Home in a Breeze, part 1
Jan. 26th, 2004 06:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseSince most of my requests were for rather old fics of mine, I wanted to see how I'd handle a newer one. Here, per request, is the first half or so of "Home In A Breeze", the first part of the Breeze series.
Disclaimer: Time Force characters and one character from Ninja Storm belong to BVE.
Spoilers: First two episodes of Ninja Storm. More of a spoiler for episode 1 than episode 2, but still....
Yes, this was literally written somewhere between "No 'I' in Team" and "Prelude to a Storm. And it shows.
Author's notes: I wasn't too impressed by the first two episodes of Ninja Storm. In fact, there was only one character I really liked there: Cam. Still, this isn't an attempt to rewrite those episodes, and who knows, the characters (and the dialogue) of the newest PR series might stop grating on my nerves. Since it's kinda doubtful that there will be a crossover between NS and previous PR series, I'm doing my bit of one now. Thanks to Chris and Rach for the plot ideas, general encouragement, and on Rach's end, letting me leech off her when she was editing. Thanks also to Beth for reminding me that he's a guinea pig, not a hamster.
I was later rather amused when Lothor made the same mistake. It was as if someone was answering me back on this. Impossible. But amusing. And no, I didn't like NS too much at this point. In some ways, I prefer Hurricanger over NS. But it turned out to be a good series in the end.
Home in a Breeze
By Selma McCrory
Copyright 2003
The partners of Nick of Time Odd Jobs were doing the variety of Odd Jobs that kept them in laundry detergent and pizza when the alert came. Actually, the alert came first to Trip, who was doing a repair job on an elderly twentieth century computer a few blocks away. "Trip! I've got a strange temporal reading from Wilkins Plaza."
I think this was one of those times where I just was pulling names out of thin air. Or the phone book. I'm not sure... it feels like I could have been deliberately naming the place where Cam lands.
Trip looked around, wondering if the people whose computer he was fixing would notice that their handyman had slipped out to investigate an anomaly. "What kind of reading?" Trip asked.
"I don't know, Trip," the mechanical owl said regretfully. "It seems to be a temporal wormhole of some kind, like what Time Force uses to travel, but its readings don't match any known time hole readings!"
Partially 'cause it's not your regular timehole. But Trip and Circuit don't know that at the moment.
"Right, I'll be right there." He shut down the connection to his friend and partner and looked at the computer. The ancient program known as Windows 95 would take a while to reinstall, so it could do that while he investigated the reading. Quietly, as quietly as an asian-looking kid with green hair and a geekish outfit could, he left the building. He could always bypass the magnetic security system later anyway. His morpher had no doubt picked up the system they were using and the only thing he needed to do was press his morpher to the door sensor to get back in.
I *had* to describe Trip. I had to. Even though most people watching PR would be familiar with both incarnations. And a machine running 95 tends to be... not new.
Trip jogged down the few blocks to Wilkins plaza. He could see the Silver Guardians arriving, preparing to cordon off the area, and hoped he wasn't too late to find the phenomenon before the Guardians did. "Circuit, where's that anomaly?"
"Approximately twenty feet to the left of you, Trip."
That meant, most probably, the wormhole was somewhere in the area of the statue, either behind the bushes or in the flower garden. Trip scampered off to his left, hoping to find where the thing was.
But apart from a young human male, not much older than Trip himself, if that, there was nothing there. As he was bringing his morpher up to ask Circuit where the phenomenon was, it cheeped. "Trip! It vanished!"
"Where was it?" he whispered, as the other young man looked about wildly and started dusting himself off. It was as if he'd fallen into the small flower garden, thoroughly smashing most of the decorative flowers there.
And here comes Cam. Who can add 'tossed into a flower garden by a rogue wormhole' to his list of 'things that can go wrong today'.
"Near you, Trip," Circuit said. "I can't say more."
The young man finished dusting himself off. "Where am I?" he wondered out loud.
Forgetting momentarily Circuit and his employers, temporary or otherwise, Trip rushed over to the only other person in the area. "Are you all right?" he asked.
Straightening his narrow-rimmed glasses in reply, the newcomer looked at Trip suspiciously. "Who are you? Where am I?"
Trip and Cam would end up wearing the same Ranger color later on, but neither we nor they knew that at this point. This exchange is to demonstrate the difference between the two: Trip is earnest, Cam suspicious and strident.
Trip tried to recall his training on concussions, which wasn't coming to him at the moment. "You're in Silver Hills, on Earth. In 2001."
The other young man looked at him. "You must be joking." The other reminded him of a classmate from his home village of Tloss, a serious young man who never seemed to have any fun. "This must be some joke."
Again, Cam with the snarkiness, Trip with the earnestness. Trip's home village was the result of another fanfic that has yet to come to light.
"Y-y-you fell through a temporal wormhole," Trip explained, though not without stuttering.
"A wormhole?" the young man said. He started to clean off his glasses. "That would explain things."
But before they could get any further, there was a yell to the side. The Silver Guardians had found them. "Clear out," the Guardian who found them said sharply. "There's an attack in progress here. Civilians need to get out of the area."
Before Cam can snark any further, a Guardian moves the plot along.
Trip let the falsehood slide, knowing that the Guardians were investigating the same thing he had been. "Okay," he said, gathering the young man and pulling him out of the way.
"But..." the young man squeaked. Trip didn't give him a chance to object. He knew the Guardians weren't equipped to deal with whatever had delivered the young man to the flowerbed. "But..."
I really shouldn't have used 'squeak' here. Ah well.
Once Trip had gotten the other young man out of the Guardians' perimeter, he stopped. "What's your name?"
"Cam." The young man glared. "And that might be my only way back home!"
At that time, I didn't know, nor did I care, about Cam's last name. (For those curious, it's Watanabe.)
"No it isn't," Trip pointed out. "The wormhole's closed."
Cam visibly sunk at that. "Great. When father needs me the most...." He stumbled, and Trip caught him, sitting him down on a low-slung ledge. "I've got to get home! I can't leave father with those imbeciles!"
Cam's vocalizing what I pretty much thought of the NS Rangers at that point.
"Breathe," Trip told him gently. "What imbeciles?"
"The idiots that he gave the morphers to. He's there, alone, with them." Cam took a deep breath. "I have to get back!"
And now we get Cam's motivation throughout this whole story: he's afraid his future teammates will screw up and Lothor will conquer the world.
*Morphers?* Trip thought, and wondered if he meant another Ranger team. Probably. If so, that meant that Cam had to get back. "We'll get you home," Trip said, with a confidence he didn't feel. "Right now, we've got to get you out of here."
"I don't think I can stand," Cam said. "I don't want to get far from where that wormhole closed."
"Look," Trip said, secretly proud of himself for sounding so calm and collected, "I need to get back to base or I can't find you a way home."
Cam looked up at him with renewed respect. "You're a technical expert?"
At this point, the only people Cam seems to respect are other technical experts and his Dad.
Nodding, Trip slung his backpack so it wasn't so uncomfortable. "Yes," he said.
"You're an expert with computers?" Cam asked.
"I am," Trip said.
"Good." Cam's eyes lit up. "Let's go." He got up abruptly. "Well? Lead the way!"
Trip shook his head at the human's obvious eccentricities, and started to lead Cameron to the clock tower. "I forgot! I have to finish fixing this computer!"
Cam shook his head. "We don't have time for this."
"I've got to do this, Cam," Trip said gently. "If I don't, people will get suspicious."
For a moment, he thought Cam was going to go his own way again, but the other nodded reluctantly.
The whole story had people dragging Cam with them, mostly because Cam was only thinking of one thing.
Trip took Cam down the block to get to the building, and easily used his morpher to get in. Cam sniffed at the age of the computer. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because these people hired me to fix their computer," Trip said, knowing Cam was itching to get home, as the humans of this time put it. "It's what we do."
"We?" Cam asked, clearly not seeing the connection. He knelt next to the computer, looking at the display. "What are you doing?"
"Re-loading the system software," Trip said, "And restoring the files from backup."
"I've got a faster way," Cam said impatiently, letting the software reload. As soon as the system reloaded, Cam did a few things, too fast for Trip to comprehend. Before Trip could understand what was happening, Cam had the system back on its feet, reloaded, and working fine. "You're sure you're a technical expert?"
Cam the Suspicious comes to the fore. Someone who repairs Zords for a living wouldn't find a simple backup and restore to be too much of a challenge. And this is his century, not Trip's.
"Not with this century's computers," Trip admitted, knowing the slow, primitive machines were sometimes beyond his comprehension.
"Then with what century's computers?" Cam muttered, finishing his checkover.
"That's a long explanation," Trip said. He heard the door open. "Hide!"
The president of the business came in. "Is it working?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," Trip said. "You shouldn't have any problems with it. If you do, let me know."
"I will," the president said, smiling in a way that indicated that he'd be asking for his money back, and more, if it wasn't. Knowing the computers of the century, Trip guessed that they might well be seeing the man again. "Thank you. Here's your fee." He wrote out a check and gave it to Trip, and Trip tucked it away in a pocket. Checks always confused him, but Wes would know what to do.
When the man was out of the room, and safely out of sight, Trip led Cam out of the building. "It won't malfunction," Cam said. "That was a simple backup and restore."
This is Cam - he's both arrogant and reassuring, something that didn't come out too well in the story.
Trip nodded nervously. "Let's get back to the base."
But before they could, Trip's morpher bleeped, and Cam looked boredly at it. Trip reminded himself that he'd just about told Cam he wasn't ordinary as he lifted the morpher up and answered it.
I had something different written originally, but Rach insisted I edit this. Good thing, too.
The annoyed, gruff voice of the Quantum Ranger came over the morpher: "This is Eric."
Staring at the morpher, Trip managed an incoherent "What?" and promptly shut up before he dug himself six feet down, as Wes liked to put it.
Later, I couldn't visualize Trip saying this. Oh well.
"Face it," Eric said, "The only reason we're not talking face-to-face right now is because someone didn't realize who you were." Trip could visualize the Silver Guardian who had encountered them standing nearby as his commanding officer talked to Trip. It was not a pleasant visualization. "Believe me, he won't forget again. Now, where are you?"
"About two blocks south," Trip managed, looking at Cam. The other looked like he was ready to bolt. He was tapping his foot, and his expression was clear: get me home or I'll find my own way home. Without you.
Thud, thud, thud. Cam doesn't *want* to deal with the TF Rangers' problems. He wants to get home. Unfortunately, he's not thinking very clearly right now.
Suddenly, Cam grabbed the morpher. "Look, whoever you are. I need to get home, and unless you're personally a heck of a whole lot more competent than the guy who's with me, then bug off. I'm needed where I am and I don't have time to waste."
"And who are you?" Eric asked.
"I'm Cam," Cam said, not without more than a touch of impatience, as if Eric was below him. "And you are?"
"Eric Myers," Eric said sharply. "Commanding officer of the Silver Guardians. And for me, you'll wait."
Cam rolled his eyes slightly. "I don't wait for anyone who isn't going to help me get home."
Another good summarization of Cam's motivations here.
"You forget: I know where Trip lives, and I can guess where he's going. So I can either pick you up quietly and we can have this talk at HQ, or you can bolt and I can just beat you there."
He doesn't quite, but....
Cam looked like he was going to cough up a hairball. "I'm going to the shortest route to get me home. If you want to meet us there, fine." He punched a button on Trip's morpher - thankfully, the wrong one.
"Right," Eric said. "If it's going to be that way...." He left the threat unfinished. "Eric out."
Cam scowled at the morpher. "Let's go. He's not going to stop me... stop us." With a further scowl, he dropped Trip's arm. "Have you got money for a taxi?"
Trip shook his head. "I have a bike," he explained.
Fanon: Trip owns a bicycle.
Cam's scowl became even deeper. "Then *I'll* find us a ride." He tromped up the street in sheer determination. "Well, come on!"
"Wait, Cam!" Trip said. "Maybe... maybe your money's like ours."
Cam got out his billfold and thrust it at Trip. "You look. I wouldn't know."
Trip looked through the money, confirming that it was basically like that of this time, though some with 2003 dates obviously they couldn't use. "This, and this, and this."
His companion looked doubtfully at the bills. "You think that's enough?"
"I hope so," Trip said, not looking forward to getting back to the Clock Tower only to find that Eric had beat them there.
"Good. Can you order us a taxi?" Cam said, striding forward once again.
"If I have a phone," Trip told him.
Cam frowned. "There's one over there. Get us a taxi."
Trip looked at where Cam was pointing. There was a payphone on the other side of the street, at a corner next to a mini-mart. "Okay." He hurried forward, caught up in Cam's mood. He punched in the number for a taxi that Wes had drilled into him, and five minutes later, he and Cam were speeding towards the clock tower.
I figured Wes had drilled the phone number into his teammates, just because he knew they weren't that familiar with his century.
The taxi took them all the way to the clock tower, and Trip let Cam pay the taxi driver off. As the cab pulled away, a Silver Guardian vehicle pulled into the now vacant spot. Eric got out, looking like the universe had offended him, and took off his trademark sunglasses.
Well, he didn't *quite* beat them there.
"You must be Cam," Eric said, by way of introduction.
Cam's eyes narrowed. "And you must be Eric Myers, prestigious commander of the Silver Guardians."
Yep, these two do *not* get along.
"I am." Eric hooked his sunglasses to his uniform. "And you left the scene of a temporal anomaly."
As if that were a crime.
"Look, normally I'd be happy to talk," Cam said, interrupting Eric and Trip, as the latter opened his mouth. "It's just that right now I have a dad who's been turned into a guinea pig, a dark ninja that's bent on taking over the planet, and three idiots that my father gave Ranger powers to because they couldn't show up on time to save their lives, and therefore were the only candidates available to fight the forces of darkness."
There were other reasons for the three being Rangers, too, but neither I nor Cam knew this at that point.
"Besides," Trip said, "It was one of your Guardians who told us to leave."
Eric's glare told him that the other Ranger was familiar with that point. "What Dark Ninja?" he asked Cam, ignoring Trip completely.
"Look, I don't have time to argue about this. You want to ask me questions about it, fine. Right now I *must* concentrate on getting home." Cam swept forward into the building that housed Nick of Time Odd Jobs, while Eric muttered into his headset. Trip decided that whatever Eric was going to do would hold, and followed Cam inside.
Once he was inside the doors of his home, Trip relaxed a little, until a voice interrupted him. "Friend of yours?" Wes asked, pointing at Cam, who was leaning against the corner between the maintenance/storage room and the staircase up to the top of the clock tower.
Trip nodded. "This is Cam," he said. "Cam, this is Wes. A... friend. Cam got tossed through a temporal wormhole," Trip explained.
"Oh," Wes said. "That's what Circuit was talking about." He gestured with his head and shoulders towards the door. "Want me to run interference?" The human slang escaped Trip completely, but Cam was nodding.
Poor Trip. And Wes does run some pretty good interference. Not quite enough, but good.
"Sure," Trip said.
"No problem," Wes said cheerfully.
Trip took the stairs two at a time, Cam keeping up with him, though not effortlessly. "I thought I was in good shape," he moaned. "How do you do this, day after day?"
Later on, I figured out that Cam had to be in better shape than this. But I didn't know he'd become a Ranger when I wrote this fic.
"Most of the time, I don't run," Trip said, though he knew he was lying a bit when he said so. He ran up the stairs more often than not.
"Oh," Cam said. "I think... when I get home I will see if my dad has some conditioning exercises for me." He had to stop, and Trip managed to stop two stairs above him. "I'm in charge of my dad's computer systems. I designed and ran the systems through the help of some of my dad's colleagues and students. I don't go into town much." He sat down. "Dad never thought I'd make a good ninja, and I agree. That's not my kind of life."
And several episodes later, this gets Jossed and becomes Alternate Universe.
Trip nodded. "Feel better?"
Cam got up. "Come on. Lead me to where your computer is before anyone interrupts us." Trip watched him struggle to get up and rejoin the jog upstairs. He knew that Cam was deliberately not mentioning Eric, though the Silver Guardian commander was obviously not far from Cam's mind.
Cam's internally labelled Eric as a 'pompous bureaucrat'. He doesn't want to deal with anything that might slow him down.
With that, Cam passed Trip easily, and the race was back on to reach the top of the stairs. As the two caught their breath at the entrance to the top floor of the clock tower, Cam's eyes opened wide as he took it all in. "Do you work here or live here?" he panted.
"Both," Trip offered. He led Cam toward the holoscreen. "The rest of my team's out doing odd jobs," Trip said, "So we'll have this place to ourselves."
Well, for the second they will....
Disclaimer: Time Force characters and one character from Ninja Storm belong to BVE.
Spoilers: First two episodes of Ninja Storm. More of a spoiler for episode 1 than episode 2, but still....
Yes, this was literally written somewhere between "No 'I' in Team" and "Prelude to a Storm. And it shows.
Author's notes: I wasn't too impressed by the first two episodes of Ninja Storm. In fact, there was only one character I really liked there: Cam. Still, this isn't an attempt to rewrite those episodes, and who knows, the characters (and the dialogue) of the newest PR series might stop grating on my nerves. Since it's kinda doubtful that there will be a crossover between NS and previous PR series, I'm doing my bit of one now. Thanks to Chris and Rach for the plot ideas, general encouragement, and on Rach's end, letting me leech off her when she was editing. Thanks also to Beth for reminding me that he's a guinea pig, not a hamster.
I was later rather amused when Lothor made the same mistake. It was as if someone was answering me back on this. Impossible. But amusing. And no, I didn't like NS too much at this point. In some ways, I prefer Hurricanger over NS. But it turned out to be a good series in the end.
Home in a Breeze
By Selma McCrory
Copyright 2003
The partners of Nick of Time Odd Jobs were doing the variety of Odd Jobs that kept them in laundry detergent and pizza when the alert came. Actually, the alert came first to Trip, who was doing a repair job on an elderly twentieth century computer a few blocks away. "Trip! I've got a strange temporal reading from Wilkins Plaza."
I think this was one of those times where I just was pulling names out of thin air. Or the phone book. I'm not sure... it feels like I could have been deliberately naming the place where Cam lands.
Trip looked around, wondering if the people whose computer he was fixing would notice that their handyman had slipped out to investigate an anomaly. "What kind of reading?" Trip asked.
"I don't know, Trip," the mechanical owl said regretfully. "It seems to be a temporal wormhole of some kind, like what Time Force uses to travel, but its readings don't match any known time hole readings!"
Partially 'cause it's not your regular timehole. But Trip and Circuit don't know that at the moment.
"Right, I'll be right there." He shut down the connection to his friend and partner and looked at the computer. The ancient program known as Windows 95 would take a while to reinstall, so it could do that while he investigated the reading. Quietly, as quietly as an asian-looking kid with green hair and a geekish outfit could, he left the building. He could always bypass the magnetic security system later anyway. His morpher had no doubt picked up the system they were using and the only thing he needed to do was press his morpher to the door sensor to get back in.
I *had* to describe Trip. I had to. Even though most people watching PR would be familiar with both incarnations. And a machine running 95 tends to be... not new.
Trip jogged down the few blocks to Wilkins plaza. He could see the Silver Guardians arriving, preparing to cordon off the area, and hoped he wasn't too late to find the phenomenon before the Guardians did. "Circuit, where's that anomaly?"
"Approximately twenty feet to the left of you, Trip."
That meant, most probably, the wormhole was somewhere in the area of the statue, either behind the bushes or in the flower garden. Trip scampered off to his left, hoping to find where the thing was.
But apart from a young human male, not much older than Trip himself, if that, there was nothing there. As he was bringing his morpher up to ask Circuit where the phenomenon was, it cheeped. "Trip! It vanished!"
"Where was it?" he whispered, as the other young man looked about wildly and started dusting himself off. It was as if he'd fallen into the small flower garden, thoroughly smashing most of the decorative flowers there.
And here comes Cam. Who can add 'tossed into a flower garden by a rogue wormhole' to his list of 'things that can go wrong today'.
"Near you, Trip," Circuit said. "I can't say more."
The young man finished dusting himself off. "Where am I?" he wondered out loud.
Forgetting momentarily Circuit and his employers, temporary or otherwise, Trip rushed over to the only other person in the area. "Are you all right?" he asked.
Straightening his narrow-rimmed glasses in reply, the newcomer looked at Trip suspiciously. "Who are you? Where am I?"
Trip and Cam would end up wearing the same Ranger color later on, but neither we nor they knew that at this point. This exchange is to demonstrate the difference between the two: Trip is earnest, Cam suspicious and strident.
Trip tried to recall his training on concussions, which wasn't coming to him at the moment. "You're in Silver Hills, on Earth. In 2001."
The other young man looked at him. "You must be joking." The other reminded him of a classmate from his home village of Tloss, a serious young man who never seemed to have any fun. "This must be some joke."
Again, Cam with the snarkiness, Trip with the earnestness. Trip's home village was the result of another fanfic that has yet to come to light.
"Y-y-you fell through a temporal wormhole," Trip explained, though not without stuttering.
"A wormhole?" the young man said. He started to clean off his glasses. "That would explain things."
But before they could get any further, there was a yell to the side. The Silver Guardians had found them. "Clear out," the Guardian who found them said sharply. "There's an attack in progress here. Civilians need to get out of the area."
Before Cam can snark any further, a Guardian moves the plot along.
Trip let the falsehood slide, knowing that the Guardians were investigating the same thing he had been. "Okay," he said, gathering the young man and pulling him out of the way.
"But..." the young man squeaked. Trip didn't give him a chance to object. He knew the Guardians weren't equipped to deal with whatever had delivered the young man to the flowerbed. "But..."
I really shouldn't have used 'squeak' here. Ah well.
Once Trip had gotten the other young man out of the Guardians' perimeter, he stopped. "What's your name?"
"Cam." The young man glared. "And that might be my only way back home!"
At that time, I didn't know, nor did I care, about Cam's last name. (For those curious, it's Watanabe.)
"No it isn't," Trip pointed out. "The wormhole's closed."
Cam visibly sunk at that. "Great. When father needs me the most...." He stumbled, and Trip caught him, sitting him down on a low-slung ledge. "I've got to get home! I can't leave father with those imbeciles!"
Cam's vocalizing what I pretty much thought of the NS Rangers at that point.
"Breathe," Trip told him gently. "What imbeciles?"
"The idiots that he gave the morphers to. He's there, alone, with them." Cam took a deep breath. "I have to get back!"
And now we get Cam's motivation throughout this whole story: he's afraid his future teammates will screw up and Lothor will conquer the world.
*Morphers?* Trip thought, and wondered if he meant another Ranger team. Probably. If so, that meant that Cam had to get back. "We'll get you home," Trip said, with a confidence he didn't feel. "Right now, we've got to get you out of here."
"I don't think I can stand," Cam said. "I don't want to get far from where that wormhole closed."
"Look," Trip said, secretly proud of himself for sounding so calm and collected, "I need to get back to base or I can't find you a way home."
Cam looked up at him with renewed respect. "You're a technical expert?"
At this point, the only people Cam seems to respect are other technical experts and his Dad.
Nodding, Trip slung his backpack so it wasn't so uncomfortable. "Yes," he said.
"You're an expert with computers?" Cam asked.
"I am," Trip said.
"Good." Cam's eyes lit up. "Let's go." He got up abruptly. "Well? Lead the way!"
Trip shook his head at the human's obvious eccentricities, and started to lead Cameron to the clock tower. "I forgot! I have to finish fixing this computer!"
Cam shook his head. "We don't have time for this."
"I've got to do this, Cam," Trip said gently. "If I don't, people will get suspicious."
For a moment, he thought Cam was going to go his own way again, but the other nodded reluctantly.
The whole story had people dragging Cam with them, mostly because Cam was only thinking of one thing.
Trip took Cam down the block to get to the building, and easily used his morpher to get in. Cam sniffed at the age of the computer. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because these people hired me to fix their computer," Trip said, knowing Cam was itching to get home, as the humans of this time put it. "It's what we do."
"We?" Cam asked, clearly not seeing the connection. He knelt next to the computer, looking at the display. "What are you doing?"
"Re-loading the system software," Trip said, "And restoring the files from backup."
"I've got a faster way," Cam said impatiently, letting the software reload. As soon as the system reloaded, Cam did a few things, too fast for Trip to comprehend. Before Trip could understand what was happening, Cam had the system back on its feet, reloaded, and working fine. "You're sure you're a technical expert?"
Cam the Suspicious comes to the fore. Someone who repairs Zords for a living wouldn't find a simple backup and restore to be too much of a challenge. And this is his century, not Trip's.
"Not with this century's computers," Trip admitted, knowing the slow, primitive machines were sometimes beyond his comprehension.
"Then with what century's computers?" Cam muttered, finishing his checkover.
"That's a long explanation," Trip said. He heard the door open. "Hide!"
The president of the business came in. "Is it working?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," Trip said. "You shouldn't have any problems with it. If you do, let me know."
"I will," the president said, smiling in a way that indicated that he'd be asking for his money back, and more, if it wasn't. Knowing the computers of the century, Trip guessed that they might well be seeing the man again. "Thank you. Here's your fee." He wrote out a check and gave it to Trip, and Trip tucked it away in a pocket. Checks always confused him, but Wes would know what to do.
When the man was out of the room, and safely out of sight, Trip led Cam out of the building. "It won't malfunction," Cam said. "That was a simple backup and restore."
This is Cam - he's both arrogant and reassuring, something that didn't come out too well in the story.
Trip nodded nervously. "Let's get back to the base."
But before they could, Trip's morpher bleeped, and Cam looked boredly at it. Trip reminded himself that he'd just about told Cam he wasn't ordinary as he lifted the morpher up and answered it.
I had something different written originally, but Rach insisted I edit this. Good thing, too.
The annoyed, gruff voice of the Quantum Ranger came over the morpher: "This is Eric."
Staring at the morpher, Trip managed an incoherent "What?" and promptly shut up before he dug himself six feet down, as Wes liked to put it.
Later, I couldn't visualize Trip saying this. Oh well.
"Face it," Eric said, "The only reason we're not talking face-to-face right now is because someone didn't realize who you were." Trip could visualize the Silver Guardian who had encountered them standing nearby as his commanding officer talked to Trip. It was not a pleasant visualization. "Believe me, he won't forget again. Now, where are you?"
"About two blocks south," Trip managed, looking at Cam. The other looked like he was ready to bolt. He was tapping his foot, and his expression was clear: get me home or I'll find my own way home. Without you.
Thud, thud, thud. Cam doesn't *want* to deal with the TF Rangers' problems. He wants to get home. Unfortunately, he's not thinking very clearly right now.
Suddenly, Cam grabbed the morpher. "Look, whoever you are. I need to get home, and unless you're personally a heck of a whole lot more competent than the guy who's with me, then bug off. I'm needed where I am and I don't have time to waste."
"And who are you?" Eric asked.
"I'm Cam," Cam said, not without more than a touch of impatience, as if Eric was below him. "And you are?"
"Eric Myers," Eric said sharply. "Commanding officer of the Silver Guardians. And for me, you'll wait."
Cam rolled his eyes slightly. "I don't wait for anyone who isn't going to help me get home."
Another good summarization of Cam's motivations here.
"You forget: I know where Trip lives, and I can guess where he's going. So I can either pick you up quietly and we can have this talk at HQ, or you can bolt and I can just beat you there."
He doesn't quite, but....
Cam looked like he was going to cough up a hairball. "I'm going to the shortest route to get me home. If you want to meet us there, fine." He punched a button on Trip's morpher - thankfully, the wrong one.
"Right," Eric said. "If it's going to be that way...." He left the threat unfinished. "Eric out."
Cam scowled at the morpher. "Let's go. He's not going to stop me... stop us." With a further scowl, he dropped Trip's arm. "Have you got money for a taxi?"
Trip shook his head. "I have a bike," he explained.
Fanon: Trip owns a bicycle.
Cam's scowl became even deeper. "Then *I'll* find us a ride." He tromped up the street in sheer determination. "Well, come on!"
"Wait, Cam!" Trip said. "Maybe... maybe your money's like ours."
Cam got out his billfold and thrust it at Trip. "You look. I wouldn't know."
Trip looked through the money, confirming that it was basically like that of this time, though some with 2003 dates obviously they couldn't use. "This, and this, and this."
His companion looked doubtfully at the bills. "You think that's enough?"
"I hope so," Trip said, not looking forward to getting back to the Clock Tower only to find that Eric had beat them there.
"Good. Can you order us a taxi?" Cam said, striding forward once again.
"If I have a phone," Trip told him.
Cam frowned. "There's one over there. Get us a taxi."
Trip looked at where Cam was pointing. There was a payphone on the other side of the street, at a corner next to a mini-mart. "Okay." He hurried forward, caught up in Cam's mood. He punched in the number for a taxi that Wes had drilled into him, and five minutes later, he and Cam were speeding towards the clock tower.
I figured Wes had drilled the phone number into his teammates, just because he knew they weren't that familiar with his century.
The taxi took them all the way to the clock tower, and Trip let Cam pay the taxi driver off. As the cab pulled away, a Silver Guardian vehicle pulled into the now vacant spot. Eric got out, looking like the universe had offended him, and took off his trademark sunglasses.
Well, he didn't *quite* beat them there.
"You must be Cam," Eric said, by way of introduction.
Cam's eyes narrowed. "And you must be Eric Myers, prestigious commander of the Silver Guardians."
Yep, these two do *not* get along.
"I am." Eric hooked his sunglasses to his uniform. "And you left the scene of a temporal anomaly."
As if that were a crime.
"Look, normally I'd be happy to talk," Cam said, interrupting Eric and Trip, as the latter opened his mouth. "It's just that right now I have a dad who's been turned into a guinea pig, a dark ninja that's bent on taking over the planet, and three idiots that my father gave Ranger powers to because they couldn't show up on time to save their lives, and therefore were the only candidates available to fight the forces of darkness."
There were other reasons for the three being Rangers, too, but neither I nor Cam knew this at that point.
"Besides," Trip said, "It was one of your Guardians who told us to leave."
Eric's glare told him that the other Ranger was familiar with that point. "What Dark Ninja?" he asked Cam, ignoring Trip completely.
"Look, I don't have time to argue about this. You want to ask me questions about it, fine. Right now I *must* concentrate on getting home." Cam swept forward into the building that housed Nick of Time Odd Jobs, while Eric muttered into his headset. Trip decided that whatever Eric was going to do would hold, and followed Cam inside.
Once he was inside the doors of his home, Trip relaxed a little, until a voice interrupted him. "Friend of yours?" Wes asked, pointing at Cam, who was leaning against the corner between the maintenance/storage room and the staircase up to the top of the clock tower.
Trip nodded. "This is Cam," he said. "Cam, this is Wes. A... friend. Cam got tossed through a temporal wormhole," Trip explained.
"Oh," Wes said. "That's what Circuit was talking about." He gestured with his head and shoulders towards the door. "Want me to run interference?" The human slang escaped Trip completely, but Cam was nodding.
Poor Trip. And Wes does run some pretty good interference. Not quite enough, but good.
"Sure," Trip said.
"No problem," Wes said cheerfully.
Trip took the stairs two at a time, Cam keeping up with him, though not effortlessly. "I thought I was in good shape," he moaned. "How do you do this, day after day?"
Later on, I figured out that Cam had to be in better shape than this. But I didn't know he'd become a Ranger when I wrote this fic.
"Most of the time, I don't run," Trip said, though he knew he was lying a bit when he said so. He ran up the stairs more often than not.
"Oh," Cam said. "I think... when I get home I will see if my dad has some conditioning exercises for me." He had to stop, and Trip managed to stop two stairs above him. "I'm in charge of my dad's computer systems. I designed and ran the systems through the help of some of my dad's colleagues and students. I don't go into town much." He sat down. "Dad never thought I'd make a good ninja, and I agree. That's not my kind of life."
And several episodes later, this gets Jossed and becomes Alternate Universe.
Trip nodded. "Feel better?"
Cam got up. "Come on. Lead me to where your computer is before anyone interrupts us." Trip watched him struggle to get up and rejoin the jog upstairs. He knew that Cam was deliberately not mentioning Eric, though the Silver Guardian commander was obviously not far from Cam's mind.
Cam's internally labelled Eric as a 'pompous bureaucrat'. He doesn't want to deal with anything that might slow him down.
With that, Cam passed Trip easily, and the race was back on to reach the top of the stairs. As the two caught their breath at the entrance to the top floor of the clock tower, Cam's eyes opened wide as he took it all in. "Do you work here or live here?" he panted.
"Both," Trip offered. He led Cam toward the holoscreen. "The rest of my team's out doing odd jobs," Trip said, "So we'll have this place to ourselves."
Well, for the second they will....
