Lee Burton 2002
Legal Crap: I do not own the characters used within this story, all characters are copyright by MMPR Productions/Disney. The "transit" system mentioned is borrowed from Rain Fletcher's Earthsiege as a means for FTL travel. The concept and use of the word "Avatar" to describe the holographic ship aid is borrowed from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda all rights related to this belong to the property holders.
Author's Note: The following story starts in an AU version of the PRiS era during the infamous Countdown. The remainder takes place during Billy's trip to Aquitar to aid in the conflict with the Hydro Contaminator's during PRZ.
Chapter Two: Discovery
1996 - Angel Grove, CA
Two men navigated their mountain bikes down the trails in the mountains surrounding Angel Grove. Stopping for water, they removed their helmets. "Hey Adam, I'm all out of water, can I take a hit of yours?" the young man asked.
"You should have brought more then Rock…" Adam said, tossing his water bottle at his friend.
"Yeah, yeah. I know." Rocky admitted, but suddenly was distracted. "What the hell?"
"What is it?" Adam turned to see what Rocky was looking at.
A flaming object could be seen plummeting from the atmosphere towards the harbor. Only moments later, their communicators chimed out an alert.
"Yes Zordon, we see it too. What is it?" Adam called into the communicator.
"THE OBJECT IS A SMALL CRAFT, AND IT IS PUTTING OUT SECURE RANGER ACCESS CODES. CODES BELONGING TO BILLY." Zordon explained, putting them into a panic.
"Billy isn't supposed to be back yet though! His ship looks to be on fire, can you teleport the craft into the Zord bay?"
"IT APPEARS THE CRAFT MAY HAVE BEEN ATTACKED, I CANNOT GET A LOCK SINCE IT IS PLUMMETING SO FAST. ONCE IT LANDS, I WILL TRY TO TELEPORT IT HERE."
"We'll be right there Zordon."
The two headed back over to their bikes, grabbed onto them, and teleported themselves off the mountaintop over to the Power Chamber.
Power Chamber
Two colored bursts of hued light in the indicated the arrival of the two Rangers, who then saw their teammates arrive only moments later.
"Zordon, what's the emergency?" Katherine asked after she got her bearings.
"As I have already informed Adam and Rocky, a craft was detected entering the Earth's atmosphere. It looks to have been attacked, and has crash-landed out in the harbor, but my concern is that the ship was transmitting Billy's secure codes." Zordon explained with a grim expression on his face.
"Oh no! We've got to help him. Can we breathe underwater while morphed Alpha?" Tanya asked
"Yes Tanya. Your helmets pull the oxygen from the water and allow you to breathe. The suits will also prevent decompression and other ailments from being underwater." Alpha explained while checking for the exact location of the crashed ship. He then grabbed a small beacon and handed it to Tommy.
"Place this beacon on the side of the ship, I can't get a lock on the ship without one as there is too much iron in the harbor seabed." Alpha then added.
"Lets get going then. It's Morphin Time!" Tommy replied, in a hurry to make sure his friend is safe. The five rangers followed through with their morphing, and vanished from the chamber.
"Alpha, I didn't want to worry the Rangers, but Billy never mentioned returning from Aquitar so soon, I am unsure why he did not contact us first."
"Maybe his communication systems were damaged."
"Perhaps."
Angel Grove Harbor
The five Zeo Rangers appeared at the bottom of the harbor in a multicolored explosion of light. Once they each had their bearings, they began to look for the ship. It didn't take very long, as the craft was embedded in the seabed, leaving a trail of debris, but another thing concerned the Rangers, the air bubbles coming from the ship's damaged hull. Billy would drown if they couldn't get him out soon.
"We need to hurry!" Adam communicated to the others and they began swimming over to the craft. Once near the craft they could see that the ship had taken a serious beating, not only during the crash landing, but also beforehand, the hull scarred by laser fire.
Tommy quickly placed the teleportation beacon on the side of the ship, "Okay Alpha, teleport us and the ship to the Zord holding bay."
Moments later, the bottom of the harbor was once again only inhabited by the plant life, sea creatures, and the powerless DragonZord.
Zeo Zord Holding Bay – Power Chamber
A violent gush of water came from out of nowhere as the ship and Rangers materialized, bringing a large amount of water with them, which harmlessly flooded into drains in the holding bay floors.
The five Rangers got back to their feet and swarmed the craft looking for a way inside. Tanya was the first to see a small entry hatch in the side of the ship, "Guys, look!"
She then approached the hatch and tried to rip the panel from the ship, "It won't budge."
"Try your blaster at maximum, you might be able to cut the panel." Tommy suggested as he continued to survey the craft, looking for any other possible entry,
Tanya did as suggested, and found that while it was a slow process, she was able to cut through the thick metal.
Soon enough, the panel fell to the side and Kat made her way inside, having grabbed a med-kit from the wall of the holding bay while Tanya was cutting. She found herself inside of what appeared to be a small hallway, just barely large enough for a human to navigate through. Deciding that the cockpit was a good place to start, she headed in that direction.
Meanwhile Adam made his way inside and headed for the back to survey the damage and make sure the ship wasn't a danger to them or the Zord fleet. Making his way to the back, he found what he figured was a hatch to the engine compartment. He grabbed for the lock arm and attempted to rotate it counter-clockwise, but something had locked the door from another source.
"Maybe the damage triggered some kind of protective measures. I'll have to get the computer back online to unlock it." He spoke to the empty passage before turning back.
Back in the front of the ship, Katherine had made her way to the cockpit door, but was unsure of what she would see on the other side. Opening the door, she gasped at the sight of an unconscious figure slumped over in the control seat.
Moving quickly to check the pilot, her fears were realized when she moved Billy back into an upright position. That was when things got a little weird, other than the electrical burns and pale skin that she expected to find, she noticed that his hair was also shoulder length, and he looked quite a bit older. Checking his pulse, she went cold at the realization that he had no pulse and was likely dead.
Opening a channel to Alpha, she called out, "Alpha, its Billy, teleport us to sickbay now!"
Seconds later, a pink and white flash filled the cockpit, and the two vanished from the ship.
While checking the damage to the ship, Rocky noticed the flash of light from the cockpit. "Guys, Kat just teleported out, if it is Billy, he must be hurt."
At that moment, Adam returned from the hatch to hear the news, "Let's get over there then." He said to the other rangers who nodded in agreement, and moments later vanished from the holding bay.
Power Chamber Sickbay
Four hued flashes of light marked the Rangers entrance into the sickbay, where they saw Kat and Alpha attending to a man with long blond hair. "Wait a minute, that's not Billy..." Tanya said as she approached, but then got a good look at the face. "Oh man…"
She returned to the others, "It's him."
"Kat, what's going on?" Tommy asked the Pink Ranger, but she was much too busy to formulate a response.
"Alpha, give me a cortical stimulator, set it to 350 joules." Kat demanded, to which the little robot grabbed an item from a tray, made some adjustment, and handed it to her, who then placed it on Billy's forehead, and stood back.
The other Rangers watched in fright as the small device shocked Billy, causing him to convulse for a moment, before returning to a limp state.
"Damn, no effect, 200cc of thrombolite." She requested, to which the robot grabbed a hypo-spray, inserted a tube of medicine and handed it to her.
She administered the medicine to his neck, pressed a button on the stimulator, stood back and watched Billy once again convulse.
"Kat, we have a rhythm." Alpha stated as a pulse began to emit from a monitor.
To the observing Rangers, those minutes and the ones following were a blur. Kat and Alpha rushed around like maniacs for about 20 minutes, checking vitals and other tests they simply didn't understand. They were relived however, that Kat had taken an EMT course in the summer, and had gotten some medical know-how from the Power Chamber's databanks.
After about half an hour, Kat removed her gloves and approached the others with a heavy sigh. "He is in a coma, but the worst is over, now we just wait."
"Did you find out what happened, and why he looks so old?" Adam asked, worried about his comatose friend.
"Alpha is running some blood analysis work, that may get us somewhere, but that will take a while to complete." Kat explained, wishing she had a better answer.
"So what can we do?" Adam asked, a huge lump in his throat.
"Nothing just yet."
After a few moments of thought, Adam suggested "If I can get the computer in his ship back online I may be able to get an answer to what happened in the first place."
"Great," Tommy said, "Let's get to work then. Kat, you'll keep an eye on Billy?"
"Yes, I will contact you as soon as we get anything."
Billy's Ship
"Damn!" Adam exclaimed as he was rewarded with a shower of sparks for his effort to reconnect the cockpit mains to a portable power cell.
"What happened?" Rocky peered into the cockpit from the main corridor where he was working with Tommy to pull away some of the damaged panels.
"I can't power the entire cockpit from here, I'm going to have to do it one terminal at a time."
"Oh. Keep at it then." Rocky said before disappearing back into the corridor.
"You do the same, I'm may need to access the power conduits behind those damaged panels."
The Green Zeo Ranger then walked around the cockpit with his power cell and scanner. "Which one…" he thought aloud trying to figure out what all the equipment was.
"Lets try this one…" Adam muttered as he reached down to the console and plugged his supply into a jack on the lower half of the terminal.
Pressing a few buttons on the supply, he was pleasantly surprised to see the terminal begin powering up.
"Yes!"
Moments later, a familiar female voice rung out through the cockpit, "Secondary Power Source Detected, CPU core active…Loading Command Interpreter… Done. Loading Avatar Subsystem: Done. Starting Holographic Matrix."
If Adam had been seated, he would have fallen out of his chair at what he then saw, but was stood up so he grabbed onto the console for support as he watched a holographic image appear and start to take shape.
He watched as the image shifted into a female, but as the image became clearer, he recognized that the hologram was of Kat.
"Guys, check this out!" Adam cried out, alerting the other Rangers who were tending to other parts of the ship. Piling into the cockpit they saw the hologram of Katherine solidify a little and turn to face them.
"Intruder Alert. State your name…"
"Adam Park, Green Zeo Ranger."
"Accessing database…accepted. Adam, where is Billy and what is the current year?" The hologram replied, starting to take on more human speech patterns.
"Um, he is in Power Chamber Sickbay and its 1996." Adam replied, unsure why it would want to know the year.
"Error detected, Computer core lockdown initiated." Avatar replied, reverting back to a more monotonous speech pattern.
"Oh no you don't..." Adam jumped up to the terminal controls and began frantically typing. The others watched on in confusion as to why Billy had a hologram that looked like Kat, and why it was locking down the computer core.
Power Chamber Sickbay
Alpha 5 walked around checking the various monitors, waiting for something to happen. He had sent Kat to get some fresh air, as she was looking a little pale from what was going on.
Suddenly alerted by a beeping tone, he approached the console where the blood sample was under analysis. After checking the results, he opened a channel to Zordon.
"Zordon, the blood results are in, I think we may have a very big problem…"
To be continued...