Disclaimer in chapter 1.
Author's notes: Thanks once again to Nalan for putting up with me, and to the readers who didn't kill me when I forgot to upload these : )
The Tempest
by Smittysgirl
Devin felt uncomfortable in Mesogog's lair. It wasn't that he doubted Dr. Mercer's word or that the four of them combined couldn't overpower him before the transformation to his reptilian form was finished, but the stories he'd heard about what had happened to Conner and Trent in this place had left deep psychic scars. The debris still littering parts of the laboratory didn't help matters much either.
"We know what we're here to do, people," Dr. Smitty said without preamble. Devin wondered how much this had to be hurting him, he knew the doctors had been friends long before all of this had started. He also wondered if Dr. Smitty truly intended to kill Dr. Mercer when they were finished here.
Dr. Mercer noded. "Dismantle everything but the invisiportal controls. You'll need them to get back anyway. Elsa will be no threat to you without my armaments."
An indicator light above the sensors began flashing. The doctors exchanged a harrowed look, and Dr. Smitty took his place above the station. The monitor switched on, revealing the other group of heroes fighting off the combined forces of the brainwashed Rangers and countless ninjas.
Kira touched her morpher absently. "Oh jeez, they should have checked in a few minutes ago! We were so sidetracked by all this we forgot!"
"Tori," Cam breathed as the blond ducked beneath the reach of the Yellow Ranger, donkey kicking the Red Ranger backwards and rocketing above the Crimson Ranger with a concentrated blast of water. The others might have been holding their own, but none had the young girl's style at doing it.
"We have to help them," Dr. T said firmly. "Anton, this will have to wait. They need reinforcements right now."
Dr. Mercer shook his head. "There's no time. My body is mending itself faster than a normal human's. Mesogog will take control by the time you get this all sorted out. You can't fight a war on multiple fronts, Terrance!"
"I'll sure as hell try," Terrance said.
Inspiration hit Devin like a freight train. He brushed past the others and called up Mesogog's orbital sensor grid. With a few frantic keystrokes and some broad associative scans he had called up the Factory Blue HQ in new Jersey. He grabbed a printout as it streamed out of a slot. "I might have an idea. The rest of you go on without me, I'm no good to you anyway with my -"
Kira tried not to smile. "Devin, you're the Red Ranger now."
"Oh. Yeah. I am." Devin chuckled nervously. "But anyway, I have something I need to try. Go on ahead."
Terrance shrugged. "All right. But be careful," he looked cautiously at Dr. Mercer, who shook his head slowly as if to confirm the transformation hadn't begun yet.
"I will," Devin promised, bolting out the room before they could follow.
"This is bad!" Ethan yelled over the din as he knocked back a squad of irate thunder discipline students, sending ricocheted lightning across the field with his shield.
Trent used his speed bursts to avoid the crush of wind and earth students trying to box him in. "Ethan, I don't think we can limit ourselves by trying to not hurt them!" The White Ranger backhanded a persistent water student to demonstrate his point.
"We're not killers, Trent!" They'd caught glimpses of the ghoulish swath Conner was cutting through the students stupid enough to persue him, and neither wanted to even think about the aftermath of this fight.
"I know we're not!" Trent insisted. "But I don't think we can resolve this through nonviolent means. We have to take this fight to a higher level. We have -"
An invisiportal split the sky above them, depositing 2 of their fellow Rangers and the uniform attired Cam nearby.
"We have backup," Trent said.
"Argh!" Dustin cried as Tori beaned him in the back with his Lion Hammer. Her stomach tightened at the thought she'd hurt her old friend, but she knew that Lothor wasn't playing. The boys would forgive her after, she had to believe that. Just so long as their was an 'after'.
"You're getting on my nerves," Shane drawled, aiming his Falcon Blaster squarely at her head. Before she could move to evade Hunter slipped in from behind and ran his Thunder Staff against her solar plexis, pulling her back against him. "I don't think Master Lothor would mind if I simply removed you from the equation."
Before he could pull the trigger a white and green streak raced up from behind, unsheathing the sword from his back and knocking him into pavement. Shane growled as he rose back up. "Who dares?"
The streak reformed, revealing Trent with his arm snaked around Cam's waist. Cam smirked, gesturing towards Shane with his own Ninja Sword. "I heard you guys were having a block party."
Shane fired the weapon without aiming, sending a stream of fire careening towards the two Rangers. Trent ducked backwards, but Cam dived below the blast, swinging the sword in front of him in widening arcs as a shield. "Looks like I brought the dip!"
Tori saw her chance, elbowing Hunter as hard as she could and retrieving the discarded Lion Hammer. She conked Shane on the back of the head, and Cam finished his charge and slashed the Red Ranger across the chest in one move. The Ranger collapsed and the two former instructors briefly embraced.
From two lanes over Dustin slowly rose back onto his feet. This wasn't at all how Master Lothor had thought capturing their former teammates would have gone, but that didn't mean it had to end in total failure. He concentratred and gestured towards the ground underneath the blacktop, trying to make a connection ...
The asphault in front of him exploded upwards, sending him flying into the radial. A creature in black armor shot up into the air in a move Dustin himself had done hundreds of times, and rained down laser fire on the Yellow Ranger. "What the heck IS that thing?" he cried.
The creature laughed as it landed, still firing on Dustin. He winced as he realized the red accents all along the armor were human blood. "I can use Eric's ninja powers! Oh, this is TOTALLY sweeee - "
It collapsed as overlapping streams of earth and water pinned it down from behind. A small group of students waved to Dustin as they quickly caked the creature in a thick and fast hardening mud. He grinned under his helmet.
Kira shot over the crowd in her Superdino Mode, Ethan hanging under her arms like she was some sort of glider. This was an especially tricky manuever without practice, but the Blue Ranger was pretty confident he could make it work. He just wished he could see the look on the Crimson Ranger's pouty face when he realized they'd copied his own stunt. Just as they reached the target drop, Ethan launched himself from his arms and demorphed, changing his body's density to diamond hard and tucking in a ball.
The students went flying as the Ethan-ball plowed through a line of befuddled ninja students, finally knocking down and coming to rest on the Crimson Ranger's chest. Hunter wheezed underneath the intense pressure and struggled for a moment to get up before relenting.
An eruption of light halted the skirmish for a moment, revealing the fully morphed Navy Thunder Ranger. Both sides stopped what they were doing as he marched unimpeded towards the location of the 3 other empowered Ninja Storm Rangers. He glared down at the felled body of his brother before reaching down ...
Tori flinched, tightening her grip on the Lion Hammer just in case. Cam nervously fingered the keys on the sword, prepared to switch it to Gold Mode.
... and helped Ethan back to his feet. A second later another invisiportal opened and the Red Ranger dashed out behind him. "Hey guys!!" Devin yelled.
"Blake?" Cam asked uncertainly. Navy nodded, brushing off Ethan's shoulders.
"It's me, guys. Devin filled me in on what was happening, since you were all too preoccupied to come and get me yourselves," Blake said.
Devin nodded. "And Blake told me about the Abyss of Evil and your powers, so I had us invisiportal in and take them back ourselves while we were on the island." He produced a Wind Morpher and the Samurai Amulet from behind his back. "I believe these belong to you."
Cam's heart leapt to his throat as he hung the necklace around himself once more. It was the only tangible link he had left to his mother, and he was almost afraid to show the relief he was feeling in front of everyone - friends and strangers included. Tori gently placed a hand on his arm to reassure him.
The remaining students looked to one another in confusion with their leaders all defeated. With a collective shrug they ninja streaked away back to Lothor. Dr. Smitty took a long, horrified look at the felled students that remained. Though none appeared to be dead at the moment, a handful were almost mortally wounded. He tapped the call button on his morpher. "Anton, we've got a situation here. Is your sickbay intact?"
"Not to mention your prisons?' Kira asked into her own.
A sickening hiss emanated from their morphers. "Pl ... pl ... pleasssssse hurry," Dr. Mercer pleaded. "You don't have much longer."
Hayley hadn't gone back to bed when she arrived. Neither team had checked in for almost an hour, and both women were near the point of outright panic. Had Lothor gotten to them? Had Mesogog? some combination there of? Cassidy wouldn't have been surprised if Lord Zedd himself had gotten up and was prowling the earth again.
"You know, it's possible both groups have fallen into jamming fields," Hayley said reasonably. "Some metalwork does interfere with our communications systems, just like cell phones. And just like cell phones there's dead zones. We're only piggybacking on what systems we can hack into."
Cassidy moaned. She didn't want to be thinking about this right now. All of the people she cared about most were in danger, not to mention the rest of her friends. She wished desperately there was something she could do. She wanted to be there, she wanted to be part of it - she wanted to be a Ranger, she realized. Not for the glory it intailed or the power of the preeminence, she wanted it so she could help her friends.
An indicator light flashed, and an image appeared on the screens in front of them. It was Dr. Smitty! He looked at them nervously, and they realized in unison he was calling from Mesogog's lair. "Hey. Sorry we didn't get a chance to call either of you before now, but stuff has come up."
"Terrance, are you a prisoner?" Hayley asked uncertainly. Though she had fight training, she wasn't anything on the order of a Power Ranger. Cassidy knew exactly how she was feeling.
Dr. Smitty shook his head. "Certainly not. We're currently in control of the base, and Anton is ... busy. How long that will last is anyone's guess. The other Ninja Storm Rangers are our prisoners, and Cam and Tori have their powers back."
Both women exhaled at once. No wonder they couldn't be bothered to check in.
"Look, the reason I'm calling is to make sure you don't worry, and to extend an invitation. We have a lot to do here, and we're all running on empty. I'd like you both to come to the island; I can have an invisiportal ready at a moment's notice."
"What about Dino Ops?" Cassidy asked. "It'll be unguarded."
"Open the raptor pens, let them patrol the grounds. The possibilities we have with access to Mesogog's base are incalcuable, I'm willing to risk Lothor attacking our base," Dr. Smitty said.
Hayley sighed. "If you're convinced. I'm not sure how much good we're going to be, but we'll do our best. Set it up near the Cyberspace, please? I don't want Mesogog having the coordinates to Dino Ops even if he is currently on our side."
Dr. Smitty nodded. "No problem."
to be continued