The Cimmerian Forest

"All righty," Xander moved around the store in his rolling chair, 'supervising' them as they unloaded several boxes of records and arranged them. "Work the beat. Work the beat. Stocking doesn't have to be boring."

"Hey if you can rhyme like that, maybe you can consider being a poet." Neil said. "But first, can you please stop bossing around and help us out here?"

"I would but you guys got it handled and me stepping in would ruin the prefect balance!" He shrugged. The others rolled their eyes, more than used to his excuses by now.

He whirled around, letting out a shocked yell as he came face to face with a cardboard cut-out of a man in black leather jacket, mascara, and long shaggy hair. Toby looked up from behind it.

"Oh, it's just you boss!" Xander heaved a sigh, standing up.

"Nice work Xander! I like the way you have got everyone working!" Toby said appraisingly while the rest made faces.

"Yeah, everybody except him…" Vida muttered underneath her breath.

"You are a born leader!" Toby continued and the green ranger beamed at the compliment, turning towards the others. "Hear that, guys? Born leader!"

"Who's that guy, Toby?" Maddie asked.

"Who's that guy?!" Toby looked appalled. "Guys! Jake Bonebreaker!"

Seeing their lost faces, he flailed his arms wildly. "The man who put metal in Metalhead? The lead guitar and vocal of metal mega classic, Hairy Hatchet!"

"You guys! Your generation doesn't know about real music!" He moaned.

"Toby, you are like five years older than us." Neil pointed out.

"And that makes it even sadder. Okay, all of you guys, your lesson. Play it. Like it. Class dismissed!" He ordered before moving back to his office.

The rangers looked at each other, snickering at their boss' antics.

"Guys, who wants to take care of the king of metal?" Xander turned towards them.

"Not me!" Nick said quickly.

"Me either!" Maddie grimaced, shooting the cardboard a nasty look.

"I have got stuff to do." Vida waved him off.

"Sorry, heavy metal makes my ears bleed." Chip said genuinely.

"I have got some reading to do." Neil shrugged.

"Fine, I will do it myself!" Xander said dramatically. "Like everything else around here!"

The others shrugged, returning to their work while Xander took out his morpher, pointing it at the cut-out. "With a little help from magic."

"Xander, don't." Neil hissed seeing him cast a spell.

"Hello Cincinnati!" The others looked up in surprise to see a man standing where the cardboard had been.

"Oops!" Xander recoiled, lowering his morpher. "There's a slight magical malfunction…"

The others laughed at him.

"What did you think your spell would do?" Maddie snickered, looking at him.

"Start playing all music by this guy?" He shrugged.

"Instead, you animated him." Neil shook his head. "Udonna told us we should voice the spells instead of just willing. There's less room for error that way."

Their morphers started chiming and they looked at each other warily. Nick flipped his morpher open and Udonna's voice came through.

"There's a convergence of dark energies in the city."

"We will check it out." Nick assured before giving a side-eyes glance at the animated cardboard. "We can't all disappear on Toby. Neil, Vida and I will check it out. You guys help with… heavy metal boy,"

"Wait, guys!" Xander protested as Neil gave him an apologetic smile and rushed out with the others. He grimaced, turning around to see Bonebreaker play his guitar loudly.

"According to the coordinates Udonna sent us, the dark magic should be right around here." Neil looked up from his morpher to see a nearly vacant parking area except for a lone cab.

"There's nothing here." Nick scoffed.

"Maybe they are hiding behind the taxi? This could be an ambush." Vida pointed out,

The cab suddenly blared it's front lights at them before revving it's engine and charging at them.

"Look out!" Nick yelled as they scrambled to avoid getting hit by the cab.

"What the-" Neil was cut off as the cab started to ebb with purple light before it backflipped in the air, turning into a humanoid monster. "Holy shit! Is that a fucking transformer!"

"Enough with the movie references, that thing is trying to kill us!" Vida screamed as the monster charged at them, forcing them to scatter in different directions.

"Morphing Time?" Neil asked the others. They nodded.

"Magical Source, Mystic Force!" They called, raising their morphers, summoning their armour.

"Magi Staff!" Nick yelled, taking out his sword and jumping at the monster, only for it to swat him aside.

"Nick!" Neil yelled, glaring at the monster. "Flurry of Snow!" He pointed his staff at the monster, shooting it with a blast of cold wave.

"You okay?" Vida ran over to the red ranger, helping him up.

"Yeah…" Nick nodded. "Let's take care of this guy!"

The ice melted as the monster growled.

"My turn… Mystic Wings!" Vida stepped forwards, her cape twisting into fairy wings as she flapped them, sending a strong gust of pink wind at the monster, slamming him to the wall.

"Thought a transformer would be tougher to beat." Neil quipped as they cornered the monster, just when they were hit by a black blur, causing them to fall backwards. They looked up to see-

"Necrolai!" Vida glared.

The vampire in black armour snarled at her.

"I will only tell you once rangers. Stay out of my way!" She warned before wrapping the monster with her wings and disappearing in a puff of black smoke.

"Well, that was something." Nick shrugged.

"Guys, I think we have got another problem." Neil grimaced, pointing at the security camera in the corner of a wall. "It recorded us morphing."

They looked at each other warily.

Lena pursed her lips as she watched her son and his friends morph in the footage as it played in one of the screens on Rootcore.

"You need to protect your identities at all costs." She admonished. "This tape could have put us all in danger. You are lucky there was no guard watching the footage and that you were able to remove it from the facility."

"We are sorry." Nick lowered his head. "We honestly didn't notice it till the fight was over."

"Wait, what was that?" Maddie narrowed her eyes and went over to the consoles, pausing the video. The screen showed Necrolai holding a map in her hands.

"That is no ordinary map!" Udonna gaped, stepping closer to the computer alongside the others.

"We can't see all of it but that is definitely the language of the ancients." Lena frowned.

"Maybe we can take a closer look?" Maddie flicked her wand and a copy of the map appeared in her hands. She passed it over to Udonna.

"Oh my… I thought this was lost!" Udonna's eyes widened. "Lena, look!"

The lightning knight peered at the map, glancing over it quickly before she gasped. "This can't be… It's a map to the Fireheart!"

"The Fireheart! No way!" Chip exclaimed excitedly and they all looked at him before he blinked sheepishly. "It sounds so cool but what is a fireheart?"

"The ancient mystics believed it to be a tremendous source of power. There are many prophecies surrounding it. My brother was one of the many scholars studying them before the war began." Lena told them softly. "He believed Fireheart could be the key to destroy the forces of Underworld forever but we never found it and for good reason too, seeing where it's hidden."

"Where is it? We need to find it before Necrolai gets her scaly little hands on it!" Vida asked.

"It won't be easy. It says to get the Fireheart, one must venture through the Cimmerian Forest." Udonna said gravely.

"That's alright. We like forests, don't we guys?" Xander grinned.

"This is different." Udonna sighed. "Imagine your worst nightmare."

"That's easy." Chip said perkily. "My mom puts my cell phone in the dryer and the next time I morph, my uniform is really tiny."

The other five rangers started laughing.

"Enough!" Lena said sternly, glaring at them. "No one in their right minds has dared to venture into the Cimmerian Forest for a thousand years. It's called the Dark Forest and legends say it's inhabited by the foulest of creatures and demons in the universe."

"But that's just legend, right?" Neil asked. "I mean people of Briarwood were scared of the forest but there wasn't anything to be scared of."

"This is completely different." Lena snapped. "You six are not going into the Cimmerian Forest for a wild goose chase."

"But we must go right? I mean the alternative is Necrolai getting it and I don't even want to imagine what she'll use it for." Vida protested.

"How's it different from fighting the forces of Underworld?" Nick asked.

"For for what it's worth, even the Merlocks are more honourable than what lurks in the dark recesses of the forest!" Lena snapped. "Udonna, tell them!"

The white witch sighed. "This is might be the most dangerous journey you will ever undertake and you should not make this choice lightly. Your path will be filled with unimaginable danger. Evil creatures, ravenous demons, merciless monsters… If you go, returning with Fireheart will not be your success, your success will be to return at all!"

"You guys still want to go after hearing all this?" Lena raised her eyes.

The rangers looked at each other quickly before nodding reluctantly.

"It's not that we want to, it's more like we have to!" Neil said gently.

"Fine. I will be going too then." Lena relented.

"No, if the city is attacked. We will need you here to defend it." Nick shook his head. "You are easily the most powerful out of us."

"if you think I am letting my son and five teenagers go into the Cimmerian Forest unsupervised, you are sorely mistaken, young man." She scoffed.

"He is right though, mom." Neil told her.

"Neil, you don't get-" She started.

"Mom, we have our magic and our ranger forms. We will be okay and if we see some monster, we will directly go into our titan modes and stomp on it. Now do I have permission to go?" He asked.

Lena's lips twitched. "Stomping on a monster is hardly honourable but it will keep you alive. You can go but promise me, all of you, you will morph at the slightest sign of danger."

They nodded.

"Be careful." The lightning knight sighed before embracing her son in a tight hug.

"This isn't… so bad?" Chip said hopefully as they walked out of a tree. They had willed it to transport them to the Cimmerian Forest, only to appear in another part of the forest and in front of a sign nailed to a tree with the carving of a skull on it and something written in letters they could not read, but it was not hard to understand it's meaning.

"I'm not looking forward to this." Maddie said warily.

"Me neither." Nick muttered underneath his breath.

"I am!" Xander boasted, stepping forwards to the front of the group. "I'll take the lead on this one. I know how to read maps very well."

"You sure?" Nick asked.

"Like Toby said, I'm a born leader!" He said smugly.

"Okay, it's all yours." Nick sighed, handing over the map to the green mystic.

"Okay, Team Xander, onward!" Xander cheered, taking the map and leading them through the wilderness.

"Oh, no!" Maddie gasped.

"What happened, sis?" Vida asked the horrified blue ranger, who just pointed at a tree on the side. They stepped closer to see a skeleton, a human one buried in the bushes.

"This is my kinda place!" Chip beamed.

"Chip!" Neil elbowed him. "This is not cool! That was a real guy!"

"Not just any guy." Nick narrowed his eyes, pointing to a golden bracelet on the skeleton's arm. He wrangled it out of his arm and held it out for the others to see the emblem of the mystics on it. "He was a mystic. One of us."

The others looked at each other horrified.

Nick bent down to keep the bracelet back, only for Neil to stop him.

"No. We should bring it back to Udonna. Maybe they could find out who it belonged to and let their family know." Neil said. "Or at least give him a proper send off."

The others nodded just when a loud noise echoed throughout the forest.

"Okay, what was that?" Maddie asked.

"Don't know, don't want to find out." Neil said. "Let's keep moving. The quicker we find Fireheart, the faster we can get out of this place!"

Hours blended into an agonizing eternity as Lena waited in Rootcore, her eyes fixated on the crystal ball.

"Maybe I should have gone with them." She sighed.

"Or maybe you should have more trust on the rangers. Not only are they powerful mystics but also the chosen ones of the prophecy." Udonna chided gently, taking a seat beside her friend.

"They are only kids Udonna."

"I know but you forget that we weren't that older than them during the Great War." She smiled sadly. "They will be alright, Lena."

Just then, black smoke clouded the crystal ball before showing a group of hidiacs scouring the city.

Lena groaned, getting up. She turned to Udonna. "Let me know if you hear anything from the rangers."

"I will." The witch promised.

Nodding, the knight sprinted out of Rootcore towards the nearest tree, ready for battle.

"Whoa!" Xander stopped suddenly but the warning came too late as the others collided with them, knocking him to the ground.

"Next time, just say stop." Vida snapped at him. "Whoa is for horses. I don't see any horses around here, do you?"

"Okay, I got it." Xander smiled, trying to placate her in vain. Another noise echoed throughout the forest, but this time, it felt closer.

"Did you hear that?" Neil turned around in alarm.

"I have got a feeling that something has been following us since we started." Chip said hesitantly. "But I didn't want to say anything because I always think someone is following me."

The others laughed.

"Only you, mate!" Xander chuckled, turning around only to yell as he came face to face with a figure who suddenly sprung in front of them, hanging upside down from a tree. The others screamed in shock.

"It's only Phineas!" Nick said, calming down.

"Ooh, the troll you met in the woods!" Chip beamed excitedly.

"Troblin actually!" Phineas corrected them. "You all must be Nick's team – the rangers!"

"Yeah, nice to meet you?" Madison said, squinting at the shabby appearance and the ragged appearance of the man.

"Meet and greet will have to wait!" Xander cut in. "Sorry Phineas, we are on an important mission."

Phineas jumped from the tree, flipping midway in the air before landing in front of them. "Tell you what, seeing you all asked nicely, I will take you through the forest!"

"Maybe we should let Phineas lead?" Nick suggested.

"Yeah. Sounds like he knows the place." Neil added. The others nodded.

"I like him! Knows what he is talking about," The troblin grinned flashing his yellowish sharp teeth at them. "I know this place like the back of my-" He stared at his hand. "Ooh, lucky me! New wart!"

Xander stepped back hastily, his nose wrinkled with disgust. He forced a smile. "Look, we don't need any help, I know where we are going! This way, team!"

With a small apologetic smile at the troblin, Neil followed the others.

"Okay, no problem!" Phineas called behind them. "Have a nice day! Just sorry I'll never see you again, but hey, have fun!"

Neil looked at his watch. It had been three hours since they started and they were no where close to finding a sign of Fireheart.

"Hey hold up leader!" Nick interrupted the green mystic, whose eyes were furrowed. "We are going in circles! Admit it, we are lost!"

"We are not! Tell him guys." Xander turned towards the others, who shifted nervously.

"We kind of are, Xan. I am pretty sure we have passed that tree stump like three times." Neil pointed out. Xander shot him a betrayed look.

"We are not lost!" He insisted.

"We are too!" Nick argued.

"We are not!"

"We are… sinking!" Chip yelled, cutting them off.

"Swamp sand!" Maddie cried in horror. They were already knee deep and as they struggled, they seemed to be sucked in faster.

"Guys, don't move!" Neil yelled. "The more we move, the quicker we will be sucked in!"

"Then what do you think we do? Wait?" Vida shot back.

"We morph!" Xander yelled. They reached for their morphers quickly. "Magical Source, Mystic Force!"

Nothing happened. They looked at each other in horror.

"Great, our morphers doesn't work here-" Chip realised.

"Lanuae Magicae! Lanuae Magicae!" Maddie shouted, her voice trembling.

"Our magic doesn't work either!" Neil cried, looking at Xander helplessly. "What do we do?"

"Guys, grab hold!" They turned around to see Nick catching a hold of a vine. They joined hands as they hoisted themselves out of the sand. They slumped to the ground, panting heavily.

"Let's re-evaluate." Nick suggested, sitting up. "Take out the map."

Xander reached for his pockets, his eyes widening as he realised, he does not have it. Their eyes darted back to the swamp where they saw the map slowly sink in.

"NO!" Nick shouted.

The others groaned.

"This just keeps getting better and better." Vida complained.

"Map? Who needs a map?" Xander spoke confidently. "I looked at the thing a million times!"

He tapped his forehead. "It's all up here."

"And that's supposed to make us feel better?" Vida snarked.

Xander made a face as he stood up and moved in a different direction. The others rolled their eyes, following him.

"I hope you know what you're doing." Neil told him, catching up to him.

"I thought you would have a little more faith in me." Xander looked at him pointedly.

"I do… I do." The white mystic said quickly. "But we don't have magic now. And I am scared."

"Don't be. We are all here. I am here." Xander put his arm around him, pulling him close. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"Okay." He smiled back at Xander, burying his doubts as they trudged deeper into the forest, completely unaware of the dangers that waited for them.

Hope you guys enjoyed and please review. I am breaking "Fireheart" into two chapters and I might do the same with other episodes too, so that I can update more frequently. Anyway, happy new year to you all!