The next couple of weeks went by pretty quickly, given all the chaos and hubbub surrounding the final days of the war. Vrak's insistence on keeping his final victory for himself by keeping people away meant that there were no witnesses to the final battle, which was a good and bad thing in and of itself. The good thing was that the vast majority of the Rangers still had a secret identity, and could choose whether or not they wanted to expose themselves to the public, which...no one was in a hurry to do. At present, the only Rangers whose identities were public knowledge were the Space Rangers, who had revealed themselves to Angel Grove years before, the Lightspeed Rangers, the Overdrive Rangers, and as a result of his historic State of the Union Address, Zack.
There was, needless to say, a lot of interest in what happened, and those who were known to the media were very much at the forefront of the media attention whether they wanted to be or not. In particular, Zack had been unable to do much of anything, and had to head back to DC to quell the divide in public opinion. While a number of people credited him as the Commander in Chief with orchestrating the end of The Armada and calling for him to be sworn back in as President, while others thought he had failed them in allowing the invasion to happen in the first place, and why he had kept his identity from them for so long, even throwing around the opinion he should be indicted for dereliction of duty for valuing his secret identity over national security. He, Jason and Trini had returned to DC to quell the worst of it. The Space Rangers, to everyone's surprise, actually found enough positive press this time around that they stuck around. While they experienced the haters like they had before, this time around they also had a lot more supporters, being part of the Ranger Army, and since most of them hadn't been home in over a decade, they actually took a chance to re-visit some of their family on the planet that had hounded them into hiding on KO 35, embracing the chance to once more be accepted on Earth.
Despite her injuries, after some rest, Dana felt confident enough in her recovery that with a full surgical team, she could take the chance to perform the heart surgery that Eric so desperately needed for the sake of his long-term health. Although it was tragic, there was one upside to the destruction, in that among the casualties there were some that were willing organ donors. Eric, rather than a bypass, had ended up being one of the lucky ones that was able to get a new heart. He was still at home, working hard to recover enough to be healthy for his and Louise's wedding, which he insisted he wanted to do as soon as he was strong enough to not embarrass himself on the dance floor, but he was at home, and exercising to strengthen his new heart.
The Rangers arrived in the delivery entrance of a hotel, inside a van that was marked as a baker's delivery. It was realistically the only way they could get to the event without having to pretty much beat their way into the door. The Harwood ComiCon had been running for around five years or so, and while it was successful enough to warrant running it each year, it really was mostly only locals that went, and they usually only sold a couple of thousand tickets, pretty much all of them to locals. That all changed the second that the Convention announced, and the Rangers confirmed on Twitter, Facebook and pretty much any media outlet they could find that they would be attending the event. The tickets were now like platinum! Up to three streets away people were queuing to get in! Still more were clamouring around, desperately hoping to catch any scalps. Rumours abounded that scalp tickets were going for upward of four and five-figure sums, and people WERE paying it! The fact was, this was the first time the Rangers had announced they were coming out to answer any questions people had. Needless to say, the press and public response was frantic.
"I can't believe this; I never thought I'd be here." Noah said with a smile as they entered the parking garage. Jake just sighed and looked to him.
"Dude, you've been here every year since you were five with the exception of last year!" Jake reminded him. "Last time I helped you into your Cosplay outfit! You wore a Cylon outfit that weighed like a hundred pounds!"
"It did not..."
"Dude, I had to help you going to the bathroom!" Jake reminded him. "You made me carry the pliers you needed to open your..."
"It's the first time I'm here as a panellist!" Noah cut him off. He saw the others looking at him and just sighed. "I know, I'm a dork."
"So...Emma, how are the wedding preparations going?" Troy asked, hoping to get the conversation off the subject of how exactly Noah got to go to the can in a home-made Cylon outfit. She just smiled.
"Things are going really well." She told them. "Dad's dancing lessons are really coming along, and Louise's dress is just gorgeous!"
"That's good to hear." Troy said tentatively. Although it had been a few weeks, and the team had pulled together over the memorial for Jordan and talked a lot about how to deal with their new fame, he still didn't really feel the same closeness to the team he once had. His decision to begin a relationship with Allison, who had, at the time, been with Jake, had been one he knew would cause a rift. Emma just reached into her jacket and pulled out an envelope. "You can come if you want."
"Um...really?" Troy asked. "Because if I remember rightly, the last time I heard from your dad, he had a very creative suggestion what he'd do with a certain part of my anatomy..."
"Yeah, he's calmed down a lot since then." Emma told him. "It's not like Allison stole you or anything, we just didn't work out."
"And...That's how your dad feels?" Troy asked her. "Ranger or not...your dad is a very scary man!"
"He's forgiven you like I have." Emma answered. "Sometimes, things don't work out like you expected."
As Emma slipped her hand into Orion's, Troy just smiled. Gia just pointed at her.
"I KNEW IT!" She screamed. "I just...I KNEW there was a reason you wanted to help Orion check out that new reservation President Taylor set up for the Andresians!"
"Well...not at first, at first, I really DID just want to check it out." Emma said as she looked to Orion. "But after a while..."
"After a while, we realised there are a lot of things we have in common." Orion replied, putting his arm around Emma. "I was...uh...just a little worried about telling you to be honest. I guess I still kind of am."
"Hey, as long as you treat her right, you're alright by me." Gia told him. "I've known you long enough to know what kind of guy you are."
"How is all that going anyway?" Jake asked. "You know...the settlement?"
"The people are really settling in." Orion informed him with a smile. As kind of a "thank you" for his part in ridding the world of The Armada, Zack had put a plan in motion for the Andresians Gosei had saved to settle down on Earth. The climate wasn't HUGELY different from Andresia, and they were a strong and industrious people. The opportunity alone was enough that they quickly got to work building a small corner of the Earth for themselves. "There were even enough clerics left that could continue my training as a preacher! I really love it out there!"
"Maybe we can visit some time when this is all over." Gia suggested. Just then, the doors opened and they saw someone in a convention tee standing before them. He was about 5'7, with shaggy hair and looked to weigh around 250 pounds or more. He looked around as others came.
"Wait...this is it?" He asked.
"Um...yeah." Troy replied. "There were only six of us."
"Where are all your set dressings? Where's all your merch?" He asked in response. Gia just looked to him.
"Set dressings?" She asked, not understanding. "And...we don't really have merch. My girlfriend has a stall for T-shirts and artwork in there."
There were two things the Rangers had learned since their time as heroes. The first was that their image and their reputation were worth a lot of money. Action figures, comics and posters flew off the shelves. The other thing was that legally, they had no rights to their own image! Since they had been more concerned with the war than any thought of profiteering afterwards, like previous teams who were more concerned about keeping their identities secret, they hadn't copyrighted their own images, or even their names. The upshot was that people could create merchandise in their image with impunity and pocket the profits, but there really wasn't a heck of a lot they could do about it. That didn't mean there weren't some vendors that weren't willing to make sure they approved of their use of image, one in particular was a certain artificially red-headed artist whose line of t-shirts and comic books had pretty much exploded in popularity.
"Well, that's a first I guess." He said as he gestured them inside. "I'm going to take you to a side-room, one of the moderators will tell you where to go when your panel starts. It begins in an hour, so I'd suggest you get yourselves ready, some of these con types can be pretty rabid."
"I'll say." Noah groaned. "It's amazing how people can lose it around the people they admire and forget they're just people."
"So says the man who wanted George Takei to help him write a fanfiction." Jake chuckled. Noah just glared at him.
"I WAS FIVE!" He protested.
"The point is, while there IS security, people get pretty close at these things." The guy warned them as he took them to a side-room. "Plus you can't discount the possibility of jackasses that just cause trouble. Point is, try to enjoy it, but it wouldn't be the first time one of our guests lost a clump of hair or some of their possessions."
"We'll be careful." Troy assured him. They all knew that any press conference they took on was always going to be risky. There were still a lot of divided opinions on the Rangers and their actions, but they had all agreed to make this their first and main public address. As they got into the room, they looked around. A lounge had been set up for them, with large, plush sofas, tables filled with refreshments and staff standing, ready to attend to any of their needs. There were a few large-screen televisions too, some with direct feeds to CCTV cameras, others that were there for them to watch whatever made them comfortable while they waited.
"If there's anything else you'd like..."
"Thanks, this should be fine." Noah assured him. "Just let us know when you want us."
"Um...could I ask one last thing?" He asked. He pointed to a table where a bunch of posters were sitting, that had been signed by a number of people. They recognised more than a few of the names. "Could you sign these?"
"Uh, we really weren't intending..."
"Oh no, it's not a profit thing!" The guy insisted. "We do this every year, we get a dozen or so Con posters and get all the guests to sign them before putting them up for auction. We were going to auction them all off for charity!"
"Well, that's a different matter." Jake said with a smile, taking a pen. "Hand me one..."
"Uh...sorry, not that we're saying anything but we have to insist they stay here." He replied. "One of our previous guests took a poster everyone signed as a souvenir."
"Someone stole from a charity?" Gia asked. "What kind of asshole would do that?"
"Someone that's not been invited back." He replied. "So...would you mind?"
"It would be our pleasure!" Emma replied as Jake signed his name and handed her the pen.
Out on the conference floor, people were bussing with excitement, but despite the fact that knowing the Rangers would be in attendance there was a surprising number of big names for a small-city convention, a lot of the guests weren't getting the response they had hoped for.
"Yeah, the sequel is coming out soon." Trent Fernandez told a fan as he handed him back a freshly-signed copy of his latest best-selling comic book. "Thanks for coming all this way."
He looked to Dax, who was playing on his phone. He sniggered as he saw he was playing Candy Crush.
"Slow day?" Trent asked.
"Dude, I had more people come to my booth at a con in Burnside." He responded.
"Burnside?" Trent asked him. "Where's that?"
"Arizona, but that's basically my point!" Dax grumbled. "I was hoping for some publicity."
"Hey, you remember what it was like in your day; people are always focused on the latest thing." Trent laughed. "Hey, it looks like someone's interested."
Dax just sat forward as a guy came over to him.
"Hi, thanks for coming out." He replied as the guest came over, handing over a DVD of Dax's Power Rangers movie.
"Hi, I was a HUGE fan of this movie..."
"Can you hurry it up?" A bigger guy asked. "The panel's about to start!"
"You're going to the Ranger panel?" Dax asked. The younger guy just nodded. "You know, the Rangers were actually extras in the movie! I didn't know that at the time of course, but..."
"Believe me, he's got every extended-version of that movie there is just so he can see the cut-scenes with them." The bigger guy replied. "For God's sake, just get the damned autograph; we're going to be late!"
"So, who do I make this out to?" Dax asked.
"Riley." He replied. "The impatient one is my friend Chase."
"Dude, seriously I heard they're already in the room!" He reiterated.
"Trust me; I've attended enough of these cons to know that nothing ever starts on time." Dax assured Riley, signing his DVD.
"Besides, you're the one that's always late Chase." He chuckled. "Come on, let's go get some seats."
"See, I told you people still wanted to see us." Trent told him. Dax just sighed.
"I guess we'll probably get more business after the panel." He replied, looking around for another guest.