Audrey awoke to the last thing she expected to see. Amy was over her, having just wiped a cool washcloth over her forehead. She moaned a little and then Jay was one side of her while Mal was over her sister. "You're awake." Mal said happily.
"You started running a bit of a fever on the way back to the command center." Jay said. "Emily said that the gash you got from that fight must have become infected." He took her hand in his and squeezed it gently.
"Jordan made you a potion though by that point you had passed out." Mal said. "Miranda had to get you to take it without your being conscious like she did for Amy after Undine broke our legs."
Audrey smiled up at them. "Thanks." She said. She tried to sit up and Jay helped her to do so. Amy placed the washcloth in a bowl with water. The others were there and smiled happily to see her awake.
"I can't tell you how worried we were about you." Lonnie said to her as she handed Audrey a small glass of water. "Try that before we get something more concrete into your system."
She could see Evie already making milkshakes with help from the three blonde samurai girls.
"Mia volunteered to help out with that too." Amy noted to her quietly. "But the others seemed pretty adamant that four people were enough to do that." She giggled a little and added, "Something tells me they're not too impressed with her culinary skills."
Audrey smiled a little at Amy as she took a sip of water but felt she couldn't respond to her. She felt kind of out of it.
Now Fairy Godmother was in front of her. "Take it easy for a few minutes Audrey. You're still in shock from the blood loss. Serena will bring over a chocolate shake in a minute for you if you can hold the water down." Again Audrey nodded kind of numbly.
"So any idea where we're supposed to dump these things?" Mike asked as he glanced at the small table that held the charred remnants of the samurai monster's weapons.
"A black hole comes to mind." Emily said and Mike laughed a little bit at that. Serena smiled a little too and then put her hand to her head. "Are you okay?" Emily asked her sister. That drew everyone's attention.
"I'm fine." Serena answered. "Just a bit of a headache."
"Are you alright child? Fairy Godmother asked as Emily took her to one of the chairs. Ally and Melody took their places making shakes.
"I'm…I'm okay. Getting better." Serena replied.
"What's wrong?" Amy asked her. "Or, what was wrong?"
"Serena was originally supposed to the yellow ranger, not me." Emily revealed to the Auradon rangers simply. "But she came down with this disease; we're not even sure what to call it now. She sent me in her place."
"Is it killing you?" Carlos asked her. Mal shot him a look of annoyance, not sure that was a good question to be asking. Amy placed her hand on Mal's arm to stop her; it was an important thing to know for their friends.
"It was." Jayden now said. "For a while now, during most of our time as power rangers."
"You said was though." Jane noted.
Emily nodded. "There are advantages to this." She said as she indicated her surroundings. "Being power rangers, knowing people with so many diverse backgrounds and unique experiences." She looked at Karone. "We owe them for helping Serena."
"We didn't do anything." Karone said to her. "We just got something to help her." She looked to the others. "It was similar to a disease that struck on KO-35, which Andros was able to identify when we finally first met them. We went to retrieve the antidote but we ran into an old enemy of ours who somehow escaped Zordon's wave, named Bladerunner."
"That sounds like a cool name." Aziz noted.
"Maybe, but he's a threat." Karone replied. Mal and Ben exchanged glances as they noted the lack of past tense use. That meant he was still alive today. "A remnant from the Machine Empire. He nearly stopped us from helping her."
A/N: You're not missing anything; Bladerunner is a charrie I created.
"I've been affected by it for years." Serena said to them. "I haven't fully recovered physically from it yet even with the cure." She took a deep breath. "I'd probably be worse off without the purple ranger powers."
"Who designed them for you?" Jane asked.
A moment of silence passed between the rangers before finally Karone spoke again. "You'll find that with a few exceptions, mostly anything Amber held, that purple rangers show up without any real explanation of where the powers came from." She revealed.
"You mean I shouldn't have powers then?" Mal asked curiously.
"That's ridiculous." Fairy Godmother told her. "Zordon helped design your powers just as he helped design the ones that Amber has used." She patted Mal's shoulder softly. "You're meant to have powers."
"Someone means for this to happen." Serena assured her. "I'm far from the first one to find mysterious purple ranger powers since Zordon sacrificed himself." She seemed to have regained her composure and she looked around. "Okay, so back to milkshakes and weapon destruction." She declared.
Everyone knew that it was time to shelve that topic for now. Emily patted her sister's arm gently before taking a vanilla shake over to Audrey. "Try this; it should help you feel better." She said. Audrey nodded in appreciation.
"The problem is that putting them somewhere in Auradon isn't such a good idea." Jayden said. "The fact is that it would be too easy to find them here."
"Is your world any safer?" Jay questioned, perhaps with a little too much of a challenge to it. "Any evil that wasn't here seems to be in your world, and even when it's eliminated it keeps coming."
Karone frowned a bit at the assessment but she sure couldn't deny it. Even though Zordon was thought to have wiped out the evil in the galaxy it was quickly proven not to be true as several things seemed to have survived; Scorpina, Lokar, Gasket and Archerinna, and Bladerunner for starters. That didn't include anything that showed up afterwards from the various aliens like Scorpius and demons like Olympius and other assorted goons like Master Org and Xandred.
"Okay, that might be true." Kevin granted. "But do you have any better ideas?"
"If only we could find some place devoid of life." Mia commented.
"I don't suppose we could find someplace like that with that gateway thing you guys use to travel from your world to ours?" Doug suggested.
"That's a good idea actually." Karone said. She headed toward the consoles. "Let me coordinate with Alpha and see what we can find."
"Once this is resolved we'll have a dinner to thank you for your help." Ben said to them. He saw a look of amusement pass Karone's face as she had been there the last time they had thrown a little dinner. "I mean it this time. Just us at my palace."
Mike laughed a bit. "Dude, you have to be the only people I've ever heard of who can say something like that and have it sound perfectly normal." He noted humorously.
"I think it's kind of cool." Mia noted with a slightly wistful smile. "To grow up as royalty in a huge castle, surrounded by people who think and feel the same way as you."
"But they don't." Jordan replied simply. "Being royal doesn't mean we think the same thing." She gestured to where Mal, Jay and Amy were. "When Ben decreed that some of the villain kids should be given a chance it was met with quite a bit of concern and uncertainty."
"Back when it started I had some problems with it." Audrey added. "Saying that Ben's mom might have married a prince disguised as a beast, but sometimes the evil fairy was the evil fairy."
"No one could necessarily blame you for that." Emily tried to reassure her. "You were right in that regard as that is what Maleficent really was."
"No arguments from either of us." Mal told her.
"And only time confirms for a person whether their suspicions have any basis in reality." Lauren added.
"And in truth you weren't entirely wrong." Jay reminded Audrey. "We did initially come here to get the magic wand and take it to Maleficent before we changed our minds."
"Man it's still kind of weird to think this is real." Kevin remarked. "I mean most of us grew up with some portion of your parents lives as movies." He glanced at Jordan and Aziz. "I mean I loved the Aladdin movie when I was a kid."
"I know right." Mia echoed. "The Little Mermaid was always my favorite." She glanced at Melody. "That would be your mom's story in our world."
"Her tail." Mike echoed and snickered just a bit, which earned him a glare from Mia.
"Does everyone have their favorites?" Amy asked. Since to them the fairy tales were real it was hard to think about them as mere tales.
"Well not everyone." Serena answered. "There are people who think those stories are ridiculous, not realizing of course that for some it's really a history lesson." She smiled a little. "I'm sure you would find some of our history fairly outrageous. But anyway, there are some people who never hear these stories."
"I'm surprised to hear that one." Lonnie admitted. "I mean it seemed like it was always consistent or something."
"We don't have your stories on KO-35." Karone filled in. "I mean we're a human colony but we until Andros joined up with the others a lot of Earth customs were pretty much unknown." She glanced at the isle kids now. "And I don't have to tell you that growing up evil doesn't give you much in the way of an education in fairy tales."
"You got that right." Carlos agreed.
"Similarly, the upbringing Lauren and I had, training to be samurai so that we could beat back Xandred and the Nighlok's didn't exactly leave us much time for fairy tales either." Jayden added. "Though perhaps that would have been reexamined had anyone known of Auradon."
The alarms went off and this time it was the Samurai rangers who jumped as they were not expecting them, they didn't even know what that meant until Doug brought up an image on the screen and said, "Oh, that can't be good."
"Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?" Mike asked.
"More Samurai." Lauren echoed.
On screen at one of the market places were six more of them. One was wielded a spear, one wielded two clubs, another was actually female and had two small curved blades, one seemed to be a regular looking samurai, one of them had four arms, a sword in each, and the last had a very long and wicked looking sword.
"I thought we defeated all of the samurai." Amy noted. "Where did they come from?"
"The legendary samurai." Lauren answered in shock. "I didn't think they existed."
"This may have been a mistake on our part." Mike replied. "Because they're here looking for trouble."
"Why didn't they show up with the last bunch?" Carlos wondered, not looking forward to another fight with them.
"They wouldn't have shown up unless their other clan members had been defeated." Jayden answered him. "That speaks well for the fact we won the last fight but now we must win this one."
"You'll have to collect their weapons too when you defeat them." Karone said. "That way we can at least banish them all at the same time."
"Are they going to sideline us in a temple too?" Aziz asked with some mirth. He hadn't appreciated that one.
"They may not need to." Lauren answered grimly. "There's a reason they call themselves legendary."
"Then it's time to take these legends down." Mal said. Jayden nodded in agreement.
"I'll stay here to coordinate with Alpha and work with Doug to find a good place to leave these weapons so these guys can't come back." Karone told them.
"Then we better go and stop them." Lauren said but hesitated a moment as she looked to Audrey. "Are you sure you're up for this though?"
Audrey took one last sip of her milkshake and then stood up. "Yeah, I'm ready." She said.
They left the command center and headed for the marketplace. By the time they arrived most everyone had ran in fright. Will was relieved to see his sister was not trying to play the hero roll as she had on the beach with Spider Spear Shark.
"So you were the ones who destroyed our Great Shogun, Grandmaster and shadow warrior." The seemingly lead samurai with the long sword said when the approached. Nothing was said about the other lost samurai. "Return their weapons and we will leave this place, and we might even let you live."
"Like we buy that one." Jay said and Mike laughed a bit in agreement.
"We can't do it." Lauren said to Mal, perhaps a bit needlessly since that was never in the purple ranger's plans. "If we do they might very well be able to restore their fallen comrades."
"Not to worry." Mal said to her. She raised her voice slightly. "Did you honestly think that we would agree to that?"
The lone female samurai spoke now with a small laugh. "No, we didn't. In fact we would have been more surprised if you did." With that the leader himself summoned soldiers to back them up.
"Let's get to work." Mal announced as she pulled out her iPhone. Her team members followed with their iPhones or respective item. The samurai rangers pulled out their samurizers and called out, "Go, go samurai." And "Gold samurai power." After transforming they stood ready to fight. "Rangers together, forever."
Each of the rangers started to move into fight the new samurais. Mal, Serena and Miranda approached the leader. Lauren, Jayden, Audrey and Alex were approached by the four armed samurai. Evie, Kevin and Melody were approached by the one with the clubs. Mia, Amy and Lonnie were approached by the lone female monster. Mike, Will and Jay were approached by the spear carrying samurai and Carlos, Jane and Emily were approached by the last one.
Antonio looked to Ben, Ellie, Jordan, Ally, and Aziz. "Guess that leaves the bling team with the soldiers." He said with some laughter.
"Bling team?" Ellie asked dubiously.
"Yeah." Antonio responded. "Two gold rangers, a silver ranger and a silverish knight, a crystal ranger and in essence a crystal knight." He explained to her.
"Technically she's a dame." Jordan told him and the gold samurai ranger shrugged.
"Alright then." Aziz said. "The bling team will handle the army." That got an eye roll from Ellie but she left it alone. They had no problem bypassing the soldiers as the samurai were already distracted with other targets.
The samurai slashed Carlos hard and he hit the ground with a loud thump. He moved in to try to finish it but Emily blocked it with her spin sword. Jane followed up by trying to attack him but he took a step back and unleashed a swirl of energy that struck the two girls hard, making them fall on either side of Carlos.
"Well that could have gone better." Carlos noted dryly as he stood up.
"At least we're able to try that again." Emily noted as she and Jane stood up. The yellow samurai ranger moved in and tried to attack the samurai. He blocked it but that allowed both Jane and Carlos to come in from underneath him and give him a double upward slash with the magic wand and earthquake claw daggers. He flipped and landed on his feet before advancing quickly and slashing the three of them again. They fell hard but rolled to a quick recovery.
"Any ideas?" Emily asked the two Auradon rangers.
Jane's mind worked as quickly as it always seemed to. "I have an idea, it's kind of a risk." She answered. "Let's combine your powers and mine and direct them into Carlos's earthquake claw daggers. Then he can attack him with all of our combined powers."
"And if he takes me out first?" Carlos asked. He was certainly stronger.
"Hopefully with our powers with yours he wouldn't be." Emily said.
Carlos shoved his doubts to the back of his mind. "Alright, let's do it then." He decided.
With a touch of Jane's magic wand and a touch of Emily's spin sword with the ape disk attached the power was channeled into Carlos's earthquake claw daggers. He ran toward the samurai, this the yellow ranger dodged as he was swung at and then came up with a two part slash attack, the power of earth and magic backing him up. The samurai fell to the ground hard with a loud explosion.
The spear carrying samurai clashed his spear with Jay's soul scimitar. Will and Mike moved in to try to strike with their swords but with a quick whirl, he knocked Aziz aside and then blocked the two sword wielders. He struck with his spear and the two green rangers fell back.
"This guy is certainly strong." Mike noted.
"He'd have to be." Jay replied. "That spear is almost twice as bulky as Aziz's."
The samurai gathered energy into his weapon and then slammed it into the ground, sending a stream of energy at the three rangers and sent them flying backwards. The three started to get up as he charged toward him.
No one could see it through his helmet but Will closed his eyes as he stepped in between his two comrades and the monster. He heard the spear coming and twisted his recursive sword around to block. He tried to thrust the spear into the green Auradon ranger and he blocked and twisted it, forcing the spear out of his hand.
"Wow." Mike said. "Impressive."
"Anbo-jitsu." Will answered with a satisfied smile.
"When you're done teaching Lonnie, you've got to teach me that." Jay agreed.
The two green rangers and the black Auradon ranger moved in together, Mike slashing him down the center while the Auradon rangers got him on either side. Together the three boys turned around as he fell to the ground with a crash.
"You know normally I'd make a comment about girl power here." Mia noted as she, Lonnie and Amy prepared to face down against the female samurai. "But that might actually work against us here."
"How about we go with the power of pink?" Amy suggested with a small smile. It was her favorite color after all. Rose was a great substitute in her opinion since Lonnie was the pink ranger.
"Great idea." Mia agreed.
"So then let's show her the power of pink." Lonnie said.
"A grand show of solidarity girls." The female samurai said mockingly. "But it will take more than lovey dovey princessy stuff to take me down." With that she tossed both of her curved blades. They each rounded out and struck the girls both times, as the three girls hit the ground the blades returned to her.
She then jumped and aimed to bring her blades down on Mia but Amy separated her rose lance into two pieces and blocked the attack. Lonnie moved in then and knocked the blades out of her hands. Mia jumped over them to jump kick her straight in the chest.
Mia used her disc to turn her spin sword into her war fan. "Let's show her a pink breeze Lonnie." She said.
"Great idea." Lonnie said.
"And let the petals go to the wind." Amy added. The two girls used their weapons to cause a hurricane of pink energy to flutter about before directing it to Amy. Using her magic she was able to get some of the rose petals to come off of the lance ends and strike the female samurai.
During the attack she recalled her blades and started to slash her way through the rose petals. She tried to bring her daggers down on Amy but she activated her intangibility and the daggers went through her. The two pink rangers kicked the female samurai away from Amy.
"Maybe we can try her own trick on her." Lonnie suggested. "Toss our weapons right at her."
"It's worth a shot." Mia agreed. The three girls gathered their energies into their weapons and then tossed them. Lonnie's disarmed the female samurai and while Mia's war fan struck her dead center Amy's rose lances curved around and, powered with all four of the elements, struck her twice.
As the girls collected their returning weapons their adversary fell with an explosion. "Oh my pink." Amy said with a laugh.
The samurai with the club moved in to strike at the three blue rangers. Melody and Kevin each turned their weapons to block the attack as Evie unleashed her quaking mirror force to unbalance their adversary.
He recovered quickly enough and brought his clubs down hard on the ground, causing his own quake. Then he rushed forward and slammed his clubs against the three of them hard.
"Got to give them credit." Kevin muttered. "When they land a hit, they make it hard."
"Yeah, lucky us." Evie said with a roll of her eyes. "We have to shut him down."
"I think it would be better to cool him down." Kevin replied and used his disc to turn his spin sword into the hydro bow and unleashed an attack on him.
"Sounds like a good idea to me." Evie said and unleashed her storming mirror force on him.
"After a cool down, it's always nice to chill out." Melody said as she used her trident to deliver an icy wind at him too. "Maybe we should have gotten Ellie to really put the freeze on them."
"We got this." Evie said with a laugh. "It's best to let the bling team do its thing."
Kevin ironically gave Evie the same look of doubt that Ellie had given Antonio. That attention though was broken as the samurai broke right through the lair of thin ice. He charged right at them. A quick maneuver from the blue samurai ranger tripped him up. "We need another plan here ladies." He said.
Evie already had an idea. "Do that again but this time, aim at me." She said.
"Are you crazy?" Kevin asked her.
"No she's right." Melody assured him. "Our combined energies together will make more of an impact that our three energies separated."
The club wielding samurai was already getting up. Melody and Kevin directed their water attacks at Evie, trying to keep it as narrow as possible. Evie used tried to collect as much of it as possible before unleashing her new improved mirror force right at him. He tried to block it with his clubs but the pressure caused them to crack right before sending him flying back in what one could call a watery explosion.
"Good thing there are four of us." Alex noted casually. "Because he's got four arms." He looked to Audrey. "Don't see that too much actually, do we?"
Audrey shrugged a bit. "Actually now that you mention it we don't." She said with a touch of shock. She had to admit she expected monsters to be less humanoid looking than most of them were. Of course they had things like Spider Spear Shark.
Jayden and Lauren moved in and tried to attack but he used both of his arms on each side to block their attack and then swirled around, slashing them each twice. The two rolled back near the two Auradon warriors.
"Let's see if we can make him sweat." Alex said and then laughed a little at his own joke. Audrey couldn't help but rolled her eyes but suspected Ellie might do the same thing sometimes too. He unleashed a stream of fire that ended up being like a crescent. It was enough to block him for a minute.
"Are you two okay?" Audrey asked them.
Jayden nodded. "He packs a bit more of a punch with those four arms of his."
"I think it's time we up our game then." Lauren said to Jayden.
"We'll give you two time to change." Alex said.
Audrey nodded. She already suspected that Lauren was going to use the black box as she hadn't seen it change hands since they had arrived. She did wonder what Jayden was going to do though. The two of them moved in, Alex prepping another round of fire. Audrey raised her elemental bow and shot her electrical arrows over the fire and toward him. She could hear him deflecting her arrows but that was okay as she was trying to distract him.
Jayden formed the shark sword and took out the shark disk. Then he combined them to enter shark mode. Lauren meanwhile placed her lion disk into the black box to enter Super Samurai mode. Together the two of them moved in on their four armed samurai. Both of them unleashed a powerful attack and sent him flying. He had two hands on the ground to balance himself.
Audrey moved in with her elemental bow and Alex moved in with his tonfas to strike at him, knowing that he would block the attack. Audrey then moved in and brought her bow in an upwards strike to knock him off of his feet and stumbling backwards.
"It's time to finish this." Jayden said. "Let's show him the power of fire."
Together with a hail of fire arrows, a stream of fireballs from Alex's tonfas and a charge from the two Samurai rangers it brought the four armed one to his knees, the swords flying in all directions.
The leader faced off against the three purple rangers. Miranda had her blades in her hand, twirling the like a master. Mal held her dragon's eye staff at the ready, vaguely aware that she held her weapon like her mother held her staff. Serena had her spin sword waiting patiently for the first move.
"You require numbers to defeat us." He said with contempt. "That is rather dishonorable."
"Excuse me, but it was yer friends who locked half of us in yer temple." Miranda retorted. "That wasn't exactly honorable either."
"Your Grandmaster and Great Shogun weren't really worried about fighting honorably when they very nearly made Audrey bleed to death." Mal added with some anger. "I think you can stow any rants about honor."
He gave a low growl of annoyance and swiped his sword at Mal. She dodged under it and Miranda flipped over him, kicking him in the chest hard. As he stumbled back Serena tried to bring her spin sword down on him and he blocked it, striking her back. He moved quickly and slashed Mal hard too, but when he tried to get the Highlands ranger she blocked it in between her blades.
"Word of advice, don't underestimate the power of purple." Miranda said. "And don't underestimate me." With that she unleashed her bear spirit and it seemed to leap right at him, making him fall back to avoid something that couldn't possibly hurt him that time.
Mal had to admit again that she was impressed by the way Miranda controlled her animal spirit. She highly suspected that it had to do with the time she spent training, something none of them had done. Even Amy with her rapid training had done so in a short time, and that was primarily on her magic and her own mental and emotional barriers, she hadn't known about her animal spirit until her near tumble into the volcano behind the mountain where the Auradon Megazord was.
Serena rose and again displayed her unique ability as the purple samurai ranger, accessing the abilities of the black box without actually having it. She unleashed a blizzard crash attack on him, followed by Mal releasing her own miniature meteor strike attack on him. This was followed by Miranda drawing energy into her blades and giving him a powerful scissors strike. The three purple rangers turned to their friends as the last samurai fell.
As that had been going on the 'bling team' as Antonio had dubbed them had easily disposed of the soldiers. They collected the fallen weapons.
"Karone, I hope you figured out where we're going to dispose of these things." Kevin said into his communicator.
"I know exactly where we're putting these things." Karone promised. "Bring them to the command center and let's end this."