Note: Sorry it's been so long since the last chapter! The insanity of life has caught up to me. Hopefully the next one should be up soon! This one doesn't take place during an episode, it's just somewhere between Into the Fire and The Taken.
"Oh, great." Allie said as they came into the dojo and saw that the faint drizzle of that morning had turned into a downpour. They had shown up for practice only to be told to go home because of a Water creature that was loose in the bay.
"We just missed the last bus," Gabe said. Ray and Allie groaned. They had planned on going over to Allie's house, because Ray's mom and Gabe's parents would ask hard-to-answer questions if they went home early.
"I am not walking home in this," Allie said.
"I have a solution," said Michaela. The other three turned to her. "You can all come over to my house. It's not that far."
"Won't your parents wonder why you're home early?" asked Ray.
"I don't live with my parents," Michaela reminded him.
"Oh, yeah… sorry." He and Michaela had made amends the day before, but he still felt like he was on thin ice when he talked to her.
"It's fine. No, really," she said, seeing the look on his face. "If I had a penny for every time someone said something about my parents, I would be the richest person in San Campion."
The way she said this, like it really didn't bother her at all, made Ray feel a lot better. The four of them headed out, following Michaela. They walked for about eight blocks, ducking under awnings and keeping out of the rain for the most part. Eventually they turned down an alley lined with small townhomes. Michaela went toward the one marked number 23 and climbed the short flight of steps to the front door. She pulled a key out of her pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped into the narrow front hall, the others following her.
"Gracie!" she yelled, dropping her backpack by the door and motioning the others to do the same. A moment later a harried looking woman with greying hair and a very stubborn chin walked into the hall.
"You're home early," she said, grabbing a coat off a hook on the wall.
"Yeah, there's some Water creature out in the bay, so they sent us home."
"And these are…?" the woman, named Gracie, said, looking at Ray, Gabe, and Allie.
"Ray, Gabe, and Allie," Michaela said, pointing to each of them in turn.
"Right, you told me about them," Gracie said, grabbing a bag by the door. "You know Rachel, the little girl I told you about last night?"
"Yeah?"
"She needs me. See you tonight." And just like that, she ran out the door.
"Oookay," Ray said.
"Who was that?" Allie asked.
"Gracie. Formerly a special cases foster mother for the San Campion police, currently a specialty children's psychiatrist."
"Is she your mom?" Gabe asked, though Gracie had seemed a bit old to be Michaela's mother.
"Adoptive, officially at least. But our relationship's more… I don't know, sisterly? She doesn't feel like my mom, you know?" Michaela said.
They started up a narrow staircase, Michaela leading the way.
"So, why does, um…" Ray started to ask.
"Gracie."
"Why does Gracie know about Kaijudo? You mentioned a Water creature downstairs."
"Eventually we had to tell her. She knows how bad a bike rider I am, but even that wasn't enough to explain all of my injuries." They had reached a landing with a door on each side. Michaela led them through the one on the left, and they walked into her room. It was small, but felt more cozy than cramped. The walls were painted a nice shade of light green, and there was a worn blue rug on the floor. The only furniture in the room was a bed, a desk, and a chair, but there wasn't a whole lot of room to walk around because of the sheer number of books. Any and every surface was covered in, paperbacks, text books, and even the occasional tablet. Michaela kicked aside a pile of them to make a clear patch of floor big enough for them all to sit.
"Have you read all of these?" Gabe asked.
"Either that or I'm in the process of reading them."
"Wow…" Gabe was completely in awe.
Ray picked up a ridiculously thick paperback with a dark stain covering most of the pages. "Is this… blood?"
Michaela leaned over to see which book he was holding. "Hot chocolate." she corrected.
Allie was standing by the small closet in one corner of the room. Hanging on the open door was a beat up sleeveless denim jacket. On closer inspection, Allie realized that it hadn't been made sleeveless: the edges weren't sewn. Then she noticed the loose threads hanging from what was left of the sleeves.
"The sleeves on this were torn off," she said.
"Yep." Michaela replied.
"What did that?" Ray asked, wondering if it had anything to do with Michaela's time in the Nature civilization.
"I did."
"You did!?" Ray, Allie, and Gabe said at the same time, making Michaela laugh.
"Yeah," she said after she had stopped laughing. "I used to wear that every day. Lucky for me I did, too. It's not easy to find sturdy, non-living material in the Kaiju realm."
This prompted a barrage of questions about how she had survived in the Nature realm.
"It's a really long story," she warned, but eventually the kids got her to tell it to them. They sat up there in her room for hours listening to her story, and by the time they left to go home, their respect for her and the Masters had gone to new heights.