Sanders Sides (power rangers au)

Chapter 77.

Roman dusted his free hand of the gown's ashes, before moving to help Virgil walk out to the lounge. He couldn't get the giddy feeling out of his chest at the knowledge that Virgil was awake again. Roman wanted to just carry him everywhere, giving him soft kisses until Virgil was cured of his injuries. However, he wasn't dumb enough to believe Virgil would ever let that happen, so he instead settled for helping the other walk over to the couch. Virgil plopped onto the cushion, moving his arms to cover his head with the hood from Roman's hoodie as Roman moved to grab some food for Virgil to eat. Patton had called Logan at some point, who was now on facetime and sitting in his room with Ella.

"Here you go, Virge." Roman said, handing him a warm cocoa. He remembered Virgil didn't like coffee, since it made him feel giddy, so he had made sure that they got hot chocolate packets while at the store today. Janus's mom had tried to point out that they didn't have a coffee maker, but Roman waved his hands. He was one.

Virgil took the cup in both hands, taking a moment to enjoy the warm mug before sipping it. Roman smiled, and set down the food from earlier. It was just a pack of croissant rolls they'd found, and they weren't the best ones ever, but Roman was pretty convinced he could have been eating literal dirt and still kept the goofy grin on his face. Virgil was awake, he was sitting next to Roman, and he was eating the roll like it was the best food on Earth.

"So." Patton said after a moment. "Do you want to talk about what happened? Or do you want us to fill you in on what happened with us first?"

Virgil looked at him with a mouth full of bread, before looking at Roman. Roman laughed a little, scooting closer and taking a small bit of his own food. "Virgil already told me, I can recite."

"Of course you can." Remus teased. Roman scowled.

"It's because I am the best." Roman said, puffing out his chest as Virgil giggled through the food and Patton grinned at them. He waited a moment, letting the others all settle, before telling them what Virgil had told him. "He said there was some monster that had a human face on its chest that attacked them. The-"

"Wait," Remus said, jumping up as he handed his remaining food to Janus and darted out the door. He came back in after a moment with the journal. "Janus and I read about something similar."

"What the fuck, dude." Roman fussed as Remus sat back down. "We agreed we weren't gonna read that without everyone."

"We've been a bit busy."

"He has a point." Virgil nodded, before reaching over and stealing Roman's croissant from his hands. Roman gasped, before getting up and getting himself another one.

"Fine." Roman conceded as he sat back down with a new roll. "What'd you read?"

"There was that set of rangers from some village-"

"In Japan." Janus corrected. "I looked it up."

"Right, yeah." Remus nodded. "And they mentioned that one of their rangers was attacked by a 'woman made from stone'." He used his fingers around the description. "And killed."

"Yeah, then the ranger came back- hang on." Janus stole the book from Remus's hands, flipping it to a certain page before reading. "'Our beloved Hineno Mako, had been turned into a yōkai. Her head now attached to a creature made from stone. She repeated her pleas over and over, as if to taunt us that we could only listen.'"

"The one-" Virgil shuddered a bit, and Roman moved his arm over the other's shoulder. "The one I saw didn't talk, and it had a camera where the head should be."

"We think that she was trying to figure out a way to control the ranger, but when it didn't work she just sent it to get the others."

"How'd they save her?" Patton asked, but Remus just shared a look with Janus.