Twenty year old Waldo Brookes walked into the building of his long-time job, Storm Chargers, where he encountered his boss Kelly, scolding him for being late yet again. Waldo, who preferred being addressed as Dustin, for the name Waldo was an utter embarrassment, had heard this speech so many times he could reciprocate it back to his red-headed boss, word for word, hand motion for hand motion.
Nevertheless, Dustin walked by his boss, apologizing at the correct points in the admonishment, only focused on reaching his destination, which was a mere seven feet away.
"Hey, dude," Dustin said, greeting his blonde-haired friend, clothed in faded blue-jeans, and of course, a crimson button down, hanging open, revealing his white wife- beater. "I was walking down Pine Crescent Lane before. Someone's opening up a surf shop down in that old beaten down place."
Hunter Bradley could only sigh.
The act of surfing only reminded him of the woman who had walked into his life, and then mysteriously disappeared with only a note as a goodbye. Hunter knew the letter was still on the grounds of the Ninja Academy. Although she was gone, they at least had some small part of her, just her handwriting, to keep. They knew that, through that letter, they could not see her smile, or watch her glide over the waves, but they could still remember those things. Hunter knew he would never forget anything about her, her laugh, her eyes, her tauntings . . . nothing. And he also would never forget that letter, the letter that acted as the shears in their relationship, slicing away at their bond.
When Hunter woke up, he knew something felt different, but looking outside, he saw the day was just like any other, and he convinced himself that it was all in his head.
Except it wasn't.
Hunter walked into Ninja Ops, the place where they had come so often as Rangers, whether to hear Sensei Watanabe's latest revelation, or to celebrate their latest victory against Lothor and another one of his useless monsters. Already he could tell things were off balance, as if something was missing, though he couldn't place his finger on what.
The high-tech computers that Cam was constantly glued to were still in their place, up and running, their intricacies known only to Cam. Sensei Watanabe sat in a chair, still as human as ever. Cushions, seats, scrolls, plants . . . everything was there.
Excluding the noise.
Noise. That is what was always found when the Rangers were in Ninja Ops. But not today. All that greeted him was a biting silence that made him uneasy.
Why wasn't Shane telling everyone about how annoying Kyle was, as he did every morning? Why wasn't Cam there, lecturing Shane on how he had to be patient with his students? What happened to the part of the morning where Sensei asked for silence, but was ignored? Where was the part where Blake poked Dustin awake? Where Tori's sparkling laugh, as she smiled at the scene?
Why was everything so incredibly wrong
Their faces turned to him, all except one.
Tori.
"Where's—" Hunter began.
They knew his question; Hunter saw it in their faces. In response, Blake thrust a crumpled piece of paper into his hands. Hunter opened the balled up sheet of paper and read the words that were quickly scribbled out.
Hunter read, but he did not comprehend the words. He remembered certain words that seemed to flash out at him. Emergency. Family. Leaving.
Those three simple words told him all that he needed to know.
Tori had left.
That was a dark day for the Rangers.
"So?" Hunter asked, wondering why this piece of information should provoke any emotion on his part.
"I was thinking we could check it out," Dustin stated simply.
Hunter knew why Dustin wanted to go to this new surf shop, and it was not because he had taken up a sudden interest in surfing to feel closer to his absent best friend.
Hunter sighed. "Dude, I don't think she's coming back."
After the first couple of days after Victoria's departure, everyone tried to cope, emphasis on 'tried.' It did not exactly go as they hoped. Blake usually came by every two or three days, by ninja streak of course, to catch up. But with Victoria gone, his visits became shorter and farther apart. After several months, he just called and emailed. Shane and Dustin thought it was a practical, but at the same time cruel, joke, and the very first day, they waited for Victoria to pop out of a dark corner, laughing at their gullibility. They waited for her, all day, and all night, all the way up until two in the morning. She never popped out. Cam and Sensei were troubled by Victoria's absence as well, though they did not show it as the others did. Hunter was, at first, angry with her. How could she leave them like that, he wondered, not even saying goodbye in person? In a letter? How impersonal could she be?
Later, however, he changed, accepting her leaving as the others did, but he did not believe she would return, as they did. He refused to get his hopes up, for he knew they would just be crushed.
Little did Hunter know how wrong he was.
.:X:.
Victoria let out a breath, admiring her handiwork. In just a week, she had repaired her shop, which ended up being donned Surf But No Turf, courtesy of Justin and Sara.
Justin came up with the name, and Sara agreed. Victoria immediately protested, saying it sounded childish.
"Doesn't matter," Sara said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, "you're overruled."
"Doesn't matter," Victoria said in a tone not unlike Sara's. "This is not a surf-ocracy."
Victoria ended up giving in, realizing she would have been on Sara and Justin's side all the way one year ago.
Victoria still had some renovations to do on her house, such as a badly needed paint job, new floors, and an overhaul of the downstairs bathroom. But Victoria wanted to finish the store first, and that week, she and Sara worked from dawn until after dusk, calling companies, taking out loans, hammering, drilling, cleaning, and mostly buying.
After a day at the shop, Victoria realized they needed to shop, and not for shoes. So the next day, Victoria and Sara went to the store, buying lighting, wood, and paint, specifically in hues of blue, yellow, and red. After six and three-quarter days of arduous labor, contractors, and bank personnel, Victoria was ready for the part where owning her own business became fun.
It was already three in the morning, as Victoria and Sara had spent that whole day renovating the shop. The day had been anything but a bowl of plump red cherries, draining her physically and emotionally. At one point, in the late morning, Victoria could have sworn a tall, curly-haired man wearing an unmistakable yellow t-shirt passed by, and throughout the rest of the day, she worried that one of them would have come sauntering through the door, gaping at her as though she were a ghost.
Victoria tormented her mind with possible worst-case-scenarios, and now she could not get them out of her head. She checked the clock. Five minutes past three AM.
Victoria no longer saw the point in trying to sleep. Later that day, floor contractors were to come and install new flooring in her house. Marble tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms; carpeting in the living room and bedrooms; and hardwood flooring in the dining room. Her parents always told her that hardwood flooring forever added a classy touch.
There was not much Victoria could do at the raw hour of three-thirty. She did not yet install the television she had brought from her old home, so that was out. It was too dark to read, and honestly, Victoria was not in the mood for mental exercise. Victoria laid her head down in exhaustion, and without a stray thought in her mind, she was fast asleep.
.:X:.
Victoria awoke to the sound of ringing. Dazed, she opened her eyes and wondered what in the world could be making that infernal ding-dong noise that had awoken her from her slumber.
Ding-dong.
Ding-dong.
She listened as the sound came once, then twice. A doorbell, she thought. Finally, the gears in her mind began working, as she realized it was her doorbell that was being rung.
Jumping up from her couch, she dashed to the door.
Three carpenters stood there. After exchanging greetings, she showed them inside. As they kneeled down in their respectable places, installing the flooring, Victoria dashed up the stairs to Justin's room and shook him awake.
"Come on, squirt," she said, ruffling his hair, "get dressed. We're going down to the store while Sara watches the house."
Victoria threw on her favorite pair of low riders and slipped on a blue tank top, a color that had come to dominate her wardrobe. After quickly brushing her teeth and throwing her hair into a messy bun, she thrust her feet into blue flip-flops and jumped down the stairs. Conveniently, the doorbell rang at Justin moseyed down the wooden staircase.
"I cannot thank you enough," Victoria gushed, as she opened the door to the sight of her green-eyed friend.
"No problem," Sara said with a wave of her hand.
"We'll be back in a few hours!" Victoria said, walking out to her car with Justin in tow.
Victoria kind of missed her old van. The blue Ford Explorer she bought was very nice, she had to admit, but since her aged van had experienced a massive amount of wear and tear, her old van started slowly falling apart, and she had no choice but to buy a new car.
As the young woman journeyed into her past, they had arrived at the paint store. Victoria knew what she wanted: blue, blue, and more blue. The same could not be said for Justin, however.
"Maybe I should get red," he mused.
"Okay," Victoria concurred.
"No, yellow," he said.
"Sure."
"No, wait! Green!"
"Justin, just pick a color," Victoria groaned.
He ended up choosing a hue of blue, a bit darker than her own blue, after about a half an hour and the growing impatience from Victoria.
Placing the paint cans in the large trunk, they headed off to the local home improvement store, Lowe's, where Victoria purchased a new toilet and sink, adding to her growing amount of debt. She sighed while they shopped for groceries in the local Stop and Shop Supermarket. They bought just about every food in the store, courtesy of Justin.
Four hours after their departure, Victoria and Justin returned home with a car much heavier than when they left. Walking through the door, they found Sara, bored out of her mind, and the carpenters cleaning up, on their way out.
"Wow, this looks great!" Victoria exclaimed when she saw the beauteous new flooring. She handed the men her credit card and signed away at the 'x.'
The men left with a farewell, and then the three got to unpacking. Plates, glasses, forks, knives, cans, food, everything went into their respective cabinets.
The three unpacked clothes and stowed them away in closets and drawers. Shampoo bottles were stored in closets, and towels were folded. Beds were made, and dining room tables were moved. Televisions, game consoles, and DVD players were hooked up, and toilets and sinks were installed.
Once everything was in its place, it was dinnertime. Victoria asked Sara to stay for the pizza she just ordered, but Sara declined.
"I'm just going to go home and crash," Sara said, yawning.
They exchanged goodbyes with a hug, and after dinner, Victoria got to work again. She opened the paint for the living room. For once, she picked a color other than blue, a pale yellow which the salesclerk called "Buttercup."
Justin sat down with his third slice of pizza, his eyes glued to the television. Victoria was perched precariously at the edge of the step stool with a roller of Buttercup colored paint. Blowing a few strands of hair that had fallen out of her bun, she wiped her hand across her forehead, smearing yellow paint on her face. She could tell this long day would only get longer.
.:X:.
"That's weird."
"What?" Hunter asked, looking over to his friend who stared perplexedly at the computer, as Dustin walked over to the computer. Shane looked up expectantly, ready to jump into action if need be.
Cameron Watanabe was not exactly sure. According to his computer, the former Blue Ranger was back in Blue Bay Harbor. That could not be true, Cam decided. If their friend had come back, she would have come to see them, would she not? The readings were not always one hundred percent accurate either. They all wore necklaces with small communication devices hanging off of them, but decorated so that they seemed like an attractive accessory. In those devices Cam had placed a tracking device, in case of emergencies. Growing up in a ninja academy taught him to always expect the unexpected.
Cam realized Victoria could have lost the device, and someone else had haphazardly turned it on, reactivating the tracking sensor. But something pulled at him. And Cam wanted to find out.
"Dude?" Shane asked when Cam failed to respond.
"Come look at this," Cam said, motioning Hunter, Dustin, and Shane over to the computer. They looked but they did not see.
"What exactly are we looking at?" Hunter asked.
Cam pointed over to one of the many programs on the screen. In one of the smaller scale ones, he maximized the screen, bringing it up to full size. The computer screen showed an array of lines and colored dots.
"This program," Cam explained, "shows exactly where you guys are. Inside the necklaces I told you were used for communication purposes only, I also installed a tracking device, in case something weird started up.
"The communicators can be turned off, and when they are, the trackers are turned off as well, which is why it was impossible to track Tori," Cam said, matter-of-factly. "But it shows here that the communicator is back on, showing the blue dot, right there," Cam pointed.
They understood. The lines were the streets of Blue Bay Harbor. The series of colored dots, they failed to realize, were color coordinated. A red dot, a yellow dot, a green dot, and a crimson dot were huddled together, just as they really were.
"As you can see, Blake is not on this map. If we wanted to see Blake, I'd have to zoom out," Cam stated. He went to go do so, but Dustin stopped him.
"Dude! Is that . . ." he trailed off, staring at the blue dot.
"That's exactly what I was thinking," Cam said.
Several moments passed before any of them spoke.
Can Tori really be back? Hunter wondered.
.:X:.
Blake Bradley had just finished dinner with his sponsor, Roger Hanna, when the diminutive communicator that hung from his neck made a series of beeping reverberations. He quickly excused himself and darted to the nearest desolate place.
"Hey, what's up?" he asked, speaking into the necklace.
"You'd better get back here," the voice of his older brother sounded.
Not asking any questions, Blake dashed away at a speed faster than the human eye could track. He arrived at his destination in less than two minutes, Ninja Ops. He rushed down the rocky steps to encounter his friends.
"Lothor again?" Blake asked in a grim voice.
Dustin sucked in a breath. "Not exactly, dude. Not exactly."
"Then what is it?" he asked, bewildered.
"Cam? It looks like you're going to have to explain the program again," Shane said.
Blake walked over to the computer.
Cam sighed. "This program shows exactly where you guys are. . ."
A/N: If I have any psychic abilities whatsoever, I foresee I will kick myself in the future for how I plotted out this chapter. It seems fairly choppy and abrupt, now that I've read over it a second time.
Right now I can't stand this story. It's choppy, long, and my grammar is infuriating. I've tried re-wording sentences time and time again, but they are still as grammatically awkward as before. The plot is totally screwed up, and I am just not happy. If my perfectionist side ever calms down, and I get over this darn writer's block, I'll update quickly (next month, most probably). There's a chance I won't update next month, but I'll explain all that in a profile update. But I will finish this story, even if it kills me!!!!!!!!
Oh, I don't own the Power Rangers, blah, blah.
But enough of my whining and boring disclaimers. What inspired me to update was all the reviews I got! Many thanks to earth-fairy2006, pinklen98, farm-girl84, Puggles Master, Hieiko, ariesbritt26, Dark Yellow Dino, band rox my sox on, SARAH, footychick, amethyst fire phoenix, and Trinix216.
Also, if you haven't noticed, I changed my pen name. The title will also undergo a change as well because I picked it out hastily to post the story.
Oh, and reviews are appreciated!
-Andriela