Author's notes - ChibiDawn, funny you should say that :). The Insectoid is another of my original villains that I thought would fit the PRverse quite well. The first time I used the character was in The Impossible Boy, but that story happens after this one (which explains why Brendan, Kim and Scott respond the way they do when they hear that he's involved). I wrote The Impossible Boy after feeling underwhelmed by Megaforce, but I used three different villains that just happened to sync up with the three villains from that series. I hadn't planned that at all, it's just how it turned out (a fanatical female robot, an army of cybernetic insects, and a horror/pop-culture themed monster as the third. It was a total coincidence). It's why I needed to use the Insectoid in this story, because this is where the team meets him for the first time (plus it allowed me to come up with some back-story and context for the guy. He's not a pleasant fellow, no). As for that dialogue from Kim, yeah, that's a conversation I always wanted to use, and it just fit in perfectly here.

Anyway, this is the big climactic battle chapter, and the brief flashback with Father Time here will show how these two totally separate adventures connect. Enjoy :).

Chapter Eight

I held my ground and raised my fists as the Insectoid closed in, the drone warriors on all sides chirping and buzzing with anticipation. Kim was right. There was easily a hundred of the creatures. But it didn't matter, not for a second. The only thing standing between a vicious army and a city full of helpless civilians was me, and I knew what I had to do. As the drones advanced, I watched as their clawed talons slid down over their wrists and locked into place.

"Great," I murmured. "Upgrades."

The Insectoid tilted his head. "Juszzzt you against all of uszzz?" he buzzed. "Surely you're not seriouszzz?"

"It doesn't have to be a fight," I called. "The Rangers and I, we can help you find a place to live."

The Insectoid snorted. "So we can co-exist?" the creature replied, spitting the word out like a curse. "We have no intention of living side-by-szzzide with you. Our destiny is to conquer! You think we care about the lesser specieszzz that stand in our way? Ask the field how it feels about the locustszzz! You're a fool, boy. There is only war!"

"But there doesn't have to be," I said. "I'm giving you a chance. Take it."

"To do what?" the Insectoid sneered. "How many battles have you fought? Do you think the galaxy cares who liveszzz and who dieszzz? Do you think it matters? How many civilisationszzz have risen and fallen in the last year? The last week? While we've been speaking? Face it, human child. The world you protect is empty and meaninglesszzz. Give up."

All around, I could see the Rangers picking themselves up off the ground and helping the people around us to safety. With Father Time damaged beyond repair, I followed after him, keeping my staff held high just in case.

The monster was lying on the road a few metres away in a pile of rubble. As I approached, he made no effort to climb to his feet. I saw that his appearance had changed to his fourth and final face. He looked ancient and tired, with pale skin, sunken cheeks and a watery eye. There were even more scars and cracks than before, and he seemed pitiful and broken.

Seeing me, the monster's mouth curled into a sad smile. "The ignorance of youth," he wheezed, so quietly I almost didn't hear him. "You still think victory is within your grasp, don't you?"

"Save it," I snapped. "Why do you even bother?"

Father Time laughed, and the sound of it was unnerving. "Let me ask you," he began softly, "how many monsters have you fought? This week? Last week? How many more do you think you'll face after me? Zedd will triumph eventually. If not him, then someone else. All you fight for is worthless sentiment. Haven't you figured it out yet?" And he closed his eye and laughed. "The Universe is a mad, cruel, horrible place, little boy blue, and that's all there is to it."

I grit my teeth, and faced down the army in front of me. "Only if we let it be!" I shouted. I held out my hands and summoned my Power Staff with a thought, the weapon appearing in a flash of blue. "I don't care how powerful you think you are! I am the Blue Ranger of planet Earth! I channel the power of the Brontosaurus! I'm stronger than you could possibly imagine! There are five hundred and twenty-seven people counting on me to protect them, and that means one thing!" I stepped towards the army of drones. "You are not getting past me."

The Insectoid glowed incandescent with rage. "Tear him apart!" he screamed. As one, the crowd of drones surged towards me.

I tightened my grip around the staff as the drones closed in. Expecting an easy target, one of the drones raised his talons and leaped towards me. I blocked the blade with a metallic clang and struck him away with the staff, slamming him into the cave wall. Two more of the creatures charged forward. Dancing around them, I sent one flying with a blow to the head, while sweeping the other's legs out from under him. Even as I kicked him away, more of the drones took the cue to attack, three of them falling towards me with their talons raised. I blocked all three with my staff, kicked the middle creature away and slammed the other two off their feet with a wide swipe. Another crowd of opponents attacked while I was off-balance, but I sent one headfirst into the cave wall with a back swing, catching another high as I turned. I dropped a third with a rapid blow to the stomach. As he crumpled to the ground, I kicked him into the crowd of oncoming foes, taking several more to the ground.

"Stop him!" the Insectoid shouted. "Bring him down!"

No longer underestimating me, the drones started swarming around me, a sea of buzzing faces on all sides. But if they thought for a second that I was scared or even intimidated?

They were wrong.

With my arms and feet nothing but a blur of motion, I kept fighting, slamming three back with my staff before spinning the weapon around me in a wide arc to flatten half a dozen more. With my staff back in both hands, I forced an opponent's talons down then slammed the weapon into his face, before dropping one on the left with a high jab and sending one on the right crashing with a low swipe. One of the creatures slashed low, and I jumped back and over the move, springing forward and knocking him off his feet with a jump kick. I blocked another wild swipe with my staff and shattered the drone's faceplate with a solid right hook, before spinning around and flattening another with a powerful backhand. Dodging under my staff, one of the drones landed a stinging blow to my wrist. With a 'yelp', I dropped my weapon. Even as it fell, I grabbed the drone's head and threw him away, before kicking the falling staff into a line of approaching drones and taking them all down. The staff rebounded back to me, and in one smooth motion, I caught it and swung high, sending a drone to the left head-over-heels to the ground.

I struck another away and dropped two more with a high kick, but they were massing around me and I was barely keeping up with the tide. Glancing around quickly, I saw the tunnel that led back to the city, and realised what I needed.

A bottle-neck.

I sidestepped one of the drones as he sliced his talons towards me. Grabbing his arm, I launched him headfirst into the crowd. Buying myself a few seconds, I somersaulted out of danger, landing in the tunnel entrance and taking two steps back. The drones surged after me without stopping to think, jamming in beside each other in the narrow cave. I grinned to myself as they fought to get clear of each other and approached me single-file. I swung left and dropped one, blocking a swipe from the right and taking another to the ground a second later. I tripped a third with my staff and launched him back with a kick to the chest, while aiming my staff straight for the stomach of a fourth attacker. The blow lifted him off the ground and smashed him into the rocky ceiling. The whole tunnel shook, before he crashed onto several more and took the whole crowd to the ground. The drones still standing visibly recoiled, and with my staff flashing through the air around me, I continued flattening wave after wave of attackers without slowing down.

With his boots pounding the rocky ground, Brendan sprinted back down the tunnel towards Lumelian, dodging the civilians in his way and moving like an aqua blur. Reaching the tunnel entrance, he charged back into the city, weaving his way through the crowd until he finally emerged into the spaceship hangar.

"What's going on?" one of the residents asked, a tall man with a greying beard.

"Something bad is coming," Brendan replied. "I need you all in the great hall, as fast as you can. Shut every airlock behind you. Now what's the quickest way outside from here?"

The man pointed to a hatch against the wall. "There's a maintenance hatch by the hangar doors that'll get you outside," he said. "It's triple airlocked."

"Thank you!" Brendan called, already halfway across the room. Reaching the door, he hit the 'open' switch and lost precious seconds waiting for the hatch to unseal and open. Diving into the chamber, he closed the door behind him and opened the hatch into the middle chamber. It took seconds for the doors to open, but Brendan felt like he was in there for an hour.

"I know this was built to keep everybody safe," he said aloud, as he dashed into the third and final chamber, "but in a time-intensive world-saving situation, this is horribly inconvenient."

Finally, there was a rush of air and the last airlock swung open. The cold blasted through his suit for a second, and he raced out onto the lunar surface. The airlock opened onto a wide landscape ringed by craters and rocky peaks. But as the Aqua Ranger crossed the plain, he skidded to a stop. I'd been right about the bugs. Even as he watched, giant spiders and zord-sized praying mantises were skittering over the craters on a direct course for Lumelian, their eyes red and the panels along their bodies glowing green. He looked up and his eyes went wide at the swarm of wasp-shaped fighter jets descending towards him. All the bugs had drones as pilots, and he realised there must've been eggs in the second cave specifically to provide pilots for the larger creatures. Then, as the building-sized insects closed in, his grin returned.

"Giant bugs?" he said aloud. "Dude. I'm Australian," and he raised his arm to the stars. "I need dinozord power, now!"

With the wall of mechanical insects only a hundred feet away, one of the spiders surged ahead, skittering towards the tiny figure of the Aqua Ranger. The spider raised its front legs to attack when a giant three-clawed foot slammed down onto the creature, shattering it to pieces. The entire army came to a halt at the building-sized aqua Dilophosaurus zord towering over them, suddenly between them and the city. With its glowing green eyes surveying the battlefield, the Dilophozord let out a roar that somehow carried even through the vacuum. Raising his wrist, Brendan tapped his communicator and materialised in the cockpit a second later.

Settling into his seat, Brendan reached for the controls. "Okay big guy," he said, switching the zord's weaponry online, "army of monsters in front of us, city behind us. You know what to do. Go!"

The Dilophozord roared in response. Across the rocky plain, the army of bugs was no longer taking chances. Lining up their target, the mantises and spiders fired, a barrage of missiles and laserfire whistling towards the city spires behind the zord. The zord instinctively turned side-on to catch the blast, and the entire plain erupted in fire and smoke.

In the cockpit, a shower of sparks rained down over Brendan but the zord stayed standing. In a monitor to the left, he saw the buildings hadn't taken a single hit.

"Right," he said, and grit his teeth. "Our turn."

As the insects held back, the Dilophozord charged through the smoke cloud, powering across the battlefield and shaking the ground with every titanic step. The mantises opened fire but it was too late. Reaching the army, the Dilophozord sent a mantis flying with a powerful kick, before crushing two more under its feet. A swarm of spiders closed in, but the zord charged through, sending them crashing like skittles before sweeping its tail towards two more and crushing them against the side of a cliff. One of the spiders approached along the top of the ridge, firing wildly. Brendan pushed the zord through, and the zord lashed out with its front claws, tearing through the spider like paper. Another spider reached the zord's leg and began climbing, but the zord's eyes flashed, shattering the creature with a blast.

Keeping their distance, the remaining insects turned to their opponent and fired. The front of the zord went up in sparks and flame, forcing Brendan to steer the zord to safety. By now they were far enough away from Lumelian not to worry about stray blasts, but Brendan knew time was against him. Hitting a row of switches on the console to his right, panels on the zord's exterior folded down to reveal banks of missiles. Without waiting for his adversaries to fire again, the Dilophozord retaliated with a barrage of rockets, obliterating a dozen opponents in the onslaught. Explosions suddenly rocked the zord's head and chest, and Brendan looked up as the swarm of wasps descended. A blast from the Dilophozord's mouth took out a couple while a wild swipe from its claws shattered another, but several of the fighters buzzed past the zord on a course for the city.

Brendan hit the radio. "Kim?" he shouted. "There's giant wasps heading for the city and I can't stop them all!"

The cloud of wasps fell towards the unprotected city, priming their weapons and preparing to fire. The lead wasps suddenly ignited, bursting into flames and crashing to the ground. The two wasps behind exploded a second later. As the fighters scattered, the pink Phoenix thunder zord descended into view, with the Pink Ranger standing on top of the zord's body, her arms folded across her chest.

"One or a thousand," the Pink Ranger said, "you are not hurting anyone today," and she teleported into the zord's cockpit. "Okay Brendan, let's take these things out!" And the Phoenix shot after the swarm to continue the battle.

With the entire cave shaking from the frenzied battle on the surface, the drones kept coming. Spinning my Power Staff around me, I launched two off their feet before stepping around a third. With my free hand, I grabbed the creature's head and slammed him into the rocky wall behind me. Two more of the drones lurched towards me. Stabbing my staff into the ground, I spun around their attacks and slammed their heads into each other.

I turned back to the cave as my opponents collapsed to the ground, only to find nobody left facing me. The crumpled and broken bodies of the drones littered the floor as far as I could see. Most of them were twitching or buzzing weakly. The few drones still standing were in no condition to fight, staggering around and trying to melt into the shadows. I reached for my staff and stepped back towards the increasingly frazzled Insectoid.

"What iszzz thiszzz?" the creature buzzed in disbelief. "Get up and fight! You are worthlesszzz, all of you!"

"That's what you get for underestimating people," I replied. "For underestimating me."

"No!" the Insectoid shot back. "You only bested the earliest hatchlingszzz! I have hundreds more, all of them slaveszzz to my will! They will live and die for me!"

I realised what he was saying. "And your queen didn't survive the trip from the planet below, did she?" I asked.

The Insectoid let out a short bark of laughter. "She waszzz weak," he buzzed, "and never would've done what waszzz needed!"

"Do you think it matters?" I asked, and pointed to the ceiling. "My friends are on their way, if they aren't here already. Eleven more, just like me. How do you think this is going to end?"

But he wasn't listening, and he marched towards me. "I will tear down that city myself if I have to," he growled.

I reached for my blade blaster and pointed it into the tunnel behind me. Without taking my gaze off my opponent, I fired a blast into the rocky ceiling and collapsed the tunnel. The ground shook for a few more seconds, and as the dust cloud cleared, I saw the Insectoid was frantic with anger.

"If I cannot destroy everything that humanzzz have built," he raged, his voice an ear-splitting screech, "I can at least destroy one of their heroes!" Twin blaster barrels rolled out of his wrists, and he raised both weapons at me and fired. I leaped to safety as the air ignited around me, the blasts smashing into the cave wall and gouging out great chunks of rock. Pieces of the cave wall rained down as I rolled to my feet, but the Insectoid didn't give me the chance to recover, blasting again and again, the stray blasts obliterating everything in sight. I dodged two shots but the third lifted me off my feet and slammed me into the wall, tearing away some of the scaffolding holding up the roof.

Dazed and hurt, I gazed around fearfully. The roof was still shaking, and it was only growing louder.

"No!" I shouted, pointing to the ever-widening cracks in the already-damaged cave walls. "Stop! You need to get your drones and get out of here! The cave's about to come down on our heads!"

The Insectoid cut me off with a blast aimed straight for me. I dived for the centre of the cave and the blast scorched past, doing even more damage to the crumbling cave wall. "Arrogant human!" the Insectoid replied. "You lie to save yourszzzelft!"

Before I could reply, he was there in front of me. Grabbing me by the throat, he casually threw me into one of the support beams holding up the roof. I smashed through the beam and took it with me to the ground. Every part of me hurt, but the damage was done. Huge pieces of the rocky ceiling broke free and crashed to the cave floor, taking more of the scaffolding with them in an escalating chain reaction. The gaps in the wall widened, cracks splintering along the cave wall faster than I could follow. As something large and heavy stomped over the surface above us, the ceiling finally broke apart. With no options left, I raised my wrist and shouted one word over the roar of the collapsing cave.

"Brontosaurus!"

The Insectoid was frozen in shock as the roof came down around him, but jumped to the side as the ground broke open beneath him. He gazed in disbelief as a giant blue Brontosaurus rose headfirst from the depths, staring at the cybernetic insect with a pair of glowing green eyes. The zord's long neck trailed after, followed by its stocky body and column-like legs, rising into the cavern as the place fell apart around us. As large as the cavern was, the metal beast barely fit, the zord's armoured back reaching the ceiling. Scanning the cave, the zord spotted me and let out a bellowing roar.

The Insectoid looked from the roof of the cave to the zord and then to me. "No!" he barked, and fired a blast towards me. "No!"

A panel slid open on the zord's front leg. As the cave collapsed, I launched myself into the zord, diving through the entrance and slamming into a wall as the roof caved in behind me. The panel sealed shut the second I was clear. The Insectoid's howl of frustration was lost in the deafening roar of the cave-in and the rush of air escaping into the vacuum, and he disappeared from view as an avalanche of rubble crashed down over him. Darkness fell as rock and stone continued to fall, and in another few seconds, the zord was totally buried by the collapsing cave.

On the surface, the Dilophozord just destroyed the final mantis when Brendan saw a huge section of the rocky plain collapsing in on itself, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris. The ground beneath them shook for a few seconds, then fell still.

"What the hell was that?" he asked.

Sending the last two wasps crashing to the lunar surface, Kim brought the Phoenix zord back around. "That was the cave!" she shouted. "Scott's still down there!"

Without another word, Brendan charged the Dilophozord across the battlefield towards the sunken hollow that had been the cave roof a minute ago, sweeping aside shattered fragments of the army of giant insects. With the Phoenix circling overhead, the Dilophozord reached the rim of the crater, when the rocks suddenly shook and the Brontozord rose from the rubble. Shaking itself free of the cave-in, the zord climbed out onto solid ground, its column-like legs trembling the ground with every step.

Brendan immediately hit the radio. "Scott, are you in there?" he asked.

"I'm here," I said, safe in the cockpit of the Brontozord. "It's okay. I'm all right."

"Dude, we were freaking out," Brendan replied. "Stop doing that to us! What happened?"

"I took out the Insectoid's army, but he came after me and brought the whole cave down," I said. "It destroyed all his technology and took out all the drones, but there just wasn't much I could do to stop him."

"At least you're okay," Kim said. "That's the important thing."

"It's a good thing he didn't know us very well," I said. "Otherwise he would've known the best part about being a Ranger."

"Always have friends you can count on?" Brendan asked.

I smiled. "Well said," I replied, and the Brontozord bellowed in response. "So how'd you guys go?"

"Lumelian's safe," Brendan said. "All the giant bugs were destroyed. The wasps too."

"And I'm getting word from the city now," Kimberly added, reading a line on the monitor before her. "They just did a head count. Five hundred and twenty seven people accounted for, safe and sound."

"Good work guys," I said, and slumped back in my seat. "Whew. What a day. We did it."

To be concluded.