Scorched Earth

by KC Polar Bear

When a nameless evil invades Earth, killing everything in its path, the first eleven Power Rangers must face an enemy beyond anything they've ever encountered; and this time, saving the planet may cost some of them their lives.

12. The Reckless and the Brave

Scorched Earth

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, just the right to put them through hell for my own amusement. Saban owns everything Power Rangers related. Anything you don't recognize is mine.

Plot Summary: When a nameless evil invades Earth, killing everything in its path, the first eleven Power Rangers must face an enemy beyond anything they've ever encountered; and this time, they'll be pushed farther than some of them are willing to go.

Timeline: Very AU from the moment Zeo started; slightly AU from the moment Jason, Zack and Trini left. Takes place midway through Zeo, only Zeo didn't happen. Jason, Trini and Zack are still attending the Peace Conference in Geneva, Kim is still in Florida training for the Pan Globals, and Aisha is still in Africa. When they left, however, their powers weren't transferred – they still have them, and five new powers were created for their replacements. Also, that whole letter thing didn't happen, either. The current team, led by Tommy, is Billy, Rocky, Adam, Kat and Tanya.

Pairings: Jason/Trini, Tommy/Kim, Rocky/Aisha; others may come later.

A/N: This story assumes that the Rangers were juniors in high school when they got their original powers, meaning they are currently in their second year of college, putting their ages at approximately 20-21.

Warning: Rated M for graphic violence, language, crude humor and disturbing content, including major character death. (Nothing too explicit as far as sexual content, I'll keep that PG-13.) Essentially, this is what I imagine an R-rated Power Rangers movie would've looked like. If only, right?

AN: Hey, guess who's back! Sorry about the long wait, life got crazy there for a while - since the last update I passed the bar, moved to a new city and started a new job. Hopefully this super long chapter will make up for my long absence. Thanks to everyone who's checked this story out so far.

---

Chapter 12: "The Reckless and the Brave"

"It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle."
-Norman Schwarzkopf

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
-Colin Powell

Crane Zord Cockpit
Several Hundred Miles Above the Moon's Surface
August 28, 2012
10:00 PM PDT

"Drop."

Tommy's voice still ringing in her ears, Kat curled her gloved fingers around the lever on her console and yanked it toward her, feeling her zord rock slightly as the detachable pod tucked under its massive right wing popped open and deployed its cargo. She tugged gently on the controls to compensate for the sudden change in weight and shoved the throttle forward, zooming ahead along the drop zone.

"Crane Zord drop successful," she reported, trying to keep her voice as businesslike as possible against the surge of adrenaline that bubbled up inside her every time she flew. She vaguely heard Tommy, Adam and Kim confirm their own successful drops as she broke formation and angled herself away from the Moon's surface.

Gazing out into the vast expanse of space that stretched out to infinity before her, Kat's well-trained eyes darted back and forth across her field of view, looking for anything that might be cause for alarm.

"Anyone see anything?" Tommy's voice came through again. Kat flicked a switch to the right of the throttle and watched as her center console screen flashed to life. A digital, semicircular wave swept out over the screen, passing over pieces of space junk and her fellow zords without much incident.

"Nothing here," Kim responded.

"I'm still circling around to get Jason an optimal shot of the layout," Adam chimed in. "But for what it's worth, I don't see anything eith- wait," he suddenly stopped, and Kat frowned inside her helmet, still glancing between her radar readout and the windshield. "Do you guys hear something?"

"What?" Kim said with a small laugh of disbelief. "Adam, what the hell are you-"

That was when the rest of them suddenly noticed it, all at once. There was a small, but persistent sound coming through their communication lines. She had to strain her ears to hear it, but Kat could swear there was something regular about the sound, almost as if…

Jason groaned loudly and Kat could tell he'd beaten her to the punch. "Tommy, Sha, you guys know what this is, right?"

There was a beat, and then Tommy and Aisha simultaneously let loose groans of their own.

"Aw, crap," Tommy grunted. "Not this again."

"Motherfucker," Aisha muttered in annoyance. "I've told him and told him about this."

"Hey, Dr. and Mrs. Cryptic?" Kim piped up. "You wanna fill the rest of us in?"

Jason did it for them. Kat could practically hear him shaking his head as he spoke. "Rocky's playing Dragonforce in his helmet again and it's so loud it's causing feedback on the comm frequencies."

Kat snorted. "And he clearly hasn't heard any of us this whole time. He's probably off in his own little world right now. Adam, Sha, any ideas on how to get through to him?"

"Already on it, Kat," Billy suddenly said. He paused for a moment. "Oh, um…you guys might want to switch off comms for the next four or five seconds." The evil smirk Billy wore was evident in his words; Kat felt no desire to tempt fate right now. She quickly reached up and tapped her helmet over her left ear, counted silently to seven just to be safe, and tapped it again.

When her comms came back on Rocky was already yelling.

"Hijo de puta, Billy! You almost made me fuck up my landing trajectory!" Rocky's voice was strained, as though he'd just been badly startled.

Trini had been laughing hysterically in the background from the second Kat's comms came back up; she finally took a couple of deep breaths and said, "Wait, don't tell me. He overrode your internal speaker system and pumped in some kind of godawful death metal or something?"

"Worse," Rocky said solemnly, still a little shaky. "Dubstep." Kat heard more loud laughter and a loud smacking sound she assumed was Jason slapping Billy high five. "Seriously, though, Billy," Rocky added. "Where the hell does someone even come up with an idea like that?"

Billy was clearly still laughing too hard to answer, so Jason did it for him, a gleeful grin still audible in his voice. "Trini lent him a report we read last year on CIA torture methods at Guantanamo and Billy, uh…'lost' it. I guess he got to read it after all."

"Real talk, though, man," Adam said through his laughter. "You're like one lab accident away from becoming Lex Luthor or some shit."

"I always thought of you more as a young Dr. Von Doom myself," Tanya said. "But you really don't think that's a little harsh?"

"Hey, it got Rocky's attention, didn't it? Besides, my ass is still sore from Tommy knocking me over at the Youth Center today," Billy said. "Consider revenge officially mine."

"In the middle of a battle operation?" Rocky asked incredulously. "That doesn't seem at all irresponsible to you?"

"Right, because blasting music so loud you can't hear your teammates' communications is textbook responsible mission protocol," Billy shot back. Rocky just grumbled in reply. "Oh, come on, Rocky, don't be so melodramatic," Billy said. "You guys dropped from roughly 800 miles above the surface, which would have given you plenty of time to readjust your trajectory. Which you didn't even end up needing to do anyway. You should have learned by now – I think of everything. And I never forget."

"OK, everyone," Tommy said with a chuckle. "We should probably switch to team frequencies before we go full-on Springer. Jase, you'll coordinate comms, right?" There was silence for a second. "You're nodding, aren't you?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry, I was adjusting some settings on the display. I only knew you were talking cause my Dad shoved me."

"Thanks, Mr. Scott," Tanya said sweetly. "You the real MVP."

In the midst of her next bout of laughter, Kat happened to glance back down at her readout. "Billy, I've got something," she said, all humor immediately gone from her voice.

"What is it, Kat?" Billy asked, snapping right back into battle mode like someone had flipped a switch.

"There's some kind of abnormality at about my two o'clock," Kat said, frowning at her display. "I'm not entirely sure what it is."

"You sure there's something there, Kat?" Kim asked. "My radar range overlaps yours and I'm not reading anything in that area."

"Well…neither am I," Kat replied. Before anyone could chime in about how confused they were, she went on. "But it's still…different, somehow." She racked her brain for a moment for a way to describe what she was seeing. "Billy, remember when you were tutoring me for that computer science class and you told me about the difference between zero and null?" Kat's dexterous fingers danced across her readout screen, sending Billy a screenshot of her display. "Look. On most of this screen, I'm getting zero, but I'm getting a reading. In this area here," she used her screen to draw a rough circle around the anomaly. "It's like there isn't even a reading of empty space. I'm just not getting a reading at all."

"Oh my god, you're right," Kim gasped; Kat saw the Firebird edge closer to her in her peripheral vision. "How did you even notice that?"

"It was just like the readouts from the moon that we got when we first got here. The complete lack of a reading, even a negative one, that we thought meant there were nothing but bodies down there." Kat leaned forward and squinted through her visor, as though she could will herself to see the invisible entity that loomed before her. "I went over and over and over them to try and prove that they really were all dead down there; I am intimately familiar with what these things look like."

"Wait," Adam said, and Kat thought she could actually hear in his voice the frown line that had just split his forehead in half. "Why didn't you say anything about that before?"

Kat was going to answer him, really she was, but Tommy cut her off. "No time for that right now. If these things are interfering with our scanners somehow, we could be under attack at any second."

"Hold on," Kim suddenly said. "I wanna try something. Billy, Jase, you guys got my readings?"

There was a pause. "I'm not sure what you mean, Kim," Billy replied, sounding a touch confused. "I have your comm connection coming through loud and clear."

"And I have your position, vital signs and diagnostics," Jason added, "but unless Billy stuck a dashcam on that thing since I was here last we can't see what you're seeing."

"Damn it," Billy hissed. "I knew there was something I meant to do last week."

Kat glanced to her right through her viewscreen at the Firebird drifting along beside her against the infinite empty backdrop of space, and a thought occurred to her. "What about one of the recon drones? Isn't there a whole fleet of those just sitting around in lower orbit waiting to be sent out somewhere?"

"I wish," Jason snorted. Kat heard him moving objects around in the holographic display. "The second we got you guys out of the hangar Billy redirected them all to the last known coordinates of those ships in case your energy signatures triggered another attack. We didn't want to be caught off guard."

"I was afraid it might be something like that," Tommy said. "If we're gonna try something we'd better do it all at once. Kim, what was your idea?"

"We switch our viewscreens to infrared," Kim answered. "It doesn't go through the scanners so hopefully they won't have thought to find a workaround for it. If that doesn't work we try thermal."

"I'm game," Adam said. "I'm almost in position for that scan anyway."

Kat raised her right hand, extended her first two fingers, and rested her fingertips against the edge of her viewscreen. "Ready whenever you are."

"OK, guys," Tommy said. "Switch to infrared on my mark. Two. One. Mark."

Kat gently swiped her fingers across her screen from right to left; as her hand moved from one side to the other, her view changed from the deep black and twinkling white pinpricks of stars to merely a slightly grainier black field with no stars, a huge, shapeless green mass looming at the edge of the moon's orbit, and what appeared to be several dozen smaller green shapes moving very quickly toward –

"Shit!"

Kat yanked her controls to one side, barrel-rolling her zord to the left. She felt the shockwave as the projectile that had been on a crash course with her left wing zipped by underneath it, jarring her against the seatbelt. As she completed the rotation, she caught a glimpse of Kim's zord dodging another projectile by burning the thrusters on its underside and blasting straight up like a Harrier jet.

"Son of a bitch!" Kim grunted, her zord wheeling back and to the left out of Kat's vision. "When the fuck did these things get here?"

Righting her zord to her best approximation of right-side up in a zero gravity environment, Kat took half a second to survey the layout in front of her. What appeared to be a small army of miniature versions of the giant space fortresses looming over Earth was suddenly spread out across the expanse of space between the larger ship and the moon, closing the gap on the small squadron of zords with every second. She risked a quick glance down at her scanner, but all she could see was a smattering of tiny spots of void in her readout, and the small fighters' lack of scanner reading made quantifying their numbers basically impossible.

"They've been here the whole time," Tommy replied curtly, grunting with exertion. Kat caught a glimpse of the Falcon zord being wrenched to one side, narrowly averting a barrage of projectiles. "We're just lucky they waited to shoot long enough for us to see them."

Kat flipped a couple of switches on her console, sending as much additional power as she could to reinforcing her shields. The projectiles were coming at her in waves now, an almost constant stream of pulsating spheres of energy that flickered green in her infrared view. "We have a plan here?" She demanded, firing a few blasts of return fire into the oncoming fleet. As the question was leaving her mouth, Kat suddenly realized that many of the ships were flying right past her, taking advantage of her preoccupation with the projectiles to slip right past the zords and make a beeline for the moon.

"They're going right past us!" Kim shouted, echoing Kat's suspicions. There was a flash of white as Kim landed a direct hit on one of the fighters and destroyed it, popping the small ship like a balloon filled with firecrackers.

"Nice shot," Tommy grunted appreciatively, whipping around and accelerating back toward the moon. "And you're right. These guys could have blown the fuck out of us already and they haven't. This whole thing is a distraction so they can get past us."

"They must have picked up on the energy signatures of the ground team," Billy piped in. "At least one of you needs to run interference for them. Adam will join you as soon as he can."

"I'll do that," Tommy said. "I'm already heading that way anyway. Kim, Kat, you guys stay here, do as much damage as you can. Make them pay more attention to you than they are to the moon."

Kat cracked a half-smile under her helmet. "Done." Gunning her engines as hard as she could, Kat blasted the Crane zord forward, straight into the center of the swarm of fighter ships. Two of them approached her, closing in and leaving a slowly shrinking space between them. Kat bit down on her bottom lip and waited for the last possible second before yanking her controls to the right, flipping her zord sideways and shooting through the gap between her two attackers. She saw the flashing lights from behind her as they crashed into each other and exploded, but she was already gone, squeezing her weapon triggers and unloading hundreds of rounds a minute of ammunition made from pure energy into the mass of enemy ships that had begun to cluster around her like white blood cells around a virus.

Noticing that the fighters had begun to close in, her available space shrinking, Kat pulled the throttle back toward her and drove her zord in a wide circle, blasting through everything in her way and anything else she got a good look at. After a moment, she had cleared a larger area to work with and chanced a look at her radar screen, where several of the patches of null readings were beginning to abandon the moon and turn back toward them.

"It's working!" She said excitedly, launching her zord straight up, flipping over, and charging back down like a breaching dolphin. Kat was almost giddy, the rush of flying and the frenzy of battle working her adrenal glands into overdrive. Her hands glided over the zord's controls without her even having to think about where they went, flying from button to switch to joystick with the dexterity of a piano virtuoso. It was that inarticulable feeling of becoming one with her zord, as if she wasn't driving a vehicle but rather acting as the brain of another, larger creature.

"They're only gonna keep coming back to us as long as we keep giving them reason to," Kim said breathlessly, her voice shrill from excitement as well. "It's not enough just to blast the shit out of 'em; we gotta put on a fucking show."

Kat actually heard herself giggle. "So you're saying the fate of the world depends on you being the center of attention? Oh no, whatever shall we do?"

"Well, since you asked…" Kat looked up in time to see Kim bait one ship into firing at her, then peel off at the last second to let the projectile plow through several of its own ships that been closing in on her. "If I were you, I'd just try to keep up."

"Anything you can do, Kimmie," Kat shot back, leveling herself out again. "I can do better." In one fluid motion, she slammed the throttle forward again and immediately shot out her hand and hit a button that cut off power to her left thrusters. The result was that her zord was sent flying forward while spinning like a top. Kat squeezed down her weapon triggers again, sending out a barrage of energy blasts in every direction. She was spinning so fast that the view from her cockpit was nothing but a massive black and green blur, lit up every few seconds by another near-blinding flash of white light; it felt like she was turning the longest pirouette of her life while an army of photographers snapped an entire album's worth of pictures.

The G-Forces pulled an exhilarated scream from her mouth, the way a roller coaster would. Finally, Kat killed her right thruster and gently gunned her left reverse thrusters to straighten out her trajectory. She blasted her way through a couple more enemy ships before finding Kim again.

"You OK?" Kim asked with a chuckle. "I could've sworn I heard you screaming."

As if in response, Kat fired at a pair of incoming fighters and watched as they exploded. "If I were you, Kim," she said with a grin. "I'd just worry about keeping up."

Her challenge delivered, Kat gunned her thrusters, armed her weapons, and charged back into the fight.

---

Above the Moon's Surface
10:10 PM PDT

Rocky pressed his arms against his sides, his fingers brushing reassuringly over the shape of his holstered blaster, as he plummeted toward the surface of the moon. His ears still rung with the fading sounds of the blaring music Billy had blasted into his helmet, so every few seconds he had to shake his head a little so it didn't feel like his entire skull was vibrating.

He supposed he should've expected one of them to do something to him eventually; Tommy and Aisha had both repeatedly given him shit about playing music in his helmet and Adam had warned him a couple weeks ago about how fed up they were getting, but it wasn't like he was just doing it to zone out and not pay attention. "Falling" toward the surface of the moon or a planet without an atmosphere was unsettlingly quiet without the wind rushing by in your ears, and the music he played was to distract himself from how much falling in a vacuum fucked with his head.

"Hey, Rocky, you still there?" The smug smirk on Jason's face was audible in his voice, and Rocky let out a loud, exasperated sigh, relishing in the harsh burst of static he sent through the communicator.

"We're all good here, Big Red," he replied in a tone of sarcastic cheerfulness. "Nothing out here distracting us, or blasting into our ears out of nowhere or scaring the shit out of us, or anything. Nope, not a thing."

"Good to know," Jason said, growing slightly more serious. "Your elevation just dropped below 400 feet. What are you seeing on the surface?"

Rocky would've answered, but he'd taken one last opportunity to try and shake the ringing out of his ears. Luckily for him, Trini was apparently planning to answer for him anyway.

"We're approaching that flattened out area with the symbol dug into it that we saw on the video," she said. "Those aliens we saw in Angel Grove are all over it, too."

"How many are we talkin' here, Tri?" Jason asked.

"A fucking lot, is how many," Aisha said. Rocky glanced to his left and saw her absentmindedly unfastening and refastening the holster that held her blaster. "As in flies-on-dog-shit, ants-on-spilled-soda a lot. There are places where I can't even see through them to the ground."

"What about the structure?" Jason asked, seeming unrattled by Aisha's colorful description. Rocky guessed he was busily moving things around in the holographic display as they spoke, allowing Billy to keep the comms channels separated so he wouldn't be overwhelmed. "Can you tell anything about it from there?"

"Whatever it is, it's super heavily guarded," Rocky said. "They're smashed up against the walls of the thing ten or twenty bodies deep, it's like some kind of fucked-up mosh pit."

"OK, so speaking of fucked up," Tanya said from Rocky's right. "How have none of you noticed the weirdest part about all this?" After an incredulous pause, she added, "By which, of course, I mean the fact that not one of these guys are wearing a spacesuit, or a helmet, or an oxygen tank or fucking anything you'd think they would need to just walk around in the vacuum of space?"

"Holy shit, she's right," Trini said. "They're just walking around down there like it's no big deal."

"Hey Billy?" Rocky said with a growing unease. "We have anything on record about any known species that can survive in space without any kind of gear?"

There was a moment of silence, and Rocky could feel his heartbeat start to speed up. They were closing in on the ground fast now – the altimeter in his heads-up display had just hit 100 feet, which meant they would be on the ground in less than a minute. "Come on, Billy, we're running out of time here."

"This is rather unnerving," Billy finally said, "but there appears to be absolutely no record in any of our databases on the universe about an alien species that can survive unassisted in space. I have no theories at this point as to how such a thing is even possible."

"Oh, good. We're fighting a bunch of dudes that don't even get killed by space," Tanya muttered. Rocky set his jaw and readied himself as the ground came rushing up to meet them.

"They sure seemed to get killed by our weapons easily enough," he said, pressing his hands flat against his thighs. It was at this point that he noticed that a few of the wandering blue creatures had stopped what they were doing and were staring up at them, watching as the four Rangers came plummeting toward them like a very well-coordinated meteor shower. "All right folks, here we go. Seatbelts fastened, tray tables upright and locked, and finish up that handjob you had going in the bathroom. We are coming in for a landing."

Rocky waited until he was only a dozen feet off the ground before he slammed his heels together and initiated his short-burst suit-mounted thrusters, pulling him parallel to the ground and carrying him over several yards worth of blue aliens before he abruptly cut them off; he glided for another few feet, then, just as he was about to reach the ground, he pulled his knees in close, flipped himself over, and brought his feet down directly into the face of an alien standing below him. The creature's head was driven backward into the ground with enough forward momentum that it carved a trench several feet deep and a quarter-mile long into the moon's surface and ground the thing's head into bloody chunks.

As he slid to a stop, Rocky barked out one last set of orders: "Tanya, Sha, weapons hot, lasers on blast. I want all eyes on you. Tri, on me, we're going for the structure. First one there wins." He narrowed his eyes inside his helmet.

"It's clobberin' time!"

Rocky used the moon's decreased gravity to his advantage, launching himself out of the trench he stood in and propelling his body over the creatures' heads. He flicked his left wrist to summon his sword and drew his blaster with his other hand, firing several shots along the sword's hilt as he fell back toward the aliens again. He landed cleanly on the head of the nearest alien, and hopped across several others, bouncing from head to head like a sentient pinball while knocking away the occasional tentacle with his sword.

"Rocky, coming up on your six!" Trini's voice echoed in his helmet. Rocky stole a quick glance at his HUD and realized Trini still hadn't hit the ground yet. He threw his sword ahead of him like a spear, driving it through four aliens like a giant blue kabob, bounced off one more head and dug both feet into another alien's shoulders before leaping into the air again just as Trini went whizzing past his head. He twisted in midair, shot out a hand and caught her by the right ankle, twisting them both around in a wide circle. Trini drew both her daggers and carved a ring of carnage around them; as they fell back to the ground Rocky released her at exactly the right instant to send her rocketing out in front of him like a giant projectile, slicing off limbs and heads and tentacles with both daggers as she went.

As Trini hit the ground headfirst and rolled to her feet, Rocky landed hard on one knee and had to immediately throw up both arms in an X to deflect two tentacle spikes being swung at his head. He shoved the alien they belonged to away, spun himself around on his planted foot and swept his leg around, dropping the creature onto its ass. Pushing himself back upright, he turned and charged after Trini, casually yanking his sword out of the ground and the stack of corpses as he went by.

By now the entire mass of aliens on the moon's surface had been alerted to their arrival, and any of those not yet drawn toward Tanya and Aisha, which mostly included the ones between him and Trini and the structure ahead of them, were massing around them as if hoping to crush them with their sheer mass of bodies. He could hear Tanya and Aisha roaring with delight as they drew more and more of the creatures to the slaughter.

Rocky cracked a smile under his helmet and felt the internal fans gently carry a few beads of sweat away from his forehead. He could not have possibly asked for a better distraction.

Two more aliens stepped into his path and Rocky feigned left, dashed right, felt one of the aliens careen into him and threw it back at its mate, but as he went to spin back around he felt a tentacle catch the back of his legs, then another slam into his right shoulder, sending him spinning to the ground chest first. The wind was knocked from his lungs, and it was only due to the moon's lesser gravity that he was able to bounce onto his back and knock a spike away with his sword. He flung his sword arm back over his head and swung it blindly behind him, feeling it cut through several legs just before the creatures who had been attached to them toppled over on top of him.

"Fuck!" Rocky grunted, straining to push the creatures' dead weight off of him even in the reduced gravity. It didn't help that he had to stop every few seconds to shove his sword through any opening he could find to knock something away, and every new kill just seemed to add to the pile.

Finally, after several painful and frustrating moments, Rocky managed to throw the remaining bodies off of him and kip up to his feet. By then the crowd of blue creatures around him had decided to abandon all pretense and began drawing their strange silver weapons and blasting at him from every direction. No sooner was he upright than a glowing red ball of energy came screaming toward his face.

Eyes widening, Rocky dodged to one side and swung his sword like a baseball bat, sending the projectile careening back toward his foes and ricocheting through the crowd. Not wasting a second to catch his breath, Rocky dug a foot in and took off after Trini, dodging and spinning around aliens and batting away projectiles the whole way.

By the time he reached his companion, Trini was locked in combat with a group of the aliens that had formed a semi-circle in front of her to prevent any further progress. Rocky moved to assist her only to have an alien step in front of him. Thinking quickly, he dropped to the ground, slid through the alien's legs and used a protruding rock to launch himself airborne once again. He brought the sword back over his head and swung it down on the alien in the semicircle nearest him, slicing it cleanly in half from back to front.

His distraction allowed Trini time to throw both daggers, draw her blaster and fire three shots, all in the span of about four seconds. He stood and nodded to her as she walked over to him, both of them breathing heavily.

"Hey, honey," Rocky said, patting Trini's arm. "How was your day?"

Trini snorted. "Ask me again when it's-"

At that moment a massive impact on the moon's surface only a few feet to their left sent both Rangers tumbling through the air; the moon's gravity may have been less, but it didn't do much to lessen the impact when they slammed into the ground, tumbling over and into each other until they finally came to a stop before the advancing masses of blue aliens.

"Ow," Rocky grunted, rolling gingerly onto his stomach and pushing himself up on all fours. "What the fuck was that?"

Trini coughed and cleared her throat. "Oh shit. Rocky, we have another problem."

"What? Who…?" Rocky twisted his head around and peered up into the surrounding blackness. A steady stream of alien ships was rocketing toward the moon, unleashing a volley of glowing energy projectiles before them as they came. The Crimson Ranger felt the ground beneath him tremble as the red ones made impact on the surface. There were green ones, too, which exploded outward into radiating domes of energy that he knew would disintegrate any living thing that stood in their way.

Rocky sprang to his feet and grabbed Trini by the shoulder. "Tri, come on, we have to go right now!"

Then Trini was up and they were running again, leaping around the incoming missiles as they sprinted toward the structure. "Jason!" He heard Trini yell into her communicator. "They're blasting us from orbit, we need air support!"

"Tommy and Adam are already on their way," Jason replied. "They should be there any minute."

Rocky shoved Trini away from him to allow a red projectile to bounce between them. "We're gonna be dead any minute," he retorted. "Tell 'em to move their fucking asses!"

"They'll get there when they fucking get there, Rock," Jason shot back. "Those engines can only go so fast. Just focus on getting to that structure alive."

"Easier said than done, Jase," Rocky muttered. He and Trini had slowed to a stop as the massive throng of aliens that had gathered around the structure now turned their attention on the two approaching rangers. He glanced around for a moment to try and formulate a strategy. The two of them stood about 200 yards from the structure; an army of the blue creatures that looked to be several hundred strong was now moving toward them from that direction. Fortunately, at least, the area behind them had grown relatively clear as most of the creatures were drawn toward Tanya and Aisha.

The other thing they had to worry about, though, was the constant barrage of the surrounding area from the newly arrived attack fleet that circled the area from space.

"We don't have time to stand still too long, Rocky," Trini said from beside him, brandishing her daggers. "What's our play?"

Just as Trini finished speaking, one of the ships came screaming over their heads, pulled a midair U-turn and came charging back at them, unleashing a torrent of red and green spheres as it came. Rocky turned to Trini. "Two birds one stone?"

She glanced from him to the ship to the approaching aliens. "Wanna give me a boost?"

He held out a hand. "Give me your blaster first." She handed it to him, readied her daggers, and backed up several steps, twirling them nervously in each hand. Rocky laid the two blasters next to each other on the ground near his feet and turned back to Trini, lacing his fingers together to form a single foothold. "Ready?"

She nodded. "Wait for it. Wait for it…" Suddenly, she took off running, charging toward Rocky as fast as the armor would carry her; Rocky planted his feet, took several deep breaths, and held his interlocked hands at his estimation of knee height. Just before she ran into him, Trini leapt forward and planted her right foot on Rocky's hands. With every ounce of strength he could muster, he threw her into the air, letting her use his hands as a springboard as she launched herself toward the ship.

The second she was airborne, Rocky dove for the blasters, spun his body around and pointed them directly at Trini's outstretched daggers. Thumbing a switch on the back of each weapon, he squeezed both triggers to fire a steady beam of energy at each of Trini's daggers until they glowed the same shade of red as his armor. Trini waited until the glow was nearly blinding before she threw the one in her right hand at the incoming ship.

The dagger hit the ship right at the front, just below center, and exploded, flipping the ship so it was perpendicular to the ground; by then Trini had already tossed the second dagger into her right hand and thrown it at the ship as well, embedding it into the craft's underside near what looked like one of its engines.

This time, the explosion was so powerful it knocked Trini backwards over Rocky's head; he scrambled back to try and catch her, but she calmly activated her thrusters again and landed easily on her feet. The ship was sent crashing down to the moon's surface, and just as Rocky and Trini had hoped, it plowed into the crowd of approaching blue monsters like a fiery meteor, splattering the moon with dark alien blood and carving a path of destruction through the creatures that nearly reached the structure itself.

Rocky let out a roar of triumph. "Get fucked, you blue pricks! Trini, we're clear, come on!" Trini trotted up beside him and grabbed his shoulder.

"Hold on," she said. "I won't get my daggers back until I morph again. Give me my blaster back." Rocky tossed her the weapon and they took off toward the structure again.

Upon closer inspection, Rocky could make out a large, rectangular opening in the side of the structure that faced them, reminiscent of a garage or airplane hangar; the rest of the structure was jagged, irregular and made from the same glistening black metal as the ships they'd seen already, but something about that entryway caught Rocky's eye. It was regularly shaped, placed perfectly for convenient entry, and, unlike anything else in these creatures' design style, seemed eminently functional. Almost suspiciously so. But they didn't have a whole lot of other options right now.

"Tri, you see that opening?" Rocky pointed to the entrance and looked over to make sure she saw it. At Trini's nod, he added, "Jase. Trini and I are approaching the structure. There's some kind of entryway in the nearest wall, that looks like our best bet. I'll let you know again when we get inside."

As they neared the door, Trini took a moment to reach down and scoop up a gun from one of the alien bodies that lay scattered around the crash site.

They had nearly reached the building when another explosion rocked the area, this time from much closer. Rocky stumbled, the shockwave knocking him off balance, and he had to grab a piece of the wrecked craft that they were running past to keep from falling. He was about to start running again when Jason's voice came over his comm.

"Rocky, Trini, get down!"

Rocky dove to the ground and took cover behind the wreckage. "Jase, what the hell? We're almost there."

That was when Trini yelled, "Oh, god damn it!" Rocky peered out from the structure to see a small squad of ships, at least seven strong, flying directly toward them. The structure stood at their backs and the remnants of the blue alien mosh pit was beginning to close in from each side.

"Well, that's not great," Rocky muttered. He was just about to make one last desperate run for it when he saw two of the ships on one side of the formation explode and a familiar shape came zooming into view.

"You guys need a little help?" Rocky didn't think he'd ever been happier to hear Adam's voice. He broke into a grin as the Pterodactyl zord blasted its way through the group of ships and sped off to find another battle.

"Took you long enough, Park," Rocky grumbled good-naturedly. He turned to see Trini approaching the structure, almost through the doorway already. Just as he started jogging after her, he noticed that a wall was beginning to lower from the top of the doorway. "Trini, move it, the door's closing!" He called out, picking up the pace a little bit.

He never heard what happened behind him – once again, the lack of sound in space caused him problems – but right when he was nearing the doorway, the wrecked ship he and Trini had brought down was hit by a stray projectile and violently exploded, sending shrapnel in all directions and throwing Rocky forward through the doorway.

But he didn't hear or feel any of that. All he felt was his feet leaving the ground and a sharp, piercing pain in his side before the ground came up to meet him.

After that, it was just his painful, ragged breathing and the rapidly dimming light from outside as the door slid closed behind him.

---

Command Center
10:10 PM PDT

Jason wouldn't have believed it possible half an hour ago, but any lingering annoyance or disappointment he'd felt about being left out of the mission had completely evaporated by the time the zord squadron was approaching the moon. His eyes and fingers darted dexterously across, around and through the orange wireframe readouts projected into the Main Chamber, relaying comm signals, adjusting terrain layouts and rearranging displays as the situation unfolded in real time. The stress of the last few hours had finally begun to ease, and he felt himself relaxing, even beginning to feel the unique rush of adrenaline that he only ever got from Ranger missions.

"Kim, two more coming in on your three o'clock," Jason said, rapidly zooming in and out on the developing dogfight above the lunar surface. The weird way the alien ships messed with their scanners was tricky to work around, and he had to keep going tighter and then stepping back again to be sure about how many were moving where. "Tom, small group about to get past you, headed toward the moon." He swung the entire display around and centered in on Kat, who he found moving quickly through a crowd of enemy fighters; the little wireframe avatar of her zord was flitting around in every direction, sometimes so fast that the display had a hard time keeping up.

"Kat, you're headed toward the middle of a huge cluster of these assholes, adjust your trajectory and go in from the top, it might make a little more noise." Jason didn't wait to hear an acknowledgment of his communications; he'd worked with this module before, and he could feel Billy standing a few feet away, hunched intently over the new communications console he'd just installed. Besides, he knew in the heat of battle his teammates wouldn't always be able to respond to him; he'd been there, and when you got info like that, you just acted on it, almost on reflex. He was about to go back and ask Adam if that scan of the moon was coming when Billy spoke up again.

"Jase, switch comm channels," he said, all laughter from earlier gone from his voice. "Drop team just crossed line of sight threshold."

"Copy," Jason said, magnifying on the four dots descending toward the moon and snapping his fingers to pop into their frequency. He pinched Rocky's readout between two fingers and pulled it to the top, letting him be the one he'd talk to first. He couldn't help but grin as he spoke. "Hey Rocky, you still there?"

He must have come off a bit more smug than he meant to, because Rocky's immediate answer was to sigh or exhale hard, sending a burst of feedback into Jason's headset so intense that he actually winced a little. When Rocky did finally speak, his voice was practically oozing sarcasm. "We're all good here, Big Red," he replied. "Nothing out here distracting us, or blasting into our ears out of nowhere or scaring the shit out of us, or anything. Nope, not a thing."

"Good to know," Jason said carefully, shrugging apologetically at his father, who was still rubbing his ear with an angry glare. He slid the vitals readouts to one side and brought up what they'd managed to scan of the surface while he talked. "Your elevation just dropped below 400 feet. What are you seeing on the surface?"

There was no answer from Rocky for so long a moment that Jason was about to turn to Billy and report a problem with the comms when Trini's voice came through.

"We're approaching that flattened out area with the symbol dug into it that we saw on the video," she said. "Those aliens we saw in Angel Grove are all over it, too."

"How many are we talkin' here, Tri?" Jason squinted at the moon while he spoke, trying to make something out from the blurry image they had to work with.

"A fucking lot, is how many." It was Aisha who spoke this time. Jason shot his dad a look that said, no shit, before she continued. "As in flies-on-dog-shit, ants-on-spilled-soda a lot. There are places where I can't even see through them to the ground." Jason almost laughed at this. Sometimes Aisha reminded him so much of himself it was frightening.

"What about the structure?" Jason asked, his eyes moving back to the moon again. "Can you tell anything about it from there?"

"Whatever it is, it's super heavily guarded," Rocky said. "They're smashed up against the walls of the thing ten or twenty bodies deep, it's like some kind of fucked-up mosh pit."

"OK, so speaking of fucked up," Tanya suddenly said. Jason was coming very close to warning his teammates not to start talking all over each other. "How have none of you noticed the weirdest part about all this?" After an incredulous pause, she added, "By which, of course, I mean the fact that not one of these guys are wearing a spacesuit, or a helmet, or an oxygen tank or fucking anything you'd think they would need to just walk around in the vacuum of space?"

"Holy shit, she's right," Trini said. "They're just walking around down there like it's no big deal."

"Hey Billy?" Rocky said with a growing unease. "We have anything on record about any known species that can survive in space without any kind of gear?"

Jason quickly muted his end of the conversation and turned to Billy. "You catch that last part?"

"I'm checking," was Billy's only reply. Jason grouped the four readouts from the drop team together and flicked them behind his head.

"OK, switch onto their frequency. Put me back on with the other group so we're not talking over each other." He glanced over again and saw Billy nod. "I'm muted, by the way," he said, readying his finger to switch over to the other comm channel. "So they're gonna be waiting for you to say something."

"Copy," Billy said curtly. Without waiting for any further reply, Jason flipped on the other comm frequency.

"Attention all zords, attention all zords. Drop team has broken 100 feet. Clearing out airspace over the structure is priority one. Adam, how we coming on that surface scan?"

"Gonna need a minute on that one, Jase." Adam's reply was a little strained. "I got four of these fuckers on my ass right now and no one else is close enough to lend me a hand."

"OK, hold tight. Tom, you're the closest one to Adam. I need that surface scan so I can oversee the ground team. Can you get over there and help him out?"

"One sec, bro," Tommy said. There was a short moment of dead air during which Jason thought he heard his father talking softly with Alpha before Tommy came back. "OK, it looks like Kim and Kat are making plenty big of a show all on their own. I'll go make sure Adam's clear. Let me know if anything gets too close to me."

"Copy." Jason watched as the small outline of Tommy's zord moved across the area of space that had become the setting for this aerial battle and approached the moon, where Adam's zord zigzagged around in front of a tightly grouped squad of ships about four strong. He checked the ground team's location markers one more time. "Billy, has the ground team made landfall yet?"

"Affirmative. Frequency swap?"

"Just a quick one. You read my mind." Billy flipped a switch and Jason heard a soft click in his ear as the frequency shifted. "Ground team, this is Command Center. Have you touched down safely?"

Aisha answered almost immediately. "On the ground. Little busy. Rocky and Trini went to building, Tan and I are distraction. Don't bug me for a few minutes." There was a second click and Jason's comm went silent.

"What the fuck?" He tapped the earpiece a few times. "Sha? Anyone? Ground team, hello?" He glanced over at Billy. "I think they just hung up on me."

"I'll monitor them," Billy said. "And I'll put you back on the other channel."

The frequency shifted again and Jason turned back to see the last void in the readings disappear from behind Adam and the two zords break off and go separate ways. "Tom, you good?"

"Yeah man, we're fine. I'm headed back to provide support for Kim and Kat. Adam's gonna get back in position for that scan."

"Copy. Keep those ships as far from the surface as you can, we need to cut off their air support."

"Jason," Billy broke in. "From what I can tell, the ground team appears to be engaged with huge numbers of these strange aliens. Rocky and Trini have been separated and neither are responding to comms."

"What?" Jason asked, muting his mouthpiece. "Did Sha or Tanya see anything happen?"

"No, they're too far away and there are too many bodies to see through."

"Shit," Jason hissed. He jabbed the button to unmute himself. "Goddamn it, Adam, where the hell is that scan?"

"It's right fucking here, Big Red, chill out." Suddenly, the blurry image of the moon shimmered, blinked a few times and then reconstituted itself into a fully detailed, high-definition layout of the lunar surface, where the small group of four glowing dots was scattered among a massive crowd of null readings. Jason saw that Aisha and Tanya were together, a small cushion of space between them and the onslaught of blue creatures that surrounded them. Trini and Rocky were apart from them, but moving closer to each other and toward the structure.

That was when Jason noticed the line of null readings accelerating toward Rocky and Trini's position.

"Tom, Adam," Jason said insistently. "We have a line of bogeys advancing on Rocky and Trini's position on the surface. I need one of you to get over there and give them some cover so they can make it to the structure."

"Jason!" Trini broke through. "They're blasting us from orbit, we need air support!"

"Tommy and Adam are already on their way," Jason replied. "They should be there any minute."

"We're gonna be dead any minute," Rocky retorted. "Tell 'em to move their fucking asses!"

"They'll get there when they fucking get there, Rock," Jason shot back. "Those engines can only go so fast. Just focus on getting to that structure alive." He turned to Billy. "Are you putting all frequencies through?"

"I've set it to activate if they use your name," Billy said. "Which frankly is what I wish the old console had been able to do. I'm trying to see if I can find anything about what that symbol might mean."

"Jase." It was Rocky again. "Trini and I are approaching the structure. There's some kind of entryway in the nearest wall, that looks like our best bet. I'll let you know again when we get inside."

When Jason looked back at the readout, the line of ships approaching the moon had slowed to a stop directly above where Rocky and Trini were now positioned. He acted almost purely on reflex, manually overriding the comms controls and broadcasting himself over all frequencies at once. "Rocky, Trini, get down!"

"I got 'em, Jase," Adam broke in. Before Jason could even acknowledge the communication, the line of ships began to disappear. He heard Adam say something to Rocky and then the outline of Adam's zord turned and began moving off over the moon's surface. Suddenly Adam swore loudly and his zord swung sharply back to where it had just been. "Holy shit! Jase, something down there just exploded. I don't know if Rocky or Trini made it inside."

"Fuck," Jason muttered, turning back to the structure. Trini's locator signal still glowed from near the large opening in the wall, but Rocky's had disappeared. Jason had time to cast a few confused glances at the nearby area before Trini's signal vanished as well, just as it approached the opening. "Somebody get me a visual on Trini or Rocky right now," he broadcast to all frequencies, zooming in as close as he could at the structure even though he knew, rationally, that it wouldn't help him find anything.

"OK, the dust and debris and shit is all out of the way now," Adam said. "And I'm pretty sure I saw Trini going through the opening before it closed behind – wait."

"What?" Jason asked.

Nothing.

"Adam! Talk to me, man. What the fuck did you see?"

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Jase, the opening Rocky and Trini were heading toward just closed and then it just…it fused. There's not an opening there at all anymore, it's just a flat wall."

Jason felt a bead of sweat break out on his forehead. He wiped his palms on his shorts and turned to Billy. "Billy, can you get any reading on Rocky or Trini?"

"Negative," Billy said, concentrating intently on the communication console. "The structure appears to be blocking our signal going in as well as theirs going out."

"Can we teleport them out?"

"Negative. Whatever that structure is made out of, it's completely blocking any signal we try to get through it. Which I'm afraid means…"

"Yeah," Jason said grimly. He looked up from the display and made eye contact with his father. "It means they're trapped in there."

---

Falcon Zord Cockpit
Several Hundred Miles Above the Moon's Surface
10:30 PM PDT

"Fuck me!"

Tommy gritted his teeth, yanked his controls to one side and barrel-rolled past an oncoming cluster of ships, firing a volley of energy rounds as he went. The chaos around him had begun to very quickly become more and more focused, until he could visualize the battle raging on and around the moon happening in only three distinct areas: above and around the structure, where Adam was still circling and where, if he'd heard correctly, Rocky and Trini were now sealed inside; the original landing site where the ground team had landed, where Aisha and Tanya still stood before the onslaught of blue-skinned aliens that had invaded the moon's surface; and another point out in space, several dozen miles from here, where Kim and Kat were doing the best they could to stem the flow of enemy ships toward the moon. All he needed to do right this second, as field commander of this mission, was make the choice of which of those three areas needed his help the most.

Kim and Kat had appeared to have things firmly in hand last he'd checked; nothing had indicated yet that that had changed. He was in this position in the first place because he'd been coming to assist Adam in clearing a path for Rocky and Trini, but they had made it into the structure, so the situation there was currently unclear.

"Adam," he said as he righted himself and blew away another incoming ship. "Do you see another entrance? Any other way for them to get out?"

"Not yet," Adam said. "I'm circling the structure to get a better vantage point. I'll let you know if I see anything."

"Copy that," Tommy said, craning his neck forward to scan the surface of the moon below him. "Jase, we have a sit rep on Aisha and Tanya yet?"

"I only got through to them for a second on the comms," came his surrogate brother's reply. "Sha basically told me to fuck off and leave them alone and then hung up on me. They seem like they've really got their hands full."

That settled it. Option 2 it was.

"OK, I'm headed over there. Adam's circling the structure to try and find another way in." Tommy paused and licked his lips, searching for the right words. "You guys get through to Rocky and Trini?"

Jason let out a long breath. "Not yet," he said softly. "Billy says we can't teleport them out either. Something about that structure is blocking any signal in or out."

"Listen, Jase. Trini is tough as nails, you know that. And Rocky's not bad, either. We're gonna get them out, OK?"

"Yeah." Jason's response was a little too quick and a little too loud, but he added more before Tommy could say anything. "We got a plan B?"

"Well there are still two more people on the surface that can help out," Tommy said. Another glance down told him he was approaching the spot where Tanya and Aisha were still fighting their way through the crowd. "They just need a path cleared."

"Sounds good to me," Jason said. "I'll let you try to reach them on comms; I'll check in with Adam and Kim and see what else we're dealing with."

"Got it." Tommy wheeled around, blasted the only ship near enough to cause trouble, and keyed his comms to another frequency. "Tanya, Sha. I know you guys are swamped right now, so no need to respond, but if you can hear this prepare for some aerial support."

He lowered the nose of his Zord, gunned the thrusters and rocketed toward the surface, laying down a barrage of weapons fire as he neared his two comrades. At the last possible second, as if they'd agreed on a plan in advance, both of them leapt straight up into the air and came down on the nose of his Zord, blasters drawn. He sped across the surface of the moon, staying as level as he could, the three of them blasting everything in sight. When they broke through the edge of the mob, his two stowaways hopped off and disappeared as he went flying by, lifting back off and gaining altitude before turning back again for a look.

"Thanks for the assist, Flyboy," Aisha's voice broke in over his comm. "I'm guessing Rocky and Trini made it to that building?"

Tommy let out a little laugh of surprise. "Man, how out of the loop are you two?"

"We just killed about twelve million of those blue assholes without being able to catch our breath," Tanya said; Tommy could hear the exertion in her voice. "Forgive us for not paying rapt attention to everything on comms, too."

"What she said," Aisha added. "And you didn't answer my question. What's going on?"

"Well, you want the good news or the bad news first?"

"Bad," Aisha said.

"Good," Tanya said simultaneously.

Tommy grinned. "Gonna have to pick one."

"Fine," Aisha said with a small laugh of her own. "Good first."

"Good news is, Rocky and Trini got to the structure OK." Tommy leveled out and steered his Zord in a slow circle over where the two women stood on the ground. "Bad news is, as soon as they did, the damn thing closed behind them and we can't get a signal in there to talk to them or teleport them out. Adam's circling it right now trying to find another door, but we need someone on the ground to head over there and see what we can find."

"Great. If it ain't one thing it's fucking another," Aisha grumbled. "All right, Tan, you heard the man. Let's get a move on."

"Just out of curiosity," Tanya said; Tommy watched her jog after Aisha as they started making their way toward the structure. "In the entire time you guys have been doing this, has one of your plans ever just worked the first time?"

"None since I've been here," Aisha said. "I always kinda thought the plans were just, like, guidelines anyway."

"Clearly you haven't worked with Jason enough," Tommy said. "He's always saying his plans have built-in backup strategies to cover up the fact that he's always preferred to wing it."

"I heard that," Jason suddenly said. "Tanya, Sha, thanks for joining us. Did Tommy fill you in or have you all just been talking shit about me for the last five minutes?"

"Which of those answers would make you less mad?" Aisha asked, her smirk audible.

"We know what's going on, Jase," Tanya said. "We're on our way to the structure right now."

"Cool," Jason said. "Tommy and Adam can provide you with air support if any more of these guys get past Kat and Kim. I'm still trying to reach Rocky and Trini. If I hear anything I'll let you know."

"Copy that, Big Red," Tommy said, steering back toward the structure. "Adam, I hope you've got something. We're bringing the party to you."

---

The Surface of the Moon
10:45 PM PDT

Tanya slung her rifle over her shoulder and cinched the strap tighter across her chest as she bounded across the surface of the moon, her boots leaving deep, ridged craters in the dusty surface. She and Aisha had initially landed about a thousand yards from the structure, so from their current vantage point they could see the outside without being able to make out any smaller details.

As she took another bounding stride, starting to become accustomed to the dramatically decreased gravity, Tanya flexed one of the small muscles around her eyes to bring up the magnifying scanner in her visor. The hard, shiny black surface of the structure suddenly rushed up to meet her; she had to stop herself from stumbling as she instinctively reacted to avoid running into something that wasn't there.

Still more new to this than I thought, Tanya thought to herself, annoyed. Steadying her steps, the Silver Ranger carefully scanned every surface of the building she could see from this angle, the high-resolution magnification revealing every nook and cranny.

Nothing. Even zoomed in this close, it looked like the structure was a single piece of rock that had erupted from the moon's surface like a pointy black pimple; Tanya couldn't make out a single opening or flaw in the exterior.

"Damn," she muttered. She holstered her blaster and brought her newly freed hand up to tap the outside of her helmet. "Sha, I'm on full zoom and I can't see any openings from this angle. You?"

"Nah, I don't have anything either." Tanya glanced to her right, where Aisha ran beside her about 30 feet away. "But 30 feet doesn't make much of a difference." Tanya heard Aisha closing her scanner over the communicator. "We're gonna have to get right up to it and check the back."

"While you're at it," Jason suddenly spoke up in her helmet. "Would one of you guys mind just, like, blasting at the side of that thing with whatever you've got on you? I'm suddenly curious about the durability of that material."

"Got some aggression issues you need us to work out for you there, Jase?" Aisha asked with mock concern. Tanya bit back a laugh.

"Ugh," she grunted, imitating a caveman. "Me Jason, me hit strange rock with big stick. Ugga ugga."

"You both better be careful or it'll be you that get hit with the big stick," Jason shot back. "Seriously though, could you at least try it out for me?"

"Sure thing, Big Red," Tanya said with a smile. "One alien doom rock, extra tender, coming right up."

"Thank you," Jason said with a chuckle. "Let me know how it goes."

They both heard a soft click as Jason switched away from their frequency. "Hey Tommy," Aisha said. "We're almost there, how we lookin?"

"You're clear from here, Sha," Tommy said from his Zord above them. "Nothing moving for miles around. You guys see anything yet?"

"Not on this side," Tanya said. She had slowed her pace as she neared the structure, which was now only a few dozen yards away. "Maybe we'll have better luck from the back."

"Adam, do you remember where Rocky and Trini went in?" Aisha piped up. "Maybe we can get it to open back up again."

"I can probably walk you through how to get there," Adam said uncertainly. "But I don't know how far you'll be able to get with it. I watched that fucking thing fuse back together into a solid rock face after they went in."

"OK, but what if there's a button or something we can open it back up with," Aisha argued. "These assholes have to get in and out somehow, right?"

"We assume," Adam replied. Aisha didn't say anything else, just sighed a little and kept jogging along toward the structure.

A few more bounding strides, and Tanya had reached the structure. The ruins of the two ships Rocky and Trini had brought down still lay in front of it, the surrounding moon dust splattered with the dark, thick alien blood. She walked carefully up to the structure, glancing around to make sure none of the creatures were hiding in the shadows of the towering rock formation. Suddenly, something became apparent to her.

"Hey, Billy?"

There was a momentary silence, and then Billy said, "What's up, Tan?"

"Can you get Jason back on my frequency? I have a question that only he can zoom out far enough to answer."

"Just ask for him and the console will switch you back to his frequency automatically," Billy said. "And I'll be there in the background if you need me."

"OK, thanks Billy. Hey, Jason, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, I'm here Tan, whaddya got?" Jason's reply came a little faster than she was expecting, his voice carrying an eagerness that she logged away in her mind for later.

"Working on a theory," she said. "Hear me out. Can you zoom way out on the moon and look at the whole area with the circle and the symbol and everything?"

"Just a sec." There was a brief silence, and then: "OK, got it. What're you looking for?"

"Can you see where the structure is?"

"Yeah."

"It's right at the edge of the circle, right?" Tanya asked as she turned to look back at the smooth line of upturned moon dust that stretched along the surface behind her.

"Yeah, it's right near the tip of the line in the middle of the symbol on the ground," Jason said. "But we saw that in the drone footage. What's your point?"

"Let me ask you this first," she said. "Can you still see the null readings where the alien things are, even though they're dead?"

"Uh…yeah?" Tanya imagined Jason tilting his head quizzically at this question.

"OK," she added quickly. "Are any of them outside the circle?"

"Hold on…huh," Jason said. "No, they're all inside it. Come to think of it, from what I recall of that drone footage, they were all inside the circle then, too."

"I might've figured out why," Tanya said. "I don't think it'll show up on the wireframe display, but this thing isn't just near the edge of the circle – the circle is coming out of it. And I think the symbol is, too."

"Are you sure they didn't just build the structure on the line they'd already dug?" Jason asked. "Or dug the lines right up to the edges of the structure and stopped?"

"If that's the case, then why were none of the aliens ever outside the circle?"

"I mean…maybe they just wanted to stay close to what they were guarding," Jason said. "Remember, we still don't know what the circle is even for. There's nothing to indicate they can't walk out of it."

"That's fair, I guess." Tanya frowned. "Too bad they're all dead now so we can't test it."

"You could try with one of the dead ones," Jason said. "Just pick it up and toss it over the line. If it explodes, we'll know you're right."

She laughed softly. "OK, one exploding dead alien, coming up."

No sooner had she taken a step back toward the pile of bodies than a massive noise erupted from the other side of the building. Tanya dove for cover, drawing her blaster as she pressed herself to the ground.

"Jesus Christ!" she swore, sweeping her blaster across her field of view. "Sha, what the fuck was that?"

"Sorry, sorry!" Aisha said through a bout of uproarious laughter. "I charged my blaster up to full power and shot the wall with it. Knocked me back on my ass and practically blew up the moon, but the wall's barely scorched. Whatever this shit is made out of, our weapons can't penetrate it."

"Never thought I'd miss Rocky being here to giggle at penetrate," Tanya said as she rose to her feet, shoving her blaster back into its holster and grabbing a dead alien under the arms. She dragged it back to the edge of the circle and hoisted it off the ground.

"I can giggle at it if you want," Jason said.

"I don't think you've ever giggled at anything in your life, Jase," Aisha said. Tanya swung back and tossed the alien's body over the line.

Nothing. The body just flopped into the dust and laid there on the moon's surface as though nothing had changed.

"Shit," Tanya muttered. "Jase, nothing happened. I don't think that's what the circle is for. Back to square one, I guess."

"Before you head back, can you send the body back here?" Billy suddenly said. "I'd love to have one to examine."

"I thought we couldn't teleport anything to the Command Center without a life sign or a Power Coin," Aisha said.

"I can override that, just send it," Billy said impatiently. Tanya glanced over at Aisha, who was just approaching from around the corner, and only got a shrug in return. Sighing, Tanya grabbed the alien's arm and teleported it away.

"Now, about getting in there," Tanya started to say. She was just rising to her feet when a piece of the wall about ten feet square just sort of flickered out of existence, revealing at least a dozen more of the alien creatures standing at the edge of a huge, dark room.

"Fuck," Aisha muttered, drawing her blaster and raising it to eye level. "Guess we won't have to worry about getting another door open."

The aliens sprinted toward them, their tentacle arms flailing. Tanya didn't get a chance to reply. She flicked her wrists, feeling the reassuring weight of her matching silver hatchets materialize in each hand, and charged toward their attackers, bounding across the moon's surface.

The first one she reached raised a tentacle to swipe at her; Tanya swung her right hand up and neatly severed the tentacle at the shoulder. As the alien spun away, another moved in from her left. She pivoted on her toes, using her hatchets to block first one spike and then the other, before slamming both blades into either side of the creature's neck. Dark, thick blood spurted from both wounds as the body crumpled to the ground at her feet. Tanya lifted her head just in time to see a third alien advancing on her; before she could even lift a hatchet to attack, Aisha fired a charged round from her blaster that blew a hole the size of a grapefruit in the side of the alien's head.

"Tommy, Adam, the structure just opened but a bunch of the blue guys just come out of it," Tanya shouted into her helmet, ducking under another tentacle as Aisha squeezed off another volley of shots. "Do we go in before the opening shuts or should we just see what we can see from here?" She dropped to a knee, twisted at the waist and drove a hatchet blade into the kneecap of an oncoming creature, dropping it to the ground where she severed its head with a single stroke.

"I don't want to risk you two getting stuck in there, too," Tommy responded; Tanya caught a glimpse of his Zord overhead out of the corner of her eye. "Get as close to the door as you can, see what you can see from out here, but do not cross the threshold of that thing. I don't want it popping back up and chopping your heads off or something."

Aisha squeezed off two more shots, spun her blaster in her hand and whipped her arm to the right, plowing her elbow into the face of a blue alien advancing beside her. It stumbled back a step and swung a tentacle up at her, spike first. Aisha moved in close, smacked it in the face with the butt of her blaster and kicked it in the chest. The creature was launched backward into the air, carried off by the moon's decreased gravity. Aisha raised her blaster and fired one last shot, hitting the creature between the eyes before it could hit the ground again. "Tan, you wanna take care of that? I think I'm good here."

Tanya slashed an alien across the chest with a hatchet and shoved it aside, charging toward the structure. "Yeah, I got it. Stand by." She skidded to a stop at the edge of the structure and reached a tentative hand toward it; before she made physical contact, a bolt of energy leapt from the wall into her hand.

"Fuck!" she exclaimed. The feeling was like being shocked by a doorknob or a person's finger, only about a thousand times more intense. "God, that hurts." She shook her hand off and curled and uncurled her fingers a few times as she advanced carefully toward the entryway and peered inside.

The inside of the structure was lit with a faint, greenish-blue light, but as Tanya glanced around, she realized there was nothing there to generate it. Every surface inside appeared to be made of the same substance as the exterior and the ships, but it was several shades lighter in color and much less reflective. The doorway she stood in front of opened into a single massive room; as she glanced around, Tanya noticed several alcoves along each wall that appeared to lead off to corridors. It was only when she happened to look down, directly in front of her, that she saw it.

"Guys, I've got blood in here," she said, daring a lean forward to poke her head slightly through the faint blue wireframe that was projected over entrance. "A lot of it." She glanced left, then right – and froze.

"Tanya, what was that last part?" Adam said, his voice muffled slightly. "You cut out halfway through. What did you say about blood?"

She didn't hear him, she was so stunned by what she was seeing. Just to the right of the doorway, piled on the floor in a slowly growing puddle of blood, were the bodies of Squatt, Baboo, and Finster, covered in bruises and deep lacerations. Lying on top of the pile of bodies, as though someone had stacked it there, was Rito Revolto's head.

Tanya was about to cut and run when she heard a sound from somewhere deep inside the structure. She looked up in time to see more of the blue aliens come flooding out from the corridors toward her.

Gasping in surprise, she leapt back, hatchets ready, only to see the hole in the side of the structure slowly dissolve back into a solid wall again.

"Guys," she said shakily. "We were at least partly right. I've got four bodies inside the structure: Squatt, Baboo, Finster and Rito."

"Holy shit," Tommy muttered. "You're sure it was them?"

"They were stacked up next to the door like a goddamn Lego house," Tanya retorted, starting to make her way back toward Aisha. "And there's more. I'm not sure how or why, but there are more of those things in there than there ever were out here. I think…" she took a deep breath to choose her next words. "I think this is where they came from."

---

Command Center Main Chamber
11:00 PM PDT

Rick Scott was sure there were times in his life when he felt more out of place than he did right now.

He just couldn't think of any at the moment.

"Kim, Kat, you guys need any help over there?" Jason asked, his hands moving deftly between elements of the glowing orange display. The image of the moon was swept gently to one side, enhancing the view of the enormous dogfight that was unfolding around the giant ship that had taken position near the moon. Rick pressed one side of the headset he'd been given against his ear as Kim's voice came back.

"Not at the moment, Jase, but we're close enough to the ship to see the opening where the little fighters are coming out. Do we have clearance to approach and check it out?"

Jason moved quickly and smoothly inside the wireframe readout. "Hold up on that for a second, Kim. Let me check and make sure Tom and Adam don't need any more help running interference for Sha and Tanya."

Rick shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other, his fingers drumming restlessly against the smooth metal surface of the console he stood next to. Everything had been happening so quickly over the last few hours that he hadn't really had time for all these revelations about his son to sink in. Now, as he stood in what looked like the set of a sci-fi movie watching his son, his son's childhood friends, a talking robot and the disembodied head of a thousand-year-old wizard from space waging a war against an invading alien army with an astonishing level of casualness, he wondered if he would ever be able to fully wrap his mind around how much had been hidden from him for the last four years.

That's my son over there, Rick thought to himself for what felt like the millionth time today, watching the young man he'd put to bed and played catch with and grounded for breaking curfew command troops and coordinate battle plans like a general. He'd known Jason was prone to playing the hero, and had seen how instinctively he reacted to help people in trouble – it was almost like a compulsion, and at times he'd worried about his son's willingness to throw himself headlong into danger to protect someone else.

But this was on a whole other level. This was like finding out that your spouse had a secret family in Canada or that your parents were swingers. This was a truth bomb on an intergalactic scale.

Rick sighed and crossed his arms, unable to take his eyes off his son. And like so many other things, he thought, I didn't handle it very well.

---

Jason Scott's Private Quarters
Two hours earlier

Rick stood a few feet behind his son and watched with a detached, stunned amusement as Jason slowly swung open the door to his private room and moved inside, stumbling slightly as he favored his still-healing feet. For a long moment, Rick couldn't get his feet to move from where he stood rooted to the floor, the ominous silence only broken by the humming of the fluorescent lights, Jason's mildly labored breathing and the pounding of his own heart. He was distantly aware of what he had lost in the last few hours, but his adrenaline reserves hadn't run out yet; he knew, though, with a certainty that filled him with dread, that it was only a matter of time before the whole thing hit him like a semi truck.

"Dad?" He blinked a few times and realized that Jason had stopped, turned around and stuck his head back out through the doorway. His son regarded him with a gentle look of concern and drummed his fingers against the door. "You coming?" Jason gestured with his head and stepped back into the room again. Rick managed to follow him this time, glancing around at the bright red furnishings – carpet, bedsheets, furniture – and the small details that marked this as undeniably his son's room. Clothes were scattered on the floor, piled in all corners; posters for several metal and punk bands lined the walls; the bed stood unmade, the sheets crumpled near the foot, the pillows askew; and a gaming console lay in the middle of the carpet, cords flung in every direction, controllers tossed haphazardly nearby.

"Sorry about the mess," Jason babbled sheepishly, opening a drawer and rustling through it. "I keep meaning to clean up in here but things just kinda kept…happening." He straightened and tossed Rick a clean shirt and a pair of jeans. "Those oughtta fit unless you've put on a few pounds since I've been gone." Any other time, the joke would've seemed perfectly typical of their relationship; today it rang slightly hollow, as though Jason was only doing an impression of his normal self. Rick didn't move for a second, just stared at the clothes in his hand as the door swung slowly shut behind him.

"So were you ever planning on telling us?" The question seemed to leap unbidden from his mouth, the broiling mixture of anger, sorrow, confusion and fear just beneath the calm exterior coalescing into a burst of words he was powerless to suck back in.

Jason went rigid at the question. He let out a long sigh and fixed his gaze on the dresser in front of him. "I wanted to. Really. Right from the start, I was always the one who said that keeping ourselves a secret was a bad idea."

That matched up with what Kimberly had said earlier, but suddenly that didn't seem like enough. "It wasn't just 'a bad idea,' son," he said softly. "It was wrong."

To his genuine surprise, Jason didn't argue. "Maybe it was. But there are rules to this whole thing."

"Rules, huh? Like what?

Jason turned and finally made eye contact with him. When he spoke, his voice was stronger this time, more confident. "One: don't reveal your identity to anyone. Period. Two: Never escalate a battle unless your enemy forces you to. And three: Never use your powers for personal gain." He held up a finger with each number and paused for a moment when he finished. "I don't remember exactly how Zordon worded it the first day, but you get the idea."

The more his son explained to him, the more questions he seemed to have. "I don't understand." Jason blinked at him in surprise and furrowed his brow. "This…guy," he struggled for words to describe things he had no concept of only hours before. "He just plucks you out of the world completely at random, beams you in here and tells you, a bunch of kids with no military training or combat experience, that you're supposed to save the world. And what, you just do it? Just like that, no questions asked?"

"OK, for the record," Jason said, stepping closer and becoming visibly irritated. "It wasn't 'just like that' at all. We had all kinds of questions. Kim and Zack actually walked out at first. I had to convince them to stay."

"So, what, you just took this guy at his word? This guy who's from another planet and has magical powers, who you've never met, and you just trust him right off the bat?"

"I followed my gut, Dad. OK?" Jason's voice surprised him with its harshness. "Isn't that what you always told me to do? Every instinct I had told me that this guy was trustworthy, so I trusted them." He took a breath and his voice softened. "Besides, I was a 17-year-old kid being offered a chance to be a superhero. Cut me some slack, would ya? Of course I said yes."

Jason offered him a small smile, but Rick was still flush with paternal worry. He licked his lips and solemnly said, "You could've died, Jason. You could've died and your mother and I would have had no idea where or when or how or why. Do you have any idea what that would've been like for us?"

Jason set his jaw and shoved his hands in his pockets. "There are a lot of people out there who would have died if I had said no," he said. "And there are a lot of people out there right now who are going to die unless I do my job."

"And what about your mom and your brothers?" Rick nearly shouted, feeling the hot tears begin to work their way back. "Where were you when they needed you?"

Jason glared at him. "Where were you?" he demanded, jabbing a finger at his father. "I saw you come wandering up to the house like you'd just taken a walk to the store. Where the fuck were you while they were in there dying?"

"I was doing my job!" Rick exclaimed, suddenly aware that he was now defending himself to his own son. "I was out there putting my ass on the line the same way I've done every day since before you were born. Protecting people, the right way, within the bounds of human law, instead of running around trying to play hero when what you really are is a bunch of child soldiers fighting someone else's war."

Jason was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper and strained with repressed fury. "I've idolized you for as long as I can remember, Dad. You were a hero to me – you risked your own safety to protect other people, you were brave and you were badass and you never took shit from anybody." He wiped his eyes with the inside of his elbow. "My entire life, everything I've ever done, the first thing I always thought about was whether it would make you proud of me. So if you wonder why I dive headlong into heroics the first chance I get, you've got no one to blame but yourself."

With that, Jason strode back across the room and quickly began changing into clean clothes. Rick just stared at him for a second before shaking his head and beginning to change himself. Hoping to change the subject, he spoke up again. "So, what's the plan now? You kids have a next step?"

Jason grunted in acknowledgment and slid his arms into a baseball jersey Rick had gotten him for Christmas. "I don't know about the others," he said as he moved back toward the door. "But my next step is to murder the shit out of as many of these blue motherfuckers as I can get my hands on." He opened the door and walked out into the hallway.

"Jason, wait!" Rick yanked the clean shirt the rest of the way over his head and stepped out after his son. Jason stopped but didn't turn around. "I'm sorry for what I said, I…" he trailed off and sighed. "You're all I've got left in the world right now. I don't want to end this with us still being mad at each other." Jason turned and looked at him over his shoulder.

"Neither do I, Dad. I meant what I said before – I'm like this because I wanted to be like you. That hasn't changed."

"Thank you," Rick replied. "I appreciate that. Doesn't mean I'm gonna stop worrying." Jason smiled and turned away again to walk off down the hall. "Hey," Rick added as they walked. "You sure you're OK? I don't want to see you get wrapped up in revenge. I've seen more than enough crime scene photos to illustrate how ugly that can get. Are you sure you're ready for this?"

"I'm fine," Jason said curtly, still walking toward the Main Chamber. "Really. You don't have to worry about me."

Rick didn't say anything else, but as he followed his son down the brightly lit corridor, he couldn't stop thinking that his son hadn't turned to face him when he spoke. There was only one reason for that: Jason didn't think he could look his father in the eye and say it convincingly. At this point, though, all Rick could do was stay close by and hope his son didn't go too far.

Out of everything, he realized, that was what scared him the most.

---

Command Center Main Chamber
11:05 PM PDT

"Negative on that opening in the ship, Kim," Jason said, crossing his arms and analyzing the wireframe display. "At least for now. We need to make sure Sha and Tanya are covered until they can get a visual on Rocky and Trini."

"Copy that," Kim's voice came back with a slightly irritated sigh. "Let me know the second anything changes, OK?"

"You'll be the first to know, Squirt." Jason smirked and switched back onto the ground team's frequency. "Ground team, sit rep. Any sign of Rocky or Trini?"

Rick shifted his weight and watched his son intently. He'd only been here for a very short time, but he already had serious concerns about their methods. Pulling pranks on each other in the middle of an active op, playing loud music over a communication system that everybody was using – these were not the actions of a highly trained team of specialists. The fact that these truly were kids behind those masks was becoming more and more obvious every minute. He wondered how nobody had thought of that before.

Rick tuned back in to what was being said just in time to hear Tanya say, "I think this is where those things come from." In that moment, something about Jason changed very quickly. His jaw clenched, his posture went rigid, and his hands balled into fists.

"Tom," Jason said, his gaze fixated on the holographic layout of the moon. Rick felt his heartbeat start to accelerate; a bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck. "How much firepower can you guys drop on that thing right now?"

There was a stunned silence over the comms as Jason's question sunk in. It was Adam who broke it.

"I'm sorry, what?" His voice carried a tone of incredulity that verged on fear. "Jase, you are aware that Rocky and Trini are still in there, aren't you?"

"They'll be fine," Jason said dismissively. "Those two are good at what they do, they'll figure something out. If this thing is really creating more of these things, we have to take this opportunity to destroy it while we still can."

"Jase, hold on," Tommy started gently, trying to calm things down.

Aisha cut him off. "Are you outta your fuckin' skull?" She demanded angrily, with enough force that it made Rick's ears hurt. "In case you forgot, dude, Tanya and I are still standing right here and have already blasted this thing with everything we've got and barely scratched it. The only thing we could accomplish even if we do manage to blow it up is to kill two or maybe four more of us."

Jason jabbed angrily at the holographic display and turned back toward the room as he spoke, glancing from Billy to Rick and back. "What we could accomplish is taking out the source of these things for good and not having to fucking worry about them anymore. And in case you forgot, Sha, these assholes have already killed almost my entire family. Does that mean a goddamn thing to any of you?"

Tommy spoke up again, trying one more time to defuse things. "Jason, think about this for a second –"

Jason was moving before Tommy even had three words out. He flung the glowing orange display to one side and slammed a hand down on the console in front of him. "Goddamn it, why are we even still talking about this? We have one chance, right now, to end this thing before it gets any worse. So either one of you guys grows a pair and starts dropping whatever you've got on this thing or I'll fucking come up there and do it myself."

At this point, Rick had already taken several steps in his son's direction, but he stopped mid-step when Tommy broke in again, this time not bothering with being calm. "Everybody ignore that order. Jason, I swear to fucking god, if you don't get your shit together and rein your crazy back in in the next ten seconds I am kicking you off this mission. You're putting at least four of your own teammates in danger for a plan that has about zero chance in hell of actually working and you are seriously damaging my calm. So either shut the fuck up or turn off your headset and walk away."

"You want me off this op?" Jason was practically screaming at this point, gesturing angrily with a finger as if Tommy were standing right in front of him. "Come down here and take me off yourself, you fucking coward. You call yourself a leader? You're a fucking joke."

Rick vaguely heard Zordon's booming voice finally cut in over the chaos, but he didn't hear the exact words. This was what he'd been afraid of ever since his talk with his son two hours earlier. He walked right up behind Jason and grabbed his shoulder from behind, just trying to get his attention so Jason would talk to him.

Instead, Jason whipped around, let out a primal scream of rage, and slammed his fist into the side of his father's head. Rick was knocked completely off-balance by this surprise attack and stumbled to his left and fell, a few drops of his blood splattering onto the Command Center floor.

He felt his head collide with the edge of a console and then everything went black.