Work Text:
Explanations
“Venusian Rangers, Power Down.”
It was the Green one who said it, but all followed the gestures, and the Power Chamber was filled with multicolored lights.
The Zeos had agreed at Kim’s request to relocate to the Power Chamber during introductions, mostly on the strength of their trust in Kim and probably-Aisha. Billy Cranston had teleported in some chairs for everyone, but no one was sitting yet because everyone was too tense in anticipation. Kim stood in line with her still-masked Team, facing the Zeos, Billy, and Alpha. Though most were focused on the four new Rangers as they deMorphed, Jason noticed that Tommy’s eyes had hardly left Kim for an instant. The look in them was subtle, but Tommy’s best friend read not happiness but rather wariness and anger toward Kim. It didn’t surprise Jason – what he knew of Kim’s breakup letter to Tommy sounded brutal – but it made him sad.
The lights faded and gave the Zeos, Billy, Alpha, and Zordon their first looks at the four other Rangers of the mysterious new Team. Orange Ranger turned into Aisha Campbell, as they’d suspected. The Green light faded to reveal Trini Kwan, which surprised all of them (except Tanya and Kat, who didn’t know who Trini was and so didn’t find her surprising). The White Ranger became a girl no one knew: a younger teen around 15 with a slender figure on the tall side, freckled skin, and intensely curly red hair pulled back into a fluffy ponytail. Paradoxical Black light fell away from the form of a teen a little younger than they, probably 16, with darkly tanned skin and features that favored the native mexica side of Mexican rather than the Spanish. As the rest of the Zeos exclaimed and rushed to hug former Teammates or friends, Rocky silently fainted.
“Mierda!” the Black Ranger groaned. She joined most of the teens around Rocky. The auburn-headed White Ranger hung back, but the others all gathered around the Blue Zeo.
Rocky came to quickly and looked up into the many faces above him. He oriented quickly on the Black Ranger. “How?” he asked her faintly.
“Well I was going to explain that,” she replied with a small eye-roll. Her voice carried a distinct Spanish accent, much more than Rocky’s. “I didn’t think you would get so dramatic.”
He moved to sit up, and the other teens backed away a little to make space. He had eyes only for the Black Venusian Ranger. “How can you be here? How? You’re okay and you never told anyone!?” Shock was shifting into anger.
She held up her hands. “Whoa, Rocky...”
“You’re Margarita,” Adam caught on at last, and the idea made his eyes go round as dinner plates. “You’re Rocky’s sister.”
Understanding rippled through the other Zeos and Billy – immediately followed by confusion. Rocky had four siblings, half of them sisters – but they’d met all of them. The oldest was twelve.
“Just ‘Rita is fine,” Margarita replied. She gave Adam a wan smile. “Hi, Adam. Long time no see.”
“What’s going on?” Tanya asked, giving up hope that the Stone Canyon teens would explain on their own initiative.
After waiting a tick to see if Rocky wanted to, Adam began. “When we were eleven, Rocky’s oldest little sister was kidnapped from their backyard. They never found any sign of her. We all thought…” but Adam stopped there, both because it didn’t seem quite a good idea to say it to Rita’s very-alive face and because his best friend, Rocky, had just sharpened accusing eyes on him. It seemed they hadn’t “all thought” the same thing about Rita’s fate.
“I was kidnapped, yes. It took me most of this time to get free,” Rita said. “And afterward, I… I needed some time. I’ll explain everything, I promise, just as soon as we’re- oof!” she said instead as Rocky nearly knocked her over with the force of his hug. She put out a hand for balance, but once they weren’t imminently falling down, she wrapped both arms around Rocky as well. The two sat there together for a long, silent moment.
Kim, Aisha, and Trini beamed, and all the teens gave the siblings space. Kim and Jason, Aisha and Adam, and Trini and Tommy exchanged greeting hugs quietly during the DeSantoses’ long embrace.
“You rotten twerp, you should’ve told me,” Rocky said at last, but without heat.
“I know. I’m the worst,” Rita replied cheerfully.
Rocky broke up in quiet laughs. He loosened the hug to put one hand on each of her shoulders instead and looked her up and down. “Are you ok? Who took you? Did they hurt you?”
Rita laughed. Her laugh was bright like little bells. “I’m fine, Rocky. I’m okay now.”
He took a deep breath. A smile hopped onto his lips. “Okay.” He looked around then and blinked. “Aisha!” he cried joyously.
“Oh, thanks,” Aisha returned, rolling her eyes. “Chopped liver over here.”
Several of them laughed. The other Zeos shook Rita’s hand one by one, startled but intrigued by this turn of events, and then a new round of hugs began among those who hadn’t had a chance to greet their friends yet. The flurry of hugs was hard to track, but a few noted that Tommy and Kim didn’t exchange one. Though she hugged Kim, after the hug flurry Kat shifted to stand closer to Tommy than she had before.
“How are you Power Rangers?” Tommy asked the question burning in him at last.
“I know, it’s a shock,” Trini smiled at him. “We’ll sit down and explain it all in a minute. But first: everyone, this is our Teammate, Moira Douglas.”
Trini gestured to the unknown girl. She’d sat out the rush of hugs, and so the Angel Grove teens had forgotten her for a moment. She was sitting in one of Billy’s teleported chairs, feet tucked on the chair seat and knees tucked close to her chest. The position made her look younger and smaller than she had at first. She smiled sweetly and waved. The newcomer seemed very different and much less intimidating than the bold White Ranger who had appaeared to lead her Team during the confrontation with Felicia. It took the Angel Grove teens a long minute to realize what looked odd about her appearance, but it clicked: she wasn’t wearing White. A sky-blue dress and soft brown leggings covered her tall and slender figure. It seemed deeply odd, but none of them quite knew how to comment on the oddity, so they didn’t.
“A pleasure to meet you all,” Moira said. Her voice carried a light accent that most of the Zeos could place as Scottish. The Zeos and Billy all echoed the sentiment.
“How did you all meet?” Adam asked.
Moira gave another pleasant little smile. “I’m sure we’ll get there.”
“Well? Should we get comfortable?” Kim asked the room at large.
The eleven teens and Alpha all chose folding chairs. Alpha quickly aborted the idea: his legs were too short for the chair, and his metal body was heavy enough that the first attempt dented the front of the chair before he’d even sat. He teleported in a more hardy, smaller chair for himself and was seated satisfactorily at last, Beta Teddy beside him in a cupholder-like attachment. Kim, Trini, and Aisha all grinned with nostalgia and love as he bustled through the process with many “Ay yi yi”s.
“Could you tell us more about Felicia first?” Kat said just ahead of Kim’s intended start. “I still don’t even know if she was telling me the truth.”
Kim flicked a sympathetic smile. “Makes sense. Moira?”
A startled flicker ran through the youngest Ranger’s eyes. It looked oddly like an actor caught off-cue. A heartbeat later, her charming, innocent smile was back. “Sure. Felicia is an old enemy of mine. What I heard her say was mostly true – all of it except some about Meagan, but those bits wouldn’t affect you. Yes, she is Fel’Hari, and yes, I think you’re part of a bloodline that can form soul bonds with Fel’Hari. They can sense those people, and it would be pointless for her to seek you out if you weren’t one of them. They’re very rare – maybe a hundred or so born across the planet each generation. There are more than that overall, but the rest live on Fel’Har.”
Kat blinked. “There are humans living on other planets?” she asked.
“Some, yes. I think the Protector Solus Terrae has given his approval for a few anomalies like that,” Moira said.
“Protector Soul-us… what?” Jason frowned.
As Moira blinked, her smile fracturing again, Zordon answered Jason’s question. “PROTECTOR SOLUS TERRAE IS MY FORMAL TITLE. IT MEANS THAT I AM KNOWN TO THOSE OF OTHER WORLDS, BOTH GOOD AND EVIL ONES, AS THE PROTECTOR OF THE EARTH. YOU KNOW A GREAT DEAL,” Zordon added to Moira, a quizzical note in his booming voice.
“We’ll get there,” Moira smiled, confident again. “Just like only a few humans have the ability to bond with Fel’Hari, only a few Fel’Hari have that ability either. Felicia is one. I don’t know about the others – I think there are plenty of Fel’Hari who are good – but she’s definitely not. If you’d gone with her, it would have been rather like becoming soul-bonded best friends with…” she paused a moment as if searching her memory “…say, Lord Zedd.”
“Okay, so not that,” Kat said, wide-eyed. “Yecch.”
“Are you sure about all this?” Tommy asked. It was a lot to take on the word of someone he’d met five minutes ago, even if she was somehow a Power Ranger.
“THIS IS A KNOWN ANOMALY,” Zordon assured them. “IT IS A RARE GENETIC TRAIT PRESENT IN SEVERAL SPECIES OF HUMANS WITHIN THIS GALAXY. IT APPEARS ONLY IN A SMALL, APPARENTLY RANDOM GROUP WITHIN EACH SPECIES, AN ANOMALY THAT MAKES THEIR GENETIC CODES SLIGHTLY MORE SIMILAR TO FELINOIDS. AS FAR AS WAS OFFICIALLY KNOWN, THESE GENES STAY DORMANT THROUGHOUT THEIR LIFETIMES. HOWEVER, THERE HAS BEEN A RUMOR THAT IF ONE OF THESE HUMANS COMES IN CONTACT WITH A PARALLEL MEMBER OF THE FELINOID RACE, THE GENES MAY ACTIVATE, THE EFFECT DETERMINED BY HOW CLOSE THE HUMAN BECOMES TO THE FELINOID. I HAVE NEVER OBSERVED SUCH AN EVENT DIRECTLY.”
“Looks like the rumor’s right on,” Adam said.
Tommy frowned. “How long have you known that Kat had this... anomaly?”
“I SUSPECTED DUE TO HER SHAPESHIFTING ABILITY – RITA HAS LITTLE SKILL WITH SUCH MAGIC, AND SO IT SEEMED ODD.”
“So that really was me?” Kat asked.
“I BELIEVE SO. I DID NOT KNOW FOR CERTAIN THAT YOU WERE A MEMBER OF THIS BLOODLINE UNTIL YOU FIRST CAME TO THE COMMAND CENTER. AT THE TIME, I DID NOT THINK IT WORTH MENTIONING, ESPECIALLY AS YOUR SHAPESHIFTING FADED AFTER RITA’S SPELL WAS BROKEN. PERHAPS I WAS WRONG.”
“You weren't,” Kim said softly. “The last person Felicia tried to bond with was Moira’s best friend. Their mentor told her and then tried to keep her away from Felicia. It backfired. Well, mostly.”
Moira’s expression didn’t so much as flicker from pleasant-non-threatening when Kim talked about her best friend’s struggles. “If you want to know more later, after we fill in the rest, just ask,” Moira offered.
“I might, yes. Thanks,” Kat replied.
Rocky couldn’t contain it any longer. “Okay, so now finding out about Rita?” he demanded.
“Ai ya, hermano!” Rita laughed. She rolled her eyes, but she also said, “Sure.”
Her arm still twined loosely around her big brother’s waist, Rita began her tale. "I was ten years old when I was kidnapped from our backyard. Rocky and I were home alone while Mamá took the little ones to the park. Rocky saw it from the kitchen window, but I doubt that anyone believed him. Four years before Rita Repulssa’s first attack, a scorpion monster kidnapping a little girl would just sound like an overactive imagination."
Rocky looked like he was going to have a heart attack. "I thought I made up the monster," he said helplessly.
Rita smiled. "I know. No te preocupes. If you had held to that story, Mamá and Papá would have taken you to a therapist," she said in her accented voice.
"They did. But it couldn't have been..." Rocky stopped, looking deeply confused.
"Yes. The monster's name was Scorpina."
Before she continued, Kim shot her a little I'm here for you look. Rita silently thanked her for the reassurance. Kim had been with her since she got free of Scorpina and had seen her through all the recovery she’d managed so far. Rita knew it was entirely possible that Kim was more concerned about the telling of Rita's story than her own. But Rita knew she could deal with her past now — this would prove it.
“Scorpina was around in 1989? That doesn’t make any sense,” Adam frowned.
“Yeah. I thought Rita – the Repulssa one, I mean - summoned her from some kind of suspended animation while I was the Evil Green Ranger,” Tommy said.
“Oh, yeah,” Rita said. “I heard about that. Repulssa seems to think that she has a lot more control over Scorpina than she really does. She used to have control over Scorpina, I think, and Scorpina doesn’t want her to know any different.”
“THIS IS AN ACCURATE ASSESSMENT,” Zordon rumbled. The teens looked up at him in surprise. “THERE IS MUCH ABOUT SCORPINA OF WHICH RITA REPULSSA AND LORD ZEDD ARE UNAWARE.”
“Like what?” Adam asked, looking concerned.
“But why?” Rocky asked Rita, not to be deterred. “Why did she take you?”
Rita hesitated, looking momentarily shy. “Scorpina keeps slaves.”
Silence echoed around the room. Those who looked up at Zordon saw, from what little they could tell of his expression through the distortion, shock and anger.
“I only lived on her main settlement, a pocket dimension around Europa, but she has ships out in the Kuiper Belt and outside the solar system. Labor slaves would move back and forth, especially if they’d been injured. She’s pretty wealthy, I think, and a lot of that comes from slave labor. Most of the slaves aren’t Terran, but some are.
"I don’t know why she took me in particular. I wasn’t a model slave by any stretch. She could never break me. I went along with what she demanded to avoid the beatings, but I never was really convinced that I was her property, and I never let myself forget home. Every time she thought she had me at last, I would pull a stunt that proved her wrong. Most of the time, Scorpina didn't seem to mind. Maybe she was curious if I’d find a way off the ship so she could patch up security. She taught me some basic things, but only one that changed me: how to heal.”
“Heal?” Adam blinked, startled. “Scorpina’s a doctor or something?”
“No – she can heal with magic,” Trini said.
“Saved my life once,” Jason said. Several Rangers’ mouths popped open in surprise or to ask for details, but he was already adding, “It’s a long story. Sorry, didn’t mean to distract.”
Rita nodded at him and continued. “She’s a good healer, but she wasn’t going to go around using her own time and magic to heal slaves. She used me instead. She taught me regular medicine and also a little magic. Since, I have used that knowledge against the Dark... but that was later.
"Though she couldn’t break me like the others, she did wear me down. After five years, by my fifteenth birthday, she had almost run me out of hope."
Rita stopped and shut her eyes briefly. *I can do this, I can do this, I can do this...* she thought. “She gave me a present because of my 'good behavior' for the past month or so – one designed to break me at last. Rocky, Adam, do you remember Kevin Harrison?"
"I do," Adam said. "He used to go to our school in Stone Canyon." He paused, as if straining for the memory. "Lived near the DeSantoses’, I think. He... disappeared..." Adam trailed off as the horror dawned on him.
"Just about on my fifteenth birthday, a little over one year ago. Scorpina gave me the present of the only boy I'd ever, ever Liked. Only it wasn't really him. Scorpina had done something to him – like she’d hollowed him out inside. He was just a body, without a mind or a soul. I knew enough about magic to be sure he was never coming back from that.
"I went loco. I did not think about the consequences of yelling in Scorpina's face, I just yelled. I don't know what went on in Scorpina's mind during that moment, but she gave me a choice. I could stay with her. I would never be harmed again, and I would have Kevin to keep. She even offered to teach me more magic."
"What was your other choice?" Kat asked.
"Severely cryptic. Scorpina said that she'd let me go. Send me to an old friend of hers. Kevin had to stay there, though. If I left, Scorpina would kill him.
"It was close. I had no idea who the friend of Scorpina's would be, and I was in love with the image of Kevin. He was one of the memories I had held on to to keep myself from going over the edge. But I listened to the part of me telling me that Kevin was already dead. Scorpina was just using his body to try to make me stay willingly. If I did, I’d be giving his murderer what she wanted. I told her no, and she held up her end of the deal. The last time I saw her was when she teleported me.
"The last five — six, really-” she said with a wink at Kim, “years have taught me to be prepared for anything. But for some reason I was still surprised when I appeared in midair and fell directly on top of a Florida gymnast."
"I was on the balance beam in Coach Schmidt’s training gym. Just not for very long," Kim added wryly.
"I was scared stiff — no idea what I was doing there or how to explain it to anyone else — and then I found out Kim’s name. Scorpina did teach me some history, including the Rangers of Earth. Well... most of the Rangers of Earth. For the longest time, I never knew why she hated to discuss Evelyn of Eltare," Rita said. Kim, Trini, Jason, Billy, and Tommy of the teens had met Evelyn personally, and several of the others knew enough about Evelyn and Scorpina to know why Scorpina wouldn't like to discuss her. Zordon seemed to be smiling at the thought.
"Anyway, I knew enough to recognize Kim’s name as the former Pink Power Ranger. I also recognized that I shouldn't have taken Scorpina so literally when she said her ‘friend. Scorpion sarcasm.
"Kim had a nice apartment to herself at the time. She took me in. I doubt I would ever have recovered from Scorpina without her. But I have, so stop looking at me like that, Rocky. Most of the hurt had already scabbed over by the time the third member joined our group."
The blood drained from Moira's face. She was the third member, and Rita's words were a blatant cue to begin her story. Her shocked expression quickly turned to a mild look of reproach directed at Rita.
Rita shrugged. "Sorry, girl. It was the best I could think of to get you going."
Moira shut her eyes and looked briefly miserable. Then her expression eased to determination — an expression quite befitting Moira's past.
"I'm sure you’ve noticed I’m younger than you, but I’m not new to this. I’ve prepared to hold the Power since I was a child, and this is my second Team." Moira's quiet brogue seemed very soft after Rita’s confident, brash tones.
Moira drew a delicate, almost invisible chain from under her collar and fiddled with the clasp. After a few seconds, she brought forward a seemingly ordinary necklace: the thin gold chain held a small, faintly shining round gold pendant about an inch across. The pendant twisted slightly, and a beam of light caught across its surface so that all could see the engraved image of an eagle.
"We were called the Avian Rangers – from avis, the Latin for bird. These were our Foci, like the Rangers of Earth's Power Coins. We each morphed into our symbol birds. Mine was the Golden Eagle.
"There were six of us originally, three boys, three girls. I was one of the oldest at fourteen when the Team formed, and the leader. Even so, we knew what we were doing. That was because of our mentor, Angela, a witch."
Moira looked around quickly. About seven stunned expressions. Not surprising, since the only witch any of them had ever met was Rita Repulssa. *Bombshell one,* she thought. How many could she get through before her mask broke?
"We each first heard of Angela Queril as the headmistress of a small, exceedingly selective boarding school in the Florida Keys. We each were offered admission on scholarship when we were twelve, though none of our parents had applied there or even heard of it. There were probably dozens of those letters each year to kids who were best suited to the Power, but not everyone’s parents will take an offer like that. My mom jumped at it; she’d wanted us in private school for years, but we couldn’t afford that kind of thing. Those of us who went were taught the truth about magic, monsters, and the universes beyond Earth — and we were given combat training, too, so that when evil returned to lay claim to Earth, we’d be prepared. I followed my older brother Sean there two years after he started, so I started training only about six months before Repulssa returned. Angela used her magic to keep our operations secret from the public, from our families, and from you, here in Angel Grove. It must’ve worked pretty well, since you never heard of us.” Moira gave them a cheery smile.
“You mean... you were some kind of army?” Tommy asked.
Moira’s smile flickered. “Not like that. Just a few kids getting some extra knowledge,” she said coolly. “Of course, when that first attack came, Zordon formed the Rangers of Earth, and you handled the main assault from Rita, then Zedd. We handled the rest.”
“THE REST?” Zordon sounded surprised.
“Most of them snuck in under your radar here. One of Angela’s talents is divination, so she wasn’t relying on sensor arrays and earthquakes. We dealt with everything from Felicia and her furballs tearing up Tallahassee to a Demnen invasion of China to petty thieves from Onyx looting Incan tombs.
“We don't know yet whether any of those enemies besides Felicia followed us here, but if they did, or will, then Angel Grove is most definitely in danger. I mean no offense to you or her, Katherine, but Felicia is a joke compared with most of our enemies. I’ve brought the most enemies to my new Team, and the two most dangerous enemies."
That did it, she realized. The false cheer was about to crack. Any further and she would start showing real emotion – and that would put these other Rangers in terrible danger.
Trini found Moira's hand and squeezed it gently. The two had been close friends since their journey to the Monolith. They had found the night before their Ninjetti Quest on Phaedos that they understood each other's worries better than anyone else, and they never nagged at each other to work through their problems as quickly as the other Venusians hoped. Somehow, Trini could always tell when Moira needed – and would accept – a friend’s reassurance. Moira smiled a little at her, then took a deep breath, blinked back the first tears, and continued, "We defended with relative ease for...”
Moira's olive-green eyes suddenly drew wide with horror.
"Exactly one year. Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the Avian Rangers," Kim supplied for her stricken teammate. She'd figured out the approaching anniversary long ago, but she hadn't planned to tell Moira. She thought it would probably be easier for Moira if she didn't have to honor it. She hadn’t expected Moira to figure it out like this, in front of strangers, and watched tensely to see if there was any aid Moira would let her give.
Moira seemed to recover quickly, but the most perceptive of the Angel Grove teens could tell now that her calm, vaguely cheerful expression was hiding something else. "On our first year anniversary, we went through the normal routine — win contest, get trophy, make enemy jealous, enemy turns trophy into monster, defeat monster — that kind of thing."
"Been there," Tommy half smiled.
"We got that all wrapped up before noon," Moira said, smiling at the memory of the ridiculous wrapping paper monster that had followed. "And the six of us and Angela threw an anniversary party. Not an hour into the party, our first real challenge showed up at the front door of Queril Academy. We should’ve known right then: no other enemies had ever found our base.
"Her na " Moira's voice and her calm mask broke, startling the less-perceptive members of her audience. She shut her eyes briefly and wrestled her emotions back under her control. "Her name is Isabella. She’s ruthless, cunning, powerful. It took us two hours to fight her off school grounds, and two of the regular students landed in the infirmary in the cross-fire."
Rocky whistled, impressed. Others of her audience exchanged unsettled looks. It wasn’t completely unheard-of for people to get a bit hurt in the crossfire of a monster attack, but usually it only happened when the monsters went after civilians as a way to get to the Rangers. Those citizens got enchanted or held hostage, and the Rangers always got there in time. They’d never had someone without the Power land in a hospital bed… though when they thought about it objectively, that seemed odd.
"We knew that Isabella was more dangerous than anyone we'd fought before, but for about two months afterward, we didn’t really understand. For those months, Isabella’s attacks were rare, and they were softened by less, ah, personal attacks by Felicia and others like her. Most of her attacks centered around me or Will Henderson, our Red Ranger and my boyfriend. She went on about being in love with him as well. She tried to convince him to join her, and, after that failed, to kill me and turn him by magic. She got a bit… sadistic with me a few times, but she never had me for long. All of her plans were relatively easy to spoil through teamwork." At the mention that Isabella claimed to have feelings for Will Henderson, Moira’s cheer vanished into bitterness, but it bounced back when she spoke about teamwork.
"It couldn't last. One day, out of the blue when we were relaxing on the beach, she threw a real attack. She even came to the fight herself, which she hadn’t since the first day. Back at the school, Angela realized that Isabella was about to complete a spell to incapacitate all of us, but she could only teleport two of us to safety at once from that distance. Sean and I were pulled out in time." With no warning, a tear fell down Moira's cheek. Instantly, she dropped her gaze, closed her eyes, and hoped that the Zeos couldn't see. Of course, shutting her eyes made the tears overflow, and another pair of them dropped from her lashes. "The rest of my Team were killed there or captured and executed later. We couldn't save them."
She was left to fight tears in deep silence, only Trini’s hand on hers as comfort. Anything the Zeos and Billy thought to say sounded woefully inadequate. Nothing like this had ever happened to the Rangers of Earth. Never had even one of the Angel Grove Rangers been seriously injured, much less killed. Jason, Tommy, and Billy thought back to those terrible days when they’d thought that Trini had been murdered and understood a little better – but the enormity of most of a Team dying was overwhelming.
Zordon had led a very different life, however. "HAD ONE OF YOUR TEAMMATES BEEN SAVED IN YOUR PLACE, ISABELLA WOULD HAVE CAPTURED YOU. THEIR DEATHS WERE QUICKER AND LESS PAINFUL THAN YOURS WOULD HAVE BEEN AT HER HANDS," Zordon said gently. “THEY WOULD BE GLAD THAT YOU LIVE.” Moira didn't perk up, but she did seem to consider his words, which was more than her Teammates had expected.
Moira shook herself out of her musings. The only way out was through. "Isabella left the planet after the last battle. It took Sean and me weeks to be sure enough of that to let each other out of sight, or for Angela to let anyone off school grounds where she could protect us. The first day I didn't see him for a whole day turned out pretty bad even before " Moira balked and started over. "Sean was always an adventurer, and he couldn’t sit still for long. He was planning a trip to some hidden caves in the Rockies, but I wouldn’t go with him. If I had, it… would have been different.
“Sean found an ancient vessel for a Demnen – an evil spirit. He didn’t know what it was or how to protect himself. It tore him apart, leaving only enough to puppet him around.” Speaking of her own brother’s death, Moira’s face was set and cold. It was an obvious mask over emotions she wasn’t going to share with them. “Its puppet came back and tricked me into going to the caves as well. I went, but when I saw the vessel, I recognized what it was too quickly. I tried to get away. In the fight with its puppet, I kicked over the artifact, and it broke. The demnen decided to take Sean’s body as its new home."
Everyone except Tanya had firsthand experience with that, and she had heard more than enough stories from Adam and Billy to know that such a sentence was worse than death for the spirit the demon pushed aside to take control of the body. Tommy quietly turned white as a sheet.
Moira went on. Her voice was dispassionate. "I would have died in that cave, but Angela found and rescued me, again. I woke up in the school infirmary with Angela. I was able to save the school from the Demnen’s attack that day. A week after, Angela told me that she was closing the school. It wasn’t because of what had happened to us, she said; something important only she could do, on another planet. She was sending me to Tallahassee, where my aunt, uncle, and cousins lived.” Only Billy picked up quickly enough that she hadn’t mentioned her mom, whom she had mentioned earlier in the story. He just frowned, though, deciding not to press for details.
“My aunt and one cousin had died in a car accident, and the rest had moved. When I got there, I found out there was no one to take me in. That was finally too much. I took to the streets.”
The stoic mask cracked at last, but what peeked through wasn’t pain – it was a small smile. "That’s where Kim and Rita found me. Like Rita, I didn't know whether this was good fortune or the other kind. I guessed the other because of... everything. Luck doesn’t change so on the spot, I thought. But within an hour I was warm, clean, and dry in their apartment, in new clothes and telling them what I just told you. When it came to forming a new Team of Rangers, they asked me to join them. Needless to say, my life has perked up since I met them."
"A happy ending," Billy remarked with relief.
"A new beginning," Moira returned. Billy smiled, pleased by the correction.
"Since we seem to be going in the order we joined the group, I suppose I'll go next. Kim, you are so telling the Team's history," Trini told her leader. This was more than just a simple statement. Trini, as one of only two who knew Kim's true motivations for forming the Venusians, and therefore her whole story, was setting Kim up to subtly skip explaining herself. Kim would tell the Team's history instead of her own.
"Figures," Kim said, a private thanks.
Trini turned to Jason. "Jason, do you remember Lord Michael Aerodon from the Teen Peace Summit?"
Jason searched for a moment before making the connection. "Yeah — he and Halley Evans were the representatives from England, right?"
"That's the one. And that exaggerated British accent? Guess what: it really was fake."
Jason stared, stunned. "What?"
"Aerodon isn't from the British Isles at all. He's not from Earth. He was just posing as an English lord to get inside the Summit. He isn't even a Lord — he's a king, but he knew no one would believe him if he called himself that."
"I knew I'd heard that name before!" Tanya exclaimed.
"You know Aerodon?" Trini asked, surprised and dismayed. Had her friends had to deal with Aerodon, too?
“Archerina’s father, remember? King Aerodon?" Tanya encouraged her fellow Zeos. They did remember. Archerina's husband was Prince Gasket, the disowned first built son of King Mondo, their main enemy. They'd had the displeasure of meeting the couple two weeks prior. The duo did help destroy Louie Kaboom, the usurper to the Machine Empire throne and the Rangers' number one enemy at the time, but they were busily proving themselves far worse enemies than Kaboom had ever been with their cunning, devious plots. They'd earned special positions of dislike in the Rangers' hearts because of a scheme involving kidnapping and brainwashing Tommy into believing that he was the King of the Machine Empire and the "five" Zeos were an evil band trying to destroy everything good. Tommy had done his best to kill them before they’d managed to break the brainwashing.
"Aerodon has a daughter?" Trini asked rhetorically, grimacing at the thought. "She must be a nightmare. Anyway, I discovered that Aerodon was very subtly sabotaging the conference. Inciting members against each other behind our backs, urging arguments, even starting them, but all too subtly for people to pin him as the source of all our troubles. I had to do amazingly little research to find out that there is no such upper class family in England as the Aerodons. From there, I, well " Trini winced a little " hacked into the Command Center's computer bank remotely and uncovered his true identity.
"After I realized that he couldn't hurt me without blowing his cover, I went to Aerodon with my 'innocent' complaints. I didn't let him know that I knew he's a galactic villain with a reputation for starting planet scale wars until later."
"What happened next?" Billy asked anxiously.
"I gambled on breaking the stalemate, and I won. I got one of the Co-Directors of the Teen Peace Summit to ban Aerodon by pointing out what damage he was doing to the conference. Aerodon heard about it before anyone else; I don’t know how. He teleported to the administrative offices in full alien king regalia looking for her. I told the co director the alien king bit – including the basics that there are evil aliens attacking Earth and Angel Grove’s not just making it up – while we were hiding from him. She promised more thorough background checks on potential Summit representatives, if she lived that long. I just managed to keep King Aerodon busy long enough for her to spread the word by telephone that Michael Aerodon was out of the Teen Peace Summit. Once it was no longer as simple as killing the two of us, he left. We both decided to keep the alien bit to ourselves, just like I decided not to involve other Summit members so that if I did get killed, no one else would," Trini said, effectively answering Jason's next, rather incensed, question. He closed his mouth without voicing it, but he didn’t look happy.
"How long Aerodon left for, I don't know. He could be back on the inside already, but I doubt it. The co director was really sincere about those background checks. Having your desk vaporized by an alien makes you reassess your security measures.
“Meanwhile, I branched off into the Teen Peace Tour for my last year signed on. We traveled all over: Cairo, Berlin, Johannesburg, Moscow, Tokyo "
"Ohh, the shots," Rocky inserted.
Trini rubbed her upper arm in agreement. " and more local spots like New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Tallahassee."
"Florida?" Adam asked, startled by the abruptness of the merging of Trini's story with her Team's.
She nodded. "Kim hunted me down after the first day there and explained what she was planning to do next and why she needed my help. It was reason enough to quit the Peace Tour right there. All four of us got acquainted for a few days and found we’d work well together as a Team." Trini added to Kim, "And that's all the Team history I'm handling.
"Before Ish says her bit,” Kim began, “I'll cover what went on between when the four of us got together and when Ish completed our group. Rita and I had gotten the idea to form a Team gradually, helped along by some two-bit villains in Tallahassee, and when we found Moira, she wanted to join too. It was just about helping people at first. Then, the day I was off finding Trini, Isabella dropped by the apartment when only Moira was home."
The Angel Grove teens winced and braced themselves. The rest of Moira’s story had been so brutal.
Kim didn’t give specifics, though. "That made us realize that our enemies weren't just going to wait around patiently until we got some kind of Power. They would try to take us out first. Trini and I used some of the last juice in our old communicators to get in contact with Dulcea.”
“Who’s that?” Tanya asked.
“She’s the Guardian of one of the Ninjetti Temples on Phaedos. Where our old Powers came from, before the Zeo Crystal,” Tommy summarized quickly.
"I explained the situation and asked her whether she had some limited version she could give us – something to offer us temporary protection. She did. The four of us journeyed to Phaedos and got connected with our animal spirits. The catch was that, since we hadn’t done our Quest, the power to transform to Ninjetti didn't come from the Morphin Grid. We could feel a definite limit to how many times we could Morph."
"Like after the Green Powers were re energized?" Tommy asked.
"Sort of."
"Or more like the Morphin power was coming from inside of you instead of somewhere else, and someday you’re going to run out?" Jason asked before Kim could continue.
Four Ninjetti (excepting Moira) turned toward the Gold Ranger with wide eyes. "That's it exactly," Rita said with surprise.
"Jason, how could you..." Kim asked, concerned. How could Jason describe it so well when he'd never experienced it himself?
"Lucky guess," Jason said simply, shrugging.
Not entirely reassured, Kim nonetheless continued. "We only had to fight one serious battle before Ish joined us. We did a little dance holding off confrontations with other enemies, old and new, who'd gotten wind of the new Team of Rangers in Florida. A few minor evil interests were eager to take us out so they could say that they'd defeated a Ranger Team of Earth, but at the same time they didn’t want to confront us because defeat at our hands meant total disgrace in the eyes of evil society. Still, we knew our Powers wouldn't hold out forever. Once we ran out of energy, we would lose the only thing keeping those enemies at bay. So we were more than a little relieved when Ish showed up at our apartment only a few days after Phaedos."
Aisha took up the story. "The first thing you should ask is how much of my past with you guys I remember after the Orb of Doom and my ZEO Quest changed history. Short answer, all of it, long answer, different parts at different times. I always had the old memories, but they got kinda stuffed under the village memories over time. I just didn't think about you guys on a day to day basis growing up in Africa." Some of the Zeos pretended to look hurt at Aisha's explanation. In truth, they were relieved that Aisha still remembered them as much as that. Neither Billy nor Zordon had been able to tell them how much Aisha would remember. Tanya, on the other end of the time exchange, had gotten most of a decade’s worth of vague memories in Angel Grove that other people around Angel Grove who weren’t Rangers seemed to share, but the Zeos strongly suspected those were memories that hadn’t happened.
"I got really caught up in the plague from the moment it showed up in the area, when I was about nine. Again. It took years to find and neutralize the culprit, and then a lot of work to reverse the damage and get the animals healthy again. But when the plague was obviously on its downward spiral, I started to feel like someone somewhere else needed me. It got so bad that I finally told Ashala I was leaving the village. She's the only one I ever told about Angel Grove, so I thought she could understand. After a lot of talk, she finally told me to sleep on it and, if I still wanted to leave by morning, she would support me. She gave me the name 'Ish' during that talk, short for Ishala, in honor of all that I have been in my second lifetime, and I've held the name close to my heart ever since. That’s what I usually go by these days.
"I said my goodbyes that night, then I used Billy's gift to high tail it out of there before I changed my mind."
"What gift?" Kat asked.
Ish smiled and raised her left wrist so that the Zeos could see her yellow watch. Rather, her yellow communicator.
"Morphinomenal, it worked!" Billy grinned.
"Billy teleported my communicator to my village, just after our time lines reconnected, with a note wishing me luck in the new life. Most useful present ever," Ish grinned. "Anyway, I thought that you guys were the ones that needed my help, so I focused on Kimberly to take me to Angel Grove.”
The seven groaned.
"I was off by a few months, of course. Landed in their new apartment in Florida instead. After a rather... awkward situation, they explained their plans. I decided to help, of course. We did the whole Ninjetti Temple thing. It was a lot like the first time to start off with. Weird part was that Dulcea was even more reluctant to send us on the journey to the Monolith than she was to help us get the powers to defeat Ivan Ooze. She was getting bad omens about the success of the attempt. In the end, the odds against us were stacked at least twice as high as they were against the first Terrans. Following perfect Ranger tradition," she grinned, "we beat the odds and claimed the Great Power of the Monolith against our enemies."
"So, that's about it. Isabella never showed up again, or Aerodon or any other really serious threats. We fought off a dozen or so small-time villains who'd never heard of teamwork for the last few months. Then Rita won the grand prize of a contest, two way tickets 'for you and four of your friends' to any place in the US," Kim said.
"It took awhile for a unanimous vote, but we eventually decided on Angel Grove. Three of us were feeling homesick and the other two were " Trini said.
"Are!" Rita inserted, beaming.
" interested in seeing the city ‘where it all started,'" Trini finished.
"We really didn't expect any of our enemies to follow us here. Sounds like Felicia coming here might not have had anything to do with us – she might have been tracking Kat for awhile already. Hopefully no one else will follow us here," Ish said.
The blare of the monster alarm seemed to prove her wrong immediately.
“Ai yi yi!” Alpha did his best to spring up from his chair quickly.
Not surprisingly, Billy made it to a console first. “Looks like someone was watching,” he said with an aggrieved sigh. “Prince Sprocket’s sent a monster to Angel Grove Middle School’s soccer game. It’s based on their mascot, the Lion, and called Catattack. No unusual abilities showing up yet.”
“That’s fascinating,” Moira said. “How do you know its name?”
Billy blinked. “I… don’t know. It’s always just there in the sensor data.” He looked embarrassed and staggered that he hadn’t ever questioned it before.
Tommy put a supportive hand on Kat’s shoulder. “Nothing to do with her, or you,” he said quietly. Kat nodded, though she still looked sad. “Ready, guys?” Tommy said more loudly to his Team.
“Ready!” replied the Zeos – and most of the Venusians.
Tommy froze. “Uh… no, I think we got this one. No special abilities or anything.” He hesitated, then added, “Um, you can back us up I guess if we get in trouble.”
“Right,” Kim said, though she too looked a little sad.
Tommy looked relieved as he said, “IT’S MORPHIN TIME!”
“ZEO RANGER I, PINK!”
“ZEO RANGER II, YELLOW!”
“ZEO RANGER III, BLUE!”
“ZEO RANGER IV, GREEN!”
“ZEO RANGER V, RED!”
The Morphed Zeos vanished immediately in streaks of colorful light. The Venusians watched them go, then looked to Kim for cues. What did they do now?
It was Alpha who spoke, though. “It looks as though a group of Cogs have cornered a small number of students in the parking lot, halting their escape. Rather than divide the Zeo Rangers, perhaps you can help the students.”
Kim smiled softly. “Thanks, Alpha,” she said. “Absolutely. No need for Morph on this one, let’s just act like especially helpful sports fans,” she said to the other four.
“Be careful,” Billy warned. “Cogs are pretty dangerous when you’re not Morphed.”
“We will be,” Kim promised. “Ready, girls?”
“Ready,” the other four chorused back.
“See you soon,” Kim said to Zordon, Billy, and Alpha, then with a grin and a sparkle in her eye she called:
“Back to Action!”
The End