Chapter 5: Realizing

"Nick," Jason said as he shook his shoulder. "Nick, wake up." Nick stirred and opened his watery eyes.

"J...J...Jason!" Nick said. "Kim, Z...Zack, B...Billy, Trini! W...what?"

"Come on, we are getting you out of here," Zack said as he grabbed Nick by the wrist.

"Wh...Wh...Why? I don't...u...un...understand."

"You are not going to stay here anymore," Kimberly said. "Your parents are bad people."

"What? They...love me. They...aren't...bad."

"Why are they making you stay inside all the time?" Jason asked.

"And do this too you?" Trini said as she touched Nick's bruised face. Nick flinched when Trini touched it because it was so tender. Nick realized then that Frank and Nancy didn't love him, but that he and Amber were their servants more than a son and daughter to them.

"Ok, let's go," Nick said with more confidence in himself than he had ever had. Just then, the door swung open with a loud bang. Frank was in the doorway with an angry look on his face and a rifle in his right hand. Frank glared at the children evilly when he saw them in Nick's bedroom. The six children knew that the situation that they were in was extremely bad. Kimberly hid behind the others afraid that she was going to be shot. The rest coward behind Jason out of fear and Jason was shaking in the red pajamas that he was in.

"What are you brats doing here?" Frank said yelling through his teeth. "You little rug rats are trespassing on my property!" The five Rangers and Nick hugged tighter in their group. Frank went up to the group and grabbed Nick very violently by the upper arm. Nick yelped do to the fact that Frank was grabbing him on a new and very tender bruise that was made the previous day. "As for you, I am taking you somewhere so that you aren't with these low lives." He threw Nick out of his bedroom door and into the hall. "As for you five, I am getting in touch with your parents!" He shut the door and locked the five into Nick's room.

"Oh no, we're trapped!" Trini said as she and Jason were trying to pull the door open.

"We are in some serious doo doo," Zack said as he sat up against the wall. Just then, a spider crawled down the wall and Zack jumped to the other side of the room where the others were trying to open the locked door.

"Gracious, why would Nick's parents force him to reside in such deplorable environmental factors?" Billy asked.

"Yeah, would they make him live with spiders?" Zack said as he pushed up against the other Rangers trying to stay as far as he could from the tiny, little spider.

"I don't know, but we have to get out of here!" Jason said as he tried as hard as he could to pull.

"I remember that," Zack said. "I was so afraid that Frank might have shot us."

"Yeah," Kimberly said. "And the fact that you were afraid of the spider. Arachnophobia."

"Kim, shush!" Zack said as Jason laughed.

"What happened after that?" Jason said. "What happened to Nick and what made the police come so fast?"

"Frank took Nick outside and was beating him with the pipe of the rifle," Connie said. "Very furiously I might add. Poor Nick was being beat to death, but that's what made everything that we wrote about the Burke's be enough evidence to put them in jail. Your father, Jason, called the police when we saw Frank beat up on Nick. After he went inside to get something, but we don't know what."

"Jeez!" Kimberly said shocked.

"Now, it amazes me what Nick did for us next," Jason said.

"Come on!" Jason said as he put his feet on the side of the door and pulled with all of his might.

"Jason, its useless," Kimberly said. "He locked us in. We can't get out."

"What I am worried about Nick," Zack said. "What do you think he is doing to him?"

"I don't know," Trini said.

Just then, something crashed through the window opposite to the Rangers and the window shattered. They went up to the thing that was thrown into the window. It was a rock about the size of a small book. Jason looked outside and saw Nick breathing very hard. The other Rangers looked out and saw that Nick was bleeding in a few places and that their were more bruises now.

"Come on, climb out!" Nick said as he went to the window. The Rangers climbed out. Nick collapsed into their arms because he was exhausted.

"Nick!" Jason said. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah,...I'm...fine. Run! Run! My dad is going... to catch us if we don't run." Nick started to run down the street. The others followed him running as fast as they could, but for no more than five seconds after they started, Frank came out of the house with the rifle and began running after them.

"Get back here!" he yelled. A few seconds after, Nick tripped over his feet and fell face first into the ground.

"Nick!" Zack said as he turned around. Frank pointed the rifle about three feet from Nick's head.

"How dare you run away from me!" Frank yelled. Nick looked at Frank with a horrified look. "You are going to do what I say from now on, Thomas." Nick froze. Just then, a body came in between the rifle and Nick...Amber.

"Amber, get back in the house!" Frank yelled.

"NO!" Amber said. "You will not kill him! I won't let you!"

"OUT OF THE WAY!"

"No!" Jason said as he went in front of Amber. "You can't treat kids like this, Mr. Burke! It's bad!"

"I don't care what you say, low life child! They are my children and they do what I want!"

"FREEZE!" a male voice said behind him. A police officer was standing behind Frank with a gun in his hand. "Put the rifle down and back away from the children!" Frank put the rifle down and the other Rangers ran up to Jason, Nick and Amber. They have a group hug of relief. Amber looked at their house and saw more police officers going into the house. Just then, Connie along with Mark and the rest of the little Rangers parents came running to the children and began to hug them.

"Jason Lee Scott, you are alright!" Connie said balling her eyes out.

"I'm sorry Momma," Jason said as he hugged back. "You all were saying that Mr. Burke was going to kill Nick and we thought that he was going to be just in deep trouble."

"You almost gave us a heart attack, son," Mark said as he hugged his son. Jason looked back at Nick and the other Rangers. Amber was hugging Nick and the Rangers were all getting the same treatment that Jason's parents were giving him.

"Am I in trouble?" Jason said innocently.

"No, son. You're not."

Just then, they saw police officers escorting Nancy and Frank into a police car in handcuffs and James out of the house. One of the officers came up to Nick and Amber.

"You two," the officer said. He was a tall man with a mustache. "You have to come with me."

"Why?" the Rangers said at the same time.

"Because we need to find them new homes. These parents are not fit to be parents. Let's go." Amber and Nick took the officer by the hand and walked toward an ambulance that had arrived there. Nick turned and waved goodbye to them with a very sad face, but then smiled when he made the gesture that he had a sword in his hand.

"Mom, where are they going?" Jason asked.

"They are taking those two to the hospital and then...I don't know, honey," Connie said.

"Will we see them again?"

"I don't know Jason...I don't know," Mark said and hugged Jason as they watched the ambulance roll away.