There was one last stop Ally had to make before she flew back to Mariner Bay. But when she'd asked George to take her, he'd explained that he couldn't, that he'd had errands to run. It was Thursday.
Ally remembered that George ran his errands on Sundays, after he attended church. He'd apologized, and Ally told him he didn't need to feel bad, said she'd catch the bus to where she was headed, then to the airport from there. She gave him his omiyage, the traditional gift Hawaii residents brought back to their families after traveling, and ran to make sure she caught the bus on time.
Now, she was here, standing in front of Park West Art Museum, the gallery where Ryan had killed Leon. Ally wore a hat low over her face, since she wasn't in the mood to be recognized. The gallery was in the heart of Waikiki, where no doubt if she fully showed her face, she'd be stopped.
Hey! They'd say, Aren't you the Purple Lightspeed Ranger? Thanks for all you do. And I'm so so sorry for your loss-
She clenched her hands into fists. There was no time for that, especially if she wanted to make her flight. (Scratch that, she needed to make her flight back. She wouldn't hear the end of it from Captain Mitchell if she didn't.)
But despite the rush she was in, she wasn't sure if she was ready to walk into this place. To face the reality of what happened. Ally wondered if Leon's blood had stained the ground. If there was still police tape up around the scene of the crime.
Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes, but she didn't dare let them fall as she took a deep breath and walked in.
"May I help you?" One of the ladies at the front desk asked as the door swung closed behind her, and Ally nodded, stepping up to the wooden desk.
"Um, yes," she began, voice lowered, and she took off her hat. For a split second, the woman's eyes widened, before she resumed her pleasant smiling. Ally wondered what she was thinking. "I'm just wondering if there's anybody here who I might be able to talk to about what happened to my brother?" The woman nodded, glanced down at her computer.
"Of course, Ms. Sakamichi." Despite her attempts at formality, Ally made a face.
"Miss Sakamichi is my mom. You can call me Ally." The woman chuckled, but it wasn't a natural laugh. It sounded… scared. Forced.
"Alright then, Ally. Give me a moment…" It took only a few moments for the woman to pull up whatever she'd been searching for. "Hm. It looks like everyone who was there that night was either fired or put on paid leave."
Despite the heat that emanated from the slightly ajar door, Ally felt a chill run down her spine. "Oh, I see. Thanks, though."
"Of course-"
"Alyssa." She jumped, looking around, as if Captain Mitchell would merely appear out of thin air. The ladies behind the desk snickered quietly, but not meanly, and Ally's cheeks flared with red. "Sorry for interrupting your vacation, but something's come up back here. Joel's picking you up."
Ugh. Of course she'd be stuck in a plane with the flamboyant Sky Cowboy himself for a good six hours. "Okay, I copy. See you all soon." At least her plane ride was free.
As they rode the lift down to Aqua Base, Joel cleared his throat, and Ally glanced at him. "You know that alert that Captain Mitchell sent you?" She nodded, confused. "That was to get you back here."
"Uh… yeah. Are you gonna brief me on Diabolico's latest monster?"
Joel cringed. "No, no. What I meant was that it was only to get you back here. There is no monster." He sipped his green juice before continuing. (Ally wasn't sure how he stomached that concoction of a drink, especially since it was so damn expensive when he'd ordered it.) "We had a bad feeling about something. So we asked Cap to get you back here." Ally was still slightly groggy, so she wasn't quite sure if she'd heard him correctly.
"So… you picked me up because you wanted to? Not because you were ordered to?" The doors slid open, and as soon as they did, Ally spotted Dana, Kelsey, Chad, and Carter there, anxiously pacing back and forth.
"Eh. I guess-" Kelsey all but tackled Ally in a hug, and she yelped, barely able to hand Joel the carrier of drinks in time to keep them from spilling all over the brunette.
"I'm so glad you're safe."
"Uh… thanks. But really now, what made you guys drag me all the way back here while I was on vacation?" She joked, and Dana shrugged.
"Gut feeling." Huh. The blonde girl always had more than two words to say. (Two words was like, the bare minimum.) The galley doors slid open, and when Ally spotted Ryan sitting there alone, everything hit her at once.
Her parents request to her, not to mention the employees at the gallery itself being laid off, and George's reluctance to drive her there… It was too strange to be a coincidence.
She didn't know what to do anymore.
There had been people on their lunch break when Ryan had walked into the galley. But as soon as he'd sat down, they'd picked up their trays and left. He guessed he'd have that effect on people, for as long as they believed he'd done what he did out of cold blood. The doors slid open again, and he waited for whoever it was to backtrack out of there, away from him. When they didn't, he looked up.
Dana was in the lead, then Carter right behind her. Then Joel, Chad, Kelsey, and last by not least… relief hit him like a bucket of cold water to the face. "I was just about to go." Ally looked as if she'd seen a ghost. Or rather, that he was a ghost, since she was looking right at him. No, she was looking through him. They didn't exchange a single word as he stepped past them, but just then, the code red sirens blared, and the gang of Power Rangers turned almost completely in unison.
"Looks like we're coming with you," Carter muttered.
When Ally caught a glimpse of their newest opponent, she almost couldn't believe what she was seeing. The thing looked like a giant bi-pedal raccoon. That is, if someone had styled the racoon's fur to be slicked down, almost in a specific style. She didn't know whether to laugh at it, be disgusted, or both. "Ah, Rangers. Pleased to make your acquaintance." Carter stepped forward.
"Sorry. Can't say the same. Ready?"
"Ready! Lightspeed, Rescue!"
"Ooh, I'm so scared. Not! Battlings!" The creatures, whom Ally realized she hadn't seen in quite a while, materialized from the darkness, swarming towards them.
"Alright. Let's show 'em what we can do as seven! Ally, Ryan, take care of the Battlings!" She wasn't sure if Carter knew what he'd just told her to do, but despite her reluctance, she nodded.
"I read you, Car." She brandished her baton just as Ryan did the same with his ax, and then she charged forward. As usual, the creatures weren't much trouble, but what was troublesome was how terribly she and Ryan fought together. When it was her and any other member of her team, they moved like a well-oiled machine, one going on the offensive while the other dodged, and vice-versa. They were fighting with the efficiency of a broken down car. She nearly hit him over the head with her baton, and he'd nearly knocked her over with a poorly timed kick.
Ally wondered if her subconscious worries about needing to bring Ryan into the authorities were what was plaguing her, stopping her from fighting at her full potential. "What?" He breathed out as they finally took down the last Battling. "Not gonna tell me to get out of your way?" She flipped her baton back into its blaster form as they ran to regroup with the others.
"Don't tempt me."
"Hey, I mean, that's a start!" Kelsey encouraged Ally after she recounted what'd happened during the fight. They'd taken down that racoon monster in no time flat, and Ally spent the rest of the day catching up on assignments, checking her email periodically to see the updates on the eyewitnesses. They were fine. She hoped it would stay that way.
"What?"
"That you were able to say three words to my brother that didn't involve something god-awful," Dana explained as she took the last curler out of her hair, and Ally sighed.
"Y'know, sometimes I know for a fact that you guys know what I'm going through. Then I realize that you've got reasons to not know."
"I can't imagine the pain you're feeling," Dana murmured, "And I know you're my best friend. But he's my brother. I can't just… hate him."
Kelsey didn't speak, and Ally wasn't sure if she wanted to hear what her other best friend would have to say. "Al?"
"Yeah, Kels?"
"You know the gut feeling that Joel told you about-"
"K!" Dana hissed, but Kelsey continued regardless.
"What if I said that gut feeling was Ryan?"
Ryan didn't know what in the fucking world had compelled him to tell the others his worries. Maybe he'd spent too much time catching up on crime procedurals, and got paranoid. But all he knew was that as long as he was silent about what really happened at the art heist… those who knew the truth were in danger. And those people would be where Ally was.
So he'd told Dana, not expecting her to do anything, but when Ally had shown up at the galley earlier… he wasn't sure what he'd felt. Relieved? No. Something less than that.
Ryan figured he was just glad that she was safe, that she hadn't gotten into trouble before he could tell her what had actually happened. If he ever did.
After the billionth time of trying to process all of this, he finally closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
For the past couple of days, stress had kept Ally from dreaming, when she was able to fall asleep, that is. But she would have preferred pulling an all-nighter to this. She was in a dark, cave-like space, with crumbling stone pillars rising all around her, but when she glanced around, she wasn't alone. A sinister laugh, one that Ally recognized to be Diabolico, echoed from behind her, and she glanced down at her wrist.
No morpher.
Well, she thought, no morpher, big problem. So, she did the only thing she could do: run as fast as she could. The pillars zoomed past her vision as she sprinted, chest heaving, and just as she rounded the corner, only to find a dead end, she slammed right into…
"Ryan?"
"No, I'm Dana," he retorted. "Welcome to the place I called home."
If Ally had wanted to wake up before, now she desperately needed to. What was she doing, dreaming about… she almost gagged at the thought. No one would be hearing about this, ever.
"You dare to turn against me, you'll face the consequences!" Diabolico called down to them, and Ally gritted her teeth, braced herself for the attack she knew was coming-
Ryan stepped in front of her. "Leave her out of this, Diabolico." The monster merely cackled with delight.
"Not a chance. Your lives are too intertwined for me to not play around with them both!" The first attack sent Ryan and Ally hurtling against two pillars. The second restrained their wrists. And the third burned like hell. A scream ripped through her throat as Diabolico burned his laser onto her back, and her favorite dark purple cropped sweater fell from her shoulders, leaving her in the sports bra she'd fallen asleep in. "This is my gift to you both."
"This doesn't feel like a gift," Ally muttered.
"Tattoos?" Ryan hissed.
Unfortunately for her, Ally had always wanted a tattoo, preferably a smaller one, but that had some significance to her journey. Maybe a small roll of film on her thigh, or maybe a paint palette for Leon on her wrist. Now, she realized she might pass on that. She turned, tried to catch a glimpse of the design on her back, and from what she could see, it was a cobra.
A cobra that matched the one on Ryan's back, and one that sent pain spiraling through her body like she'd been injected with actual venom.
Great, she thought, just great.
"From now on, every time you morph, the cobras will move up your body, closer and closer…" Her muscles contorted as the snake uncoiled, and Ally gritted her teeth, willing herself not to scream. She would not show weakness, even as pain lanced through her as the snake traveled up her back. "Until it reaches your necks, and destroys you."
"Fuck," Ryan muttered as he spotted the cobra tattoo in the mirror. "Fuck this-" Someone knocked on his door and he rushed to grab a sweatshirt he'd left haphazardly on the back of his chair. "Come in-" The door slid open before he could even finish his sentence, and there was Ally, chest heaving. It wasn't a far walk from the girls' dorm to his room, so he figured she was furious.
Which wasn't good.
Her cheeks flushed red the moment she saw him, and Ryan realized he hadn't put on his sweatshirt. He guessed he didn't need to, if that dream had been real for her, too. "I'm gonna have nightmares again," she muttered, and even though irritation flashed through him, he didn't focus on it. Instead, he focused on that word: again.
"So you had the same dream I did," he retorted, "Because you were in my dream-"
Ally scoffed, and Ryan thought he felt his eye twitch. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Mitchell. But yes," she spat, and he watched as her hands dropped to the hem of her own dark purple sweatshirt, froze just for a moment before she turned, pulled it up, displaying the matching cobra tattoo on her back. "I have it, too." Her voice had lost all its scorn as she dropped her sweater back down. Instead, she was just… tired.
Ryan shook his head and turned, heard a soft but sharp intake of breath as Ally gasped. "I have enough to deal with," she muttered. "First with all the shit going on back home, and now this? I-"
"I'm sorry." Ally laughed bitterly.
"Oh, thanks so much for your apology about killing my-"
"For dragging you into this mess," Ryan corrected, starting to pace around his room, "Diabolico's whole deal is with me, not you." He paused, already knowing the answer to the question he was about to pose, "I don't know why he said our lives were, what?"
"Intertwined," Ally muttered, "I hate that word."
"Yeah," Ryan whispered. "That." Silence enveloped the space, and as it did, he wished to just blurt out everything he'd kept back. That maybe, if he did, all of this would go away-
"Why did you tell your father to bring me back here?" His jaw dropped, and he stopped pacing, stared straight at Ally. "Kelsey told me, Dana tried to stop her, but…" Ally shrugged, not meeting his eyes. He wasn't sure if she had ever done so yet.
"I don't know," he lied, "A bad feeling. I guess." Ally didn't reply, and he knew that she knew what a terrible excuse that'd been. "Look," he continued before she could question him again, "We tell no one about what happened. Can we at least agree on that?"
Ally nodded. "Yes." She turned to leave, but before she opened the door, Ryan thought he heard her laugh. "I guess this is karma for me telling you to leave me alone, huh."
He wasn't quite sure what to say to that, what he could say that wouldn't reveal the truth. "I guess so."
