Precure Ranger! 2 (Patreon)

Precure Ranger! 2 - or ‘How I became the protagonist, the side character and recurring mentor to the Precureverse (It never ends!!)’ (PowerRanger!OC-MC into the Precureverse)

Sleeping yesterday took a while, waking up was surprisingly easier considering that I was excited to see if what happened was a dream or not.

I literally jumped up and out of the bed as soon as my mind gained control, a burning smile itching in my face as I looked into my bed stand and found the Morpher. It was still there- “Which means this wasn’t a dream at all!”

I was grinning like a madman, delighted by this turn of events. I was a Power Ranger- Well, sorta as I was now a ‘Precure Ranger’. But… What does Precure stand for? Something about the girls being Magical Ones?

Urgh! I was so excited! I took a look at the alarm clock-

AND I AM ABOUT TO BE LATE AGAIN!!!

Differently from last time, however, I managed to make it just in time to school and dodge any potential detention. Today was a good day, I thought to myself. Not only did I make it in time, but I also had the opportunity to pick one of those ‘school clubs’ to bolster my grades.

Out of all of those that I could pick, I settled for Soccer- I mean, Football. It was a bit weird to not think of the sport I was familiar with when hearing ‘Football’, but I could tell it was kind of important to not just call it ‘soccer’ nowadays.

European/Japanese Football isn’t the same as American Football. This much is clear, but I didn’t expect it to be so highly-paced and promoting less contact. It felt odd to have to be on the move so much without having to crash into someone. Odd, but not unpleasant.

In fact, I found it to be more refreshing and easier to handle without hurting myself.

As I got accustomed to the exercises, the coach had us go through a practice game, and that’s where I got fully ready for the kind of sport I was trying to play for. It was definitely fun and the teamwork was just sufficient to get some proper moves going through the match.

But it was during the mid-point that a ‘disaster’ unfolded, with one of the players on the other time clashing with me and the guy literally kicking too hard on the side and… sending the ball careening through one of the windows on the girl-only side of the Academy.

If it wasn’t mentioned before, Verone Academy was divided into four- female and male, but also Junior High and High School.

The ball went flying into the lab of one of those, but it wasn’t this that truly triggered a disaster. It was as the guy and I approached the window that we saw someone move out of it. Someone I quickly recognized and called out.

“Nagisa?”

As if I had struck her with something, the girl’s vicious look vanished into a big smile.

“Oh, hi Marcus and…” She stopped, her eyes widened at the other guy. “H-Hi.”

“Sorry for the window. Wasn’t looking.”

I frowned. “That’s a bit too dismissive, don’t you think?”

Dude just shrugged at me and walked away. “That was rude.”

“I-it was fine,” Nagisa quipped a bit strongly. “And… I have to go.”

I blinked in surprise but nodded nonetheless. “Okay?”

The girl left, but as the coach was giving a lecture to the dude that destroyed the window, I walked up to it and… I recognized another familiar face.

“Honoka, I didn’t see you there.”

The girl sighed, yet smiled. “It’s alright, Marcus. I was showing Nagisa an experiment when… Well, that happened.”

She was glaring a bit at the ball and I nodded in agreement.

“Sorry for the mess, the guy that did it is getting pulled by the ear by the coach.”

“It’s alright, it’s just that it could have gone worse here in the lab and…” She drew a tiny huff. “So, how are you?”

“I am well, trying my luck at football,” I answered, tilting my head to the side as I felt my brain depriving me of good topics. “So… Do you know what’s up with Nagisa?”

“You mean why did she just leave without saying a thing while we were talking about if we want to keep doing magical girls’ stuff or not?”

…I may be weak on social cues, but I can tell when someone is pissed.

“That was rude of her,” I remarked and Honoka nodded in agreement. “Still, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing she would do. She just looked at the guy that got the ball through the window. Fuji-something.”

Honoka perked at the name. “Fujimaru Shougo?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

“He is my childhood friend,” Honoka replied calmly. “Shougo is not exactly a boy of many words, so… did he say something weird?”

“Only gave a half-hearted apology and I was trying to get him to be a bit more truthful about it- then Nagisa tried to ‘justify’ that and then she left in a hurry.”

“I see…” The bluette hummed, nodding at my words.

“Oh!” I remembered on the spot, making her jump a bit at the sudden noise. “By the way, I thought about it and would it make sense that we had our phone numbers exchanged in case we aren’t together and a monster is attacking?”

Honoka raised an intrigued look and then nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

I left as we were done exchanging numbers, and for a time I thought Nagisa would reach out for me once school was over to do the same as I asked Honoka to bring it up to her before the school day was finished. But that didn’t happen as she just left in a hurry, and I kind of… thought it was something I did or said.

I mean, the way this all happened was so weird that I just couldn’t understand what was up with her. Despite me not knowing, I decided to adopt an ‘advice’ dad gave me ages ago: if a woman is upset, and you don’t know why, you just say ‘I am sorry’ and then deduce what is going on from what comes after that.

All was well once I was back in my room, finishing my homework in record time and… resting on my bed, looking at the Morpher with giddy eyes. It was still insane what happened yesterday and I thought that the next fight was going to be cooler or something.

Turns out that these sorts of battles are not necessarily progressively tougher. Most of those were not.

In this particular case, as I was alerted by my Morpher and then by Honoka, someone had started to drain electricity from the city. We were able to find the source of the disturbance on top of the local mall. A monster had taken over a vacuum cleaner and was literally ‘sucking all electricity around’.

By the time I got there, the girls were already transformed and struggling a bit as the monster was quite in fact using its suction function to pull them left and right, separating them for a time.

I managed to get a nice opening shot on it as I transformed, jumped above it and then used my Dragon Dagger to cut into it. I almost managed to cut it in half but- I wasn’t done just yet.

“One last push!” I exclaimed and I saw Nagisa jump up to help me with this.

“Gotcha!” She returned just as loudly as we both kicked the monster down to the roof, causing it to fully split in half and then dissipate.

We soon landed in front of Honoka and… our transformations vanished.

“That was sudden,” Honoka hummed, looking around. “Do you think that it was Pisard?”

“I bet he was that guy,” Nagisa nodded in agreement.

It was at that moment that I realized this was a chance to clear up some air.

“Also, Nagisa.”

“Hm?” She turned to look at me.

“I wanted to… apologize, you know. I mean when you just left, so if it was something I said or done, then I want to-”

“I-It wasn’t you,” She admitted, sounding a bit mortified at the notion. “It wasn’t you, Markus. I was just being… silly. And it was rude too-”

“Very rude,” Honoka interrupted. “You left without saying anything.”

“S-Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

…

“Is this about that Fuji-guy?”

My question was met by a blush from her. “N-No.”

Honoka frowned, giving me a knowing look.

“Y-Yes, I just…”

“Want to be his friend?” I asked, not catching up with what Nagisa was up to, but I could sense I may have said the wrong thing from the oddly ‘flat’ look Honoka gave me.

“Y-Yes! That’s it, friends!”

“...Well, if you want I can try to introduce him to you? Plus, Honoka is Fuji-guy’s childhood friend. We will both help you with this!”

Nagisa turned to Honoka and the fellow girl nodded at this.

I had to leave earlier than the two as I needed to check if the electric issue had caused any problems to my flat’s generator, but as I left, a situation unfolded that was unaware to me for a long while.

“Nagisa-chan?” Honoka hummed, drawing the short-haired girl’s attention as they calmly walked back home together.

“Yeah, Honoka-chan?”

“Are you interested in Shougo? I mean, more than just a friend?”

Nagisa tensed up. “Y-Yeah?”

“I don’t mind. He is just a friend.”

The tomboy hummed. “Oh- Okay then.”

“But, I need your help with a boy.”

Nagisa appeared surprised by this request. “Uh? But I am not good at it. Like, I don’t know many and-”

“It’s Markus.”

Nagisa almost tripped as she heard this, turning around to see a blush on Honoka’s face as she confessed that.

“EHHHHHHHHHHH!?!”

—--------d-d-d-d—-

AN

Things are bound to get interesting with this trio. Especially around the end of ‘Season I’. And no, the Yuri is not dead- it’s just ‘deeply buried and waiting to be dug out by unforeseen developments of the romantic kind’.