Disclaimer: If it looks like a Power Ranger and morphs like a Power Ranger, and puns like a Power Ranger...it's mine. If it looks, morphs or puns like a Power Ranger you've seen on TV, then it's not mine. And if it's named Hannah Johnson, it's on loan from Sir Perfluous and his series, "Power Rangers: Oceania."

Chapter Two: Storm Surge

Nakoa Kino was dying. Or at least that was what it felt like.

He had swam up to the strange creatures and tried peeling Kealey Shepard from their grasp, all the while trying to avoid the eerie tentacles that snaked out around him, trying to wrap around his limbs. Kealey was limp, eyes closed in their grasp.

And now, Nakoa could feel himself faltering. The edges of his vision were graying. His lungs were burning.

Have…to keep…Nakoa felt a tentacle wrap around his chest and shoulders, but didn't have the strength to fend it off.

Before his vision went completely black, he thought he saw something coming toward them…two figures, in red and white.

"Hey, there's jets on the suit!" Landon realized, the same time he realized he could speak in the helmet, forgetting it wasn't a dive mask. Bursts of air propelled him forward, and he rammed headfirst into one of the tentacled things, knocking it backwards, stirring up silt. "Hey, can you hear me?" he asked the girl in the matching white-and-black suit next to him.

"You're yelling in my ear-of course I can hear you!" Emily said. "But okay, I got it. Let's see..." Using her own jets, she powered her outstretched arms into the thing holding Nakoa, knocking her friend loose. She grabbed Nakoa under the arms. "Okay, I gotta get him out of here," she told her new friend in red, looping Nakoa's arm over her shoulders, then using the jets to propel her upwards.

Landon was left alone, facing the line of creatures. One held the blonde girl aloft like a trophy. Landon chose it as his next target, pushing off on the bottom of the seabed and powering both of his booted feet into the thing holding her. The jolt made it release her, and Landon grabbed her by the arm and powered upwards. He broke the surface like a breaching submarine, the power behind the jets arcing him up and unceremoniously depositing both of them on the beach. Landon hit hard, his suit disappeared, and he stared at the sky for a moment before rolling over, scrabbling through the sand to reach the blonde girl. She wasn't breathing. Immediately, he started CPR, all the while keeping one eye out on the water. The bubbling was closer. The things were still coming.

"Come on, breathe," he grunted as he continued compressions. "We're gonna need some help here pretty soon."

Emily turned Nakoa quickly on his side as her friend coughed up water. He sucked in air, looking bleakly at Emily's concerned face. "I…what happened?"

"I really don't know," Emily said honestly. She looked over to where the guy in red was still doing CPR on Kealey Shepard. "It's a lot to explain."

Eerie glowing tentacles broke the surface, reaching across the sand. Emily looked around, spotted the black box the stranger had been holding, and ran over to it. "Gotta be….please tell me….yes." She picked it up and popped it open, pulled out a blue shell. "Here," she told Nakoa. "Just take it."

"Em, what-"

"Just do it!" Emily was already clutching her own shell in a white-knuckled grip, saw a white glow in the surf. "Oh, no." Please work again, please work again…

"Damn it!" Landon swore as he tilted the girl's head back and administered two more breaths. He glanced up, saw the brunette from earlier and the guy they'd saved come running at him, the girl holding the box from Dr. Johnson in her hands .

"They're coming!" she was yelling. Her friend was pointing backwards as the luminous round things were mindlessly rolling toward them.

"Try to hold them off," Landon gritted his teeth.

"How?" her friend demanded. "With this thing?" He waved the blue shell in the air. "What am I supposed to do-throw it at them?"

"Then switch me!" Landon commanded, and the guy slid over and dropped to his knees, taking over compressions as Landon jumped up and stood beside Emily.

"How do we bring those suits back?" Emily asked.

Landon held his shell up and then clutched it in his fist. "It's linked with your brain!" he told her. "Just…just tell it to appear."

She eyed him dubiously. "Are you freaking kidding me?"

"Hey, it worked before!" Landon countered. He closed his eyes. Come on…come on. His eyes flew open as he remembered what Dr. Johnson had said.

Remember this word…

Nakoa looked down at the little black box and the plain pink shell that remained inside. She's gone, he thought miserably. He pulled the pink shell out and rolled it over with his fingers. Then, he pushed it into Kealey's lifeless hand.

I'm so sorry. Furious, Nakoa got to his feet and ran to join Emily and the other guy.

"Is she-" Landon began.

Nakoa shook his head, brushing away tears with the back of his hand. "I don't know what in hell these things are, but I want a piece of them." He pulled the blue shell from his shorts pocket. "So what is this thing and what does it do?"

Landon took a step forward, standing in front of Emily and Nakoa. "Follow my lead," he told them. He closed his hand around his shell. "Ho'ololi," he whispered aloud.

"What?" Emily asked Nakoa.

Her Hawaiian friend replied, "It means, 'transform.'"

"Oh." Emily wrapped her fingers around her shell. Nakoa was holding his so tight it was leaving an imprint in his palm. The two of them looked at each other.

"Ho'ololi," they said together.

Instantly, what looked like colored metal enveloped their hands, emitting a low colored glow in each of the shell's colors: red for Landon, white for Emily, and blue for Nakoa. It spread up their arms and across their bodies, up their neck and finally, around their heads. Nakoa's vision darkened and he looked down to see himself encased in some kind of wetsuit-looking thing. A hurricane symbol was emblazoned across the chest, matching the colored armored material encasing their arms and legs. Colored armor plates hardened at their elbows and thighs. Each had colored renderings of boots and gloves in the colors of their shells. Emily had a black nanofiber skirt with a giant white paw. Down the side of his legs, Nakoa was sporting blue jagged lines that strongly resembled shark teeth. And Landon had a red swirl that he recognized as the color pattern of an orca- a killer whale.

Landon looked at his two teammates, then ahead at the rolling creatures. "These suits packed a punch underwater," he reminded Emily. "Let's see how they do on land."

"They're on our turf now," Emily replied confidently from behind the scuba mask-shaped visor and helmet.

Nakoa clenched his fists. "For Kealey," he added.

And then, the three of them surged forward into battle.

No one noticed the soft pink glow that enveloped Kealey Shepard, or noticed when she jolted awake, her hands clawing at the sand. She stared up at the sky through tinted vision, then rolled over, her eyes going wide at the fight taking place just feet from her. What is going on? She stood up, took a moment to look at the pink and black body armor stuff with the pink dolphin tail that had replaced her wetsuit. Then, she looked at the action.

Those are the things that grabbed me, and wrecked my board! Which means…now it's personal. Kealey ran forward and joined in the fight, grabbing the tentacles of one creature like a bouquet of flowers. She held them tightly together as she grunted, throwing them over her shoulder to land on the beach. It writhed, then lay still.

Landon looked at the fallen creature, then at Kealey. "Hey, you're not dead!" he exclaimed.

Kealey's jaw dropped behind her visor. "I'm not…what?" she gaped. "Wait. Who the hell are you?"

"Oh, my God, you're alive!" That came from Nakoa, who used the jets on his suit to leap into the air, then drive a foot through the top of one of the tentacled things.

Kealey dodged another creature and glared at both boys. "Will you stop saying that?" she ordered.

"Hey, can we maybe talk about this later?" Emily suggested. She pointed a white fist back at the creatures. "We've got bigger fish to fry….no pun intended."

"They just keep coming," Landon groaned. "We could really use some extra help."

"You've got it," a voice reverberated inside his helmet, bringing him up short.

"Doc?!" Landon said incredulously.

"That's Dr. Johnson to you still," Hannah Johnson's voice reprimanded him over the communications system. "And yes. Each of you has a personalized weapon to use," she informed them. "Just hold out a hand."

Landon glanced at Emily, Kealey, and Nakoa, then, turned his right hand palm up. A vicious-looking serrated sword materialized in his hand, forming the same way his suit had. Kealey was holding a coiled pink whip, Nakoa sported two blue daggers in both hands, and Emily had a pair of white fans with bladed edges.

"That should do it," Emily nodded.

"Let's take 'em down!" Nakoa yelled.

"There was just someone talking in my head!" Kealey protested, but as it wasn't seeming to bother any of the others, she rolled with it, uncurling the whip and lashing out, slicing one of the creatures in half like an orange.

"That's the Medusa Stinger," the voice told her. "And I am the 'someone' talking in your head- my name is Dr. Johnson."

Kealey lashed out with the whip again, entangling some of the tentacles of another creature and flinging them out into the water. "Nice to meet you, I guess?"

"Dr. Johnson, what are these things?" Landon asked her. It felt weird talking to himself inside the helmet.

"It's called the Coral Blade," his boss's voice explained over the phone. "Your friend in blue has the Mako Daggers, and the shorter girl has the Venus Fans."

"I'm not that short!" Emily shot back as she sliced through the tentacles of another creature, rendering it a useless white ball that Nakoa quickly sliced to ribbons.

"I actually meant the weird white things, Doc," Landon explained not-so-patiently as he cleaved another of them into pieces.

"Oh. At first glance, they appear to be some type of foraminifera," Dr. Johnson said. "The tentacles are actually a granular ectoplasm that they use for catching food. However, they are not usually this large."

"You don't say," Nakoa grunted, driving the daggers into the white mass currently trying to roll over him.

"In fact, they are a benthic creature-they shouldn't be able to survive out on the land. This is fascinating."

"I'll think they're more fascinating when they stop trying to catch us," Landon replied. Nakoa tossed his daggers, pinning one by the tentacles (not tentacles but whatever, Landon thought), and Landon made quick work of it, dicing it into four quarters and watching it fall apart.

He looked up. The beach was littered with the creatures, and the four humans were the only things left standing.

"Is that it?" Kealey breathed. "Did we get all of them?"

"Looks like," Landon said. His suit disappeared back into the shell in his hand, and he sat down on the beach, breathing hard.

"I think your Doctor Johnson has some explaining to do," Emily told him.

"She's not 'my' Doctor Johnson," Landon replied. "I'm Landon, by the way."

"Emily."

Nakoa waved a tired arm. "Nakoa." He yelped and slid sideways across the sand as one of the tentacles jerked near his arm.

Kealey held up one hand with her thumb and pinkie extended-the classic 'hang ten' sign. "Kealey," she announced. "Now that we're all, you know, normal….will someone please explain to me why everybody keeps telling me I'm not dead?"

Hannah Johnson stood with her back to the four young adults, replaying back the video of the fight on the screen. Behind her, Landon, Emily, Nakoa, and Kealey sat in muted silence, watching the footage themselves. Kealey thumbed the pink shell in her pocket, watching her movements on the screen. "I didn't even know I could do half of that," she muttered. Louder, she said, "So, when's someone gonna explain the whole 'not dead' thing to me? 'Cause the last thing I remember is getting dragged under by one of those things-what are those things, by the way?"

"Doc?" Landon pressed. "You wanna explain what's going on?" He pointed to the screen. "That particular species of foraminifera…their max growth is 20 centimeters. Not seven feet tall. So, they're what? Mutated?"

"I'm afraid not." The screen went dark and then video appeared of an older looking man with graying brown hair and glasses. Two butterfly bandages were holding together a nasty-looking gash in his forehead.

"Kevin!" Hannah burst out. "You're alive!" Landon saw some of the color return to her face and allowed himself a smile.

Kevin McCoy smiled at his wife. "Hi, beautiful. Didn't mean to scare you." Then he turned serious again. "Leo just returned this footage from the bottom of the Challenger Deep. Hannah, honey, you might want to pay especially close attention." Dr. Kevin McCoy pressed a button on the laptop in front of him, changing the video source.

"This was shortly after Rose was hit broadside," he explained off-camera. The five people in Hawaii stared as the little Leo ROV slowly dropped through the depths, finally coming to rest next to a large black smoker.

"Where is that?" Kealey whispered.

"The Challenger Deep," Landon explained. "The deepest spot on the planet." The young biologist watched as something came close to Leo, illuminated in its' little front lamp. Something humanoid. Pale, glowing skin. Glowing green eyes. A mottled purple tail, and then, Leo went flying, the picture going in and out, before finally going out completely.

Landon jumped out of his chair. "Dr. Johnson, what in the hell was that?" he gaped, pointing at the frozen video screen, which Dr. McCoy had rewound back to the mermaid-looking thing that had kicked Leo out of frame.

"We're not sure," Dr. McCoy replied. "We were actually hoping, Hannah, that this would be more in your realm of expertise?"

"There's no fish, no mammal, nothing that looks like that living in the Challenger Deep, or anywhere in the ocean!" Landon argued. "Nothing in marine biology can possibly explain that!"

"He doesn't mean because of my degree, Landon," Hannah cut off his tirade. "He means because I used to be a Power Ranger."

There was a pause. "I'm sorry…a what now?" Nakoa asked.

"That explains it," Emily said quietly, and all eyes turned to her. "Landon, the first time that suit thing appeared…I remember stories from when I was a kid in California. Power Rangers. Suits like ours, fighting off alien invaders," she explained. "Holy cow, Dr. Johnson, you were one of them?!"

"Not in California," Hannah replied. "Here, in the islands. Twelve years ago. Most of you would've been too young to remember." She smiled fondly at the memories. "I was the Orange Oceania Ranger." Then she frowned. "But we defeated Hine Nui. This can't possibly be her again. If it was, I'm sure I would have heard-"

"A group of us are going back down as soon as we repair Rose," Dr. McCoy's face filled the screen again. "We'll see if we can't get you more information."

Her facial expression clearly indicated she didn't like this plan, but Hannah also knew her husband was a stubborn as she was when he was presented with a mystery. She remembered following a certain Navy Lieutenant around trying to get answers once herself. "We'll hold the fort here."

"The biomechanical suits…did they work?" Kevin McCoy asked excitedly.

Hannah nodded. "Brilliantly, actually," she confirmed. She pointed to the young people behind her. "Meet the team."

Landon gave a weak wave. "Hey."

"Everybody's talking about you guys out here," Dr. McCoy was grinning ear to ear. "News travels fast. Sounds like the islands are in good hands while we figure out what's going on."

"Yeah, but," Emily said aloud, "how long will that take?"

"However long it may be," Hannah interjected, "we'll do what we have to. Like it or not, the four of you are all that stand between whatever sent those creatures and the Hawaiian Islands."

There was a pause as Emily, Nakoa, Kealey, and Landon processed that. Then, Nakoa spoke.

"So…no pressure."

Author's Note: And thus ends episode 1! Be honest...how am I doing?