Scott roared as he swung his weapon at Charisma, narrowly missing her head.
"Guys, your powers…"
"We figured that one out already." Colin interrupted Dippy as he stopped Amaya's attack with the heavy sacrificial weapon. As they struggled for position with their weapons interlocked, Colin suddenly launched his head forward, connecting with her helmet, causing her to fall to the floor. "BLOODY HELL!" He yelled as he held his head.
"Not a smart move when your opponent wears a helmet." Charisma commented as she dodged another attack.
"I figured that one out!" Colin snapped back as he brought the heavy bronze weapon down in a destructive arc, smashing the chain connected to the shackle on Dippy's right wrist. "Let's just get the job done and get out of here!"
As he swung the weapon again, aiming for the chain connected to the shackle on her right wrist, the tip crashed through the crystal hanging overhead. As Dippy's right wrist came free, a bright light bathed the room, and an inexplicable mist swirled around the chamber as an unnatural wail assailed the combatants.
"What happened?" Charisma yelled as she threw Scott into the wall. "What's going on?"
"Who the hell cares?" Colin replied, bringing the weapon down another twice, releasing Serendipity's ankles. "It's distracting them, lets…"
He was cut off as Amaya smashed the haft of her weapon into his ribs, sending him to the floor. As she raised her weapon above her head, Dippy swung her hand wildly, at which the Black Ranger flew inexplicably across the room into the opposite wall. Looking around, she noticed the white mist was moving through the invisa-portal. "The Crystal!" She yelled. "That's what kept the souls here, and that's what stopped us using our powers."
"Escape now, think about that later." Charisma snapped as she helped Dippy get up from the altar. Colin quickly grabbed her other arm and the three sprinted through the portal.
Arriving back in the office, Tommy hit the speed-dial on his phone. "Hayley, they're back. Shut down the portal." He barked as he rushed to their side. The portal closed a short time later. Tommy began thoughtfully inspecting Dippy's injuries. "God, they really did a number on you." He gasped as he saw the state they'd left the young girl in. "Torture's not a new trick, but normally they go for something a bit more refined than just beating the hell out of a prisoner."
"Well in this case it doesn't feel great to be a pioneer." She responded with a weak laugh, which was cut off by the wince of pain from her ribs.
"Next time we see them, we'll make them pay." Charisma said reassuringly.
"Guys, I don't think you'll have to wait long for round three." Tommy commented as he pointed to the Dragon Zord flying over the city.
"Zord time." Charisma told Colin as they began to leave the room. Serendipity hauled herself to her feet slowly.
"Uh, Dippy? Where do you think you're going?" Colin asked her.
"To paraphrase a wise man," she began, "you need the Megazord, and last time I checked, only I can summon the Condor Zord."
"Using my own words against me?" Colin replied with a soft smile. "Now that's just a low blow."
"We can use all the help we can get." Charisma commented. "Sure you're up to it?"
"If I get a chance to kick the Black Ranger's ass up and down the Strip, it'll be worth it." She answered.
"Fire of the soul, IGNITE!" They chorused together, morphing before sprinting out of the building and heading towards the centre of the city.
"Think the Zords will have repaired themselves?" Colin mused.
"There's one way to find out." Dippy answered.
Calling the Zords and assembling the Soulfire Megazord, they took flight, landing in the centre of the city to confront the Dragon Zord.
"We didn't get the job done in the Dimensional Nexus." Scott remarked as his Zord landed. "Guess we'll just have to finish you the old-fashioned way."
"Talking us to death?" Charisma taunted him. "Come on, let's see what you have!"
As the Zord's mouth opened, the Megazord took flight, avoiding the inferno.
"Come on, that tired trick? Let's see something impressive!" Charisma continued to berate her opponent.
"Oh I will show you impressive!" Scott yelled back. "Dragon Zord Warrior mode!"
Converting to the warrior mode, he surged forward, catching the Megazord a sweeping blow across the chest plate. The three retaliated with a blow to the back of the Dragon Zord's head as it passed.
"Pathetic!" Scott roared as he rounded on them. Launching his Zord into the air, it came down, spinning quickly. "Dragon Zord, Spear Tornado Strike!" He screamed as the attack connected, sending the Soulfire Megazord sprawling across the ground, sparks flying.
"Power levels are critical!" Charisma stated as she checked the systems. "We take another hit like that and we're finished!"
"I know how to catch him out." Colin replied. "I figured out the weakness in the Zord's attack pattern. Both of you, bail out!"
"Why?" Dippy asked him.
"In case I'm wrong. But trust me, I have his number." Colin answered her. "Trust me."
"I already told you I do." Charisma told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Come on Dippy."
"Giving up so soon?" Scott laughed aloud as he watched them bail out. "Pity, I was having fun!"
"Don't flatter yourself." Colin shot back from the cockpit. "We just realised it'll only take one of us in this thing to defeat your two bit joke of a Zord."
"You cocky little…!"
"Go on then tough guy." Colin sneered. "Give me that ultimate attack of yours. One…more…time!"
"You heard him bro." Amaya retorted. "If the Scotsman has a death wish, let's make it come true."
"DRAGON ZORD SPEAR TORNADO ATTACK!" He screamed passionately as his Zord launched into it's attack. Colin began counting down in his head.
"Now!" He yelled. "Rising Serpent Strike, FULL POWER."
Scott watched as, instead of awaiting the attack, or setting up a defence, he launched the Megazord straight towards him. As the Dragon Zod spun, it's spear narrowly missed, rotating just out of the way in it's spinning path, while the Megazord scored it's way along the Dragon Zord's body.
"Critical hit!" Scott screamed in disbelief as the Zord came crashing, prone to the ground. Pressing the attack without allowing it time to regain it's feet, Colin smashed the Megazord into it with a full-power diving attack. He struggled to bring it back to an attacking position, all the while praying for it to hold out.
"Come on Megazord" He growled as he fought with the protesting controls. "Just a little more, then you can fade out to recharge."
Scott pulled the Dragon Zord to it's feet slowly, clearly damaged. "We're not done…"
His words were cut off as Colin surged forward. "Serpent Strike, FULL POWER!" He yelled as it landed the final blow. As sparks flew, the Dragon Zord pitched lifelessly to the ground, discarding it's crew as it fell before fading out to self-repair.
"You go too Megazord." He commanded as he leapt out of the cockpit to the ground where his friends were waiting. The Zord faded out, it's energy all but expended and it's frame on the verge of critical failure. "You've earned it."
"That was amazing!" Charisma yelled as Colin arrived beside them. "How did you do that?"
"Applied Maths." Colin explained. "The Dragon Zord's ultimate attack requires it to spin. I knew if I figured out the speed of it's spin, I could time my attack so that my attack would connect, while his would spin harmlessly away. After that, I just didn't give him a chance to mount another offensive."
"That's it. From now on, you help me with maths homework." Charisma responded. "Anyway, are you two about ready to give it up yet?"
"Against you?" Amaya spat with disdain, hauling herself back to her feet. "Not a chance. Even without our Zord you're no match for us! You two can't compete with us, and the cripple's so weak she may as well not even be here!"
Serendipity then noticed again the involuntary flexing in Scott's right hand. It was then that the last few pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Dr. O said there were only FOUR Soulfire Rangers. The Purple Ranger regularly called the Black Ranger 'sis' and didn't want to talk about her. He said he'd lost a sister named Amaya. She finally remembered her brief conversation with the Black Ranger.
"Darksoul wants the Crystal, what do you really think will happen to you once he has it?"
"That is none of your concern weakling. Oh and don't worry, you won't have to wait long before we destroy you."
She had thought it odd that she showed no concern over the potential outcome that Darksoul would betray them. Of course, because she knew he would! Somehow Darksoul had created a duplicate of Amaya to convince the Purple Ranger to fight in the hope of winning back his sister. He had told her Darksoul promised to use the Crystal to give him back what he'd lost. His sister! She now understood what he wanted, even if she hadn't yet established his identity. She then remembered the involuntary flexing in his right hand whenever he saw or heard something that made him uncomfortable, he said he used to play piano, but saying it that way let her know he didn't anymore. The reaction in his hand, obviously there was a connection.
Looking at her own hands she remembered that in her morphed form her arthritis didn't affect her. She gasped as she made the mental link. The hand, losing a sister, she figured out who he was. Scott! She also realised what might make him see that he was being fooled. She placed an arm across Charisma and Colin's chests, holding them back.
"You and me Black Ranger!" She yelled. "One on one, unless you're a coward!"
"Dippy…" Colin began.
"I know what I'm doing." She replied sternly. "What about it?"
"Don't make me laugh cr…"
"DO NOT call me that AGAIN!" She interrupted as she stepped forward, her shard of the Soulfire Crystal appearing in her hand and glowing more brightly than before. "I am SICK of people feeling sorry for me! I am SICK of people using my condition to write me off!" She stepped forward intently, her gaze never shifting from the Black Ranger. "But most of all, I AM SICK of using my condition as a reason to give up! Ancient Armour Mode!"
As she stepped forward, flame engulfed her, forging the armour around her. Her razor fns extended to almost two feet in length, and were tipped with vicious looking barbs. Moving into the centre of the clearing between the two sides, she slipped into a guarding stance.
"Look who finally figured out that trick." Amaya sneered as she powered up. "But in case you forgot, I can do that too."
"I'm glad." Dippy snapped back. "Now you'll have no excuse when I kick your ass eight ways from Sunday!"
Amaya snarled as she lunged forward, finding her strike blocked by one of Serendipity's fans. Powering up the other, Dippy scored a trio of telling blows across her chest plate. Rolling away, Amaya pulled herself back to her feet with her weapon.
"So the little girl grew up and learned a few moves." Amaya snapped back. Powering up her blade, she sent Dippy sprawling to the floor with a power wave attack. As Colin was getting ready to step in, Dippy gestured to him to stop, before getting back to her feet.
Scott watched the fight unfolding, but couldn't shake how odd it felt. He didn't know why, but the way his sister taunted and insulted Dippy just didn't seem right. She seemed completely venomous and caustic in her demeanour. He also couldn't explain to himself why he felt no joy as Amaya regained the edge over the Yellow Ranger, or why he didn't feel anything at all while she was being attacked.
Dippy avoided another energy wave, sending one back herself, finding her target. As Amaya lay on her back, Dippy pressed the advantage, powering her weapons to full power and swinging them wildly. Amaya raised the haft of her naginata to block, only to have it sliced into three pieces before the remaining attacks smashed her out of her Ancient Armour Mode. Dippy backed off a few paces.
"Uh, I thought Dippy was a pacifist?" Charisma commented.
"So did I!" Colin retorted as they continued to watch.
"Unlike some I will not take advantage of a vulnerable opponent." Serendipity stated with authority. Powering down to her standard Ranger form, she waited for Amaya to return to her feet.
Scott continued to watch, completely torn. Serendipity fought with the strength and honour Amaya always had, and had respect for others. She could easily have destroyed Amaya, but opted to allow her to continue. He thought hard about what Dippy had said. Amaya had taken advantage of Dippy when she was vulnerable, and had beaten her more excessively than was necessary. Why did this bother him so much? It came to him. Amaya was the one who wanted to kill Dippy! She wanted to destroy her while she was helpless. She took a cruel pride in her weakness. He continued to watch as the doubts continued to plague his mind.
"I am no longer armed." Amaya stated. Scott called forth his own naginata. Colin was again about to intervene, but this time Charisma stopped him as she watched Scott throw it in front of his sister.
"You are now." Scott told her.
Picking up the weapon, she prepared to attack, only to be cut off as Dippy launched a hail of energy blasts into her chest. Surging forward, an upward swing of her razor fans disarmed her opponent, before he brought them down in a scything arc across her chest. Amaya lay on her belly on the ground looking up at her opponent as she walked away towards her comrades. "Finish her now bro." She snarled.
Scott reluctantly picked weapon while his sister regained her feet, levelling it behind Dippy's back. She held up a hand as her friends prepared to attack.
"Do what you have to do." She told him. With an anguished scream, He swung around, scoring a savage slash across Amaya's chest.
"You are NOT my sister!" He screamed, pressing the attack as he powered up to his armoured mode. "You look like her, you sound like her, you even fight like her but there is no way you can be Amaya!"
Staggering back a few paces, she stared at him. "But bro, you know it's me. Darksoul allowed me to come back to you, albeit in this pseudo real form. I know all about what happened to us. Ask me anything." She held her arms open as though gesturing for a hug. "Ask me anything only Amaya would know."
"It's a trick." Serendipity interjected. "You know it is. She will know all the secrets you and your sister shared, but you know it isn't her. Ask yourself, does she act like your sister? She might sound like her, but does she TALK like her?"
"Bro please!" Amaya begged him. "Who are you going to believe? Me or her?"
Scott stood concentrating on the heart-rending decision. She insulted Dippy because of her disability. She took advantage of her weakened state. She encouraged him to enter an unfair fight. She tried to encourage him to kill.
How could he have been so blind? Amaya was always a sweet, caring child. She was the carefree, supportive young girl who would sit each day by the piano as he practiced, the one who would always cry when he played the first movement of Moonlight Sonata. While she loved martial arts, and loved competing alongside her brother, she hated hurting living things. She hated needless suffering and more than anything; the thought of killing was anathema to her. She had been studying hard at school and wanted more than anything to become a vet so she could prevent animals suffering. Fire burned in his veins and tears formed in his eyes beneath his helmet as he prepared to act.
"You have dishonoured Amaya's memory LONG ENOUGH!" He screamed. Letting out a pained, impassioned scream, He powered up his blade to full power. Spinning skilfully as he surged to the attack, he brought the blade across her, forever destroying the corrupt spirit that masqueraded as the one person he would have done anything for. The effort of his exertion caused him to de-morph as he dropped to one knee. As he knelt on the cold concrete, tears streamed down his face as he stared into the night. "Goodbye Amaya." He breathed gently.
"Goodbye bro." He heard a familiar voice say. Looking up, he saw the spirit of his little sister standing before him. "You've carried me around for too long. It's time to live. I know you'll do the right thing." With that, she passed her hand through his, causing his fragment of the Soulfire Crystal to appear and glow brightly. Then, with the same bright smile she greeted him with every morning by the piano, she disappeared.
Scott returned to his feet and turned to face the three Rangers. As the three de-morphed, Colin and Charisma just stood staring at him in disbelief.
"You?" Charisma yelled. "We thought you were our friend!"
Scott was unable to respond, instead just taking the option to turn and run from the abandoned street as fast as he could. Colin and Charisma were about to pursue, but Serendipity gestured to them to stop.
"Let him go." She told them. "He won't be a threat any more. For now, let's just go home."
As they walked away, Dippy pulled her cash from her wallet, before tossing her wallet and her purse into a nearby trash can.
"What did you do that for?" Charisma asked.
"I can't show up at home looking like this without a good cover story." She responded. "I'll say I got mugged. Shame really, I kind of liked that purse."
The following morning, the three assembled in Dr. O's office, Dippy relayed the whole story to the rest of the group. They all sat in stunned silence as she finished the sorry tale. Eventually Colin was able to break the mood.
"OK, now that would totally screw with your head." He remarked.
"God, no wonder he believed Darksoul and agreed to fight for him." Charisma concurred with his assessment. "So what do we do about it?"
"In my experience, there's nothing we can do about it." Tommy stated. "We can only hope and trust in Scott that he'll do the right thing and fight on the right side."
"No disrespect Dr. O, but it wasn't long ago he was using my skull as a bongo." Colin said sarcastically. "I don't know…"
"Just like each of you, the Soulfire Crystal would not have chosen him to bear it's power if he wasn't suitable." Tommy interrupted him. "It will take the full power of the united Soulfire Crystal to defeat Darksoul for good."
"Well that's one problem out of the way." Colin mused. "That just leaves one."
"What do we do about Barry?" Tommy pre-empted his question.
Charisma and Colin finished up their classes, before heading across to Adam's gym across the street. They had met Dippy for lunch as usual and she told them to meet her there after school. They didn't know why, they but they had a feeling that she had something important to tell them.
"Hey, Adam." Colin greeted the gym instructor as they arrived. "Dippy told us to meet her here. Do you know where she is?"
"She's in the pool." Adam informed them, continuing with his work.
They both made their way to the pool finding Dippy in the middle of a few laps. Seeing her friends enter the room, she made her way to the side of the pool with a big smile on her face. Her injuries from the night before were still evident, though they had healed quite considerably due to the Crystal's energies.
"Hey guys." She greeted her friends. "Fancy a workout?"
"You've never seemed interested in this kind of thing before." Charisma responded. "What's with the sudden interest?"
"I meant what I said to that thing last night." She told them. "I'm through using my arthritis as an excuse to give up on things I enjoy. When I was first diagnosed and found it harder to compete in athletics, I ended up just giving up on exercising altogether. But I decided that I would like to get back into exercising again."
"Are you going back to athletics?" Colin asked her.
"Not quite." She replied with a small laugh. "I wouldn't be up to anything as high-impact as that, but I researched a couple of web sites, and found a few dedicated to low-impact exercise programmes designed for people with arthritis and other joint problems." She brushed her hair back as she continued to explain. "I mail-ordered some roller blades, so that should help with the impact on my spine when I go for a run, I've signed a membership here so I can go for a swim and take part in the Tai Chi classes and I've downloaded some stretching exercises that should help with my mobility, and in the long run could end up reducing the regularity of the harsher attacks."
"So what about your…ahem…tea?" Colin asked her.
"I'll still use it," she responded, "but my days of relying on it as my only relief are over."
"Well I think that's great Dippy." Charisma congratulated her friend. "It's great you're taking something positive out of what happened to you."
"Yeah, I'm just worried about Scott though." She told her friends thoughtfully. "I haven't seen him since last night. I really think we should be trying to reach out to him. I can't imagine how he's feeling."
"Well I know my head would be totally screwed if something like that happened to me." Colin agreed. "I'm sure he'll show up sooner or later, and when he does, we can try to give him another chance."
"Yeah." Charisma sighed as she knelt by the pool. "I mean, you have more reason than Colin or I to hate him, so if you can forgive him, I guess we can try too."
"Say Colin, could you help me out?" Dippy asked him.
"No problem." He replied, reaching out his hand. Without warning, Dippy grabbed him and pulled him, fully clothed, into the pool. Resurfacing, Colin wiped chlorinated water from his eyes.
"Sorry, I couldn't resist." She giggled as she and Charisma began laughing. Colin wasn't that amused to begin with, but quickly came to appreciate the joke and joined in.
Meanwhile, sitting in the back yard of his parent's house, Scott called forth his shard of the Soulfire Crystal. He had considered throwing it away almost a dozen times already, and just putting the self-inflicted nightmare behind him. He still couldn't believe everything he'd done. It pained him to think that he wilfully attacked the first people in this god-forsaken place that had actually been nice to him. It almost made him weep openly when he thought about his part in Serendipity's kidnapping, or that he was able to stand back and let that thing torture her, and was about to let it destroy her. He couldn't believe that his desperate desire to have her returned to him had left him so blind, so easy to manipulate that he almost became everything they had both hated their entire lives based on nothing more than an unfounded promise that she could be returned when he knew she was gone.
As he continued to wonder if he would ever deserve the power he had been given, he remembered seeing her that one last time. His sister, his TRUE sister had told him with the last words she said before she disappeared to do the right thing. He knew exactly what she meant, but there was no way the Rangers could accept him now, was there?
His attention was snapped up, and his shard disappeared into his hand once more as his stepfather called him inside.
"Scott, I said the game's starting." Roy shouted across the porch. "I've already got the beers out the fridge."
"I'm just coming Roy." He replied as he got up off the grass and made his way inside. As he arrived in the house and opened a beer, with his step-father's permission, the same thoughts that had plagued him for the last several hours continued to echo around his head. How could he ever make them trust him? Forgive him? More importantly, how could he ever forgive himself?
