The Rangers filed into the Ranger Base after school, finding Mick and Redbot waiting for them. Redbot really didn't have anywhere to go, since it was as yet not common for the people of Earth to see robots walking around the place. Preston and Sarah had taken him out when a Sci Fi Convention was in town, and he had been promised to be able to explore all he wanted come Halloween, but for now he was really restricted to the Ranger Base and the woods surrounding the area so long as he was careful not to be seen. Feeling sorry for him, Calvin had introduced Redbot to Social Media to allow him to 'meet' others and keep him from getting too lonely.
Mick was looking a little agitated and harassed, more so than usual. Mick was a slightly neurotic person by nature, and often did react to most situations with an extreme emotional response, but today he did look quite troubled, though was not quite as animated and flailing as he often did. It was almost more concerning to not see him running around flapping his arms like he was trying to take off.
"Alright, is everyone here?" He asked them.
"Mick, there are six of us." Calvin reminded him, pointing to each of them in turn. He held up six fingers. "We're all here."
"Right...yeah, you're right, of course." Mick told them. "Um...alright, as you all know, we have a fair bit to discuss..."
"Yeah, is this going to take long?" Preston asked, fidgeting a little in his chair. Mick just furrowed his brows, staring at him.
"Why, do you have somewhere else to be?" Brody asked him. "This is important."
"Well, yeah, I know that, but...I kind of have plans." Preston told him. Calvin and Hayley looked to each other and suppressed a chuckle at their friends' expense. They could see that Preston and Sarah were just itching to get out of the room and be on their way. While they had no doubt that they would work on the project as they had said, as per usual Sarah was trying to build some kind of brand new invention for a business project when a much simpler plan would be acceptable. Hayley had talked Calvin into doing a pet-grooming service, and in a previous year about four students had set up a shoe-shine business despite the fact very few students wore shoes, preferring trainers. However, they had ascertained that after that they were going on a date. They were still being very cagey about it all, but Calvin and Hayley were determined to find out all the gory details.
"Well the sooner we get started the sooner we finish." Brody reminded him. "Alright Mick, go ahead."
"Alright, as you know, we just found out that Principal Hastings was replaced by Madame Odious. She's been in this school, and right now, the board do not know how long she's been here." Mick recapped. "This does give us quite a few problems, because it means that not only are we effectively without a principal until she comes back..."
"Wait, she's coming back?" Hayley asked.
"Yes." Mick replied with a nod.
"WOW! I've got to say I'm impressed!" Hayley commented.
"Yeah, I mean...locked up in her basement like that, with Odious doing...God knows what to her...I wouldn't blame her if she wanted to leave town and never come back!" Calvin agreed.
"She's tougher than she looks." Mick told them. "A LOT tougher! She's determined to come back, and if she has her way I doubt it'll be too long before she does."
"I know Mrs Finch will welcome that news." Levi told them. "She's not exactly thrilled about being forced to take on the role."
"Well, that answers one question at least." Brody commented. "Mrs Finch is the Acting Principal?"
"Dead man's shoes...pardon the expression. No one else wants the job!" Levi informed them. "If she didn't take on the job they'd have to close the school."
"It does present us with a few problems." Mick told them. "Right now they've got no idea how long Madame Odious has been running things so they're reviewing pretty much everything she's done since the beginning of the year."
"Whoa that...that's a LOT of ground to cover!" Calvin answered. "Um...you two were hired during that time, and Brody was enrolled in the school! If they look too deeply into that..."
"Don't worry; those papers are bullet-proof." Sarah interrupted him. "Dr Morgan once told me she's been forging ID's since she was in High School. If she says those papers are air-tight, then you can trust her."
"Your old boss can forge air-tight government documents?" Hayley asked her. "That's a little scary!"
"You have no idea how scary she can be." Sarah commented.
"Either way it means we'll have to be a little more careful around here." Mick told them. "There's going to be a lot more scrutiny so we might want to avoid drawing too much attention to...you know...here."
"That's probably a good idea." Sarah announced, getting up. "So with that in mind I need to go..."
"We're not quite done here." Mick interrupted her. Sarah just sank back down slowly. "The other issue is, Odious talked to Jennifer a lot."
"Jennifer?" Calvin asked.
"Principal Hastings." Mick clarified. "The thing is...she knows about us."
"Wait, what?" Brody asked. "She knows...how much? What does...?"
"She knows pretty much everything." Mick answered as the others looked to him. "Odious told her I was involved, and from there it wasn't too hard for her to figure out who all of you were. She didn't have a lot to do in that basement, so she spent most of that time thinking and she pieced together a lot of it. I filled her in on the blanks."
"You did WHAT?" They all chorused, shooting forward in their chairs. Mick held up his hands.
"Now, now...to be fair...she knew pretty much everything anyway." Mick told them. "Secondly, she's pretty much convinced we saved her life, so she's assured me that she'll never tell anyone anything about us. She's still to make her statement to the authorities and wanted to run things by me first."
"She...she's not meant to be talking to anyone yet." Calvin answered. "The doctors said..."
"Believe me, she is a lot tougher than anyone gives her credit for!" Mick assured them. He could have put their minds at ease by telling them about the story she told him. One of her first teaching assignments took her to a school in a really rough neighbourhood, and she had almost lost her life when she confronted a student over some homework. She had almost been stabbed to death only a month into her first placement. The fact she was alive was remarkable, that she had continued in her career afterwards was nothing short of astounding. "But she's assured us not only will she keep our secret, but she'll also do what she can to make things a little easier for us. One thing Odious has shown us...inadvertently...is how useful it can be to have someone in a position of authority."
"I...guess that's true." Brody answered cautiously. "So where do we go from here?"
"Well, I'm going to Jennifer again tonight, just to see how she's progressing." Mick answered. Hayley mouthed the name 'Jennifer' to Calvin. "In the meantime, all we can do is keep our heads down and our guards up until she comes back."
"Alright then, I guess that's it." Brody answered. "Anyone want to train?"
"We, uh...we have to go." Sarah told them. "We're working on our project in my workshop."
"Yeah, we'll see you guys around." Preston answered as they both scrambled to gather their things and leave.
"They seem to be in a hurry." Brody commented with a shrug. "How about you guys?"
"I just need to stop by the pet store." Hayley lied expertly. "Calvin and I will be doing a pet-grooming service for our project. I need to pick up a few things."
"Yeah, and that puts me in the role of official bag-carrier." Calvin said with a smile. "See you guys around!"
As they left, Brody just looked to Levi who shrugged.
"Sure, I can go a few rounds with you." He answered, slapping Brody on the shoulder. "Maybe you can show me some more Romero moves."
"Sorry, some of those moves are family secrets." Brody chuckled. "But don't worry, you'll see them soon enough."
"Now that, that sounds like a bet!" Levi smirked as they went to get changed into their training gear.
In another part of the city, Victor and Monty were in the mall, taking a little break from their attempts to find a project for their business studies assignment. They had been procrastinating more than a little, and time was quickly catching up with them. Victor loved the food court, not because the quality was particularly good, the food was pretty much what anyone would expect for a place where someone could get a full meal for under five dollars, but because of the variety. In the same place, they could get Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Italian, Sushi and Thai all within just a few paces of each other. It meant that they didn't even have to order the same kind of food if they didn't want to.
Victor sat down, setting down a plate of combination curry in front of himself and a jumbo plate of nachos in front of Monty. The plate was piled high with chilli, beans, peppers, olives, sour cream and cheese.
"I have no idea how you can eat that and still have less meat on you than a chicken wing." Victor commented. Monty didn't answer though. He was surprisingly quiet, and had been since the attack the previous day. Victor had started shovelling away his food when he saw Monty picking at his plate, hardly touching it. He just sighed.
"Come on Monty, snap out of it! We need that brain of yours!" Victor reminded him. Monty didn't answer though, just crunching down his first heavily topped nachos. "Come on, I've taken you to see Black Panther, AGAIN, I've bought you your favourite, what else can I do?"
Monty just sighed, staring at his tablet. Victor rolled his eyes, before waving to himself.
"Alright, go ahead, tell Uncle Victor. What is it?" He asked him. Monty just looked to him.
"I'm...I'm trying to find that girl from the race." He told him. Victor smirked as he heard this.
"You're trying to find her? A girl whose name you didn't even get, and who you met only once for not even a minute?" Victor asked him. "Wow, she must be something else. She has bitten you hard!"
Monty turned his tablet around, showing Victor a picture of her. Victor took the tablet from him and inspected it, before looking to Monty.
"Where did you...?"
"I've been searching all the websites, looking for any pictures I can find of her." Monty told him. "I've been Tweeting, posting on Facebook, Instagram, asking if anyone knows her or how to find her..."
"You know, SOME people would call that stalking." Victor teased him. Monty just glared at him. Victor was only light-heartedly teasing him; he knew that Monty didn't really have much luck or much confidence with others, especially girls. He looked to the picture again. "She's pretty cute."
"She is." Monty replied dreamily as he stared at the picture. Ace and his friends came by, having seen them on their way to get some pizza.
"Now isn't this nice?" He asked, gesturing to the scene. "Enjoying your date?"
"Wow, gay jokes!" Victor responded. "Way to embrace the twenty first century Ace."
"Yeah, you might dress like it's the 1950's, but you don't need to act like it too." Monty chipped in. Victor looked to him, almost impressed. He knew that Monty was always a lot more confident in Ace's presence when he was around, but it wasn't like him to be confident enough to throw insults back.
"What did you say?" Ace snapped at him.
"You know Ace..." Victor was about to say, before noticing that he and his friends all looked very different. They all bore some pretty obvious bruises and signs they had been in a fight pretty recently. Given the state of them, it was clearly not a fight that had gone well for them! Ace had a black eye, and a pretty badly swollen jaw, and the guy standing behind him had his nose strapped up, clearly broken. He almost did a spit-take with his food. "What the hell happened to you?"
"We had a bit of a rumble." Ace told him. "It's no big deal."
"A rumble, with what? A combine harvester?" Monty laughed.
"HEY!" Ace called out.
"Ace, seriously it doesn't look like much of a fight, more like a massacre!" Victor teased him. Ace and his friends looked decidedly uncomfortable as he said this. All things said and done, it was a pretty one-sided fight. Calvin had pretty much taken them apart with ease. "Who the hell did that to you?"
"A...a...a...a bunch of guys!" Ace lied. "Really, really big guys...I think some of them might have been college kids!"
Ace's friends all shuffled and looked more than a little uncomfortable about this. They wouldn't dare to contradict Ace's version of events, mainly because they didn't want to admit that they had lost a three-on-one fight convincingly.
"You...you took on some college kids?" Monty asked him. Ace just shrugged.
"I wouldn't expect a loser like you to understand." Ace answered. Victor started looking around.
"Where's Cherry?" He asked. Ace just coughed.
"I chucked her." Ace lied again. The fact was that after he hurt her, the very act that prompted Calvin into the fight in the first place, Cherry had texted him only once to tell him she was done with him and had ignored all his calls, texts and messages since then. "I was done with her, so I kicked her to the curb! I can get another girl like that!" He snapped his fingers to make a point. Victor looked out the window as something caught his attention. It was a horrid brown, slightly rusted station wagon, one he recognised.
"Wait, is that...is that Uncle Jack's car?" Victor asked him. "Did you come here in Uncle Jack's car?"
"Shut up alright?" Ace snapped. "The Beast just needs a little work done on it and..."
"I thought you did all the work on The Beast yourself?" Monty chortled. Ace just started to turn red. "Oh yeah, you sound like such a winner right now Ace."
"Hey, can we get a couple of cartons to take this to go?" Victor called to the counter staff. "See you around Ace; we wouldn't want to interrupt all this winning you seem to be doing!"
As they walked away, Ace kicked over a chair, but had to sheepishly pick it up and right it when he saw a security guard glaring his way. After getting their dinner boxed up, Victor put his arm around Monty, leading him away.
"Come on Monty." He told him. "We'll look for your mystery girl for a bit, and then we'll really get to work on this project."
"That sounds great!" Monty answered as Ace and his friends sat down, waiting for their order to be prepared.
Up on the Warrior Dome, Galvanax went into a drinking hole, searching around. He moved, ever so slightly as a monster hit the floor just short of him unconscious. He smirked as he saw this, looking up and seeing Drillion standing at the bar, his weapon still slick with the other patron's blood. He turned back to the bar, pounding a fist on it and screamed at the barman.
"Same again!" He called out. The barman put a tankard the size of a bucket down in front of him at which he grabbed it and started to chug. Galvanax walked up to him.
"I'm a little surprised to see you here." Galvanax commented.
"The Princess does not need..."
"I'm a little surprised she lets her pet off his leash." Galvanax stated. Drillion turned to face him.
"What did you call me?" He growled.
"So, I guess she doesn't mind you going off to play as long as you return when she calls 'heel'." Galvanax taunted him. Drillion took another long swig, glaring at the Galaxy Warriors Champion.
"I go where I please." Drillion stated flatly. "No one can tell me otherwise."
"Well, you certainly are impressive against the local drunks." Galvanax replied as he looked to the monster on the floor. "Though I wonder how you will fare against a REAL foe."
"Perhaps we should find out!" Drillion suggested. There was suddenly a lot of noise as furniture was overturned and doors flew open as the patrons and staff scrambled to get away. There was even smashing glass as some of the patrons in their panic and desperation to get away took their chances throwing themselves through the windows! The barman leapt into the cellar and shut the hatch behind him, leaving the two monsters alone in the bar.
"You haven't earned that honour." Galvanax told him. "Monsters have to defeat 25 opponents to get a shot at me. Of course, if I choose to make a personal challenge, that rule can be bent."
"Just say the word!" Drillion snarled.
"Like I said, you're not worthy." Galvanax told him. "Prove me wrong...Royal pet!"
Drillion finished his tankard and stormed out of the tavern to go to his quarters. Galvanax, seeing he was now alone in the tavern walked around the bar and helped himself to a bottle. He ripped out the stopper with his teeth, spitting it across the room, before taking a long swig.
"That was far too easy." He remarked.