Disclaimer: Power Rangers is copyright of BVE. No infringement is intended.
RESTLESS WARRIORS
By Etcetera Kit
Chapter Ten: Power of Earth
Taylor watched as the others roasted marshmallows over their dying fire. They were laughing about something. She wasn't sure what it was. She just remained in her lawn chair, reading a book by the dim lantern light that governed their camp site. So much had happened to her in the last two days. She had come on a seemingly ridiculous mission, seen ghosts, been discharged from the Air Force and hired on to the Silver Guardians. The latter two had happened within an hour of each other. Eric had been surprisingly calm and reasonable when she had told him that she wasn't sure when she was going to be able to start and then launched into the long story about what was going on here. Oh well, it was good to know she had a job, even if her boss was the world's biggest asshole, but great in bed.
"That's so not cool, dude!"
She suppressed the urge to duck-tape Dustin's mouth shut. Dustin had opened up since their encounter with the leaders in the spirit realm. At first, he had seemed shy and almost afraid of everyone around him. Now, he was now talking faster than any human being had any right to and he managed to say 'dude' more often than not. It made her wonder if part of this nervous energy was from being surrounded by women, when he was normally surrounded by other guys. She could also tell that Dustin and she were going to get into an argument over his motor-mouth and choice of words quickly.
"Dude!" he was saying to Kira, while laughing. "We slot-car race too. We just have to go over to Shane's place and play it on his computer."
"You don't have it on your computer?" Kira asked.
"Nah," he replied, shaking his head. "I don't do computer games. If it can't be done on a video game system, then I don't bother with it. Besides, I don't like mouses."
"Mice?" Kira asked skeptically.
"No, dude, mouses."
Kelsey and Kira exchanged glances and burst out laughing. Dustin looked at them for a moment, with an exaggerated hurt expression on his face, before he realized that his marshmallow was on fire. There were several moments of theatrics that ended with Kelsey blowing out the marshmallow for him.
"Thanks, man," he said to Kira. "You guys made me burn my marshmallow," he added to no one in particular.
"There's plenty more," Kelsey reassured him as she passed him the graham crackers and chocolate bars to make a s'more.
"I just feel kind of weird being around all these girls," Dustin commented as he squashed the marshmallow between the graham crackers and chocolate. "I mean are you guys going to start talking about weird girl things that I don't want to hear about?"
"Would you like us to?" Kira asked.
He choked on the large bite he had just taken out of his s'more. Maya absently patted his back while staring at the dying embers. "Thanks, Maya," he said. "I think I read somewhere that charcoal is good for your stomach," he added indicating his s'more with the burnt marshmallow.
"Where did that come from?" Kira said incredulously.
Dustin shrugged. "I don't know."
"Well, guys," Kelsey said. "I think we should hike to the bathrooms and then turn in for tonight."
"Hey!" Dustin protested. "What about all the rest of this stuff? We can't let perfectly good s'more ingredients go to waste!"
"Want to make s'mores any other time while we're out here?" Kelsey countered.
Dustin thought for a moment. "Good point."
"Are you sure about that?" Kira asked Kelsey. "I mean look what the sugar's already done to him. Do we want him hyped on sugar every night?"
"He's not in our tent," came the reply. "We don't have to deal with it."
"Quit talking about me like I'm not here, dudes!"
Taylor inwardly groaned. Did they all just think that this was some kind of extended camping trip? Granted, they were still fuzzy about what they actually needed to do. None of the spirit realm leaders had been able to detail what stopping this ceremony would actually take. Of course, they needed to find the ceremony first… and then there were the demons that were bound to be following them and this fairy scout that was coming… it was a mess, one huge, colorful mess and there was no way out of it.
"Coming, Taylor?" Kira called, stepping into the large tent that the four females would be sharing. Kelsey and Dustin were in the distance, sprinkling water over the remains of the fire. He seemed to find it extremely amusing that the embers popped when water was poured directly over them. Taylor rolled her eyes. To think that twenty-four hours ago, Dustin had not been overly fond of fire. Well, she thought back to her first Girl Scout camping trip as a kid—she had gone from being afraid of matches to loving them in a single afternoon.
"Yeah!" she called to Kira.
She already had her things for the bathroom trip ready to go. She had just been waiting for them to get done with their s'mores. Maya and Kelsey disappeared into the girls' tent while Dustin ducked into his tiny tent that had been pitched directly next to theirs. Soon everyone had their things and they were en route to the bathroom with Dustin and Kira exchanging tips on some video game that both of them played. Again, she wouldn't have pictured Kira as the type to be into video games, but… it wasn't her judgment call. The bathroom couldn't come soon enough, as Taylor had had quite enough of the video game talk. Both bathrooms were empty when they finally got there.
"Hey guys, don't come in here and peek!" Dustin called before ducking into the men's bathroom.
"Are you seven?" Kira yelled after him.
"Eight!" came the response from inside the building.
Kira rolled her eyes, suppressing laughter as they went into the women's bathroom. "He reminds me of Conner," she said. "The only difference is Conner has a one-track mind about soccer. He has a one-track mind about video games."
Taylor just rolled her eyes and followed them to the sinks. She had already thought it a million times in the short time she had known these people, but once more wasn't going to hurt. It was going to be a long trip. The girls ended up waiting on Maya and Kira to shower (Taylor assuming that she and Kelsey would shower in the morning). When they got out of the bathroom, Dustin was outside waiting for them, wearing a pair of yellow plaid pajama pants and a tattered wife beater. He was flicking drops of water off of his hair, making patterns on the sidewalk. For a fleeting moment, she was reminded of Max. That was something he would do. She swallowed a lump that threatened to form in her throat. She was not going to indulge in self-pity and loneliness, not now.
"Feel free to act your age and not your shoe size anytime now," Kira muttered.
Dustin gave her a lopsided grin. "Those aren't that far apart in the grand scheme of things."
"I'm willing to bet they are," Kira countered.
"How old are you two anyways?" Taylor cut into the conversation. The words came spilling out of her mouth. She had been dying to ask that question for a while and it just popped out, now that she was annoyed.
Dustin and Kira turned to her with uniform expressions of amazement. Taylor thought for a moment that those two were just not used to people asking them how old they were, but then again, most people were amazed to find that she was as young as she was.
"Twenty," Dustin replied finally.
"Nineteen," Kira said.
Great, Taylor thought. Neither of them is even completely legal yet. She sighed and led the way back to the campsite, willing to bet that Dustin and Kira were bringing up the rear and whispering about her behind her back. She got into her sleeping bag, wondering what had possessed her to listen to that letter, to help these moronic people.
God, she would have given anything to have Eric along. He would have put Dustin in his place a long time ago.
"Vypra…"
She shuddered at Jareth's tone of voice. It was a little under a month before the ceremony had to go forth and there were still many things to be done. She needed certain herbs, incense and amulets. It would be fruitless to send the goblins to do it, since they were, for the most part, incompetent fools. She had to dawn a human disguise and frequent the occult back allies of the human world, looking for the items she needed and then checking to make sure that they were genuine. Jareth had one task—finding a suitable human for the sacrifice. So far, she had not seen even hints that he had chosen a human.
It was people like Jareth that made her wish that she could pull this off on her own, but this was impossible. She needed his power to stop the yellow rangers long enough for the ceremony to go forth. He might be arrogant, but his armies were superior to any other that she could have put together. Besides, no one else would want to follow her. They actually believed that ridiculous scroll that those old fool ninjas wrote. It was stupid to believe what ancient ninjas doped up opium said. Five yellow rangers were not a threat. By the time she was done here, those five would be history along with all the other rangers that had ever been.
"They have called the five together," he hissed. She would never understand how he could make his voice sound angry, while at the same time, seductive.
"You knew they were going to do that," she snapped. "You've seen the scroll as many times as I have." She didn't have time for his surprise. There was too much to be done for this ceremony. She didn't have the time.
"Yes…" he mused. "But I wonder where the rest of your scroll is."
If she had had a heart, it would have started beating faster. Why did he care that her scroll was incomplete? It didn't matter what the rest of the scroll said, their immense power would stop anything in their way. "We don't need the rest of the scroll. We will have enough power to destroy those who do and then that will be obsolete." She paused. It was time to figure out what he had been up to and why there was no human. "So where is the human you keep bragging about using for the ceremony?"
"That, my dear, will be a surprise."
His idea of a surprise didn't tend to coincide with anyone else's idea of a surprise. "You do understand that the human has to have the scarification and be in our keep for ten days before the ceremony?" All of that except the scarification was a lie. The human could have the scarification and be bleeding from it on the altar for all the ceremony cared. It just had to have the marks. It also didn't matter if it was in their keep. But maybe, this would make Jareth get his act together.
"Vypra, Vypra," he said, shaking his head sadly as if dealing with an unruly child. Did he guess that what she had just said was mostly a lie? "How many times must I tell you that the human will be here?"
"Tell me who the human is, since you're so confident about it."
Jareth laughed. "I imagine that when those Yellow Rangers burst in on the ceremony, they will so shocked to see one of their own as the sacrifice, that they will be easy to subdue."
Vypra turned to him, disgusted. "And you say I underestimate their power? Have you considered that that might make them angry and give them more power?" She had seen the way these Power Ranger interacted. Even if they didn't like one another, they fought to the death for each other, if for no other reason that the pure fact that they all had once fought for the same cause.
He looked nonplussed. "Trust me. I can make a deal with one of them to get rid of their Wind Ranger. She will not miss him and the others will not suspect something until it is too late."
"You underestimate them. You cannot plan on pitting them against each other." This was complete madness. Jareth was being a fool. There was no way that that plan could ever succeed.
"I guess this is why I am in charge of security and getting the human and you are not!" he snapped, his voice low and full of poison. "Do not cross me, Vypra. I know my role in this scheme and you know yours. Now shut your mouth!" he spat and stalked from the temple.
She held her breath and counted to ten. There were times she wished she could have found someone other than Jareth, with the same power, to go along with her plan. All the rest of the spirit realm was convinced that they would be wiped out of existence if this went through. They were all fools. She hated the fact that she needed him, was depending on him in this. He was mad. She needed to tell one of the goblins to get another human. There was no way he'd be able to get one of the rangers unless the ranger was captured in a battle.
The amulet she had wrapped around her wrist began to glow and become warm. She ignored it. There were two identical amulets like this in the spirit realm. One belonged to her and the other belonged to her brother, Lucivar. The warmth and glowing meant he was trying to contact her. He had been trying to contact her for days. This was ridiculous. He knew what she had to gain as much as she did. Why didn't he leave alone? The only good thing was that he would not find her here. Lucivar had grown weak over the centuries and his once powerful army had splintered into fragments. One of those fragments had been Queen Banshera. He had called her a fool once too often. Well, they would see who the fool was after this ceremony went through.
But who could find her here? A fairy in the mortal realm could see through her cloaking and find them. A fairy could also decipher the markings on the old ruins and that could lead those rangers straight to them. However, fairies could not stay in the mortal realm long without growing weak, so the chances of a fairy being around long enough to detect her were laughable. Fairies also kept to themselves and eschewed interaction with others in the spirit realm. The chances of Boric sending one of his precious fairies to help Zordon's brats was as slim as a fairy being around long enough to decipher the markings. The other spirits—the Dark Council and the Council of Light—could not pass into the mortal realm unless called by a mortal and they could only remain there as a shadow, a ghost of what had been. They could do no harm and could not help. All of them except Zordon…
She banished the thought.
Nothing was going to stop her. Nothing.
Dustin groaned and hit his pillow, trying to find a comfortable place on the hard ground. However, it was a thing never to be achieved. He never had this much trouble sleeping on previous camping trips, why should this be any different? Well, for starters, he was in his own tent and didn't have anyone to talk to when he couldn't sleep or people to tell him to shut-up or snoring that was rhythmic enough to lull him to sleep. No, it was just him and his sleeping bag and countless bugs and furry woodland creatures outside the tent. It was so noisy out here—how had he ever been able to sleep before. For once in his life, he wished he brought a book or his CD player or something…
He also didn't like being alone when he felt like demons were going to jump into his tent at any moment. That was ridiculous and could be chalked up as him being jittery all by himself at night. Why did he start worrying like this when he was alone and it was dark? During the day or when he was with the others, this wasn't a problem.
And tomorrow they had to start searching the ruins for wherever these demons thought that they could start the ceremony. And that fairy guy had said he was going to send one of his scouts to help them. That was laughable—what was this guy going to look like? He couldn't imagine that someone like Boric would fit in real well around here.
The wind kicked up around the tent.
Dustin shuddered. Maybe he could convince one of the girls to sleep in the tent with him, if he made it clear he wasn't going to try anything. Not that he wanted to try anything with the particular bunch of women with him…
His nerves finally hit a breaking point. He groped around in the semi-darkness by his pillow for a moment, before his fingers closed around his flashlight. Clicking it on, he frantically shone it around his tent for a moment. Deciding that there was nothing unnatural in his tent with him, he propped the flashlight up next to his pillow and pulled his old morpher from his duffel bag. By the dim light of the flashlight, his old morpher and the new one Zordon had given him looked the same. The only difference was that one held his ranger powers and the other didn't. The only male yellow ranger from Earth… he had always liked the color yellow, even though it wasn't entirely manly. And he never knew why he had an affinity for that color, although it started to make more sense once he joined the Wind Ninja Academy.
He shoved his old morpher back in his duffel bag, tempted to go sleep in his car where he could turn the radio on. Groaning, he buried his face in his pillow.
"Dustin?"
Grabbing the flashlight, he shone it at the entrance to his tent. That got him nowhere since he had the tent entrance completely zipped up. "Who's there?" he asked, knowing that it sounded stupid, but he wanted to know who it was.
"It's Maya."
"Oh." He lowered the flashlight from the door and scooted across the minuscule tent floor to the entrance zipper. That revealed Maya to be crouched outside his tent. "Hey," he said softly, remembering that Tori used to yell at them for making noise on camping trips.
"Can I come in?" she asked.
"Sure," he replied, scooting back to his sleeping bag. Maya entered the tent and sat cross-legged on the ground next to his sleeping bag.
"Taylor woke up to your flashlight," she explained in a soft voice. "She was going to come yell at you, but I told her I'd do it."
"Oh." He paused and gave her a curious look. Her features were serene. "You don't look like you're here to yell at me."
"No, I'm not," she agreed. "You're nervous about being by yourself in the tent."
"Yeah," he ran a hand through his messy hair. "I was thinking about just sleeping in my car and putting the radio on."
"You won't have enough room to sleep in there."
"I barely have enough room to sleep in here!"
Maya laughed. "Do you always fall asleep to music?"
"More often than not."
She nodded, a look of understanding coming over her face. "Come on," she said in a motherly tone of voice. "Get in your sleeping bag."
"Huh?"
"I'm tucking you in. Get in your sleeping bag."
It was an order that he didn't dare disobey. He crawled into his sleeping bag and didn't know what to think as Maya zipped him in and turned off his flashlight. Sighing, he turned over onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. A moment later, Maya was gently rubbing his back, a soothing back and forth motion between his shoulder blades. And for some strange reason, he knew Maya was just trying to take care of him. It wasn't an advance. But hadn't Trini told him he was supposed be the caretaker?
But you first must take care of yourself before you take care of the others.
Maya started to sing softly. Her voice was a low alto and rich. It was soothing. Combined with the gentle motion on his back and her voice, he felt his eyes begin to droop shut. He wasn't even aware of the words that Maya was singing. Part of it seemed to be in a language that wasn't from Earth.
Just before he fell asleep, he thought he heard one line of the song.
Though the heavens stop turning, I'll be holding on to our dream.
And that line suddenly made all the sense in the world.To Be Continued...
Author's Note: Words of wisdom: Relish today. Ketchup tomorrow. I read that somewhere- and now I'm not sure where. The usual thanks goes out to new and old reviewers alike. I'm liking all the great comments and feedback in general- keep it up! In many ways, early comments help to shape the future ending of my work. (With long pieces like this, short pieces not so much.) Once more, thanks for reviewing-EK
