Chapter 8-Interlude: Findings

As Elsa and the White Ranger clone stepped into the main laboratory/control room of the island fortress, they both felt a sense of eerie silence throughout the room, with the only sound being the sounds of their boots as they echoed off the walls.

"Just out of curiosity, did you consider waiting a few minutes (before coming in here) so you could come up with another one of your asinine excuses, or was the beating you received at the hands of Dr. Oliver's girlfriend too much for you to consider fabricating one this time?" Mesogog asked Elsa, his back turned to her as he stayed sitting in his chair.

Elsa didn't answer him. As far as she was concerned, her master could have been yelling at her and using his brainwave scrambler on her all at once and she still wouldn't even have responded. Though she could hear him loud and clear, Elsa's mind was somewhere else, mentally replaying the fight she had with Katherine, first when the tramp was in her regular civilian form, and then…in her Ranger form. And as much as she wanted to put it out of her mind to hear what Mesogog had to say (even though she knew it was probably going to be another chewing-out, as usual) she just couldn't get it out of her head.

Like an old record stuck in a loop, images of the fight kept repeating itself again and again in Elsa's head, so much so that that was all she could think about. And it was just making her seethe more and more.

"Well, judging by the silence I'm hearing and the look you have on your face, I suppose it was the latter." Mesogog said as he swiveled around in his chair to face his generals.

Elsa then finally broke out of her trance and faced her boss eye-to-eye as she tried to come up with a good explanation.

"Master, everything was going according to plan." Elsa explained. "It took a while, but I was able to obtain the gem, but unfortunately…"

"'But fortunately…'what?" Mesogog asked, his tone still casual, but carrying a threatening undercurrent to it.

As Elsa internally struggled to try and explain, flashes of Kat trouncing her in her Ranger guise flowed through her brain again, breaking her train of thought.

"Tell you what Elsa, how about if I tell you (or at least from my point of view anyway) as to what really happened, starting with when you and the Tyrannodrones showed up at the school." Mesogog said as he got up from his chair to look at Elsa square in the eye.

"Now it's true that a few moments after you got there you did in fact obtain the gem (that I will agree with you on), but instead of coming back here like you were supposed to, you chose to go ahead and let your own foolish pride take over, thus not only allowing Dr. Oliver to catch you completely off guard, but also allowing the dino gem to end up literally falling into his girlfriend's hands, which as you yourself saw, ended up creating ANOTHER POWER RANGER IN THE PROCESS!" Mesogog spat angrily. "WHICH MAKES THEM MORE OF A THREAT TO MY PLANS NOW THAN BEFORE AND EVEN MORE OF AN ANNOYANCE!"

"Now as tempting as it would be to scramble your brain beyond comprehension for proving your incompetence once again (as well as the White Ranger here), I think the beating you received at the hands of the Pink Ranger seems more fitting this time." Mesogog continued.

"Master-" Elsa began.

"Elsa," Mesogog hissed. "Do me a favor and stay quiet, and listen closely, for it probably may be the best (and only) advice I'll ever give you: The next time you decide to let your own pride get the best of you and ruin a perfectly well-thought-out plan, don't bother coming back, because otherwise you're going to find yourself in a place far worse than even where that idiot Lothor is right now. UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes, master." Elsa said, still raging to herself inside.

"Good. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind about the scrambling part." Mesogog hissed as the front of his forehead started to glow.

Elsa, not wanting to face another brainwave assault, quickly headed out of the lab and stormed back to her own chambers, with images of her and Kat slugging it out flashing over and over again in her mind.

--

SCANNER READY.

As soon as Tommy saw those words on the Dino Ruins' mainframe, Kat then handed him the Pink dino gem, to which Tommy then took and placed on top of what looked like a modified flatbed scanner and typed in some keys to start scanning the gem. Shortly after Elsa and the others retreated, Kat, Tommy, and his students then headed to the Dino Ruins to try and figure out the gem a little more. Though it was more than obvious that the gem had chosen Katherine to wield its power, there were still some questions that the group (namely Kat) wanted to know.

Fortunately, Tommy had then said that if anything, that's what they were going to find out once they had the computer scan it. "Hey, if nothing else, at least we'll know a little more than we did before."

"Tommy, are you sure you know how to use that?" Kat asked her boyfriend as she saw him typing in codes.

"I do." Tommy replied. "Maybe not as much as Hayley, but close enough." He concluded as he finished his typing, to which the screen then said, SCANNING…

"So how long do you think it'll take?" Kira asked.

"It shouldn't take long, especially since we've got the actual gem and not just traces of it this time." Tommy answered as he turned back to the screen, which was now showing a full fledged picture of Kat's dino gem and what looked like readouts and information in a sort of statistics layout.

"So that's it?" Conner asked.

"Yep." Tommy answered his student as he maximized the window with the gem's information so they could all read it. Most of the gem's stats, like its dinosaur power signature (which was the Icthyosaur, of course) or its color scheme (Pink) or even its dino gem abilities (Manipulating the gravity around one's body regardless of environment) the group already knew by now, so aside from those things, along with the fact that it was a new gem, there weren't any other secrets about the gem that Tommy, Kat and Tommy's students didn't already know, or at least from what the computer was telling them.

"No other Easter eggs?" Ethan asked.

"From what I can tell, no." Tommy replied.

"But what about when after I had touched the gem, it turned from white to pink?" Kat asked.

"Good question." Tommy said, his eyes narrowing in thought as he looked back at the screen, namely to where it showed information about the gem's energies. When he had first looked at it just a few seconds before, it had only said, ENERGY SIGNATURE: DINO-THUNDER. Now as he looked back at it, the section now had a blinking sentence that said, DUAL-RANGER ENERGY SIGNATURES DETECTED.

"Hello, what's this here-?" Tommy asked himself as he moved the mouse to the blinking words and clicked it, opening up another window on the screen, showing an image of two energy streams on each side of the window, with a picture of the gem in the middle. Along with a strange numerical code below the images, both streams had names of what their energy signatures were. But while the one on the left side had the name DINO-THUNDER, the one on the right only said, UNKOWN. SEARCHING…

"Okay, now why is it saying that?" Ethan asked.

"I don't know," Tommy answered. "We'll see in a minute."

After a few seconds, a dialog box popped up and said SEARCH COMPLETE., to which Tommy clicked OK, closing the box and revealing the window of the two streams. And when Tommy turned to where it said for the second energy stream's signature, it now said, ZEO.

"ZEO?" Said Tommy's students at once.

"Wait a minute, weren't those the second powers you, Kat, and your other friends had gotten after the first ones, Dr. O?" Trent asked.

"Yeah, they were." Tommy said.

"But if I remember correctly, those were eventually upgraded to Turbo or something." Kira said, as she recollected seeing those parts in the video diary. "Why's the computer now saying that the gem's got that power along with the Dino-Thunder ones?"

Tommy then sighed as he put his fist close to his mouth as his eyes narrowed in thought. Then Kat spoke up.

"It was after I touched it."

Everyone then looked at her.

"When I grabbed it, it didn't change colors at first, it only glowed (much like how yours did when you guys first touched them, I'm sure), but then after a while, it started to…I guess you can say pulse, and then I saw pink energies appear all over my body and then they all started to move towards the gem and then, at that moment…that's when it changed colors."

"But didn't you pass on the power to-damn, what was her name…" Conner began.

"Cassie?" Kat supplied.

"Yeah-Cassie-didn't you pass on the power to her?"

"Yes."

"Well, wouldn't that basically mean all your Ranger powers (or at least what you had at that point) were now hers?" Conner asked.

Kat nodded and shrugged slightly in agreement.

"Supposedly," Tommy then said. "But if I were to take a guess…I don't think even that would mean that you'd lose all your powers. Now granted, I've been a Ranger for the longest time, and yeah, I've studied the gems as thoroughly as possible, but even I'm not going to say I'm a complete expert on how Ranger energies work. But, even in spite of that, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine a former Ranger still having traces of Ranger-energy in his/her body, even though it wouldn't be enough to give you full power."

"So Elsa was right," Kat said as she remembered the cyborg telling Mesogog about the traces of energies she found in Kat's body. "There were still some of the old Zeo powers inside me."

"Just enough to give the gem a color scheme of its own, albeit from someplace else." Tommy supplied, remembering Kat telling him about it shortly after Felectro was defeated.

Since there wasn't any other information about the gem (or at least what wasn't already known) Tommy then saved the information on the mainframe and took the gem off the scanner before handing it back to Kat.

"Well, at least we know why the gem changed from white to pink, but there's still one thing I don't get though." Conner said.

"What?" Ethan asked.

"Why didn't the gem already have its own color scheme? I mean, our gems (and I'm sure yours too, Dr. O) already had theirs from the word go, how come Kat's didn't?" He said as he pointed to Kat's gem.

Nobody said anything, but as they all looked at Kat's gem resting in the palm of her hand, they all pretty much were thinking more or less the same thing.

Who knows?

Finally Kat spoke up.

"Well, if anything, I guess we'll probably find out in time."

"More often than not." Tommy agreed.

"So what now?" Kat asked.

"Well, if you want, I can try and make a bracelet out of it so it's easier to carry around." Tommy offered.

"Okay." Kat said as she handed him her gem. But as Tommy prepared the computer, Kat then realized something and spoke up again.

"Wait, you said 'bracelet', right?"

"Yeah." Tommy said.

"Is it possible for the gem to be disguised as something else besides a bracelet?"

"Yeah, I suppose. Why?"

"Because I think if I have my morpher as a bracelet, it might attract some attention, if not arouse suspicion."

"How so?" Conner asked. "I mean, we've all worn ours almost everyday and almost everywhere we go (okay, I'll admit it, it's not exactly my idea of a soccer player's attire, but what are you going to do?), and I don't think we've gotten anybody suspicious, guys?"

Ethan and Trent nodded, but Kira had a look of realization on her face as she looked at Katherine, as if figuring out why she was wondering about disguising the gem differently.

"True, but in my case, I think it will." Kat said.

"What do you mean?" Tommy asked.

Kat then answered with only one name, and that was all everyone else needed to hear to realize why she didn't want the gem as a bracelet.

"Krista."

"She was the one who found the gem, therefore she more than has an idea of what it looks like (even though yes, the gem's a different color now). If Krista were to come to dance class and see me wearing a bracelet with a gem that, while having a different color, has more or less the same shape and size as the one she had found, she may start to wonder as to why it looks so familiar, and with that, she could eventually start to figure other things out." Kat continued.

"Like why we all hang out with Dr. O more than any of our other teachers." Ethan guessed.

"Or why we're not around when the Power Rangers are around." Conner supplied.

"Or why whenever Krista needs help, either you or a certain guy in Red happens to be around." Kira said with a semi-sneer.

"Ah-hah, ah-hah, very funny." Conner said, trying his best not to blush.

"Okay, so we definitely can't disguise it as a bracelet, because obviously it'll make Krista suspicious, but it still needs a disguise though. The question is…what?" Tommy asked his girlfriend.

Kat thought for a second before an idea came to her and a small smile began to break across her mouth.

"I think I have an idea."