#cam would’ve been an excellent teacher for Antonio

[theorangerangers]

What If: Antonio Garcia

What if Antonio met Lauren while he was training to help Jayden?

After leaving panorama island Antonio and his father they move to a costal town near the woods where Antonio takes octo Zord with him to try and train himself to be a samurai ranger when he finds a strange building that looked oddly like the Shiba house back home

He meets a girl training there named Lauren. And they become fast friends. When he asks if she has any siblings she lies and says she has a cousin named Jayden which makes Antonio very excited and tells her everything he and Jayden used to do together and then she shows her octo

She tells Antonio she’s the back up in case anything happens to Jayden

Lauren’s teacher eventually caved to let Antonio hang around and tells Lauren that teaching him may help her leadership skills as well as deepen her own understanding of the Marshall arts

Antonio grows to be Lauren’s second brother and trains as hard as she does to prepare for the nighlock

When Antonio makes his grand entrance it’s a bit more subtle due to all the time he spent with Lauren and how he knows how sheltered kids might not take too well at the arrows being shot at them

Gi and Jayden both noticed how similar Antonio’s fighting style despite being an underhanded technique is to the Shiba family style but Antonio was told not to tell them about Lauren so he lies and says he’s self taught

Most things remain the same until Lauren shows up and Jayden introduces her as his older sister and the real red samurai ranger

In this timeline there’s an actual reason why tensions in the team start getting really high during the final battles because it comes to light Lauren lied to Antonio and Antonio lied to everybody else

 The final battle happens like it does in the show but at the end rather than having the peaceful return to their normal lives Antonio Lauren and Jayden stay at the Shiba house to basically straighten out all the stories that they’ve been telling each other and try and mend what they broke

Antonio has serious thoughts about not returning due to the lies that we’re told and how it could have put everyone in danger. Jayden feels betrayed that his best friend knew his deepest secrets and chose to let him suffer alone with it. Lauren is upset with Antonio for going against her after he had basically spent their whole childhood listening to her

Antonio is like a little brother to her but he isn’t a child like when they first met he’s not 7 and she’s not 16 anymore and he has to make his own choices they are 16 and 25 now

Lauren knows very well at 16 she was not ready for rangerhood and she projects it on the rest of her team since Emily is 15, Jayden and Antonio are 16, Kevin is 17, and Mia is 18. She remembers how small her brother was last time she saw him and how young Antonio still is and this gap tends to be the catalyst for most of her and Antonio’s arguments growing up but Jayden adds a new element to it

Lauren and Antonio make up in the way siblings do in that they just stop arguing and Antonio offers some food but Jayden doesn’t quite understand the sibling/best friend dynamics since this wasn’t a part of his childhood and it feels like theyre just ignoring it

They will wear Jayden down eventually