At the supermarket in Summer Cove, Spike and Trevor were taking the opportunity to pick up a little lunch while on their rounds of the city. They had already been around some of the neighbourhoods that Trevor liked to frequent and had caught up with a few of the figures of note he liked to keep on good terms with. Not only had he made a lot of friends on the job, but it was a pretty reliable source of information when people actually talked to the cops and trusted them. Spike found he quite liked Trevor's approach to community policing.
Trevor was beginning to regret his decision to come in for lunch though. Spike was standing by the counter, staring through the glass at all the options on display and it was getting a little wearing. For a kid that looked somewhere between athletic and positively skinny, he was amazed how obsessed he was with food, especially junk food.
"For the love of God Skullovitch, just pick something will you?"
"You can't be too picky with your lunch choices." Spike told him sagely. "I'm likely not going to get to eat again until dinner time so it has to be something good."
"You're staring at a footlong hot dog!" Trevor pointed out.
"Yeah, it has to last." Spike protested. "Not to mention I need to pick out dessert. Oh man, those apple turnovers look great, but the donuts..."
"Skullovitch, I swear to God if you don't pick something in the next 30 seconds, I'm leaving you here!" Trevor warned him.
"Alright, I'll have a footlong spiced hot dog with everything on it, a vanilla cupcake...oh, and could I have a slice of that pepperoni pizza?" Spike asked the counter assistant. Trevor just face-palmed as the assistant went to get his order.
"I swear to God, by all rights you should weigh like six hundred pounds." Trevor declared. Spike just shrugged.
"A good metabolism runs in the family." He stated. Trevor looked across, seeing that Al was at the counter picking up some things. He smiled as he went over.
"Hey, Al isn't it? We met at the barbecue?" Trevor introduced himself. Al just shook his hand.
"Yeah, right, you're Hayley's stepdad right?" Al asked him. "It's a small world isn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess it kind of is." Al responded. "I was just picking up a roast chicken for dinner. The rotisserie here is great."
"Chicken?" Spike asked. "Aw man, and I've already ordered!"
"My partner the human garbage disposal." Trevor laughed.
"It's your month with Hayley isn't it?" Al asked him. Trevor just nodded.
"Yeah, it is." He answered. "I've got to say, I never saw myself being a dad, but when the kid is as great as Hayley everything pretty much falls right into place."
"Yeah, I guess the worst you have to worry about is Kody shedding all over the place." Al chuckled. "I swear I stopped understanding half of what Sarah talks about when she was ten. I just kind of smile and nod politely whenever she talks about science. Say, you're the 86th Precinct aren't you?"
"Yeah?" Trevor asked. "Why?"
"Ellie's applying for a job there!" Al told him. "It's just clerical work but..."
"Oh, we do NOT talk badly about clerical workers!" Trevor stated. "If they're not there, we have to spend time in the office dealing with the mail."
"Talk about boooooooooring!" Spike added, coming up to them with his arms loaded with his purchases. Al just nodded.
"Well, I should really be getting back and check my e-mail." Al replied. "The only problem with being your own boss is any time you take off only cuts into your own profits."
"I'll check up on Ellie's application for you!" Trevor chipped in as Al left. He looked around as he heard a crash and saw Spike had dropped his purchases all over the floor.
"Skullovitch!" He grumbled.
"It's not my fault they didn't have a bag!" Spike complained as Trevor helped him pick up his stuff. He looked up and pointed. "Hey, you know that guy?"
"What guy?" Trevor asked, trying to see where Spike was pointing. "No, I can't say I have."
"Is it just me or does it look like he's following Mr Thompson?" Spike asked. "He was looking at that display and only left when Al did."
"Spike, you're being paranoid, people shop!" Trevor told him.
"People with guns?" Spike asked him. "He had a holster!"
"Spike, California is an open-carry state. He has every right to carry a weapon." Trevor answered as he collected the last of Spike's purchases. "Now come on, I still want to swing past the elementary school before they close out for the day. The parents like to see a uniform in the area every once in a while."
"OK." Spike answered, but as they headed to the checkout to pay for his lunch, he took one last look for the stranger and couldn't see any sight of him. He eventually just shrugged and went to pay for his lunch. After all, he was new to the city, maybe Trevor was right and he was just trying to find something exciting as the new guy to prove his worth.
Lunch time came around, and the Rangers headed into the canteen. Fortunately the biggest danger in the day was extreme boredom. So far no one had really approached or spoken to Viera. They had seen her before and most were unobservant enough to not even realise she had left. It did make the transition a while lot smoother, which was a good thing while she was still coming to terms with her new place on Earth.
"Hey, you could have picked a worse day to come back." Callum commented as he came over with some trays. While Sarah had managed to maintain Viera's fake ID, she hadn't yet set up one of the school's charge cards for her, meaning that Calvin and Hayley had to split the cost of her lunches between their cards in the meantime. "Look, burritos!"
"Burrito?" She asked, staring at the strange package item that Calvin put down in front of her. "What's that?"
"Its bread filled with meat cheese and other stuff." Sarah explained to her. "You know...it's sort of like a sandwich only with a different kind of bread!"
Viera's expression seemed to change and she immediately picked it up, taking a massive bite that looked like it should have easily choked her, gulping it down furiously. Hayley and the others just stared at her.
"Wow...someone likes her burritos!" Preston commented.
"Here, try a little of this." Calvin told her, handing her some hot sauce. "But be careful it's a little spicy..."
Viera upended the bottle over her burrito, filling it with fiery liquid so strong that the Rangers could smell it from a couple of feet away.
"Wait, that's too much you'll..." Hayley tried to warn her, only Viera not only didn't seem to notice but had a look of sheer joy on her face as she continued to devour her dish. "OK...I guess people from her neck of the woods don't have taste buds."
"So, you're back!" Ace said as he came over. The others just stared at him as he came over. "I didn't think you were dumb enough to come back here!"
"Uh...Ace, what are you doing?" Brody asked him.
"Last time she was here, I broke my fingers!" Ace told them. Preston just blinked.
"You're saying she broke your fingers?" Preston asked. Ace started to shift a little uncomfortably, seeing the Rangers struggling to stop laughing.
"I slipped and fell wrong alright?" He protested. "Listen, you need to learn..."
Viera just stopped eating for a second, before staring up at him, burrito filling covering her face from ear-to-ear. She just gave a disinterested shrug and went back to eating.
"Hey! I'm talking to you!" He demanded.
"And I think she's done talking to you." Sarah chipped in. "So unless you have some other business here? We'd like to eat our lunch in peace."
Ace just turned and left the table. The other Rangers just stared at her.
"You beat up Ace?" Brody asked. Viera just let out a massive belch as she finished the last bite of her burrito.
"He was harassing that strange boy with the curly hair." She explained. "Oh, Calvin are you going to eat that?"
"Well, I..." He started to say before Viera snatched up his burrito. He just sighed. "I...guess I'm going for another!"
Over at the Thompson House, Al pulled up into the driveway, fetching his groceries out of the passenger seat. He looked around as he heard another car pulling into the street, and into the parking lot opposite his house, the Collins' place. He suddenly got a little curious when he noticed that it was the car he had seen them driving before. Maxine Collins got out of her car and waved to him.
"Hi there!" She called out. "Wow, someone's been hitting the shops!"
"Yeah, we were running a little low." Al commented. "Maxine, what happened to the other car?"
"Other car?" She asked him.
"Yeah, there was another car parked outside your house this morning. I thought you'd bought a new one." He told her. She just started laughing.
"A new car on my salary?" She joked. "Yeah, I only just got this one back from the shop. I'm starting to think there's so many new parts in it I'm not even sure I can say it's my old car anymore."
"No, there was a red car just here this morning. It was a Ford." He told her. She furrowed her brows.
"No one I know owns a red Ford." She told him. "Actually I just got back into town. I was visiting my sister in Harwood this weekend, I just stopped by the shop to collect the car."
"So that wasn't you that was parked outside earlier?" He asked her. She just shook her head.
"It's probably just someone trying to avoid the toll at the doctor's office." She suggested.
"Yeah, you're probably right." Al answered. "Well, hope you had a good time in Harwood."
"Oh, it was interesting alright." She chuckled. "See you around Al!"
Meanwhile, just at the end of the street, the Stranger in the red Ford watched Al go into his house, before starting up his engine and heading for his motel. He had seen enough for one day.
Back at the school, the final bell had gone, and everyone was heading home, all except for the Rangers. They all had a few things to work on, but the reality was they didn't really want to just abandon Viera at the end of her first full day in the school. While Brody, Mick and Redbot would be there, they all felt a certain responsibility to be there if she needed them. None of them felt that encouraging Viera to seek change at home was a bad thing to do, but none of them could argue that a lot of what had happened with the revolt against Viera could at least partly be considered their responsibility.
Sarah was working on her hoverboard, performing a few tweaks on it, while Mick and Calvin were doing the same with Brody's truck just to keep it running smoothly. Hayley had gone off to the tennis courts. None of them really knew why tennis was so important to her, but according to Calvin she had been practicing a minimum of an hour a day for at least a year. Brody, as per usual, was training while Preston was sitting with Viera, showing her some of his magic, both his tricks, and also his real magic.
Preston had come some way in his magical mastery, despite the fact no one had been around to teach him how to use it. He did know that there were others out there that used magic, but it wasn't as if he had time to contact anyone to ask for help or to go anywhere he could learn which meant for the most part he had to teach himself. As he pulled off his most impressive and difficult trick, summoning up a dragon the size of a large rat, he grinned brightly at her, awaiting her approval. Viera just looked to him.
"Is that it?" She asked him. Preston's dragon immediately disappeared without a trace as his concentration dissipated. He just looked at her, his smile falling from his face. "Oh, no it's…it's nice it was a really…really nice dragon."
"What do you mean 'is that it'?" He asked her. "I just made a dragon appear from thin air, do you know how difficult that is?"
"Well…?" She said, with a strained look on her face and a little shrug. She could see Sarah coming over, putting her hoverboard aside.
"That sounds like you've seen something bigger than that." Sarah commented. "I didn't know there was magic in the Lion Galaxy."
"Are you kidding? Of COURSE, there's magic in the Lion Galaxy!" Mick chipped in. "The power of some of the battle mages in my home galaxy alone was legendary!"
"But what you did it's…it's really nice too!" Viera said, trying to back-peddle a little. "I mean, some of the mages in my household studied for years at the Colleges before they were given their wands."
"Wand?" Preston asked. "Wands are really a thing?"
"Of course, they are! They act as a catalyst and help channel their power!" She told him. "But without training and without a wand, it's really impressive what you can do."
"Man, I knew that I was missing something!" Preston grumbled. "I'll bet all the mages in your household are all super old guys with huge white beards and…"
He noticed her sucking her teeth. She looked to him a little apologetically.
"Actually, some of the mages we have in our household army are signed up at twelve." She admitted. Preston's eyes just shot open wide.
"TWELVE?" He asked incredulously. "You're telling me I'm not even matching the magic of kids that haven't been through puberty?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it!" She protested. "I'm sure if you had access to a wand and some of our teachings you could be great!"
"Yeah, you heard what Viera said, those kids had been practicing for years." Sarah reminded him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I love your magic, it's pulled our butts out of the fire more than once."
"Man, I wish I had a wand." Preston grumbled. "I suppose you can't just pick up any random stick and start waving it, around right?"
"Certain materials have different magical properties." Viera told him. "Crafting a wand, a basic wand is difficult, for some of the legendary wands it's easily as difficult as crafting some of the most advanced weapons' systems like the Lion Ship."
"Yeah, sorry Tom. I don't mean to keep putting it off, it's just…something important came up." Levi said as he arrived back, speaking on his cell phone. "Yeah, I hope we can reschedule soon too."
"How is he?" Sarah asked. Even without her heightened empathy, she could see that Levi was getting pulled in a few different directions lately. He had only recently found out that he was in fact Aiden, Brody's older brother. When he had taken the Gold Power Star from the Nexus Prism, Madame Odious had kidnapped him and transferred his memories into her robot in an attempt to infiltrate the Rangers. Even after 'Aiden's' destruction, which triggered a lot of his memories into returning, he had struggled to make sense of any of them and to put them together in any meaningful way. It was only a chance encounter seeing a suit of Sensei armour in San Angeles that sent him to the Wind Ninja Academy where the pieces fell into place.
While Levi was glad to get his life as Aiden back, and in the process his family, the issue was that he already had a life as Levi. While he had set it up originally as just a cover to help hide him from Galvanax, it had evolved into a life all of its own. The Westons had took him in, giving him another family that were every bit as much of a family as the Romeros were. He was trying to get Brody and Tom, his brothers, to unite and to unite both families, but so far fate hadn't quite provided the opportunity to do so. He put his cell phone away.
"He's as good as I can expect." Levi replied sadly. "Tom's been great, I just wish things weren't so hectic. So, what's the issue here?"
"I just found out that by Lion Galaxy standards my magic's the equivalent of hanging a spoon from the end of your nose." Preston muttered.
"That's not exactly what Viera said." Sarah reminded him.
"You know I never did figure out that trick." Levi commented, at which Viera just got up and walked off.
"Viera, are you…?"
"I just…I just feel a little tired." She told them. "I want to go and rest."
"Sure, we'll try not to disturb you." Mick answered. Preston suddenly looked a little guilty.
"Do you think it was something I said?" He asked. "I wouldn't have complained if…"
"Preston, I don't think it has anything to do with that." Sarah told him sadly.
"So, what do you think it is?" Levi asked. Sarah shook her head.
"I think it's something she needs to approach us with when she's ready." She told them. "Come on Preston, I've made a few tweaks to my board. I should be able to get us most of the way to mine on one charge now."