Once A Ranger, Forever A Hero
Chapter 9 - Grief

Tommy took a break from recording to watch some of the newscast with Kira. Thankfully Cassidy was still the lead reporter after they gave her some safe images to work with following their last battle. Now she and Devin knew to stay further away from the real action and block any rangers that might de-morph on camera. It was nice having someone in the press that was willing to treat them favourably. A couple of them had even given interviews when it was all over.

clean up crews are beginning to work on the sites where the fight damaged the most. Right now the mayor has estimated the damage in the low thousands with no civilian casualties which is a huge sigh of relief for the community and sign of the rangers timely intervention. I was able to get a few comments from the rangers afterwards and they said that the larger part of this fight was waged in space, aboard an alien ship where the leader of this attack was. Also, I can now confirm that this was a just would-be attempt to invade our planet and that no further threat is expected. We may never know what happened out there in the stars but here on Earth I just want to say thank you to the power rangers and their continued efforts to keep this planet and its people safe. We will continue to update as the situation goes on. For now this is Cassidy Carlisle, signing off.

Kira sighed, "Bless Cassidy's soul, doing damage control for us is not easy."

"No kidding," Tommy agreed. "Well she didn't lie per say, just slid over some more sensitive information."

"Like the fact that there was a freaking armada ready to destroy the entire solar system?"

"Well yes," Tommy looped an arm around her. "Did you talk to Marah and Kapri?"

"No they wouldn't come on the phone," Kira checked her cell for any new message. "Last I heard, Tori told me that Dustin and Hunter were sitting with them. They aren't talking. This whole thing reminded them too much of what happened to the Alliance. Kap is…she'll recover with time I hope. Andros?"

"With Ash and the kids," Tommy looked at his phone too. "Carter hasn't updated about Ash's condition since this morning so take from that what you will." There was a soft knock at the door and Tommy simply shouted, "Come in!"

Adam strolled in wearily, rubbing his neck and rolling shoulders. "Well this sucks. I just got back from San Angeles. The Overdrive team missed a local attack. Fortunately it wasn't catastrophic, minor property damage at best, Hartford is paying for the repairs. The press there is having a field day, especially since we had to downplay the magnitude of Vile's attack here."

"As long as no one was hurt, we can deal with the rest," Tommy reminded him.

"Can we though?" Kira nestled into Tommy's side. "People were hurt. Maybe not civilians but we're hurting right now, some of us are gone forever because of what happened. Others are just lost, think about Hunter and Kapri, how can they even begin to move forward after all that?"

"Andros was suicide mission and we couldn't stop him," Adam added. "In fact we had no other choice but to let him go through with it."

"We took a hit," Tommy replied evenly. "A huge one at that. But every person who has ever put on a suit knows that we aren't invincible. We're given powers but we're just as vulnerable as we ever were. And still we keep going, we keep putting the suit on and charging into the fight. Maybe we don't acknowledge it enough but I think we all know the risks and accept them."

"There are funerals to attend," Kira reminded him.

"Yes and we will mourn for our own as would anyone. I'm not saying it's going to get better right away, or even at all. But we must move on, go about our lives, fight the next fight when it comes. No one knows what we went through and we can never tell. We simply aren't allowed the luxury of letting our pain show."

"Can't say you're wrong," Adam said softly. "Knowing what I know now, if Zordon offered me the suit again, I don't know if I'd take it."

"You would," Kira smiled at him. "I'd take mine. A thousand times over. So much good has come from being ranger. I just wish we'd done things differently for this one fight. I don't see how we'll get through this one."

"We will," Tommy rubbed her back.

"We don't have a choice," Adam filled in for him.

"Well I wasn't going to say it," Tommy said with a growing smile. "I figured I had done enough sermonizing for now." Kira and Adam snorted.

"Sure for at least one night," Adam scoffed. "Thomas Oliver actually withholding the power ranger legacy and duty speech? Now that's what I call character development."

"No," Kira disagreed. "Character development would be him not doing right before and after a fight."

"Now you're asking for too much." The pair burst out laughing and Tommy scowled good-naturedly.

"I'm going to get something to drink. You jerks want anything?"

"Don't you have a recording to finish?" Kira asked.

"Yeah but it can wait." He stood and pecked her head. "Right now I want to spend time with my family."

A/N: Hey guys, sorry for going MIA on you for so long. I hadn't realized that I let things slip until I was checking the upload schedule and noticed I was missing one.