Chapter Six:
The Green Ranger's First Fight
Kenny let out a shaky breath. Dr. Watanabe lay dead in his arms, his blood leaking all over the green arms of his suit. Anger built inside him, and he let out a scream of rage.
"Whoa," Dayton said over their comms. "You good, kid?"
Kenny ignored him, setting the doctor's body gently on the floor and getting to his feet. He started up the birdie rockets at his waist, tapping them like he'd seen the others do a million times before, and took off toward the door.
It slid open at his approach, but his speed was too much to make the turn into the corridor and he slammed hard into the wall.
"Ow," he said, getting to his feet. He shook his head and looked around. The corridor was clear of gas, but bright red alarms flared from the ceiling. His visor was still glitching, so he couldn't detect where the Mask had gone, but he was still connected to the other ranger's visors. From what he could tell, Cage and Madison were heading for the ground level, about to reach the exit. Kenny started up his birdies and took off again, controlling his speed a little bit better this time.
Through his visor, he watched as his fellow rangers blazed through a pair of doors and out into the bright sunlight. "Where is he?" Captain Cage asked, the pair of them looking around.
"There," Madison said, pointing out Dr. Carlin a short distance away, yanking open the door of a taxi and pulling the driver out, placing his hand over the driver's face and gassing him as well. Madison swooped toward the double agent as he got into the cab and drove away. She reached him before he got very far and tore the door open.
"Where do you think you're going?" she asked.
She reached in and grabbed him by the chest, tearing him from the car with her incredible strength. Kenny kept racing toward the fight, keeping an eye on the other rangers' visors as he raced up through the elevator shaft, blew through what looked like a tropical fruit bar of some kind, and shot through the doors into the open air.
"I'm here," he shouted, looking around. "Wait, where am I?"
He took a second to get reoriented. He was currently just outside a small restaurant near the park. He searched for his companions and spotted the pink ranger and the Gas Mask scuffling nearby, Madison struggling to bring the vehicle to a stop as her opponent attempted to gas her.
"Hang on, I'm coming," he shouted. He raced toward the pair just as Peggy broke away from the cab and struggled to get the Mask under control. Kenny came in too fast and ended up slamming into both of them, breaking Peggy's hold on the Mask and sending her tumbling to the ground.
"Hey! I had that!" she shouted, rolling back up.
"Sorry!" Kenny shouted back. The Gas Mask now clung to him as he careened out of control. The man's hand reached up to his face, revealing a multi-chambered gas device on his wrist just as another cloud of noxious gas blinded Kenny. The pair slammed into the ground at high speed, the impact making Kenny lose his grip.
"Ow," Kenny said, getting up from his crater. He looked around to see the Gas Mask crawling away. "Oh, no, you don't!" he shouted. He crawled after the Mask as the Mask struggled to get away. In a last ditch effort, he turned and held his sleeves out, releasing another cloud of noxious gas right in Kenny's face. Kenny reeled back, his visor going wonky again, as the Gas Mask got to his feet and started running.
Kenny shook his head and went after him, bursting from the cloud just in time to see him disappearing down a nearby alley.
"I see him," Captain Cage said in his ear. "He's headed for the other side, on Main."
Kenny and Madison ran together as fast as they could around the block to head him off, much faster than any normal person. They rounded the corner just in time to see him climbing into the back of an unmarked armored car.
"Birdies," Madison said. Both she and Kenny fired up their rockets and took off into the air again as the car sped away. The windows rolled down and four Black Cross soldiers stuck their heads out, holding rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
"We've got bogeys," Kenny said.
He and Madison bobbed and weaved, avoiding the barrage of exploding projectiles. One struck Kenny in the side, knocking him for a loop. After a couple of seconds, he managed to right himself and shake off the blast.
Madison flew up right beside him. "Hey, new guy," she said. "Grab your visor."
Kenny shook his head. "What?"
"Grab your visor." She held up her hand in front of her own face and clenched it as if grasping her visor to demonstrate. Like magic, her sonic disruptor panel appeared in her hand.
"You take out these guys," she said. "I'll go on ahead."
She sped forward, leaving Kenny behind. Kenny uncertainly reached up to his own visor and clenched it, a large titanium-plated boomerang forming from nanites inside it. "Whoa," he said.
"Throw it," Madison's voice told him. "It has a laser-guided targeting system. It'll go where you want."
Alright, Kenny thought. He pulled his arm back to throw it. His visor was still glitching from whatever was in that gas, but it had started to clear up enough to highlight the four soldiers hanging out of the vehicle. He threw the boomerang, and it spun swift and deadly through the air, turning on a dime to strike each of the soldiers, one after the other, knocking them all out.
Madison landed in front of the car, holding out her disruptor and firing off a sonic blast. The car veered wildly out of control, its internal workings all messed up. The pink ranger dodged out of the way as it came barreling toward her, just as Captain Cage came down on its hood with a powerful punch that crumpled the entire front of the car and brought it to a full stop.
Kenny and Madison landed on either side of the captain as he extricated his fist from the wreckage. "That's better," he said. "Now, let's get this guy."
The captain grasped his own visor and withdrew a long whip, lashing it at the front passenger door and tearing it off with one mighty tug. Inside, there was no sign of the Gas Mask or Dr. Cecil Carlin. Just five unconscious Black Cross soldiers.
"None of them match our target," Madison said, reading their life signs.
"Then where'd he go?" Captain Cage said.
Kenny looked around, his now mostly functioning visor scanning the area for any trace of their foe. It picked up on a small section at the back of the car that looked like something should belong there. "I think there was an escape pod here," he said, showing his teammates the spot.
Madison looked over the hole. She started up her birdies and took off into the sky, searching the area for any sign of him. "There!" she shouted. "He's running down an alley two blocks away."
She raced after him. Kenny and Captain Cage started up their own rockets and followed. As they approached, Kenny's visor highlighted his tiny figure running between two buildings.
Peggy reached him first, slamming down in front of him to block his path. "Going somewhere?" she asked.
Dr. Carlin skidded to a halt. He stumbled and tried to run back the opposite direction when Captain Cage landed behind him. "We have you now," he said.
Kenny landed as well, the three of them boxing him in. His shifty eyes moved back and forth between them. "Please," he said. "They blackmailed me. I didn't want to hurt anybody. Honest."
"Oh please," Peggy said, but Kenny picked up on a note of uncertainty in her voice. Her normally serious face now seemed a little shaky in her square on Kenny's visor. Dr. Carlin took the moment's hesitation to let off another cloud of smoke screen.
"Oh, no, you don't," Captain Cage said, not falling for it again. He jumped through the cloud before it could completely obscure the doctor's body and slammed him to the ground, grabbing at the apparatus hidden inside his wrist.
As they struggled, Dr. Carlin clicked his heels together and a new green cloud billowed from the left, a spark igniting on the right. "Look out," Kenny shouted, just as a fiery explosion lit up the alleyway, throwing him back against a brick wall and launching Captain Cage high into the air. Kenny was just sitting himself up and shaking off the blast when he saw Dr. Carlin slip out through a side alley, his gas mask back on his face, his lab coat burned away but his skin apparently covered in something flame retardant.
"Get back here," Kenny shouted. He struggled to his feet and started his rockets again, taking off after the Mask. Dr. Carlin ran as fast as he could away from Kenny but it just wasn't enough. Kenny slammed into him, scooping him up and lifting him off the ground, holding on tight as the traitor struggled. He tried to hit Kenny with a smoke screen again, but his wrist apparatuses had been crushed in his scuffle with Captain Cage.
Kenny flew out of the alleyway and back out onto the public street, slamming Dr. Carlin down onto the pavement and holding him down, tearing off his gas mask and spreading his legs apart so he couldn't try that last trick again.
"That's enough," he said. "You're done. Now, how did you infiltrate us? What were you trying to steal?"
Dr. Carlin sneered up at Kenny. "That's for me to know," he said, biting down hard on something inside his mouth. Kenny didn't realize what was happening until the doctor started to foam at the mouth. He gave Kenny one last cocky grin and slumped down dead.
"No, no, no, no, no," Kenny said, shaking the doctor, but he was long gone. Kenny stared speechlessly at his lifeless form, holding the second man to die in his arms in the space of an hour. His entire body shook.
Madison and Captain Cage landed on the street beside him. "You good, kid?" Captain Cage asked.
Kenny didn't answer. He just kept staring at the body in his arms.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. "You've got an audience, kid," Madison said gently. "We've got to put on a good show for them. To let them know everything's going to be okay."
Kenny looked up to see a crowd of civilians around him. Men, women, children, all looking scared and confused. He took a deep breath and laid the Mask carefully on the ground, rising up to stand before them. Madison and Captain Cage rose with him.
"Everything's alright," Captain Cage said, stepping forward. "No one's going to hurt you. The Black Cross failed in their attempt, and they're not going to try again any time soon."
He clapped Kenny on the shoulder. "This right here is our newest member. Please let me introduce: The Green Ranger."
The crowd were still too stunned by the fight that had gone down to do much more than stare, but they had started to loosen up, several small children starting to stare up at Kenny in awe. Kenny took a deep breath, trying to calm his shaking hands.
Later that night, General Kenpachi and Joshua Cage stood in a private meeting room with Doctor Kuchar and several higher-ups.
"I want to know how he got let in today in the first place," Kenpachi demanded, his neck and ears bright red with anger.
"He's been with EAGLE for years," General Hunter said. "He passed every background check he's ever been through. Didn't even come up after James Cage's virus exposed all the others."
"Meaning?" Kenpachi said.
"Meaning," General Scott said slowly, "He was either the deepest sleeper agent we've ever heard of, or, he was a secret sympathizer."
"Like Leon Hunnisett," General Blake said.
Both Joshua and General Kenpachi looked at each other. They could hardly forget the damage their young recruit's betrayal had caused a few months back. "It would explain why their whole operation had seemed so amateur," Joshua said. "He and his buddies probably came up with it impromptu when they heard today was happening and didn't entirely think through their escape plan. Too focused on how many points they'd score with the Fuhrer, I imagine."
General Kenpachi let out a ragged breath, looking at the chair where Dr. Watanabe normally sat. "I am very tired of losing friends," he said. "Do we know what they were after?"
Dr. Kuchar withdrew a small flash drive from his bag. "We found this on his person. My team scanned it and found that it had downloaded the entire hard drive from the main console in that room. We think he plugged it in before the ceremony when no one was looking and removed after he . . ."
Dr. Kuchar didn't have to finish. Kenpachi had already pieced together the timeline in his own head. "Well, thankfully, the crisis was averted quickly by our rangers. But I would greatly prefer that nothing like this happened again."