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Apparently, there’s a new ninja team.Cam hears about them first, because he’s Cam, and Shane is pretty sure he’s got a network of spies that would put most evil villains to shame. Or maybe ‘spies’ isn’t the right word. More like a network of super geeks who all happen to be in on the ranger secret and keep themselves updated about any weird happenings in the Morphin’ Grid.Shane is grateful for them, even though they still kind of scare him. At least Cam and Ethan do. Those two can talk for hours and he’ll only understand about five words of it.“Remember that random surge in the Grid back in ’07?” Cam asks, pulling up the data maps on his laptop. Shane leans in closer to peer at it. There’s a spike of red energy right around 2007, that he frankly doesn’t remember at all. “We thought it was just the Overdrive rangers being weird.”“The Overdrive rangers are pretty weird,” Shane agrees. “I still don’t get why Tori had to go over there to help them out. And why didn’t they ask the rest of us?”Cam ignores this. “Well, there was a lot of energy in ’07 on account of the five rangers getting their powers back to help out Overdrive. And they had that red ranger from the future… but anyway, we just got the same readings, except more.”He pulls up a later year of the data map, displaying five spikes of energy that definitely denote a new ranger team. Red, blue, yellow, white, and pink.“No green,” Shane points out, smirking.Cam looks a little disgruntled. “We haven’t had a team without a green since… Jungle Fury, I think. Well, and Megaforce, but they’re a special case.”“Yeah,” Shane says with a snort. “Kinda miss them though. Anyway, what’s this new team? Where are they based? Are you sure they’re related to that red energy? That was ten years ago.”“Yes, their energy signatures are a direct match for that one, we ran them through the system,” Cam says. Shane gets the feeling he’s purposely dumbing down his words from geek speak for him, but he doesn’t complain. “That’s the crazy part though. They’re ninjas.”Shane stares at him. “What?”“Look,” Cam says, pressing around on the screen until it zooms in on the new team’s energy signatures. “Their power source is ninja steel. That’s also their team name. And look at their suits.”Shane blinks at the picture Cam pulls up for him. Five kids – maybe they’re not kids, but all new ranger teams feel like kids to him – dressed in the telltale brightly-colored spandex of power rangers. They have sashes around their shoulders, and similar to his own team’s, their suits are all solid colors all the way through, except the girls have black tights under their skirts, like Tori had gray, and their helmets…“Shurikens,” he says in amazement. “They use shurikens.”“Power stars,” Cam agrees. “At least that’s what they call them.” He plays a quick video from a news outlet, showing the blue ranger yelling out his ‘elemental star’ attack.Shane narrows his eyes. “If they call them power stars, are they really ninjas? In fact, if they’re ninjas, how come they never went to one of the academies?”Cam smiles at him, and Shane realizes too late he’s walked into a trap.“That, Sensei Clarke,” Cam says in his driest tones as he snaps the laptop shut, “is what I want you to help figure out.”Shane heaves a sigh. There’s no use arguing with Cam on a mission. He’d learned that the hard way when he’d tried to get out of paying a visit to those samurai a few years earlier….He ropes Dustin and Tori into it, too, mostly via bribery. Hunter and Blake, he knows, are lost causes – Hunter has a readymade excuse as the headmaster of the Thunder Ninja Academy, and Blake is quick to jet off for some motocross race or the other whenever Cam tries to get them to do work.“Tell you what,” Blake had said the last time, “if you guys ever turn evil again, call me. Anything less dramatic than that gets put on the list.”The list in question was helpfully labeled the Fake Emergency List, and it detailed all of the various times one of the Ninja Storm rangers had gotten into a bind and needed to call the others for help. Including, but not limited to: Dustin getting trapped in the waterfall by some particularly mischievous students; Tori disappearing for a Retro Ranger Mission (as she called her excursions) and everyone freaking out about it for no reason; and Shane finding something weird at the skate park that turned out to just be a stink bomb but totally could have been an evil plot, guys.It also detailed who was called, who came to help, and therefore, who owed whom a favor. Hunter liked to use his favors to make them do paperwork for his academy. Shane preferred setting his students loose on his teammates for a practice duel (his teammates were talented, but some of his students were legitimately out of their minds and liked to pull stunts like suspending themselves in midair for an entire day to protest the treatment of fish in the lake. Air ninjas were insufferable when they wanted to be.)“But hey,” Hunter says when Shane informs him of this particular mission, “let me know if the new kids are any good. We should go into town together, rough them up a bit. Y’know,” he smirks. “Ninja style.”Shane is still grinning at the thought – he and Hunter hadn’t ‘roughed up’ a team since Jungle Fury, and he missed the way the new reds cowered under their glares until both of them burst out laughing and told them to chill out – when the four of them pull into Summer Cove.“So, what are we, like, looking for?” Dustin asks, stepping out of the truck and spinning in a circle to take in his surroundings. “A mysterious waterfall? Ooh, maybe their base is underground like the Dino Thunder rangers’ was.”“We’re not gonna find their base,” Tori sighs. “If they’re at all decent ninjas, it’ll be super secret. We’re just gonna hang around for their next battle and see what they’re like.”Dustin looks disappointed. “We can’t even help?”Shane claps him on the shoulder. “If you really wanna fight a monster, you can take one of my classes again – ”“Oh, no, thanks,” Dustin says quickly. “I love you, man, but I don’t trust people who can walk on thin air.”“Their last battle was a week ago,” Cam interrupts, walking over from where he had set up their sensors. “Monsters don’t usually go too long without attacking, so they should be showing up somewhere soon.”“And in the meantime,” Tori says, smiling brightly at the boys, “we can explore the town.”Shane groans. “You don’t need a surfboard from every city, Tor.”“I’m sorry, and how many skateboards do you own, Mr. I Bought A Skateboard In New York And Tony Hawk Signed It – ”“That was a momentous occasion, unlike – ”.He ends up ‘keeping watch’ (it’s debatable how much watching they’re really doing) in an outdoor café near the plaza where the rangers have allegedly had a few fights, with Dustin, the two of them splitting a pizza and musing on life and its various oddities.“Ninjas, man,” Dustin says with a deep, contented sigh. “Never thought I’d see those again. How long has it been since we were active, actually?”Shane has to work out the math. “Fourteen years,” he says, then pauses. “Wow.”“I know, right?” Dustin shakes his head in amazement. “That’s crazy, dude. And we were so young. We were like babies. I wonder if these kids are babies, too.”“Probably,” Shane says over a bite of pizza. “You heard them in the videos, right? They sound like teenagers. Hell, they could be our students.”Dustin’s face gains lines of puzzlement. “Yeah, but they’re not. What’s up with that? I thought all ninjas in the country had to go to some academy. At least in this state.”“I guess they’re not very traditional ninjas,” Shane says with a shrug. “Remember, the original rangers went off and became ninjas, too, for a while…”“Yeah, but,” Dustin snorts, “they weren’t really ninjas. They were just given the powers for a while. And then they lost them. We don’t lose our powers – our elements.”“We also don’t use shurikens to channel our elements,” Shane points out, thinking back to the new rangers’ element power stars. “And also – ”He’s cut off by an explosion. Within seconds, he and Dustin are on their feet, ready to strike. The monster comes from somewhere to the left of them and starts blasting at rapidly-emptying tables and chairs.“Hey!” Dustin calls, and is about ready to charge in and fight the monster bare-handed, when Shane grabs his shirt sleeve and yanks him back. “What?” he asks in irritation.“Shh,” Shane whispers, shoving him away from the center of the café and closer to the walls where they can hide in shadows. “Look. They’re coming.”Dustin turns to look, just in time to see the new rangers emerge from the other side of the plaza. There’s five of them, red, blue, yellow, white, and pink, just like in the footage and the data maps. They all stand shoulder to shoulder, imperiously looking down at their enemy.Red points his sword at the monster. “You’re going down!” he shouts with all the bravado of a newbie red. Shane feels an irrepressible surge of fondness – and kinship, maybe, as Red sprints off after the monster, moving so fast he may as well have been walking on air.“Should we help?” Dustin asks quietly, watching as Pink attempts a move with her sword that the monster anticipates and throws her off so she goes sprawling to the ground. “Do they need it?”“Don’t think so,” Shane admits, a little begrudgingly, as White goes chasing in after Pink, helps her up, and then kicks the monster right in the face. He pulls out his phone to snap a picture. “Text Tori and Cam. They’ll wanna see this.”.“They went that way,” Cam says after the battle, pointing the way his specially-coded GPS is saying.Shane looks at him. “That’s a high school.”“Maybe they’re high school students,” Tori suggests. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”“Maybe they’re high school teachers,” Dustin points out. “Like Dr. O.”“Well, either way, none of us exactly look young enough to be in high school anymore,” Shane says decisively. “And they could be anywhere in there. Or near there, if they have a connecting passage to a base somewhere else. Which means we’re at a dead end.”“Do we really need to know their identities, anyway?” Tori asks. “They’ll tell us when it’s time. The next Ranger Reunion party is only a few months away, and if they’re not knee-deep in some world-ending catastrophe by then, they’ll be invited. Somehow.”“I just wanted to know,” Cam admits, looking off at Summer Cove High School, “why they’re not our kind of ninjas. Why they go to school here.”“And ask them why they have no green,” Dustin supplies. Cam rolls his eyes, but doesn’t deny it.“We could sneak in,” says Shane dubiously. “But that feels like an invasion of privacy. For all we know, they might not even know that other teams exist.”“That’s ridiculous,” Dustin protests. “What kind of ninjas don’t know about Ninja Storm?”“Despite what your ego may have you believe, Dustin,” Cam says with a long suffering sigh, closing his GPS and his laptop, “tales of our adventures really only go as far as Blue Bay Harbor. The rest of the world loves living in their bubbles.”“Good luck to Summer Cove, then,” Tori says, turning her back on the high school to search out their car in the parking lot. “They’re probably gonna need it.”.A few weeks later, Hunter barges into his office at the Wind Ninja Academy, predictably without warning or invitation, and says, eyes gleaming, “I’ve got it.”“Got what?”Hunter slides his phone across the desk so Shane can look at the screen. “The Ninja Steel rangers. I think I’ve found them.”Shane looks down in bemusement at the article about some country star cancelling his tour. “I don’t follow. And you think you found them before Cam did?”Hunter waves a hand dismissively. “Cam just checks his data maps and sensors and whatever. I can find the real stories. And I put Summer Cove on Google alerts. So, this country star, Levi Weston just suddenly cancelled his world tour to stay in Summer Cove High School. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”“I guess,” Shane says. In truth, it probably only seemed weird if one was expecting something weird to happen in Summer Cove, which, aside from the presence of power rangers and monsters, really wasn’t weird at all. At least, nothing like Angel Grove.“Right, and he showed up in Summer Cove – ” Hunter flips a few screens over on his phone to show a different article. “Just when the gold ranger showed up. If I’m right… all we gotta do is find him, and find a color-coded group of friends near him, and we’ll find the Ninja Steel rangers.”Shane rubs a hand over his face. “Hunter, I have papers to grade…”“We can ninja streak there and back,” Hunter assures him. “Just to see. Come on, dude, don’t you wanna see the new Ninja red?”He kind of does. “Okay,” Shane says, a grin crossing his face in spite of himself. “One afternoon. Are we inviting the others?”“Nah,” Hunter says. “We’ll fill them in when we get back. And let Cam yell at us for it. I think it’s good for his soul.”.Summer Cove has not wilted under the siege of monster attacks when he and Hunter ninja streak over to check it out. Shane remembers Blue Bay Harbor after Lothor’s year-long crusade to kill them, the marks on the trees, the broken buildings, the people hurrying away at the merest hint of danger – but Summer Cove is still standing.“They haven’t been active that long,” he muses, as he and Hunter sneak into the high school. It’s still easy – a ninja never forgets how to slip around in secret, after all. “Nothing that bad has happened yet.”“Good,” Hunter says. “Let’s hope it never will.”They both know it’s a futile wish – the last team, Megaforce, had had to face the literal end of the world, and they had been in high school, too. But it’s a wish worth asking for nonetheless.“Where is he?” Shane mutters, scanning the lounge for their elusive country singer. “Have you considered that maybe this guy just wanted some peace and quiet, and here he has two ninjas stalking him across high school?”“Hey, life could be worse,” Hunter says defensively. “We could be two evil ninjas bent on world destruction, but all we want is to give him a fright and then be on our merry way.”“If he’s a ranger,” Shane says, right as Hunter says, “A-ha!” and points at the boy in question.Shane turns to look. Levi Weston stands out among the crowd of milling high school students – he’s tall, handsome, and carries himself with that air famous people do. Reminds him of Blake, just a bit. And when he peers through the other students a moment longer, he notices there are five of them who aren’t just gravitating around Levi, but actually talking with him, properly. Like friends.“Red, blue, yellow,” Shane murmurs to himself, eyes flicking from shirt to shirt. “White, pink, gold. Damn.”Hunter grins. “Cam is gonna be so pissed I figured it out before him.”“Forget that,” Shane says, shoving his elbow at Hunter’s side. “They’re on the move. Come on, let’s go.”Quieter than shadows, the two of them slide against the wall, following the six teenagers as they exit the student lounge – and hopefully go somewhere other than their classes. Shane feels only a little bad about stalking them like this, but he has it on good authority that his team had been stalked, too, and well, it’s only fair to pass the tradition on.They’re halfway down an empty hallway, when Red stops suddenly. “Hey, guys, I think I forgot something,” he says. “Go on without me, I’ll be right back.”The others nod and head off down the hallway. Shane pauses and looks at Hunter questioningly. They should follow the others – by all rights, they’ll lead them to their base, but….Red presses a sword to his throat before he can decide. “Who are you and what do you want?”Shane is impressed, despite the fact that Red isn’t actually holding the sword like he’s ready to cut. He slips out of his ninja magic that had been masking his appearance and feels Hunter do the same.“We’re not here to hurt you,” he says, holding his hands up as proof. “We’re ninjas, too.”Red narrows his eyes. “How can I trust you?” he demands, and from the tone of his voice, Shane gets the feeling he’s been betrayed before.“Ever heard of Ninja Storm?” Hunter asks. The confusion in Red’s eyes only deepens. “Guess not. Uh… the Wind and Thunder Academies?”This lights a spark in him. “Oh, yeah, my dad used to tell me about – ” He stops and swings the sword from Shane to Hunter. “What’s your name?”To his credit, he keeps his other hand at his side balled up in a fist. Shane has no doubt that if he tried to run, he’d be met with a pretty mean punch to the gut.“Shane,” he says before Hunter can, turning Red’s attention to him. “I’m from the Wind Academy. My buddy here is the headmaster of the Thunder Academy.”Hunter nods at Red. “Hunter,” he greets, and holds out his hand. The boy stares at it in suspicion until Hunter drops it. “No? Okay, then. We’re not here to fight, we swear. Just wanted to check out the new ninja team.”“New?” Red asks, brow wrinkling. “What do you mean, new?”Shane trades a look with Hunter. “How much time do you have?”.An hour later, Brody has skipped his last class of the day and finally decided against fighting them, and is sitting out in a park near the school with them as they tell him about the legacy – his legacy, and theirs.“So… there’s a ton of ninjas out there?” he asks, sounding at once hopeful and disbelieving. “Like, whole schools full?”“Yup.” Shane offers him a smile, and finds it tentatively returned. “You six managed to slip through the cracks, though. Not sure how, our books usually pick up any child born with ninja abilities in the area, and the rest tend to find their way to us somehow, anyway.”Brody looks deep in thought. “Maybe my dad planned on sending me and Aiden – I mean, Levi – to ninja school when we were older, but then…” His face falls for a minute, but then brightens again. “Hey, did you know my dad? Dane Romero?”Hunter shakes his head. “Not at the Thunder Academy, I don’t think. He would’ve been older than us, anyway, so we could have missed him, but…”“I’ll check the Wind Academy records,” Shane says kindly, although he’s pretty sure he won’t find any record of Dane Romero there. But stranger things had happened.“My dad was the greatest ninja in the world,” Brody tells them proudly. Hunter coughs and Shane nudges him sharply. “He must have studied at an academy or something. I wish we could go there…”“You can,” Shane says immediately. “I mean, not right now – you have school, and you should be getting back to your team. But later. I’ll send you the address.”“Okay,” Brody says, brightening up. “That would be great. I always wanted to meet other ninjas.” His voice drops a bit. “The others – they’re great, you know, but they’re not born ninjas. They just got chosen by the Nexus Prism.”Hunter shoots Shane a befuddled glance, but doesn’t question it. “Right, well, bring your team along, if you want. There’s lots of cool stuff to do at the academies.”“I bet,” Brody says wistfully. “You’re right, though… I should get going.”“Say hi to your team for us,” Shane says, and Brody waves as he heads off to go back to Summer Cove High, no doubt ready to regale his teammates with a story about the weird new red ninjas he’d just bumped into in the hallway..Cam is annoyed, but not that much, and he manages to extrapolate the identities of the other rangers from the data points Shane and Hunter give him so he can update the Ranger Database.“Actually, I’m glad you guys went,” he confides in Shane, busily tapping away on the keyboard. “There’s always a prize up for whoever can get the newest rangers into the database fastest. I thought for sure Noah was gonna beat me – Harwood is closer, geographically, to Summer Cove, you know – but thank god you two are impulsive idiots.”Shane perks up. “What’s the prize? You have to share it, we helped you find it!”Cam levels him a look over the top of his laptop. “It’s first dibs on Billy’s new code-sequencing app before it goes live from Aquitar.”“Oh.” Shane deflates. “Never mind. But lucky you.”Cam smirks at him. “And the winner gets free pizza delivered to their home base by everyone else in on the pool for a whole week.”“That’s much better,” Shane says in satisfaction. “So, who are they?”Cam swivels the laptop so he can look at the rapidly generating data on the Ninja Steel rangers. “Red and gold are brothers, the sons of Dane Romero – I looked him up, by the way. No record of him in our academy. Maybe he studied at one in a different state, or even different country.”“Or didn’t study at all,” Shane muses, staring at the side-by-side pictures of Brody and Levi – or was it Aiden? No, Levi. “Brody said he was the greatest ninja in the world, but what did he do before the Nexus Prism?”“He seemed to have pioneered the discovery and research on their power source, ninja steel,” Cam explains. He presses a key and the screen shifts to an image of their megazord. “It powers their weapons and zords. It’s thought to be extremely dangerous, but he seems to have nullified its effects enough to use.”“Right,” Shane drawls, pretending he understands any of that. “Well, we never needed any ninja steel, or whatever. What happened to good old elemental powers?”Cam flips to another picture, this one of their swords and the shurikens placed inside them. “He also invented – or at least discovered the basic methodology behind – their elemental power stars. With these, they can use all five elements at once, and combine them as well.”Shane frowns. “That seems… greedy. Who needs all five elements? Just master one like the rest of us.”Cam snorts. “Indeed. Either way, he was an accomplished ninja researcher before his, ah, unfortunate accident. The other rangers are simply high school students chosen by the Nexus Prism.”Shane runs over the pictures of their faces next to their names: Preston Tien, Calvin Maxwell, Hayley Foster, and Sarah Thompson. All good, upstanding citizens with decent grades – Sarah, in particular, has an impressive resume – and no shortage of smiles for their yearbook photos.“The Power chose well, I assume,” he says with a smile. “I guess we’ll get to meet them all someday soon.”“Hopefully,” Cam agrees, closing his laptop. “Now, what I can’t understand… is that color scheme. Do they really need white and pink?”“You just want one of them to be green,” Shane accuses.“It’s a good color!” Cam protests. “It’s been in most teams since Zeo – ”“Megaforce didn’t have a green…”“Yes, they did, just because it was an upgrade doesn’t mean he wasn’t green – ”“You’re still mad because Overdrive and Jungle Fury didn’t have greens back to back, even though Jungle Fury had that spirit ranger – ”“But he wasn’t on the main team or even the sixth – and you don’t get to talk, literally every team has a red – ”“Because red is the coolest color!”