"Thank you for coming with me last night." Audrey said the next morning as she walked beside Jay, his hands wrapped lightly around his arm and her head on his shoulder softly. "You know you didn't have to."
"I promised your mother I would." Jay replied to her as he stroked her hand gently with his free one. "And it was nice to get a home cooked meal." He chuckled just a bit. "You know I'm still not used to the idea of plenty of food to go around."
"It takes time to get used to things, and so much has happened to all of really since we all became power rangers." Audrey said to him. "Maybe even beforehand, since you guys first came here from the Isle of the Lost."
"And you didn't see us dating back then did you?" Jay asked teasingly.
"No, no I didn't." Audrey admitted simply. "Nothing has worked out the way I thought it would have back then but it's all worked out for the better I think." She bit her lip. "Well, for the most part anyway." She added as she thought about Chad's descent into darkness. As foolish as it sounded she still put much of the blame for that on herself.
"Don't feel that way Audrey." They heard Amy say as she came running up to the two of them, Mal and Ben behind her in basically the same positions as the brunette princess and the former thief. "People make their own decisions in life."
Audrey supposed she shouldn't have been surprised that the rose haired twin had read her mind. "I know that." She replied. "It's just so hard not to feel that it's my fault somehow." She looked to Mal and the two girls. "I know that he chose to attack me to get his powers, that he decided he wanted me regardless of what I say about it, and that he chose to embrace demonic powers. It's just hard not to feel that I'm partly responsible for it."
"I do get it." Ben promised Audrey. "Chad was my best friend too, like a brother for years." His face took on a hard appearance. "I can accept the fact he had problems with my proclamation, I can accept the fact he had problems with who I chose to date. But he chose to start harassing and assaulting a woman, let alone one who's been both of our friends, and he chose to turn his back on Auradon for an invading force. That's not something you forgive but those were still his choices, and I know we both tried to get him off that path."
"I think you trying to get him off that path is the reason he first slapped you." Mal reminded Audrey as kindly as she could but knowing it wasn't exactly a cotton ball kind of conversation. "That isn't the kind of guy you should be feeling pity or sadness for." The purple haired girl could see in her friend's expression that the princess knew she was right and yet she couldn't entirely dismiss the feeling. It showed how complex Audrey had grown to become, if she hadn't always been that way.
They joined the rest of their friends on some benches outside to spend some time together as friends before school began.
"Ready for your first day of school Aquiella?" Carlos asked her as he threw a tennis ball for the campus mutt and his technical pet, a small dog named Dude.
"I think I am." Aquiella answered him. "I'm looking forward to this magic class."
"It'll be so cool to work with someone else who knows one of my elements." Amy practically beamed from her place next to Alex and Mal.
"And I bet you'll have a lot to teach her too." Alex added. Both he and Ellie were here because they had limited control over their abilities, and perhaps a bit worse for him because he didn't have any precedence for his fire power whereas at least Ellie had a bit of experience from her mother Queen Elsa of Arendelle. Of course ice was not a basic element so Amy didn't really have any control over that, though Mal suspected in time she might.
"Well there might be water tricks I can teach." Aquiella agreed nonchalantly. "But I think what will be interesting is to see if we can figure out if we can expand your other abilities."
"You mean you want to see if I can become a telepath?" Amy asked her.
"Yes." Aquiella said. "It might be limited, much like mine since I can only do it with a good amount of water nearby. But even a limited capacity is still an extra boost."
"Oh, that would be kind of cool." Amy agreed. "And you're right; any small boost is still an improvement." She was trying very hard to stand still as this discussion was making her kind of excited, and Mal knew how energetic her sister could be with ideas she liked. "And speaking of expanding abilities I think I can teach you how to be intangible too."
"You think?" Miranda asked her.
Amy nodded. "Different principles for her, but if you look at a water bottle the water is essentially invisible and I think we can replicate that effect for Aquiella." She explained.
"I know mom will be interested in how you two do in expanding each other's magical talents." Jane said to the two girls. "Even when magic was common it didn't seem to be so…so interchangeable. Powers might be similar but even then they were still unique."
"I wonder if some of that is because of the ranger powers." Evie contemplated. "I mean all of our powers are connected to this morphing grid on some level that was established by Zordon who knows how long ago."
"That would be an interesting topic to explore." Carlos agreed. "I mean magic seems to be even more rare for the rangers of Earth than it is here. I wonder why that is and what that means for them."
"Well this is the same world where our parents lives are fairy tales." Lonnie pointed out. "Magic may not even be a huge factor for most of them."
"Maybe, but I seem to recall at least one team of rangers whose powers were based largely off of magic, the Mystic Force Rangers." Jane replied. "And I think something was even said that the one who helped with those powers was once the nemesis of the original rangers like Jason…what was it, Rita Repulsa, I think."
Amy gave off a small little laugh as she looked to her twin. "Can you imagine mom being responsible for a group of ranger powers?" She asked with amusement.
Mal snickered herself. "Yeah, right. The only one's she would be responsible for would be the Psycho Rangers 2.0." She replied derisively.
"Actually I think your mother would be more likely to figure out how to cut off the entire world from the morphing grid." Carlos noted absently as he again tossed the tennis ball for Dude to go after. "She much preferred being the most powerful person in the world, even though strictly speaking that might not have been true."
Audrey couldn't help but say it, "Yeah, the most powerful evil fairy in the world lost to my dad, so maybe not that great."
Mal and Amy exchanged a look but ironically they were exchanging looks of agreement. It was always a source of amusement to the older twin that her mother lost to a human man despite being a powerful evil fairy while the younger twin just considered it proof that good really was stronger than evil when a non-magical good being could overcome an evil magical being.
"What does that say anyway?" Lonnie wondered absently. "I mean, so many of our parents were ordinary people who dealt with magic of some sort and yet were able to come out ahead, and we've been using powers to barely stay one step in front of our problems."
"What it says is that times have changed." Miranda replied. "Not to put down anything our parents did but the enemy itself has gotten smarter. They work together now, though perhaps not very well. They've become more ruthless and demanding."
"They can cross lines that we won't, or shouldn't." Will added simply. "They can also do things that we usually won't even think of doing."
The bell rang for classes. The guys volunteered to walk their girlfriends to their classes, and Alex did the same for Amy despite them not being officially a couple. Mal was waiting for it to happen though. She had never really seen a guy capture her sister's interests before, but then again no guy on the isle could ever be like Alex was.
Maleficent paced the bridge. Behind her were Chad and Gregory. Further off on the back was Jabberwock, who was ordering the soldiers for their imminent assault. Paradias watched from his throne.
"Explain to me how we're going to strip Audrey and the others of their powers without stripping us of our powers too." Chad said to Maleficent again.
The evil fairy queen let out an impatient sigh. "Look, you won't even be down there when that happens. You'll slip right by the grid and the demonic powers are unique enough that once you slip through the cracks you won't be effected by it."
"And me?" Gregory asked.
"That was actually the fun part." Marcellus said as he entered the bridge now. "The monster I've created is already putting the last pieces into place around the world. It will cut Aziz, Jay and their little friends off from the morphing grid, making them a shadow of what they were."
"And then the monster I created on top of that will absorb all the magical properties, preventing my daughters and their little witch, genie, fairy, or otherwise magical little friends and magic item toters from using that against us." Maleficent added and then laughed. "Not that any of them have the magical power to stop us anyway."
"An interesting idea." Paradias admitted. "But tell me; what happens when the eventuality hits that Fairy Godmother realizes that they have no power to stop you, either magical or otherwise. She will simply reach out to the Earth rangers, will she not?"
Marcellus laughed. "She can try." He agreed simply. "And they can show up all they want. Then they too will find themselves just as helpless as they will be cut off from the morphing grid themselves. No mere human would ever be able to stop them."
"How will I be prevented from losing my powers?" Gregory asked again.
"Give me the iPhone." Marcellus demanded and the eldest son of Gaston reluctantly did so. Marcellus was a lot like Carlos in that no one expected him to be a technological genius, and yet surprisingly he was. He easily took a part the iPhone and installed an extra chip into it and then reassembled it. "That chip is on a feedback loop in a backdoor of the morphing grid." He explained now. "No one will even know I created that backdoor unless someone were to go into the morphing grid to track it down themselves, something that again no human could do."
"If we can tap into the morphing grid, why don't we do something more destructive?" Chad asked then.
"Because if we do something more destructive than it might draw the attention of the other rangers." Marcellus answered with a roll of his eyes. "We'd lose whatever advantage we have with that connection."
Paradias nodded approvingly. If this were somehow to fail, perhaps they could use that connection to the morphing grid someday. But hopefully that would not be the case. "Begin the attack when you're ready." He said.
"We will first have to get those rangers to transform and attack." Marcellus said. "That way all of their powers will be online to confirm their integration into the blocking system my monster uses and then we can shut them down upon activation."
"Don't worry; I know how we can draw them out." Gregory said. "We begin blocking out the magic of the world."
The evil fairy nodded in approval. "And then we have no more power rangers." Maleficent said gleefully. "Just a group of pathetic little teenagers that we can easily put in their place."
The morning passed and they started their afternoon classes. For the non-magic users it involved researching the origins of the past, particularly where it came to Sermaya and his beastly generals. His lack of appearances were in fact disturbing but each of them knew it would only be a matter of time before they showed again.
The magic users were in their magic classes. Amy was finding it kind of easy to balance out helping Alex to learn his abilities with working with Aquiella. Part of that was that they had made an interesting discovery; though it was mostly done thanks to the mermaid girl they could actually communicate telepathically. It allowed them to talk about their ideas that way even as Amy used her own hands to help channel and manipulate Alex's powers.
After the encounter with Doomfire, Jane had discovered a great way to help Ellie learn to control her powers. She had Jordan set up tests that the future Queen of Arendelle could only pass by using the exact amount of ice pressure.
The task fell to the genie girl because she quite frankly looked bored, as unlike everyone else thanks to her parents she was very magically aware and had never been taught or otherwise told to shy away from her powers.
They had been practicing for almost ten minutes when everything seemed to just…just fizzle out. It started a moment later and then fizzled again. "Mal?" Amy called out with concern. Not that her older twin would know much more than she did but turning to the purple haired girl for help had always felt like second nature to her.
Mal too had realized something was wrong as she had been working on a spell of her own, a simple tracking spell that she intended to try out that night after she had Ben hide something for her. She had been able to feel the magic coursing through her fingers and then nothing. She moved to place her hands on her sister's shoulder and asked, "What's going on? Why is the magic going out like that?"
"I've never had a problem like that." Jordan agreed somewhat irritably as she tried again to conjure her next idea for Ellie. It wasn't working now.
"Why isn't ours working?" Ellie asked as she tried to summon some snowflakes. "I didn't think our abilities were exactly magic."
"Good question." Alex agreed as he tried to summon fire in his hands with no luck. That hand now reached out and took Amy's hand in an attempt to comfort her, though Ellie wondered if he too were seeking comfort as well.
"I think it's time to go to the command center." Fairy Godmother announced. "And run some tests."
"Should we call King Ben and the others?" Jane asked her.
Her mother shook her head. "Not just yet. Let's wait until we have a bit more information go on here." She said.
Fairy Godmother lead them to the command center. Jane picked up a tool to analyze the magic wand, trying to determine if she could transform or not with this condition going on. Amy took another instrument and began to examine the rest of them, being able to easily take scans that could help.
Jordan was also pretty familiar with the controls of the command center and she began to scan for any external sources that could affect their magical abilities.
"Looks like the white gem can still draw energy from the magic wand so I can still transform into the white ranger." Jane revealed with some relief. She went over to help Amy analyze what she was scanning.
"I guess it's a good thing we don't necessarily need our magical powers to be power rangers then." Jordan noted. "Because right now we don't have that option available to us."
"We're going to have to tell the others sooner or later." Amy said to them all gently.
"We're going to have to tell them now." Fairy Godmother stated. "I've just summoned them to the command center."
Evie and the others came into the command center a few minutes later. "Looks like you picked a good day not to come to magic class E." Mal said to her blue haired chosen sister. "Or a really bad day I guess, depending on your point of view."
"What do you mean M?" Evie asked her.
Lonnie was tempted to make a comment about missing someone's birthday but didn't. She already knew the isle kids had no idea what birthdays were and she wanted to ask Jane which one was coming up so they could show them. Now was not the time for those thought though she was sure.
"We're not sure how yet, but our magic powers have been blocked from us." Jane answered them all as she took Evie's proffered mirror and ran a quick scan. She handed it back to her a moment later. "The magic is also gone from it though you should be able to use it as a weapon."
"How did this happen?" Audrey asked them.
"We haven't figured that one out yet." Jordan answered her. "Running scans now but I'm not seeing anything to help us figure it out."
"It has to be a monster of some sort." Jay decided as he put an arm around Audrey's shoulders. She didn't seem to mind it at all. "Who or what else would be capable of this?"
"It would have to be a particularly strong monster." Fairy Godmother reminded him. "But considering we're not sure about Paradias's true strength anything is possible."
The conversation became moot as the alarms went off they saw a monster that looked like a mechanical lizard of sorts, but he had from below the head until the midsection he seemed to have the shape of a black d battery cell. The sensors clearly indicated that was where the magic was going. He wasn't alone either as he had a group of soldiers heading with him.
"That's our magic drainer." Melody said. "Now we just have to shut him down."
"We're going to send him back to the swamp and the recycling bin." Carlos declared.
Mal nodded. "Let's get to work." She declared. The team rushed out of the command center and out of the walls of Auradon Prep. Ben and Melody pulled out their items to transform while the rest of the team pulled out their iPhones, input their numbers and transformed.
Intercepting the monster was easy enough. Ally removed her crystal cards from the spot around her waist and tossed them at the soldiers and the monsters. It really did little more than annoy them but it was enough of a distraction for the other rangers to summon their weapons and get ready to fight.
"We don't appreciate you messing with our magic lizard breath." Jordan snapped at the monster.
"Oh, so you don't like the tricks of Blocker Number M I take it?" The lizard monster asked with a laugh. "You're going to hate what will be coming up soon then, won't you genie girl?"
Aziz drew his spiral spear and moved in to attack Blocker Number M but he caught the attack in between his scaled hands and then tossed him back, running into a couple of soldiers that were not too happy to see him.
"Guess we're going to have to trim the fat before we can get to the meat." Will said as he flipped around his recursive sword and got ready to attack.
Lonnie twirled her hurricane tessen around in her hands. "Yeah, the disgusting green lizard meat." She added with disgust.
Amy still wondered what the monster had been talking about when he said they would hate what was coming up soon. She wasn't sure what could be worse than a creature that could drain magic but whatever it was, she was sure she didn't want to meet it.
They started to deal with the soldiers before realizing that there were more coming. Melody got the trident ready to try to take some takedowns from the back when she noticed something else. A monster very much like the monster that had started to attack Aziz again but this one was silver. "Mal." She called out.
Mal turned to at the aqua ranger's voice and tried to follow it. She could just make out the silver lizard with a d battery cell body. "What is going on here?" She wondered. She wondered if somehow the two monsters would combine and turn their magic against them.
Evie saw it too. "Maybe we should try to keep the two lizard things separate from each other?" She suggested.
"Great idea, if we can get through the soldiers." Audrey replied. "These things are crawling out of the woodwork." She shuddered a bit as only bugs basically did that.
"Like roaches." Amy said with a shudder.
The new lizard monster attacked Ben. He lashed out and the Auradon Knight blocked the attack with the Praeleanthor sword. "Don't think I'll be that easy scale face." Ben warned the monster.
"Oh but you are." The monster said with a gleeful grin. He knocked the hand holding the sword to the side and then slashed him across the chest hard. He then slammed his scaled foot down hard on the arm holding the sword. "That ancient weapon was the only unknown hurdle to our master's plan, and I have the feel for it now."
"Why would ye even need a feel for it?" Miranda demanded to know as she kicked the lizard thing off the young king. "What are ye freaks planning and what kind of lame name should we be callin' ye anyway?"
"Lame?" The monster questioned. "Block Number P sure doesn't appreciate that little jibe." His large fists lashed out and connected with Miranda hard.
"Are you ready to finish up the cycle brother?" Block Number M questioned.
"Ready when you are brother." Block Number P replied.
"Blocker M blocks magic." Ellie murmured. "Blocker…oh no." She shouted out. "We have to destroy that thing monster now."
"That's not possible." Aziz pointed out simply.
Mal thought quickly. "There might be one way but we have to be quick." She looked to Audrey. "We need our battlizers now." She looked to Evie. "Lead the others with the Auradon Launcher. We're going to need our best to do what Ellie says before they complete whatever cycle they're planning."
Audrey nodded. "Let's do it then." She said.
"You heard her." Evie said to the others, though they had never tried the Auradon Launcher without Mal or Audrey before. "Let's do it."
Evie took Mal's place at the back of the cannon, though technically making her the head of the team. Then it was Lonnie and Will, Alex and Amy, Carlos and Jane, Melody and Aquiella, Aziz and Ally, and last was Jordan and Miranda. They summoned the Auradon Launcher.
Mal and Audrey took out their iPhones and pressed the little half sun gems on their screens. Mal transformed into what she dubbed her crystal dragon battlizer and Audrey transformed into what she dubbed her gem princess battlizer.
As the rest of the team fired, Audrey gathered energy from her body and those gems as Mal gathered energy to unleash her draco meteor attack. But before they could unleash their attacks there was a snap of electricity and the Block Number P seemed to grow larger and they all felt their powers just fizzle out, the magic users recognized the feeling. Ben just managed to catch Mal as she fell, while Jay caught Audrey as she fell.
"What just happened?" Lonnie asked.
"If it's like our magic problem." Mal said worriedly. She took out her iPhone again and input her numbers, but nothing happened. "Oh no."
"Our powers." Amy started softly. "Are they..?"
"They're gone." They heard Maleficent say as she appeared with Chad and Gregory. "You all played right into my hands. The power rangers of Auradon are no more." The soldiers continued on toward them.
Will, Jay, Aziz, and Miranda kicked several of them back and they fell back against some of the others. "We have to get back to the command center." Evie said to them. "Maybe Fairy Godmother has some idea."
"I hope so." Jane said. "Because I have no idea what just happened."
"Then I hope everyone is quick." Aziz pointed out. "Because they're not going to let us go easily." The soldiers were already starting toward them.
"Destroy them." Maleficent commanded the soldiers. "Destroy them all."
"Except Audrey." Chad added with an authority in his voice they had never heard before, a dark authority. "The princess is mine."
"Time to go." Jordan said as they all ran off back to Auradon Prep, the soldiers behind them. They had run for close to twenty minutes and were getting exhausted before they had a small grace in the form of the Auradon guards who had been dispatched to defend the castle and the critical areas, like Auradon Prep itself. They knew though that it was a stop gap measure.
"What happened to our powers?" Mal wanted to know as soon as they came in. They found in that time that Doug had shown up there and was working. The good news was they were confident Doug had answers for them, the bad news was they knew they weren't going to like them.
"Your magical powers and ranger powers are being channeled out of your bodies and into the monsters." Doug told them. "Which in turn are being channeled…well, I haven't figured out where yet. But destroying the monsters won't solve the problem this time."
Carlos gave an incredulous laugh. "Destroy the monsters? Without our powers?" He asked. "That's a joke right?"
"It wasn't supposed to be." Doug answered. "But I can see why all of you would think that."
"There's no way we can destroy those things without our powers." Mal snapped.
"Hey, this isn't Doug's fault M." Evie said gently but firmly as she stepped to put an arm around Doug.
"She's right Mal." Amy said softly. "Don't be mean to him."
Mal sighed. "I know, you're right E. Amy." She looked to Doug. "Sorry to snap at you." She sighed a bit. "But it doesn't change what I said, we can't stop these monsters without our powers."
"Sorry to say even I'm not sure how we can fight these things the way we are." Miranda said. "We're taking two monsters and a bunch of soldiers, and something tells me that Chad and Gregory aren't powerless like we are."
"Why don't we ask the Earth rangers for help?" Audrey asked now. "You know they'd do it and we really need it."
"Because it sucks to have to turn to them every time something goes wrong." Jordan suggested with snappily before sighing. "No sorry, you're right Audrey. I just hate doing that to them, I feel like we're not carrying our weight, we're the biggest team to our knowledge and we keep getting into trouble."
"We're all a family, all in this together." Mal said to Jordan. "Amber told me that with the Psycho Rangers. Besides, they said they would be there whenever we needed them. They know better than even those of us who were here from the start what we're up against and that it might be necessary."
"Those are all very good points." Fairy Godmother said. "However, we have determined we cannot call upon the other rangers anyway."
"What?" Lonnie asked.
"You see, your power drain isn't local." Doug said. "Somehow it's draining from the morphing grid in itself." He looked to them all. "Asking the rangers to come here will only result in having their powers drained themselves."
"We can't do that to them." Ally said with a sigh. "We're on our own.
Alarms went off and they all looked toward the view screen. The soldiers were getting past the Auradon guards and were starting to get into the school itself. "We may not have powers and we may get hurt or worse out there, but we have to do our best to defend Auradon and its people." Ben said to the others.
Mal nodded. "Our king is right." She agreed, only now for the first time that any of them could remember had the purple haired girl ever addressed that fact. "We have to do our duty, our best as power rangers." She looked to them all. "We don't have a choice. We have to get to work." No one argued with the young king and his girlfriend, their leader, and they all got up and headed up the stairs.
"There has to be something we can do." Doug said to Fairy Godmother.
There was only one thing she could think of. She contacted the Earth Rangers anyway. Unsurprisingly it was Amber who answered. Fairy Godmother solemnly told her what was going on. After she finished she said softly, "I think our time is done. We can't resist Paradias, Maleficent and all of their forces without our powers or our magic. We can't ask you to come here and suffer the same fate."
"You're wrong." Amber said to her. "If we thought it would make a difference we'd be there no matter what." She took a deep breath. "But we can send you help anyway."
"Your powers…" Fairy Godmother said.
"The help I plan on sending you won't need magical powers, which we really don't have anyway. They won't need ranger powers, they've been helping us with nothing but their weapons, strength and intelligence for a long time. They became part of the team not long before me in fact."
Fairy Godmother seemed impressed to hear this, and the truth was she was desperate anyway. "That would be a good thing."
"I'll ask them." Amber said. "I'm sure they'll go…oh, and if you want to plan a victory celebration for them, I'd advise lots and lots of pizza." She said with a small laugh. She thought the Auradon group would get to love them as much as the other rangers had once they got past the most obvious fact. "I bet anything help will be on the way."
Doug looked at Fairy Godmother. "Who do you think she's going to call?" He asked. She only shrugged, unsure.