Episode 19: Part 2
The loud sounds of fierce battle cries and ringing steel echoed across the beaches of Hanauma Bay as the combined might of the Ocean and Vanguard Rangers clashed against the Cambion-Benthic monsters. As the Ocean Rangers led the charge, the Vanguard Rangers took winged leaps from behind and changed formation to assist their own colored counterpart.
Desmond and Joe were the first ones to clash against General Kuta and force him back with an aggressive flurry of attacks from their flaming weapons. While Desmond kept the mollusk warrior on the defensive with fierce spear thrusts, Joe circled around with his saber and protected his ally by parrying aside Kuta's counter attacks. As the two Rangers locked weapons again with Kuta, they both turned the polearm aside and tumbled away allowing Alex and Izzy to leap and make a combined surprise attack. Kuta snarled as Alex's punch blinded his sensitive eyes with a flash of light before Izzy swept him aside with a gust of wind. While the Red Rangers raised their guards again, both Pink Rangers took a moment to smile and exchange a little fist bump.
Nearby, Kara and Hannah moved together to dodge a spray of fireballs from Captain Barbatos's outstretched hand. As they neared, Hannah lashed out her whip blade to catch the Cambion's leg and cause him to stumble for a moment. Having dropped his guard for just a moment, Kara surged forward and delivered a punishing slash with her electrically charged scimitar. Like lightning, she pushed aside the Cambion's weapon arm allowing Hannah to follow up and attack with a slash of her own before hooking the demon's arm and tossing him to the sands.
As Barbatos rolled over and groaned for a moment, Kara glanced to the Orange Ranger and gave a friendly nod, "I like your weapon. Maybe I can give it a try later on?"
"Only if you teach me to dual wield weapons too,' Hannah laughed while taking a ready stance again.
Meanwhile, Cam and Danny moved to block Mujina, keeping her busy with whirling spear strikes and sword blows. While they distracted the swamp hag, David and Nick cleared a way though the hoard of Magogs and Nightmarchers. Using their big blunt weapons and great strength, both Green Rangers swept aside several troops with each swing of their warhammer and club. As they cleared a path, Nick called over to David, "You ready to bury these guys?"
"Just follow my lead!" the doctor replied raising his Ocean Bracer to manipulate the earth around him. To the enemy foot soldiers' surprise, the sands beneath them began to shift and churn, forcing them to lose their balance and stumble over their own feet.
Nick nodded and raised his own Keyrune drawing on his power to call up a tall spiral of earth and sand that David and primed. The enemy troops simply watched in dumb horror as the wave of earth and sand came back down and flattened many of them like a giant sledgehammer. David could only laugh and nod with approval as Nick turned back around and gave a thumbs up, "Nice teamwork there Doc!"
As the Green Rangers thinned the ranks of enemy troops, Naomi and Claire used the opportunity to make a beeline for the hostages still on the beach. The White Ranger led the charge gunning down enemies in their way with her blaster pistol while Naomi batted aside the stragglers with her twin hand clubs. While they continued to advance, Naomi panted, "You know Claire... I've gotta admit, I've never actually seen natural snow and ice before."
"Oh it's great," Claire replied kicking aside a Magog and blasting aside two Nightmarchers, "You can do all sorts of great things with it... like this!"
Claire immediately pulled her Keyrune and turned a patch of sand into a sheet of ice causing several troops to slip and fall. As they hit the ground, Claire gave a another wave of her artifact and the sheet of ice enveloped the enemies, flash freezing them in place. "Go Naomi! Save the prisoners!"
The Yellow Ranger sprinted forward past the frozen enemies until she reached a small crowd of people tied together at the edge of a small promontory located near the edge of the bay. Using one of her serrated clubs, she cut the thick ropes that bound the prisoners together and immediately freed them. She could see the tired, fearful, and grateful looks on the civilians' faces as she helped them rise and pointed inland, "You're free everyone! Hurry! Get back inland and run to safety!"
As the small crowd dispersed, one last figure remained. Mr. Sato rose and put his arms around his daughter, "Naomi! Thank goodness! I knew you'd come!"
"It's ok Dad... I'm here..." she said hugging him back in relief. After a moment, she let go and looked to him gravely, "It's not safe here. You have to get out of here!"
Mr. Sato began to protest when all of a sudden, the swamp hag Mujina turned and spotted them, realizing that the prisoners had all gotten lose and escaped. "No! How dare you!" she shrieked leveling her staff.
Before either of the Blue Rangers could respond, Mujina fired a powerful blast of green magic that swept the Yellow Ranger and her father over the side of the promontory and into the waters below.
"Oh crap!" Danny exclaimed as he looked around and did a quick mental calculation of the battlefield. He had to get past Mujina and there was only one quick way to do it. "Hey Cam! Grab my wrist and whatever you do, don't let go!"
Cam blinked in surprise as Danny grabbed his arm and summoned a pair of wings, "Wait... what?"
In an instant, Danny took off into the air with a startled Blue Ocean Ranger in tow. They both made a high leap over Mujina's head and landed near the edge of the waters where they could help. They dashed over toward the edge of the promontory, and saw Naomi putting her lifeguard skills to use, grabbing hold of her stunned father, and side-swimming back toward the shallows and the relative safety of the beach. As she neared and began hoisting him out from the water, Mujina gave another cruel laugh as she caught up, "I just can't get rid of you, can I? Well... try this!"
The hag leveled her staff and cast a dark spell causing wispy tentacle like appendages made of magic to erupt outward and try to strangle them. Being unable to protect herself, Naomi turned to shield her father and braced for a big hit when a great splash of watery energy sprayed in the air. Cam rushed over to defend Naomi and her Dad from harm, slashing furiously at the magic tentacles with his own charged blade. They both watched in surprise and gave impressed smiles as he took one more powered slash and destroyed the tentacles with a defiant shout.
Mujina snarled again and fired one more burst of cursed energy, this time catching the Blue Ocean Ranger off balance as he barely had time to raise his guard again. As Cam braced for the worst, he was surprised when he heard Danny give a shout, "Whitesteel, Armor on!"
In a flash, the Blue Vanguard Ranger had summoned a silver shield and armor down his shoulder. As Danny shielded his comrade, Mujina gave a surprised gasp as her spell reflected off the silver steel shield and came right back at her, blowing her backward up the beach line.
"You ok, kid?" Danny said clapping Cam on the shoulder.
Cam nodded in relief, "Yeah... thanks for the save Danny."
The two Blue Rangers turned back around and saw their other allies beginning to regroup around them as the remnants of the Nightmarchers and Magogs broke ranks and fled in fear. While the foot soldiers broke ranks, Naomi sent her father off toward the ocean bluffs to get to safety. From where he stood on the beach, Captain Barbatos furiously waved his sword in the air, trying in vain to rally what was left of his demonic minions, "Stand and fight you cowardly dogs! You are Cambion soldiers! Have you no pride?"
"I think they've got functioning brains," Claire called out in an unusually confident challenge, "Which is more than I can say for you."
Barbatos gritted his teeth as he began to march quickly toward the Rangers. "Fine then! I'll take you out by myself."
Joe shook his head and nodded to the other Vanguard Rangers prompting them to summon their combined weapon, a large angelic crossbow: the Radiant Arbalest. The Ocean Rangers stood back as the veterans grouped together to and braced themselves. As Barbatos picked up steam and began to charge across the sands, Kara loaded the weapon with a crackling bolt of electricity and braced herself against the Red Ranger, "Ready!"
In unison, the Rangers fired their weapon together and the projectile became a searing bolt of divine thunder. The Ocean Rangers shielded their eyes from the bright flash of dazzling light as the bolt struck Barbatos full on and completely vaporized him into ash and brimstone.
Upon seeing their demon ally's demise, both Kuta and Mujina stood in momentary shock while the twelve Rangers turned their attention back on the two generals.
"Now… where were we?" Alex asked, hoping to raise her friends' fighting spirits with a little bit of bravado.
As she spoke, the skies began to grow darker and the waters around Hanauma Bay began to churn violently. At the edges of the water, a foggy mist began to rise and hinder visibility around the landscape. When she saw this, Mujina began to laugh, "It's too late Rangers! You're all too late! Leviathan is here!"
General Kuta stopped before he began to slowly smile as well, "You may have foiled our original plan… but once the sea serpent is done feasting upon you, then we will take control."
Mujina waved her staff enveloping the two generals in a blast of sand and allowing them to retreat to safety. After the two monsters disappeared, the twelve Rangers turned back toward the dark churning waters of the bay and saw the waters swell violently. For a moment, the Vanguard Rangers felt the same twinge of fear and dread as they recalled their first meeting with the monster back in Santa Barbara nine years ago.
Moments later, a large serpentine head resembling a dragon emerged from the water. It was covered in thick gray scales and began to rise like some monstrous pillar from the waves. As the colossal serpentine dragon ascended from the waters, the Ocean Rangers could see the burnt streaks and ugly scars covering its face where the Vanguard Rangers' megazords had wounded it almost a decade ago.
"What the hell is that thing?" Hannah murmured as she reached out and gripped Cam's arm in fear.
"Looks like Godzilla," David quipped softly while trying to make light of his own Japanese heritage, "Believe me… I would know."
As the titanic beast reared its head back, it let out a deafening roar of fury that sounded like thunder. The noise was so terrible; it startled the twelve Rangers and caused them to cover their ears from the piercing cry.
"So, Leviathan… we finally meet again…" Nick said gripping his hammer while trying to steel his own courage.
"What do we do now?" Desmond asked, still gaping in shock at the colossal sea serpent.
"We call the megazords," Claire answered while holding up her Keyrune, "Maybe we'll be able to put that dragon down for good this time."
Alex pulled out the coral whale whistle entrusted to her by the mermaid Maris, but she stopped and turned to Claire, "That monster is blocking up the whole entrance of the bay. How are we going to get to our zords when there's no clear path?"
The Pink Ranger's question was answered as a bright rocket streaked across the sky and struck the beast's head from behind, engulfing it in a fiery explosion. While the beast reeled, it snarled again in fury as the roar of some familiar sounding jet engines was heard above. To her complete surprise, Hannah glanced up and saw three F-16 fighter jets descend from the cloud cover and fire another volley of air-to-surface missiles at Leviathan. As destructive as the missiles were, Leviathan's scale armor was still too powerful, absorbing much of the heat and force of the explosive projectiles.
"No way!" Naomi called in surprise as the fighters roared by low overhead "The Air Force is getting in on this too?"
Hannah didn't pay any attention to Naomi. Instead, she stared in shock when she recognized the familiar paint patterns on the underside of one of the Fighting Falcons. It looked just like her father's plane.
Up above in the skies, Hannah's father Captain William Johnson glanced out the side canopy of his fighter plane as he made a steep banking turn, then leveled off. "U.S.S. Poseidon, this is Razor-1. We have a visual on the target. Looks to be some giant sea snake, and it's heavily armored. Our missiles barely scratched it."
From the other end of the radio, Captain Benjamin Ramos's voice was heard, "Understood Razor-1. We're almost there. Keep a target lock on that monster so we can hit it with our own heavy weapons."
"Roger that," Captain Johnson replied as he made ready for another pass. "Razor Squadron, you heard Captain Ramos. Let's keep that thing busy until the fleet arrives."
From the beach, the Rangers watched as Captain Johnson and his two wingmen split off and flew another diversion pattern to confuse Leviathan. Hannah turned to Desmond and gripped his forearm, "Desmond, call the zords! I have to get up there and help! Please!"
The Red Ranger nodded and called upon the Rangers' royal conch shell. As he blew into it to summon the Ocean zords, Alex blew her own whistle to summon their allied killer whale zord Orca too.
Nearby, the Vanguard Rangers made ready to summon their own zords when Joe drew forth his Battlizer: Archangel Auriel's Trumpet. Izzy stopped and looked to him in surprise, "Uh, Joe? What are you doing?"
The Red Vanguard Ranger turned solemnly toward the colossal sea serpent watching as it thrashed violently in the waters of the bay, "Our zords will need time to form up. I'll buy everyone a minute while you guys put the zords together."
Claire stepped forward and took her husband's free hand with a reluctant sigh, "I really hate it when you do the suicidal hero thing... you know that?"
He smiled behind his visor and squeezed her hand back, "I love you too Claire. I promise I'll be careful. Now, everyone go!"
Danny nodded and led the others in summoning the Vanguard zords while their Red Ranger put the trumpet to his lips and blew a loud powerful note. From where the beast rose from the waters, Leviathan turned its head toward the sound of the trumpet. Amid the fighter jets buzzing from above and a slew of zords approaching, a fiery Seraphim war angel joined in the fray as the decisive battle of Hanauma Bay prepared to reach its climax.