Pulling open the door to the bay, Will stepped inside from the afternoon heat of the desert area that the bay occupied. Shaking the little bit of sweat that had collected in his hair, he let out a deep breath as he reached the slightly cooler climates of the indoors. Hearing a rattling coming from above, he quickly ascended the stairs to the next level to see what the commotion was coming from the direction of Tiger Zord. Recognizing two familiar faces, a smile crossed his face as he greeted them, "Hey guys, what's up?"
It took Lisa a second to hear her fellow Ranger's approach, immersed as she was in hammering pieces of the Tiger Zord's frame back into their proper shape. She happened to be taking a break to re-examine the angles when she heard Will speak, and popped up out of the massive machine to reply. Her hair was in complete disarray and she had a grease smudge on her forehead, but she couldn't have looked happier if she tried. "Ah, the superstructure's all out of shape," she explained, tying her hair up and out of the way. "That's the problem with this Zord type...the back struts like to bend themselves."
Hey yourself," Quinn greeted as he took the hammer Lisa had been used and handed her the better one he'd found while she was working. He waved to Will, then leaned under the zord to examine the work Lisa had just done.
Will tried to look to see what she was talking about, but only realized it was a fruitless venture, because he really had no idea. He smiled anyway, and shook his head, while he placed his hands on his hips. "I'm gonna have to have a talk with Angela about using my team members to do her dirty work. It looks good though Lisa, at least from what I can make out." He turned to Quinn, and offered a hand in the air as a high five. "How goes it man?"
Lisa looked positively horrified. "Don't you dare!" she yelped. "If you scold her, she won't let me fix it anymore...and then I'll never figure out how to correct the problem in future Zord models. And besides, she didn't ask me, I volunteered." She took the hammer from Quinn with a smile and a "Thank you," hopped back into the Tiger's open access panel, and resumed banging on the offending pieces of metal in earnest.
Quinn pushed out from under the panel he'd been under and blinked at Will. He glanced up at Will's hand and contemplated what it would take to hit it from his place on the floor. He raised an eyebrow, prepared to ignore the bag of worm that answering the question truthfully might bring up, "I've been fine. How the new team?"
"Well," he started, "it's pretty good. I've got Lisa backing me up for one. So I know all our stuff is gonna work. We've got some that are pretty serious minded people, but you kinda need that too. Its a good balance. But hey man, we could always use a Green Ranger too." He brought his hand up to the back of his head, and scratched for a second as he thought about the last time they were altogether. They had been assigned to their teams so fast it had made his head spin. Recalling an older memory, he added, "Say, its been awhile, and you guys are pretty good with the tech stuff now, but I seem to recall a time not to long ago, when you tried to fix an Alpha unit, and uh...there was that cafeteria incident. I think they're still pulling chunks of meatloaf out of that thing. So should I be worried?"
The hammering ceased and Lisa's blonde head surfaced from the access panel, pouting. "That's not fair," she complained, pointing the hammer at him accusingly. "That was one time, it was a minor malfunction...and I fixed it after that!"
"And it was mostly my fault," Quinn offered. He smiled, then smirked thinking to tease, "And besides at this point fixing an Alpha is a bit easy. Don't you agree, Will?"
Will shook his head, and laughed. "You know I suck at anything that aren't Lego Blocks, or Motorcycles." Looking down towards the floor where Quinn was so he could project his voice. "How's the LA team treating you? I still haven't met their Red yet." Looking over at the tools, he tried to figure out what some of the more exotic ones did. "Is there anything I can hand you guys while your in there?"
"If you can fix a motorcycle, you can fix an Alpha," Lisa declared. That probably wasn't true, but fixing just about anything came just as easily to her. "And yes, actually...if you could please hand me that clinometer over there?"
"It's good," Quinn said as he sat up, "Like my teammates." He felt himself begin to blush and hoped the dim lighting didn't give him away. He tilted his head towards the tool he had neatly stacked near them, "You have no idea what she just asked for do you?"
"Nope," admitted Will honestly, his hands dangling over the tools as he looked over them carefully. "No fricken clue. Umm...is it the one that looks like a crescent moon? Or is that one that looks like an oversized torque wrench?" Taking the moment to add some more thoughts into the mix, he offered, "I hung out with Staffan the other night at the pool hall, and he seemed pretty good. It seems weird that we don't get to hang out as much now."
Lisa giggled. "Not even close," she teased. Will had made a joke about the meatloaf incident; that made him fair game to be made fun of. "It's the rectangular doohickey with the dial on it. We used one in Equipment Repair class...or did you fall asleep that day?"
“Sleep? Wouldn't matter right, since we studied together," Quinn pointed out as he peeked at Lisa's work again, "At least I'm pretty sure my notes were detailed enough. Hanging out would be good though. Hate to think I'm only going to see you guys in the middle of a requires all rangers battle."
"Yeah to be fair guys, Quinn's notes were good, and it wasn't that I didn't have enough sleep," he said, "so much as it may have been that brunette two rows in front of me that day. Don't remember the class.....or her name. " Picking up the tool closest to the description that Lisa provided him, Will slowly moved over to the access panel and handed it to her. "Try this." Leaning against the railing, his arms were sprawled as he grabbed a hold of it, the bar pressed against his back. "I remember the girl thought."
"Quinn's got a good point," Lisa mused. "We used to hang out all the time...maybe we should go do something after this? I'm almost finished, I just need to double-check the angles." She brightened when Will handed her the device she was looking for. "Yeah, that's the one! Maybe you were paying some attention after all."
"Brunette?" Quinn questioned as he tried to think back to the class, "I think she dropped out. I vote for hanging out too. When we're done with the zord." It would be nice to just get caught up.
"I'm down for that," announced Will from his reclined position. "You know guys, I know we just started out as Rangers, and are best times are still ahead of us, but let's hope those good times that came before are going to stay with us for as long as possible." His smile brightened. "Including that time Quinn tried to get me to give him my training morpher so he could attempt to rewire it."
Lisa laughed out loud; that was a story she hadn't heard before. "Please tell me you didn't let him!" Wanting to finish up as quickly as possible so she could go have some fun with her former classmates, she ducked back into the Zord to re-check her work. Everything seemed to be in order, so she called out "I think we're finished here. Quinn, could you get in the cockpit and boot up the diagnostic program, just to make sure?"
"I wasn't attempting to re-wire it. I'd taken mine apart and put it back together and wanted yours to compare how alike they were," Quinn defended before he moved to get in the cockpit and start the program, "Okay, here we go."
Remembering both the Morpher Incident, and the Alpha Incident, Will took two VERY noticeable steps backwards in a manner that would catch the attention of the others in an attempt of humor. Inwards though, he completely trusted the other two Rangers and their ability to do what they did. He had found that with this group he had to be more trusting than he had been with others in the past, because on a daily basis they all put their lives in each others hands. I was very proud as he watched the two work to call the two of them his friends.
Lisa smiled as the machine's engine hummed to life, without any of that tell-tale rattle Angela had complained about. "How are our readings, good?" she called again. "Why don't we take it for a little walk and see if the hydraulics stay stabilized?" Of course, it didn't occur to her that making the Zord move was probably not a good idea while she was still sitting squarely in the middle of the machine's major moving parts.
"Everything looks good up here," Quinn told her, "But I don't want to squash you. Your red might retaliate."
"Nah, go ahead," Will joked. "Just make sure it isn't messy, I don't want to have to clean it up."
"Whoops..." Blushing and looking a bit sheepish, Lisa climbed out of the access panel, closed it behind her, and moved off the Zord to stand near Will. "I guess I got a little carried away there...I'm clear, Quinn. Try it now."
Quinn ran the zord through a careful series of movements, trying not to feel odd that it wasn't his zord, "Feels okay up here, anything I'm not noticing?"
Will smiled as Lisa joined and told her, "For the record it would be a bad thing if he did crush you. Besides the fact there's a crap ton of paperwork I'd have to do, we also couldn't ever replace you on the team." Hearing, Quinn's voice he turned to look at the Zord. If anything was wrong, it would be beyond him to notice. Of course his flew, and didn't have as many external moving parts.
Surprised, Lisa turned to face Will. She didn't quite know how to take a compliment, so she ducked her head shyly and fidgeted with the clinometer for a minute before finally figuring out what to say. "Thanks, Will...that means a lot." Turning her attention back to the Tiger Zord, she watched it walk and scrutinized the movements. "No, it looks good..." she confirmed. "Looks like the legs are back in balance, it's not tilting to the right anymore. I think we're done."
"Sounds good," Quinn commented as he put the zord back where it belonged and shut it down. Then he joined the other two, "So clean up and then...what?"
Narrowing his eyes, Will knew that as the Red, decisions like this would ultimately fall on him. Taking a deep breath, he exclaimed, "Chinese Food!"
"Fantastic!" Lisa exclaimed with an excited little hand-clap. Chinese food was one of her favorites. She still hadn't noticed the grease smudge on her forehead and probably would have gone out to eat without noticing it, had Quinn not suggested cleaning up first.
"Sounds good," Quinn agreed as he threw a clean wet rag at Lisa and went to gather up the tools.
"Is that place we used to go in town still open?" asked Will. "You know that one where its like Family Style, and there are paper lanterns and stuff?"
"I'm not sure," Lisa replied, working at wiping the smudges off her face and hands. "I haven't been out there since graduation."
"I think it is," Quinn said as the began to clean his hands as well, "If not we'll find something else."
Will once again stood apart from the other two, his hands on his hips, in a stance he would later refer to as the classic leader pose. Looking over the other two he asked them, "You guys ready?"
Finally somewhat presentable, Lisa put the rag away, took the tie out of her hair and gave it a good fluff. Looking at Will, she had to suppress a giggle. "Look at you..." she teased. "When did you start looking so much like a real Red?"
Quinn raised an eyebrow, "And here I thought he was going for Peter Pan. Guess we're ready."
Suddenly Will eyed Quinn, and Lisa very seriously for the briefest of moments while he added, "Leader Posing 101. I stayed awake for that one." Smiling, he placed his hand on Quinn's shoulder, and added, "Besides that's why the Reds take their jobs so seriously. We all want to be Peter Pan at heart. C'mon guys, let's go get some food."