Power Rangers: Tech Support
A totally non-serious look at Ninja Storm. Written by Tiggs Panther

Standard disclaimers apply.

3 - Downtime

Well, it had certainly been an interesting day for Cameron Watanabe. Not to mention the other six inhabitants of Ninja Ops. Lothor had been quiet for a couple of days, so the Earth's remaining Ninja students were taking the opportunity for downtime, maintenance, and training. But Cam couldn't help but laugh inwardly at some of what had happened.

The most sane moment probably had to be setting Blake and Hunter off on Tsunami Cycle maintenance. He might be the technical expert, but what those two and Dustin didn't know about bikes wasn't worth knowing. But hearing them both despair at the states of the blue and red bikes made him realise, for once, that maybe he wasn't alone in having to watch non-experts deal with their area of expertise.

Eventually he left them to it. The weapons and systems had been checked as far as they could be, any only the mechanical fine-tuning remained. And even Cam would freely admit that the three bikers knew more about that aspect of things than he did. Dustin was otherwise busy, however, or he'd have been helping them out as well. He headed over to where he'd left the Mobile Command Center truck, meaning to give it a quick once-over.

"Hi Cam," said Tori, smiling. "I remembered you mentioning about needing to clean the truck, so I thought I'd handle that part for you." And handling it she was. The truck was currently parked near to the edge of the lake, and Tori was using her Ninja skills to collect water from the lake and channel it as a focussed blast towards the truck.
"Isn't that sort of cheating?" he asked. "Using your Ninja powers of water as a high-powered garden-hose?"
"Not really," she replied. "I did run it past your father first." She paused a moment. "To be honest, my control over water isn't quite what I wish it was," she said, even as she directed a stream to clear a large patch of mud from the windscreen. "And I figured that if I needed to practice and the truck needed washing, why couldn't I just practice by washing the truck?"
"It does make sense. Although I dread to think how the others could practice their Ninja skills."
"It's funny you should mention that, Cam. Shane's at the far edge of the forest, doing just that. He mentioned something to Sensei about needing to increase his air-walking abilities."
"What did my father suggest?" he asked, curious.
"He sent Shane out with his skateboard, if you'd believe it."

Cam knew that his father advocating playing to one's own strengths, but even he was slightly unprepared for what he saw at the other end of the forest. Shane was using his inner Ninja skills to skim through the treetops on his skateboard. Every so often he would then jump from one tree, catching an impossible amount of air whilst performing an equally impossible move.

It did actually make a certain amount of sense. Being a keen skateboarder Shane was already used to moving through the air, and it was usually easier to use Ninja abilities to keep airborne when already moving than form a standing start. By combining the two, Shane would be able to practice both maintaining an airborne state as well as pulling off complex techniques whilst doing so.

At least, that's what Cam guessed. He didn't think that interrupting Shane mid-air would be a very good idea. So he left him to it, heading out into Blue Bay Harbor to pick up some supplies.

Cam didn't find out about Dustin's exploits until he got back to Ninja-ops, but they certainly affected the rest of his day.

Dustin was training with Sensei, improving his control over the One-to-Many technique he regularly used as the Yellow Ranger. It was easy enough to do with a Ranger's level of power to draw from and a helmet to hide facial features, but managing it without Morphing was proving difficult.

Perhaps, in hindsight, Sensei should have suggested practicing outside, rather than inside the Ninja Ops. He was used to training the Rangers inside a building, though, and hadn't considered the added complication of several thousand dollars worth of high-tech surveillance equipment in this exact circumstance. In his defense, however, he also hadn't expected Dustin to be quite to close to succeeding as he had been.

The end-result of the sudden appearance of an extra fifteen Earth Ninjas in a small space already containing a highly advanced display screen was, predictably, yet another long night of "fixing stuff" ahead of Cam.