Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.


The ruined temple of Juno was filled with the sound of lasers, explosions, and the obnoxious laugh of a peacock monster.

In most instances, you would assume that 10 heroes against one monster would be in the hero's favor.

This was not one of those instances.

"Stand… Still!" Gozim grunted, ferociously swiping through the air with his claws, trying to hit the eyeballs pestering him. Predictably, the eyes didn't stand still – after all, how could they, they didn't have feet? – But dispersed, some flying behind him and blasting him in the back. "Dammit!"

Pupils dilated under her mask, Nefer scurried across the room on all floors, chasing a low-power laser dot being generated by one of the eyeballs. "Come back here… You accursed red demon… Yield to me! NYAH!"

She pounced, claws stretched wide to catch the insidious dot, only to crash into Thotep, knocking him over. "Gah! Nefer!" Thotep shouted.

"Sorry! But you were in the way! Where did my precious red bounty go? Where is it? Where is it where is it where is it?!" Nefer demanded, looking around frantically.

The red dot reappeared on her forehead…

As did several dozen more all over her body.

Thotep groaned as the dozens of eyeballs surrounding them powered up. "I really hate your instincts sometimes."

She sighed in resignation as the eyes opened fire. "Yeah, so do I."

Akilah and Shin charged towards the cackling Argus, grimacing in pain as they were bombarded by lasers, but as the tankiest members of their respective teams, they were able to withstand a lot more damage than their peers. "Is that all you've got?" Akilah taunted, deflecting an exploding eye with a swing of her khopesh, which exploded against the wall. "I have faced showers of Roman arrows that stung worse than this!"

"And I lived for decades on the streets, getting gnawed on by rats in my sleep! This is nothing!" Shin bragged, bounding all over the place, doing his best to dodge the worst of the attacks. "… That actually sounds a lot worse now that I'm saying it out loud."

Argus sniffed in disgust. "Disgusting insect. Perish!"

He gestured, and several of the eyes clustered together into much larger orbs, combining their power and firing massive energy beams at Akilah and Shin, who cried out in pain as they were pushed back.

"Golu Maagi!"

Suddenly, the two warriors were encased in rocky armor, the pain from the concentrated laser fire immediately dwindling. "What?" Argus cried in surprise.

"Ha! Thanks for the defensive boost, Ariel!" Shin yelled to the sorceress, who was flitting about the room, firing spells at eyeballs accosting Nushi.

"No problem! Hey Goro, think you can lend them a hand?" Ariel asked, yelping as a laser shot clipped one of her wings.

"On it!" Goro rolled behind some debris, manifested a second gun, and started shooting at the eyeballs trying to swarm him with one while sticking the other over his cover and firing at the eyes attacking Shin and Akilah with the other, able to hit his targets easily by seeing through everyone else's eyes.

Several of the eyes making up the larger orbs burst, weakening the massive blasts bombarding Akilah and Shin, who immediately charged forwards, their stony armor heating up and chipping off as they pushed through the lasers, but still providing them a measure of protection. They slammed into the eye clusters, scattering them around the room, and lashed out with their weapons at Argus…

Who immediately ducked, the massive blades swinging over his head. He then backflipped through the air, landing on top of Shin's ax, and twirled about, flaring his tail feathers and blocking his vision. "Hey, what the-"

"Get off of him!" Akilah snarled, lashing out at the Centurion, but he sprang out of the way just in time, causing her to accidentally punch Shin in the face instead. "Oh shit! Shin, I'm sorry-"

Argus landed on her head and kicked off, shoving her forwards and causing her to slam into Shin, knocking both of them over. Before they could get back up, over a dozen eyeballs glommed onto their armor and exploded, shattering it and causing them to cry out in pain.

"No!"

Furious, Goro started firing on Argus, but the peacock didn't even look in his direction, several eyeballs flying into the paths of the bullets, taking the shots for their master. A massive Shuriken suddenly shot through the air at Argus's head, but the Centurion caught it between two fingers, then bent backwards as Mibojin dove down on him from the ceiling, her blades barely missing his head, and drove the Shuriken into her chest, flinging her away.

He then flipped sideways, dodging an ax strike from Shin which shattered the ground he had just been standing on, lashing out with a split kick which struck Shin in the gut with 1 foot and got Nushi in the groin with the other just before she could attack him, launching her into a winged Cleopatra, slamming both of them into the ceiling. He grabbed Nushi's sword and flung it over his shoulder at Ariel, piercing her through one wing and pinning her to a wall.

He then ducked just as Nefer and Gozim lunged at him from both sides, causing them to slam into each other and fall to the ground. Argus rolled forwards and then stuck out his leg just in time to trip Thotep, causing him to topple over and land on top of Nefer and Gozim before they could get back up, the trio getting badly tangled up in each other.

"THESE are the fabled Egyptrangers?" He sneered. "Eye expected better of you!"

He then took one step to the side just before Goro burst out of the ground, punching him in the gut before he could recover. "How did you-"

"Have you forgotten? Eye see EVERYTHING!" Argus taunted just before every eye on his body, even his eye spots, started glowing before unleashing a MASSIVE storm of laser blasts in every direction, flinging everyone away from him while he laughed madly.

"Dammit… We haven't even managed to scratch him!" Gozim snarled in frustration, punching the ground.

"He's a truly formidable opponent," Cleopatra agreed, landing beside him. "With all those eyes, he can see everything. We can't take him off guard, and he is able to read our body language to anticipate any attack!"

"I don't suppose you ever had to deal with a guy like this back in your time?" Akilah asked the Bugrangers.

"Not us specifically, but… this is like if the Eyes Dopant and Ikagen had a baby, and that baby could fire lasers!" Shin grunted.

"And if Dora Argus was the uncle," Ariel added.

"Thank you so much for the mental image," Mibojin groaned.

"How were those villains defeated?" Thotep asked. "Could we apply those methods to this creature?"

Shin considered. "Well, Eternal beat the Eyes Dopant by using a cape to conceal his movements so his opponent's eyes couldn't read his body language, but that's not an option here because Argus can apparently see through anything. Ikagen, though… Wait. Ariel, do you think-"

"On it!" Ariel said, waving her wand at Goro and chanting a spell. The blue soldier glowed, blurred…

And suddenly there were over two dozen of him, all standing in a ring surrounding the startled Argus. "What? What is this?!" The Centurion squawked, startled. "You… You aren't illusions, what are you-"

"Goro! The Kyurangers were able to deal with Ikagen having eyes all over his body by-" Ariel started.

"Duplicating one of their members so there were enough of them to blast his eyes out!" All the Goros finished her sentence in unison as they raised their guns.

"Wait, what are you-"

The Goros opened fire. Argus frantically summoned eyes to shield himself while ordering more eyes to strike the clone soldiers from behind, but everyone else quickly targeted the eyes attacking the Goros to keep them off his back as the blistering fusillade of energy bullets from the blue warriors shredded the wall of eyes Argus had surrounded himself with and converged on their target. The peacock-themed monster screamed in agony as the bullets impacted his body, his slender form jerking and convulsing wildly as shot after shot slammed into him, the eyes growing all over his frame and armor bursting as his tailfeathers were torn to shreds.

It took a full two minutes of concentrated gunfire, but finally the clone army raised their guns, smoke rising from their barrels as Argus collapsed to the ground, gurgling and gasping for breath. "I never did like peacocks," Goro remarked as his body glowed and all the clones collapsed back into him. "The eye spots give my kids the creeps."

Cleopatra grimaced at this. "Perhaps I should not let them see my menagerie later, then…"

"Great shooting, Goro!" Akilah congratulated her fellow blue.

Goro smirked. "But of course! I never miss a shot."

"Yeah, except when-" Ariel started.

"WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT."

"My tail!" Argus screamed. "My beautiful tail! Do you have any idea how long it took to grow it out that much?!"

Nushi frowned. "Your tail? That's all you're concerned about? Goro just blinded you!"

Much to their alarm, Argus started laughing as he stood back up, feather fragments drifting around him. "You think so, do you? Fools. It will take me ages to regrow my tail, but my eyes?"

He crossed his arms, all of the empty sockets on his body closing…

Then flashing open a moment later, each of them filled with a new eye!

"Those eye can replace whenever eye wish!"

"He can regenerate?!" Mibojin exclaimed.

"Shin, did either of those monsters from the future have a similar ability?" A dismayed Thotep asked.

"Ah. No. No, they did not," Shin said, paling.

Argus laughed insanely, eyes powering up.

"Everyone behind me! Jinga Majuna!" Ariel cried, generating a shimmering magical curtain just before Argus unleashed another massive omnidirectional laser blast, the barrier just barely managing to protect everyone from the deadly light show.

"Well great, he can make more eyes! How are we supposed to hit him now?!" Nefer complained.

"Maybe we could repeat the cloning trick? Except this time I don't stop shooting, ever, until he explodes?" Goro suggested.

Thotep shook his head. "No, I doubt that attack will work on him again, he'll expect it next time. Still, it would've worked, if not for that regenerative power! If only we had a way to more reliably blind him!"

"What about our bandages?" Gozim suggested, some of the black bandages making up his suit unraveling and waving through the air. "Maybe we could bind him, cover up all his eyes?"

Thotep shook his head. "No, we already know he can see through our suits, which means our bandages would not restrict his sight at all. We need something else…"

"Ariel, you seem to know this monster's myth. How did Mercury defeat him in the past?" Mibojin inquired.

"Well, if I recall correctly, Mercury managed to get him to fall asleep, then smashed his head in with a rock," Ariel recollected.

"Neither tactic will work on me this time!" Argus bragged. "Thanks to a blessing from Somnus, I no longer sleep, and a rock to the head won't do any good because I'm wearing a helmet!"

"Wow, he's really covered all his bases," Nefer observed.

"You don't sleep?! Lucky!" An envious Nushi cried. "Do you have any idea how much more work I could get done if I didn't need to sleep? I could have saved the world forever like half a dozen times by now! Cured all diseases, wiped out the Swarm, established a utopia!"

"Nushi, the last time you tried to forego sleep, you attempted to blow up the moon after steak up for a week straight," Coccinella reminded her.

"And I would have succeeded if you hadn't stopped me," Nushi complained. "The explosion would've wiped out Parasitica and left the Swarm leaderless and neutered! Plus, I would've cured lycanthropy!"

"You also would've destroyed numerous branches of magic which draw power from the moon and made Aunt Lunagel very angry," Ariel argued.

"And also caused a lot of damage to the planet's gravitational fields and tides and stuff," Shin added.

"Don't be ridiculous, I'm not that irresponsible, I would've made a new moon!" Nushi insisted. "I can do that! I'm a brilliant scientist!"

The Egyptrangers stared at her in horror and disbelief. "… She tried to blow up the moon?!" Cleopatra asked incredulously.

"Okay, does anyone else have any bright ideas on how we can win it?" An irritated Gozim asked. "Preferably ones that don't involve blowing up the moon, which would make Khonsu very annoyed at us?"

"He's such a killjoy," Nefer complained.

"Wait… Bright… Oh! Of course! I think one of my dad's spells will help here!" Ariel realized. "Everyone, close your eyes!"

She raised her wand, gathering power.

Argus laughed and immediately closed all of his eyes. "Thanks for the warning!"

Nushi chuckled. "Don't thank her yet. After all, you said you can see through anything right? Does that include your own eyelids?"

Argus froze. "Wait. Shit! NO-"

"Gou Golu Gogika!"

The Bugrangers immediately tinted their visors, while the Egyptrangers glanced away. Even then, the blast of light Ariel emitted was so blindingly brilliant everyone couldn't help squeezing their eyes shut reflexively as the light seemed to fill the entire ruined temple.

Through the brilliance, they could hear Argus screaming, long and loud. "My eyes… My EYES!"

Finally, the light dimmed, and everyone was able to see the room again, though they had to blink a few spots from their eyes first.

Argus… Wasn't nearly as lucky.

All of his eyes were open, milky white, looking around wildly but clearly seeing nothing. A number of eyeballs fell from the air and out of hidden crevices all over the room, and from a spattering of thuds they heard outside, all the eyes he had outside the temple waiting to be called upon had been blinded as well. "Eye can't… Eye can't SEE!" He shrieked. "My eyes across the city, return to me!"

"Unfortunately," Cleopatra said, raising her khopesh. "By the time any of them get here, it'll be too late."

Nushi nodded in agreement, brandishing her sword. "Everyone, let's show him what the buzz is all about!"

Argus frantically started ripping eyeballs out of the sockets all over his body. "Eye can still win this… Eye just need to replace the eyes you've blinded, and-"

"Luuma Gonga!"

"Guh!" Argus gasped, his body freezing up.

"That paralysis spell won't last long, get him!" Ariel called to the others.

"Wow, her magic is a real asset to her team, why aren't you nearly as useful?" Nefer asked Thotep.

"My spells take time to write down!" He snapped.

"I keep telling you, you should write them in advance!" Akilah told him.

"I've tried that, but I keep pulling out the wrong spell by accident," Thotep complained. "Or I trip or something, and the spell goes off in my face, and-"

"All of you, focus!" Cleopatra snapped.

"Sorry," they apologized, all of them rushing for Argus.

"Nngh…n-no," the peacock gasped, grunting with exertion as new eyeballs suddenly grew to replace the few he'd torn out. "Stay… Back…"

Despite his paralysis, the new eyes managed to fire lasers in the direction of the two teams, but only managed to get off a few beams before Goro blew them out with several well-placed shots. Gozim and Nefer lunged at the paralyzed monster, slashing through his chest with their claws and causing blood to spatter across the floor. Akilah grabbed him in her jaws and tossed him over her shoulder, slapping him with her tail and flinging him across the room, allowing Goro to pepper him with shots until Mibojin appeared right above him and drove her giant Shuriken into his back, spiking him into the ground.

Shin grabbed him by the neck before he could get up, hurled him into a wall, then threw his ax into the peacock's chest, and with a cry of "Shin Ranger Kick!" Struck the pommel of his weapon with his foot so hard the blade tour through his body and embedded itself in the wall behind him. He stepped to the side as Thotep charged up behind him, only for the ibis-themed Ranger to trip over his own feet, losing his grip on his khopesh, which flew through the air and buried itself in one of Argus's eyesockets, causing him to scream in agony.

"Eye'll kill you…eye'll kill you all!" He screamed, more eyeballs growing from new spots all over his body, glowing as they powered up a laser blast…

There was a twin flash of red, and suddenly he was smashed through the temple wall and out into the courtyard outside, tumbling across the ground, squawking in anguish.

Nushi and Cleopatra, standing in the hole where the wall had once been, nodded at each other and tapped blades. "Shall we end this?" Cleopatra asked.

"Together!" Nushi agreed as both of their teams rallied behind them.

"Ammit! Come forth, and pass judgment on this wretched soul!"

"Weapons, combine! Form Buzz Bomber!"

Argus whimpered. "Eye can't see right now… But eye'm fairly certain eye'm about to die."

"You're absolutely right!" Ariel cheered as the Bugrangers pointed the Buzz Bomber at the heavily wounded peacock, while Cleopatra leveled the transformed Ammit at him.

"Two in one day? Oh my, what a treat! Who's soul shall I be judging today, Your Majesty?" Ammit asked hungrily.

"Argus, Centurion of the Roman Legion!" Cleopatra replied.

Ammit fired a beam of light which struck Argus, freezing him in place as a giant Eye of Horus appeared behind him. "Now, let the scales of justice determine your fate!"

"Everyone, let's show him what the buzz is REALLY all about!" Nushi declared as the scales on the bazooka started swaying back and forth.

"Buzz! BUZZ! BUZZING OVERCHARGE!"

The scales finished their judgment. To nobody's surprise, the heart side was down.

"IMPURE!" Ammit declared.

"Divine Punishment! Heart-eating Purifire!" The Egyptrangers cried.

"Finsecting move: Buzzing Cannon!" The Bugrangers cried.

Both teams prepared to fire their weapons…

When suddenly the skies darkened, the rumble of thunder filling the air.

Everyone looked up. "Wait, it rains here?" Goro asked in surprise.

"Of course it does!" Thotep chided him. "Unfortunately, this is no ordinary thunderstorm…"

Argus cackled madly, spreading his arms and looking up joyfully at the thunder clouds. "It would seem, heroes, that my mistress Juno has interceded on my behalf! GODS OF OLYMPUS! EYE ACCEPT YOUR BLESSING, AND DEDICATE ALL THE SACRIFICES TO COME IN YOUR NAMES!"

Cleopatra gasped. "NO!"

A lightning bolt shot down from the heavens, shifting to take on the form of a Trident which struck Argus, the resulting explosion blasting everyone back. The Centurion cackled madly, his form wrapped in electricity, as wailing dark spirits swirled around his body, which grew and grew until he was 50 m high, towering above nearly every building in Alexandria!

Also, his tail and all of his eyes had been restored, because that's what happens when a monster becomes giant, for some reason.

"Ohhh, so that's how they make monsters grow here," Ariel realized.

"No… We can't have a monster battle here! There's too many people!" Akilah cried.

"Wait, you guys don't usually fight giant monsters in the middle of crowded cities?" Shin asked in surprise.

"Of course we don't!" Gozim exclaimed in disbelief. "We have them out in the desert, where there's less risk of people getting hurt! Why would anyone fight a giant monster in the middle of a crowded city?!"

"Well. You know. Maybe, like, the monster is already there, so you kind of have to fight them where they are?" Ariel said awkwardly.

"You can't just move the fight elsewhere?" Thotep asked incredulously.

"That's, um, not always an option," Nushi said awkwardly.

"The cities of our time are much bigger than yours," Mibojin explained.

"No matter. We cannot allow this beast to destroy Alexandria. Let us summon our God Beasts, and drive him out to the harbor, where we can fight more easily!" Cleopatra decided.

Argus laughed evilly. "Oh, feel free to do that, great Cleopatra. However, Eye doubt you can get them all ready before Eye kill your guests!"

"… My guests? What do you-" Cleopatra gasped. "No!"

Argus laughed. "Yes! Eye told you before Eye had eyes on them…" He turned away from them. "And now, ALL my eyes are on them!"

He lifted a foot in the air…


Everything was going to be fine.

Aranea danced through the legionnaires, her sword and limbs ripping them to pieces.

A prophecy – a true prophecy – could not be averted.

She threw Widow's Bite like a harpoon, impaling a legionnaire in the stomach, then reeled him in, stabbing him in the chest with her other legs repeatedly before casting him aside.

Any attempt to change fate only made it come that much faster.

Antares' tail shot through the air, piercing the skull of a legionnaire that had been about to run her through from behind. Odd. Normally she would've been able to pick up on that sooner.

Where was she?

Oh, yes.

A true prophecy could not be averted, but it could be fooled.

Archers appeared on the rooftops, took aim, and fired at her mother, sister, and their friends. Eyes wide, a flash of utter panic and fury rushing through her, she quickly created a webbing dome around them to protect them from the arrows, then fired more web lines at each of the archers, wrapping around their necks and snapping them with a single swift gesture.

Apista and Philia shot her grateful looks.

Aranea tried very hard not to think about how they had looked after… After Argus had stepped on…

She took a deep breath and wove a webbing lattice around her. A group of legionnaires tried to charge her, only to be sliced apart by the razor-sharp threads.

Fooled. Right. A prophecy can be fooled.

Her vision had been very clear. Argus would turn gigantic, step on two of the people she loved most in the universe – and some of their friends, who she didn't care quite as much about but still respected – and they would be reduced to… To…

She was having trouble breathing why was she having trouble breathing-

"HEY!"

Aranea blinked, realizing she had ensnared the Silver Centurion in a web and was only moments away from dismembering him. "What are you doing?! I'm on your side!"

"Right. Of course you are. My apologies," she said vaguely, loosening his bonds and turning away. There were so many more legionnaires to kill after all.

"I mean, okay, I know I wear similar armor, but I don't look that much like them don't I? Wait, where are you going? Are you all right?"

She ignored him. He didn't have anything worth saying anyway. She need to focus on… On…

What was she-

Right! Her vision had been completely and utterly unambiguous on the fact that her mother and sister were going to be stomped to death. No faking out. No loophole.

But!

Aranea was a skilled Weaver. The best in generations. She was, after all, destined to rule-

Oh, right, Nushi and Ariel had told her it got a little annoying how she kept saying that all the time, mustn't disappoint them, mustn't make them think twice about being with her, mustn't do anything to jeopardize the beautiful future she foresaw for them, not that it could be jeopardized, of course, because fate can't be changed, because if it can be changed that means she might fail, and she couldn't possibly fail SHE COULDN'T POSSIBLY FAIL-

Arachne was trying to tell her something. What was it? Probably nothing important. Nothing was more important than this.

As she stabbed a legionnaire multiple times, perhaps a few more times than he actually warranted – he wasn't Argus, after all, just some random faceless minion, certainly not someone who could turn big enough to step on and crush-

She took a deep breath. Lost her train of thought again. Where was she?

Right! She was a skilled Weaver. Greatest in generations. So it would be simplicity itself for her to pull this off!

All she had to do was make it look like Argus had stepped on them by using her Weaving to craft a scene identical to what she had seen in her vision. Once he turned into a giant, she'd immediately grab everyone, pull them aside, weave her strongest illusion enchantments around them, so strong that surely not even the Centurion's hundred eyes could see through them, then spin together a set of clones that Argus would step on instead, making sure to make them as close to life as possible so that they would… That they would…

That they would look as if actual people had been stepped on. Yes.

And then she would hug her mother and sister and wrap them up in a cocoon where they would be safe and sound until this adventure was over and she would find the next piece of the Loom and they would go back to their own time and have birthday cake which Mibojin could only have one piece of and EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE-

The Web, both her personal one and what was left of the one that had once bound her entire civilization together, was trying to cry out to her. She ignored them. There was nothing important they had to say. She wasn't delusional, she wasn't having a panic attack, she wasn't cracking under the pressure she was fine EVERYTHING WAS FINE SO BACK OFF OKAY?!

She paused, her claws dug deep into a legionnaire's face, and looked up, sensing foreign divine magic. It smelled like electricity mixed with far too much testosterone, almost making her gag.

A lightning bolt lanced down to strike where she calculated the ruined temple where they had encountered Argus was, and an eerie calm fell over her.

Right.

Time to cheat destiny.

She immediately used a web line to launch herself into the air, giving her a vantage from which she was able to snatch her mother, sister, and all those others whom she didn't care quite as much about and pull them several meters away from where they were standing.

Startled, Philia glanced up at her. "Sis? What are you-"

"Shh," Aranea shushed her, promptly covering them in so many layers of spells that they were completely invisible, inaudible, unable to move-

Wait? Could they breathe?

Eh, they'd be fine for a minute or two, right?

As the legionnaires on the ground looked around in confusion, wondering where the hell the large group of women and children and golems and others had just been, Aranea fired up her spinnerets, quickly weaving together exact replicas of the entire group where they had just been standing. Every ounce of concentration and magic in her body had to be focused on this task. Nothing could be left to chance. They had to look so much like the real thing even she would have a hard time telling they were fakes.

Some of her other eyes told her that Argus had almost finished growing. Time was almost up.

Okay. She could do this. Just a few more seconds-

There! Done!

The copies were standing in the exact same place she had foreseen, in the exact same pose, looking up at Argus in horror.

She was so relieved she almost passed out right then and there.

She'd done it. She'd saved everyone. Everything would be okay.

Argus laughed, no doubt in reaction to something one of the others had said on the other side of the city, she hadn't really been paying attention. "Yes! Eye told you before Eye had eyes on them…" He turned towards her. "And now, ALL my eyes are on them!"

He lifted a foot in the air…

And paused.

Aranea's hearts stopped beating.

Argus narrowed his eyes, and then a cruel smirk formed on his beak. "Nice try."

His foot came down, and Aranea suddenly experienced what it was like to lose everything for a second time.