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There are times, briefly, when Koda would just like to ignore his comm going off and get to eat his Bronto Burger in peace. Is that honestly too much to ask? He'll never actually do it, but he does take on giant bite out of it before he joins his friends in the back of cafe for whatever trouble Kendall has to tell them about now.
As much as he loves Tyler, Shelby, Riley, and Ivan…sometimes he just misses the quieter times when it was just him, Chase, and Kendall with no Sledge causing trouble—only the occassional trouble from Fury.
"Alien bio-signs in the city square," is, as expected, the report from Kendall.
"We're on it," Tyler replies and then they're off out the back door.
"Koda are you eating?" Riley asks as they jog along.
Since he's still chewing the bite, all Koda can do is nod which gets him a laugh from his team. He doesn't mind it, he knows that some of his ways are amusing to his friends. And truthfully, he likes making them laugh, especially since they're never laughing at him. At least, he's never seen it that way.
He does finishing chewing and swallowing by the time they make it to the square—he'd maybe swallowed a slightly bigger chunk than he meant to and oh, did that hurt going down. Still, he's able to devote his full attention to whatever alien menace Sledge has thrown at them now.
It looks oddly familiar, like something he's seen recently, which isn't something he can often say about the weird things they fight. He stares at it as Tyler and the alien mouth off at one another, frowning as he tries to place it. Something about its yellow covering and—
"You from monster movie," Koda exclaims, interrupting what was surely an epic verbal smackdown. Suddenly all eyes are on him, but Koda just beams and points, "Yellow guys, collect human things in monster world. You hunt Boo!"
Everyone else looks confused, but he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't remember the name of the movie or what the yellow guys were called, but this guy looks just like them. Big yellow body, some kind of suit Riley told him the name of but he doesn't remember, with a big round glass piece where the face should be. It's also got a massive tank of some kind on it's back connected to a gun it's currently loosely holding as it seems thrown off by his words.
"Koda," Riley says slowly, "Are you talking about Monsters Inc?"
"Yes, yes! Monster movie," Koda crows, so pleased that the green ranger gets it.
"Don't you know calling people monster's is rude!" the alien shouts with an oddly muffled voice. "I'll teach you some manners."
Instinct has Koda cartwheeling aside even as the alien lifts its gun to fire. What he's not expecting is that what comes out isn't energy or fire or anything else he might've guessed. Instead it's a stream of something and the alien is able to swing it to follow Koda a lot faster than he thought possible.
In an instant one whole side of his body is covered in a foul smelling greyish-yellow gunk. Worse, he can't feel or move anything that's been covered, can't tell if it's hot or cold or any sensation at all, and since he's mid-cartwheel he ends up collapsing awkwardly on the ground. He immediately tries to get up, but to his horror the gunk has sealed him to the ground.
"Koda!" his teammates shout in near perfect unison.
"Don't worry rangers, you'll soon join him!"
All Koda can do is listen as his teammates morph and take the fight to the alien. He tries once to maybe at least pull himself free from the ground, but it pulls painfully at his skin and he gives up. As much as he hates it, he's stuck, and worst of all he's mostly face down—only just able to get his free elbow and knee to prop him up so he's not breathing concrete.
Suddenly there's pink in his vision and Shelby's welcome voice. "Are you okay?"
"Not hurt, but can't move," he tells her.
"Okay, I don't think I can do anything about that right now," she says apologetically. "Relax as much as you can and I'll be back as soon as we finish this creep."
"Okay."
She pats his cheek softly and then she's gone and he's back to only being able to listen. It's just about the worst thing he can imagine. She told him to relax, but his heart is absolutely thundering in his chest and he can't quite catch his breath. It's odd because it's not like he took a hit to the chest or anything, but try as he might he can't seem to draw in a full lungful, can't stop gasping. His head is spinning, everything goes a bit muffled and gray, and he loses all sense of time passing.
Then a hand touches him and before he can think he lashes out.
"Whoa, whoa, calm down, mate."
And at the sound of the first voice that greeted him in this strange place and time, suddenly he's back to himself. He opens his eyes, not even sure when he closed them, and can just see Chase kneeling beside him. His friend is still morphed, but there's no urgency in his voice so slowly, ever so slowly, Koda manages to get his breathing under control. His friends are here, everything will be okay now.
"There we go," Chase says warmly, patting his back.
"W-what going on?" Koda asks.
"We've beaten that goo fiend and the brains are over there talking about what to do," his friend explains, and sits down beside him. "That goo has hardened into something that's, uh, pretty hard. Kendall wants a sample to analyze, which of course Riley supports, because they love to analyze things. Shelby thinks if we're careful we can chip it away slowly, but I gotta tell ya mate I think that's gonna take hours."
"The discussion has turned to how to move him to our base," Ivan speaks up, startling Koda. "I believe they have just about come to a consensus."
Sure enough, Shelby comes over moments later and explains the plan. She's going to use her drill to cut the chunk of concrete he's attached to free. Apparently the concrete is much easier to deal with than whatever the gunk is.
And he agrees, because what else can he do?
*
As Chase predicts it takes hoours for them to chip the majority of the hardened gunk off him. In that time they take great care to help him move as much as he can to keep his muscles from cramping. They can't end up getting too close to his skin for fear of hurting him, but enough of it is off that he can move again.
The only thing truly left is his hair, which—
"I'm sorry Koda, but I think we're going to have to cut it all off," Shelby tells him, biting her lip nervously as she delivers the news. "We don't know how long it might take Ms. Morgan to develop something that can safely dissolve that stuff."
"Oh, that…" he trails off, unsure how to feel about it. It's not something he's considered before and he really would have prefered it be is choices, but, "okay. Hair grow back, right?"
"That's right, and if it's any consolation, I think you'll be pretty hot wth short hair," she says with a sly smile.
"I second that," Riley speaks up from where he's resting.
"I third it," Chase chimes in as he drops beside Riley.
They're all exhausted from tirelessly working to free Koda and he loves them more than ever for it.