Trinity Scott.
That was what her passport said, in bold black letters for all the world to see, as official as the familiar stamp on the back of a silver quarter.
Piper sighed and stowed it back in her jacket pocket.
Trinity was just such a mouthful. She honored her mother's wishes to name her after her best friend, Trini Kwan, but honestly, couldn't it have been her middle name? That was what she went by for as long as she could remember, anyways. Piper, not Trinity. Piper, Piper, Piper.
It had been a long plane ride.
Technically, she was supposed to be here to meet Uncle Tommy (he wasn't really her uncle, but that was what she always called him- jeez, it took her five years till she found out he wasn't actually related to her) to be staying with him for a week. Her parents needed some vacation time in Hawaii, and she hadn't seen Tommy in two years since he moved out here. So she had taken a little plane ride to the only airport around- Turtle Cove- and planned on meeting him after catching her next flight to his town.
Tommy seemed to have completely forgotten about her good sense for finding trouble if it was in a ten-mile radius of her, but that was okay with her. So long as she got just a few hours away from her overprotective father, it would all be worth it.
Jason could be such a killjoy.
But that was another reason why Piper loved fieldtrips, vacations, going anywhere where no one knew her name- or more importantly, her father's. But then again, it was almost impossible to find someplace where no one knew her father's name. Or her mother's, for that matter- Kimberly was quite famous as well in the Power Ranger world.
She was lucky, and she knew it. No one else ever had been born with two Power Ranger parents- especially not with Mighty Morphin Power Ranger parents (Mighty Morphin was a big deal- first modern Power Rangers ever), and especially not with the first red ranger as their father. Almost everyone was dragged into the Power Ranger world of orgs and battles and sacrifice and power by fate- Piper had been born into it because of her parents. By the time she was five, she had met and knew the real name of almost every single 'notable' Power Ranger out there because of Jason, Kimberly, and Uncle Tommy.
And no one, ever, payed her any attention.
Oh, she wasn't a spotlight-hogging brat. Piper was just fine with being ignored (though not exactly a fan of it). She just wished they payed attention to her for her- Piper didn't even really have her own name (it was Trini's). She was Jason's daughter. Kimberly's daughter. Jason's daughter, Kimberly's, Jason's, Jason's, Jason's-
Not. Piper.
She was living in the shadow of someone else. And maybe she was only thirteen and too young to be soul-searching or trying to make her own name, but she was sick of only being known for her parents, never having her own identity.
How much it must suck, she realized, to be George Washington's kid. Or King Tut's. Or Cleopatra's. You would go down in history, recognized and tagged forever, as being close to or related to someone else.
Not that Cleopatra had had a daughter- not that she knew of- but still, the sentiment was the same.
Piper sighed.
This was going to be a long week with Uncle Tommy. If Jason was a big deal, Tommy was like- the big deal. She was lucky she wasn't his daughter, or she'd probably be stuck in his shadow forever.
As walked down the enormous hall with the polished white floors, among the crowds of people, she didn't notice the strange smoke swirling in the shadows against the walls. And she didn't realize that today, trouble might magnetically find her again. And this time, it might go terribly, terribly wrong.
Princess Shayla sat on the rock by the Sacred Fountain, fingers trailing delicately over the cool surface of the water, leaving tiny ripples in their wake. She cocked her head slowly to the side, brown hair tumbling around her shoulders, and watched the beautiful patterns that rippled across the surface of the water, watched as they lapped against the edge of the stone and slowly receded back into stillness.
She was thinking, as usual. Thinking about past days and peaceful times, thinking about the time before the orgs had awakened and brought terror and destruction down upon them all. Thinking about how the Anamarium had once been a part of the Earth, now a story that only existed in fairy tales. And she was saddened by it all.
But a deep peace and sense of purpose lay heavy in her heart, and kept it beating strong. She knew she would never give up- never stop fighting till the Wild Force was disbanded and the Power Ranger gifts were passed to a new generation- and then she would wait with the Zords till their time came again.
She thought longingly of Merrick, and sighed.
Till our time comes again.
A geyser of water suddenly exploded out of the fountain, bubbling a foot high of water and white spray. Shayla leapt back, startled, and watched in alarm as the fountain slowly dropped back into the surface of the pond. The flat water rippled, a shadow came over its reflective surface, and then a new scene unfolded before her eyes.
A bone-white floor that shined and reflected harsh lights painted the scene before her, a crowd of people moving all over the place. Even as she watched, a tendril of white smoke curled across the vision, floating above the floors. People were pausing, staring, looking around, and then suddenly a bright light- orange, or golden- burned out of the view of her vision, casting the room in a strange red glow. People were screaming, running, the smoke was thickening…
And then the fountain went blank.
Shayla whirled around, eyes wide, hand flying to her throat.
"Rangers!" she cried, hailing them through her necklace. "Another org has risen!"
It started when the smell wafted through the air- thick, sharp, and smoky. The smell of fire. Piper glanced around, but no one else seemd to notice; the babble of the crowd was steady. It wasn't until the scent grew stronger that she realized something was wrong.
Piper paused and looked around, seeing that other people were beginning to notice it too. She glanced down and noticed thick white smoke curling across the floor- and then the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
The smoke wasn't moving like smoke- rising up and rolling to vanish, thick pillars- but like…tendrils of an octopus. Like hands.
One of the hands paused, smoke rolling, contained, and then surged upward, slamming into a passerby's face.
The man shouted and coughed, spluttering, going down on his knees. People everywhere stopped and looked around. The room was getting warmer, Piper noticed- too warm.
That was when the screaming began.
Orange light suddenly spilled into the room, that kind of glow that only comes from a fire. Piper's head snapped up, and she couldn't believe what she was seeing- but then, based on how she grew up, and who her parents were, she could.
A glowing shape crawled into the room, a shape with four legs, a large body, and a long neck ending in a narrow head. A fiery line lashed out behind it- a tail, Piper realized. The thing was made of flames, licking and twisting and wavering in a fearsome form that never remained quite the same. Then it reared up on two legs and slammed back onto the ground, and the flames of its body seemed to explode.
Heat blasted throughout the room. The scream increased tenfold and there was the sound of something cracking- the floor, Piper realized, glancing down. She dropped her suitcase and staggered back as another heat wave blasted her face. People in front of her were running and screaming, trying to get away- any way- from the monster. Piper tried to move, tried to run, tried to remember everything her father and mother had taught her from her training since she was four, but then she caught the creatures eyes.
Two deep depressions in the flames were the eye sockets should have been, and a blinding white flame burned in each with all the intensity of the sun. And they looked at her.
And Piper couldn't look away.
The air around the fire-monster was rippling, as if in heat waves, and Piper snapped out of her revere as the air wavered and contracted, and then blasted outward, rippling out like a shock wave to consume the room.