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“He looks really familiar,” Noah said quietly, staring at the guy who was sitting with a laptop in the corner of Ernie’s. “I could swear I’ve seen him before.”
“He’s probably been here before,” Jake said in between bites of his froyo, since he so rarely managed to finish it before being interrupted by monster attacks and he was determined to get the chance to finish for once.
“I don’t think so,” Noah said slowly. “I just feel like there’s something familiar about him.”
Jake hesitated. “You don’t think he was on one of the videos, do you?” he asked quietly.
Noah shook his head. “After meeting Casey and Jayden, I’ve been trying to remember what all of the Rangers look like, and he wasn’t in any of the videos.”
“Don’t worry about it then,” Jake said. He moved to take another bite when the familiar sound of Gosei contacting them went off, and once again they had to leave their froyo unfinished to deal with a monster attack.
*
“What on earth is this thing?” Gia yelled. “It’s moving way too fast for us to catch!”
“Is it a car monster?” Emma asked. “Who comes up with this stuff?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Troy said. “We’ll just have to use one of the Legendary powers. Turbo, let’s go!”
The team activated the Legendary powers, which appeared to come with tiny cars that they used to chase after the monster, but even with that they weren’t able to catch it.
“Maybe Gosei will have an idea of what we can do to catch this monster and figure out what it’s up to,” Noah said.
“I hope so,” Gia muttered. “I hate it when we lose.”
*
Making their way back to the cave, Noah stumbled in shock when the semi-familiar guy was there, tinkering with Tensou.
“Who are you?” Troy demanded.
“Justin Stewart,” the guy said, looking up from his work. “I used to be the Blue Turbo Ranger.”
Noah did some quick math in his head. “But that was 15 years ago! You couldn’t have been more than…”
“Twelve, yeah,” the guy nodded. “Youngest Ranger ever. And I hope to keep that title—bad enough I was twelve, I hope that nobody younger ever has to go through that.”
“It’s an honor to meet you,” Troy said, extending his hand, which Justin took.
“So what are you doing to Tensou?” Gia asked.
“Just doing some system upgrades,” Justin said with a shrug. “It needs to be done every couple of years, and Gosei and Billy asked me if I wouldn’t mind doing it when Billy wasn’t available. Besides, it’s my way of contributing to the cause.”
“You wouldn’t have any ideas on how we can deal with this monster, would you?” Troy asked. “The Legendary powers didn’t work.”
Justin laughed. “Yeah, I saw you used our Turbo powers,” he said. “But you know, you can’t just use the Legendary powers and hope that it works. You’ve got to look at the problem from all angles until you find a creative solution. You should have seen some of the nonsense we came up with. Or heard about some of the things that happened to us.”
“Like what?”
“Well, there was the time we got baked into a pizza. But it turns out that evil pizzas were no match for a simple stoplight,” Justin said with a smirk.
“Seriously?”
Justin nodded. “Yeah, but TJ tells the story way better than I do.”
*
Unfortunately, the monster was back before Justin had the chance to offer them any other advice. Once again, they found themselves using their Legendary Turbo powers to chase after it, and once again, they weren’t working.
“Split up!” Troy called. “Gia, you and Emma cut it off. Noah, see if you can find a weakness. Jake, you and I will be a distraction!”
“Got it!” everyone called.
Noah found himself analyzing the monster while the team worked. Soon they had managed to drive the monster back into his direction.
“Shift Into Turbo! Blue Senturian!” Noah called, and he found himself using one of the powers he hadn’t used before. And he was holding a stop sign, which he brandished menacingly at the monster.
For some reason, it actually stopped, and the other members of his team all blinked at it in confusion.
Troy motioned for them to all demorph into Super Mega mode, and the team quickly summoned their weapons, blowing up the monster with a simple Super Mega Blast.
Of course, it didn’t seem to matter that they had blown it up, because for some reason the monster always had to grow, but at least taking care of it with the Legendary Samurai Megazord only took a few minutes.
*
“Thanks for the help,” Noah said, shaking Justin’s hand.
“I didn’t really do anything,” Justin said. “And just be glad I don’t do the obnoxious question thing Dimitria used to do to us. I swear that was half the reason the first group of Turbos retired.”
“I have a feeling I don’t want to know,” Noah said.
“Probably not,” Justin said. “But let me know if you need any other help. You guys have a tough fight ahead of you, but Rangers always take care of our own. I’ve got to head back to work soon, but all of us are looking out for you. Remember, once a ranger…”
“Always a Ranger,” Noah finished.