O, let me not be mad, sweat heaven!
Keep me in temper. I would not be mad.
—William Shakespeare, King Lear
Dull yellow carpet, torn in places and aged in every place, rested on the holy ground, synchronizing with the off-white walls and their chipping paint to give the entire area the semblance of warmth, light, and even love. Candles on the altar, candles in front of shrines to Mary and Joseph, lights designed to look like candles illuminating the stations of the cross hanging from the walls, and large lights suspended from the ceiling to make the entire church visible. St. Paul's Church in Ivory Glade, Colorado, had always been Alexander Revell's source of strength and dedication. His practice of martial arts was to shape his body; his practice of faith was to shape his soul.
In the pew underneath the stained glass window depicting the Christ stepping on a snake and reaching up to an angel reaching down from heaven, Alex kneeled, listening to the eucaristic prayer he had memorized years ago. He was alone this Sunday, because his mother and father had attended Mass last night while he was training with Grandfather at Sharpened Senses. And as long as evil remained to threaten his home, Alex knew training would have to be a priority. His left arm, from shoulder to wrist, was wrapped up in bandages and hidden by a thick green sweater. The wound he had received almost an entire year ago still remained and, lately, had begun to burn or bleed unpredictably. It meant pseudoine was near, but investigations always turned up nothing. This time it had been opened and leaking constantly for almost seven hours now.
Second degree pseudoine poisoning was incurable. It was when the substance entered the bloodstream but never made it into the DNA. Therefore, when other pseudoine was present, a resonance was created and re-opened the scratch Dominic Larson had made on his arm. Third degree poisoning, like Craig Hopwood had after the warmonger Sir Vesper stabbed his leg with a sword, was curable because, instead of entering the blood it stayed in one local area until it was either removed or the victim died. Alex did not want to know what first degree poisoning entailed.
"Through him, with him, in him," the priest was chanting as he lifted a chalice to the sky, "in the unity of the Holy Spirit..."
Closing his eyes, Alex concentrated on praying, putting the scratch completely out of his mind and focusing. He asked God to protect Craig, to guide him to safety and clear his name of wrongdoing, to protect their town from Rapture Hold and Twilight Legion, and to keep his friends and family healthy of body and clear of mind.
"Amen," he said at the same time as the priest and the rest of the congregation.
It never occurred to him to pray for himself.
In one hand, he held a bag from Younkers stuffed with clothes and other junk, and in the other he struggled to hold two more bags from music and novelty stores. In front of him, Rebecca hurried, both hands free, toward the jewelry stand set up in the middle of the mall corridor. Beside him, Brittany stared at the ground as she walked, looking as though any minute she would burst into tears. She carried a small plastic bag from Barnes and Noble with both her hands.
"Women," Cecil sighed, shifting his weight to avoid dropping one or all of the shopping bags Becky had accumulated over the course of their visit.
Becky turned around and lifted her eyebrows, asking, "What was that?" in a sweet and innocent voice.
"Has anyone ever told you that you waddle like a duck when you shop?" Cecil answered her question with a ridiculous one of his own. He heard Brittany begin to laugh but never had the chance to hear her finish because Becky was suddenly in his face, her foot pressing firmly, and therefore painfully, on top of his own.
"I waddle like a duck, huh?" she demanded breathlessly, brown eyes sparkling, compromising her supposedly angry facade. "Maybe I'll fix it so you waddle like a duck, too. A neutered duck." Cecil's eye bulged, and he pulled his foot out from under hers with all his strength, then stepped backward and bumped into another mall shopper, who cussed at him and told him to watch where he was going.
Brittany sighed. "You two belong on your own sitcom," she grumbled.
"Quack," Becky snapped at Cecil for one parting shot, and turned around to return to her perusing.
"Why do you do that?" Brittany wondered as he reclaimed his position beside her.
Cecil frowned, ignoring the pain in his foot, and watched as Rebecca pointed to something under the glass display and the salesman pulled the item out for her to examine. "I..." he began, but could not find an end to the statement for the life of him.
"I've made Cecil Mercuric speechless," observed Brittany with a smile. She pointed to his face and added, "You're blushing."
"Not blushing," he corrected her. "All these people around are making me hot."
"I don't think it's all the people," she teased. "I think it's that one right there."
Recomposing himself, Cecil replied, "Think what you want," and made his way to stand beside Becky at the counter to get a glimpse at the next boutique he would be carrying. "What is that?" he asked her.
"A cross embedded with an emerald in the center," Rebecca told him. "I thought Alex would really like it."
"That is awfully pricey," he complained, pointing to the price tag.
Grinning, she countered with, "Well, size doesn't matter, so why should price?"
"You have a one-track mind," grumbled Cecil, setting the shopping bags down so he could reach around and take out his wallet. "I suppose if we went in halves..."
"Make it thirds," Brittany interrupted.
As Rebecca collected the money and paid for the trinket, she took the little velvet box the cross came with and slipped it into her purse for safekeeping. Cecil bent over to pick up his bagged burden once more, but a loud commotion from further down the mall caught all of their attention. The three teenagers raced toward the noise, like salmon swimming upstream against the flow of other shoppers who were panicking as they struggled to get away.
Standing on a dais in the center of the mall, a platform where Cecil, Craig, and most of them used to sit on Santa's lap, were two women with a horde of men and women dressed in the uniforms of Twilight Legion spilling out from an ethereal doorway hanging in mid-air behind them. One was a beautiful woman, with dark hair and tan skin, sweeping her gaze across the chaos she had caused and smiling to herself. The other was less beautiful, thin and pale, squinting as though she were staring into a bright light and smelling raw sewage. She tapped the first woman on the shoulder and pointed at Cecil, Becky, and Brittany.
"Power Rangers!" the first woman observed happily.
Mall-goers were still scrambling to get away, and Cecil cursed to himself, unable to respond while so many people were nearby. A Legionnaire grabbed one of the innocents and thrust his fist into the victim's back. Another Legionwoman was pulling on a customer's hair and banging his head against a glass display window.
Channeling power through his OmniTech Ability Band, Cecil quietly executed the Psychic Stream power to try and sever the pseudoine's control over the Legionnaires, but the response he got was different than it usually was. If the normal feeling of Psychic Stream was like cutting through butter with a knife, this felt like cutting through a brick wall with a knife.
The first woman laughed contently. "Nice try, Red Ranger." She stood up straight, though still fairly short, and introduced herself. "I am Fhare. This is Devus. We are Rapture Holders, serving the Destroyer's Hand. And by combining my talent to control the minds of those infused with pseudoine with Devus's talent of opening gateways to any place in existence, we serve very well."
Devus touched Fhare's face with one finger, then turned around and stepped through the portal. She was still visible on the other side, but shimmered like a reflection in a pool of water, then both she and the gateway vanished instantly.
Seizing the opportunity, Cecil pulled the two girls back and into an empty Bed, Bath, and Beyond store, and exclaimed, "It's morphin' time!"
"Omni Pegasus!"
"Omni Sphinx!"
"Omni Titan!"
Emerging from the store, the three Omni Rangers fell into defending stances and instantly summoned their newer weapons, the Electric Hammer, the Light Whip, and the Chaos Sword. A group of twelve Legionnaires, about half of the total present, surrounded them and closed in to attack. Cecil turned his sword upside down and tried to attack his enemies in places that would immobilize them instead of killing them. With the alien technology guiding her technique, Brittany used her whip to trip multiple Legionnaires at the same time, then used her Dazzle Wave power to blind them and render them helpless. Occasionally Becky would seize the opportunity to aim her hammer-like weapon and fire a burst of electricity that would knock one of them back.
"We have to contact the others," Becky told Cecil in an almost scolding voice.
He nodded and began to reply, but broke it off to defend himself against another attack from two Legionmen.
Two beams of light, one gray and one blue, materialized through the ceiling of the mall and touched down near the other Twilight Legion members terrorizing the unluckiest shoppers. Amber and Bane immediately dispersed into the chaos and began attacking with the Shadow Blades, short knife-like weapons in each of the Black Ranger's hands, and the Water Claws, weapons attached to the Blue Ranger's wrists with three sharp blades extending past his fists on both of them.
Finally, as he broke through, Cecil reached the stage and came face to face with Fhare as she watched the battle with a look of disappointment. "You fools are much more powerful than you are supposed to be," she said distantly.
"Then why do you fight us?" the Red Ranger asked sadly. "Is a cause destined to fail worth the suffering of so many? Is it worth the price the other Holders paid?"
Fhare examined him intently, and Cecil could only imagine what type of terrible sight she was seeing. A young man in the flexible armor of a Power Ranger, a golden shield engraved with the diamonds-in-diamond sigil, upside-down sword clutched in his hand covered in tainted blood of her allies, and the feeling of suffering surrounding and choking them both like a cocoon. "I..." she started to say, but never finished. Instead, Fhare turned her head to take in the battleground once more and demanded, "Where is the last Ranger? I want to bury all six together."
Emerging from the church along with the rest of the faithful crowd, Alexander was heading for his car when the alarm on his communicator began beeping. Walking quickly back into the church and down a flight of stairs to the empty basement, he lifted the device up to his mouth and acknowledged, "Alex here."
"The other Rangers have engaged another Rapture Holder," Oriquin informed him, speaking with a quick pace. "They have the situation well in hand, but they will need you for the Megazord if the attacker grows. Teleport to Ivory Glade Southlake Mall to assist."
"Right," Alex answered. He kept his bandaged left arm with the communicator and Omni Morpher raised and made the sign of the cross with his right. Exclaiming, "It's morphin' time!" he felt the earth and nature itself entered his soul as he invoked the powers of the "Omni Dragon!"
"Give yourself to me," a woman's voice whispered.
Alex's left arm went absolutely cold, and then grew colder. The rest of his body began burning up, and then got hotter. He closed his eyes against the ambivalent pain, and could still see the woman's smile. Alex knew he screamed out then, but he could not hear his own voice or see his friends' reactions with his own eyes.
"Alexander, give yourself to me."
"I won't give in," Alex thought to himself.
In his mind, he was standing in a white room, but he felt there was unseen water reaching up to his knees, and a golden cross was thrust before him. Craig was hanging there, crucified, his thin blood-tinged brown hair blowing in every direction but his head was facing downward into the water where he had no reflection. Wondering, Alex looked straight down to see if he had a reflection, but what looked back at him from below was not himself, but his Grandfather. His Grandfather changed into his parents, who changed into his close friends, who changed into his classmates, who changed into the people of Ivory Glade, who changed into six billion people.
He tried to scream but no sound would come, in fact the entire place was erriely dead silent, and suddenly Alex realized he was not breathing. A frantic gulp and panicked attempt to inhale failed and, as time passed, he became more desperate, until he finally gave up. There was no beat of his heart, either, or even ringing in his ears. Slowly it dawned on him: this must be consciousness. True consciousness.
A voice slashed into the silence, "You must become my strength."
"I won't give in!" Alex screamed defiantly in silence.
Trying to ignore the voice was all but impossible in this place. There were more reflections in the water that was not water now. Cecil, holding his hand out, looking straight at him, as if he were trying to prevent this somehow. Tall and fierce flames exploded directly behind him, splattering burning heat and bright light and ashes in every direction. Amber, turning to glance over her shoulder, spotting him, and smiling serenely. There was an evil black shadow growing behind her.
"I have enjoyed our little games until now," a smooth tone from the past echoed. It was Arcanza, but as he spoke the voice became the strange woman's: "Nobody survives..."
The six billion people standing in the reflecting pool began falling down and crying out, first one by one, then two at a time, and as time continued to scrape by ever so slowly every last one of them wound up dead. Their collective screams became a chorus of pain and, without the ability to do anything to save them, Alex could only weep without sound. A pool of red at the bottom of the tiny lake began to spread, changing the water to blood, then back again.
At the edge of his vision he sensed people reaching out to him, and though he saw himself responding with agression, attacking them. The thought made him excited, the excitement made him sick, the sickness made him strong, and the strength made him excited all over again.
The water was rising. It was up to his chest. There was a hole in his chest. His heart should have been there. Thinking was beginning to get harder and harder. He looked up. There was no cross now. Craig was standing in the water with him. Trails of blood fell from where should have been tears. Craig looked at him. He felt the words "I'm sorry." The white room turned green. The green room turned black. Black overtook everything.
"I won't give in!" he screamed as loud as he could. It came out a pathetic sob.
What was left of Alexander Revell's soul vanished.
What was left of Alexander Revell's mind shattered.
What was left of Alexander Revell's body was submerged in blood.
The entire mall fell silent as Cecil watched Fhare turn her head as Alexander materialized in a beam of green light. He watched a cruel, evil smile perk her lips upward, and her empty white eyes surged to life. Cecil was about to run an Omni Analysis on her and acquire some definite measurements on her power level, but suddenly Alex began screaming louder than the quiet young man had ever screamed before. Even when his voice cracked the blood-curdling shriek continued at full force. All around the ground began to tremble and, in a circle with Alex in the center, the earth beneath the mall began to crack open, creating deep crevices radiating out from him.
"The building is going to collapse!" Cecil cried to his teammates through his communicator. "We have to teleport out now." And, following his own advice, he seized the full flow of OmniTech power and filled his mind with the need to teleport outside the mall. A hand from somewhere grabbed his shoulder and held on to him as he, as well as his unknown accompanier, splintered his body into millions of tiny molecules and reassembled them a safe distance away.
When the red afterglow faded from his vision, Cecil turned and growled low as he discovered the person who had grabbed him was Fhare. She laughed guiltily and began running away from the chaotic mess the Southlake Mall had become. The ground still roared as it attempted to turn itself upside down through its forceful movements and tremblings. Amber, Rebecca, Bane, and Brittany all teleported near Cecil.
"What's wrong?" Becky asked in a shaky, unsure voice.
Amber grabbed Cecil's arm for reassurance as she answered, "It looked like the Rapture Holder did something to Alex."
Lightning forked in the sky, then suddenly hissed as the supercharged bolts lanced downward toward the quaking earth. The entire mall, at once, collapsed, but then began to sink below the planet's crust. Cecil could hear popping and sizzling as, he imagined, the building was plunged into some kind of magma below.
Bane stepped forward cautiously and took in the scene in its entirely. "This is it," he said to his companions. "The true power of nature. Mother Nature's vengeance."
A circle of fire exploded from the chasms, throwing all five Rangers off their feet, while at the same time a single column of earth rose in the circle's center. Cecil struggled to stand up and regain his footing, but the fight was interrupted by Amber exclaiming, "Look!"
Walking toward them from the circle of flames, one slow step at a time, with streaks and sheets of lightning still flashing behind him, was the Green Ranger. He did not call out to them, or make a sound of any kind, and did not stop approaching until he stood about ten feet from Cecil. "Alex?" Cecil carefully asked. "Are you alright?"
Without warning, Alex leaped forward, executing a powerful 720 degree spinning kick that struck the side of Cecil's helmet twice before knocking him down. Instinctively Cecil countered with a sweep of his foot to try tripping his assailant, but Alex jumped straight up then, sharply, straight down, crushing Cecil's leg under both of his feet and all of his weight. "Son of a bitch!" Cecil swore at the top of his voice.
"Stop it, Alex!" Amber called.
Responding to the voice, Alexander turned, his visor seeking out Amber and locking on her. With a roar, the large Nature Axe materialized in his hands, and he brandished it threateningly as he charged the Black Ranger.
"Onyx Gemstone Armor!" Amber exclaimed before he reached her. In a flash of light, or more accurately a flash of darkness, her Omni Ranger suit was replaced by similar-looking sturdy armor that allowed almost as much freedom of movement as the spandex-like material. "Zenith Aura!" A swirl of rainbow energy entirely encircled her as she dodged Alex's attack and countered with a punch to the back of his head. Growling, the Green Ranger absorbed the blow and shook it off, then retaliated with an uppercut that knocked Amber backward with its sheer power.
Becky helped Cecil to stand up and took the opportunity to ask, "What's wrong with him, Cece? He's not betraying us, too, is he? Alex wouldn't..."
"I do not know," he answered between breaths that hurt. "I remember he teleported in and looked ready to fight, then Fhare spotted him and..." And suddenly Cecil realized what had happened.
"And what?" Becky prompted, but Cecil ignored her and called up his Omni Analysis power to trace the direction the Rapture Holder had run to escape.
"Stay here," he ordered, "and follow Amber's lead. Keep Alex occupied until I get to the bottom of this." Assessing where Fhare might be given her direction and the time that had elapsed, Cecil quickly calculated the most likely location she would be at and teleported there instantly.
Reaching over his head, with his hands clasped together, Alex brought them down in one fast and powerful motion, smashing the top of Amber's head. She felt the shock absorbed by the Aura in her mind, so the attack was not completely without pain, and the rest was reflected back to her assailant by the Gemstone Armor.
"Don't make me do this, Alex," she warned. "Shadow Blades!" Her shortsword-like weapons formed in her hands and, with a quick dual swipe, knocked the Green Ranger backward to put some distance between them. She watched in horror as Alexander threw his head back and screamed, not in pain but a primitive roar, the kind a dinosaur would have made millions of years ago. His Jade Armor replaced his normal suit, and the earth around him growled violently as it did so.
Nearby, Bane suggested to the other two girls, "We had better activate our armors as well. My gut tells me his attacks are about to increase in strength. Turquoise Gemstone Armor!"
"Coral Gemstone Armor!" summoned Rebecca.
"Tigereye Gemstone Armor!" Brittany followed a second later.
Amber fell into position with the other three, her and Bane in front and the other two behind, slightly off to either side, a flat V-shaped formation. Leaping into the air, Alexander flung the Gaia Star, and it radiated with bright green light as it struck Brittany, then Bane. Amber grabbed it from the air, then redirected it by throwing it at full force at the ground below her. The Star plunged into the upturned dirt and sheathed itself, now unable to return to Alex's hand.
Calling forth his Stone Cannon, Alex aimed it directly at Amber and fired an incredible energy discharge. She easily dodged the attack, but suddenly Alex was there, unleashing a roundhouse and subsequent series of punches. Suddenly, and shockingly, the Zenith Aura shattered and dissipated, and Amber could not help but shriek as it felt like her head did the same.
Bane pulled her away from the onslaught and picked up the fierce fight in her place, with Brittany and Rebecca firing from a distance to cover him. "Please," she whispered, "don't hurt Alex. He's not himself."
"You ruined his mind!" Cecil screamed, thrusting the Chaos Sword forward with all the force he could muster in his rage. "I felt it. Somehow you..."
Fhare sidestepped the blade and hissed at him as she did so. "You felt it?" she asked curiously. "How? I thought only I was cursed with this infection."
Easing his strike, Cecil maintained an offensive position with the sword as he replied, "What infection?"
"My Talent," the beautiful woman answered sadly, and absently, as though she were speaking to a figment of her imagination rather than someone real. "Since birth, the Lineage has cursed me with the ability to see the psyches of others. And with the discovery of pseudoine, I discovered I could do more than see, I could also control."
"And that is why you are with Rapture Hold now," concluded Cecil. "You want revenge on existence for creating you with your curse."
Smiling coldly, Fhare acknowledged, "Exactly," and retreated back from him a couple steps, thinking he would not notice.
De-morphing, Cecil released his hold on the OmniTech power and kept eye contact with her to convince her he did not want to fight. Maybe, by befriending this enemy, she could restore Alex to normal without causing him harm. Having someone capable of manipulating pseudoine-infected people would make Twilight Legion fall infinitely faster, as well. Maybe even the Pseudo Ranger. "My Talent emerged after I became an Omni Ranger," he confided in her. "I discovered I could destabilize an enemy's mind by combining it with OmniTech. Then I accidentally realized I could block pseudoine from affecting the mind and freed all of the Legionnaires who tried to seize Ivory Glade. Later I began to use it to create bonds between my mind and others' minds, and I could reinforce their strengths by giving them my own."
"So what?" she sneered. "You have a purpose. Now so do I."
"Every time I use a Psychic Talent, it rips a little piece of me away," he said, quietly and dangerously. "Sometimes I feel like crying for days after I use it."
Lowering her eyes from their lock with his, Fhare sighed, "I know. I do, too, but I am afraid when God returns, and brings Hell along..." She left the sinister sentence hanging empty and cold.
Realizing he was connecting emotionally with the enemy, Cecil held out his hand, offering a silent ceasefire. Fhare glanced at his hand, then away, as he could tell she was considering it. That small hope was ruined, though, when a portal shimmered in the air nearby and the other Rapture Holder woman, Devus, emerged from it. "Our lord wanted me to inform you that there is also residual pseudoine inside the Blue Ranger, and he wants you to turn him as well. We can take my portals to get there instantly."
Fhare smiled devilishly and began walking toward Devus quickly.
"I cannot let you turn Bane, too," Cecil warned. "Stop, or I will kill you both."
Halting in mid-step and turning back to look at him as Cecil silently morphed once again into the Red Ranger, Fhare scoffed, "Farewell, Ranger."
"Good-bye, Fhare," whispered Cecil, then raised his voice to call, "Psychic Stream!" The beautiful Rapture Holder grabbed her head with both hands, screaming as the mental anguish rocketed back and forth through her mind. Devus watched in shock as her teammate began shaking uncontrollably, then threw her head back so far the snapping spine was audible. Fhare fell, limp, to the ground, and left life with one final tormented breath.
The gate, and Devus, vanished. Slowly Cecil approached the body and put his hand on the head of lifeless Fhare.
Each time she was knocked away it was a greater struggle to stand up and rejoin the intense battle. Bane was beginning to show early signs of fatigue, too, while Rebecca and Brittany were obviously maxed out and focusing on distance attacks. Every attack Alex began drained them more, while his strength seemed to never waver.
Suddenly the Green Ranger went silent and stopped moving. He stared straight ahead, past the other four Rangers, either ignoring them or baiting them. "Alex?" Amber asked over a distant roaring. "Are you coming back to your senses?" She approached him, ever so slowly, assuring him she would not act aggressively.
"Be careful!" Becky screamed.
Amber put her hand on Alex's shoulder and told him, "Relax. That Rapture Holder woman is controlling your mind. You're not yourself."
An instant, full-power swing of his fist was all the Green Ranger needed to knock Amber backward this time. She felt her head hit the ground and, without the Zenith Aura to protect her, and with her severely weakened condition, consciousness immediately left.
Teleporting back to his companions, he found no one there except for Alexander, standing alone, facing straight ahead. Lifting his communicator, he called, "Amber, this is Cecil, come in."
The voice that answered him, however, was Rebecca's. "Amber was hurt badly. We teleported with her back to Gemini Destiny. She's safe now."
Dropping his arm and balling his hands into fists, Cecil scolded himself for abandoning his friends when they needed him. He remembered his talks with Craig, when Craig had told him of all the times he had tried to handle a situation by himself, leaving the other team members to handle the dirty work. Pride was a very dangerous sin for an Omni Ranger.
Suddenly the sky darkened, for only a couple seconds, and when light returned the Pseudo Ranger was standing behind Alexander laughing in its sinister metallic voice. "I am glad to welcome you to the ranks of Twilight Legion," it said to Alex. "Your powers will be a great asset to our cause."
Alexander, instead of responding vocally, performed a spinning kick that forced the Pseudo to stumble backward. In the sky above, the Dragon OmniZord appeared, and a giant ball of fire from its mouth exploded against the side of an office building near the crater that was once the city mall. All around, devastation reigned as people fled burning structures and upturned roads with fixed fear. No one dared look at the three Rangers facing off in the epicenter, let alone approach them. After another superheated flaming breath, the Dragon dipped down, its green and silver metallic scales gleaming with reflected fire, striking the Pseudo Ranger with its tail.
The Pseudo Saber formed in the evil doppelganger's hand and it deflected the lashing tail with inhuman strength and accuracy. "So this is the game you wish to play," Pseudo growled. It lifted its free hand, bright blue flames began encircling it, and with the shout, "Chillfire!" a thick beam of the same flames, only liquefied, launched itself toward Alexander.
Before the beam reached the Green Ranger, a solid piece of earth, shaped like a miniature replica of one of the Rocky Mountains, quickly grew out of the ground itself and stopped the attack before it got close. Dropping its fighting stance, the Pseudo Ranger, realizing its power level was equal to that of its berserker opponent's, dismissed the battle with a wave and teleported away surrounded in a silver light.
Alex, turning his head to the sky, did the same; a clap of thunder accompanied his teleportation. The OmniZord, though, continued attacking random locations, and more buildings were being demolished by the minute.
"We have to stop that," Brittany proclaimed, startling Cecil from behind. He turned to see her, Bane, and Rebecca standing and watching the disaster born from the mythological creature.
"We cannot form the Omni Megazord," Cecil thought aloud. "We may have to use Babel with our individual Zords for backup."
"Or we can form the Crusader Megazord," suggested Brittany. "I designed the Dark Crusader to serve as a base, like the Titan, and the remaining four to attach to it. Bane is going to take Amber's place." Bane lifted the ShadowTech Ability Band on his right forearm and nodded.
"Alright," agreed Cecil. "We need CrusaderZord power now!"
"Dark Crusader! Cerulean Crusader!" Bane summoned the two vehicles.
"Rose Crusader!" called Becky.
"Gold Crusader!" exclaimed Brittany.
"Crimson Crusader!" cried Cecil, and instantly he was teleported inside the Warrior Mode CrusaderZord as it responded to his cry from its hidden location in the hollowed out mountain that served as the Zord Holding Bay.
"Initiate Crusader Megazord assembly," Bane ordered through the communicator. Cecil pressed his hand against the newly-installed TGP panel in the ceiling of the piloting stage and felt the machine begin to convert. The Rose and Cerulean Crusaders converted themselves into plating that reinforced the Dark Crusader's legs and feet. The Crimson Crusader did similarly with the upper torso and abdomen. Finally, the Gold Crusader changed into larger hands, larger feet, a helmet, and a golden pair of wings attached to the back. Part of the Dark Crusader itself had broken off to form a giant sword and shield.
In the conjoined piloting stage, Cecil stared at the monitor displaying the image of the Crusader Megazord and gasped, "Holy shit! This Megazord looks like...a giant archangel. Brittany, this is...beyond incredible!"
"We have to grab the Dragon and immobilize it long enough for Elliott to safely teleport inside," Bane instructed. "After she de-activates it manually, I will carry it back to the Holding Bay, where it will stay dormant until Revell is sane again."
With movements that, before now, Cecil would have thought impossible for a giant robot, the Crusader Megazord struck the Dragon OmniZord's left wing with its sword, causing the weaker vehicle to hang helpless in the air just long enough for the Megazord to drop its shield and grab it. The Dragon used its breath of fire to counterattack, but even the intense heat could not phase the new creation. Brittany teleported out of the piloting stage, and within moments the glowing unearthly green eyes of the Dragon turned black and lifeless.
Bane turned to Cecil and told him, "I can handle it from here."
"Take the Dragon back to the Holding Bay," Cecil told him quietly. "Then bring the Megazord back here, along with the Hydra OmniZord, and see if you can help put out these fires and clear away all of the wreckage." Then, motioning to Becky, he quickly teleported back to Gemini Destiny to check on Amber's condition personally.
After Alpha Complex had been destroyed, all that remained of the once massive assortment of data and history was filtered and condensed onto a single compact disc. Brittany Elliott, combining her familiarity of computers and what little additional knowledge she had been taught by Seraide, was able to recall most of the important files and programs. Together she and Oriquin built a new mainframe for Alpha Systems, one that incorporated mobility and some semblance of human emotion. The little robot, standing only half of Oriquin's height, was named Alpha-S2. "He" contained that reservoir of information, now, and at the same time functioned as though it were a living being.
It had turned out, though, that Professor Donaldson had put extensive effort into creating Gemini Destiny's onboard computer as well. Between Alpha-S2 and the ship's mainframe, the capabilities they held were incredible, but still nowhere near so as the Complex's had been.
"Amber has overexerted herself," Alpha explained to Cecil and Rebecca as they watch him tend to her. She was lying on a bed in the Infirmary/Medical Supply room of Gemini Destiny, attached intravenously to one monitor that displayed all of her life signs. As far as what little medical knowledge Cecil had, all of those vitals look healthy. "A full day of rest will allow her to recuperate and I can keep watch over her until she is better."
"Thanks, Alpha," replied Cecil, putting his hand gently over Amber's forehead. To Becky, he said, "I think I did something terrible. I killed Fhare, and it seems I killed Alex's mind along with her."
Becky comforted him with an arm around his shoulder and a quiet, soothing voice. Her breath smelled like peppermint. "You did what you had to. Fhare was going to come after Bane, next, and he's wiped us out before. It was the right choice."
"I was this close to converting her to our side," he sighed, looking up to hold his thumb and index finger an inch apart. At the same time Brittany entered the Infirmary and joined them, with Oriquin emerging from behind her.
The Omnian lord looked sadly at Amber, then turned to Cecil and told him, "I am sorry."
Cecil sighed, shifting himself away from Becky's half-hug and walked closer to Oriquin. He addressed him in a quiet, calm voice, but there was still a specter of conflict between them. "Do you have any plan as to how we can save Alex?"
"Again," the tired-looking man replied, "I am sorry."
"Me too," Cecil agreed. "For years now we have been poisoning this planet. Earth is damaged daily by our unconcern; emissions from SUVs burning holes in the ozone layer, forests being axed, our waters turned into virtual poison at our hand."
Brittany frowned, not comprehending this obvious philosophy-driven speech, but Becky had no qualms about asking, "What do you mean?"
"We are always raping the soul of the planet. But now it has an opportunity to get its revenge. God's greatest creation, Mother Nature, is lashing back at us through Alexander Revell and OmniTech." He paused, to let it sink in, and stared at the floor to avoid the gapes and dumbfounded looks he knew were waiting for him at eye-level. "Our best friend has become our greatest threat, and our home has turned against us."
Original Publication Date: 18 October 2001
