PR FIC: Once a Ranger Chapter 18
Sep. 17th, 2007 06:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daylight_darknightPS Many thanks to the amazingly fantastically incredible
aussiemouse for her continued support.Title: Once a Ranger
Characters: Andros, Zhane, Tommy, plus various other people from PRIS, PRZ, MMPR and PRLG
Rating: PG-13
Summary: All Power Rangers are connected, in more ways than one. Questions are answered as the secret of the Power Rangers is revealed.
Previous Chapters
Once a Ranger
Chapter 18: Enlightenment
By Daylight
“Shields!”
An arrow of light shot forward towards the MegaWinger hitting the energy field surrounding the ship just seconds after it was activated.
“They’re shooting at us!” exclaimed Rocky jamming his fingers into his console fighting to get the ship battle ready. “Since when do they fire energy weapons?”
“You preferred it when they just tried to suck us dry?” answered Zhane stumbling as the ship shook from another impact to the shields.
“Maybe they don’t want to get quite so close after last time,” commented Andros as he settled into his position at the front of the bridge.
“Think we actually scared them?” asked Adam.
“We can hope.”
Having settled into battle stations, the rangers prepared the ship for megazord transformation, the giant robot unfolding and pulling its sword from subspace. The sword, however, was proving useless as the invisible ships stayed out of range of its wild swings. They seemed quite content to stay at a distance and shoot at the MegaWinger until its shields failed.
“Billy,” called Tommy. “Can you modify the target sensors so they work with those gravity readings you picked up?”
“Sure, no problem. Just give me a few minutes,” replied Billy already at work on the problem.
“Better make that some quick minutes,” commented Tanya who was monitoring the dropping shield strength.
Meanwhile, Andros had grown tiered of flinging the Zord around in defensive manoeuvres when he couldn’t even see what he was trying to avoid. So he decided to take a different approach and aimed the robot right in the direction the shots were coming from.
“Andros?” enquired Zhane. “Where are you taking us?”
“I thought you might like to get a little closer to your targets.”
“Yes, but any closer and we’re going to…”
A slightly larger impact was felt indicating they had found their targets.
“There you go,” announced Andros.
“Thanks,” muttered Zhane as he directed the Winger Sword at the ship they’d just hit.
“Got it!” shouted Billy and suddenly all their screens lit up with the red lights of dozens of enemy targets. “Is that better?”
“Oh, yeah,” exclaimed Tommy, the MegaWinger Megazord suddenly crushing and slicing ships in every direction. Space was soon filled with the light of exploding ships.
The battle continued for a few more minutes but soon the few remaining red blips on their screens could be seen moving away and disappearing.
“What’s the range on these gravity sensors?” asked Adam.
Billy shook his head. “Only a few thousand kilometres at most.”
“Then they could still be out there,” said Tanya. “Watching us from a distance.”
“No,” replied Andros frowning at his own response. “They’re gone.”
Tommy gave him a look. “It’s pretty clear the Phantom Ranger won’t be meeting us here. This was obviously an ambush.”
Turning towards him, Andros met his stare. “Are you saying Phantom set us up?”
“He’s the one who arranged this meeting.”
“I don’t believe this. Phantom has always fought on the side of light. He would not join with forces this evil.”
“No offence, Andros,” Tanya spoke up. “But how well do you really know the Phantom Ranger?”
Andros and Zhane exchanged a look and the Silver Ranger shook his head. “Not that well. We don’t know who he is or where he comes from, but he’s fought by our side several times before.”
“And there are tales of him going back a hundred years, always of him coming to the aid of people in need,” added Andros.
“Well, maybe he’s under an evil spell.” Everyone looked at Rocky. “It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”
“Maybe,” said Tommy thoughtfully, “Or maybe there’s something else going on.” He approached Andros. “You and Zhane knew the shadows were there before we detected them.”
“What?”
“You knew before their ships attacked us the first time and before the shadows attacked on Triforia.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Zhane held up his hands. “Just what are you trying to say?”
“Tommy…” Adam warned, eyeing the angry looks on the Kerovians’ faces.
Rocky shrugged. “He might have a point. I mean, we haven’t known these two that long.”
“Guys think about what you’re saying,” shouted Tanya. “They’re rangers!”
“Well, for all we know the shadows could be controlling them too.”
Tommy nodded. “And we only have their word on what happened to TJ and the others.”
The Red Astro Ranger stood from his place at the helm and moved round the console to stand face to face with Tommy. “Those are my friends you’re talking about!”
“Then maybe you should do a better job of trying to find them.”
“Don’t you think I’m doing everything I can?”
Tommy put his hands on his hips. “No, I don’t. Maybe if you were, we’d have found them by now.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Andros levelled his finger at his fellow red ranger. “Ever since you joined us you’ve been trying to take charge, acting like you know better than me. I’ve been a ranger as long as you have.”
“And how much of that actually involved leading a team. Even when you had the others, you had TJ backing you up. Maybe I should take charge.”
“This is space, not your two dimensional little planet. You don’t know the first thing about conducting an interstellar search.”
“And you do? Great job you did finding Zordon. You seem quite adept at losing the people you seemingly care about.”
“Watch it,” said Zhane stepping between the two red rangers. “Andros’ right, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea what we’ve been through.”
“Oh, come on,” said Rocky standing up for his fellow team-mate. “Do you have any idea how many villains we’ve had to face down on Earth?”
“Yeah, I’m sure fighting Rita and Zedd’s little toy monsters when you wanted to go out and play football was a real pain.”
“Oh, no. Don’t you two start,” protested Tanya.
“If you’d just calm down and think about this reasonably,” added Adam.
Tommy shook his head. “We should have never trusted them, especially after what happened to…”
By this point, the only one to stay out of the argument was Billy who sat thoughtfully in a corner. It was a sudden shout from him that finally brought the argument to a halt.
“Of course, Kerovians!”
There was a pause, the pure confusion of the non sequitur in the middle of the shouting match having thrown everyone into silence.
“Sorry, what?” asked Rocky, recovering.
“Kerovians!” repeated Billy. “Andros and Zhane are from KO-35. Kerovian Outpost 35. They’re Kerovians!”
“Yes…” said Zhane speaking slowly and nodding as if talking to a small child. “We’re Kerovians.”
“Exactly!” shouted Billy excitedly. “Andros, what’s your Psy rating?”
Zhane rolled his eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”
But a sudden look of realization appeared on Andros’ face. “Damn it!” He hit his palm against his forehead. “How could I be so stupid? We should have realized this before.”
“Um, Billy. Would you mind filling us in?” requested Tanya. “You’ve kind of lost the rest of us?”
“Yeah, what’s a Psy rating?” asked Rocky.
“It’s a measurement of a person’s psychic potential. Children on Union worlds, like KO-35, are often tested on it,” Billy explained. “It goes from zero to ten. An average telepath would be a six or a seven. I’ve never heard of someone with a ten rating but theoretically they’d be able to see into the future.” All the rangers appeared rapt in their attention to Billy’s enthusiastic lecture having momentarily forgotten their argument.
“An average human from Earth would have a Psy rating of one, but Kerovians, though they’re human, usually have a Psy rating of three. That’s why they can perform telekinesis. Look…” He held up a tool in his hand and nodded at Zhane, whose forehead was still furrowed in confusion at where this conversation was going, but he obediently held out his hand. The Zeo Rangers jumped when the tool flew right into it.
“So…” prompted Adam.
“If Andros and Zhane have higher than average Psy Ratings, they may be picking up the shadows’ psychic signatures. They wouldn’t even be aware of it consciously because they’re not actually trained telepaths. Then if we found someone with a really high Psy rating of maybe 8 or 9…”
“We could track down the shadows,” finished Tommy realizing the implications.
All eyes suddenly turned to Andros and Zhane.
Andros, who was still pissed at himself for not making the connection earlier, simply said. “Four.”
In turn, Zhane reluctantly admitted, “Five.”
Billy raised an eyebrow at the silver ranger.
“I can’t hear people’s thoughts or feel people’s emotions if that’s what you’re wondering,” Zhane said in response. ‘Not that you’ve actually tried,’ whispered a familiar voice in his head. He scowled at Andros. “Except for Andros and that is more than enough.”
The others exchanged looks at this new revelation. Tommy opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again. Leftover tension from their previous argument still hung in the air.
“So you really think it would be possible to track them psychically?” Andros asked Billy.
“The psychic signature must be fairly strong for you to be feeling them and if it’s that strong, someone with a high Psy Rating would be able to feel it even from a distance. We just need to find someone and I already have a few ideas about that.”
Rocky threw his hands up into the air. “Finally, we’re getting somewhere.”
“And there’s something else,” added Billy, almost reluctantly. “It’s about the enemies new weapons. I just need to check something first.” He picked up a portable scanning device in one hand while grabbing a surprised Andros’ wrist with the other. “Do you mind?” he enquired gesturing to the morpher attached to the red rangers arm.
Andros frowned at the strange request but nodded in agreement. The former blue ranger ran the scanner over the morpher and once having gathered the information he needed, left to input it into the MegaWinger’s computer.
“This will take a couple of minutes.”
“In the meantime, we should head back to Earth,” announced Tommy. “The Phantom Ranger said it was in danger and even if he set us up, we still need to check it out.”
“Of course,” muttered Andros sarcastically obviously discontent with Tommy taking charge again. “Because when isn’t it in danger.”
“Strange, I thought you actually cared about the people there,” Tommy shot back.
There were sighs and rolled eyes from the other rangers as they saw a new fight looming.
“Well, maybe I’m tired of running to their aid all the time when I have more important things to do.”
“There is a little thing called priorities.”
It was Billy who stopped the argument again, but this time with a whisper.
“Oh, no.”
“What?” shouted Andros in exasperation.
“The energy signature of the weapons the shadows fired at us.” Billy looked up from the console where his analysis had just completed. “I thought it looked familiar and I was right.” He took a deep breath. “It’s ranger energy. And it matches exactly with that from Andros’ morpher.”
Adam frowned. “But the only way they could get that kind of energy…”
“…would be if they drained it from a power ranger,” finished Billy.
“So they’re dead.”
Andros’s cold statement hit everyone to the bone, but Billy quickly tried to deny it. “No, no. There’s a chance…”
“Billy…” Andros interrupted. “You know as well as I do that if a ranger is not disconnected from their power before the power is drained, their life force is drained too. And I really doubt that our enemies would bother.”
“Andros,” protested Tommy. “You can’t just give up hope.”
“Why not?” demanded the Red Astro Ranger hands in the air. Then he tilted his head and gave his fellow ranger a sad smile. “You were right about one thing, Tommy. I really am good at losing the people I care about.”
Turning away and heading to the back of the ship, Andros left the shocked others wondering if all hope truly was gone.
Next:
Chapter 19: Understanding
Can Andros and Tommy finally have a talk without yelling?
