Chapter 37—War of Angels, Part II: A Thousand Sons

Aaron

You know how they say you only live once? Well, they're wrong.

If you're wondering how I'm talking to you if I was supposed to have died, then you're just as confused as I was when I came back to life.

I looked around the room I was in, its bright walls reflecting the sunlight pouring in through the windows, and guessed I was on Eltar. All the technology was too advanced for Earth.

Then I noticed my Dyn's head on the side of my bed. He was sleeping, I could tell, and from the bags under his eyes, I could tell he hadn't been doing that much. Glancing at the calendar on the wall, I could see it was May 19, 2032. I had literally been in a coma for a year-and-a-half. I heard my heart rates accelerate on my vitals machine, and I guess my Dyndid, too, because he awoke with a start.

I've only seen my Dyncry twice, and I hardly remember the first time because it was when Corey was born. I was like, 4. The second time was when I graduated high school.

This made three times.

He grabbed me solidly and pulled me in close to him, talking so quickly and jumbled that I couldn't make out if he was speaking English or Eltarian or both.

I tried to speak, but my voice was gone, and my Dyn frowned.

"Your voice is still gone, but we've done all we could to keep you out of atrophy," he said to me slowly. "Your voice will come back in a couple hours, but they said if you didn't use your vocal chords regularly, they would go dormant."

I opened my mouth and nearly choked, when I noticed there was a feeding tube down my throat.

"Hold on, I'll take it out," Dyn said, reaching for the tube and disconnecting it before he ripped it out of my throat.

I gasped and coughed, but otherwise felt a bit better.

"I'm guessing you're wondering what happened," he mused to himself, running a hand through his extremely short hair. I don't think I'd ever seen my Dyn with a buzz-cut before. "Christmas of 2030, your dad and I sent for you to come to Eltar for the final vote on the Temporal Restoration Act of 2010, and when you went to leave, Gabriel sabotaged your ship and blew up your fuel cells."

I flinched, rubbing my hand along my arms and face to make sure I was okay.

"You're fine," he said, chuckling slightly, "no burns or anything. We think you survived because your Eyr Orion defense mechanism kicked in and absorbed the photonic energy. Luckily, it was able to divert the energy to your morpher…but because your morpher is routed into your body, you went into shock and pretty much destroyed your internal organs. It took us 6 months just to get you healed."

I looked away for a second, cleared my throat, and tried talking. My voice was raspy, and my throat burned, but I voiced my sentence. "How are the other rangers?"

He looked away now, and I knew I was about to get bad news. "Listen…before you get angry, understand the position I'm in."

I frowned, "What do you mean?"

"They…they think you're dead. The entire universe does."

My eyes widened. "What?"

"Aaron, Eltar cannot make it through an invasion force, and if Gabriel had it in his head to finish you off while you were weak, we all would have been under attack. So the rangers have kept him busy on Earth."

"Is there a new white ranger? Is everyone okay?"

"There is no other ranger, and everyone's fine," he said slowly, "for the most part."

"For the most part?" I repeated.

"Listen…Jay is here in the Royal Infirmary, I'll have him come in and talk to you, but you should also know something."

I looked up as he stood.

"Your psychic powers finally manifested."

I couldn't help it, my eyebrows rose as I looked at him excitedly. "How do you know? What'd they manifest as?"

"You're an Empath."

"Fuck."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, nothing at all. You get foresight, aunt Andrea has telekinesis, and aunt Nike's got telepathy, but I get empathy. Awesome."

"Aaron," he said sternly, "your empathetic abilities are unrivaled. We had hundreds of specialists—all top secret—come in and ascertain the lengths of your empathy: some of your capabilities are more powerful than mine and my sisters' combined."

I looked down, somewhat ashamed. "Sorry."

"I'm going to have Jay come up, and I want you to try to empathetically bond with him, okay?"

"How?"

"You'll know."

With that, he hugged me again, ruffled my hair, and exited.

—37—

The images in my head flew by at something like light speed, but each of them had thoughts, feelings, and back-story behind them; I assimilated the knowledge so easily that it was like I wasn't even doing it.

Then, things began to fall into place and become coherent. Jay's thought stream was beginning to focus, and I could see what he wanted me to see. First and foremost, Gabriel had ascended to a higher plane of power after he thought he killed me. He drained just about every bit of energy in my morpher before the explosion and became The Angel. Lucky for them, the power boost was only temporary, but he managed to injure just about everyone, including Doc Ol. Unfortunately, he could ascend once every 3 months, and had been doing so to claim small victories over both the Cyber Squad and SPD. I had a battle on my hands, then.

Secondly, Josh was the Green Technos Ranger. Did I have a thing for evil green rangers? I mean, seriously. To make matters worse, though, he was a cyborg. Apparently, upon discovering his identity, he and Patrick had an unmorphed fight and went at it viciously. Patrick overloaded Josh's circuits with lightning and temporarily shut him down, much to Amy's dismay. Apparently, he was adopted. No shit.

Speaking of Patrick, he was now the commander of the Cyber Squad, as Beth felt he knew SPD protocol much better than she did. Cyber Squad had also completely enlisted in SPD and took their orders from both Doc Ol and Commander Scott. The war against Mesomorph and the Mecha Squad was now widely publicized, with SPD recruiting fresh out of high school and advertising rangerhood as a way of life that everyone could enjoy. Apparently, Ranger Ops was back up and running, despite Supreme Commander Tate's disapproval.

I continued to skim through Jay's memories, learning the past year in a matter of minutes. I started narrowing my focus, learning about how each of my teammates was doing. Grace had ascended even higher in her stardom, becoming the world's most talked about diva in history—not only because of her amazing vocal abilities and her perfect dance technique, but also because of her selfless devotion to saving the world through SPD. Imagine the most famous person you know, and then turn them into a superhero. It's like that.

Amy was still in college—her last year, at that—and tried to keep her head down in every manner of speaking. Even though she had enlisted in SPD, she kept her identity secret and tried to keep every bit of normalcy she could. The same could be said for Jay, who had continued at U of M, but quit the football team. His athletic scholarship had obviously been revoked, and he was struggling to keep up with the enormous tuition the school required. So far, though, he was doing okay—he'd definitely gotten smarter, that was for sure. I could also tell from his memories that he'd specified a major in the past year or so, choosing to go into physical therapy and education.

Beth and Grace had a huge fight that ended up bringing the team together even more, but it turned out that Beth and Grace had had some sort of relationship or something. I found that both weird and interesting at the same time, but I didn't want to focus too much on it, so I continued to see what else Beth had been up to. She had excelled in SPD, receiving awards from Supreme Commander Tate and Commander Scott at the same time, but chose to let Patrick lead based on his experience.

Matt and Patrick had become infinitely closer, but as I tried to figure out why, Jay severed our link by pulling away from my hand immediately.

"Whoa, dude, I told you not to move," I chastised Jay.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly, "but…it's not really my place to tell you everything about everyone."

I frowned. "Now's not the time, dude, I need to know what's going on."

"All you need to know is that we're still at war with Mesomorph and we need your help."

"Why won't you let me see what's going on with Patrick?" I asked, sensing he was keeping something from me.

He was silent as he looked out the large, one-way window of my medical room. "I think it's better if you ask him about it."

I didn't say anything for a few moments, but I think I knew what he was getting at. "Is he…is he with someone else, now?"

"Go talk to him," Jay said as he walked back to me and handed me a piece of paper. "He's here on Eltar in the private infirmary."

I glanced at the piece of paper with Patrick's room information and instantly felt worry grip at my insides. "Why?"

"Just go talk to him," he said, but I could feel the sadness in his voice. "Just…be prepared. His emotions are a lot crazier than mine, I'm sure…we…we all thought you were dead."

I nodded and placed my hand on his. I'm not sure why I did, but it felt like the right thing to do. I wasn't empathetically bonding with him—not in the Eltarian way, at least—and I wasn't making a romantic gesture. I was trying to apologize for my absence. I knew it wasn't my fault, but God it sure as hell felt like it. I had missed an entire year-and-a-half of my life; just gone, like I'd taken some sort of everlasting nap.

—37—

The first thing I noticed when I saw Patrick was that everything had taken its toll on him. He looked older—not in a bad way—but worn and determined. It was like something inside of him had broken down to reveal nothing but his core of iron will. Even when he saw me, the surprise in his face didn't remind me of my Patrick. He was…so much different. His hair was shorter now, almost like a crew cut, and he seemed to have become more toned than before.

His bare tanned chest seemed to be glowing in the light through his window, and as he began to dress, I noticed the extra care he took in each of his movements.

"What's wrong?" I finally asked.

He grinned to himself somewhat. "Still impatient, I see."

I didn't laugh. I was too concerned.

"You might wanna sit down," he said, his voice finally giving way to some gentleness.

I had to admit that walking through the infirmary after my teleport had exhausted me inexplicably, but I didn't want to tell him. So I simply sat on his medical bed as he buttoned his shirt in front of the window, glancing out of it nostalgically.

"Remember Christmas before last?" he asked me distantly.

"It still feels like it should be Christmas," I said, a little more blunt than I'd intended.

"Right," he said sadly, "sorry."

"It's okay."

He finally turned to me and walked over to the med bed, resting his hand on my shoulder comfortingly. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"I'm not," I said. "The only reason I survived is because of my Eltarian powers…and I wouldn't be able to deal with something happening to you."

He smiled softly and looked away. "Aaron…a lot happened in the past year or two."

"Year and five months," I corrected absently, "and I know. My…my psychic powers manifested."

"I know," he said, laughing a bit. "Hunter came down here a while ago to let me know you'd be coming to see me. Imagine my surprise at that. My dead ex-boyfriend coming to visit me in the hospital."

I winced internally at the sound of the word "ex-boyfriend."

"Hunter told me to try to go easy on you," he continued, "because psychic manifestation can completely fuck up your emotions—either before or after it happens. In your case, it was before."

I looked at him confusedly, but somewhat defensively. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well…Hunter said that all of the things that happened between us—you know, the whole you fucking a cyborg thing—could have been a haywire emotional response to the latent psychic energy buildup."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay. Now why are you in here?"

He sighed again and placed his hand on my thigh now. His touch, for some reason, was still electric to me, even through my denim jeans.

"After we slept together on Christmas, we didn't talk much. You had to head to Eltar, I had to go back to SPD—things got complicated. And then the next thing I knew, you were dead. And I was so upset. I was so, so fucked up. If it hadn't been for Matt and Jay, I honestly don't know what I would have done."

"Jay?"

He looked at me quizzically. "You psychic bonded with Jay, didn't you?"

"He tried his best to keep me from looking into memories with you in them. I figured it was because you…you know."

Now he looked lost. "I what?"

"Well…cuz you're with someone else now, right?"

He laughed, all out this time, and the lines in his face showed pure amusement. I could tell, though, that it had been a while since he'd done that.

"No," he finally said, "I'm not with anyone. And I haven't been."

As much as I tried to fight it, I began grinning madly.

"Well, neither have I," I said honestly.

"Shut up," he said jokingly.

"Seriously, though, Patrick; why are you in here?"

After a long while, I noticed his smile slowly fade away as he prepared to answer me.

"I was pregnant."

I was not expecting that. Not at all. My instinct took over, and I quickly did the math. If I had been out for 17 months and Eltarian gestation periods lasted anywhere between 10 to 12 months, then I had a 5-7 month-old baby that never even knew it had a Dyn. I was completely floored, and I felt all of my emotions begin to stir. I had a kid! With Patrick!

I grabbed him and hugged him tightly, rambling about how excited I was. "What'd you name him? Or her? Is it a boy or a girl? Fuck, dude, I'm so…I don't even know what I am! But I'm just glad it's with you."

"Aaron…"

"Does he talk yet? Or is it a she? You still haven't told me. Oh, I bet it has your eyes. I guess it could have mine, too, I wouldn't really care. Is he staying with my parents, or is he here on Eltar?" I took a breath, and then realized that if my child was here on Eltar, I could go see it! "Can we go visit him?"

"Aaron, stop," he finally said. I noticed now that he was crying. Patrick didn't cry often. It reminded me so much of years ago…back in high school, when his mom died.

"What's wrong?" I wondered. Then I realized he was probably worried that we weren't together. "Babe, if you're worried about us, I promise I can make it work. Cuz if there's one thing I remember from all my dreaming in my coma, it's that I love you, and I'm gonna make this better. I can drop out of school and tour with you guys or enlist in SPD—it's not like I actually need a college education: I'm a prince!"

He laughed somewhat, a little bitterly, and wiped at his face. "You're sweet," he finally said, sniffing, "but…it's not that."

"Then what's wrong?" I asked, daring to kiss him. He hesitated somewhat, and then he pulled away.

"I lost it."

"Lost what?"

"Our baby," he said after moments of silence.

All of the excitement I felt dwindled away into a pit of anger and frustration, and I involuntarily pulled away from Patrick.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know I was pregnant until it was too late, and all the rangering and touring and everything else was just…it was too much. Especially with Gabriel's new power…"

I didn't respond, because I didn't know how to. I didn't think it was Patrick's fault—not at all. It was just…I was so excited. I had been so ready to be a Dyn that I didn't realize how much it hurt me to know I wasn't.

"I don't blame you," I finally said gently, "I'm upset with myself that I wasn't there. If I'd been here…maybe you—"

"Stop," he said firmly. "I've already been through the 'what if' phase, and I don't want to go through it again. You can't blame yourself for something you couldn't control."

"I could have," I said stubbornly. "You don't know what it's like to feel unreliable because you're always there for everyone. Even for me when I decided to pull away from you. And then I pulled away too far, and you just…you weren't there anymore because you were stretched so thin. And now, here I am again, being the flakiest fuck-head in existence."

"Are you done being emo?" he snapped. "Seriously, Aaron, I can't do this. I…I'm an emotional wreck as it is…I can't carry both of our burdens anymore."

"What?" I asked, bewildered. "I'm not asking you to carry my burden!"

"You never have to ask, Aaron," he said earnestly, "I just do it automatically. And you know that."

I couldn't look at him, because I knew he was right. "I'm sorry. For everything."

"You don't need to be." After he cleared his throat, he added, "I pretty much killed Josh, anyway, so just be sorry that you went and stuck your dick in a cyborg."

I glared at him. The topic was still somewhat sore for me, but I let it go.

"Do you…do you think we'll ever be back to how we were?"

"No," he said quickly. "We've both changed so much that we'll never be like we originally were, but…"

"But do you think we could be better?" I asked, laying my hand on his. Unlike with Jay, this was a romantic gesture. It wasn't empathy, it wasn't casual. It was all my pure emotion.

He sighed, rubbing his head in frustration but leaving his other hand on mine. "I don't know…we're still in the middle of this war…and I'm a mess, you're a mess, and so is the entire world. I don't really know if it's the right time for us to be focusing on our relationship…or…whatever it is."

I wasn't done, though. "Patrick," I replied, "I know we're at war. We have been for the past 4 years. But it doesn't mean we're not still people with emotions. And…I want a family with you. I want all of that with you. And the problems we have we can tackle together."

I wasn't sure if he was crying again or if he'd never stopped, but he squeezed my hand. "I want to, Aaron," he said, "God, you have no idea how much I want to. It's just that…I can't. I can't do anything of those things. I…I can't have kids."

—37—

I slammed my fist into Gabriel's face, the satisfying squishing of blood echoing from the impact. I watched his body fling to the ground, and I immediately followed up with a mighty yell as I jumped into the air to attack his fallen form.

He rolled away from my foot, and then jumped up and fired upon me with solar flares. I quickly threw up a force field of photon energy, and reflected his energy back at him. He flew backwards, into an already crumbling building, and I stood to my full height panting…waiting.

Five flashes of color lit up the battlefield, and I looked over to see the rest of the Cyber Squad.

"Aaron?" Grace asked me, her visor shooting open in surprise.

"You're alive?" followed Matt's question.

"We'll talk later," I said to them.

I saw Jay put a hand on Amy and Beth's shoulders reassuringly and held up my right wrist. "Cyber Digitize—Energize!"

I felt the particles of light energy circling around my arms and legs, covering my body in pure light. Bursts of photons exploded behind me, echoing with cataclysmic force, creating swirls and pools of light that wrapped around me. My armor graced my shoulders as the Elesferi coated my body in white and black patches. Finally, my helmet materialized, my bright blue visor snapping shut and the large golden horn on my head shooting back like a fin.

"Cyber Delta, White! Power of Light!" I announced, slamming my feet into the ground as I posed and felt the light of the sun bounce off my armor.

My sensors began going haywire, though, when I finally saw a dome of solar energy forming under the rubble I'd knocked onto Gabriel. Rays of light began shooting forth: one, two, three…they finally engulfed everything as I heard Beth shout something to me.

There was a deafening explosion of sorts that sent out a shockwave of pure energy that spread for hundreds of meters either way. When I looked up, I saw Gabriel's Ascended Form looking down on us with those same crystal blue eyes I remembered seeing in Doc Ol's basement when we'd killed him the first time.

My sensors were telling me I couldn't compete. Not in the slightest. But I had to try. I had a score to settle with him. It was no longer just a "destiny" thing, or some alien blood feud that needed to be settled. It was personal. He had tried to kill me. He killed my unborn child. And he would pay with every breath in his body.

I lunged forward with my Magna Edge drawn and my Delta Tiger Fang appearing in my other hand.

He merely flexed his hand and thrust me back into the ground, my body digging so deep into the earth that I left a ditch ten-or-fifteen feet long. I came to halt and flipped myself off the ground. "DIGITAL ORYMEKA, ENGAGE!"

The other rangers were with me on my call, and we charged him simultaneously.

Folding his wings and landing on the ground, Gabriel slid into a fighting position with an arrogant grin on his face. "You all know you can't win. You couldn't win with Patrick here, so what makes you think you can win with a weaker ranger?"

"How about both of us?" Patrick's voice resounded off the walls of the buildings around us.

From the skies, he and a small squadron of SPD Troopers descended like angels.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him as he stood next to me.

"Tackling our problems together," he said back to me. I could hear the smile in his voice.

But even with our Zordians, which we called after only ten minutes of battle with Gabriel, we were no match. He was able to damage each and every one of them, including Zeta. It was like he'd reached a new plane of power unrivaled by anyone.

"Aaron," Patrick grunted through his gritted teeth, "you've got to use Eyr Orion."

He was holding his stomach in pain from where Gabriel had lashed him with a whip made of solar energy. I was cradling his head in my hands, wiping the blood from his mouth and face on my already ripped shirt. I knew Patrick was right. Half the SPD Troopers Patrick had brought with him were already critically injured, and two had died shortly after the battle began.

But just as I stood up to try to unleash my energy, I felt another presence on the battlefield. Mesomorph.

"What the hell do you want, lizard lips?" I shouted at him.

"Aaron, be careful!" Omega shouted at me through our comm-links as she retreated like I'd commanded the Zordians. "Mesomorph has been trying to get a hold of Eltarian DNA, and since you're alive, he's going to target you!"

I clenched my fists, my eyes never leaving Gabriel or Mesomorph. This seemed like it was it. I wake up 2 days before my birthday just to get killed. Again.

Mesomorph lunged at me, but I jumped to the side and dodged his claw. I wasn't expecting his tongue to be so long, though, and it lashed out and struck me twice in my stomach. He licked his lips in satisfaction and I saw his eyes widen as he tasted the blood he'd gotten from me.

Mesomorph's body began to glow, his face morphing and his whole body changing. It was like he was literally going through a metamorphosis. His reptilian features faded away to reveal a man-like being with two large reptilian wings and blood red eyes. He sported two horns on his forehead, and his bald skull looked somewhat bony and misshapen, though it could have just been me. He had thin lips and razor sharp teeth beneath them, but the rest of his solidly built body seemed to have survived the transformation just fine, save a few random scales near his wrists.

"I am…Messiah," he said, his voice still very much the same raspy and sinister voice it had been before. He cracked his neck sickeningly as he observed his body in the windows of the surrounding buildings. "Very interesting."

The next thing I knew, we were in the SPD command center.

"What happened?" I asked, bewildered, the glow from my body residing. Apparently, my Eyr Orion was about to engage before we left.

"I teleported you out," Supreme Commander Tate said, his voice terse. Even though I wasn't SPD just yet, I immediately stood at attention. "At ease," he said.

"What happened out there?" I asked again.

"Mesomorph was able to consume the blood of an Eltarian, and while you were gone, he had absorbed the rest of the evil Zeta's essence."

"So…he's Eltarian now? Just because he drank some Eltarian blood?" Amy asked.

"We're still working on how this happened," said Commander Scott as he entered the room with Doc Ol.

Immediately, Doc Ol hugged me, and I have to admit, it was awkward. I was still getting used to the fact that everyone thought I was dead.

"You'll have a lot of explaining to do later," Doc Ol said lightly as he patted my back and let me go. "Are you injured? You've got a lot of blood on your shirt."

"It's not my…" I fell short of my answer and looked back at Patrick, who was leaning on Matt's shoulder.

At the same time, everyone realized what I'd just realized.

"I guess I kind of forgot to mention," Patrick said, coughing weakly.

"How is that even possible?" I asked before he could finish.

"When I miscarried…I had to go to Eltar and they took a bunch of blood and whatnot…and apparently my dad was half-Eltarian. Because I'm a quarter Eltarian."