Chapter 1 – Surviving the Elements, Part 1
I watched Kaila sit down on the bench. Just watching her sit down was majestic. I sat down and put my arm around her. The town park was quiet. The only other person there was a guy cleaning up trash off of the ground. It was almost eleven o'clock, too late for the kids to be out, and most other teenagers that Saturday night were out on dates or home watching television. Not Kaila and me. Kaila loved those kinds of things: sitting outside, alone, looking up at the sky – which she was doing when I sat down. I looked up, too.
I said to her, "Do you see that group of stars over there?"
"Where?" she asked.
We were facing south, and I pointed to our left. I said, "Those three stars that form a little triangle, and that bunch that look like a hook. Do you see them?"
"Yeah," she said.
"That's Leo," I told her.
Sarcastically, she said, "I know."
"You do?"
"Mmhm."
"Did I show you that one already?" I asked her.
"Yes, you did," she said. "In November. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and we were on your roof."
I couldn't believe I had forgotten that night. It was our first kiss. "You're right, you're right. That was a special night."
"Yes, it was," she said. After a few seconds, she said to me, "Show me another one, Derek." Kaila loved it when I pointed the constellations out to her. At least, that's what she told me. I was suspicious that she already knew them, but she knew I liked showing off.
This time I pointed off to the right and said, "Those stars over there, the ones that look like a big V, that's Pisces."
She smiled and laid her head on my shoulder. Then she said, "You know what I want to do right now, Derek?"
"What's that?" I asked her.
"I want to go see our tree." Back in October, Kaila and I had taken a walk through the woods. We had sat by a tree and talked for almost two hours. That was the night I asked her to be my girlfriend. We were already dating, and we had known each other since kindergarten. She said yes, and since that moment, I was filled with happiness. And as corny as it seemed, we carved our initials inside a heart in the tree.
"Then let's go," I said to her. Holding hands, we started walking towards the west end of the park, where the woods started. As the guy cleaning the park was walking towards us, I noticed a pile of crumpled up papers on the ground a few feet ahead. I picked up the papers, walked over to the guy, and threw them into his trash bag.
"Thanks," he said. He actually sounded grateful.
"No problem," I said to him. Kaila put her hand on my cheek and turned my head so I was facing her. She smiled at me, then kissed me. "What was that for?" I asked, delighted.
She replied, "For being you."
We got to the woods and started in. About halfway there, we saw two figures walking toward us. "Who's there?" I called out. They walked closer and I saw their faces. It was Jake and Corey Prewitt.
"Is that you, Derek?" Jake asked.
"Yeah," I replied. "What are you guys doing out here?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he said.
"Kaila and I are on a date, sort of," I said. "More of a walk, really."
"Yeah," Jake replied, "well, Corey here is still chicken shit about the dark, so I'm trying to toughen him up."
"How have you guys been?" Kaila asked. Jake and I had been really close when we were younger. He snuck out and came over to my house whenever his parents were fighting or when he was fighting with them, which was a lot. For about the last year, though, we hadn't talked that often. I kind of felt bad about that. Jake hadn't been very social since graduation.
"Corey," Jake said as he slapped his brother on the back, making him jump, "has been doing just fine."
"And you?" I asked.
"I've been me," he replied. Then we heard a rustling in the bushes.
"What's that?" Corey asked. He sounded frightened.
"Shh!" I said.
Everything was silent for a few seconds, and then, "Boo!" Jimmy Eckson leapt out of a bush near us and made all of us jump except for Jake. "Well," he said, "three out of four ain't bad."
"Jimmy!" Kaila said. "What are you doing?" She walked over to Corey and put her hand on his shoulder. "You scared Corey."
"Corey?" Jimmy started, "I scared more than Corey." Jimmy was an easygoing guy. He got along with everyone, but the only person I wanted to see then was Kaila.
"Come on, Kaila," I urged her. "Let's go." She took my hand and we continued on to our tree.
"Later!" Jimmy called after us.
Seconds later, the sky lit up and the ground shook violently, throwing Kaila and me to the ground. The shake was so overwhelming it drew my attention away from the fact that Kaila landed on top of me.
"What the hell was that?" I asked. We got up and ran back to Jimmy, Corey, and Jake.
"Are you guys alright?" Kaila asked them.
"We're fine," Jake said.
"Guys, look!" Corey yelled. He pointed through the trees at orange flames.
Jimmy took his phone out and said, "I'll call the fire department." As he starts, a snake fell from the tree above and knocked it out of his hand. "What the…?" Unbelievably, the snaked grabbed the phone with its mouth and slithered away.
"Tell me I didn't just see that," I said. Then snakes started falling all around us and slithering around our feet. They all moved to the middle of the pentagon the five of us formed. They started glowing green, and all grew together into a monstrous creature. It was a big, ugly, humanoid lizard. It had a long tail and its bones were showing through parts of its skin. It carried a sword that looked like it was made of bone.
It spoke with a deep, masculine voice. "If we have to rid this town of its goodness, what better place to start than the kiddies?"
All five of us started running out of the woods. When we got out, we were quickly surrounded by what looked like the spawn of the creature we had just seen. There were five lizard-like creatures, smaller than the first one, but just as ugly. Then bones started falling around them. Three creatures arose from the bones around each lizard. They were bony, skeleton-like things that would've made perfect Halloween costumes. I saw the park cleaning guy run off. He was yelling something, but I couldn't understand it.
"This is bad," I said.
"No shit, it's bad!" Jake yelled.
The first lizard thing walked out the woods and said, "I am Repskell, Commander of X's Army."
"What do we do?" Corey asked.
Repskell held his sword in the air and shouted, "Cobrites and Skeletoids, attack!"
Jake yelled, "We fight!"
Three Skeletoids ran at me and they all tried to grab me. I ducked between two of them and got to the other side of them, where the Cobrite was waiting. It didn't do anything. So, I turned to fight the Skeletoids. I had taking martial arts classes throughout my childhood and I put them to good use. I jumped and kicked two in the chest, a move that I had just perfected that day. They stumbled back. I punched the third one in the gut, and it felt like punching hardwood. It hurt. "Big mistake," I said to myself. It did double over, though. That told me they had tough exteriors, but weren't very strong. I backed up a step, and kicked the Skeletoid in the chest. It fell down, and the other two came after me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kaila give a high round kick to one of the Skeletoids she was fighting, knocking its head off. The body disintegrated.
"Knock their heads off!" Kaila yelled. "That's how you kill them!"
I jumped back, and then side kicked one of the Skeletoids in the face, sending the head flying. It disintegrated. I got a big grin on my face. I saw Jimmy fending off three of the Skeletoids, and he managed to kill two of them. Jake was fighting for himself and Corey, so he had to deal with six. He was having no problem. He was on the football and wrestling teams in high school, and was pretty strong. I saw him kill four of the six Skeletoids he was fighting.
I went to attack my third Skeletoid, but felt something hard hit me in the back. And it hurt. I fell to my knees in pain, and turned to see the Cobrite standing over me. I heard Kaila scream and Jimmy yell in pain. Jake merely groaned, but the look on his face showed his pain. I tried punching the Cobrite over and over, but it had no effect. It simply slapped me across the face, knocking me to the ground.
"What do we do?" Kaila yelled over the noises the creatures made.
"I don't think we're gonna make it!" I yelled back. "Unless we run for it, but then what?"
"Derek!" Kaila yelled.
"What?" I called back.
"I—" she was cut off by sudden silence, of all things. All the creatures had frozen. So had the trees that were moving in the wind, and a piece of paper that was being blown across the playground. But the five of us were still moving.
I stood up and went over to Kaila. "Are you okay?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she said, "I'm alright."
"Is everyone else okay?" I asked.
They all said, "Yeah." I walked up to Repskell, cautiously, and looked at him. His eyes were yellow, and his teeth looked sharp.
I heard Jimmy say, "What do we do now?" I looked at him to respond, but then he flashed white and disappeared.
We all gasped, and I said, "Where did he go?" Then the same thing happened to Kaila. "Kaila!" I yelled. Then it happened to Corey, and then Jake. "Oh, crap…" Everything flashed white and I was suddenly staring at rock. I turned around and saw the others. We were in a cave that appeared to be underground. It was lit up, but there was no apparent light source. There was no apparent way in or out, either. It could've fit about twenty people – fifteen comfortably. "What is this place?"
Jimmy started, "I don't—" but was cut off by Kaila.
"Oh my god!" she said. "Jake, your hands." Kaila went over to him and held his hands gently, showing us his knuckles. They were bloody.
"I'm fine," Jake said.
"No, you're not," Corey said to him. Then a white light appeared around Jake's hands, stayed there for a second, and disappeared. His hands were healed.
"Actually," Jake said, "I am." Corey and Kaila started inspecting Jake's hands.
"Okay, this is getting weird," I said.
Jimmy said, "We just fought skeletons and giant lizards and got sucked underground, and you don't think it's weird until we see some little white light?"
"Give me a break!" I yelled. "This has never happened to me before."
Kaila walked over to me and said, "This hasn't happened to any of us before, Derek."
"Well," I said, "we need to figure out how to get out of this friggin cave." I started walking around, looking for anything that wasn't rock.
Corey said, "It seems like this white light is trying to help us. I mean, it did get us away from those things up there."
"Yeah," I said, "well I don't like it down here."
"You're just gonna have to deal with it 'til that light does something else," he said.
I walked up to him and said, "Look, Jake, I'm not in the mood for your crap right now."
"Back off, Derek," Corey said, "He's not trying to piss you off."
"Yeah, Derek," Kaila said. She put her hand on my shoulder and tugged me back lightly. "We're all a little tense right now."
"Uh, guys?" Jimmy said from behind us.
"What?" I said and turned around. There was a white orb in the center of the cave. "Whoa." We were silent for a few seconds as we formed a circle around it. "Do we talk to it?"
Before we had the chance, the orb spoke to us. It spoke slowly, with its words broken up, "For years, the power protected you. Now, you must protect the power." I was speechless. Apparently, everyone else was, too. The orb suddenly split into five, smaller orbs, and one started orbiting around each of us. Again, none of us spoke. Jake's orb quickly turned black and entered his body. Kaila's turned pink and entered hers. Jimmy's turned blue, then Corey's turned yellow, and the orbs entered their bodies. Mine hovered a little longer, turned a deep red, and then entered my body. I felt a rush of heat, and heard the word "fire" resound in my head, like it was a sudden thought.
I opened my eyes, which I hadn't realized I closed, and felt hot. But it wasn't uncomfortable. It was quite the opposite.
"Am I the only one who feels this?" Jimmy asked.
"What?" I asked him.
"I feel wet. Like, I feel water all over my body. Like I just got out of a pool or river. But…"
"But what?" I asked.
"Not to sound weird, but it feels good. I also heard the word 'water,' like that orb said it in my head."
Corey said, "I heard 'lightning.' And I feel like I did when I touched a broken lamp in my house, except the feeling isn't going away. And like you said, Jimmy, it feels good. It feels... electric. No pun intended."
"I heard the word 'wind,'" Kaila said, "and I feel like I can fly."
"Uh," Jimmy said, "You are." I looked at Kaila's feet. They were hovering about three or four inches above the ground.
"Whoa," Kaila said. "I like this." She rose a few more inches.
I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Come down, honey, you're scaring me."
She came down to the ground and said, "Your hand is really warm, Derek."
"I feel hot," I said, "but it's comfortable. And I heard 'fire.'"
Then we all looked at Jake. "What?" he asked.
"What do you feel?" Kaila asked.
"I don't feel anything."
Corey asked, "What did you hear?" Jake didn't say anything.
"Well?" Jimmy pushed.
"'Darkness.'"
Everything flashed and we were back on the surface, in the same positions as before. But the heat was still there. Then time unfroze. The noise of the Cobrites and Skeletoids came back.
Repskell yelled, "Kill them all!"
Then I heard the Cobrite that was standing over me gasp. He was staring at my hand. I looked at it and could not believe what I was seeing. There was a fireball floating in my hand. And it didn't burn me. I grinned from ear to ear, stood up, and said, "Ever play with fire?" Then I threw the fireball at his face. He screamed and stumbled back, holding his face. "Now, that was cool." Everyone, even Repskell and his henchmen, was watching me. I threw my arms down at my sides with my hands open, summoning a fireball into each hand. I threw them at each of the Skeletoids I had been fighting that I hadn't killed, and knocked their heads off. I summoned two more, and threw them, one after the other, at the Cobrite. Then I jumped and did a flying kick to his chest and landed on my feet. The Cobrite flew backwards and landed flat on his back. He melted into a green acid, which then evaporated. "I love this."
"Hiyaaa!" I heard Kaila yell behind me. I turned around to see the other two Skeletoids she had been fighting disintegrate. She put her hands out to her sides and sped the wind up around her. Her hair flew up into the air. She brought her hands together, and then thrust them out at the Cobrite that had targeted her. She didn't hit him, but he flew back into the woods and, quite literally, splattered against a tree.
Jimmy slapped the head off of his last Skeletoid, and there was a splash when he did it. He brought his hands together at his side, and pulled them apart slowly as a ball of water grew between them. He threw it at a high velocity at the Cobrite near him, who then splattered into acid, which evaporated.
Corey, who had seemed frightened throughout everything, suddenly looked like he was in a fighting mood. Static electricity built up around him. He closed his eyes, and when he did so, lightning bolts shot out of his body at the last two Skeletoids and one of the last two Cobrites, all of which were killed.
Corey, Jimmy, and Kaila all walked over to me as Jake stared down the last Cobrite. It took a swing at him, but Jake caught its fist with his hand, crushed it, and bent its arm down. He glared into its eyes, and black smoke started surrounding it. Then it turned completely black. Jake let go and backed up, and the Cobrite started swinging at air, apparently blinded. Then Jake walked back up to it, and punched right through its head, killing it. He looked at us, then walked over to us.
We all stood in a line, with me in the center, Kaila to my left and Jake to hers, Jimmy to my right and Corey to his.
Repskell didn't look scared. He said, "Impressive. Now let's see if you can handle me."
"Bring it," I dared him.
He swung his sword in a crescent, which sent a shock wave that knocked us all down.
"Okay," I said, "that was unexpected." We got back to our feet. "This might be tougher than I thought." Then this thing appeared on my left wrist. It was a weird, gray, oval shaped device with four buttons and a dim red light at the front that was strapped on by a black wristband. Each button had a red light in the middle. "What is this?"
Everyone else had one, too. Kaila's had pink lights, Jimmy's had blue, Corey's had yellow, and Jake's had dark gray.
I looked up at Repskell and he looked scared.
"What do these things do?" Corey asked.
"I don't know," I replied. "But when in doubt... just push buttons." Which is exactly what I did. I held my arm up, with the device facing out, and pushed the top nearside button. Everything turned white, a wall of fire went over me, and then everything came back. The fire felt so good. I was suddenly in red tights that covered my whole body, with flame designs on the chest, arms, and legs. I had red boots and white gloves on, and the device was still on my wrist. I also had a helmet on. I assumed it was red, but couldn't see the outside. The weird part was, I could see as if there wasn't anything over my head, but I knew there was. And it didn't add any weight to my head. It was also very breathable. It took me a second, but I realized what had happened. "No way," I said, "I'm a Power Ranger!"
Repskell didn't like it. "Oh, crap."
I ran up to him, punched him in the chest about six times, backed up, and did a spin kick to his head. He spun around 360 degrees and fell to his knees. He hit me with his sword, which pushed me back. It hurt a little, but it didn't cut through my suit. Instead, it sparked as if it were made of metal.
He stood up and said, "I'm out of here." He glowed green, and then disappeared.
I turned around, looked at the others, and said, "I guess we're Power Rangers."