Author's Notes/: -Bows deeply- I sincerely apologize for the amount of time it's taken me to update again. Unfortunately, I'm dealing with medical issues at the moment, combined with the fact that my poor computer caught a Malware virus and I can't find my system recovery disk. x.x And on top of all that useless information no one cared about, -Winks- a couple of chapters were being uncooperative. I finally found some inspiration through the joy that is YouTube.
Played Hunt-the-Typo with Chapter 34, but nothing worth re-reading.
And the plot thickens ... Enjoy!
Chapter 37:Information Gap
"You have a visitor," Astronema informed Rita blandly, as Zeus made a face behind her.
Rita grunted. "Well? Who is it?" she demanded.
Quantrons moved aside to reveal ...
"Sis!" Rito Revolto cried joyously, throwing his arms open in welcome.
Rita's suspiciously curious expression darkened in an instant. "Oh. It's you."
"Aw, come on Sis! Don't be like that!" Rito protested. "And after I came all this way just to bring you a present, too."
"What is it this time? More useless feather-brains?" Zedd sneered.
"Hey, those Tengas worked great until the Machine Empire moved in!" he shot back, sounding wounded. "And no. I brought something much better than Tengas. Took the time to dig it out of Dad's storage and everything."
Rita froze, her eyes widening in malicious delight. "Rito! You didn't!"
"Check the hangar and see for yourself," he returned cheerfully.
She hitched up her skirts and took off running, leaving everyone to stare after her. Moments later, the sound of Rita's delighted cheering echoed through the Dark Fortress.
Zeus and Astronema exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed.
They found Rita circling what looked like a small one-man fighter ship done in a mutated shade of green. She cackled and muttered to herself as she inspected it. After a moment, the ship's lights flickered feebly.
"So?" Rito asked as he wandered in. "Do ya like it? Can I stay and help fight the Power Rangers?"
Rita whirled, laughing happily. "This is even better than the dark spellbook you gave me twelve thousand years ago! Of course you can stay!"
"Excuse me?" Astronema demanded sharply. "Exactly *whose* ship is this again?"
"Aw, come on. Please?" Rito begged, clasping his hands together. "I wanna make mincemeat out of the Rangers, too!"
Zeus cleared his throat, glancing at Astronema. He raised his eyebrows pointedly.
Her eyes darkened. "Fine," she snapped, whirling around and marching off.
Rito cheered. Rita ignored them all, continuing to inspect her new Zord.
Zeus watched them for a moment, glanced after Astronema, and finally shook his head with a sigh. "Great. More work for me," he muttered.
"Chrin?"
He paused in whatever he was calculating, looking up from the console in front of him. "Yes, Tanya?"
She frowned, feeling uncertain. "Can we talk?"
"Sure," he returned cheerfully. He typed something swiftly, then bounced over to her with another bright smile. "What is it?"
She blinked for a moment before shaking her head. "Sorry. It's just ... "
"Creepy?" he offered, still smiling. "Now that you know the difference, seeing me makes you think of Justin differently."
"That's not - " She cut herself off with a sigh as he raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so maybe it does make things ... strange," she admitted. "I just ... I guess I have some things I still need to know."
"Ask away." He plopped down on the floor, gesturing for her to join him. "And if I don't like the question, I won't answer it."
She eyed him, snorting faintly. "Fair enough." She took a moment to gather her thoughts. "How do you know all this?" she asked at last. "Everything about Justin. Are you two Bonded in some way, or telepathic or something?"
Chrin burst out laughing.
She gave him an irritated look.
"Sorry, sorry ... " he giggled, clutching his stomach. "I just ... can't help myself." He struggled to get himself under control, still snickering occasionally. He wiped at his eyes, flashing her a grin. "You guys have spent a little too much time on the mythical side of things lately. Sometimes there really *is* just a simple explanation, you know."
"Then what is it?" she retorted, annoyed now.
"Did T.J. and the others tell you about how we all met, when Zordon sent us to meet them and Dimitria wanted to test our skills?"
She nodded. "They said they blocked your memory of who you were, to see if you would notice the difference between the Ro -sorry - the others, and the human Turbo Rangers."
"Don't censor yourself so much; it'll just give you a headache," he chuckled. "I don't mind being called a robot. And in layman's terms, that's basically what we did. But to make me actually believe I *was* Justin, I had to have Justin's sense of 'self', so to speak. We created digital copies of his memories and downloaded them into my system. Then my own memories were firewalled, to make sure I would function exactly as Justin would."
"And Justin was okay with this?" she asked skeptically.
He laughed. "Oh, heck no. He protested all along the way. But I refused to let any of the others be the test subject, so in the end he *had* to agree, because he was only making himself more suspicious the longer he went on. And since he never had time to delete my copies of his memories before we went home, I still retain them."
She frowned again. "But if you only have Justin's memories as of then, how do you know how he felt when the others went into space? You can't have remembered that."
"That's because I don't." He gave her another amused look, leaning back on his arms and shaking his feet back and forth. "Again, you're complicating things. What I have is Justin's memories and capabilities programmed into a supercomputer that functions as my brain. I don't have to remember it to know how Justin reacted; I have data on his emotional and mental responses in multiple given situations combined with a computer capable of calculating thousands of possible outcomes in a single nanosecond. I 'know' because I have the research and understanding of his character to predict his feelings."
"But that means you're just guessing!" she argued. "You don't know for sure if that's how he really feels!"
"I have a highly probable guess," he corrected, "Combined with the current actions he's taken since. I'm pretty confident that I'm right."
Her anger faded. "Oh."
He looked at her again and sighed. "Tanya, I know Justin because there *is* a bond between us - it's just not as simple as the Soul Bonds or Blood Bonds or whatever. I was created from Zordon's knowledge of his character and image, and given my own identity from that. I have copies of his memories and experiences. We're not the same people and we never will be. But Justin is my father, my brother, and my friend all rolled into one." He stood suddenly, offering her a hand. "Which is why I want him to come back to himself just as much as the rest of you."
She hesitated, then pulled him into a hug. "Thanks, Chrin. I needed this," she murmured.
He shrugged. "Zeus may be a different person, but Justin wouldn't want to see you upset." He pulled away, stretching. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work."
She looked at him curiously. "What are you and Billy up to, anyway?"
He grinned, winking at her. "It's a secret."
She was more than this once. She thought she was, at least. Sometimes ... she wasn't so sure.
She remembered things. The team she had shamed and abandoned when she chose her mistress' side. The warm, tropical planet she'd grown up on, her vow to keep it safe. A vow she'd broken ... for her. For *this*.
A sharp gasp jerked her from her thoughts, and she looked down. Automatically she wrapped her arms around her mistress, holding her gently. She murmured soothing words as she carefully stroked her hair.
Tearrah shuddered in her arms, clinging tightly to her. She was pale and sweating, the way she always looked after waking from a nightmare. Her eyes were wide and fearful as she stared up at her.
"I'm here," she whispered. "There's nothing to fear; no one will ever harm you while I'm here. I will always protect you."
Tears welled in her mistress' eyes.
Spectra leaned down, resting her head against Tearrah's. "No one will hurt you again."
And no 'well-meaning' Light Ranger with too many questions would change that.
"Goldie! How ya doin', old buddy?"
"Go away, Rito," he snarled, not looking up from his work.
"Say, that looks real nice. She's a babe."
Rito found himself pinned to the wall in an instant, Goldar roaring in his face. "Don't you touch her"!
"Whoa ... " Rito waved a hand in front of his face, squirming. "Take a breath mint and *relax*, Goldie! I'm just sayin'."
Goldar stared at him suspiciously for a long moment before he slowly relaxed at last, releasing him. He was back at work on the figurine he'd been making in moments. The careful way he etched details into the clay with his claws would have been unnerving-had the one watching him been *anyone* but Rito.
"So who is she?" his skeletal friend asked, leaning over the back of his chair.
"I don't know."
Rito paused, cocking his head. "She's yours, but you don't know who she is? Why are you makin' a statue of her then?"
"Because I love her."
"Oh." Rito seemed to digest this for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay." He made himself more comfortable. "You know, I bet she'd be even prettier in color."
"Don't have any paint."
"Well hey, are we villains or what?" Rito demanded cheerfully. "Let's go steal some! Come on, Goldie! Time to make your girlfriend pretty."
Goldar had paused in his sculpting at Rito's suggestion, but now his eyes narrowed warningly. "She *is* pretty," he growled.
"Well, of course she is! But she could still use some color in her cheeks, know what I mean? Hey, maybe you could do me at the same time!"
"Fat chance," Goldar grumbled as he stood. He stored his precious statue in a place where no one would bother her. Turning, he eyed Rito with an odd sense of anticipation. "Let's go get some art supplies, nimrod."
"Right behind ya, Goldie!"
A shadow hidden in the darkness of the ship surveyed the security cameras quietly as a pair of Quantrons sparked pathetically on the floor behind it. At last the creature smiled, and the shadows of the room dropped several degrees.
"Time ... " the voice, neither male nor female, murmured to itself. "Time to see what these pathetic losers can do. Time to see just how strong my hold is upon them all ... "
A laugh, cold and dark and oily, seemed to ooze through the halls.
Somewhere in the bowels of the ship, Demoness shivered and clutched her chest, while Tearrah's eyes shot open with a silent scream.