Author's notes - ChibiDawn, yeah, that line was pay-off to an earlier joke about Scott also wearing a blue suit. Billy's such an amazing guy that I imagine he'd cast a really long shadow, even in stories that he's not even in, so Scott would naturally feel that comparison (and he mentions that a couple of times in this story. Billy also talks about that briefly in his own story Heart and Mind). And the thing about Scott is that he is a really smart guy, but the other Rangers haven't quite realised it yet (although they are getting there, and both Brendan and Kim figure that out here). Anyway, enjoy chapter 5! :)

Chapter Five

With the cloud of dust and debris clearing, Kimberly took a moment to shake her head and regain her senses. One of the computer mainframes had fallen on her and was wedged in place thanks to several twisted girders. Taking a breath, Kim punched the girders free then threw the computer away, where it crashed to the floor on the other side of the room. Climbing to her feet, she slipped for a second on the wreckage under her boots, then glanced around. Her face fell behind her helmet.

Brendan had been right beside her when the roof caved in, but the Aqua Ranger was nowhere in sight.

"Brendan!" she shouted.

"Here," came the weak reply.

Kim turned to see a white glove emerging from behind a fallen piece of the wall. She quickly climbed towards him.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"I'm fine, I think," he replied. "I'm kinda jammed in here though. I don't wanna teleport out if I can help it."

"Hang on, I'm almost there."

Reaching his side, Kim braced herself against the floor and pushed the wall section free, giving Brendan enough leverage to pull himself clear. Once Brendan was safe, Kim let the wall fall, and the two Rangers stood up. Offering Brendan a hand, Kim helped the younger Ranger climb free of the debris, before they stopped and gazed around the room. The place had been totally destroyed. On the side with the tunnel, the roof had caved in, leaving a maze of twisted metal jammed tightly in place.

Brendan's eyes went wide. "Where's Scott?" he asked. "Scott!"

Kim turned to the wall, realisation turning to dread. "He was in the tunnel when the bombs went off," she said.

"Oh crap," Brendan said. "C'mon, help me get him out of there! Hold on man, we're coming!" Sliding on the wreckage, Brendan charged across the room to where the tunnel entrance had been, throwing away pieces of debris as he went. Kim immediately went to join him, but heard the floor groaning ominously beneath them. Over the noise of Brendan digging was the squeal of metal straining to support the weight of the wreckage. She grabbed Brendan's shoulders.

"Wait, stop!" she said.

"No, we have to rescue Scott!" Brendan shouted. He was breathless and panting, and a sharp intake of breath made Kim pause. Was he crying?

"We can't," Kim replied. "Listen to the floor! If we go tearing into that, the whole room might collapse! Or we might fall into the cave below and get trapped too. There's too many people counting on us. We can't risk it."

Brendan deflated, and kicked at a piece of rubble. "But what if he's in trouble?" he asked. "What if he demorphed?"

"That's exactly the reason we need to be careful," Kim said. "What if the hostages are down there too? If we bring the roof down on everybody's heads, that's not gonna help anyone."

"Okay," Brendan said softly. "You're right. He's a smart guy."

"Yeah, he is," Kim nodded. "Which means he'll be okay for a little while. But we need to find another way down there. Think about it. That tunnel was really narrow. If you were kidnapping five hundred people in a hurry, would you really use a tiny little crawl space like that?"

"No," Brendan said. "I wouldn't."

"There's definitely another entrance, somewhere in the city," Kim continued. "It'll be large, too. We just need to find it," and she raised her communicator. "Zordon? There was an explosion, but I think we've figured out where everybody is." Nothing but static blared forth from the communicator. Kim frowned. "Alpha? Zordon?" But there was no reply.

Brendan tried as well. "Zordon?" he asked, his voice shaky.

"It won't do any good," she realised. "We've lost them. The planet's moved out of range."

"So Scott's missing and now we're on our own?" Brendan asked.

"C'mon, we can do this," Kim said. They made their way out of the collapsed room and into the hallway. "What did Scott say before?" the Pink Ranger continued. "Whoever attacked the city wanted those people alive."

"But how does that help us find them?" Brendan asked.

Kim pointed to an air vent above their heads. "What do human beings need to live?" she asked. "Oxygen and heat. And where's the only place on this whole entire moon that has those two things?"

"Here in the city," Brendan nodded.

"Exactly," Kim said. "We don't have any way to track the oxygen or air flow, but think about it. Lumelian's been abandoned for hours now. Nobody's using any power. So if someone has tapped into the power grid to keep the hostages alive, we should be able to track it."

"Like a big neon sign," Brendan said. "Literally. But how though? We've lost Alpha and Zordon," and he gestured to a bank of keyboards on the wall behind them. "And neither of us knows how to use the system. I couldn't even guess."

"But before we lost contact, they did it," Kim said. "They switched the computer network back on. We just need to find a computer we can use."

"Yeah?" Brendan asked.

"Yeah," Kim said. "And I've got an idea about that. C'mon," and they raced back towards the surface.

I crouched behind the bus shelter, waiting for the attack from Father Time that never came. The street was still, and aside from my heart pounding like a drum and the distant roar of the ocean, there was silence. One minute passed, and then another. The monster had seen where I'd fallen, and he can't have been too badly injured. Why wasn't he attacking me?

I raised my communicator. "Zordon," I whispered, "I've lost sight of the monster. Can you see him?"

"Negative," came the reply. "We can see you, but there's too much temporal distortion, it's affecting our sensors. Father Time must be drawing a lot of power to enact his plan."

I peeked around the corner. All around were my flickering team-mates, frozen in split-seconds. But there on the ground in the middle of the street was the damaged clock blaster, throwing off showers of sparks every few seconds. The monster was nowhere in sight.

I ducked back behind the bus stop. "Zordon, I can see the clock blaster in the middle of the road," I said, "but the monster must be hiding or something."

"It must be a trap to draw you out of hiding," Zordon replied.

I tilted my head. "Why though?" I asked, thinking out loud. "The monster has four faces and can see in every direction. He doesn't need to draw me into a trap." I remembered how the weapon had fired by itself even after it had fallen from the monster's grasp. "Hold on, I'm gonna try something."

I scooped up some gravel from the ground and lightly threw it onto the road. As it skittered past the fallen blaster, the weapon fired automatically. The stones stayed frozen in mid-air.

Bingo.

"Zordon, we were wrong," I said quickly. "We thought the monster was the trap, but it wasn't. The clock was. Zedd knew we'd go straight for the clock to disable it, so he must've told Finster to build in some kind of motion-sensor. Anyone going near the clock would get caught automatically."

"Scott, you must be right!"

"As for the power source," I continued, "every time the weapon fired, the pendulum in the monster's chest glowed the same colour. That's the key. If I can take out the pendulum, it'll shut this whole thing down."

"Agreed," Zordon said. "If the pendulum is the power source, disabling that will negate the monster's spell. Good luck Scott."

I stepped out from behind the other side of the bus shelter, keeping a wide distance between myself and the clock blaster. As I stepped onto the street, Father Time emerged from behind a stand of palm trees opposite. His face had changed again. Now he was gazing at me with the battle-hardened grimace of a warrior or soldier. His face was scarred and dented, with several teeth missing and deep creases in his forehead.

The two of us approached the centre of the road, keeping as far away from the clock blaster as we could. "So you've figured out my trap?" Father Time asked.

"It was a good one," I said. "But now it's just you and me. And I'm not scared of you."

Father Time held his arms wide, and two bladed clock hands appeared in his hands. "Good for you," he said, raising the swords as he closed in. "But trust me, little boy blue. Your time is up!"

He fell towards me. "Power Staff!" I shouted. The weapon materialised in a flash of blue light, and I caught the descending blades in a shower of sparks.

With a pained groan, I opened my eyes.

I want to say that it was my sense of danger that woke me up. But actually, it was the sharp pain in the back of my head. It was like the base of my skull was being attacked by someone with a tiny jackhammer. As I came to my senses, I could feel my whole body aching. There was cool rock beneath me, and twisted pieces of debris were poking into me from all sides. It didn't hurt too badly, though, so I must've been okay, at least for the moment. Testing my joints, I raised my hand to my head, and felt my sweaty forehead and tangled hair beneath my fingertips.

I blinked.

Oh no.

I'd demorphed.

I pulled back in a moment of panic, swinging my hands out for anything to help pull me to my feet. If I moved fast, I could sprint back to the safety of the city. Hyperventilating, all I accomplished was slicing my hand open on a sharp piece of wreckage somewhere nearby, hidden in the darkness. Yet somehow through my panic, with my lungs burning and my heart pounding, a simple question came to mind.

How was I still breathing?

Stop. Think. If I was outside the city, I would've already run out of oxygen. I wouldn't be able to breathe at all. Wherever I'd landed, it was somehow connected to Lumelian above me, still warm and still with fresh air. Keeping my eyes closed, I remembered advice my mother had once given me in a stressful moment. Stay calm. Control your breathing. I tried to think of anything I could to slow my heart-rate. My friends, my Power Coin, Zordon's deep scary voice. I remembered the first time I'd morphed, and then the first time I'd sat inside my Brontozord. And then I remembered how comfortable the seat always was. At that, I chuckled softly in the darkness.

With my heart-beat back to normal, I opened my eyes and gazed around to get my bearings. Pitch black. That wasn't good. Keeping calm, I felt for my morpher and my Power Coin, letting out a sigh of relief when I found them where they should be. My brain caught up to the last few minutes and I realised I'd demorphed in the explosion, right after the cave collapsed on my head. The blast must've been huge. It usually takes a lot of force to drop us out of our morphs. I must've fallen a long way, too. Whoever had tunnelled into the city had booby-trapped the cave behind them so they couldn't be followed.

But they weren't counting on a morphed Power Ranger, were they?

Even more grateful for Zordon and Alpha's forward planning, I raised my wrist to my mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood.

"Guys, you there?" I asked. "Kimberly? Brendan?"

There was nothing but static. Great. Either the communicator had been damaged by the fall, or more likely, I was so far underground that it wasn't working. Which meant that I probably couldn't teleport to safety. But I realised a second later that I didn't want to. Brendan and Kimberly were somewhere above me, and if I knew one thing, it was that my friends were trying to find a way down here. Which meant that help was on the way, sooner rather than later. More importantly, the five hundred people from the city were down here somewhere as well. Where else could they be? I was their best chance. Then, the next thought hit me. Whoever planned all this? They were down here too. And they thought I'd been killed in the cave-in.

I smiled in the darkness.

Yeah. That'd work.

Wary of my injuries and the shattered wreckage around me, I carefully climbed to my feet. I was bleeding from more than a few scrapes, and my knee was a bit sore, but other than that I was okay. Looking around, I realised I'd been down here long enough for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. A few metres up ahead, I could see a faint shadow. The tunnel! It must've kept going away from the city. It looked to be wide enough for me to follow, and even better, there wasn't much gravel underfoot.

As quietly as I could, I stepped towards the tunnel and began following it.

Back in Lumelian, Kimberly and Brendan raced through the deserted city towards the grand entry hall, their footsteps echoing through the otherwise quiet corridors. As they ran, they could see lights and screens switching on around them.

"I hope you know where you're going," Brendan panted as they ran. "Scott's been down there for a while now."

Kim gestured to the rooms they were passing. "Look around," she said. "It's like Billy's computer when he switches it on. Everything's powering up, system by system." Glancing out the windows, they could see the city's exterior lights switching on one-by-one. "Which means all we need to do is what Scott always does," she continued. "What he's been doing all day now."

"And what's that?" Brendan asked.

Kim met the Aqua Ranger's gaze. "Ask the right questions."

Reaching the end of the corridor, the entry hall opened out before them. Across the room was the tall computer screen standing by itself.

Kim nodded. "And I've been in enough shopping malls to know exactly what a, 'You are here' sign looks like," she said. "C'mon."

Kim crossed towards the giant screen, standing before it as Brendan followed after her. At first, her heart sank. The screen was blank. But as she gazed over the screen, she noticed a blinking cursor in the bottom corner, and smiled with relief behind her visor.

"Computer!" Kim began. "Activate! Or something!"

The screen flickered once, and a shimmering image began to take form. The figure was decidedly feminine, with graceful lines and long billowing hair as if caught in a summer breeze. Kim shook her head with a wry smile. Of course the greeting program was a beautiful woman. Why wouldn't it be?

Turning to the two people before her, the figure began speaking. The first few sentences were in an alien language that neither of them understood, although to Kim's ears it sounded vaguely Spanish or Italian. But both Rangers blinked when the next few words were in perfect English.

"Language detected, English from planet designated Earth," the computer said.

Brendan forgot himself for a second. "Wow," he said. "That's impressive."

The figure turned to him. "I'm programmed to recognise and respond in over two thousand…"

Kim raised her hand. "Save it sister," she said quickly. "This is an emergency. The entire population of Lumelian is missing and we're guessing they've been kidnapped by some very bad dudes. One of our friends is missing too. You're talking to the Pink and Aqua Power Rangers from Earth. We're here on a search and rescue mission. We need full access to your databanks."

The figure blinked and faded from the screen. Kim guessed she was checking to see if the city really was abandoned. After a few seconds, the figure returned and looked down to the Pink Ranger.

"Input the proper code to verify your authority," the program droned.

In a flash of pink light, Kimberly summoned her Power Bow with a thought.

The figure blinked. "Authority verified," and she added quickly, "how may I be of assistance?"

Brendan let out the breath he'd been holding. "Damn," he said.

"I'm assuming the city's security cameras are offline? And have been for hours?" Kim asked.

The figure nodded. "That is affirmative, yes."

"I figured," Kim said. "Okay. Keep sending out the SOS signal, but we need to see the power grid of the city, right now."

"Yeah, we're looking for strange power surges or something," Brendan added.

A schematic of Lumelian appeared onscreen with red lines indicating the power flowing through the city. Kim swept her eyes over the map, and found what she was looking for a second later. "The top corner," she began. "Do you see it?"

"Yeah, I do," Brendan nodded. "There's a huge amount of power flowing past that section there, but there's no 'there' there. Computer, what's the room in the top right corner?"

"In your terminology, Rangers," the program replied, "that is starship hangar six. It's currently empty, although yes, I am detecting odd fluctuations of temperature and power usage. Shall I run a diagnostic?"

"That hanger, is that an evacuation point in the event of an emergency?" Kim asked.

"Affirmative," the computer replied. "I do not understand. Is that relevant?"

Kim turned to Brendan. "More than you think," she said. "Tell us how to get there. Now!"

To be continued.