Ch 21
Astronema sighed softly as she heard approaching footsteps accompanied by lots of whispering. She had already figured that it would not be the Red or Silver Rangers' voices that she would hear in the morning. After all, the Silver Ranger hated her and the Red Ranger was probably angry with her for taking his precious envelope. And while she was still hoping that he would acknowledge it with a more noticeable reaction, the Red Ranger had already told her that it would be someone else bringing her breakfast. However, she had not expected to hear more than one voice.
After several more seconds of whispering, she finally heard the footsteps get closer, seeing three Veo Tech Rangers enter the cargo bay. Astronema looked up at them from her spot on the floor and smiled as the Pink Veo Tech Ranger set down a plate of food in front of her and backed away from it quickly.
"You're not afraid of me, are you?" Astronema asked teasingly.
"Afraid of you?" Kim scoffed. "Where'd you get that idea?"
"Well, you seem to have brought reinforcements," Astronema answered. "And it's not like you have to be here for very long. I don't need you to watch me eat or anything."
"As long as you're unchained, we aren't taking any chances with you," Tommy said. "Staff or no staff, you still have enough power of your own to do whatever you want –"
"And yet, I don't," Astronema interrupted. "I've been able to get out of those chains since they were first put on and I haven't done anything to anyone. Your ship is still intact and so are you… If there's anyone on this ship who can't be trusted, it's the Red Ranger."
"Because you think that he'll use the prism?" Adam guessed. "Andros has told us about fifty times that he won't use it and Dimitria didn't seem worried about him using it. And after talking to Wan, I can't imagine why he would want to."
"He wouldn't," Kim said firmly, turning to look Astronema in the eyes. "We trust Andros not to use it and there isn't anything that you can say that will shake our faith in him or Zhane."
Astronema only smiled wider. "You can't even defend him, can you?" she asked. "If he has to keep saying that he won't use it, then it must be because he's been accused of it more than once by someone other than me. And there's a reason for that… I'll bet that he hasn't even bothered to tell you what's in that envelope he carries around. How can you trust someone who always carries around a secret?"
"We trust him," Tommy said. "We have no reason not to trust him. Whatever's in that envelope is his business. He'll tell us when he's ready to.And even if he really might use the prism, we'll need someone more credible than you giving us that information."
"You rangers," Astronema said, shaking her head slowly. "You have way too much faith in goodness. It can't always prevail… Just ask the Silver Ranger. He's seen evil triumph as a result of that faith. He learned the hard way that being kind or helpful isn't always good."
"It is good as long as you're not being tricked," Adam replied. "It wasn't Zhane's fault that the last team died. Your monsters took care of that."
"Darkonda was never my monster," Astronema countered. "He just happened to be after the shards too. When I heard about his past with the Astrorangers, it sickened me. He went too far…"
The rangers exchanged glances.
"They just did what all you villains try to do," Kim said. "They killed Power Rangers. Isn't that what they were supposed to do?"
"Hurt them, yes," Astronema said. "Torture them, maybe. But killing the Power Rangers is just as pointless as letting Dark Specter destroy the universe… Without you, we can only fight amongst ourselves. Every villain knows how badly we need rangers. You force us to increase our power, to figure out different offensive tactics, and challenge us endlessly. That's why, eventually, the rangers must change their powers. We become stronger and so you must do the same… Circle of life, I suppose."
"Yeah, you use us as practice so that you can fight each other when you're powerful enough," Tommy said. "But you know that rangers' identities change all the time. You could kill us and go after the next group, so I'm not buying that you 'need' us."
"That's because you've never thought about it," she replied. "But if you did, you'd realize just how easy it would be for us to destroy you at any time. We just don't because we like the game."
"You expect us to believe that?" Kim asked.
Astronema shrugged. "Believe what you want," she said, beginning to pick at her food a little. "None of that will matter to your team once I destroy the Veo Prism. After that, you'll go back to being nothing again just like before."
Adam, Kim, and Tommy glared at her a moment, finally deciding to say nothing as they turned away from her and walked away from the cargo bay.
"She's right, you know," Adam said when they were far enough away from the cargo bay.
"About what?" Tommy asked.
"We'll go back to being nothing again," he answered sadly. "If I lose this power, that's exactly how it'll feel –like I'm nothing because I'll be doing nothing."
"What's so bad about doing nothing?" Kim asked, though she did not sound so sure of the answer herself.
"Well, what are you two going to do when this part of your lives is over?" Adam asked. "Last time we talked, you said that you loved this."
"I do love this, Adam," Kim said softly. "But between this and finishing school as a happily married woman, I'd leave being a ranger in a second. You don't want any of those things?"
"Of course I do," he replied. "But I want this too. These morphers chose us to be their next protectors. We can't just let that power be extinguished forever… can we?"
"If we don't have a choice, then I guess we'll have to," Tommy said with a sigh. "I love this new power too. But it may be best for the universe if it doesn't exist anymore. Who knows what'll happen if anything gets changed again? As long as the Veo Prism exists, we face that risk."
"You don't think that we can –," Adam stopped, distracted suddenly by a searing pain in his wrist just under his morpher. He looked briefly to Kim and Tommy, who both seemed to share the same pain as they grasped onto their morphers, trying in vain to remove them to find the source of their pain. But the morphers would not move.
Not at all.
_0_0_0_0_
"What do you mean, she had it?" Zhane asked.
"She took the envelope from me at some point," Andros explained. "I found it in the cargo bay by her feet and I took it back."
"Do you think she knew what it was?" he asked.
"I doubt it," Andros answered. "She only took it because it was mine. If she bothered to look at it, she probably didn't care what she was looking at."
"Why would she do something like that when she keeps telling us to trust her?"
Andros shrugged. "Her idea of fun, I suppose," he sighed.
"Maybe you should tell her what it is," Zhane suggested after a pause.
"The last thing I need from her is pity," Andros said, shaking his head. "And I'm sure that it'll feel worse if she really doesn't care."
"I think she'd care," Zhane said sincerely. "And maybe she'll think twice before using it for sport again… Maybe."
Before Andros could answer, the Veo Tech Rangers had all filed quickly on the bridge in front of them, clutching their morphers with what appeared to be fear in their eyes.
"Everything okay?" Zhane asked when they said nothing after a while.
Without a word, the rangers moved their hands from their wrists, still shaking somewhat with pain. Zhane and Andros leaned forward, staring for a long time at what appeared to be the Veo Tech Rangers' morphers sinking into their skin.
"What happened?" Andros asked after a minute.
"We were just standing around talking and it just… happened," Tommy explained. "We don't know what could've caused it."
"Astronema?" Andros wondered aloud.
"I don't think so," Rocky replied. "Aisha and I weren't even around her when it started happening."
"Maybe we should try contacting Wan again," Zhane suggested. "Maybe this happened to him."
"Good idea," Andros said, turning to the main viewing screen and pressing a few buttons. "DECA, connect me with Wan of Bromak-7."
"No connection available," DECA said.
"It was available yesterday," Andros muttered under his breath, trying every encryption code that he knew of to try to get into Wan's communication systems. A stray camera that he may have forgotten about, an audio system, anything.
"Can't get in?" Zhane asked from behind him.
Andros shook his head. "I'll try one more," he said, still clacking away on the keyboard. Seconds later, he smiled to himself. "Got it… We can at least get a visual on him if nothing else."
The rangers huddled around Andros at the station, looking sadly at the visual of who they could only assume was Wan. He was wearing clothes that were much too large for him at the moment and he lay sleeping on his side facing the camera, oblivious to the world at the moment… as an infant.
"I don't think he'll be able to help us," Zhane said with a sigh.
"Not in this form," Andros replied, shaking his head. "And it may not wear off for a while, so it looks like we'll be searching elsewhere for answers. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing, guys."
"How is this a good thing?" Kim asked, pointing at her aching wrist with disdain.
"It means that your powers are binding with you," Andros said. "That's pretty rare… Our powers haven't even bound to us and we've had them for years. We may never have that."
"Well, what's the difference?" Adam asked, suddenly not as concerned with the pain that had spread from his wrist to his arm.
"We're interchangeable," Zhane replied quietly. "Dozens of people are usually trained to take over if something happens to us. That hasn't really happened with the Veo Tech Ranger powers."
"So this is permanent for us?" Kim asked worriedly.
"Maybe," Andros shrugged. "Maybe Kayn can tell us more when we run into him on Earth."
"Any word yet on why he's headed for Earth?" Tommy asked, trying his best to keep his mind off the pain.
Andros shook his head. "If I had to guess, I'd say that he's interested in the Veo morphers," he said. "I just don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But he won't stick around for very long when he realizes that they're gone."
"How close are we?" Adam asked.
"At least four days," Zhane answered. "Hopefully by then we'll be able to talk to Wan again so that we won't have to wait for Kayn. In the meantime, has the pain stopped yet?"
"A little," Aisha answered.
"Then, we'll keep trying to contact someone who might be able to answer some questions about the Veo Prism," Zhane said. "You guys try to relax until we do. Work out on the Simudeck or something… But we'll keep trying."
The Veo Tech Rangers nodded and walked away from the bridge. No one said a word the whole way to the Megalift. What more could be said? The morphers had fused to them, telling the team without a word that they really were in this for the long haul. And as the thought hit each of them, they suddenly heard Kim begin to sniffle. By the time Tommy turned to her, her eyes had already spilled over with tears.
"What's wrong?" Tommy asked as she scrubbed at her face in frustration.
"I'm sorry, you guys," she said tearily. "I love fighting with you but I just can't do this for the rest of my life. I can't."
"Kim," Tommy began, not sure of what to say to her.
"I thought this was temporary," she continued. "I still want to go to school and get married and have babies. I can't do those things as a ranger… I can't do anything as a ranger."
"Kim, it's okay," Aisha said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure this won't last forever."
"It already has," Kim said softly, walking away from them sadly.
Tommy followed Kim to the Simudeck, motioning for the others to stay in the corridor or at least away from the Simudeck for the time being. The others filed hesitantly into the exercise room.
Kim stood by the Simudeck's control panel, pressing a sequence of buttons that Tommy knew would cause about twenty quantrons to fill the room. Tommy stopped her before she could finish, placing his hand over hers gently.
"Kim," he began. "Why do you feel like our lives are over just because we're rangers? Why can't we go to school and get married and have babies with our powers?"
Kim turned around and looked him in the eye. "Tommy, I could barely juggle high school and being a Power Ranger," she said. "I'm lucky that I graduated at all and I'm sure that the only reason that happened is because I left my morpher behind."
"I don't believe that," Tommy replied. "But I understand not wanting to do this forever, I guess."
"No, you don't," she said. "When you said that you could do this for the rest of your life, I believed you… I could actually see you doing this for a long time. But it's been too long for me already. I'm ready to stop, even if that means that you don't."
Tommy sighed. "What if we get married?" he asked after a short pause, watching her eyes flash with confusion at the sudden suggestion.
"We're already getting married," Kim said.
"Yeah, but I was just thinking," he started softly, taking her hand in his. "Since we'll be on Earth in a few days, we could just get married while we're there."
"Tommy," Kim sighed, though she smiled briefly at the thought. "Getting married won't change how I feel about this… There'd still be too many things that we wouldn't be able to do, even if we did."
"Like what?"
"Like being alone," Kim began. "That's something that we haven't had since we left home… We wouldn't have time for a real honeymoon, not as long as we're trying to find this Kayn guy."
"It shouldn't take all nine of us to find one person," Tommy said. "We could go to a Justice of the Peace when we get there and we could go back to our apartment –"
"You mean the one that we haven't made any payments on since we've been gone?" Kim interrupted with a smile.
"No, I mean the one our parents have been paying on since we've been gone," Tommy answered.
Kim lowered her eyes sadly. "Where do they think we are right now?" she asked.
"Taking part in peace negotiations overseas," he replied with a shrug. "It's not a total lie."
"But it's still a lie," she said softly. "How are you okay with that? As rangers, we're supposed to set an example for others but we lie to our teachers, to our parents… "
Now Tommy lowered his eyes. "I thought about telling them the truth a long time ago," he said with a sigh. "And I know they would have been understanding. I think they still would be… But we were told specifically by Zordon not to tell, so I never did. Besides, then I'd have to tell them everything I did as Rita's Green Ranger and I don't want to relive that."
Kim released his hand and hugged him tightly, waiting until his arms were around her before she spoke. "What you did back then was never your fault," she said. "And to be honest, I don't even think my parents would believe me if I told them. They'd probably think I was nuts or something. That's probably the only reason that I never bothered trying to tell them anything. Maybe it's better that they don't know what we do."
"Maybe," Tommy replied, sounding just as unsure as he knew she was. "So, it's still a 'no' on getting married?"
Kim looked up at him and smiled. "You really want to?" she asked.
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to," Tommy answered, looking into her eyes. "But the day that we say 'I do' is up to you."
"I don't know," Kim said honestly. "I want to marry you more than anything, but…"
"It's okay, Kim," he replied when she trailed off. "You have four days to think it over. Just let me know by then."
"I will," she said, releasing him and pressing the last button of the sequence she had begun on the Simudeck control panel. "Feel like working out?"
"Sure," he said, joining her in the center of the room. "You're still worked up enough to take on thirty quantrons at once?"
She nodded. "Forty quantrons," she corrected him with a smile. "Think I can't keep up? Or do you think you might not be able to?"
He smiled back. "Is that a challenge?" he asked.
"I'll get all twenty of mine down before you get your twenty down," Kim said, holding out her hand for him to shake. "What do you say?"
"I say that you severely underestimate my fighting skills, Miss Kimberly," Tommy answered, shaking her hand and looking up at DECA's camera in the corner of the room. "Make sure to time us separately, DECA."
"Time will start when the simulation begins," DECA said.
"Don't cheat," Tommy said as he stepped a few feet further from where Kim stood.
"I won't, if you won't," she said with a smile. "Start simulation."