Last time we saw the Season Ninjas...[]
Tyler and Sienna's day off was interrupted by Dean, who first tried to assassinate them, and then morphed and attacked when that failed. They managed to fend him off, only for an alarm to start sounding, warning them that someone had broken into the Zord hangar.
February 7th, Downtown Scrimshaw, 10:40 pm[]
A single patrol car cruised down the road, past several skeletal buildings. The Rangers' fight with their own Megazord had taken its toll on the district, but most of the debris had already been cleared away.
Officer Darla Moody glanced around the street. No vandals or monsters tonight, thankfully. She checked her watch. She had time for a little repair work while she was on her shift.
Pulling up at the curb, Officer Moody climbed out. Light from the one surviving street light illuminated a row of saplings along the side of the street. All but two had been crushed by debris, and the survivors had lost branches. Checking to make sure nobody was looking, Officer Moody gestured, both hands together, towards the nearest standing tree. Turquoise energy glowed around her fingers, and the sapling began to regrow.
A cold wind picked up, making the trees' branches rustle. Frost began to spiderweb across their leaves and bark. Officer Moody paused, confused. Before her eyes, the tree turned white, stiffening with a crackle as it froze.
An eerie laugh rang out, and the wind blew again, making the frozen twigs tinkle against each other. Eyes widening, Officer Moody spun around, only to be enveloped in white energy. When the light faded, the policewoman had been frozen solid in a block of ice.
February 8th, Zord Bay, Scrimshaw, 11:15 am[]
Anya heard the whoosh of ninja-streaking, and looked up from the Penguinzord's cockpit. Two teenagers ran into the hangar, and looked around, clearly confused. They spoke, but their voices didn't carry far enough for Anya to make out the words. Leaning on her console, she watched them, curious what they would do next.
With a gesture, the boy faded away. Anya glimpsed a distortion moving closer. Aha, an Autumn Ninja.
"Hey!" Anya yelled, popping out of the cockpit. She was still a little breathless from her run to the hangar. "Can one of you guys tell me what happened to the school?"
Spotting her, the girl ninja-streaked up beside her, striking a fighting stance as she landed. Anya looked her up and down, stood, and adjusted her pose with a couple of quick jerks.
"You'll slip if you plant your feet like that," she said.
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Sienna demanded, yanking out of her grip.
"Look at the uniform and guess," Anya said, sitting back down in the cockpit. She crouched, looking into an opened panel. "What did you guys do to this thing? The controls are all messed up."
Sienna folded her arms. "How did you survive the attack? Where have you been and how do we know we can trust you?"
"I have a very honest face," Anya said, not looking up.
Reaching down, Sienna grabbed a handful of Anya's collar and yanked her around. Quick as a flash, Anya seized her wrist and twisted back. Sienna slipped and fell on the Zord hull with a clang. Before she could recover, Anya dragged her into the cockpit and aimed an elbow at her ribcage.
"Don't like that? Let's try 'I could have taken both of you down but didn't out of the goodness of my heart' instead," she said.
At that point, a hand clamped down on Anya's shoulder and swung her around. A palm strike to the face snapped her head back, and she fell against the seat. De-camouflaging, Tyler climbed into the cockpit and pulled Sienna away.
"Sorry," he said to Anya, "But attacking us doesn't really help if you want us to trust you."
Finding that her nose wasn't bleeding, Anya shrugged and propped her feet up on the console. "Whatever. The name's Anya Barnes."
Sienna froze, staring at her in disbelief. "Wait—you're that student who went to the loony bin!"
"My fame precedes me," Anya said, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a slight smile.
"Um . . ." Tyler looked from one girl to the other. "Loony bin?"
Anya sighed. "Something tells me you guys want a full explanation."
"It'd be nice," Tyler said.
"I don't do 'nice,'" Anya replied, flipping a panel shut with her heel as she sat up straight. "Dangerous sociopath, you know."
"No, I don't," Tyler retorted. "You want to gloat, fine, but we could barely figure out what that bad guy did to the Zord controls, I don't think you'll get very far alone."
"That bad guy? You mean the guy in the suit who was making the other students fight?"
Tyler and Sienna exchanged silent looks. Anya started to get up, flinched, and touched her ribs. When the others noticed, she stopped and straightened, folding her arms.
"I think we both have long stories to tell," Tyler said.
Persephone Café, 11:40 am[]
"So, you two are the only ones left?" Anya asked, twirling her fork in her salad. The trio sat at one of the café's outdoor tables, in the shadow of the the corrugated blue metal overhang. Most of the lunch crowd was inside thanks to the noontide heat, so the trio could talk openly. A radio news show played quietly in the background.
"Yup," Sienna replied, through a mouthful of her pita bread. She swallowed. "How did you get out of the nuthouse?"
"And what you were doing there in the first place?" Tyler asked.
"Like I said, I'm a sociopath," Anya said. She propped her elbow up on the table. "Though they wouldn't have found out if it wasn't for Jeremy."
"Jeremy?"
"Jeremy Wick," Sienna put in, giving Anya a hard look. "The student she murdered."
Anya pointed a fork at Sienna. "Hey, he was the one who tried to kill me in my sleep. I was just defending myself."
"That's why you weren't sorry at all afterwards, even though he was your best friend for five years, and you started sleeping with the murder weapon," Sienna replied dryly. Tyler looked startled at that.
"Pretty much, yeah. I mean," Anya gestured with both hands, "If you can't trust your best friend, who can you trust?"
"My point exactly." Sienna folded her arms.
"Now, to answer your question," Anya continued, glancing at Tyler, "Since Sensei Von Kreig stopped visiting me to keep me from using my powers, I used them to escape. It's as simple as that."
"And that bad guy—the Thinker," Tyler put in. "What about him?"
"Ran into him in the woods, making some of the other students fight for this." Anya nodded down to the belt buckle morpher. "I decided to jump in."
"Why?" Tyler asked.
"Why not?" Anya looked from Tyler to Sienna and back, eyebrows raised, as if she couldn't believe they didn't see how obvious it was. "I need to stay sharp."
"That's—" Sienna began, but Tyler interrupted.
"Wait a second." Moving around the table, he turned the radio up.
". . . Not the first of these incidents in Scrimshaw. Just last night, two police officers—Lieutenant Darla Moody and Officer Peter Landors—were found frozen solid in different parts of town," the female announcer said. "Authorities have not confirmed the cause or causes, but believe the cases to be connected. All five victims have been connected to the recently destroyed Global Gym downtown."
Sienna and Tyler exchanged alarmed looks—and immediately turned to Anya. The White Ranger only looked mildly intrigued.
"Moody and Landors, I remember those two, they were Spring ninjas. Someone's picking off the graduates," she said, grabbing an apple off Tyler's plate and slicing out a wedge. "Wants to cut you off from any possible allies, probably."
"What's your game?" Sienna snapped, moving around the table and catching Anya by the arm.
In one quick gesture, Anya freed her arm, eating the wedge off the knife blade. "Nothing. Not my style, freezing a whole person and just leaving them there—and I couldn't do it even if I wanted. Powers still a little rusty, haven't used them in three years and all."
"Then do you know who might be doing it?" Tyler asked, coming back to the table.
Sienna whipped her head around towards him. "You believe her? Just like that?"
"Do we have a reason not to?" Tyler replied. Before Sienna could reply, he interrupted, "I know, sociopath, but she's still innocent till proven guilty."
Anya paused in the middle of cutting another apple slice. "Thank you, Aussie," she said, starting to cut again. "You're surprisingly decent."
"I don't believe this." Sienna rose. "Come on, we should probably check this freezing thing out. There are only a couple of hospitals in this city; it shouldn't be hard to find the one they took the survivors to."
"I'm not done yet," Anya said.
"Good, I wasn't talking to you."
"You're not helping," Tyler said to Sienna, in a low voice. Sienna just rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm, and pulled him away.
"Guess I'll handle the tip, then," Anya said, as they disappeared around the bend. Once their footsteps had faded, she checked both directions, reached into her coat, and pulled out a rolled-up comic book. Flattening it on the table, she started to read.
Stewart Memorial Hospital, Scrimshaw, 1:17 pm[]
By the time the two teenagers reached the hospital, the road in front of it was swamped with police cars. Worse still, reporters and rubberneckers crowded around the cars, as close as the police would let them get, all talking and shouting at once.
"You sneak through, figure out what's going on," Sienna said.
Nodding, Tyler looped around the crowd into an alley, right beside the hospital's grey-white wall, and disappeared. Sienna looked around, and spotted a woman delivering a news report to a camera. She slithered through the shifting crowd towards her, but not too close.
". . . Latest in a string of still-unexplained freezing incidents at Stewart Hospital, where several of the earlier victims are being treated: several doctors and visitors attending the victims have been found frozen, and the perpetrator is believed to be in the building. Authorities are attempting to evacuate the hospital," the woman said.
Sienna had heard all she needed. Slipping through the crowd, she ducked into the nearest empty alley. As she ducked behind a dumpster, Sienna noticed a couple of puddles on the pavement. They were frozen. Sienna threw her shoulders back, grasping her morpher.
"Summer Storm, Ranger Form!"
Sienna stands in a grassy, green meadow, a storm raging above her head. Rain pelts her, melting her ninja uniform away to reveal her Yellow Ranger garb. Her helmet materializes as her long hair shortens to fit inside it, and the visor snaps shut.
Barely waiting for her morph to finish, Sienna ran back towards the main entrance of the hospital. Seeing her, the crowd parted to let her through, as did the police.
"Yellow Ranger!"
"You show that monster who's boss!"
"Will you marry me?!" That last shout made Sienna look back in bewilderment, but she couldn't see the speaker.
Running into the lobby, Sienna found herself trapped in a flood of fleeing nurses and doctors and patients. She almost asked for directions, but realized that all she had to do was go the way everyone was running from. Weaving through the crowd of scrubs and wheelchairs, she reached an elevator just as it opened.
Inside, Sienna hesitated, looking at all the floors. Before she could make a guess, the doors closed, and the elevator lurched into motion. Someone else must have hit its button. Well, that worked too. She turned on her helmet communicator.
"Tyler?"
She heard a grunt and a thud. When Tyler spoke, he was panting. "Fifth floor. The thing's frozen a lot of people, take care of them first."
"Got it."
The elevator pinged, 5th floor button glowing orange. As the doors started to open, a cold wind blasted into the elevator. Ice filled the gap between the doors, freezing them in place. A musical laugh echoed from the hall outside.
"That's not going to work for much longer," Sienna said, and summoned her heat powers. She gestured towards the door, and the ice started to melt, dripping down the doors and puddling on the floor. However, as she melted the ice away from the door, she could hear more crackling and hardening around her.
"You're sure it's a monster?" She asked into her communicator. "Because it sounds an awful lot like a person."
The attacker let out a high-pitched giggle. Abruptly, the entire elevator car shuddered, and Sienna stumbled. Catching one wall, she looked up. She could hear someone walking around on the roof. Almost as she realized this, the footsteps stopped. A metallic sound rang out, like a sword being drawn from its sheath.
"Sienna—get out of the elevator, now," Tyler said.
Not stopping to ask why, Sienna focused all of her power on the ice holding the doors shut. It began to evaporate with a hiss. Overhead, the eerie laughter finally stopped. Sweat made Sienna's hands slick inside her gloves.
"Goodbye, Sienna," the attacker said. "Hi-ya!"
There was a clang, and a sound like breaking glass. The elevator dropped, throwing Sienna up against the roof. She knocked her head on the wood, and everything went blurry. Vaguely, she was aware of someone screaming, and a weird, weightless feeling, like she was flying. Then there was another, louder crash, and everything went black.
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