Mal didn't hate the cold as much as her twin sister did but she wasn't fond of it either. And that was exactly what surrounded her, combined with lots of snow. She would have liked to assume that the sun shining overhead would make things a little warmer but that was not the case at all.
She looked around and was not too surprised to notice that she seemed to be alone. "Swell." She said aloud. "How do I find the others?" She wondered.
She heard a screeching and ducked just barely in enough time to avoid one of the spiderlings that had accompanied the Snowrachnid from digging its legs into her face. She turned around as it got ready for another attack and slammed it with the dragon's eye staff, sending it flying backwards. She didn't see it coming back but stayed on guard just in case there were more or it came back.
She walked just a little bit before hearing more screeching. She saw a bunch of spiderlings heading toward her. "Oh, come on." She said exasperated. She raised her dragon's eye staff but wasn't sure how she was going to take this many out.
She was already panicking over finding a spell that wouldn't come when a huge stream of fire shot out from behind her and burned them to a crisp. She turned to see Evie coming toward her, lowering her mirror force shield. "The blazing setting." The purple haired purple ranger said with relief.
Evie stopped in front of her and the two chosen sister's hugged for a minute, glad to have found someone else, and each other to boot. Then the blue haired blue ranger pulled back. "We have to try to find the others." She said.
Mal nodded in agreement. "I hope Ben and Amy are okay." She said softly.
"There's only one way to know for sure." Evie said gently. "Let's get a move on."
It wasn't long before they got a bit more discourage again. This time there were no spiderlings or any other signs of life. Then from out of nowhere an Ice Guard landed hard on the ground, clearly knocked out. He had a bow and arrow next to him.
"Not too smart are you?" Jay asked as he hopped down in front of him. "Trying to snipe? Oh, and your bow is definitely not of a high caliber. My girlfriend would smoke you."
"And you definitely sound like your girlfriend." Mal said to him as she laughed.
"But thanks anyway." Evie added as the two of them hugged their friend. "Have you ran into anyone else yet? Where did you even come from?"
"Not yet." Jay replied as the two girls pulled back. "There is a mountainous area coming up not far from here. We should go back and search there."
"Sounds like a good idea." Mal agreed. Together the three of them started toward the mountain. It almost seemed like old times to them except for the fact that Carlos and Amy were not with them. Amy being missing especially worried Mal.
As Evie looked up, contemplating how they were going to scale the thing beyond a certain point, they heard a loud crunching sound and saw Alex as the fire knight come flying through the air hard. As the two girls ran to his side and Jay readied his soul scimitar they saw Gauntula coming toward them. "Look, the rest of the power rangers." He said.
"Rest?" Evie questioned.
"Where are the rest of my friends?" Mal questioned hotly as she rose up to her feet. "Where is Ben? Where is my sister?"
"Dead, with luck." Gauntula said simply. Mal lashed out at him and he dodged her attack before striking her in the stomach hard with his gauntleted fists and then bringing them up against Mal's chin, making her fall back to the ground hard. "Temper temper girl." He advised her.
"He's trying to force us to lose our concentration Mal." Alex said as he got up. "If Ellie were dead I'd know it. And she's my cousin. You would know if Amy were dead without question. And I think it'd be the same thing for Ben." He looked to Jay. "And Audrey too."
Mal knew in her heart that if Amy was dead she would feel it. She was her twin sister; there was no way something big could happen to her without her knowing something. As for Ben…she hoped Alex was right but even more importantly she had touched the Praeleanthor sword, she knew higher forces protected him. And when she remembered that the sword had been gifted to him by the other rangers, it made her feel even more confident of his safety. "Then let's put this guy down so we can make sure they stay safe." She declared.
"I'll distract him." Jay said to Mal. "You show him the power of the dragon." He was referring to her battlizer.
"That is a good idea black ranger." Gauntula acknowledged smugly. "I think I'll take that to heart." He raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.
"He was talking to me brain trust." Mal said snidely. "But a good idea is a good idea." She got into position to activate her battlizer. Then there was a large rumbling sound.
"I hate to ask what that is." Evie said nervously.
The area surrounding the four rangers was struck hard with multiple energy bursts and sent the four of them reeling backwards hard. Mal had no chance to use her battlizer. When they looked up the blue ranger almost wished they hadn't. They were looking up at a large three headed dragon that had large light blue, again almost icicle colored wings and armor over the front of its body.
"I know exactly what Amy would say if she were here." Mal said in shock.
"And I wouldn't blame her for it either." Alex added.
"Meet your end power rangers, the three headed dragon of the ice barrier Thrisula." Gauntula said to them as the dragon let out a roar from its three heads.
"How are we going to take that one out?" Jay had to wonder. He wasn't sure they could do it with anything less than their full team, something they haven't had since Paradias's final assault on Auradon Prep. And maybe not even then.
Gauntula jumped onto Thrisula's head. "The game is over Power Rangers. We have won." He bragged with amusement. "My dragon will end you while my compatriots will have already your friends down. Arendelle belongs to the Ice Queen and we will soon take over Auradon and your world."
"Even if you do take us down, our friends will make sure that you don't fulfill your queen's desires." Evie stated.
Gauntula laughed. "I expected you to say that." He admitted. "You know, after defeating her and costing her the deal she made with the Shadowking, my queen is quite looking forward to taking down your friends Jason, Tommy, Kimberly, Trini, Billy, Zack and Amber." He shrugged. "In a way you all are nothing more than stepping stones."
Mal could only spare a moment to realize she didn't really know who Trini was. When they got back to Auradon she hoped she remembered to ask Jason, Tommy or Amber who she was. Right now she had more pressing problems as she had come to the same realization that Jay had already thought.
Trishula took one massive step forward to try to crush the four rangers but they were able to dodge out of the way. They could hear Gauntula laughing at their plight. "I wish there was some way we could shut him up." Jay commented.
"We'd have to reach him first." Evie reminded her longtime friend simply. "And right now I don't even know how we can do that."
Trishula shot out at them again and they all scrambled to dodge the attack, barely doing so. Then the large dragon snapped at Evie and she let out a frightened gasp as she barely dodged the attack. "That thing can swallow us whole." She commented in fear.
"Yeah and it would still chew us up just to be mean." Jay said with a small smirk. Not that he thought it was a good thing but he thought it was a clever comment for the moment.
"We could actually probably being chewed up." Evie tried to say reasonably. In some ways it was only a way to help calm herself down. "But in reality when we landed in its stomach acid it would probably dissolve just the same. And as for breathing…"
"Okay, let's focus less on the many ways this thing could demolish us and more on how we can survive this encounter." Mal interrupted with a healthy dose of fear of her own.
"Honestly I don't see how M." Evie admitted to her. "There are only four of us here." They all had to dodge another set of bursts from Trishula, and again it was only barely successful. "Even if we had everyone here this thing is still bigger and seems to be stronger."
"It has to have a weakness." Alex reminded them. "We just have to figure out what it is."
"That's going to be kind of hard to do." Jay pointed out as they all had to avoid yet another seemingly devastating strike from Trishula's three heads.
Mal rolled and recovered as quickly as she could. "What about the cold fire? Can we use that to defeat this thing?" She asked Alex.
"I think that only works against the Ice Queen." The fire knight replied as he stood and started to draw power into his tonfa's. "And honestly even if it would work I don't know how to make it happen." Truth was he wasn't even sure how to use it against the Ice Queen even though somehow the original rangers had found a way to do so.
Trishula lashed out to try to take a bite of out Alex and he lashed out with his flame tonfa's and struck the large dragon across that head hard. It roared with a mixture of annoyance and pain, since it was a fire based attack, and pulled back.
"You're only delaying the inevitable power rangers." Gauntula said now.
Mal hated to admit it but it didn't look promising at all. The four of them just weren't enough to stop a dragon monster this size and Gauntula was not exactly a good thing to have glaring down at them either.
"Mal." Evie started doubtfully.
"It's time to finish these four losers off and so we can see how the others are doing." Gauntula said to the dragon monster. As he started to point down at them for what Mal assumed was the final command two chakrams came from the side and slashed him hard, forcing him to fall off of the dragon and land on the ground hard.
"What?" Jay questioned.
"Mal!" She heard someone cry out and turned around to find Amy running up to her and hugging her tightly, her head pressed tightly against her stomach. "You're okay. I was so worried about you." She said to her sister.
Mal hugged her back. "I was worried about you too Amy." She said softly.
Evie smiled broadly as Melody came over to her. "Are you guys okay?" She asked the blue haired blue ranger.
"We're alive. Let's be thankful for that." Evie said to her with a small laugh before the two of them exchanged a brief hug. By that time Amy had extended her arm to welcome her chosen sister into the embrace as well.
Carlos and Jay high fived each other. "Glad to see you're okay dude." Jay said to him.
Carlos laughed a little. "Well we're alive. Let's save okay until we're out of this mess bro." He said to Jay, who nodded in agreement.
"The chakrams." Alex whispered and then laughed as he saw his cousin as the ice dame approaching him. "Hey, your powers are back Ellie." He said happily.
"They are. And they're not the only ones." That drew Mal, Evie, Jay and Carlos's attention as they saw standing next to her was Miranda in the get up of the Highlands ranger. "Miranda got her powers back and came all this way to help us."
"And we'll need all the help we can get." Mal said happily as she and her fellow purple ranger clasped hands. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Amy give Alex a very close and happy hug, glad to see him almost as much as she was to see her twin alive and well.
"This is impossible. You should all be dead." Gauntula said with annoyance as he stood up to glare at the half reformed team.
"It's quite possible actually." Miranda said to him. "Oh, and by the way. That does mean that yer little friend Ryu is gone."
"What's with the big dragon?" Carlos asked.
"That would be Trishula." Evie answered. "I think it's Gauntula's little pet. And I don't know how we're supposed to fight that thing."
Amy glanced up at the big dragon. "Oh my pink." She gasped which got small smiles from Mal and Alex as they had not more than a few minutes ago had commented they knew that would be the rose haired girl's response to seeing this thing.
Melody looked up too. For a moment she could only imagine how overwhelmed Mal, Evie, Alex and Jay had felt upon seeing this thing. She had to raise her neck up high to look up at the three heads of the dragon. Then she noticed something. "What are those on its heads?" She asked Mal.
"What?" The purple ranger questioned and then followed the aqua ranger's line of sight. She then noticed what they had failed to see up until now. Each of the heads had what looked to be a small red gem on each of their foreheads. She suddenly had the idea that that might be the key to defeating the dragon.
"Any ideas?" Carlos asked her curiously.
"I think so." Mal said to him but she had to think quickly. They had to divide the forces they had between the three heads and there was still the seething general to take into account too. "Okay, Ellie and Alex. I need you two to be a general distraction." She said to the two knights. "Carlos and Jay, you're team one. Amy and I are team two. Melody and Evie are team three. We get to deal with the heads."
"I'll take on Gauntula then." Miranda said to Mal. "Make sure he doesn't get in the way of whatever ye have planned for this dragon."
"Sounds great." Mal replied to her fellow purple ranger.
Miranda moved in with her grizzly blades and started to fight Gauntula. She didn't care at all that he had fought against the other rangers without weapons, she had learned very early from her mother Merida that when you had to fight you fought with anything you had at your disposal regardless of what your opponent chose to do, or not do in this instance.
"Take the front cuz." Alex called out to Ellie. "I'm going to take it from the back. Between the two of us we should be able to confuse the monster enough for the rangers to take out their heads." His newly reinstated cousin nodded and aimed a burst of ice at Trishula as Alex slid under the giant dragon monster, though just barely.
Carlos and Jay went to the left as Melody and Evie went to the right. The two daughters of Maleficent stayed in the center. Though Melody decided it was going to be easier to stick with the trident, the rest of the rangers drew their blasters and got ready to try to get the red jewel at the center of their respective heads.
"Hope your aim here is better than it is here on the Tourney field." Jay commented jokingly as he and Carlos took aim at the right head.
"Hope your aim is better than your jokes." Carlos retorted simply. The two boys laughed just a little.
Alex powered up a blast of fire from his tonfa's and sent it as a wave of fire at the dragon. Trishula roared in annoyance and perhaps a bit of pain and aimed a snapping attack at him which the fire knight dodged. That made it impossible for Evie and Melody to attack that head though.
Mal and Amy fired at their head just as Carlos and Jay fired at theirs. The girls missed as it hit the side of the head, and it didn't seem to care at all. Somewhat ironically Carlos hit the red jewel object on the forehead while Jay missed. It didn't seem to matter though.
"Nice shot." Carlos poked fun at his friend for his initial comment. Then he moved on to be more serious. "I hope hitting it together does the trick because just one hit didn't seem to matter at all."
"What happens if two hits don't do it?" Jay questioned the yellow ranger.
"Either we try to get the numbers further up at one gem or we're in total trouble." Carlos answered him simply.
"Keep it together guys." Mal called out to them. "Let's not jump off that bridge until we make sure this plan won't work." She placed her hand on Amy's shoulder. "We can do it sis. Just like we did on the isle, except of course we're aiming for a red gem instead of a wasp." Amy never did understand why Maleficent always had them shoot the spray on the wasps. She assumed it killed them but she still didn't know why they did that way. She assumed it was their mother's idea of toughening them up.
Ellie shot a burst of ice at the three heads. The first turned away from Alex. The middle head reared back in annoyance, which made it too high for Mal and Amy to attack it. The last head seemed to glance around at the ranger's surrounding it. The gaze fell upon Evie and Melody finally and the two blue colored rangers opened fire on the red gem on the head of the monster.
For a moment it was hard to tell just how accurate the hit was. It did seem as if Melody had hit with the trident and that was in fact the reason the aqua ranger chose to use that weapon, so she had more room to maneuver. They were all too far away to actually tell if the red gem on the forehead shattered, their first clue was when the three headed dragon let out a shrieking sound. Then the head just seemed to disappear into the ether.
Gauntula kept trying to connect with the Highlands ranger but she could already see any hit would hurt and so she took to dodging the attacks. She had to grant though that he was great at the follow up, making it impossible for Miranda to retaliate. The shrieking of the dragon drew his attention and Miranda moved in and struck him hard.
Gauntula rose and glared at the new ranger. "You and your little friends haven't won yet." He spat at her. He then summoned Ice Guards. "Stop the rangers from attacking Trishula." He ordered before moving in and striking Miranda in the chest hard.
She stumbled back, feeling the wind knocked out of her lungs. She was only barely able to dodge Gauntula's follow up strike.
"We'll take care of the Ice Guard M." Evie called out to her chosen sister. "Melody and I will deal with the minions."
"Somehow I think they just got the easy job." Amy said jokingly, giggling just a little.
Mal laughed a bit. "Yeah, you can say that again." She agreed. "Maybe we should draw straws?" Privately the purple ranger hoped that meant that with one head down the dragon monster wouldn't be as deadly. If anything it seemed more so as the one that the two girls had been aiming for suddenly lashed out at them. It would have probably swallowed them whole if Amy hadn't grabbed her elder twin's arm and made them intangible just as the jaws would have otherwise snapped them up.
"Mal!" Carlos called out. "Amy!" That drew Melody and Evie's attention. Thankfully the head pulled away just as quickly to see that they were okay thanks to Amy's magic ability. Evie quickly turned around, directing the energy blast from her mirror force shield at some of the Ice Guards.
The other head unleashed a blast at the yellow and black ranger's and sent them rolling back on the ice. Then the head lashed at Carlos and he gasped just a bit as he barely scooched back further on the ice to avoid the attack.
"Hey, eyes on me!" Ellie called out as she unleashed another blast of icy energy at the dragon. This time Trishula ignored the attack and continued to focus on the two groups of rangers as if finally understanding their plan.
Alex unleashed another stream of fire energy at the dragon and the tail was swiped at him. The fire knight dodged under the attack.
Mal leaned down to be at eye level with her twin sister, who was still shorter than her despite their near identical age, and as the two sisters touched hands and blasters Mal channeled an impulse spell that locked the two burst of blaster energy onto the gem on the middle dragon's forehead and struck, shattering the gem. Moments later the middle head disappeared into the ether.
"Almost done." Jay said with triumphant.
Trishula seemed to take exception to that as it now rose in the air and unleashed a huge burst of icy wing from its wings and sent them all flying backwards hard. The last head opened up its mouth and then unleashed a huge burst of energy, striking into the middle of the team hard and sending them all sprawling around hard.
"I think we've pissed it off." Alex noted rather calmly considering what had just happened. It was an attitude under normal circumstances that Amy would have admired because it was far different from her mother's attitude. Right now she didn't have the time to notice it.
The Ice Guards were now converging on the group below the formerly three headed dragon.
"This doesn't seem to be going so well." Carlos noted.
"I think it's going great." Evie now said with what the isle kids could tell had to be a wicked smirk on her lovely face. "I have an idea on what to do. Get ready boys." She then raised her mirror force shield again.
"How will taking out the Ice Guards help us?" Ellie asked.
"I don't think that's her plan." Mal replied.
Evie unleashed a storming mirror force attack, but aimed the attack not at the minions below but at the flying dragon above them. With a shriek of pain and annoyance the monster lost its equilibrium and crashed down hard, taking out the Ice Guards by its sheer weight compared to the guards.
"I think it's paralyzed or something." Amy said to them. "It's not moving."
"Makes our job easier then, right bro?" Jay asked.
"Totally easier." Carlos agreed as the two male rangers fired at the last jewel on the last head of the monster. This time the entire body faded into the ether.
"Yer dragon is gone, Gauntula." Miranda said to the general. "So are the minions, though I suspect ye could easily summon more if ye got the chance." She moved in and raised her blades to bring them down on him. "But I'm not going to give ye the chance."
"Did you forget your lesson so quickly girl?" Gauntula questioned with a smirk as he raised his gauntleted hands and blocked the descending blades.
"Not at all." Miranda responded. She released her blades to let herself fall to the ground, and as she did so she brought her feet hard into his chest. Since he wasn't really armored all that well he lost his grip on the purple ranger's blade as he fell back and she caught the weapons. "Anyone care to finish the job?" She called out.
"I think it's time to let the isle brats go for the win." Melody said with a giggle.
"Brats?" Jay questioned.
"Sounds right to me, now get to it." Ellie said with a giggle of her own.
"You heard them, let's make it so." Mal announced. She, Evie and Amy stood shoulder to shoulder. Jay and Carlos leapt onto the girl's shoulders and the yellow ranger almost lost his balance since Amy was the shortest of them all but he recovered it and the five isle rangers formed their blasters and unleashed the Auradon Triangle Spark at Gauntula as he tried to rise, destroying him.
"That should have been called the Isle Triangle Spark or something." Carlos said with a laugh as he and Jay joined the girls back on solid ground. "It was the isle 'brat's' who did it after all."
"Speak for yourself." Mal said. "I happen to think that I…that we…that, well that Amy happens to be a very respectable young person." She finished with a small laugh of her own. For her part the younger twin wasn't entirely sure if she should find that a compliment or not. Mal might not be mean to her but she sure knew how to be sarcastic enough to keep Amy curious.
"That was very well done." They heard someone say and they turned to see Elsa, Queen of Arendelle, approaching them. She was limping slightly. "I'm very proud of you all."
"Aunt Elsa?" Alex asked a bit shocked.
Jay and Mal held out their weapons as if prepared to fight again but Amy placed her hands on each of their arms to stop them. "No it's okay. It's really Queen Elsa. We rescued her when we fought Ryu." She said to them.
"Mom was forced to be that Icesha monster, we're not entirely sure how. But we were able to free her." Ellie added as both daughter and nephew moved to support the queen of that land.
"Glad to see you're okay your majesty." Mal said to Elsa with a small bow. "Forgive me if we skip the formalities, we have your kingdom to save and friends to find."
Elsa laughed lightly. "Think nothing of it, I get it." She promised. "But how do we do that?"
"How did you find us?" Carlos asked Melody.
"That was Amy's idea, using her own magic and the power of the trident to home in on her sister's magic." Melody explained.
Mal nodded as she understood her little sister's idea. "Then let's follow that one up." She decided. "Amy, Alex, Melody and I will draw our magic together and focus it on the trident to find the others."
"How does that work?" Miranda asked now. "I mean Amy focused on you, her sister. That isn't something you can use there."
Some part of Mal hoped her love for Ben would factor into that. But it was almost a false one. Her other reasoning's were more realistic. "Alex has the cold fire which we need to fight Ice Queen and I'm willing to bet anything the others are together, including Aquiella."
"You're hoping I can find my cousin the same way that Amy found you." Melody realized. She held out the trident. "It's worth a shot. Everyone, move in closer together and hang on."