Once a ranger always a ranger

Chapter 11 learning to work together

What I didn't know was that Tommy and Jason were in the same situation, but in a different part of town.

The next day at school Kaitlyn and I didn't talk to each other. I noticed Jason and Tommy going at each other. After we broke them up Jason slammed his locker shut and went to class. "Come on John, we better get to class or we're going to be late." I said. After school Rita sent down a shark-like monster. When Zordon told us about the monster I told Kaitlyn to stay out of the battle. "Really? You don't stand a chance because you're too slow. And too tense." Kaitlyn said. "Who are you calling slow and tense?" I asked. Jason called Tommy slow. "Tommy, Jason, Ariel, Kaitlyn, you must listen to me very carefully. You must put aside how you feel about each other right now and work together." Zordon said. "It's morphing time!" Jason, Tommy, Kaitlyn, and I said. We morphed into our ranger forms and the others were on standby. The shark got us. I helped Tommy. "We need a low ground attack." I said. "Great idea, we can catch him when he pops up." Tommy said. "That's the idea." I said. Meanwhile Kaitlyn was helping Jason. "We can see him in the air. We gotta catch him up there." Kaitlyn said. "Sounds like one of my plans." Jason said. "Not a bad idea for a newbie, eh?" Kaitlyn said. Tommy and I were right behind him when he disappeared which forced us to come together. He attacked us forcing us to work together. "We should combine our plans." Kaitlyn said. "Sounds like a plan." I said. We combined the plans and it worked. "Give the fish a break, will ya?" The shark said. "You should have thought of that before fish face. Trying to break me and my partners up." I said. "Untied we stand." Tommy said. "Divided we fall." Jason said. Then the others morphed and came to help us. We used the power blaster but it really did nothing to him because Rita made him grow a few seconds ahead of us while we were almost done with getting it together. We called in our swords and brought them together. We fought for a while and brought in the power sword. We defeat him after a few slashes of the swords. The next day Kaitlyn came up to me. "Hey Ariel, can we talk?" Kaitlyn said. "Yeah, is everything okay?" I asked as I turned to face her. "Look, I just wanted to say sorry about what happened between us." Kaitlyn said. "It wasn't your fault. We were under a spell made by Rita Repulsa." I said. Then Tommy and Jason walked up to us. "Kaitlyn, is it okay if we talk to Ariel for a minute?" Jason asked. "Yeah. I'll be in the classroom Jason." Kaitlyn said as she walked away. I turned to face them. "Okay, Ariel, we were under a spell by Rita. I wanted to tell you but I just couldn't tell you that Jason and I got into an argument because of that." Tommy said. "It was weird seeing you guys go at each other." I said. "Yeah, I was wondering if you guys wanted to hang out after school again today. You know, since last time, all of us weren't there." Tommy said. "Let me ask John during class and Kaitlyn at recess." I said. Then Jason went to his class. "So Tommy, remember yesterday when you came to talk to me and left after you asked me if we were still going to hang out at the youth center?" I said. "Yeah." Tommy said. "Well, you had this look on your face that told me that something was wrong. What's going on?" I asked. "Alright, let's just say that, one of my old friends is going to be moving away and I feel like we might not be able to stay in touch." Tommy said. "I know what that's like. I had two friends who lived on the same street as me. I would go over to their house to play with them all the time. But then after moving here, I lost all contact with them." I said. "What were their names?" Tommy asked. "Their names were Tabatha and Olivia. They were sisters." I said. "Were they twin sisters or was one older than the other one?" Tommy asked. "Tabatha was like one or two years older than Olivia." I said. "Did they go to the same school as you?" Tommy asked. "I guess that they did. Although I never really saw them at school except during recess and at lunch." I said. "Okay, we should get to class, or we're going to get into trouble for being late. You know how our teacher is." Tommy said. "Alright, let's go." I said. We went to class and I told John what Tommy told me while I was at my locker. "Wow, that sounds like it's going to be tough for him." John said. "Yeah, plus we know what it's like to lose contact with some friends. You know, with being the new kid." I said. "Yeah. So, about the whole hanging out at the youth center after school thing, what are you guys going to do?" John asked. "Just work on our homework and talk." I said. "Isn't homework supposed to be done at home?" John asked. "Maybe. Why do you ask?" I asked. "It's called homework for a reason. That reason being that it should be done at home, not anywhere else." John said. "I have seen a few other students do their homework at the youth center. So there's no reason why we can't do it too. You know, this could be like a homework group thing, we just have to make it work. I won't be able to do this alone." I said. "Alright, I'll give it a try." John said. "That's all I'm asking you to do." I said. Later that day at recess I walked up to Kaitlyn and asked her if she would like to come to the youth center after school today for homework group and just to hang out and talk afterwards and she said that she would like to. Later that day after school Kaitlyn and I walked to the youth center with John and Tommy. The others had to go grab something at home before coming to the youth center so we just told them that we'll meet them there. When we got to the youth center we went over to the tables by the juice bar. The others showed up as John, Kaitlyn, Tommy and I were getting our planners out to see what we had to do for homework. If we had any classes together at school we could all do the homework for that class together. Today in one of our classes we got the assignment to work on a poster about smoking and what happened to smokers. It's due in a week. Our teacher gave each of us a straw and we got to walk up and down the hallway just breathing through the straw. That was to show us what our breathing would be like if we were to smoke a cigarette or do something else called vaping. We have this thing coming up in the coming weeks called dare. It's a drug abuse prevention program that I heard about. Dare stand for drug abuse resistance education. After we got done with our homework I wanted to talk to them about the dare program coming up in a few weeks. "So, what do you guys think about this dare program coming up at our school?" I asked. "Sounds like they're going to be teaching us about drugs and stuff." Jason said. "It's not just that." Tommy said. "He's right. It's mostly just going to be about resisting drugs and violence." Kimberly said. "Yeah, and I think it's supposed to teach us to be drug free." Kaitlyn said. "My guess is that they hope that we'll remember everything from this program so that we stay drug free." Trini said. "Well then, I guess we'll have to take some notes during the program." I said while pulling out some extra notebooks from my backpack.