Author's notes - Thanks for following me through part one. Eleven parts to go! This will be a bit of a journey, yes. I'll take a break for a couple of days, and start the next part, early next week. Have a great weekend :).

Part One

Chapter Four

Luckily, the milkshake bar hadn't closed for the day. With two milkshakes in hand, I stepped out of the shop and followed the pavement around to the carpark of a nearby look-out. Once the brothers were gone, Jason and I had cleared the barricades and loaded the cauldron into the red dragon for Alpha to look at later. Driving back to Montville, Jason parked beside a mountain-top look-out, with a wide view of the Sunshine Coast laid out before us in the lengthening shadows of dusk. He was still there when I approached, sitting on the hood of the car and staring out over the view. With the gravel crunching under my shoes, he turned to face me, but he saw the milkshakes and grinned.

"No, but seriously, where do you put it all?" he asked. "You've eaten your way from one side of the range to the other."

"I am blessed with a high metabolism," I said, and handed him one of the milkshakes. "Chocolate and cherry."

"Nice. What did you get?"

"Tropicana," I explained. "Mango, passionfruit and orange," and we took a few seconds to try the drinks.

"That's not bad," Jason said softly. "Here, have some of mine," and I automatically handed him my drink as I tried his. He was right, it was really good.

"Did you manage to get hold of Zordon and Alpha?" I asked.

"I finally got through to them before," he replied. "According to Zordon, they were hit by a massive surge of energy so powerful that it knocked out their systems and took everything offline. They spent half an hour just trying to reboot the computers."

"At least we know why we couldn't contact them," I said. "Any culprits?"

"None so far. Alpha said they didn't recognise the energy spike, and there wasn't a match anywhere in the database. Which isn't ominous at all. Zordon said he'd keep us in the loop either way."

We sat there for a while longer, gazing out over the range and enjoying the drinks. After a few minutes, I turned to my best friend. "So are you going to tell me what today was about, or do I have to ask?" I said.

"Today? What are you talking about?"

"This," I said, and nodded to the lantern on the backseat of the car. "The monsters. Everything." Jase stared at me blankly, so I took a breath and continued. "You didn't have to bring that book up for your friend. You were going to run into her next week. I saw the sign in the shop. They have a delivery service and they would've had the lantern down to your house by the weekend. And we could've called the other Rangers the second we saw those two monsters, but you didn't want to. And that ain't you, Jason Scott. So c'mon. What's going on?"

"Only because you full-named me," he said. He lifted up his jumper to reveal a large bruise under his right arm. It had faded, but was still the wrong shade of purple. "You remember the putty fight on the weekend?" he began, and he let his coat fall. "Right at the end, I was distracted for half a second, and one of them got in a lucky shot. We deal with them so easily that you forget how strong they are. I didn't even realise it until I went to the doctor on Monday. One x-ray later, he found that I'd busted a couple of ribs. It's fine, I mean, it's a bit sore, but it's healing up okay. And I can't use one of Zordon and Alpha's bone regrowth pills because the next time I visit the doctor, he'll see that I've healed too quickly. So I'm stuck with it for the time being."

"That's why you wanted to get out of town for the day, and not call in the others for the fight," I realised. "You didn't want anybody to know you were fighting wounded. Hell, you didn't even want me to know."

"I'm telling you now."

"Only because I figured it out!"

Jason looked away. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I think it scares me, sometimes, that people might not see me the way I need them to. Bulletproof, you know? Like Superman. Remember at the start, all we had to deal with was Rita's monsters? But every year, the threats get scarier. Every year, we need to be better. But we're always being tested. They're all waiting for the slightest sign of vulnerability, the hint of a crack to exploit. I think it's starting to get really hard to let the mask slip."

"I get that," I said. "We have to be strong. People are counting on us. But all the time? It kinda sounds exhausting."

"It can be."

"That's my point," I said. "Not even Superman is Superman all the time. Look," and I pointed to my backpack, there on the floor of the car, "if you can forgive me for that? I can forgive you for not being bulletproof. Someone once said to me that you should never have to apologise for who you are."

Jason smiled. "He sounds like a smart guy."

"He has his moments," I said, and Jason laughed.

There was silence for another few minutes, and Jason held up his shake. "This was worth it though, coming up here."

"No argument there," I said. "You wanna head home?"

"We'll just run into afternoon traffic. Besides, we still haven't hit all those chocolate shops."

We slid off the bonnet of the car. "Now you're talking," I said. "I'm still worried about that energy spike, though."

"If anything comes of it, we'll deal with it then. What are the odds?"

I laughed, and we climbed into the car and drove away.

To be continued.