With moves nearly faster than her eyes could process, Kat was barely surviving through luck and reflexes alone.
The dreadful dragon ranger swung high, causing Kat to duck, but doing so left her vulnerable to a flank from the beastly triceratops ranger. She winced as his staff grazed her side, bubbling warm blood that spread across her pink blouse.
Okay, time for the big guns.
Kat backflipped backward, accidentally kicking the dragon ranger back several steps, yay for small miracles. Mid-air she exclaimed "Pink Ninja Power!"
In a flash of magenta light, her ninja attire appeared around her.
Old power coursed through her with such an intense familiarity it was like they hadn't even left. She felt just as she had smashing Tenga beak all those years ago.
The two rangers were fast, but Kat was faster. She moved around their strikes like a fluid, dodging strike over strike without even a thought.
But evading was never going to be the toughest part of this.
"Boys," she spoke. "You need to snap out of this. Gain control of yourselves before it's too late!"
But her cries fell on deaf ears as the two rangers continued their assault.
"Billy please!" Kat urged as she barely maneuvered away from his last attack. "Come back to us!"
"That's impossible," Billy replied. "I've already lost everything, there's nothing to come back to."
"You're wrong," Kat said. "You still have us! Your team..."
Billy scoffed. "Yeah, right. We haven't been a team since high school."
The words hit Kat like a punch to the gut, but she had to ignore them if she hoped to break through.
"As much as I want to deny it, I know you're right, Billy," Kat said. "We've all strayed so far apart. But it doesn't have to stay like that."
A quick leg sweep from Tommy sent Kat tumbling to the ground. Damn it. She knew it would prove to be a mistake to take her eyes off her husband.
"You foolish girl," the Wizard of Deception exclaimed. "Mere talking won't be enough to save them."
A green glove grabbed a hold of her ankle, hard enough to send a jolt of pain up her leg. But as Tommy tugged her towards him he only found an empty uniform in his grasp.
Kat appeared in a puff of smoke, catching the Blue Ranger off guard with a spin kick that sent him rolling away.
"Tommy!" She urged the still-standing green ranger. "I know you can beat this. Just like you've beaten every other evil spell."
"No, Kat, you don't understand," Tommy replied. "This isn't an evil spell. This is who I really am."
Kat felt a dark chill creep down her spine. Then she shook her head. "No, you're wrong. Come on Tommy, you're better than this!"
Tommy began to laugh as Billy pulled himself back up. Panic closed in around her.
"That's the thing," the green ranger spoke. "I'm not better than this. I never was. I wasn't good enough for Rita, I wasn't good enough for Zordon. I wasn't even good enough for Kimberly."
The last sentence hit Kat the hardest. It had her so distracted she nearly fell to a swift blow from the Blue Ranger.
Come on Kat, she urged herself. You can't let them get to you. Otherwise, you're dead.
But the two warriors weren't making it easy for her. Even with her ninja powers the two together were starting to catch up.
The sword of darkness flew toward her, and Kat's ninja instincts directed her to leap into the ground.
She didn't account for the fact that space functioned differently in the dark dimension. So instead she merely hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
There was a pang of embarrassment and pain but neither of those could match her fear as the Sword of Darkness pressed against one side of her neck and the Power Lance against the other.
"It's over, little pinkie," the Wizard of Deception decreed. And Kat knew he was right. This was it. End of the line. He grabbed her hood and pulled it down."Any last words?"
Kat swallowed as she felt the weapons press tighter against her throat. She cast a quick, sharp, glance between the two Rangers. "You're lucky Zordon is dead. Because if he saw the two of you he'd be disgusted!"
"Hahaha, is that all you've got?" The wizard taunted. "Finish her, my puppets!"
Yet the two Rangers remained motionless.
"Have you gone deaf?! Kill her!"
Kat looked up in disbelief. She felt their weapons tremble. Only for a moment, then, and she felt the pressure resume.
"He loved you both," Kat said. "And he expected better from you."
"Ignore her!" The wizard demanded with a pinch of growing panic. "She offers false hope in the name of self-preservation. YOU'RE WORTHLESS, AND ALONE. ONLY HATRED! ONLY DARKNESS!"
The pressure worsened and Kat felt a thin trickle of blood run down her neck. She refused to accept her fate.
"After ten thousand years of imprisonment, Zordon finally felt like he could leave his time warp because he knew we were here. We're his legacy!"
"No! You were just his pawns! Ones that he discarded as soon as you lost your worth!"
In a move so fluid Kat could barely follow Tommy pulled his sword back to deliver a powerful blow.
But not against her.
The Wizard of Deception stumbled back, a glowing orange light poured from the wound in his chest.
"Don't EVER talk about Zordon like that…" the green ranger breathed.
The wizard, seeing the writing on the wall, did the only thing he could. With the gash pouring sickly light into the darkened air, he raised his hands and cast the trio out of the dark dimension.
The three Rangers were demorphed and dumped back into the Oliver's kitchen.
The smell of coffee was the first thing that hit Kat's nose. There was nothing but silence as the three looked amongst each other.