Chapter Nine: Smells Like Teen Spirit

The Power Infirmary was located two rights and a left down the temporal halls. Intersections appeared at least somewhat consistent. Ren noticed they took exactly fifteen steps down the hall before reaching the first intersection, and they’d turned on that same intersection when they’d rushed here from the training hall. In time, perhaps the group could learn the layout.

“Behold, the Power Healing Pod,” said the castellan.

An almond-shaped container more than large enough for a full-grown man to lay in comfortably. There was only one, and it appeared to be the only feature of the Power Infirmary. There was no indication of a hatch or door on the pod.

“Guess we just need to make sure we only take one major injury at a time,” Haruto mused.

Miyu, of course, looked the most worried. It was her cousin Yuto, the Smalt Ranger, who was in the chamber after all.

“Is he alright?” Miyu asked the castellan.

Just on queue, the pod hissed. The faintest of creases emerged from a microscopic fissure dead center on the pod. The pod opened like a flower, revealing a fully-repaired smalt-colored suit.

“The Power Healing Pod will heal all injuries to your person and to your Power Suit.”

Yuto walked out of the pod. Immediately, he was embraced by Miyu as the rest of the group gathered around. Everyone, that was, except for Ren.

We’re going to have to work on team attacks, he realized, deep in thought. Just beating our targets to death with blunt weapons for minutes at a time was non-viable, especially if the beasts were going to explode in their faces upon defeat.

One thing was for certain, though: while before the group of five only had their shared non-school club status in common, now they were united in their new role as secret timeline guardians.

A bare section of wall sat to the left of the healing pod. The whole room was arranged roughly like a standard non-magical hospital, albeit at a far larger scale than the Japanese standard.

“Is this… a spot for a window?” Ren asked.

“Aye. Engaging viewport,” the castellan said.

The bare metal panel fell away, replaced with what the castellan referred to as an ‘exterior viewport.’ The transparent paneling was emphatically not glass, though it largely served the same purpose and looked a great deal like glass. It functioned exactly like a window and looked just like a window. Ren figured, close enough.

The exterior cell of the temporal fortress was fully visible amidst a technicolor void. They were looking right over the bulbous eight-sided Power Command Center. The squad joined Ren at this window, marveling at the sight. The structure was not built on a bluff or solid ground, but just sort of floated there. Were they in a nebula? Were they even in the physics-based, quotidian universe?

“We’re sure not in the old schoolhouse anymore,” Yuto said, evidently not feeling waylaid in the slightest from what had been crippling injuries mere hours ago.

Ren nodded. While this was seemingly obvious, just seeing the strange floating fortress in the middle of nothing really brought it home. They were small-town Tenshigurobu’s very own sentai squad!

“We should get back to the training hall,” Ren said. “Maybe stop by every day after school to train some more.”

Next time some tengu monster or Schattenritter or whatever these things came to town, the go-home club would be ready!

+++

School life resumed with the new week much as it had before the crew discovered their Power Pendants. Plenty of students had part-time jobs. Many more had clubs to attend after school. This was just some kind of sentai club.

Ren and the others attended their homeroom classes, the pendants that marked their status as Mahourangers affixed to their necks. Each pendant fit underneath their school uniforms, perfectly camouflaged. They weren’t about to get a dress code violation.

As that first day back after victory over the tengu wore on, Ren started to wonder more about the circumstances he and his acquaintances found themselves in.

“I keep expecting us to meet a more… permanent… face of this Umbral Whatever.”

He, Haruto, and Sakura were waiting out the lunch period on the roof. Most kids kept to their club-based social circles. Just so happened the go-home club now had a formal reason to stick together.

Something was gnawing at Ren. He pulled up his diamond pendant and pressed down on where that yen-shaped coin was embedded deep within.

“Hey, Castellan,” he began.

“Aye aye, transmitting, Kermes Ranger!” This response felt as if it emanated right into Ren’s head, as if it were his own thoughts.

“Got a question for you.” Ren stared out over the school sports field, where a class was about to head to the locker rooms to change into their uniforms. He cleared his throat before continuing:

“Why not pick one of them?” the Kermes Ranger motioned out towards the field. “There are plenty of athletic-minded clubs even for a small school like ours. Wouldn’t any one of them be better for this role?”

Heck, a preexisting club would come with better coordination. Athletes would surely be more effective in a fight.

“Protocol states that conscripts should come from a wide swathe of martial backgrounds. Especially karate, kendo, and taekwondo.” The castellan said this with a notable ‘pop’ next to each item, as if they were customizable elements added into a canned speech.

“Haruto does sports sometimes. I think Miyu had a single semester of archery one time,” Ren said, conceding these points. “But why not, like, go straight to the kendo club?”

“Modern human sports and school club activities are practically a full-time job! Why, there’s no time to patrol as a Mahouranger if you’re constantly attending to school duties!”

“Fair enough.” Ren shrugged, though the castellan wasn’t present to see him.

“I think Miyu and Yuto should be coming back soon,” Sakura said. “They said they were going to take their bikes by the shrine in the morning.”

Sure enough, the door opened and the cousins appeared on the roof as well just before they were all going to have to filter out to their next classes.

“There’s nothing there,” Yuto reported. “A big crater, sure, but the shrine custodians don’t seem to recognize it as something out of place.”

The cousins described the damage to the shrine. They’d all slain a score’s worth of minions apiece, but they left no traces whatsoever. Only that gaping crater remained.

“Amazing. It appears that damage we did when the tengu exploded has somehow…” Ren struggled to find the words to describe such a thing.

“—embedded itself in the very fabric of space-time!” The castellan interrupted, blaring like a bullhorn right into everyone’s minds.

“Gah! Give us a warning before you do that,” Yuto grumbled.

The newly formed ‘club’ hung out on the roof, four of the five gazing in the direction of the old schoolhouse that was now their ersatz headquarters.

Huh. Wonder if there’s roof access through the temporal fortress. Ren scratched at his chin. Like, if there were an exit through that liminal space, would we be able to reach the top of the building back here on Earth?

“Y’know, I kicked a football clear out of the school grounds,” Haruto said after a time. “Rest of the class went searching in the woods but I think I punted it clear to the sea.”

They were getting stronger seemingly just as a matter of course. Yuto regaled them with a tale of accidentally squeezing his hard wooden bento box into a clean, clear sphere. Haruko mentioned offhand that she’d practiced archery at home after the tenge mission and put a plain arrow clear through a solid cinder block wall. Left a minuscule hole like a laser beam. And that was just her practice set.

It would be something to test out when they had more time. Maybe next weekend. Further rumination was put on hold as the door opened once more.

“Oh, is the roof occupied?” Asked a foreign accent pegged to Tokyo-standard pronunciation.

Out walked Becca, the exchange student.

“Whoopsie, guess I’ll just go hang out under the stairs if my spot is taken~” Becca then added something in English that nobody understood.

“Hey, Becca-san. Want to hang out in the old schoolhouse somet—” Yuto’s invitation was ended with a swift elbow from Miyu.

Ren knew what Yuto was trying to do: check to see if the Temporal Fortress would form if unaligned civilians were present. Doing that with just one guest would come off as creepy, though, and risk their guest freaking out. Ren made a facial expression that he hoped came off as ‘leave that part to me later.’

Regardless, Becca went back down the stairs, oblivious to the go-home club’s shared secrets. Ren breathed a sigh of relief. While their matching pendants would not immediately be identified as some alien artifact, their classmates could still eavesdrop on the squad. It’s doubtful anyone would actually believe their talk of moral Courts or Temporal Fortresses, but they could mistake the talk for something far worse: they could be mistaken as chuunis! Becca’s command of Japanese was surprisingly fluent for a blonde foreign lady, too, so they couldn’t bet on a language barrier to provide the plausible deniability of confusion.

Keeping all this a secret would be harder than first thought.