DetectiveRed

This is a little rough but I wanted to get it out.i think there might be one more fluffy chapter after this.

“Angelica Elizabeth Hart, I am going to kill you.” Scott and I cuddled together on the couch in the command centre’s infirmary and watched as respected local journalist, Stella Baker, laid into our new mentor.

“I would have preferred a nice to see you,” the gold ranger sulks as Kepler checks her for bruising and burns. She’d teleported out in time but she said it was a close call. Her face is red and it’s hard to tell whether she’s burnt or embarrassed, it could be both

“You didn’t let me know you were even in town. I found out you were after you almost got yourself killed. Again. What will Joanne think?” 

Scott’s chest rumbles as he chuckles to himself, seemingly unaware that if it weren’t for me being comfortably wrapped in his arms we would be having a very similar conversation. This distraction isn’t fair. He did something stupid instead of me for the first time in a while and I’m too comfortable sitting next to him to call him on it.

"Probably good riddance.”

“Oh come on. No fight would make her think that.”

Laying against his chest reminds me of something I said before all this happened. About how guys smell different. About how they kinda stink. Scott definitely doesn’t. At least not in a bad way. Stupid boy still one upping me after I stopped boying. This is to say. He smells very nice. Maybe it’s a superhero thing, and the morph meant he didn’t sweat as much or it disappeared with his clothes but he smells good. Why is he allowed to do that? 

“Can we not do this in front of the kids?” Angie sheepishly pleads, a far cry from the confident woman who was teasing Astrus before.

And his arm is wrapped around me. For the first time today I actually feel safe. There is nothing left to save. All the weight on my shoulders is gone. I lay my face against his hand on my shoulder and he turns into a tomato. A very hot tomato.

“Kepler, is she okay?” Stella asks. Her and Angie have a lot of catching up to do.  

“A few bruises, but the suit took most of the heat.” Kepler finishes her scanning.

“Good,” she grabs Angie by the ear and drags her towards the door. “You are going to help me call the others and tell them you are okay.” 

“No!!!” Kepler chases after them, leaving me and Scott in the infirmary alone. 

It feels familiar. Like when we kissed last. It isn’t going to be spontaneous this time. I will be in control. Maybe I couldn’t be a man, but I can be assertive. I pull away a bit to reposition, so we can talk, so I can mess with him and it’s almost painful. But he needs to be told off as much as Angie did.

He looks tired, but not in a concerning way. More like he’s post workout. It’s a look I haven’t really seen since before he transitioned, when he’d hike up his shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow, exposing his abs and then Summer would tell him off for exposing his bra or whatever and I’d look away… I don’t have to anymore.

“Scott?” He looks at me differently now. There’s no worry anymore and the relaxed smile he’s giving me makes it all the harder to do what I have to.

“Yes, Fi?” He’s expecting a reward, but not yet. I cup his face.

“Don’t you ever do something that stupid again.”

“All I did was hold his feet down!” He protests.

“I would prefer you not help anyone do that kind of maneuver again, but that’s not what I mean.” I can’t tell if he’s listening to me. “Think before you run in like that. You could have been hurt.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“Because I teleported us back!” 

“Then I owe you a thank you.” With my hand holding his face and the way I’ve knelt on top of him just to look him in the eyes, I can’t resist when he leans in. I push him down and kiss him. His lips are warm and salty… I might not have any practice but I want more of this. My lips part and he realises what's happening. Our tongues meet and I see why dream Filia was excited to talk about this stuff.

“And a promise?” I ask. 

“What is it?” He kissed my cheek.

“You know what it is.” Two can play at that game. I kiss his cheek.

“Tell me.”

“That you won’t do it again!”

“Aww you care about me.”

Our “conversation” finally comes to an end when the rest of the team shows up and Ziggy, being the ever so kind friend that they are, says “Ewww, they’re sucking face”. 

To be fair we should have probably gotten a room. Or noticed when they came in. The entire world had faded to background noise and my head is still spinning.

“Oh please, Ziggy, like you and Leo weren’t flirting over the radio,” Summer argues. Oof. 

“And we wouldn’t have had time to flirt if these two had helped with cleaning up!” Leo responds. Ouch.

“That’s no excuse for making me third wheel. Between the four of you I’m more like a spare tire.” I quietly climb off of my boy who slowly makes himself look a bit more proper while they argue.

“Aww don’t be like that. Those two still might not be dating!” Ziggy laughs. Leo stops himself before he can get a death glare.

“How did the clean up go?” Scott interrupts the cackling.

“A lot was thrown into the ocean so not perfectly. The Kangaroo is totalled. We were able to recover what we could see though.” Summer reports. “Our mecha don’t have hands, so it’s not like we can sift through the sand.” She doesn’t say his name but I can see her looking at Scott. 

“To be fair he was trying to save someone.” I jump in. 

“Someone who was fine?”

“He didn’t know!”

“Filia, you had to tackle him. Don’t defend this.”

“But look at him…” On cue he gives his best puppy dog eyes and Summer, in response rolls her eyes.

“This barely worked before he was a guy, it works less now.*

I add my power to his. Just like we had done earlier. For all my flaws, and insecurities I know that she thinks I’m cute, my big ol’ eyes beg her to forgive him, and me for doing this. Cracks begin to form in her cool facade. Leo and Ziggy are laughing their asses off, but I focus. 

“I don’t know which pair of you I hate more. Fine. Good job everyone…”

“Yay! Thank you, Summer.” I smile at her and she returns a death glare. 

“I’ll be prepared next time, Fi.”

And there probably isn’t going to be a next time. When I’m more settled I’ll find my flaws again, they won’t be as loathsome but they’ll remain and I’ll feel less comfortable weaponising being cute. Teasing Summer is also not a habit I want to make. 

“So what do we do now?” Leo asks. “We’ve missed half the school day and we haven’t even been fully debriefed.”

“Wait around I guess.” Ziggy twirls their hair. “We might be able to sneak into the last period but…”

“Yeah if school is still on,” I remind them. “There were two monster attacks today. We could just go to Ernie’s and skip.” Smooth avoiding, Filia. I lied about it not being scary. It’s still scary. Less scary but I still don’t want to do it. 

“And we also don’t know where Fins is,” Scott reminds me.

“I regret to inform you that you will not be leaving for the youth centre yet. We still need to hold a proper debrief.” Astrus appears in the corner of the infirmary. Or maybe they’d been there for a bit and were waiting for a good time. Either way I jump and so do most of the others. Summer doesn’t. But she pays attention. “Please come to the main hall.” 

I place an arm around Scott’s waist and he keeps one on my shoulder as we move into the main room. It feels natural. Chatting echoes through the halls. I can make out more than the three voices I’m expecting. In the corner of the room, Angelica is being chewed out by Stella, Clay and a tall tan woman I’ve never seen. 

“I apologise for the extra people. I was not able to convince Joanne to wait until we were finished.”

The woman, Joanne I presume, is cool, for lack of a better word, wearing a red leather jacket, and black jeans, attached to the belt loop sat a carabiner with a small coin similar to the ones in our morphers. She was laying into Angie even harder than Stella, she was basically pinned against the wall, blushing. There is very little trace of the woman who was toying with Loch, and making fun of Astrus. She pulls away from Angie who slumps into the wall. 

“Sorry you had to see that. You kids did very well today.” She says. Just going down the list I assume she’s the old red ranger.

“What is it with hot older women today?” Summer says under her breath. This is her reward, I guess. She deserves it.

“You lot should remember to get this old man’s phone number before you leave, because he is terrible at staying in touch.” 

“Joanne, I am trying to debrief my team.”

“He didn’t even tell me, I had to find out through a panic call from Stella that my stupid ex had almost got herself killed again.”

“I said I was sorry!” Angelica whines.

“You’re gonna be sorry when I’m done with you, darling.”

“You pwomise.” I take back almost everything I said about these rangers seeming put together. Especially Angie. I could see myself in her shoes.

“Ex,” Stella does the most obvious finger quotes around that word.

Astrus, outside of the small time in which he was thrown off guard by Angelica’s teasing, has always been a rather solemn figure, a kind old man, who maybe smiled proudly. His big projected face is rolling his eyes and smiling.

“She can’t stay mad at her Angel for long.” Angie teases and Joanne’s focus immediately darts back to her while she and Stella laugh. Angie stops laughing as Joanne’s combat boots stomp towards her. Kepler notices this and shoos them out of the room.

“Now. I must congratulate you rangers for overcoming everything thrown at you today.” Speaking of proud smiles. “Loch as far as we can tell is gone. So are any of their plans to resurrect Dysphorus.”

“And Fins?” I ask.

“Likely alive but powerless.” Kepler explains. “She has briefly appeared on the shore since the explosion but went into the water soon after.”

Why did that comfort me? Even if she had saved my hide at least once, it was from her employer. I shouldn’t be worried she’s okay. I’m not worried about Loch. Still she tried to do the right thing.

“As for your school. It was evacuated after the Crab Trap attacked.” Astrus continued “The explosion from its defeat alerted them. It wasn’t safe.”

“Your parents have been contacted.” Kepler finishes.

“And that's it?” Leo asks. “We beat the bad guy. The town is safe?”

“For now.” Astrus confirms. “I would like you all to keep training and checking in for the next few weeks.”

Astrus doesn’t seem convinced it is. I’m not either, Dysphorus’ attacks took place over six month, we’ve only been working for one. Sure Loch is done but it seems to good to be true, but maybe I just don’t want it to end.

I squeeze the handsome boy next to me, he doesn’t seem particularly phased. This is what I wanted to be, and half the time all I did was get kidnapped or attacked. It only just felt like we were settling into our roles?

“And keep our morphers on us?” 

“Correct.”

—

A few computer tablets is all I managed to scrounge from the ship before it detonated. As soon as I realised what he was doing I set it up to transfer my new data, and teleport everyone and everything I could maybe use into the ocean below. Loch couldn’t just lose with grace, he had to ruin everything, instead of a ship, I’m sitting here, in a cave that smells like rot and salt wondering about my next moves.

I didn’t have time to put in exact coordinates for where everything was going, so it was all relative. All into the sea. The next few weeks would be a lot of searching and a lot of convincing. Considering what Loch has done, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone just gave up. I almost wanted to, but that would mean he won, and even dead I didn’t want him to have that satisfaction.

I’m an engineer and inventor by trade. Given time and resources I would get myself off of this rock.