"1,001 Things You Want to Know About Dragons," that was what the book title read. Madison had picked it off of the Rootcore bookshelf to aid Clare in her pressing problem. The Fire Heart, a jeweled red dragon egg, the last of its kind, had started to shake after several weeks of laying dormant in Rootcore. Clare had kept it in a nest, nuzzled it nightly, and made sure it received all the warmth the absent mother dragon could not provide. Now it was about to hatch.
"Ha, here we are," Madison read out of the parchment pages of the book, turning to the segment "Hatching Dragon Eggs". "To hatch a dragon egg, set the egg upright and proceed to bludgeon it with a sledgehammer until open." She looked to her sister, Vida, who now had that gleam of almost testosterone-fueled violence twinkling in her eye.
"Excellent! I'll get the hammer!" Vida said happily, a devious smile crossing her face. She ran to the back room, leaving Clare frozen in fear. The clanging and clattering of Vida hastily searching through the Rootcore closet with magic could be heard. Footsteps hit against the polished wood, and Vida appeared back in the central chamber. In her hand was a very large sledgehammer with the Mystic Force "M" engraved into the side. "Here goes, baby!"
Vida raised the hammer above her head and slammed it into the top of the Fire Heart. She repeated it again, a small crack starting to appear. Beads of sweat were starting to roll down her forehead. She raised the hammer higher this time; a tint of pink energy appeared around it and began to glow. The crack at the top of Fire Heart was spreading further down the egg. "Oh, yeah, I'm feeling it!" Vida moaned in a frenzied fervor, "This baby's gonna hatch!"
Vida let out a primal scream as she raised the sledgehammer directly above her head and pounded it onto the Fire Heart with a final, deafening blow that scared a squirrel off the branch outside. Bits of eggshell were sent flying to corners of the room, and dragon's blood splattered on the Mystic Force. Chip, awkwardly, pulled out his Mystic Morpher and removed the blood from everyone and everything it had landed on, gathering it into a small vial, which he immediately corked.
"Dragon's blood has a lot of uses," he awkwardly chuckled, "Just…trying to see the bright side?" He brought his Morpher close to Vida, offering to take the dragon's blood off her robes, already dripping with sweat.
"Hell no," Vida grinned, "That was too exciting. It comes off when I say it come off!"
"We're going into town, V" Xander spoke up, "Do you really want people to see you like this?"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Vida sighed, "Get it off." Chip poked his Mystic Morpher onto Vida's chest and removed every last drop of dragon blood. He couldn't get a small bit of it out of her hair, but on closer inspection, that turned out to be her hair dye. That said, the Mystic Force went into town, leaving Clare to pick up the pieces of eggshell and come up with a way to explain this to Udonna.
Hours later, Udonna returned. She was happy to see Jenji, but when she found out about what Vida had done to the Fire Heart…Clare never came out of her room for at least a week, and Udonna continued to remain nowhere in sight. The others could only guess what the apprentice had to go through for such a mistake. Vida continued remaining smug. She hadn't taken the blame at all.
Months passed after this. Calindor, actually Imperious, rose and was defeated by Daggeron, who had also returned. The world was temporarily trapped in darkness, and a strangely helpful Koragg transported the team to the Tribunal of Magic. Legend Mode was granted. Clare only came out of her room rarely. Then Koragg was revealed as Leanbow, father of Nick, the Light, and the Ten Terrors rose from the depths of the underworld. Occulous was the second Terror chosen to fight. He had taken down everybody but Nick…
"Let my friends go!" Nick screamed. All he had was his Lion Staff and Legend Power to go on, and that wasn't any use against the Terrors. Occulous had summoned an army of Hidiacs, Styxoids, and Necrolai that one man alone could never hope to defeat. Nick reached for the dial of his Lion Staff and used the only technique he knew how to do. "Code 1!" he spun it, "Firestorm!" A circle of red magic was traced in front of him, temporarily blocking one of Occulous's shots. The fire streamed forward towards the cybernetic hunter, but no damage was done. Nick leapt high into the air, an explosion going off behind him.
Nick's boots were covered in red, sparkling fire as he descended towards Occulous with a bicycle kick, pounding him in the stomach. The hunter took his sniper rifle, pointed the opening of the barrel at Nick's chest, and pulled the trigger. A point blank laser bullet struck Nick in the chest. He screamed out in pain as a neon red light passed over his body and began to dematerialize him into tiny bits of energy.
"I have won, Stone of Judgment!" Occulous called to the empty field, his army retreating. "The Light is yours! As for the others…let's see how they fare without their mighty leader to support them!" Occulous vanished, and in his place appeared the bodies of the Rangers he had dematerialized with his lasers. First to appear was Chip, who blinked once to make sure he was still breathing, and then cheered. Vida followed, pumping her fist in the air and shouting to the skies. Madison, a smile crossing her face, was next, and a grinning Xander appeared last. They were perfectly intact.
"Nick?" Madison called.
"Nick?" Chip also shouted.
"Yo, Nick!" Vida screamed.
"Nick, where are you?" Xander asked.
No response.
"So, what do you want to do now?" Xander questioned the others.
"There's that awesome castle over there," Chip pointed to the ruins of the white fortress on the horizon, "Whaddaya say we go there?"
"You can be king of the castle!" Madison laughed.
"How'd you like to be queen?" Chip asked.
"I wanna see the torture chambers…" Vida gleefully grinned.
"Let's go!" Xander pointed, "Who's going to stop us?"
As for Nick…he was taken to the pit of the Terrors, possessed by The Master and turned into Koragg, who quickly became Sculpin's personal punching bag when he found out Leanbow had escaped him. And nobody ever thought to look for Nick, either. Things were so much better off without him.