Bringing Rose Red home again, and bringing Grant to Auradon, wasn't all fun. Snow White had to take Rose Red to Belle and Adam so they could get her checked out. She had been trapped on Schadel Island for years and they had to make sure she was okay, and they had to do the same thing for Grant.
The second thing was the unfortunate report they had to give to Fairy Godmother about Paragon. It wasn't much of a report but the fact that nothing the rangers could throw at it could do more than mild damage to it was disturbing enough. It seemed their only saving grace was that Paragon had had a lot of time, centuries if the stories Maleficent, Jafar and Grimholde the Evil Queen had told their children were true, and it didn't seem interested in venturing off of its island.
"I don't even think Paradias could take that thing out." Jane said to her mother. "We should just be glad that it doesn't seem to care about expanding its territories." She looked at the blurry and not all together proportional image they had of Paragon. "Where did that thing even come from?" She wondered.
"I kind of hope we never have to find out." Carlos said to her with a shrug. "I mean no offense but if that thing isn't unique then we'd have a whole host of problems, I mean more so that one would already be."
Jane laughed as she lightly placed her hand on his arm. "I guess you're right." She conceded, oblivious to the slight blush in his cheeks at her touch. Mal and Evie however were not and exchanged knowing glances; the blue haired girl had to work hard not to giggle as well.
"Well I just hope that we can trust Grant." Fairy Godmother noted now. The fact was that Gregory's betrayal was still rather fresh in everyone's mind, and though it was unspoken the fact that Will too was a hairsbreadth away from betraying them as well also rang a bit. Granted in the long run it really was only one incident but it was enough. "I have however received word that at least he spoke the truth, tests to confirm him to be Rose Red's son."
"I wonder who his father is though." Alex mused. Granted it wasn't a big secret that not everyone was aware of the identity of both of their parents. The five isle kids only knew about one of their respective parents. It was less common in Auradon but Will spoke little of his father and no one had said anything about Ellie's father either, for example. Mal also knew that, given the nature of the Schadel Island, that it might not have been a welcome topic.
Evie's iPhone buzzed and she looked at the text she got, then at her friends. "Rose Red and Grant are leaving. She's going to stay with Snow White for a little bit until she can figure out her next move. She talked Grant into enrolling in Auradon Prep." She revealed to them all.
"Come on then guys." Ben said as he stood up, helping Mal to her feet as well. "Let's go help him get enrolled and settled in then. Show him some team unity."
Mal couldn't help but laugh a bit at the young king's words, but she understood the meaning behind them. She hadn't thought it would ever be possible but in his own way Grant was as much or even more a stranger to Auradon than she and her chosen siblings had been. "Yeah, that's a good idea. We have to show him that he's not alone here." She agreed.
"I'm still having a hard time processing that Grant is your step-nephew." Aziz admitted to Evie as they all started to leave the command center. "Even though he's only like a year older than you are."
Evie shook her head a little. "Yeah, I know what you mean." She promised him.
Carlos shook his head. "He could be your boyfriend in a different time." He said absently. He chose to ignore that look of annoyance on Evie's face.
"I think someone might disagree with that one." Amy reminded him as she thought of Doug, who right now was in an extra chemistry class.
"Anyway," Evie said quickly to change the semi-awkward subject and to get her mind off of her potential boyfriend. "He's going to meet us in the commons area. We can get him registered and then show Grant the command center too."
Meanwhile above Auradon Paradias's ship remained in orbit. He sat on the throne of the ship and looked down at Maleficent, and just behind her was the Dark Auradon Knight Chad, the sorcerer Marcellus and Jabberwock, his only surviving generals. Gregory had been captured by Auradon forces after losing the gray ranger powers to the ninja turtle Raphael while both Nerissa and Reviveslime had been destroyed. He smiled grimly though, at least his dead generals would still serve one last purpose. He looked to Maleficent. "Did you find somewhere?" He asked her.
"I did." Maleficent answered him.
Paradias nodded. "Good. Then it is time for the final phase of my plan. If all goes well, then the rangers, except Audrey of course," He corrected himself as he looked at Chad, who had developed a very unhealthy with the brunette princess, "Will be destroyed and Auradon will belong to us."
"And if not then I'll make sure my brat daughters and their little friends suffer." Maleficent said to him. She looked to the three remaining generals. Despite the fact Undine was affiliated with them she was not officially a general in their army, at least not yet. "It's time to move out." She said to them. The four of them left the bridge.
Paradias looked at the soldiers still operating the ship. "I will be going to the surface myself with Shunoros. And we will bring about the end of Auradon as those fools know it." He said.
Grant turned as the rest of the ranger team approached him. He was aware that technically they were his team mates, probably were his friends, and that Evie was in fact, and it was just as weird to him as it was to the blue haired girl, his step-aunt. But none of it was familiar and this wasn't home, at least not yet. The ominous black storm cloud gathering above didn't help to ease his tensions.
"Let's get you to the registration office." Ben said as he came up to him, placing his hand reassuringly on his shoulder. "It'll be quick and painless, I promise. Then we'll get you assigned to a room and we can worry about classes a little later."
"Then we can show ye the command center." Miranda said to him. "It's actually a rather impressive sight. Not something you see all that often anywhere."
"I'm sure it looks good." Grant said uneasily. Technology was even more uncomfortable to him than the fact he was surrounded by a large crowd of people. He had grown up around only about a dozen or so people and the only one he was ever sure he could trust was his mother.
There was a large crack of thunder and he heard Amy gasp just a bit as she reached for Alex's hand. He held her hand and tried to reassure her softly. Mal thought it was kind of cute, and she was glad her sister felt she could seek comfort from someone else besides her.
"That sounded too close for comfort." Aquiella noted uneasily. It occurred to Mal to wonder what it was a severe storm felt like to aquatic life in the oceans and seas. However it felt, it seemed as if their orange ranger didn't seem to appreciate it.
Jordan frowned too. "I, I feel like this isn't natural." The genie girl told them all. "I feel like there' some kind of magic behind this. Probably dark, either from Paradias or Maleficent."
"Not what we wanted to hear." Carlos noted simply.
Their iPhones went off and they activated their iPhones to hear Fairy Godmother. "The school is being surrounded by soldiers. I don't know what they're doing here now or what they want but we have to get rid of them." She told them.
"Registration will have to wait." Mal said to them all. "Let's get to work." They headed toward the entrance to Auradon Prep. They saw Ruby and another student doing their best to stop them from entering, even as several of them were climbing the walls. Jay, Will, Aziz and Miranda headed toward the front to knock them back even as Ellie and Alex used their own elemental power to line the wall tops with fire and ice.
"What's going on?" Ruby asked Mal as she saw the purple haired girl.
"We're being invaded." Mal replied simply. Now was not the time to remember that Ruby was not in the know. "I don't know what they want."
Thunder resounded and they saw in the background Paradias appear. He seemed to glare at each of the rangers. "The time has come for you all to perish. Auradon will belong to me." He gloated eagerly.
The team assembled near the entrance to the school. Normally it was an open area, no gate or anything whatsoever. Now Ellie raised her arms and created what looked like a two doored gate on either side of the walls, though made of ice and not metal. "Get ready to close that behind us Ruby." The princess of Arendelle said to the long haired blonde. "We're going to see what we can do to end this." Mal nodded approvingly.
"Please be careful everyone." Ruby said uncertainly. As the ranger team stepped out into the area beyond Ruby lassoed one end with her long hair while grasping the other end with her hands and, ignoring the cold, reluctantly did as she had been requested.
"I must applaud you." Paradias said to them all. "Coming to meet your ends head on and eyes open. Your bravery is certainly commendable."
Even as the soldiers moved to allow the team through, and subsequently cut off escape afterwards, the team pulled out their iPhones, or in the case of Ben, Jane and Melody, their weapons that enabled them to transform. "You want this to be the end Paradias?" Mal questioned him. "Well on this point we can agree. We're more than willing to finish this. But it won't be us meeting death with eyes wide open."
Paradias laughed. "You still have one more challenge in front of you kids." He cautioned them. "Meet my most powerful monster, Shunoros." Then in front of him appeared a large creature that almost seemed mechanical in nature. Four mechanical tentacles emerged from the rounded stumps on its arms; the middle portion that would be considered the hand was instead cannon shaped. It bore the distinct outline of a circle around its waist that Mal suspected could only be grown to resemble the circular beams that often allowed his monsters to grow.
Each of the team transformed and summoned their weapons, ready to fight. Paradias merely laughed. "Destroy them." He commanded his forces. "Every one of them, except the princess." The soldiers surged forward even as Shunoros took several slow but massive steps forward.
"Which princess do you suppose he means?" Alex asked.
"Audrey." Ellie reminded her cousin just a little irritably. She couldn't imagine how the brunette princess could deal with the obsession Chad had with her. She didn't think she could handle it as gracefully as Audrey seemed to. "He won't kill her because of Chad."
"He won't be killing any of us." Miranda said as she twirled her grizzly blades, and then slashed the first soldier to approach her.
The tentacles on Shunoros's arms lashed out and slapped at the team, sending them flying into the mess of soldiers. They all reached down to try to grab a hold of them but Ellie, Alex, Aquiella and Amy unleashed bursts of elemental energy to knock them back so they could stand up.
"I think it's time for a little bit of divide and conquer." Jordan said to Mal. There was some advantage to having almost twenty team members in their group.
Mal nodded in agreement. "I think you're right Jordan." She looked to Audrey, Evie, Carlos, Jay, Lonnie, Jane and Amy. "Let's take go after the Shunoros thing. The rest of you take out the soldiers." She delegated.
Ellie looked to Ben, Jordan, Aziz, Ally, Will, Miranda, Aquiella, Grant, Alex, and Melody. "We have to try to keep the soldiers away from the gate." She said to those who were going to deal with the minions. "They're already trying to scale the walls and get through the ice gate, and if they get in I don't know how many people can defend themselves."
Will remembered rather vividly that both his sister Whitney and her friend Callie, the daughter of Cinderella and Prince Charming, were inside those walls. "I think I better take Aziz, Miranda and Grant closer to the walls to act as defenders." He said.
Ellie nodded in complete understanding. "Good idea." She confirmed.
"Then let's get to work." Mal said. The team split into two, though soon Will would lead Miranda and the two boys closer to the walls to try to defend the school.
Again Shunoros lashed out the tentacles. The team dodged to the side and used that maneuver to try to surround the giant mechanical creature though they suspected somehow that it wouldn't matter all that much. Then the ring on its waist extended a huge burst of energy that knocked them all on their backs hard.
"I had a feeling it'd do something like that." Jay said as he started to stand, raising his soul scimitar and got ready to fight again.
Audrey raised her elemental bow and unleashed a few electrical arrows at the large mechanical monster though it didn't seem to be all that fazed by the impact. He slammed a tentacle toward her which she was just barely able to cartwheel over. She gave silent thanks to the hour she spent in cheerleading practice for that.
Carlos leapt at the giant monster with his earthquake claw daggers extended and tried to dig into the metal. He barely stuck on and he tried to deliver a seismic shock to the mechanical monster. It didn't seem to register and twirled quickly to fling the yellow ranger off.
Lonnie jumped up and slashed at Shunoros with her hurricane tessens. It left small trails as she moved back to the ground and then barely dodged as he tried to bring his hand down on the pink ranger.
Mal used her dragon's eye staff as a pole vault to kick him the mechanical monster in the face as hard as she could. It wasn't hard enough as it only took a step back and then slammed one of the mechanical tentacles in right into the purple ranger hard.
Amy rushed to her twin sister. "Mal, are you okay?" She asked her.
"Oh, that didn't feel good." Mal moaned as Amy helped her to stand up. "We have to up our game here."
"I think it's time for the neon armor." Jay said to Mal. "Get our speed and strength up."
The rangers moved closer together. "Let's do it." Mal agreed. The team activated their neon armor and then headed again toward Shunoros. The mechanical monster unleashed another burst of energy from the ring around its waist but this time they had the speed to jump over the attack.
Audrey, Jay, Carlos and Amy brought their weapons down on Shunoros as hard as they could, leaving more scratches on the monsters metal coat but they still couldn't ignore the fact the monster had size over them. "Too big for us, not big enough for zords." Carlos mused.
"It is kind of an unfair advantage." Jane acknowledged. She tried a magical attack on Shunoros just to discover the thing was also immune to magic. The revelation did not surprise any of them. "It figures Paradias would make it magic resistant." The white ranger stated.
"Then we'll just have to stick with the brute force option." Mal said. She wasn't entirely sure how much of an option that was either but at least they had made some dents in the mechanical creature.
"Heh, fine by me." Jay said and then moved in. He used the ring around Shunoros's waist to jump and slash the monster again. "Though maybe you two could try your battlizers out." He suggested. It was their strongest weapon, technically even stronger than the Auradon Blaster or Launcher.
Audrey and Mal nodded and took out their iPhones again. They were interrupted though by Paradias's laugh. "I've seen your little get up ladies." He said to them. "And as impressive as those were I'm afraid I can't allow you your little costume change."
"And what do you think you can do about it?" Jay questioned. Personally he thought Audrey looked gorgeous in the red and pink get up of her battlizer and he knew she was making a dress like that in her fashion design class.
Shunoros started to glow green and the ring around the waist started go glow, only to have another ring form under its legs and over its head to connect in the back. Then a pulse emanated from it and shot through the area.
Each of the rangers had raised their arms to protect their faces and braced for impact only to find that nothing had happened. Carlos snickered. "I think your monster messed up their Paradias." He noted wryly.
"Oh did it?" Paradias asked amused. When the two girls again raised their iPhones and pressed the half sun jewel on the top of their iPhones nothing happened. "Looks like you were wrong. It seems as if access to your battlizers has been restricted."
"But the adjustments that Doug and Donnie made…" Evie started.
"Were to prevent your powers from being cut off from the morphing grid." Paradias finished knowingly. "But your powers aren't being cut off from the grid. Your power levels are simply being limited in this area."
"Well that's annoying." Jane noted. She didn't know what to do about that one. "But we still have some strength and speed on our side."
"Ah yes, very true." Paradias noted with amusement. Then his eyes glowed. "I think it's time we do something about that as well." From the second ring two compartments opened and formed together a third ring that encircled around Shunoros's arms. This was followed by another wave that this time knocked them all back, dissipating the neon armor.
"I'm really starting to hate this guy." Mal said grimly.
"What do we do now?" Amy asked her sister.
"Magic won't work." Jane stated. "We can't access our neon armor anymore. You two can't access your battlizers." She looked to Mal. "We might try the Launcher or the combined blasters but that would leave Auradon Prep defenseless."
"I think we should try something a little more natural." Amy suggested to them.
They all thought they understood and Mal activated her intercom helmet. "Alex, Ellie. We could use you at our location. You guys might be the only way we can stop Shunoros." She said to them.
A moment later they heard Ellie respond, "Alex and I are on our way, we'll be there in a minute."
"So we have to buy ourselves a minute or so." Carlos echoed.
Amy stepped forward and unleashed a small earthquake right in front of the robotic monster. It didn't seem to have too much effect on it but the distraction was enough for Jay and Lonnie to approach the monster and maneuver around the three rings to slash him enough to force him to take another step back.
"Man this thing sure knows how to take a hit." Jay said, perhaps a bit admiringly. If they could take half the hits this thing seemed to take they wouldn't have been in nearly as much trouble as they had been so far.
Shunoros righted itself just as Alex stopped by Amy and took her hand. "Lend me some heat?" He asked her.
"Anytime." Amy said to him. "I always seem to be on fire around you lately." Under ordinary circumstances the comment would have embarrassed the younger twin immensely and amused the older twin but right now it passed without questions.
With Alex and Amy's combined fire power they unleashed a firestorm that was able to envelope the large robotic monster. It still took several steps forward even though they could see that it was clearly now one large thing of heated metal.
Now Ellie stepped up next to her cousin and the rose ranger and unleashed a blizzard on the rapidly heated and slowly cooling monster. The slowly cooling monster rapidly froze up though they could already see it was already struggling to break free of its frozen status.
"We need more power to defeat this thing." Mal said.
"Mal!" Ben yelled out to her. They turned to see the rest of the team approaching. "Some of the castle guards are protecting the school." He said to them as they approached. "And it looks like good timing too." She hugged her knight and the king briefly.
Then Mal looked toward them. "Time for the Auradon Launcher, before Paradias finds a way to block off our weapons too." She stated, perhaps a little bitterly. She was getting a little tired of always being steps behind her mother and the other bad guys.
Mal was in the very back now. In front of her were Audrey and Jay, Evie and Carlos, Lonnie and Will, Alex and Ellie, Ben and Amy, Melody and Aquiella, Aziz and Ally, Jordan and Jane, and Grant and Miranda.
"Focus." Miranda said to Grant softly. "Channel all of yer energy into the Launcher. When it's built up Mal will launch our combined attack at the monster and hopefully destroying it in the process."
"Got it." Grant said with a nod.
They all channeled their ranger energies into the Auradon Launcher and then Mal pulled back on the launcher trigger and released it. The massive energy from the launcher slammed right into the Shunoros, breaking the rapidly cooling, and as a result fragile, metal monster before it was destroyed in blaze of glory.
"Yes!" Carlos exclaimed. "One more monster down the drain."
The launcher vanished as the some of the metal scraps fell to the ground. They could already feel their access to their neon armor restored, and Mal and Audrey could just feel on the edges of their awareness the power of their battlizers.
"Looks like you've lost Paradias." Mal called out to their nemesis. "You better run now before we finish you off."
But all Paradias did was let out a haughty and evil laugh. "You fools. You've done exactly what I anticipated you would do." He told them all. "And in doing so, you've sealed your fates, as well as the fate of Auradon."
"Dude, what are you talking about?" Jay asked him. "Your monster is gone; it was destroyed, just now."
"Yes." Paradias agreed. "As I say it's what I wanted you to do. This has always been the ultimate goal. If you had been incompetent enough to lose beforehand then so much the better, but this has always been the goal." He raised his hands and several dark round objects like energy balls started to form in his hands. "All of the monsters you've destroyed, from Shunoros to the Invader of Nightmares, and even the Psycho Rangers. The admittedly unfortunate destruction of my generals Nerissa and Reviveslime, still leads to this event right now."
"What is he babbling about?" Aziz wanted to know.
"It's time." Paradias said. "For the rise of the Great Serpent. And the fall of Auradon, starting with your precious school." With that he unleashed the dark energy objects, Mal presumed they were the essences of his fallen, and they floated into the already black skies. Then the clouds parted and they saw Paradias's ship.
"Is he planning on blasting us with that?" Ally asked him.
"That's pretty cheap." Jordan mused angrily.
"Wait." Melody said. "Something about that ship is wrong."
It was Audrey who finally realized what the problem was. "It's falling from the skies. The ship must have been evacuated. There's no one to pilot it." She stated.
"It has served me well." Paradias acknowledged. "But is no longer of any use to me."
There was a loud roaring sound that no one could identify, and then each of the rangers let out a scream of horror as Paradias's ship fell from the skies and crashed right into the left side of the school, inertia carrying it in a path through the school and causing destruction in its wake.
"Mom!" Jane shouted out in fear.
"Doug!" Evie gasped.
"Whitney, Callie!" Will exclaimed.
Mal knew there was more than just those four who were caught in this. For a moment all she felt was numb all over. She was only vaguely aware of Paradias's triumphant laughter.