DISCLAIMER: As always, I do not own Power Rangers.
AUTHOR: So, this story has been on my mind for quite some time now – about 3 years, I think. It has taken some time to complete it since it is a longer story (17 chapters including the epilogue) but I'm finally ready to let you guys read it. The intention is to post a new chapter every week. Hope you'll enjoy it!
Chapter 1: Something about this storm
It was believed to be the storm of the century. As Madison drove through downtown Briarwood, she wondered if this was apocalypse coming. Everywhere she looked she saw people getting ready for what news caster on CNN described as "some turbulent couple of days ahead".
Restaurants were closing up, chairs and tables from the outdoors seating areas already dismounted and carried inside. The small boutiques along the main street had flipped the sign from open to closed, curtains pulled down and doors and windows neatly barred. Outside the grocery stores the line of anxious citizens, eager to get their hand on whatever supplies were left, grew more irritable by the minute.
On the local radio channel, they talked about nothing else but the upcoming storm. Madison turned down the volume as she waited for a red light to switch to green. She did not need any more reminders of the last storm hitting Briarwood, she'd had plenty of that during her childhood. Thirteen citizens dead, several hundred families homeless, and destruction of building worth millions of dollars in less than 48 hours; the storm that had hit Briarwood nearly twenty years ago had left a permanent scar in the city soul. Every year, just as school started, the town major held a memorial ceremony down at the city hall to honour all those brave men and women who had risked their lives to save the city and its people from extinction.
Madison's dad had been among those brave people. Back then he had only been a regular police officer and not the head of Briarwood Police Department but he had put his life on the line and fought alongside the army and civilians to keep the water from flooding the streets. It had nearly cost him his life.
Madison was too young to remember any of it. Being only an infant at the time, she and her sister had waited out the storm in their cradles with their mother in the house they had rented back then. She had heard the stories, though; all too many times to ever be able to forget them.
The people of Briarwood had learnt their lesson since then. The shoreline districts had already been closed off and evacuated to safer grounds. The military patrolled the streets to keep burglars and people with too little sense for their own good away. The harbour had secured the larger ships to the docks with twice the amount of chains than usual. And from what Madison understood from the radio before she turned it off, air traffic was being rerouted to other cities.
Yes, the feeling that the world was coming to an end grew stronger every second. Madison rubbed her arms to suppress the goose bumps. She could not wait to get back to the sturdy house upon the hillside her family lived in nowadays. Brown and coarse to the skin, it reminded Madison of a giant toad looking out over Briarwood with its huge panorama windows as eyes. It was not a pretty house but it laid somewhat sheltered and that had been the important part for her dad when he had bought it just a few months after the last storm.
Her dad's confidence in the house was the only reason he and Madison's mom had not ended their twenty-five years as married anniversary trip to Hawaii to come home and tend to their daughters. Well, that and Vida's reassurance that they would not wait out the storm alone but have friends over. Of course, if their father had known the friends were all males and at least one of them was everything he loathed in young men, Madison was sure he would have jumped on the first plane back to the main land before either Madison or her twin sister could breathe the forbidden word 'boyfriend'.
Madison sighed as she left the central parts of town behind her and started the climb up the hill on less jammed streets. A light rain had begun to fall from the iron coloured sky, leaving a soft spray of droplets on the windshield for Madison to remove with the wipers. Before the day was over, that soft spray would turn into a waterfall. Madison could feel it.
A sudden shiver made her shift her holding of the steering wheel. There was something about this storm tugging on her senses, making her restless. It had been like this for days, ever since the storm was first reported as something building up out at sea. Madison could not quite explain it, what it was or where it came from, but it was crawling underneath her skin. She had tried to ignore it but to no use. The feeling was not going away.
There were other things making her restless, too. Nick, for instance.
Nick had been back from his trip overseas to visit his adoptive parents for a week and a day, and during that one week and one day she not had been able to snatch a moment alone with him – not even once. From the moment he had walked into Rock Porium, looking as handsome as ever, there had always been someone around him. If it wasn't her sister, it was Chip. If it wasn't Chip, it was Xander or Leelee or Toby or Phineas. . . Always someone that wasn't her.
Madison bit back a curse. It wasn't as if she had not tried, she had, but it had not been that easy picking up where they left off as she had hoped. Three months was a long time for someone to be gone for, a lot happened in three months. A lot of thinking to be tormented by. . .
"I'd like to come back if there's something, or someone, to come back for."
Oh, how those words had haunted her! For the last three months Madison had barely gotten any sleep because of the sweet, tormenting memory of their goodbye. How many times hadn't she repeated the words they had spoken in her head, tried to alternate them and given them different meanings to make him stay? Countless.
What had he meant by giving her his baby blanket? Was it what she hoped it meant or something else entirely?
Madison sighed deeply as she drove up the drive way leading up to the huge brown house. Nick had promised to come; Vida had practically threatened to destroy his motorcycle if he didn't. Maybe, just maybe, a couple of days trapped together in a storm would be what she needed to get the answered she wanted. Just maybe.
She made it up the driveway and hit the big button on her key ring that opened the garage door for her. Once inside, she pulled the parking brake and killed the engine. One push with her thumb on the seat belt and she was out of the car. For a moment she stood there inside the garage looking out over the lawn and the upset sea beyond.
There was something about this storm. . .