Remix entry 2
Oct. 9th, 2003 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseNewly unlocked.
It was bad enough that it was so long-- but to have Omino driving frightened him to no end. Blake would beg off, but then he'd be stuck here in his little room in the academy until his eighteenth birthday. Wihout Hunter. That thought frightened him more than the trip to Japan. At least when Hunter went to college they'd be able to talk over the phone and email-- without hiding.
"Ready?" Omino asked, pulling Blake out of his withdrawn state.
"Ready as I'll ever be," Blake said.
Omino wrapped his arms around Blake. Blake sincerely hoped he'd be returning under his own power. He needed a hug-- but he wanted Hunter. Or Tori or Cam. Not....
...they streaked, bouncing on water, for way too long. Ten landed neatly on the grounds of the third ninja academy Blake had now visited.
The Hurricane academy reminded him a little of what he'd seen of the Wind academy. Of course, he could see little of this academy, either, since Omino was obviously more concerned with getting this over with.
An older man with shoulder-length hair, the first Sensei with hair that Blake had ever seen, strode forward to talk briefly with Omino. Omino looked towards him and nodded. A young woman stepped forward, obviously an honor guard. Omino strode towards Blake, murmuring a comment to Johnson as he went by. "Blake, you and Hunter will go with Nanami."
Blake bowed, not wanting to make the students of the Hurricane academy think Americans didn't respect their sensei, even when they didn't respect them. He saw Hunter joining them.
"Follow me," the young woman said in accented, flawed English.
Hunter and Blake walked together, following Nanami. Hunter took a moment
to squeeze Blake's shoulder and he jumped at the touch.
"How's your stomach bro?" Hunter whispered.
"Not too bad," Blake replied in the same tone.
Hunter nodded. Louder, he said, "Are you a student here, Nanami?"
Nanami smiled. "Yes. I am of the Hurricane academy, water way."
"Blake's girlfriend is water way at the Wind academy."
Nanami smiled. "Wind academy and Hurricane academy are anciently related. We are only considered neutral because they split 1500 years ago."
"You and Wind split?" Hunter asked.
Nanami nodded.
"Bro, don't you see the similarity between the Hurricane and Wind logos?" Blake said, pointing with his chin towards a banner.
Hunter turned away from his brother long enough to really look at the Hurricane Academy banners. "Oh, yeah, I see it now."
"What were you doing, checking me over for bruises?" Blake joked.
"Well, you never did tell Sensei about Johnson kicking you," Hunter returned rapid-fire.
Nanami looked from one to the other, clearly befuddled.
"Sorry, we haven't been together for a week," Hunter said. "We need to get some of the verbal sparring out of our systems. Where are we going?"
"Sensei has asked me to escort you to one of the waiting rooms," Nanami said simply. "Until the Wind Academy and other representatives arrive for council."
"Okay," Hunter said. It was clear that they weren't going to see the others right off, but at least they had each other.
Nanami took them to the building. They exchanged boots for shoes, and followed Nanami into a small room. She left them there, the door shut but not locked.
Blake caught his big brother in a bear hug.
"I missed you too, bro," Hunter said, gently patting Blake's back.
The two stood there for a minute, simply basking in each others' presence.
Blake pulled away. "So how is this going to work?"
"No one told me either," Hunter said. "Cam said to be prepared to tell the whole story on how we joined the team."
Blake gulped. "The whole story?"
"He and I came up with a spin for it," Hunter said. "Don't worry."
"I'm worrying."
Hunter put a hand on Blake's shoulder. "Don't."
"Think we'll be able to run away if they decide the wrong way?" Blake asked.
Hunter chuckled. "Think positive, we'll be leaving with Sensei, Cam, and the rest of the team."
"Who precisely is your Sensei?" Nanami asked from the doorway.
"Omino," Hunter said. "But we've come to think in the last year of the Winds' sensei as ours, because that's who we had."
"Is that why this matter is before the council?" Nanami asked.
"This matter is before the council because Sensei Omino has a stick up his..."
"Blake!" Hunter interrupted, shoving his brother. "I'm sorry, he's... well, he's 16. What he meant to say is that we're here because Sensei Omino is not happy with our association with the Wind Academy. He's concerned because we trust them, I guess. At any rate, he's been separating us and confining us to separate rooms until he can convince us otherwise. We thought that this might be faster than going through the state and claiming child abuse."
"Oh," Nanami said, clearly nonplussed. Either that, or her English was worse than she thought. "You lived together before?"
"We're brothers," Hunter explained.
"Brothers?" Nanami asked, looking from one to another.
"Adopted," Blake explained.
"What happened to your... first? parents?"
"Hunter's are dead," Blake said, "Mine... we don't know. I was adopted when I was a baby."
"We get asked that a lot," Hunter told Nanami. "I don't care that Blake doesn't look at all like me, he's my brother. My little brother."
Nanami nodded. "I am an... only child... myself, but I have friends that have little brothers and sisters. Even one that is a little brother."
Hunter nodded, unsure as to what to say.
"Did you have something to tell us, Nanami?" Blake asked.
"Yes, it is time to go before the council. Sensei Mugensai has decided that you may choose to sit with whomever you wish," Nanami said.
"Lead on, MacDuff," Blake said.
Hunter shoved him. "That's not the line in the play, you ingoranmus."
Blake stuck his tongue out at his older brother, and the two followed Nanami out the door.
* * *
By the time the two star witnesses arrived at the council chamber, everybody else was seated. Sensei Wantabe and the other Rangers were seated together, while Sensei Amano, with Johnson, were seated at another table, with seventeen senseis seated at a table in front of the other two tables. A mix of Wind, Thunder, and Hurricane students were seated in the room as well. Nanami joined the other students, talking briefly to a young man in red with lighter-than-usual hair and a yellow-jacketed young man with very bushy hair.
"Where do we want to sit?" Hunter asked.
"Is that rhetorical, bro?" Blake asked, feet carrying him rapidly to the Wind table.
Blake sat in the empty seat between Sensei and Tori. Tori squeezed his hand.
Hunter sat in the other open seat between Cam and Sensei. Cam touched Hunter's shoulder briefly.
Hunter grinned, feeling much better.
Sensei squeezed the shoulder of each of the Bradley brothers.
Then Sensei Mugensai banged the gavel for order.
"We have come together to resolve this dispute between the Wind and Thunder academies," Sensei Mugensai Hinata said gravely. "On whether two Thunder Academy students, recently involved in saving this planet from Lothor, belong in Thunder or Wind. Hunter Bradley, Blake Bradley, please stand."
Looking at one another, the two Thunder brothers stood.
"Please tell this council, in your own words, of how you became associated with the Wind Academy."
Blake saw Hunter wince despite his best effort. "Well, sir, it happened like this...."
He told simply of the day where the Thunder Academy had been attacked, their capture, and Lothor's persuasion to attack the Wind Academy. "We were taught that Thunder was the best Way, that there were reasons why we didn't associate much with non-Thunder ninja. That the other Academies weren't as honorable as Thunder, and that we shouldn't allow ourselves to pick up bad habits."
Blake saw the Council stir at that.
"And then we had actual contact with the Winds," Blake said. "We learned that Dustin was into Motocross, the same as us. When I first met Tori, there was a mutual attraction... but that's not what changed our mind.
"We'd temporarily managed to deprive the Winds of their powers. Tori didn't have a morpher, but when one of Lothor's aliens attacked the beach where she was surfing, she charged in anyway. I did what I was trained to do-- protect a civilian. I went charging in between her and the monster, and got hit with these... things that would have sucked all the water from my body.
"Tori took me to the portal outside Ninja Ops. To Cam. She risked everything to make sure that I was OK. The Rangers' headquarters, everything."
"We started to question what we'd been taught," Hunter continued. "Blake especially. I mean, we still believed that Sensei Wantabe had killed our parents - it's not impossible to have noble people from a not so noble way. But as we continued to interact with the Winds, our perspective eroded. And then came the Cave of Souls...."
Blake took up the narrative at that point, telling of their kidnapping of Sensei, their encounter with the ghosts of their parents. Their decision to go off in shame. And then, Choobo.
Blake's voice started to get scratchy as he began to talk about their trip to Lothor's ship. Hunter placed a hand on his shoulder and took up the narrative, giving Blake some time to get a drink and rest his voice. Then came the slimey steam on Vertigo Island, and Blake again had to take up the narrative.
"The Winds tried to help me restrain Hunter, snap him out of it. Keep him from hurting me. It just got too hard. I went down, and Shane called for the others to use the Ninja Smoke screen to get me out of there. They got me safety, and then agreed to help me help Hunter. Dustin and Shane were understandably a little skeptical, but they knew helping was the right thing, it's just in their nature.
"As it turns out, there were two problems at once. The Winds took care of Lothor's alien, leaving me to get through to Hunter. We used the zords to get home.
"Even then, we were hesitant about joining the team. But Lothor wouldn't just leave us alone. So we joined the fight. We'd taken jobs at Storm Chargers, and found an apartment in the bad part of town."
"What kind of place was it?" Sensei Mugensai asked.
Blake and Hunter exchanged glances. "Let me put it this way," Blake said. "It often rented by the hour."
Several of the senseis blanched at that.
"We still wanted to obey our sensei's teachings," Hunter said. "We tried to keep seperate. But we were hungry... it wasn't a good place. Fortunately, our teammates had enough sense to haul us out of there and get us living with Sensei Wantabe and his son."
"And you were living with Sensei Wantabe until Lothor was defeated?" Sensei Hinata asked.
"Yes, sir. And our Sensei wasn't pleased," Blake said.
"Especially over the fact that Blake and Tori were dating at that point," Hunter added.
"This begs the question, Blake, why are you dating Tori?" Sensei Mugensai
asked.
"Because..." Blake took a deep breath, trying to translate his feelings
into words. "Because she's pretty, she's smart, and she's one of the most
caring people I've ever known. But that doesn't keep her from beating me
during practice. She..." Blake stumbled, looking for words. "She has the
truest soul I've ever known. Look, I'm sure somewhere there's a basis for
Sensei Omino's distrust of the Wind Academy. But it's clearly not based
on Shane, Dustin, Tori, Cam, or Sensei Wantabe. You can't know them like
we know them and not trust them. They're just too honorable to deserve
anything else."
Mugensai gave a brief nod at that. "Anything else?"
"I've been thinking on what it means to be a Thunder," Hunter said. "I don't know if Blake has, but I have. I was raised a Thunder by Thunder parents. And I'm sure Sensei means well, but we aren't the same students he last saw nine months ago. We've grown. We've changed. Maybe this means I'm not Thunder anymore. Maybe it means Blake isn't a Thunder anymore. If the council finds us Thunders, we understand, but we don't want to be seperated anymore, not from each other, and not from our four Wind friends." He deliberately treated Cam as a Wind, knowing that they might be prejudiced if they realized he was a Samurai.
"You consider Cameron Wantabe a Wind?" Sensei Mugensai asked.
"Yes," Hunter said.
"He doesn't consider himself one."
"Oh," Hunter said. He hadn't thought that Cam or the others had been given a chance to speak before he and Blake got there. Maybe they'd prepared written statements or something.
Sensei Mugensai seemed to take that reaction at face value. "Do you consider yourself a Thunder, Blake?"
"I've been thinking about that since Sensei Omino asked me the same question," Blake said. "I don't know. But if being a Thunder means never seeing my brother, my girlfriend, or my friends again, then I don't want to be one anymore."
Mugensai gave a slight nod. "The testimony of the Bradley brothers is over. Do the representatives of the Wind academy have anything to add?"
"Nothing more than what has been written," Sensei answered.
"And you?" Mugensai asked Omino. "What are your reasons for this form of discipline?"
"Together, Blake and Hunter can be very stubborn. In order to help them to see the error of their ways, they must be kept separate until they see the truth. It is harsh, I know, but it is the only way to help them."
"Why isn't it enough to forbid them to see the Winds?" Sensei Mugensai asked.
Blake made a strangled, frightened noise.
"I know how my foster sons think," Omino said. "They would sneak away and see them anyway. Especially Blake. Especially with what I have seen."
Sensei Mugensai asked, "I have often found that something that is forbidden will remain a lure." He glanced out at a young woman in her thirties, sitting in the audience. Unlike most of the others, she was not in uniform. "But perhaps, as a parent, you are... overreacting?"
"With all due respect, Sensei Mugensai," Sensei Omino said in a tone conveying anything but respect, "you do not know Blake and Hunter. This is what is best for them, I assure you."
"Dude, what's he smoking?" Dustin wondered, almost too quietly for Blake to hear, and thankfully, too quiet for the Senseis to as well.
Shane covered his mouth to keep from laughing.
"It seems that these two are practically adults," one of the Senses pointed out.
Sensei Omino looked at Blake and Hunter and scrubbed his face with his hands.
"Rangers tend to age fast, mentally," another, more owlish Sensei pointed out.
Sensei Omiino slightly inclined his head, but told the council, "Perhaps, but it is my right to discipline them. As well, I have the right to hold to the promise I made to their parents, and it did not include consorting with a Samurai!"
"Cam loves us more than you ever did," Blake muttered under his breath.
"Enough." Sensei Hinata's voice was firm. "We have heard enough. We will take this testimony, and the written statements, and make a decision." He shot a look at Nanami, who left her friends to cross over to where Hunter and Blake sat.
"Back to the cell?" Hunter asked quietly.
Nanami looked confused.
"I guess we're going to be seperated until the Council figures this mess out," Blake said.
"Yes," Nanami confirmed. "Sensei said that it could be an hour or two, and that the two of you did not belong to either Wind or Thunder during that time."
"One cell or two?" Hunter asked.
"If you don't mind," Nanami said, "Lunch with me and my friends?" She looked slightly shy as she said that.
Hunter and Blake's eyes lit up.
"That'd be great," Hunter said.
"Thanks," Blake added. "We've both been cooped up way too long."
Nanami smiled. "Follow me to our favorite eating place." She led them off.
To their surprise, she led them outside. "So, where are we going, Nanami?"
"By the... pond? Lake?" Nanami asked. "My friends Youske and Kouta will meet us there. With food."
"Outside?" Hunter was nearly bouyant. "This is getting better and better."
Nanami just smiled and led them forward.
"Kind of makes you wish we were more vigilant about our Japanese, dude," Blake whispered.
"You're not straying are you?" Hunter murmered.
Blake shoved his brother playfully.
Nanami glanced back and continued to smile.
* * *
They had a long lunch with Nanami and her friends, Youske and Kouta. While the three were pleasant lunch companions, Hunter could only look at the trio and hope that he and Blake would be reunited with a trio of friends of their own.
It was bad enough that it was so long-- but to have Omino driving frightened him to no end. Blake would beg off, but then he'd be stuck here in his little room in the academy until his eighteenth birthday. Wihout Hunter. That thought frightened him more than the trip to Japan. At least when Hunter went to college they'd be able to talk over the phone and email-- without hiding.
"Ready?" Omino asked, pulling Blake out of his withdrawn state.
"Ready as I'll ever be," Blake said.
Omino wrapped his arms around Blake. Blake sincerely hoped he'd be returning under his own power. He needed a hug-- but he wanted Hunter. Or Tori or Cam. Not....
...they streaked, bouncing on water, for way too long. Ten landed neatly on the grounds of the third ninja academy Blake had now visited.
The Hurricane academy reminded him a little of what he'd seen of the Wind academy. Of course, he could see little of this academy, either, since Omino was obviously more concerned with getting this over with.
An older man with shoulder-length hair, the first Sensei with hair that Blake had ever seen, strode forward to talk briefly with Omino. Omino looked towards him and nodded. A young woman stepped forward, obviously an honor guard. Omino strode towards Blake, murmuring a comment to Johnson as he went by. "Blake, you and Hunter will go with Nanami."
Blake bowed, not wanting to make the students of the Hurricane academy think Americans didn't respect their sensei, even when they didn't respect them. He saw Hunter joining them.
"Follow me," the young woman said in accented, flawed English.
Hunter and Blake walked together, following Nanami. Hunter took a moment
to squeeze Blake's shoulder and he jumped at the touch.
"How's your stomach bro?" Hunter whispered.
"Not too bad," Blake replied in the same tone.
Hunter nodded. Louder, he said, "Are you a student here, Nanami?"
Nanami smiled. "Yes. I am of the Hurricane academy, water way."
"Blake's girlfriend is water way at the Wind academy."
Nanami smiled. "Wind academy and Hurricane academy are anciently related. We are only considered neutral because they split 1500 years ago."
"You and Wind split?" Hunter asked.
Nanami nodded.
"Bro, don't you see the similarity between the Hurricane and Wind logos?" Blake said, pointing with his chin towards a banner.
Hunter turned away from his brother long enough to really look at the Hurricane Academy banners. "Oh, yeah, I see it now."
"What were you doing, checking me over for bruises?" Blake joked.
"Well, you never did tell Sensei about Johnson kicking you," Hunter returned rapid-fire.
Nanami looked from one to the other, clearly befuddled.
"Sorry, we haven't been together for a week," Hunter said. "We need to get some of the verbal sparring out of our systems. Where are we going?"
"Sensei has asked me to escort you to one of the waiting rooms," Nanami said simply. "Until the Wind Academy and other representatives arrive for council."
"Okay," Hunter said. It was clear that they weren't going to see the others right off, but at least they had each other.
Nanami took them to the building. They exchanged boots for shoes, and followed Nanami into a small room. She left them there, the door shut but not locked.
Blake caught his big brother in a bear hug.
"I missed you too, bro," Hunter said, gently patting Blake's back.
The two stood there for a minute, simply basking in each others' presence.
Blake pulled away. "So how is this going to work?"
"No one told me either," Hunter said. "Cam said to be prepared to tell the whole story on how we joined the team."
Blake gulped. "The whole story?"
"He and I came up with a spin for it," Hunter said. "Don't worry."
"I'm worrying."
Hunter put a hand on Blake's shoulder. "Don't."
"Think we'll be able to run away if they decide the wrong way?" Blake asked.
Hunter chuckled. "Think positive, we'll be leaving with Sensei, Cam, and the rest of the team."
"Who precisely is your Sensei?" Nanami asked from the doorway.
"Omino," Hunter said. "But we've come to think in the last year of the Winds' sensei as ours, because that's who we had."
"Is that why this matter is before the council?" Nanami asked.
"This matter is before the council because Sensei Omino has a stick up his..."
"Blake!" Hunter interrupted, shoving his brother. "I'm sorry, he's... well, he's 16. What he meant to say is that we're here because Sensei Omino is not happy with our association with the Wind Academy. He's concerned because we trust them, I guess. At any rate, he's been separating us and confining us to separate rooms until he can convince us otherwise. We thought that this might be faster than going through the state and claiming child abuse."
"Oh," Nanami said, clearly nonplussed. Either that, or her English was worse than she thought. "You lived together before?"
"We're brothers," Hunter explained.
"Brothers?" Nanami asked, looking from one to another.
"Adopted," Blake explained.
"What happened to your... first? parents?"
"Hunter's are dead," Blake said, "Mine... we don't know. I was adopted when I was a baby."
"We get asked that a lot," Hunter told Nanami. "I don't care that Blake doesn't look at all like me, he's my brother. My little brother."
Nanami nodded. "I am an... only child... myself, but I have friends that have little brothers and sisters. Even one that is a little brother."
Hunter nodded, unsure as to what to say.
"Did you have something to tell us, Nanami?" Blake asked.
"Yes, it is time to go before the council. Sensei Mugensai has decided that you may choose to sit with whomever you wish," Nanami said.
"Lead on, MacDuff," Blake said.
Hunter shoved him. "That's not the line in the play, you ingoranmus."
Blake stuck his tongue out at his older brother, and the two followed Nanami out the door.
* * *
By the time the two star witnesses arrived at the council chamber, everybody else was seated. Sensei Wantabe and the other Rangers were seated together, while Sensei Amano, with Johnson, were seated at another table, with seventeen senseis seated at a table in front of the other two tables. A mix of Wind, Thunder, and Hurricane students were seated in the room as well. Nanami joined the other students, talking briefly to a young man in red with lighter-than-usual hair and a yellow-jacketed young man with very bushy hair.
"Where do we want to sit?" Hunter asked.
"Is that rhetorical, bro?" Blake asked, feet carrying him rapidly to the Wind table.
Blake sat in the empty seat between Sensei and Tori. Tori squeezed his hand.
Hunter sat in the other open seat between Cam and Sensei. Cam touched Hunter's shoulder briefly.
Hunter grinned, feeling much better.
Sensei squeezed the shoulder of each of the Bradley brothers.
Then Sensei Mugensai banged the gavel for order.
"We have come together to resolve this dispute between the Wind and Thunder academies," Sensei Mugensai Hinata said gravely. "On whether two Thunder Academy students, recently involved in saving this planet from Lothor, belong in Thunder or Wind. Hunter Bradley, Blake Bradley, please stand."
Looking at one another, the two Thunder brothers stood.
"Please tell this council, in your own words, of how you became associated with the Wind Academy."
Blake saw Hunter wince despite his best effort. "Well, sir, it happened like this...."
He told simply of the day where the Thunder Academy had been attacked, their capture, and Lothor's persuasion to attack the Wind Academy. "We were taught that Thunder was the best Way, that there were reasons why we didn't associate much with non-Thunder ninja. That the other Academies weren't as honorable as Thunder, and that we shouldn't allow ourselves to pick up bad habits."
Blake saw the Council stir at that.
"And then we had actual contact with the Winds," Blake said. "We learned that Dustin was into Motocross, the same as us. When I first met Tori, there was a mutual attraction... but that's not what changed our mind.
"We'd temporarily managed to deprive the Winds of their powers. Tori didn't have a morpher, but when one of Lothor's aliens attacked the beach where she was surfing, she charged in anyway. I did what I was trained to do-- protect a civilian. I went charging in between her and the monster, and got hit with these... things that would have sucked all the water from my body.
"Tori took me to the portal outside Ninja Ops. To Cam. She risked everything to make sure that I was OK. The Rangers' headquarters, everything."
"We started to question what we'd been taught," Hunter continued. "Blake especially. I mean, we still believed that Sensei Wantabe had killed our parents - it's not impossible to have noble people from a not so noble way. But as we continued to interact with the Winds, our perspective eroded. And then came the Cave of Souls...."
Blake took up the narrative at that point, telling of their kidnapping of Sensei, their encounter with the ghosts of their parents. Their decision to go off in shame. And then, Choobo.
Blake's voice started to get scratchy as he began to talk about their trip to Lothor's ship. Hunter placed a hand on his shoulder and took up the narrative, giving Blake some time to get a drink and rest his voice. Then came the slimey steam on Vertigo Island, and Blake again had to take up the narrative.
"The Winds tried to help me restrain Hunter, snap him out of it. Keep him from hurting me. It just got too hard. I went down, and Shane called for the others to use the Ninja Smoke screen to get me out of there. They got me safety, and then agreed to help me help Hunter. Dustin and Shane were understandably a little skeptical, but they knew helping was the right thing, it's just in their nature.
"As it turns out, there were two problems at once. The Winds took care of Lothor's alien, leaving me to get through to Hunter. We used the zords to get home.
"Even then, we were hesitant about joining the team. But Lothor wouldn't just leave us alone. So we joined the fight. We'd taken jobs at Storm Chargers, and found an apartment in the bad part of town."
"What kind of place was it?" Sensei Mugensai asked.
Blake and Hunter exchanged glances. "Let me put it this way," Blake said. "It often rented by the hour."
Several of the senseis blanched at that.
"We still wanted to obey our sensei's teachings," Hunter said. "We tried to keep seperate. But we were hungry... it wasn't a good place. Fortunately, our teammates had enough sense to haul us out of there and get us living with Sensei Wantabe and his son."
"And you were living with Sensei Wantabe until Lothor was defeated?" Sensei Hinata asked.
"Yes, sir. And our Sensei wasn't pleased," Blake said.
"Especially over the fact that Blake and Tori were dating at that point," Hunter added.
"This begs the question, Blake, why are you dating Tori?" Sensei Mugensai
asked.
"Because..." Blake took a deep breath, trying to translate his feelings
into words. "Because she's pretty, she's smart, and she's one of the most
caring people I've ever known. But that doesn't keep her from beating me
during practice. She..." Blake stumbled, looking for words. "She has the
truest soul I've ever known. Look, I'm sure somewhere there's a basis for
Sensei Omino's distrust of the Wind Academy. But it's clearly not based
on Shane, Dustin, Tori, Cam, or Sensei Wantabe. You can't know them like
we know them and not trust them. They're just too honorable to deserve
anything else."
Mugensai gave a brief nod at that. "Anything else?"
"I've been thinking on what it means to be a Thunder," Hunter said. "I don't know if Blake has, but I have. I was raised a Thunder by Thunder parents. And I'm sure Sensei means well, but we aren't the same students he last saw nine months ago. We've grown. We've changed. Maybe this means I'm not Thunder anymore. Maybe it means Blake isn't a Thunder anymore. If the council finds us Thunders, we understand, but we don't want to be seperated anymore, not from each other, and not from our four Wind friends." He deliberately treated Cam as a Wind, knowing that they might be prejudiced if they realized he was a Samurai.
"You consider Cameron Wantabe a Wind?" Sensei Mugensai asked.
"Yes," Hunter said.
"He doesn't consider himself one."
"Oh," Hunter said. He hadn't thought that Cam or the others had been given a chance to speak before he and Blake got there. Maybe they'd prepared written statements or something.
Sensei Mugensai seemed to take that reaction at face value. "Do you consider yourself a Thunder, Blake?"
"I've been thinking about that since Sensei Omino asked me the same question," Blake said. "I don't know. But if being a Thunder means never seeing my brother, my girlfriend, or my friends again, then I don't want to be one anymore."
Mugensai gave a slight nod. "The testimony of the Bradley brothers is over. Do the representatives of the Wind academy have anything to add?"
"Nothing more than what has been written," Sensei answered.
"And you?" Mugensai asked Omino. "What are your reasons for this form of discipline?"
"Together, Blake and Hunter can be very stubborn. In order to help them to see the error of their ways, they must be kept separate until they see the truth. It is harsh, I know, but it is the only way to help them."
"Why isn't it enough to forbid them to see the Winds?" Sensei Mugensai asked.
Blake made a strangled, frightened noise.
"I know how my foster sons think," Omino said. "They would sneak away and see them anyway. Especially Blake. Especially with what I have seen."
Sensei Mugensai asked, "I have often found that something that is forbidden will remain a lure." He glanced out at a young woman in her thirties, sitting in the audience. Unlike most of the others, she was not in uniform. "But perhaps, as a parent, you are... overreacting?"
"With all due respect, Sensei Mugensai," Sensei Omino said in a tone conveying anything but respect, "you do not know Blake and Hunter. This is what is best for them, I assure you."
"Dude, what's he smoking?" Dustin wondered, almost too quietly for Blake to hear, and thankfully, too quiet for the Senseis to as well.
Shane covered his mouth to keep from laughing.
"It seems that these two are practically adults," one of the Senses pointed out.
Sensei Omino looked at Blake and Hunter and scrubbed his face with his hands.
"Rangers tend to age fast, mentally," another, more owlish Sensei pointed out.
Sensei Omiino slightly inclined his head, but told the council, "Perhaps, but it is my right to discipline them. As well, I have the right to hold to the promise I made to their parents, and it did not include consorting with a Samurai!"
"Cam loves us more than you ever did," Blake muttered under his breath.
"Enough." Sensei Hinata's voice was firm. "We have heard enough. We will take this testimony, and the written statements, and make a decision." He shot a look at Nanami, who left her friends to cross over to where Hunter and Blake sat.
"Back to the cell?" Hunter asked quietly.
Nanami looked confused.
"I guess we're going to be seperated until the Council figures this mess out," Blake said.
"Yes," Nanami confirmed. "Sensei said that it could be an hour or two, and that the two of you did not belong to either Wind or Thunder during that time."
"One cell or two?" Hunter asked.
"If you don't mind," Nanami said, "Lunch with me and my friends?" She looked slightly shy as she said that.
Hunter and Blake's eyes lit up.
"That'd be great," Hunter said.
"Thanks," Blake added. "We've both been cooped up way too long."
Nanami smiled. "Follow me to our favorite eating place." She led them off.
To their surprise, she led them outside. "So, where are we going, Nanami?"
"By the... pond? Lake?" Nanami asked. "My friends Youske and Kouta will meet us there. With food."
"Outside?" Hunter was nearly bouyant. "This is getting better and better."
Nanami just smiled and led them forward.
"Kind of makes you wish we were more vigilant about our Japanese, dude," Blake whispered.
"You're not straying are you?" Hunter murmered.
Blake shoved his brother playfully.
Nanami glanced back and continued to smile.
* * *
They had a long lunch with Nanami and her friends, Youske and Kouta. While the three were pleasant lunch companions, Hunter could only look at the trio and hope that he and Blake would be reunited with a trio of friends of their own.
