All's well that ends…
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Disclaimer: Another fic that I wrote over the holidays. You know the drill, power rangers isn't mine. I own nothing.
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A/N: This is set towards the end of the season. For those who don't know, the Lost Galaxy book was an artifact put into Kai's care by a mysterious Guardian. It was a source of information - and trouble, whenoneof it's spellsgot Terra Venture sucked into the Lost Galaxy. It was only towards the end of the season that Kai and Leo figured out how to get them allhome, by reading the spell backwards.
It never made sense to me how Karone, having been one bad-ass sorceress only a season before, hadn't known how to reverse it, and why they wouldn't consult her in the first place. This is my attempt to explain it - and to push the lesson that you really shouldn't mess with forces you don't understand (or else sweet, kind-natured pink rangers will revert to their former evil selves and make you clean insanely huge zords).
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Kai stood up as Leo entered the Megaship bridge.
"How's Mike?"
"Alpha says he's going to be fine."
Kai sighed in relief. For the first time that day, he was totally relaxed. Mutiny had been destroyed, Mike was okay, and thanks to Leo and himself, the colony was out of the Lost Galaxy. All in all, it wasn't a bad day's work.
He saw Leo's answering grin.
"Some day, huh?" The red ranger said. "But I guess all's well that ends – OW!"
He really had good reason for this exclamation, too.
A very pissed-off pink ranger had stalked up behind him and grabbed him by the ear as she would a naughty child. It was kind of funny, really. This huge, muscle-bound guy was cringing away from a slender blonde less than half his weight.
Kai didn't really have time appreciate the irony, though. A moment later, his ear was also siezed in in a painful grip.
"What," Karone said in a deceptively mild tone. "Did I say about the Galaxy book?"
"Uh…"
Kai desperately tried to remember. It was hard to think with her twisting his ear like that. Karone continued, a streak of carefully controlled anger beneath the surface of her pleasant voice.
"I believe I told you to never, ever, under any circumstances try any of the spells, unless it's on my say-so, and under my supervision. Do you by any chance remember that little chat?"
"Oh that chat."
Kai remembered now. He'd been late for a briefing, and trying to find a file that Leo had misplaced during breakfast.
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"…Kai, are you even listening?"
Karone's voice was exhasperated as she watched him frantically search the kitchen. Her hands were on her hips, her lovely face pale with worry.
"Yes, yes," he said absently. "I heard every word."
"Good, because just being a Guardian doesn't mean you know anything about magic. There are powerful forces in that book, Kai. Ones that even Dark Spectre would hesitate to –"
"Found it!"
Kai pulled the file out from behind the toaster and held it high in triumph. He looked to Karone for congratulations on his success.
However, there was a distinctly pissy expression on the pink ranger's face. Her arms were folded, and one finger was tapping on her arm expressively.
"Kai, this is important," she said.
"And I listened," he reassured her. He ran over the things he'd vaguely heard her say. Book has spells. Spells powerful. Should consult Karone before using. Got it. "But I'm running late and I have to go."
"But…" Karone still sounded worried.
He grabbed his jacket from the table. As he headed out the door, he shouted over his shoulder;
"I heard every word."
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"Every word, huh?"
Karone purred the words as only an ex-evil monarch could do.
Kai winced. Maybe he should have paid more attention, but he'd had a lot of stuff on his mind and he'd been been distracted.
"What are you complaining about?" He said desperately. "It worked, didn't it? We're out of the Lost Galaxy."
To his surprise, it worked. Karone's grip loosened slightly.
"I guess it did," she said grudgingly. "What spell did you use? I've been all through that book and I couldn't find a counter spell."
"Oh, we just read the spell backwards," Leo said.
There was a dangerous silence.
"What?" Karone said slowly, coldly.
Kai desperately wished he could reach Leo, so he could kick his thick-headed teammate. The red ranger nodded eagerly.
"Yeah, we figured that if saying the spell forwards made it work, then saying it backwards would do the opposite."
The silence stretched until even Leo must know something was wrong.
"Should we maybe not have done that?" He asked in a small voice.
Kai felt Karone take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Leo," she said kindly. "I'm a sorceress of the highest abilities. I've trained my entire life. I've studied ancient forces beyond your comprehension. By the time I was thirteen, I was one of the most feared magic-practicioners in this galaxy alone. Do you really think that if all we had to do was read the spell backwards, I wouldn't have known that?"
Well, when she put it like that…"It's just that…" Kai said. "I had this dream. There was this ghost, who was telling me we had to get out the way we came in."
"So you trusted a dream rather than me!"
He could tell by the tone in her voice – and the tightening grip on his ear – that he wasn't helping matters.
"Well, we've had a lot of useful people visit us in dreams," he floundered. "Kendrix...and Mike, sort of…"
"…Hexuba…" Leo said helpfully, before Kai could suggest he shut up.
"Uh-huh." Karone didn't sound impressed. "So you trusted the word of a long-dead man, whose motivations and loyalties you knew nothing about, rather than come to me?"
Kai opted to keep silent.
Karone sighed.
"Sometimes I don't understand how you guys have lasted this long. If you'd come up against me as Astronema, I would have defeated you within a matter of weeks. You're so naïve! I could have fed you poison and convinced you it was candy. Andros might be a crotchety old sour puss, but at least he didn't trust every one who walked in the door."
Kai thought about pointing out that her brother was suspicious bordering on paranoid, but kept his mouth shut. One thing he knew for sure about Karone was that to her, Andros hung the sun in the sky and no one was allowed to say any different. Any hint of criticism – that didn't come from Karone herself, at least – brought out the Astronema in her like nothing else.
"Well," Karone said, firming her grip on their ears, making Kai wince and Leo yelp in pain. "I guess there's only one thing to do."
"What?" Kai asked fearfully.
Karone didn't answer as she marched them out the door and down the corridor. They didn't encounter Maya. Kai gloomily reflected that her empathic skills had probably given her a heads-up. Damon stuck his head out of the engine room to see what was going on, took one look at Karone's expression, and promptly withdrew it.
Outside the sickbay, they brushed past one the slaves they'd rescued. She gave them a startled look, but said nothing. Kai supposed that after all she'd been through, this must seem pretty normal.
Karone shoved the two men ahead off her as she marched in the room. Mike, still covered in bandages, half sat-up.
"What's going –"
"Major Corbett, I think you should know."
Karone's voice was crisp and level. Kai had never thought her warm, gentle voice could be so impersonal.
"These gentlemen are responsible for one of the most irresponsible acts of magic I have ever seen – and I used worked for evil. They endangered the life of every man, woman and child on this colony, not to mention every planet in the vicinity. I believe they may have disrupted the space-time continuum. Gravitational forces have been realigned and it's a strong possibility that entire solar systems have been sucked from one galaxy into another."
Kai cringed smaller and smaller as she continued. Mike's face grew steadily darker and darker, like storm clouds looming on the horizon.
"On K0-35, they would face severe discipline. However, as this is an earth ship, and I have no authority here, I must leave their sentencing up to you. If it would not compromise the rangers' identities, I would go straight to Commander Stanton."
Leo staggered slightly, as if his knees would no longer support him. Kai knew how he felt. This was that bad? Like jail time bad? Court martial bad?
Mike's flinty gaze bored into his younger brother and teammate.
"I guess I don't have to tell you how much trouble you're in..."
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"This is all your fault."
The words were childish and without purpose, but Kai found they made him feel a little better. A little.
He glared across at the red ranger who was on all fours, scrubbing at the cargo bay floor. His own hands were wet to the elbow, covered in soapy suds.
It was Leo's fault anyway, even though he wouldn't admit to it. He was the one that had misplaced the file, so Kai had to go looking for it when he should have been listening to Karone.
Leo looked incredulous.
"Me? It was your idea!"
"My idea?"
Kai dropped his scrubbing brush, scowling at his fellow ranger.
"It was your idea!" He said.
"Was not, Mr I'm-the-Guardian-of-the-Galaxy-book-and-I-totally-know-what-I'm-doing!"
Karone's voice interrupted.
"Quiet, children. I'm not interested in whose idea it was. Right now I want this cargo bay spotless."
Kai picked up his scrubbing brush, dunked it in the bucket of soapy water, and resumed scrubbing. He resisted the chilish urge to stick his tongue out at the red ranger.
"Once that's done, you can move onto the rest of the megaship." Karone tapped her lips and a truly evil smile dawned. "Oh – and the Galacta beasts look like they could use a bath."
"The galacta beasts?" Leo straightened. "But they're huge! Where are we supposed to find a bath big enough?"
"Improvise," she said coldly.
"This is cruel and unusual punishment!" Kai complained. "Evil-doers would just kill us! Even they wouldn't be this…evil."
His voice petered out as he remembered who he was talking to.
"Oh, really?" Karone smirked. "If you were on the Dark Fortress, and you pulled a stunt like this, I would have sent you to play with Scruddly."
Leo frowned, looking boyishly confused.
"Who's Scruddly?"
Karone met his gaze.
"Do you really want to know?"
Kai and Leo glanced at one another. Finally in mutual agreement, they ducked their heads and resumed scrubbing.
"You know," Leo said at last. "It could have been worse."
"What do you mean?" Kai said.
"Well, we got lucky, didn't we? The whole galaxy could have got sucked into a black hole. But it didn't. We got back on track, and everyone's okay. So, really, when you think about it, all's well that ends – OW! Karone! That hurt!"
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A/N: When Kai speaks about Mike visiting their dreams, he's referring to how the Magna Defender carried an unconscious Leo out of the cave, and Leo dreams that it was his brother.