Fighting The Fire
Disclaimer: Power Rangers are owned by Saban. I only own the plot ideas and characters you don't already know. Also, in this particular chapter, the dream sequence is my (much grittier) version of a scene from Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, and in case you haven't already guessed, no, I don't own that either.
A/N: For the purposes of this story, all events in PR canon have been bumped ten years into the future. Also, assume that the original team were juniors in high school (approximately 17-18 years old) when they got their powers. For example, the events depicted in the prologue would have occurred in 2007. Forever Red will take place later this year, a few months after this story concludes. Basically, when considering the history of the show, assume canon unless the story explicitly indicates otherwise, just bumped ahead ten years.
Prologue
He had never really believed in hell, but if he'd ever had to approximate what that would feel like, it would have been this.
It always started with the fire.
Five years of sleepless nights, of painful mornings, of hiding his face from the concerned looks the others shot him when they thought he wasn't looking – the cycle that had come to define his life, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. It was all one massive, vicious circle, and the origin was always the same. The terror started with the nightmares, and the nightmares always started with the fire.
He'd become intimately familiar with how it began: he felt the heat rising up over his body, heard the roaring of the flames that wasn't quite loud enough to cover that horrifying crackle that always reminded him of evil laughter. He felt the beads of sweat that had begun to trace their way down his arms and the small of his back, only to be kicked off into oblivion by the futile thrashing of his legs; if he looked down, he could still see it, every detail coming through in such crystal clear focus it was like he was watching it in a movie: every streak of red or yellow in the unforgiving orange of the bubbling pool of lava that awaited beneath him like the jaws of a hungry shark, every bubble that swelled up and burst, sending droplets of molten rock flying up towards his unprotected skin.
After a while, other things started coming into focus, things that didn't seem as immediate as the fire but terrified him nonetheless. He felt her hair falling over his shoulder, felt the tensing of the muscles in her back as it flexed and thrashed against his own. He heard the sounds of the battle waging around them, the clanging and smacking of fists and feet connecting with metal and flesh; heard the voices some small part of the back of his mind recognized, shouting commands, crying out in pain, and one that simply called out their names, over and over again, the panic and desperation in it sending a chill down his spine. He felt the metal rings encircling his hands, the rope that wound its way around his chest and bound him in place, dangling from the ceiling of some kind of cave, moving ever so slowly downward into the maw of the lava pit beneath him.
As they got lower, he began to smell it, the heat from the pit starting to eat into the rubber of his diving shoes and the hairs on his exposed calves; he heard his own voice, calling out for help he doubted would ever come, and hers, spitting out the occasional defiant taunt to their captors between cries of pain that tore at his heart. He heard the mocking laughter of their captors as they watched the battle unfolding before them; his hands curled into fists as he writhed and kicked uselessly at his bonds, all his long years of martial arts training suddenly worth nothing to him.
Then they began to move faster, the lava rising up to meet them seeming to grow more excited as they descended toward it. His heart was pounding in his chest, threatening to leap from his ribcage like one of those chest-bursters from Alien as the heat grew steadily more intense. He felt her body slamming against him harder now, as their struggling increased, and a powerful mix of emotions went through him for the woman bound to his back. He felt a surge of pride for her bravery, her stubborn refusal to give in that reminded him so much of their youth together; in that moment, he realized this was the closest he'd ever come to acknowledging the deep love he'd felt for her for as long as he could remember. This always triggered a burst of regret for never having acted on those feelings in all their years together, for never taking the chance to find out what she really felt about him. He felt an overwhelming wave of guilt for being unable to get her out of this, followed by anger at himself for failing to come up with a way out when she was counting on him.
As those feelings arose and then lessened, one remained behind, stronger than anything he could remember feeling: anger so deep, so furious, so powerful, that it consumed everything else, manifested as an almost physical presence in his mind. It filled every cell of his body, fueled his every thought, and colored his vision a deep shade of red – the color of blood. He felt her fingers interlace with his in one final gesture of comfort, and the anger grew even more intense. Soon he knew there would be nothing left in his body but this rage, this desire to find anyone who'd ever hurt either one of them and kill them, no, destroy them, tear them apart with his bare hands and relish in their screams of pain and pleas for mercy before finally ridding the world of their existence.
This anger, by far the most intense emotion of any kind he had ever felt, was still at its full power when he felt himself enter the lava, felt the searing heat of the bubbling liquid begin to consume him from the bottom up. He had never really believed in hell, but if he'd ever had to approximate what that would feel like, it would have been this. He felt each layer of skin being torn from his body, every inch of his flesh being slowly dissolved by the unimaginable heat of the pit. Soon, even the air he used to scream in pain began to burn the inside of his throat, blistering the inside of his mouth raw as the fire began to eat him from the inside out. When he finally lost feeling in his legs, he dared a look down and beheld the lower half of his body entirely stripped of flesh, the bones of his legs gleaming white against the red of the fire as the flames ravaged his groin; the soft tissue of his genitals and abdominal cavity boiled and sizzled like bacon on a skillet, the smell of his own burning skin invading his final tortured breaths. He actually felt it when his stomach popped like a balloon, the acid inside already starting to boil as it ate through his lungs and liver.
When her hand finally went limp in his, he allowed himself one or two choked sobs of rage, regret and agony for a life only just begun before the smoke finally, mercifully overcame him, and he realized he was feeling himself die as the flames greedily attacked his throat and face.
Suddenly the pain was gone; after a moment, he realized that he was standing on solid ground, his eyes closed. As he slowly came back to himself, he heard the voice call his name again; then he heard another voice, taunting the first one, ordering him to destroy it, giving rise to that anger that had defined him at the moment of death. As the second voice rang in his ears, he realized he was more than willing to obey its orders.
With that, Jason Lee Scott slowly turned around and opened his eyes, which glowed with the same dark shade of red that had colored his vision as he felt himself being burned alive. It was then, as he felt himself leaping from the ledge to attack the people around him – people he'd once called friends – that he would awaken with a scream of raw agony, panting, a cold sweat soaking the bed. His eyes would pop open as though hoping to forcibly expel the images from his mind, and as he sat there trying to calm himself down, to remember where – and who – he was, he would stare at himself in the mirror that faced his bed and see his eyes glowing in that same dark shade of red.
In those moments, all he could think of was the fire.