Work Text:
The first thing she does when she gets off the plane is call Keeper on her communicator.
When he picks up she snarls, “Fifteen hours, Keeper. Fifteen hours on a cramped little plane with a kid screaming and a guy snoring on my shoulder.”
“I trust you arrived safely, then,” Keeper says over the line, and he sounds like he’s amused, which ticks her off even more.
“Explain to me again why I had to make the fifteen hour flight to New Zealand instead of you?” Kendall asks, struggling to grab her luggage off the conveyor belt with one hand.
“I do not think the TSA would have found my alien anatomy particularly regular upon x-ray scan,” Keeper muses calmly, “Nor do I imagine I would have done much to comfort the screaming human offspring.”
Kendall attempts to blow a stray strand of hair off her forehead by blowing upwards, making a “puft” sound that Keeper seems to take as her acknowledgment.
“In the old days, when the grid was strong, I would have simply teleported you there,” Keeper says, sounding nostalgic, “But the grid has been tapped for power across galaxies and dimensions for so long and so often that such frivolous uses of it often result in disaster. You might have ended up there in several pieces.”
Kendall smirks. “I’m not entirely sure I didn’t,” she says, “I still can’t feel my legs.”
“I have located the source of the Energem,” Keeper attempts to divert the conversation back to the reason for her long journey, “And I am sending the coordinates to your communicator. Remember, Kendall, whatever happens--”
“I know, I know,” Kendall says, but the hardness in her voice has no malice in it, only determination. “We need to secure the Energem,” she continues, “And whoever it’s attached itself to.”
***
Keeper’s coordinates lead Kendall right into the middle of Auckland, and she checks into a hotel to get cleaned up before she begins her search for a needle in a haystack. She still has no idea how she’s going to convince this person who has found and bonded with the Black Energem that she a) not crazy and b) a person worth trusting, but she imagines no amount of prep work will prepare her for walking up to someone and asking them to come back with her to California and fight evil, so she intends to just wing it.
As it turns out, finding the boy isn’t the hard part. It’s keeping up with him.
He seems to go everywhere on his skateboard, and even driving her rental car down the streets behind him, Kendall almost loses him twice. He’s fast and reckless, jumping over benches and narrowly missing collisions with people, and Kendall follows him around all day before he finally stops at a diner long enough for her to decide to approach him.
Kendall watches him from across the street as he sits down to eat, finally taking off his helmet and pads and setting them down in the chair next to him. She walks across the street at the crosswalk, casually strolls down the street and smoothes her pony tail back with a hand before entering the patio of the diner where he’s sitting and walking up to his table.
“You’re pretty good,” he says as she walks up, and she stops short, hesitating.
“Excuse me?” Kendall asks.
The young man looks up at her from his seat, his burger clutched in his hands, sauce smeared across his cheek. “I thought I lost you back there when I took that turn round at the roundabout, but I guess you were too smart for that.”
Kendall doesn’t answer him, though she might preen a little at the compliment.
“You’ve been following me,” he says, setting down his food and looking at her.
“Yes,” she agrees, nodding at him.
“Why?” He asks, narrowing his eyes.
“I’m afraid that’s rather complicated,” she says seriously, and he grins.
He reaches into his shirt and pulls out the Energem, affixed to a little black cord. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with this little charm, would it?”
Kendall opens her mouth and then closes it. Apparently he was smarter than she suspected, too.
Just then a waiter comes over, carrying a second plate of food and a drink.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he says, smiling at her, “I took the liberty of ordering for you. I hope you like red meat.”
***
“So, let’s see if I’ve got it all,” Chase says as they finished their second set of drinks, the sun beginning to set in the distance, “This little trinket is an Energem, entrusted to a dinosaur millions of years ago, and it’s purpose is to transform me into a Power Ranger to fight evil, save the world, and there’s apparently nine more of these little babies out in the world that you need my help to find?”
“You forgot the part about the alien mentor who sent me to find you,” Kendall says, amused by his casual demeanor.
“Ah,” Chase says happily, “Yes, thank you, knew I left something out.”
He’d taken it all pretty well, for someone who two weeks ago hadn’t any clue what they were doing with their life. Chase was the kind of person Kendall had often envied growing up; carefree, energetic, athletic, spontaneous. He was just the sort of person to make a good ranger, and she could see why the Energem had chosen him. While he didn’t necessarily have her drive or stubborn determination, he had his own skills, and she could respect that. Teams were supposed to balance each other, after all.
“So, Kendall, was it?” Chase says, but he doesn’t pause long enough for her to confirm, like he’s putting on a show of not paying quite enough attention, “Where do you fit into all this?”
Kendall purses her lips. “Right now,” she says, sipping her drink before continuing, “I’m Keepers assistant. I found him trapped in an interdimensional subspace flux to protect himself from being wiped out with the dinosaurs when the comet hit, and I freed him. Together we’ve been looking for the other Energems, and yours is the first we’ve found but, like you said, there are nine more out there, and one of them is mine.”
Chase raises his eyebrows. “Thought the gems decided that,” he says, questioning.
Kendall grins, revealing maybe a little more than necessary as she says, “I doubt the gems are as stubborn as I am.”
Chase laughs, and then the waiter comes over and he pays for their food. “Come on,” he says, picking up his things, “You can give me a ride back to my apartment.”
***
“Your very calm about all this,” Kendall says as Chase keys open to door the his apartment.
“Did you expect me not to be?” Chase wonders, leading her into his one bedroom place.
“I’m not sure what I expected,” Kendall admits, inspecting his living arrangements, “You’re the first ranger I’ve ever met.”
Chase is… not the cleanliest of people, it seems. She’s no neat freak herself, but it appears that he doesn’t actually own any furniture, save for a bean bag chair, a air mattress on the floor, and two bar stools at the kitchen counter. His clothes are stacked in color coded piles against the wall, a bag of trash is tied to the refrigerator handle, and the bathroom is missing its door, with a beaded curtain handing there instead.
“Welp,” Chase says, coming back from the refrigerator with a sports drink in his hand, “Don’t let that deter you.”
The corners of Kendall’s mouth turn up and she looks away.
Kendal takes a seat on one of the barstools and pulls her laptop from her shoulder bag. “We need to talk about the next steps,” she says, “The first of which is you coming back to California with me and Keeper.”
“California,” Chase says, taking a seat on the floor next to his mattress, “Sounds cool.”
Kendall looks up from her boot screen. “That’s it?”
Chase shrugs.
“No objection about leaving family and loved ones behind? No internal conflict about leaving your home to find your destiny and fight evil?” Kendall wonders, watching him.
“Ain’t got no family or loved ones, and while I know it may seem hard to believe that I’d be willing to just pick up and leave all this,” he gestures around his barren apartment, “I think I’ll survive the pain. Something tells me there are skate parks in California, which really puts that nail in the coffin for me.”
“Well,” she agrees, as her computer connects to the grid, “Destiny is destiny I suppose.”
Chase smiles at her over her laptop screen. “Suppose it is.”
***
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chase says two days later in Kendall’s hotel room, “You want to mail order bride me?”
Kendall tosses a pillow at him from across the room. “It’s logical.”
“I think we need to address the underlying issue here,” Chase says, grinning mischievously. “I think you need to embrace the fact that I am a babe, and you want this on lock down.”
“I’m more attracted to dinosaur fossils than I am to you,” Kendall teases, pulling the paperwork from her printer and handing it to him, “But we need a way to get you into the states, and even if I hire you at the museum, immigration laws are really cracking down on work visas.”
“I imagine that’s true,” he tells her with narrowed eyes, “What with the rather demure attitude about getting married. What, no special someone in your life?”
Kendall shrugs. “Not in a long time, and not for the foreseeable future.”
“Ooo,” Chase pretends to shiver, “You are ice cold, girl.”
Kendall laughs. “I’m practical, that’s all. I figure some boundaries need to be involved here.”
Chase wiggles his eyebrows, but he flips through the paperwork for spousal immigration she’s handed him, grinning all the while. “I’m not doing it without a proper proposal,” he says, not looking at her.
“Chase,” she warns, and he giggles.
“No, I mean it!” He says dramatically, “I have dreams, Kendall! I want you down on a knee, and I want to hear you say it.”
“Make me do that and I’m tossing you into the luggage compartment on the plane and not letting you out,” she warns, but she’s smiling as she says it.
Chase continues laughing, but he holds out his hand for a pen, and she chucks one at his head.
***
“I look forward to meeting him upon your return,” Keeper says over her communicator, and Kendall hums.
“He’s a good guy,” she muses, “The Energem chose well.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Keeper agrees, “When do you return?”
“Well, we’re getting married in the morning, and then we have to file the paperwork before we can buy the tickets, so it’ll be a few more days,” Kendall rattles off without thinking, and Keeper does something he hardly ever does and interrupts her.
“Married?” He asks, his voice confused.
Kendall smirks into the communicator. “Remind me to update you on international immigration laws when I get back, Keeper.”
***
They get married at one of the speedy wedding chapels that advertises on billboards, and because Kendall’s paperwork is impeccably in order, as it usually is, customs issues Chase a temporary spousal visitation visa, with a continuation upon review addendum that Kendall can work around later.
If worst comes to worst, she can always hack into their system and approve him for permanent residence herself. She didn’t like to cheat, but she wasn’t above using the skills she’d been given for the greater good.
“I expect I’ll be learning quite a bit about dinosaurs on the honeymoon, huh?” Chase jokes at her on the plane.
“You’d better get your nose in a few books,” Kendall says, “Because I’m hiring you as a salaried assistant excavation expert at the museum.”
Chase guffaws at her. “I am not even a little bit qualified,” he starts, but she waves him off.
“Please, I have to have a reason why I came back from my vacation with a New Zealand hottie in toe, and it cannot be that I got married,” Kendall laughs.
“Oh,” Chase nods, “So this is a secret illicit fake marriage, aye? We should really get on the same page about this.”
***
Chase takes to Keeper like a duckling to its mother, and while the two of them spend their time training and building his skills, Kendall starts looking for more Energem sources.
He moves into Kendall’s house for legal purposes, but the two of them have cots set up in their base that they sleep on more nights than not, and Chase is actually surprisingly good at charming the museum personal into thinking he knows anything about what he’s doing at his job.
It’s nice, adding the additional person to what had so long been her and Keeper, alone. It reminds Kendall that someday there will be many more rangers, when they finally find all of the Energems, and she tries not to look forward to it with too much eagerness. There is a lot of work to do before they get there, after all.
Still, she keeps an empty picture frame in her desk for the day when the team is united at last.
“Keeper,” Chase asks one day after they’ve eaten dinner, “Why is finding the Energem’s so important? I mean, if they’ve been lost for millions of years, what are the odds that the evil guys you’re worried about will come after them now?”
“Oh, I have no doubt that Sledge and his army will one day return for the Energems,” Keeper says, and he picks up his staff to project an image of their potential enemy over the table, “Their power is immeasurable, and Sledge will never give up looking for them. That is why we must find them first. Had I not had to freeze myself in time--”
“Interdimensional subspace flux,” Kendall corrects the science behind Keepers actions, like she does every time he tries to insist he froze himself in time by using the morphing grid.
Keeper continues like he doesn’t hear her. “--I would have had much longer to search for the remaining Energem’s myself. It was fate that Kendall found me when she did, and that she made the choice to help me, instead of leaving me to fend for myself.”
Kendall offers Keeper a small smile. “There was no choice to make.”
Keeper gives her a small nod of gratitude, all the same.
Kendall clears her throat. “Speaking of potential Energems, I’ve used Chase’s gem to locate similar power sources. I’ve found two worth investigating, but they are both very faint.”
“Intriguing. I have not been able to use my powers to locate any signals at all, but my strength is not fully returned to me without more of the gems,” Keeper says, “We should investigate at once.”
***
Since time is of the essence, Keeper sends Kendall and Chase after the first Energem signal, while he goes after the second.
Their search takes them into the mountains of Colorado, and despite being from New Zealand, Chase complains about the cold the entire hike.
When Kendall brings this up, he exasperatedly says “I grew up in the city! With central heat!”
They end up leaving most of their gear in a small clearing until they know where they need to dig to find the fossil, going on foot with their basic survival packs while Kendall works onher tablet at tracking down the Energem to a more precise location.
“How are we going to find an Energem or a fossil in this weather?” Chase asks, trailing behind Kendall as she tries to read her tracking screen. “It’s practically a blizzard!”
“It’s barely even snowing, Chase,” Kendall says distractedly, wiping some of the tiny snow flurries off her screen. She keeps walking forward, squinting at the readings on the screen. “According to this, we should be nearly on top of the source of the power, but there’s no telling how accurate--” Kendall is in the middle of a sentence when the ground gives out beneath her, and she lets out a shout as she finds herself falling downwards.
After what feels like several agonizingly long seconds, she hits the ground with a sickening thud and the feeling of what could be a bruised rib, and she lets out a low moan as snow from above falls on top of her.
“Kendall!” Chase shouts down the hole where she’s fallen, “Kendall are you alright? Can you hear me?”
Kendall grunts in response. “I’m okay,” she calls back up after a moment, glancing up to find that her tablet with the Energem tracking signal on it did not survive the fall as well as she had. “The tracker’s not, though,” she says as she reaches out to pick it up with her gloved hand.
“I’m going to get some rope to get you out,” Chase calls down, and he leaves, jogging back down to the little plateau where they’d left their excavation equipment.
Kendall tosses the broken and useless tracking tablet aside, and then she screams.
Staring up at her from the icey cave floor is the face of a frozen man.
“Kendall!” Chase shouts, rushing back to the cave opening.
Kendall reaches out with her glove and wipes away some snow and frost from the ice, and as she does so, she catches sight of a blue crystal in the man’s hand.
“Chase,” she calls back up, and suddenly she feels no pain, “You need to get down here!”
***
The logistics of getting the frozen man out in that ice block and then getting him back to the lab are very complicated. They have to cut out a big enough block of ice so as not to injure the frozen man holding the Energem, but they don’t have the right kind of equipment for that sort of ice excavation.
“We could, you know, just cut the Energem out,” Chase suggests, staring down at it, “I mean, he’s not going to miss it.”
Kendall smacks him on the chest. “He could have bonded to the Energem,” she says, “Keeper will want him in one piece.”
Kendall has Chase morph, and use the laser from his Dino Charger to melt the ice with as much precision and extra buffer as they can.
Then there’s the need to rent a refrigerated truck to get that hunk of frozen cave man back to California, which Kendall as the proprietor of a museum can requisition easily enough, but getting the block of ice into it ends up being mostly Chase’s job, with the help of a pulley system.
“If I didn’t have an Energem,” Chase says, pushing the heavy block of ice up in his ranger suit, “We’d need twenty guys to do this!”
Finally, the last complication is that they can’t reach Keeper.
Kendall had tried him on her communicator as soon as they’d discovered the Energem, but she hadn’t been able to get anything but static.
She pushes down the feeling that something has gone wrong on Keepers mission and tries to focus on the task at hand, even if she isn’t entirely sure what she’s going to do when she gets the frozen man back home.
“You sure you’re not hurt,” Chase wonders when he finally demorphs and they’re packing up, the Blue Energem and its holder securely in the ice truck.
“I’ll see a doctor when we get back,” she promises, wincing as she goes to get up into the truck’s driver seat.
Chase has to follow behind her in the museum truck they’d come down in, but before she can close the door he pulls off his Energem from around his neck and tosses it up to her. “Hang onto it for a bit,” he says, before closing the door for her and walking back towards his own ride.
She wears Chase’s Energem the whole drive home, and when they get there she finds she doesn’t need to see a doctor.
***
They put the block of ice into a segment of the lab that Kendall has installed an ice air vent into, to keep it from melting on its own. She starts running scans on it while they wait for Keeper to return.
“It’s definitely the Blue Energem,” she tells Chase, who is studying the man inside the ice with a cryptic expression on his face, “Originally given to the Stegosaurus when Keeper arrived, this man must have found it thousands of years ago, before he was frozen.”
“He looks scared,” Chase says, apparently ignoring what she’s just said, “Don’t you think?”
Kendall looks up from her computers at them. “Chase, stop bonding to the frozen cave man.”
“What if he can see us and hear us right now?” Chase wonders, sounding more concerned than Kendall’s ever heard him. “What if he’s been, like, conscious this whole time he’s been frozen?”
Kendall rolls her eyes and goes back to her readings. “According to my calculations, he’s probably been in the caves we stumbled into this whole time, but deeper down. Recent tectonic shifts and effects of climate change must be what pushed him to the surface, and from the looks of the ice fairly recently.”
“We need to let him out,” Chase says, and Kendall spins around in her chair.
“We’re going to wait for Keeper,” she instructs, but Chase shakes his head.
“He’s really freaking me out, Kendall,” Chase says, coming over to her computer station, “We have to help him. I can’t look at him in that block of ice for the next week while we wait for Keeper.”
Kendall sighs and spins her chair back around to her computer. “Then don’t look at him.”
“Kendall,” Chase scolds, and he grabs onto the back of her chair, turns her back towards the cave man, and pushes her over to him. “Look at him. You’re cold but you’re not that cold.”
Kendall glances at the man’s face and then back at Chase. “We could hurt him! I have no idea how to thaw out a human being from something like this without killing him.”
“Well, you said you think he bonded to the Energem,” Chase gestures at the blue crystal in his hand, “That’ll protect him.”
“Might protect him,” Kendall corrects, “But I’m not sure it can restart his heart, or cure frostbite!”
“Try,” Chase urges, and then he nudges her shoulder gently with his fist, “For me. Come on.”
Kendall lets out a defeated groan. “You are a terrible influence and if anything goes wrong I am blaming you completely.”
Chase makes a ‘score’ motion with his arm and follows her back over to the computer.
“Alright, I’m turning off the frost vent,” Kendall starts, touching a few keys, “And I’m going to power up the labs heating lasers to ten percent.”
As the cooling system shuts off, Kendall positions the lasers and programs them into a pattern to begin thawing the icicle. Once they heat up they start tracing over the ice, and slowly it starts to melt around the edges.
“Is that going to be fast enough?” Chase wonders as they watch, and Kendall shrugs. He knows as well as she does that they don’t know what they’re doing.
The lasers keep going back and forth across the ice in a randomized pattern, and Kendall adjusts it every few minutes to make sure the ice is heating evenly.
After a few moment, the cave mans finger is exposed. Kendal adjusts the pattern to keep away from that area to avoid burning him.
“This has to go faster,” Chase says nervously, “What if he warms up enough to need to breath and he can’t because his face is still covered?”
“You’re still assuming he’s going to be alive once we thaw him,” Kendall reminds, readjusting the computer model. “I’m upping the lasers to twenty percent.”
Chase jumps, causing Kendall to look up from her screen. “Did you see that? His finger twitched! Holy cow he’s alive in there!”
“I didn’t see anything!” Kendall argues back, watching the man’s finger very carefully.
“You weren’t looking!” Chase says, and then he’s reaching for the computer. “Must go faster, must go faster.”
“Chase!” Kendall scolds, and immediately tries to undo what he’s done by smashing buttons on her very delicate and precise machinery, but the lasers spin out of control, and she has to grab him and drop them to the floor to keep from being hit by one of them.
She hears one of the lasers powering up to full velocity and shouts, “If we survive this I’m going to kill you!” at Chase before it explodes.
“Warning: Fire Detected,” the alert system sounds as the sprinklers go off after the explosion. “Warning: Fire Detected.”
Kendall is in the process of coughing when she gasps from the burst of cold water that is raining down upon them, and she scrambles to her feet and slams the emergency shutdown button for both the lasers and the sprinklers.
Chase stands up beside her, waving smoke away from his face. “Alright, I admit it, mistake made, you can kill me.”
Kendall would shoot him an annoyed look, but her eyes are fixed in the middle of the room where the giant ice sculpture had been. Now it’s nowhere to be seen.
“Hey, wheres…” Chase begins, but he stops short as the cave man stands up from where the block of ice had been, both dripping wet from the sprinklers and singed from the explosion.
“Oh my,” Kendall says quietly, but then the caveman sees them and drops into fighting position. He lets out a loud shout, looks around frantically, and then runs right at them.
Kendall squeals as she ducks and covers, but it turns out not to be necessary as he jumps right over them and heads for the exit.
“Kendall, seal the doors!” Chase calls, going after him, and Kendall enters the command into the computer as fast as she can.
The doors to the museum slam shut, and then the tunnel entrance out the back, and finally the doors that lead out to the roof seal off. The caveman pounds on the door he had been heading for angrily, and then he turns and runs towards another.
“Hey, whoa, buddy,” Chase says as he catches up to the cave man, his hands held out in front of him, “It’s okay, we’re not gonna hurt you.”
“I’m sure that’d be comforting,” Kendall says under her breath, “If he spoke English.”
The cave man lets out a series of grunts and words that sound like gibberish to her, and then he drops to the ground and rolls around Chase.
“Holy cow he’s fast,” Chase says, running after him.
He heads back towards Kendall, who quickly skirts out of the way, but then the cave man leaps onto the table and, pushing himself up with incredible dexterity and strength for someone who has been frozen for the better part of a millennium, he jumps up into the metal rafters at the top of the base, climbing until he’s high enough that he can glare down at them from his new perch.
He’s probably declaring dominance, Kendall muses.
Chase comes over to her with his hands on his hips, and they both stare up at the cave man in the rafters.
“This,” she says quietly to Chase, so as not to upset their new companion, “Is all your fault.”
***
It’s a tense two days before Keeper finally comes back to the base, carrying a large chest and looking quite ruffled up.
When he opens the door, the cave man in the rafters bolts for it, and Chase has to wrestle him down to the ground while Kendall quickly closes the door behind Keeper to keep him from escaping.
“Oh, my goodness,” Keeper says, watching Chase get his butt handed to him by the scared cave man, who, after subduing Chase, runs away and climbs back into the rafters.
“Keeper,” Kendall says, and she’s never been gladder to see anyone in her life, “Thank the grid you’re back.”
“I see you’ve had an eventful time while I was gone,” he says, taking in the mess that was once their base of operations.
“We found a cave man,” Chase says, pushing himself to his feet and dusting off, “A very angry, very strong cave man.”
“I see,” Keeper says, and he walks towards the cave man’s perch. He sets the chest he is carrying down on a table, and holds his staff out. “Yes, he is quite a fine specimen of Homo neanderthalensis, truly an extraordinary find. How in the world did you find him alive?”
“Technically he was frozen,” Kendall says, and she shoots Chase a nasty look, “Until Chase decided he had to be freed.”
“I did say you could blame me,” Chase agrees, nodding, “This is all my fault, completely true.”
Something about the way he just takes her admonishment with no argument makes her want to give him less of a hard time. “And he’s alive because he bonded to the Blue Energem.”
“Really?” Keeper says, surprise evident in his voice, “Amazing.” Then he lets out a series of grunts and mish-mashed words upward to the ceiling, and the cave man just freaks out.
He jumps down from the rafters, talking a million miles a minute at Keeper, coming towards him and embracing him, gesturing wildly. Keeper barely gets a word in edgewise as he tries, in what is apparently the cave mans language, to calm him.
“My son,” Keeper says in English, lifting his staff, “All will become clear, one moment my son.” Keeper gently touches his staff to the cave man’s head and then taps it on the ground.
“Keeper speaks, erm, prehistoric?” Chase whispers to her, and Kendall shakes her head fondly.
“Apparently,” she says, crossing her arms and deciding she shouldn’t be surprised by anything ever again.
“There, now,” Keeper says, and he gently places his hand on the cave man’s shoulder, “My name is Keeper. These lesser species are my friends, Kendall and Chase. I promise they are friends, and mean you no harm. What may we call you?”
The cave man glances over all of them slowly, his eyes more alert and less frantic than before, almost more human. “Koda,” he says slowly, his mouth working at the new words, “Name Koda.”
***
Keeper had used the power of the Blue Energem in combination with his own powers to bring the cave man called Koda literally up to speed with modern times.
While instilling a basic understanding of modern language into his head, Keeper had also encouraged the evolutionary processes his body had been putting off because of being frozen, and he spends a good week doing nothing but eating and sleeping as his appearance changes rapidly.
“Is this a good idea?” Kendall wonders, watching Koda put away his fifth Bronto Burger since waking up 10 minutes ago. “I mean, I know we need him, but is it fair of us to just… force all this on him? He’s essentially going through several thousand years of evolution in a few days, not to mention everything else he’s been through already.”
“I have faith that Koda is capable of handling the task that has been given him,” Keeper says confidently, “The Blue Energem would not have chosen him otherwise.”
Koda passes out again after burger number six.
While Koda undergoes the necessary changes to catch up with modern humans under Keepers close supervision, Kendall finally gets around to inspecting the chest Keeper had brought back with him from his mission.
It’s encrusted in ancient calcifications and petrified dirt, and it’s very finely decorated.
“What’s that?” Chase wonders, watching her run scans on it.
“Some sort of ancient stone chest,” Kendall says, dusting it off gently with a brush to read some of the symbols, “Based on the region Keeper found it in, it could date back as early as the 12th century, around the time the Aztec’s would have been coming into power in that region. These symbols look very similar to some of the well recorded ones from popular temples, and if I’m right they’re protective in nature.”
“Whoa,” Chase says, backing up, “Are you sure you want to be messing with ancient Aztec curses?”
Kendall smirks at him. “You don’t really believe in that, do you?”
“You’re the one who came to me and told me aliens were real and they killed the dinosaurs,” Chase says skeptically, “Would I be crazy to be a little bit wary of things like this?”
Kendall hums at him, but she keeps working on the chest.
“You think there’s an Energem inside?” Chase wonders sometime later, when she’s taking detailed pictures of the chest with the museum equipment.
“It’s very possible,” Kendall says, smiling, “I’m getting some very strong readings that match Energem signals.”
“Then… why don’t you open it?” Chase wonders, frowning.
Kendall shrugs. “Opening it could destroy the chest. I just want to make sure I’ve got it all documented before I damage it.”
Chase makes clucking noises, like those of a chicken.
Kendall glares at him, just as Koda comes running over to investigate the clucking sound.
“Me hear buckbuck bird,” Koda says, eyes wide, “We must hide. Buckbuck bird very dangerous.”
Kendall and Chase exchange a look. “You mean a chicken?” Kendall wonders.
“Chicken?” Koda repeats slowly, and Kendall nods. “Chicken is size of full man, razor sharp beak, very fluffy?”
Chase cracks up laughing. “No, mate,” he says, clasping Koda on the shoulder, “Chicken’s are tiny little things. Most of us eat them for dinner. They sound like this,” Chase says, and he demonstrates the sound of a chicken again.
“Chicken small?” Koda asks for confirmation.
Chase holds up his hands a foot apart. “Maybe this big.”
Koda nods approvingly. “Buckbuck bird come down in world while Koda sleeping.”
Both Chase and Kendall crack up laughing, and Koda looks at them confusedly like he usually does.
“Come on, Kendall,” Chase says after a moment, gesturing to the chest, “Don’t be a Buckbuck bird. Open the chest.”
“It sounds to me like Buckbuck birds were pretty fearsome creatures,” Kendall says, to which Koda nods vigorously, “But okay. Let’s crack it open.”
With a tiny chisel, Kendall carefully begins to pry the top of the chest from its base. It takes her a few minutes, but finally the lid starts to loosen, and with a deep breath and an encouraging look from Chase, she lifts it off.
Inside is the Pink Energem.
Breathlessly, Kendall reaches for it, her heart beating a million miles a minute in her chest. Just as her fingers get close enough to touch it, the Energem begins to vibrate. It glows Pink for a brief second, and then it… it hops out of Kendall’s reach to the other side of the chest.
“What the,” Kendall says, confused, and she tries again to grab it. Again it hops out of her reach, avoiding her. Frustrated, Kendall uses both hands to try and capture it, but instead it bounds itself out of the chest and flies over to the crystal dock, where Chase and Koda’s Energem’s are locked in, but before it locks into place it suddenly stops and falls to the floor.
“Ooooh,” Koda says, watching it with awe, “Pink Energem not like you.”
“That’s an understatement,” Chase agrees.
“I don’t understand,” Kendall says, walking over to it, “The Pink Energem is supposed to be mine. I’m supposed to be the Pink Ranger!”
She reaches down to pick up the crystal, and while it doesn’t bound away from her this time, nothing happens when she does grab onto it. There is no rush of power, no glow from bonding. It just sits there in her hand, looking as annoyed as a crystal can look.
“I guess not,” Chase says, coming over to her and placing a commiserating hand on her shoulder.
Kendall sighs before closing her hand over the crystal and stomping away.
***
Koda starts acting strange after that.
Kendall is devoting her time to analyzing the Pink Energem and trying to figure out why in the world it won’t bond to her. Keeper had tried to talk to her about it, assuring her that there were still many more Energem’s to be found, and that perhaps Pink was not destined to be hers, but she had waved him off, and he knew better than to try and force the issue against her stubbornness. He had retreated to his own section of their lair to “let her find her own path”.
She had always known she was going to be Pink. Even as a little girl, playing games with her friends, she had been pink. Then witnessing the near end of the world shortly after, watching the pink ranger do battle, it had solidified her position. She had changed her last name to honor a fallen pink ranger when she was 18, since her father’s last name wasn’t something she wanted to keep anyway.
So Kendall is maybe acting a little less than sane while she tries to find a way to force the Pink Energem to like her, when Koda starts acting… strange.
He comes to sit by her while she works, but he’s generally very quiet while he observes, so Kendall doesn’t mind. It’s when he leans in close to her shoulder and… smells her? That’s when she jerks away and stares at him disapprovingly.
Koda gives her an innocent smile and then stands and skips away.
Kendall stares after him with a questioning look, but she eventually brushes it off.
That is until the next day when she finds a torn up piece of lawn sod, weeds and all, sitting on her desk next to her computer.
“What in the world?” Kendall wonders, staring at the dirt.
Koda drops from the ceiling and Kendall starts before she remembers it’s him, and mumbles a curse under her breath. “Koda, you need to stop doing that,” Kendall says, but Koda just gestures to the large piece of grass on the table.
“Is for you,” Koda says, and Kendall looks between Koda and the sod once before trying to smile.
“Thank you?” Kendall says, wondering if this is some sort of custom from his tribe.
“Chase say, ‘Flower cheer girls up’, so I bring flowers to Kendall,” Koda says, and suddenly Kendall isn’t annoyed so much as amused. She needed to make it more clear to Chase that he has to be careful what he says around the cave man.
“Oh,” she says, catching sight of the dandelions, “Thank you, Koda, but these aren’t flowers. They’re weeds,” she explains at his confused look.
Koda’s face falls, and his arms drop down to his sides. He looks so hurt at the idea she doesn’t like it that she sighs, picks one of the dandelions and holds it up to her nose. Koda smiles, and she smiles back at him, and then she sets the dandelion by her computer.
“Could you maybe take this and put it back where you found it?” Kendall wonders, gesturing to what is probably a missing piece of the museum lawn.
Koda nods, picks up the sod, and then sprints away.
***
Kendall knows something is wrong the moment she walks down into the lab, both from the way Chase is red in the face from laughing, and from how nervous Koda looks.
She realizes how very wrong when she smells and then sees the large fish strewn across her desk.
“Why,” Kendall says, ready to yell at the giggling Black Ranger, “Is there a dead fish in my sterile work space?”
Chase holds up his hands, giggles some more, wipes at his eyes, and then holds up his hands again. “Don’t be mad,” he says, snickering, “I promise you’re gonna think it’s funny. Koda,” Chase says, nudging Koda towards her and giggling madly, “Go ahead.”
Koda looks very nervous, but at Chase’s prompting he walks towards her.
“Koda wonder,” he starts, and then he hesitates, looks back at Chase for reassurance, and then starts again. “Koda wonder if Kendall be Koda’s mate.”
Kendall’s mouth drops open. Behind Koda, Chase falls off his chair and pounds his fist against the floor while he laughs.
“Koda lose family,” Koda continues, ignoring Chase, “And Kendall have very nice--” he gestures to what she assume are her hips “--so Koda begin display of manhood.”
Kendall tries to form words, but she is completely at a loss.
“Koda good hunter,” Koda continues, gesturing to the fish, “And can build strong house.”
Chase is laughing so hard he might suffocate, and right now, Kendall would do nothing to save him.
“Oh, Koda,” Kendall finally says, pushing her glasses up her nose seriously, trying in every way to look remorseful, “No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No-o.”
Koda looks heartbroken, and Kendall tries to figure out how she’s going to explain modern concepts of sexuality to a cave man.
“Oh,” Keeper says, as he joins the group from wherever it is he’s been hiding, “Are we having fish for dinner?”
Chase’s guffaw drowns out Kendall’s groan.
***
“Okay, Koda,” Kendall says, opening up the children’s book she had found in the museum library and handing it to him, “I’m going to try and be as accurate as I can, while making this simple.”
Koda looks down at the book and then back up at Kendall expectantly. Keeper is sitting next to him, and he, too, looks mildly interested in whatever Kendall has prepared, but he also just looks amused. If she wasn’t so uncomfortable being alone with Koda right now, she’d kick both Keeper and Chase out.
“It has nothing to do with you,” Kendall assures him again, patting his shoulder. She gets up and stands next to Chase. “Okay, Koda, what do you notice is different about me and Chase?”
Koda considers this. “Well,” he says, tilting his head, “Chase funnier.”
Chase giggles, and Kendall smacks him in the side. “No, Koda, physically.”
Koda nods at her. He furrows his brow while he thinks and finally says, “You short.”
Keeper stifled a giggle, Chase cracks up again, and Kendall decides to ignore them. “I’m a girl,” Kendall says, gesturing to herself, “I’m what’s called biologically female.”
“Biolegically female,” Koda tries out the words and bumbles them. Keeper points down to the book, with the little picture of a pink girl, and Kendall waits for them to look back at her before continuing.
“Yes, okay,” Kendall continues, “Chase is a boy. He’s biologically male.”
Koda looks between them, still seemingly confused.
“Now, there are more kinds of people than just male and female,” she tries to explain, and Chase rolls his eyes.
“Maybe we should save gender nonconformity for lesson two,” Chase suggests, and then he wiggles his eyebrows, “After we convince the cave man not to jump you.”
Kendall resists the urge to smack him again. “Okay,” she agrees, “Let’s just stick to the basics for right now. Koda,” she says slowly, “Some girls like boys, and some boys like girls. It’s called sexuality. But there are some boys who also like boys.”
As she gestures to Chase, Koda’s eyebrows lifts slightly, like he’s intrigued. He looks down at the book and flips the page, looks over the little blue boy symbol and the pink girl symbol again and then looks back up at Kendall.
“And there are some girls who like girls,” Kendall continues, gesturing to herself. “And there are some people who like both girls and boys, and some people who don’t like either. It’s very complicated, and every person is different. Koda, I’m a girl who doesn’t like boys.”
“So…” Koda says, looking down at the book again, and then back up, “Kendall not like Koda because he boy?”
“Precisely!” Kendall says, throwing her hands up excitedly. “Yes, that is exactly it. If you were a girl, Koda, I would be very interested. I’m sorry.”
Koda nods at her, but then he frowns. “But, if Kendall not be Koda mate,” he says, looking from her to Chase and then to Keeper, “Kendall can be… still Koda family?”
Keeper smiles at Koda and places a hand on his shoulder. “There are many different kinds of family, Koda,” he tells him, “And not all of them require familial ties.”
Chase lets out the little happy sigh, like he’s amused, relieved, and emotionally touched at the same time, and Kendall shoots him a glance before she nods at Koda. “Yes, Koda,” Kendall agrees, “We are still family.”
Koda smiles brightly, and then he stands up and hands her the book back before clasping both her and Chase on the shoulders. He nods at them, and then he turns and walks away, leaving them standing there watching after him.
“I never considered that cave men wouldn’t have some concept of gender,” Chase muses, and Kendall finally lets herself giggle, amused.
“I think you may want to practice that speech for the next cave man we might find,” Keeper teases them, standing from his own place, “Though I for one would be very much interested in a larger study of human gender concepts.”
“I’m just glad he took that so well,” Kendall says, glancing down at the book in her hands, “I wish coming out to my real family had been so easy.”
***
The more Koda becomes acclimated to his new time, his new home, and his new family, the more Kendall worries about his safety.
There isn’t much she can do to protect him, seeing as he’s a ranger and is bound to be put in dangerous situations time and time again, but she does what she can.
Aside from making sure he eats a balanced diet (instead of just Bronto burgers, as he’d have it), and making sure he has all the things he needs in his cave, she creates him an identity.
It’s easy enough to use the skills she’d acquired during her late nights in the computer lab in college to hack into the social security database (and okay, having the grid connected to her computer doesn’t hinder her), and she picks a social security number issued to an infant in 1994 who died shortly after. The number hasn’t ever been used, at least not until Kendall starts filling up its profile with Koda’s new information.
She gives him a birthday (Koda said he had been born under the seventh moon, which Kendall extrapolates to mean sometime in July), and fills in all the necessary fields with things that won’t trigger red flags. She decides on ‘Asian/Pacific Islander’ for ethnicity, and genders him as male.
When she gets to his name, though, she hesitates, and sits back in her chair, considering.
She doesn’t realize how long she’s been like this until Chase comes over and waves a hand in front of her face.
“What are you doing?” He wonders, nodding at her computer before crossing his arms and hitching his hip up on her table.
“Making Koda legal,” she says with a grin.
Chase takes a closer look at her screen. “Okay,” he says after a moments reading, shaking his head, “If you could just do this, then why did we get married? I mean, I still stand by my hot bod but-”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it would be sneaking you into the country with falsified documents? Especially since you already existed. Koda has no records and no identity at all. You we had to do legally,” she says, tapping her mouse, “But Koda is easy enough to pencil in the cracks.”
Chase hums. “What if you get caught? Isn’t this a felony?”
“There are approximately 41 million immigrants in the United States,” Kendall explains, already having done the math on this before she made the decision to hack into the database, “About 19 million of which are naturalized citizens. The social security administration employs 62,000 people, but let’s go ahead and be generous and add in ICE, which employs something like another 20,000 people. That’s something like 500 active cases per employee per year, with that number increasing exponentially, and with all those cases, no one is going to be looking at an active number issued to a natural born US citizen back in 1994.”
Chase’s eyebrows have risen during her speech. “Do you have any worldly idea how scary you are?”
Kendall smirks. “Yes.”
Chase chuckles. “Okay, so, where was Koda born?”
“I’m not worried about that,” Kendall says, pointing to the screen, “But I do need to come up with a last name for him.”
“Hmmm,” Chase says, and then shrugs, “You could give him mine. He won’t care.”
Kendall gives him a look. “Okay, that would raise flags,” she says, “You’re not supposed to have any family here, remember?”
“So what about yours?” Chase wonders.
“I was going to make something up,” Kendall corrects, but then she purses her lips. “I just haven’t thought of anything yet.”
“Smith?” Chase jokes, and she does crack a smile before shaking her head.
They sit in silence for a moment, both considering.
“What about Keeper?” Chase wonders, and Kendall raises an eyebrow.
“What about him?” Kendall asks, looking around to see if their mentor is anywhere to be found.
“No, I mean,” Chase gestures, “Koda Keeper. Change the spelling, or something, but,” Chase shrugs again, like it’s the best idea he has, but Kendall tilts her head at the screen.
She types ‘Keapper’ into the box, and submits the form.
“Nice,” she says, nodding, and Chase nods in agreement before patting her on the shoulder.
“Very good,” he says, standing, “But don’t we have a dig we should be getting off to?”
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Kendall stands too, pulling the little box she keeps the Pink Energem in out of her desk and slipping it into her pocket. “The signal is intermittent, and nothing at all like the last two.”
Chase eyes her pocket suspiciously. “Really?”
“I just want to keep it close,” Kendall says, placing a protective hand over her pocket, as though she could keep his eyes from seeing, “Just in case it changes its mind.”
Chase shakes his head, but he says nothing.
***
The Pink Energem had chosen Shelby.
Kendall is beating the stuffing out of the punching bag Chase hung in the garage of her house. They have three new rangers to contend with, none of whom are particularly qualified for the job, but least of all their new Pink. The signal she’d seen had been a trap to lure out the Energems, and she had stupidly left the Pink one in the truck. Of all the ridiculous schemes-- stowing away in the truck and practically stealing the Energem--
Kendall hopes that destroying the punching bag will rid her of some of her rage and disappointment, but so far it hasn’t.
She doesn’t even hear Chase come into the garage until he says, rather loudly, “There are five more Energems still out there!”
“Don’t care,” Kendall says, breathlessly, “Hate her.”
“You don’t even know her,” Chase says, sitting down on a tool box, “That’s unfair.”
“Don’t need to,” Kendall continues, not dropping her stance.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Chase says tiredly. She was probably making too much noise for him to sleep.
“What?” Kendall rounds on him, dropping her stance, “Because I’m not a ranger I can’t handle this kind of a workout? You think I’ve never sprained a wrist doing this, or pulled a muscle, or broken a bone? I can fight, and I can kick any one of our new recruits ass’s, even with their powers!”
Chase looks bored. “I’m sure that’s true.”
Kendall huffs at him before unstrapping her boxing gloves from her wrists and throwing them down on the ground. She lifts a bandaged hand to her forehead to wipe the sweat away before starting to pull off her wraps. She comes over to sit by Chase on the tool box, and he scoots over to make room.
“There are five more Energems still out there,” Chase says, more quietly. “In the meantime you need to be nicer to Shelby.”
“Pink was supposed to be mine,” Kendall says, for what feels like the thousandth time.
“You keep saying that,” Chase says, picking up on it, “Care to elaborate?”
Kendall sighs, and rests her exhausted arms on her knees. “Do you remember when humankind set sail to explore the stars for a new earth?”
Chase furrows his eyebrows. “What, Terra Venture? That space exploration mission?”
Kendall nods. “I was just a little kid, but… my dad kinda checked out on me for a few years when I was young. I basically raised myself, with the help of the TV and the library. I remember watching this report on the GSA live channel, detailing a woman named Kendrix Morgan who had been killed during a mission. And something about it just… stayed with me. I think it was the look on her face in her uniformed photo.”
“That’s… kind of morbid,” Chase says, when she pauses, and she knows he’s prodding her to continue.
“Later, after Terra Venture found Mirinoi and settled, it was revealed that she and a group of people with her on the mission had been Power Rangers, and she had been the pink one. I saw her give an interview about what it had been like, and how lucky she was to have survived and…” Kendall drops off, unsure where she’s even going with this. She runs a hand up through her loose hair. “I don’t know, Chase, it doesn’t make any sense to me either but something just clicked. It was like in that moment I knew that I was going to be connected to the power too, and I thought it was going to be as the Pink Ranger,” she sighs, then bites her lip. “So when I was 18 I got a scholarship to Cal Tech, left home, changed my name to Morgan and never looked back. When Keeper found me it was sort of… a relief.”
“So… you’ve been operating the last twenty-some years of your life planning on being the Pink Ranger?” Chase asks, his face looking like he’s just tasted something sour.
Kendall nods, and then she laughs.
“Okay,” Chase nods, “I can see why you hate her. It’s completely irrational, but I get it.”
Kendall stands, picks up her boxing gloves and wraps and takes them over to a set of old, ugly drawers and puts them away.
“It must have been nice,” Chase says a moment later.
“What?” Kendall asks, unsure what he means.
“Going through your life with that much purpose,” he says, and she freezes, “I’ve never known, not even for a second, what I wanted to do or had any kind of plan for my life. So it must have been really comforting, knowing beyond a doubt what your destiny was. And it’s probably pretty scary not knowing that anymore.”
Kendall twists the old loose knob on one of the drawers in order to avoid looking over at Chase, who has hit the metaphorical nail on the head. It was a nail Kendall hadn’t been able to hit herself, yet.
“It’s still not a good reason to hate Shelby,” Chase says gently, and Kendall grinds her teeth, “She had no idea what she was taking from you, and I know that if you told her this, she’s put down the Energem in a heartbeat.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Kendall says, and then with a huff adds, “Obviously.”
“But she still would,” Chase says, and he stands, and heads for the door back to the house, “Which means you should give her a chance.”
***
Kendall hates it when Chase is right. It’s not so much on principle as it is the smug look he thinks he can shoot her any time she and Shelby spend time together.
Even with Chase’s interference, Kendall manages to become friends with Shelby, and with the other members of their team, too.
And he is right about one thing: There are five more Energems out there for the taking, and she hasn’t given up hope that one of them could still be hers.
When they aren’t fighting their new enemies, they spend most of their time in the base, which becomes sort of a second home for Kendall, even more so than it had once been. Tyler buys Koda some chalk, and the two of them draws bright pictures of dinosaurs and wild animals all over the walls. Chase installs speakers in the rock base and blares his music around the lab, and Riley’s stack of training manuals takes up residence on her far work table.
They spend so many nights there, the six of them and Keeper, that at one point she just forwards her mail to the museum.
This turns out to be a mistake, though, when one day Koda comes in waving an envelope around excitedly.
“Chase!” Koda says, coming towards them, “Look! It’s your Green Card!”
Chase’s face brightens as he reaches for the envelope, and the others come over to watch him tear it open. “Sweet,” he says, showing Kendall with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
And then Koda says, “Now you and Kendall not have to be married anymore!” and every set of eyes in the lab turns to them as they both give Koda identical looks of horror.
“Wha-a-a-at?” Shelby asks, a smile creeping over her face.
“You guys are,” Tyler hesitates, gesturing between the two of them, “Married?”
“Uh oh,” Koda says, looking suddenly afraid, “Koda not supposed to say, was he?”
“Welp,” Chase says, taking a big breathe and holding out his hand for her, “Off to the courthouse with us!”
Kendall lets herself smile as she takes his hand, and the two of them run up and out the stairs of the lab as fast as they can, pursued by all of their teammates shouting questions and demanding to know why they weren’t invited to the wedding.
Kendall lets herself laugh as she and Chase run, drawing looks from every person in the museum. They push through the front doors and out into the courtyard, the sun shining above them, their team following behind them, and, Kendall thinks with a smile, their adventure still waiting ahead of them.