiness. Detention was where it had all started, and it seemed oddly fitting that this was where it had come back to.
It felt weird to consider that there had been a time when she'd maybe passed Ethan or Conner in the corridors and never given them a second thought. Before the dino gems had claimed them. Before she'd met Tommy Oliver. That first day of detention, as it turned out, had been a busy one.
She'd never been particularly aware of Ethan before that day, but everyone at Reefside High knew about Conner McKnight, the soccer legend, the womaniser, the brainless jerk… depending on who you talked to. And now, they were best friends. More than friends – Conner and Ethan were brothers who had fought beside her, and who she knew would risk their lives for her, because they'd done just that, over and over again, as she had done for them.
It seemed funny to think that they'd never so much as exchanged two words together before Principal Randall tapped them for detention together.
Tommy had forged them into a team, had trained them and protected them and given them so much, but in a weird way it had been Elsa who had brought the Dino Thunder Rangers together in the first place, when she gave them all detention together. Kira grinned at the thought, wondering if that had ever occurred to Elsa.
And things came full circle. As she pushed open the classroom door, Cheryl looked up from her nails with a sour twist to her mouth, and Kira had a sudden vision of Cheryl being chosen as a Power Ranger. The idea almost made Kira laugh out loud.
"What are you smirking at?" Cheryl snapped, and Kira's grin grew wider. "I suppose you're happy, now you've sicked your little reporter-geek friend on me," the cheerleader sneered.
"That reporter-geek is going to be collecting her Pulitzer while you're still trying to figure out what happened to the best years of your life, Cheryl, so you might want to back off," Kira told her, inwardly amused to hear herself defending Cassidy. My, how the world has changed. She shrugged happily. "Or I could just punch you in the face again. Whatever works for you."
Kira hummed her song from the prom under her breath, nodding cheerfully to the handful of other students slumped miserably in chairs scattered around the classroom, before Cheryl broke in with reluctant curiosity.
"So what the hell are you so happy about? You're stuck here in detention, too, for the rest of the year."
"Oh, I don't know. The sun is shining, the world's still standing, we could have been expelled…"
"You could have been expelled," Cheryl muttered to her nails. "My daddy would never have let them kick me out."
Behind Cheryl, through the window, Kira could see a familiar jeep pull into the staff parking lot, and she felt her smile turn radiant. Detention was only a few more hours, and then there were only six more weeks of highschool left.
She planned to use that time to talk Tommy out of that ridiculous idea he still had that he was responsible for Mesogog, and back into the research and fieldwork that he clearly missed. If she was lucky, and if she was reading Hayley's cryptic hints correctly, then maybe she could even convince him to come to New York with her. And if not, well, they'd fought monsters and mutant dinosaurs and cheerleaders together. She wasn't going to give up that easily.
The classroom door slid open, and everyone looked up with varying degrees of apathy.
"Oh, fuck," Cheryl swore, and slid lower in her seat, her perfectly made up face twisting into an expression of antipathy. Tommy stood in the doorway, his eyebrow lifting. His dark hair was adorably rumpled, as if he hadn't woken up properly yet, and he was carrying a takeaway cup of coffee in one hand and his briefcase in the other.
"It looks like I drew the short straw today," he said with wry calm. "I'm sure none of you want to be stuck in detention any longer than I do, so let's get this over with."
His glance swept over the handful of belligerent and indifferent students, and met Kira's gaze. She propped her chin in her hands and fluttered her eyelashes at him, and felt herself light up as he tried to suppress his answering grin.
The future was looking very, very bright.
Thank you for reading Rumours of Thunder. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I would be very grateful for any feedback. - Mintaka14