Disclaimer: Good evening, from Los Angeles, I am not Dan Rydell nor am I Casey McCall. I am, however, about five months behind schedule on this thing. Sorry about taking so long. Anyhow: the Power Rangers and all related characters are the property of Disney, Saban, Jetix, and/or whoever else owns them. I just know that it's not me. Aaron Sorkin created The West Wing, which is where I got some of the plot and some of the dialogue. Have I forgotten anyone? I hope not, but then again, I'm broke, so suing me isn't worth it. You're watching WWPR on CSC, so stick around!

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Act 4: Civis Americanus

12:15 p.m., Billy's Office

"At 11:47, the President gave the go order for a retaliatory strike, code name: Drago One," Billy informed the senior staff that had raced into his office.

"Just out of curiosity," Tommy interrupted, "but why are we naming a military mission after a former Ranger?"

"We named it after the constellation, didn't we?" Adam asked.

"No, then it would be 'Draco', with a 'c', not a 'g'" Tommy immediately corrected, sort of slipping back into leader mode, but not really. "Drago was Trent, my white-wearing teammate back in '04, remember?"

"Honestly, Andros names these things," Billy said, slightly exasperated. "I shall convey all of your concerns to him the next chance I get, but for now, to keep our cover, I surmise that we can just say it's supposed to be Draco—with a 'c'—and just claim it's a typographical error. I am correct in assuming that this is plausible, yes?"

The guys realized that Billy was slipping back into his habit of using as many multi-syllabic words as possible, which in high school was all the time, but now usually meant that his patience was wearing thin. So they decided to shut up, leaving it to Kat to ask the next question. "Yes. Now that that's cleared up, what are we hitting, and what are we hitting it with?"

"On the record?" Billy asked her.

"Of course."

"Two stockpiles of munitions at al-Hassan and Mukarrat, the Saffian Bridge and Syrian IHQ in Damascus. You'll get the standard weapons briefing in half an hour."

"Okay, but they'll tell me what we're supposed to be attacking with. What are we really doing?"

"That is what we're attacking with. But—let's just say there's a reason we made Andros our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs."

"You mean…"

"Exactly. He'll be following far above in his beloved Megaship to keep our guys as safe as humanly possible, and to make sure we don't miss."

"That's all well and good," Tommy interjected, "but I've been on that ship and it's not exactly built for stealth. How is Andros going to keep the rest of the known world from seeing him coming?"

"Other Ranger teams pop up all the time," Adam responded. "Anyone who spots him on their radar will hopefully mistake it for a zord belonging to the new guys."

"Hopefully?"

"It's a guess," Billy responded. "Whether it's educated or not, I don't know."

"And we all know how much you love that."

"Yeah, but Andros was also publicly outed back in 1998, so if it gets out that he was the one flying it, no one will be any the wiser. Getting back on subject, we're going on the networks at 7:00, so Tommy, Adam, start zeroing in. Kat, not one word to the press on this before Jason says it on TV, got it?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay, that's all for now, guys."

"Thanks, Billy," was murmured by several of the group as most of them scattered to do whatever it was that they needed to be doing. Only Billy and Rocky were left in the room.

"Let me guess," Billy told his fellow blue, "you're looking for something to do."

"Well, at the risk of turning into you—affirmative."

"Something on your mind?"

"Yeah. I was just interviewing this kid for Nate's old job. He's one of Tommy's kids, bright, which I'm sure he'd be able to show if he hadn't been scared out of his wits. You'd like him a lot."

"So, what's the trouble?"

"He's black."

"So were three of the first eleven of us, including the lady who keeps your head attached to your shoulders."

"I know that, it's just the visual. A young, black man holding the door for the President, carrying his bags on state visits? I know slavery ended in America 150 years ago, but people have long memories, you know."

"I know what you mean."

"So what?" Andros suddenly interrupted. He had been standing in the open doorway long enough to hear the gist of the conversation, and felt compelled to put his two cents in. "You know, I always found race relations on Earth to be ridiculous. You're all the same on the inside. We're all gonna die, have dirt thrown in our faces at a cemetery, and then the mourners will all go back to some church and eat potato salad. Regardless of what they look like in the mirror."

"Well said," Rocky responded.

"Is he qualified for the job?"

"Absolutely."

"Are you going to give him a decent wage?"

"Affirmative," Billy answered.

"Than the rest doesn't matter. We've all been in real, life-or-death battles out there, guys. We don't have time for the cosmetic ones." Andros stole a quick glance at his watch. "Speaking of time, I've got to get in the air."

"Good hunting, Andros," Billy said by way of wishing him luck.

"Don't worry, Bill. No one's coming back in a casket today if I have anything to say about it," Andros said as he donned his cap and left the room.

"So," Rocky started, "again I am left with nothing to do."

"Yes."

"Like a writer on a movie set."

"Yeah, I've got nothing for you here," Billy told him. "Hey, why don't you take this Ethan guy to lunch and than see about getting him settled in. You remember how ridiculous most of the paperwork is around here."

"True, I could spend a good half-hour just helping him explain away his spandex-related past for the background check."

"Definitely. I remember that one all too well. He'll need all the help he can get."

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3:00 p.m., Adam's Office

"Adam, Matt Covington at the Post wants to know how much longer it'll be until one of you guys can answer the phone," an unknown lady asked a harried Mr. Park as he rushed through the communications wing colloquially known as "the bullpen."

"It's my first bombing. I don't know yet." He quickly crossed the threshold into his office and slammed the door. Tommy was sitting there, scribbling away on a legal pad. His office was right next door, but the two had found that they worked best together, bouncing ideas off each other.

"I'm looking for a third word to describe the attack. What goes with unprovoked and cold-blooded?"

"Unwarranted?"

"That's good. Unwarranted…"

"…unprovoked and cold-blooded, exactly."

"Don't those all mean the same thing, though?"

"Sort of, but they each have their own nuances."

"Fair enough. Trini would probably tell you just how they're different."

"I'll take your word for it. I mean, I barely knew her."

"To be honest, I wasn't all that close with her, either. At least, not as close as the others were. There was that one battle where the others were trapped inside a monster on some island, but we never really had any of those really meaningful talks, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess. But you still had to have some idea of what she was like."

"From what I saw of the group dynamic, she was the mediator, the voice of reason. With a really deep sense of honor."

"Sounds like someone worth knowing."

"She was one of us. And that was the least of reasons why she was worth knowing."

Adam nodded, then turned to the computer on his desk. "So: unwarranted, unprovoked and cold-blooded?"

"Yeah."

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6:45 p.m., West Wing corridors

"This over here used to be the White House Counsel's office, before Tommy and Adam conquered and pillaged," Rocky told Ethan. The two had been filling out paperwork for the last four hours, so Rocky had decided to help Ethan relax by giving him the 10-cent tour. "I guess all that's left is the Oval and a fly-by of the President. We've got a national address in a few minutes, though, so he may not be—alright, where'd he go?" At this point, Rocky noticed that Ethan was no longer walking alongside him. Turning around, he spotted the boy standing about ten feet behind him, again sporting a deer-in-the-headlights look. "Come on, just keep up with me." The two then walked into the Oval Office.

The scene before them was only slightly chaotic, with a camera and teleprompter both pointed at the desk and spotlights on either side. Jason, Tommy and Adam came in from one of the other doors, haggling over last-minute changes in the speech.

"What happened to paragraph seven?" Jason half-asked, half-demanded.

"It got moved back," Tommy told him. "Page 3, in bold."

"I meant paragraph eight."

"We cut that half an hour ago."

"France will read between the lines," Adam added.

"I'd like to see it again, please," Jason told them as a staffer wheeled a television monitor into the room. "I'd like to see anything again. Hayley, I still can't find those damn reading glasses!"

"The porters have been searching all afternoon, sir," she told him. "They'll turn up when they turn up."

"This is getting ridiculous," Jason said, throwing his hands up in the air. He then turned to Adam. "When do we get the ballistics report?"

"There's a bit of a problem there, sir."

"Why?"

"Ordinarily, we'd get help with early information from sources inside the Syrian intelligence…"

"So what's the problem?"

"Well—we just blew up Syrian intel—"

"Oh, for the love of—will someone get a hold of CNN and find out if we hit anything!"

Billy came racing in, holding a manila folder. "The ballistics report, sir."

"Thank you. Now if only I had my glasses, so I could actually read this thing."

"The staff has turned your bedroom upside down, sir," Hayley told him.

"This has been all day. We could have brought in an optometrist by now!"

"An optometrist can't fold all his equipment into a briefcase."

"Who died and made you 'Stating-the-Obvious Girl'? I don't need an optometrist; I just need the glasses he prescribed."

Kat walked over to the desk, holding a different report. "Sir, if you'll take a minute to familiarize yourself with the Lobo, the press will be…"

"I am familiar with the Lobo."

"You understand I'm not talking about the Diamondback."

"The Lobo! I studied that report last night. Matlock was with me in my private study. The Lobo, the A-61, the Falcon, and the Diamondback. Are we covered?"

"Yes, sir," Kat responded. On the other side of the room, Ethan whispered something to Rocky.

"For want of a pair of glasses…" Jason droned on. Meanwhile, Rocky said just two words to Ethan: "Tell him." But still the young man remained silent.

"Try mine, sir," Tommy said, offering his pair to Jason.

"Tell him," Rocky urged Ethan again.

"We're looking" came the call of another staff member in the hall.

"While we're looking," Adam interrupted, "can we take a look at the new para—," but Adam wouldn't have a chance to finish the question.

"Oh, crap. I can't see anything with these."

"Ethan, tell him," Rocky hissed. And he finally took his cue.

"Mr. President?"

Silence reigned in the Oval as all eyes turned to the guy with a guest badge around his neck. Sensing an opening, Ethan continued. "You said you read the report in…"

"What?" Jason asked incredulously.

"You said, you read the Lobo report in your private study last night, sir."

"What of it? Who is this?"

Suddenly, Hayley figured out exactly what Ethan was referring to. Turning to one of her assistants, she gave an order of her own. "Have a steward go to the President's study. Have him look under the papers on the coffee table."

With one crisis solved, Rocky started to introduce Ethan to Jason. "Mr. President, this is Ethan James."

"I don't have time for new people right now," was the response.

Billy had had enough, and decided it was time for that talk. "Mr. President, can I have a moment?"

Jason nodded and walked back out the door he came in, which led to Billy's office. Tommy flashed Billy a quick look, pointing at his watch, to remind Billy that time was of the essence.

"What do you need, Billy?" Jason asked as Billy shut the door behind them. Billy then proceeded to shut the other doors around the room as he answered.

"Well, you've gone through everyone who works for you and everyone who's married to you. I didn't know who you could get mad at next, and I was afraid the American people might be next. By the way, when we're done, you're sending the Mrs. some flowers."

Jason nodded, but kept his mouth shut for what seemed like a good thirty seconds, then dove into history to make his point, picking up steam and volume as he went. "Did you know that 2,000 years ago, a Roman citizen could walk the face of the known world free from the fear of molestation? He could walk from Spain to Persia unharmed, cloaked only by the words 'civis romanus': 'I am a Roman citizen.' So feared and so universally understood was the wrath of Rome as certain should harm befall even one of its citizens. Where was Trini's protection, to say nothing of the rest of the people on that airplane? Where is their retribution? Where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most powerful military force in history comes crashing down on your house?!? In other words, Bill: WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?!"

"We are behaving the way a superpower ought to behave, and the way you would hope a human being would behave."

"Well our behavior has produced some crappy results. In fact, I'm not so sure it hasn't induced it."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about 286 Marines in Beirut. I'm talking about Somalia, and the USS Cole, and yes, I'm talking about planes flying into skyscrapers on a late summer morning!"

"And you think that ratcheting up the body count is going to act as a deterrent?"

"You're damn right I do."

"Then you're getting forgetful as well as stupid. I'll tackle the stupid part first: American history is a laundry list of quick-fix solutions that have done nothing to solve the problems they were designed to stop. Alcohol consumption in this country increased during Prohibition, to say nothing of organized crime. You tell me, how did mandatory busing of public school students do at ending racism? Capital punishment hasn't put much of a dent in the crime rate. This would just be the next link in the chain. You want to start using the American military as your personal avenging angel? Do you? Well—you can do that. We're the only superpower left. You can conquer the world like Alexander or Charlemagne. But you'd better be prepared to kill everyone, and you'd better start with me. Because I will raise up an army against you, and I will beat you."

"What else?"

"Huh?"

"You said I was forgetful and stupid. What was I forgetting?"

"I vow you took over fifteen years ago."

"What vow?"

"Ranger rule number two: never escalate a battle unless you're forced to."

Jason felt a shock wave run through him as the words of their mentor were fired back in his face. He realized Billy had played the logic trump card for this hand, and had beaten him. There was only token resistance to be put up from here. "They killed her, Billy. They took the life of one of our own."

"I know."

"We are doing nothing."

"We are not doing nothing."

"We're blowing up a desert?"

"Four high-rated military targets."

"And this is good?"

"Of course, it's not good. There is no 'good.' It's what there is. It's how you behave if you're the most powerful nation on earth. It's proportional, it's reasonable, it's responsible; it's merciful. It's not nothing. Four high-rated military targets."

"Which they'll rebuild again in six months!"

"Then we blow them up again in six months! We're getting really good at it!"

This was greeted with a sigh, so Billy let him down gently with one last reason. "It's what our fathers taught us—including you know who."

Jason softly responded, "Why didn't you say so," and walked over to a chair near the window. "Geez, Bill, when I think of all we went through to keep each other alive back then, and then all the trouble you went through to get me to run, and then to get me elected—I could pummel your ass with a baseball bat."

Both men started laughing at that, slowly at first, then snowballing to the point that they both had to sit down for their own safety. This fit brought the story from the morning staff meeting to Billy's mind. Jason still hadn't been told yet. "Oh, here's something you'll like—Lance Prather…"

"Oh, I like anything that starts with Lance Prather. Let's have it."

"Well, Prather goes on the radio yesterday, and he says the people in his district love America. And you'd better not go down there, because you might not get out alive."

Jason sat up in his chair, still laughing. "Lance is calling me out?"

"Apparently the people in Lance's district are so patriotic, that if the President of the United States himself were to show up—they'd kill him." They broke down into another fit of laughter.

"Adam must be ballistic!"

"The man is beside himself. We could sell tickets."

The tension sufficiently cleared, Jason suddenly felt a twinge of remorse over what had just transpired in the next room. "By the way, the kid back there in the Oval, the one who figured out where my glasses were, who was that?"

"Well, if you want him, he's your new body man."

"What's his story?"

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6:57 p.m., Oval Office

Back in the other room, Kat stepped over to Adam to ask a few questions. "What do you think's going on in there?"

"I don't know," Adam responded.

Changing tack, she continued. "Do you know anything about a story going around that has the Secret Service investigating Lance Prather for threatening the life of the President?"

"No."

"Jackie Andrews from the Union-Tribune has you quoted as saying 'the Secret Service investigates all threats made against the President and it's White House policy not to comment.'"

"Yeah."

"Did you say that?"

"Yeah. Hey, you don't suppose that's how the story got started, do you?" The sarcasm was flowing so thick from that remark, you could have boiled it down and made a pretty nasty syrup. "Just make sure the next time Mr. Prather comes calling, you tell him that I said there's a new sheriff in town."

Men, Kat thought to herself as she turned and conducted a strategic retreat to the other side of the room.

Rocky hadn't noticed any of this. He was busy along with Tommy trying to apologize for Jason's rather curt behavior earlier. "I think this was just a really bad day."

"He's not usually like this," Tommy added. "He can be incredibly civil when he wants to be. It's just been a difficult last few days, highly emotional, you know?"

"Yeah," Ethan responded. "I should probably go." But before he had a chance to, Jason stepped back in.

"Excuse me, Ethan? Can I talk to you for a second?"

Ethan seemed mildly shocked, but Jason was in a far more cordial mood than he had been just ten minutes ago. "It's okay," Jason started again. "I don't bite often." Ethan walked over and reached out to shake Jason's hand. "I'm Jason Scott."

"Ethan James."

"Listen, Bill Cranston—oh, wait, that's right. You know of most of us already—Billy told me about how we ran across you and let me just say I'm honored to meet another of our successors. You're a credit to the legacy and I'd be personally honored if you were willing to put up with more of our insanity. So, what do you say? You want to come help us out?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Thanks, Ethan." Jason shook his hand again, then walked behind his desk.

"Thirty seconds, Mr. President," the cameraman said as a make-up artist walked behind the desk to give Jason a last-second touch-up.

Billy walked over next to the desk and asked, "All set?"

"You tell me," Jason responded.

Billy gave his friend a quick once-over and fired back, "That's a pretty ugly tie."

"My niece gave me this tie."

"My nephew gave me an ashtray he made at summer camp."

"Get out of my sight," Jason said in a manner that clearly indicated he was joking. "Somebody throw this guy out of the building!"

"Stand by," the cameraman ordered as everybody sans the president moved behind the camera.

"Thank you," Jason said to everyone and no-one at the same time.

The voice of a news anchor could be heard on the monitors in the room, explaining to the TV audience what would take place on air following the President's address. Ethan leaned over and whispered to Rocky, "It's not the same feeling as going out there to save the world, but it's still amazing."

Rocky nodded and whispered back, "It doesn't go away."

(on TV monitor): The anchorman finished his intro. "Here now, the President."

(in the Oval): "My fellow Americans," Jason started, "good evening. A short while ago, I ordered our armed forces to attack and destroy four military targets in northern Syria. This in response to the unwarranted, unprovoked and cold-blooded downing two days ago of an unarmed Air Force jet, carrying 45 passengers and the flag of the United States…."

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Notes: go ahead and kill me for taking five months to finish this chapter. I deserve it. The line about death and potato salad came from Tony Campolo, a minister who said it at my cousin's college graduation years ago. I myself finally graduated two weeks ago. (Yay!) But there is no rest for the weary. I then left the very next day on a choir tour to South Korea. But I'm back, with diploma in tow! Amen, If by some miracle you're still reading this, please leave a review and...tell me WHY!