Tori so owed him for this.

Okay, so, yeah, he did say that he’d do this favor. And sure he could have asked some questions about it, but he had assumed it was gonna be something else. He assumed it was anything but what he was just about to do. It had always been easy for her to talk him into things. And now he was starting to remember why that wasn’t fair.

His heart pounded in his chest. His palms were sweaty. He was nervous. The only time he ever got this nervous was right before a jump. Just because he never got nervous like this any other time didn’t seem to be a good enough reason for him not to be nervous right now. He saw their eyes focus on him and a nervous smile tugged at his lips.

He was out of his element. Not really over his head, but definitely out of his element.

Dustin glanced down at his watch and checked the time. He could still delay starting the class another minute or so, even though it looked like everyone who was in the class was here. It didn’t take much for him to know that this was going to be a long class. He looked at the students gathered around, knowing that this was so not going to be as easy as he thought.

Tori owed him big.

They waited in relative silence. He wasn’t saying anything, not that he knew what to say to begin with, and they were quietly whispering amongst themselves about something. He felt that he had a pretty good idea what it was that they were whispering about. He tried to hear what they were saying, but he couldn’t. He guessed that wasn’t a bad thing. If they were sayin’ stuff about him being their sub, he didn’t know if he wanted to hear that just yet.

Looking down at his wrist once again to check the time, Dustin checked to see if he could hold off starting the class any more.

Nope. It was time to start.

Taking a deep breath he turned to face them, the small crowd of students, all wearing black uniforms with a distinctive blue trim. Water ninjas. This was a water class. Tori so owed him big.

“So . . . uh,” he began, “I’m gonna be subbing today for Sensei Tori.” He spoke clearly, knowing that they all heard and understood his words. Swallowing past the lump that was starting to form in his throat, Dustin watched as they all looked at each other, then at him, then at each other once again.

A tentative hand rose up and Dustin called on her with a nod of acknowledgment.

“Sensei Dustin, no offense because I think you’re a great Sensei and stuff, but you’re gonna teach this class? I mean, you’re an earth ninja and this is, well, not a first year earth class. It’s a first year water class.”

She had a point. She had a very good point. It was beyond him why Tori asked him to cover this class for her. The only thing he could think of was that no one else could and he was her last option.

“Yeah,” Dustin said as he scratched his head. “I know this sounds weird.” The looks on their faces spoke volumes. “Okay. It is weird. Really weird. But we can still try. I mean, we won’t know unless we try. I’m willing to give it a shot.”

Soft whispers floated on the breeze between them as they discussed his “proposition” among themselves. All Dustin could do was watch and hope that they would at least give him a shot. If anything the class would be amusing, and they might teach him a thing or two as well as him hopefully teaching them.

“So, we’re good?” he asked.

“Yeah. We’ll give it a shot,” one of the students said.

Dustin smiled as he tried to think of what he was going to do next. All that he kept thinking of was how grateful he was that this was a first year class and not a more advanced one. He walked a couple paces, looking at the ground, hoping to get an idea.

“So what did you guys do last?”

“Hey! Dustin!”

Dustin turned upon hearing his name called. He saw Tori running towards him, waving.

“Hey,” he answered when she was beside him, falling into step as he continued walking, heading over to where he was going to meet Shane. He smiled at her at first, but then the smile fell once he saw the expression on her face. She had favor face.

“What do you want?” he asked defeated. He knew Tori. He also knew that he never had a chance when she asked for something.

“What?” she asked. Once he turned to catch her eye her gaze dropped to look at the ground they were walking on.

“You have that look. That “I want to ask you for a favor” look.”

“I don’t have a look,” she argued.

“Yeah, you do,” he said with a laugh in his tone. “So what is it?”

“Nothing,” she said automatically. “I just wanted to see—”

“Dude, Tor,” he said interrupting her, “we’ve been friends for, like, ever. You have a favor face. I know your favor face. You have favor face right now. So just tell me what’s up,” he said as he stopped walking.

“Could you cover my afternoon class today?”

He knew it. Favor face. “Your afternoon class? Why can’t you teach it?”

“It’s Blake,” she said. Once she said that, he knew that there was no way that he could turn her down, Not like he would have been able to before she said that. “He’s at some track outside Blue Bay Harbor. We were going to go out later this evening after I taught that class, but I wanted to surprise him. So I was wondering if maybe you could—”

”Cover the class for you so you can see Blake,” he finished for her. “Yeah. I can do that.” He knew how much she looked forward to the times when Blake’s schedule brought him around here. Then they wouldn’t have to depend on phone calls. It was all the thanks he needed to see the smile light up her face.

“Thanks so much, Dustin” she said hugging him. “I owe you so much for this.”

Tori started to head back to where she came from, and he called out to her, “Tor! What time’s the class?”

“Two,” she shouted back to him a radiant smile on her face.

She pulled her jacket tighter around her. She was sitting at the table set up outside the Factory Blue Trailer. It wasn’t getting colder, but the light wind was picking up a little more strength. Checking her watch, she noted that Blake should have been back around half an hour ago. If she had to guess, she would say that he was just running late.

From what Blake had explained to her over the phone was that they were testing something. She had a feeling he said it was the new track, or it could have been the bike? She had to admit that she wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to what he was saying. She heard that he was going to be in town, and that was enough for her. He was going to be home. She kinda wasn’t listening to what he said after that.

The wind blew past her again, and again she wrapped her jacket tighter around her. She definitely wasn’t getting warmer just sitting here.

Two hands came from behind to cover her eyes as a voice gently whispered, “Guess who.” His warm breath caressed her ear softly, sending a shiver up her spine.

Smiling, she answered, “You’re late.”

“How can I be late when I didn’t even know that you were coming?” Blake asked, defending himself. He kept his hands over her eyes and she could tell by the sound of his voice that he was grinning when he added, “And you didn’t guess.”

The smile on his face grew wider as her eyelashes tickled his palms.

“Hmm . . .” she mused. “It couldn’t be my boyfriend, could it? If it is, he was supposed to be done half an hour ago.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be seeing you until five,” he pointed out as he uncovered her eyes and came around to face her.

“Originally I was supposed to meet you here half an hour ago.”

“Yeah, but you said that you had a class that you had to teach, so we agreed that we’d meet at five.”

“I wanted to surprise you. If you don’t want to see me until five, I could leave.”

“Don’t,” he said, taking her hand and keeping her from standing. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I’m happy to see you. I just wasn’t expecting it.” his words held an apologetic tone that she couldn’t ignore.

“You know, the whole point of a surprise is that you’re not supposed to expect it,” she said smiling. He did have a point though. They were supposed to meet for their date at five because she couldn’t make it before then since she had her class to teach.

He had told her that his schedule was free after two. She thought it was a great idea to get someone to cover her class and get to the track once he was done. It was going to be a nice surprise. And they would get to spend more time together. She thought it was a great idea. It just didn’t go as smoothly as she had planned. Obviously.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Okay.” She smiled and laced her fingers between his own, following his lead as he lightly pulled her down some unknown, unmarked path he was on.

“What happened to that class you had to teach?”

She looked at him and then off into the distance before she answered, “Dustin’s covering it for me.”

“Dustin? He’s covering your first year water class?”

“He was the only one who would cover it for me. And he can totally teach that class.”

“Tor, he’s an earth ninja.”

“It’s just a first year class. All he has to do is change some things around from his beginning earth courses. All first year classes follow the same basic principles.” Okay, so she was kinda reaching. But Blake and her rarely got to spend a day together.

She waited for his response, but when none came, she looked over at him. His expression said it all. “Sensei’s gonna have a talk with me. I know.”

“I don’t even think that a talk is gonna cover it.”

Tori looked around as they continued to walk across the grass. She wasn’t sure, but it almost looked like Blake was headed somewhere in particular.

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t you know?” That was all he asked as he squeezed her hand lightly.

Things had looked familiar when she was driving to the track earlier. It took her a while to place it, but eventually she did. This new track was on the site of last year’s Action Games. She knew where he was taking her, where this unknown, unmarked path he was walking on was leading. They were going to the Abyss.

“Blake, why?”

“Don’t you want to make sure that everything’s cool? That it’s still closed?”

Tentatively she nodded in agreement. It just didn’t feel right to her. She bit her lip as they continued to walk to the last place they had seen Lothor—the last place they had their Ranger powers. Did she really want to go? Did she really want to see it again? She wasn’t sure. But as much as she didn’t want to go, she was curious.

Silence continued between them as they drew closer to the Abyss. Part of her wanted to fill the space with conversation. The other part of her was fine with it, satisfied by the fact that he was here and they were together in the same physical space. Their time spent together was never long enough for her, never often enough. She wanted him around, in Blue Bay Harbor, but she also wanted him to be happy. And racing for Factory Blue made him happy.

That didn’t stop her from missing him. He was away a lot of the time for different races. And she had known about this when he told her that he had signed with Factory Blue. She also knew that it was going to be hard. She just . . . didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was. She missed him and he was hardly ever around. There were times she just wanted to share something silly with him, so she called and got his voicemail. Sharing it with his voicemail, or even when she managed to get him on the phone just wasn’t the same as sharing it with him in person.