Disclaimer: I own nothing here you recognise (and depending on what fandom drew your interest to this fic, I may not own some things you don't recognise); you know how it goes.

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Guardians of Magic

Kenzi would never stop being amazed at what her life had become since she and Bo first became friends all those months ago. She still found it frustrating when some of the more set-in-their-ways fae treated her more like a pet than a person, but the warm friendship and acceptance she received from the likes of Hale and Trick made up for that, and it was always fascinating to learn more about this secret society that so many other people in the world would never know even existed.

Of course, if she was going to acknowledge the good parts of her life, she also had to accept some of the closer calls she'd experienced since meeting Bo. Even if the way so many people had rallied to help her proved that she had found good friends, she still had the occasional nightmare where she, Bo and Hale ended up tearing each other apart because of that spider-thing before Trick and the others found a cure…

Still, right now, she was definitely in one of those moments that was simultaneously incredibly cool and fundamentally terrifying. Walking through the streets of what was basically an alien planet might be the kind of opportunity that didn't come along very often, but that was mainly because people wouldn't really expect something like this to happen unless they were completely crazy. Even then, she doubted that anyone could have imagined that someone would get dragged along to become part of a war that basically amounted to defending magic from science when she didn't even have any kind of powers of her own.

OK, she wasn't a fan of the drab outfits either, but she'd worn worse on some of her undercover missions with Bo in the past. At least the colour wasn't the same vivid pink as that time she'd had to infiltrate a college sorority, even if the scale of this mess went way beyond anything she'd had to deal with before…

Kenzi might be part of a team consisting of some really freaky yet really cool people, but no matter what the team were capable of, she still worried how they were actually going to stop these guys. Even doing something as simple as looking for information was potentially dangerous right now, especially when the redhead kept anxiously looking around as they walked. Paige had tested her spell on Willow back at the trailer, so they knew Willow would get her magic back once they got home, but it was easy to see that the girl was worried about losing her main advantage if anything happened while they were out and about.

Things might be simple right now- breaking into a building was at least easier than outright waging a war- but that still left them walking through enemy territory with the goal of infiltrating what had to be one of the most secure buildings in a civilisation where people like Bo would be condemned as monsters for no better reason than Bo's magical potential (and Kenzi still wasn't sure if 'magic' was the right term for what Bo could do). She might be proud of her skills at working cons, but there was a difference between convincing people that she could do stuff like cleanse a house of spirits and basically breaking into what had to be the equivalent of CIA headquarters Langley in this world…

"Hey," a voice said, Kenzi starting in shock before she looked around to see Tommy Oliver walking up beside her, the young man giving her a cautious smile. "Are… you OK?"

"Yeah, I-I'm just- I have- I can't believe I'm doing this, you know?" Kenzi said at last, wishing she didn't sound so lost even as they continued walking down the quiet street, the rest of the 'strike team' spread out around the area. "I mean, I get why we have to do this, and I know we're all at risk, but… I mean, this is way beyond me and Bo stopping a couple of fae being mean to humans…"

"Believe me, I think we're all feeling the pressure right now," Tommy observed with a slight smile. "Like Billy pointed out, we're all basically new at this kind of thing; the only thing any of us can do is focus on the goal at hand and hope that we can put everything together in time to make a difference."

"And what if we can't?"

"We can't accept that," Tommy said, a sudden wistful tone to his voice as he turned his head, apparently looking half at Kenzi and half at something that was probably only in his own mind. "If my team had decided that they couldn't do anything about an impossible situation, I wouldn't be here."

"You wouldn't?"

"…Remember how I told you that I only joined the other Rangers a few weeks ago?" Tommy said, looking around as though to make sure nobody else was close by before he continued talking. "That's because I was originally chosen to be a Ranger by Rita Repulsa."

"Rita Rep- as in the witch you said you guys are fighting?" Kenzi looked at him in shock. "Why would she choose you to become a Ranger?"

"Because she also put me under a spell that turned me against the rest of the team," Tommy said grimly. "I was basically completely devoted to serving her as my Empress and spent the better part of the next week doing everything I could to destroy the other Rangers. I cut them off from their mentor, trapped their leader in a prison where he had to fight Rita's best soldier without his own powers, helped to destroy their best weapons… if they hadn't managed to regain contact with their mentor at the last minute so that he could give them an extra boost of power, I could have literally crushed them."

"…Yikes," Kenzi said, suddenly wondering what would have been worse. It didn't sound like Tommy had actually killed anyone, but at least Bo could tell herself that she'd only killed because she hadn't known what she was, where it sounded like Tommy remembered being forced to try and kill people who were now his friends. "But… they broke that spell, right? The other Rangers?"

"The spell's been broken," Tommy nodded. "I've fought with them against Rita ever since, and I'm never going back to her… but the point I'm making is that they wouldn't have broken the spell and freed me if they'd just given up trying. I did so much damage to them, but they kept fighting no matter what I hit them with until they had the chance to turn the tables on me and break Rita's spell."

"So the point is that we can't give up either, huh?" Kenzi smiled cautiously at her new acquaintance. She wasn't sure that she was ready to take on the kind of odds Tommy must face in his world, but she could get behind the idea of never giving up. "I… think I can go with that."

"Just remember that we're all here with you," Tommy nodded at her, before he indicated the street ahead. "Let's go; we don't want to fall behind."

Kenzi gave him a brief smile before she continued walking after her new acquaintance, walking cautiously along the streets as they weaved around the gathered civilians. It took a few more minutes until they reached the large tower that had been previously identified as one of the Empirikuul's primary data centres, but Kenzi was glad to see that the rest of the group were already discreetly standing around outside what looked like some kind of food shop opposite the data centre (there was definitely food visible through the few immediate windows, but there were so few that Kenzi wondered if the building was the equivalent of a supermarket or a newsagent's). Emma, Willow and Bo's distinctive hair was tied up and hidden underneath their caps, while Billy was standing cautiously next to Dave as though they were a pair of brothers on a walk, and Vision's holographic disguise seemed to be holding up as he walked out holding a bag.

"Kenzi?" Bo looked at her anxiously as the last two walked up to join the others.

"All good here, Bobo," Kenzi nodded reassuringly at her best friend. "Mr Green here's pretty good at the pep talk side of things."

"It's… I've been on the receiving end of a few," Tommy shrugged in a casual manner before he looked over at Vision. "You went shopping?"

"I was able to acquire funds and thought it would be a good step to both take more legitimate action at this time and ensure that we had supplies for later," Vision explained. "A benefit of a society with this level of control is that they have few digital defences as they feel it isn't needed."

"They're that sure nobody would go against them?" Willow looked at Vision, her eyes wide with fear.

"I'm guessing they're prepared for outright magical attack, but less prepared to deal with this kind of 'attack'?" Dave put in.

"And we shall be discreet and give them no reason to think otherwise until we are ready to do anything," Vision nodded reassuringly at the Merlinian.

"You think you can get through any remaining firewalls once we're in there?" Willow indicated the data centre.

"I am reasonably certain that they could not have designed this place to withstand me when I am making an active effort to infiltrate their systems at close quarters," Vision nodded in confirmation, before he handed the bags to Emma. "Could you hold these?"

Bemused at the request, Emma took the offered bags while Vision walked over to the nearest door leading into the data centre. The rest of the available Guardians looked around anxiously as the Vision literally walked through the wall a few moments later, only relaxing once it was clear that nobody else had seen him move. Kenzi wondered if the Vision had just hacked any watching cameras to stop them registering his presence or if the fact that he wasn't actually magic meant that he wasn't doing anything to attract their attention.

It took a few moments of anxious waiting, but eventually a door opened and the rest of the group walked in as quickly as possible, each of them looking around as they went in. From what Kenzi could see, the streets were relatively quiet and nobody was looking at them, which left her wondering if these people were so secure in the way things were that they just assumed anybody going inside the building like this had to have authorisation to be here in the first place.

Once inside, Kenzi wondered if she should be disturbed at how straightforward this building was. She wasn't surprised to see a large collection of computers and books through the most obvious doors, but the way some of those books were locked behind glass doors made it clear that they weren't for public use.

"Yeah, that's not worrying at all," she shook her head as she indicated the books.

"Y-yeah," Willow said. "Generally speaking, from what I've read of history, when societies decide that the public doesn't need to know things and keeps knowledge locked away like that… well, that's when you should start worrying about the kind of world you're living in."

"Which is another reason to start taking this whole place down?" Billy put in with a slight grin.

"So long as we're just talking about the culture rather than the building, anyway," Dave put in. "I'm not that keen on destroying knowledge…"

"We will not," the Vision nodded at the student. "We are here to change this world, but that does not mean we will attack for the sake of attacking."

"Let's just focus on research before we start working on our battle strategy right now," Emma nodded as she looked around. "OK, Vision can start breaching the digital defences so that we can find out more about the history of this place, and… Dave, Willow, you see what you can find out on the computers. If we can get any of these cupboards open, Bo, Kenzi and I will see what we can find that way; Tommy and Billy can stay alert to keep an eye out for any sign we've been caught."

"Research?" Kenzi looked sceptically at Emma. "I'm not exactly an expert-"

"We just need to check each book and see if it has something in it we might find useful; you don't need to be an expert in anything," the blonde sheriff clarified reassuringly. "These things don't even look like the locks are that elaborate; I should be able to show you-"

"How to pick them?" Kenzi finished with a pole shake of her head and a casual grin. "No need to worry about that; I've been doing that particular trick for years."

"I… had to do that a couple of times too," Billy put in, raising his hand with an awkward shrug.

"I learned how to do that when we had to break into the morgues a couple of times to get a better sense of what we were dealing with…" Willow said.

"OK, let's just get the locks open and see what we've got," Dave said, shrugging as he looked at the books. "And everyone remember, no magic unless it's desperate."

A couple of hours later, Dave wondered if it said something about himself as a person that he'd only done anything really interesting after he started learning about his magic (if you didn't count the mess of his first encounter with Balthazar and Horvath in the shop). From what he'd heard about the others, Emma, Billy and Kenzi had been through a lot even before they actually had to deal with magic, and Willow and Tommy were at least younger than he was so it didn't seem to matter as much to him, but even after he became the Prime Merlinian and started dating Becky it was hard to shake off the idea that he was still just the same old nerd he'd been before Balthazar came back into his life.

He appreciated that there was still something cool and dangerous about studying texts that were basically forbidden to most of the general population around here, but they'd been going over these books for ages and still hadn't found anything useful. Willow was basically tearing through the books while occasionally helping out on the computers if anyone got stuck, but it was fairly clear that Vision was the one doing most of the work when it came to taking in the data.

Reading the books was interesting in one regard, but the more Dave looked through them the more he began to see what about magic had let these Empirikuul guys come to power in the first place. A few of the books seemed more like the standard spellbooks he'd read in the trailer, such as his Incantus or Harry and Mildred's schoolbooks (seriously, why couldn't he have attended a school like that?), but most of these spoke about all kinds of demonic figures and ritual sacrifices as they were the equivalent of… well, a really twisted kind of mortgage or taxes; whether or not you liked it, you just got on with it.

"Are you… noticing a theme with these books?"

"Huh?" Dave looked over at Kenzi, unaware that his new acquaintance had just walked up to him.

"I mean, these guys might be racist jerks, but if they've faced people who worship Mr Squid-Eyeball or however you pronounce that, you can't exactly blame them for being… well, you can see why they've got issues," the young woman observed with a shrug, turning the book in her arms to show him the image she was talking about. It depicted something that Dave could only compare to a giant squid with an even larger eyeball on one end, reaching out with its tentacles and grabbing small figures to bring towards something on the other end of its body that was almost certainly a mouth.

"…Yeah," Dave nodded, wincing at the image in the book. "That's just… even if that's a metaphor for something, that's gross."

"And we should probably assume it isn't," Emma cut in as she walked over to their table (Dave really needed to watch his surroundings; Morganians weren't always going to make a big production out of attacking him). "For what it's worth, pretty much every other book we've found here has been along those lines; for all the cases where we have worlds like ours, we have worlds where the locals worship things like that."

"And that makes it OK for these guys to decide they can just go all anti-magic on the multiverse?"

"I'm saying it helps us understand how they got to this point, but that doesn't mean that we should just let them off," Emma clarified as she looked at Kenzi. "We need to think of this like Nazi Germany; there are bad people here who sincerely believe what's being preached, but some people are just going along with the official party line because they don't know any better-"

The sound of a door opening from down below prompted Emma to fall silent, holding up a hand in a halting gesture as she looked anxiously around the room. Dave's mind raced over where the rest of the infiltration team were right now, but he was sure that nobody was meant to be downstairs, which meant that someone else was here.

OK, so Tommy and Billy were on guard, but the moment Billy had to change into Shazam, they'd blow the element of surprise…

"Get Willow to call Paige," Emma looked over at Kenzi before turning to Dave. "Be ready; if things get rough, you might be our best defence."

Dave nodded as he put down the book he had been looking at, moving to stand in front of the door with his arms spread in a defensive manner. He could hear Kenzi moving around behind him as she put things back, but right now he wasn't sure if that would be enough; they hadn't been advertising their presence, but if anyone had come here at all it wouldn't be hard to spot that someone else was here…

The sound of fighting from outside ended Dave's dilemma as he hurried for the door, opening it just enough to see what was happening outside. To his surprise, Billy was hanging back while Tommy engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a trio of men in uniforms similar to the armour he and the other Guardians had seen when they arrived. The real surprise for Dave was seeing how quickly Tommy moved from one to the other, to the point that he was sure at one point he saw Tommy jump up to kick one guard while punching another at basically the same time.

If this was what Tommy Oliver was capable of when he was apparently only human, Dave was suddenly really interested to see what he could do when he was using that 'Morpher' thing…

It was only when Billy called out in a panic that Dave realised one of the guards had gotten past Tommy to grab the kid. Not ready to have Billy show off his own powers just yet, Dave basically dashed out the door and hit the guard in the face with a punch that he knew was a stupid move even before he felt the ache in his hand. Seeing that the guard had at least released his grip on Billy, and lost for any better ideas, Dave tried something different and kicked the man between his legs, wincing in male solidarity when the man fell over clutching at his groin.

"I'm here!" Paige's voice called out from behind Dave, even as he reminded himself to keep his attention on the guards. "Everyone get back here!"

Dave wasn't sure if Tommy had heard at first, since the teen in green was still struggling with his previous attacker, but the question was soon answered when Tommy threw his opponent back down the stairs and ran back towards them. Billy joined the older teen as they both ran back to join Dave and Paige, the young woman placing her hands on Dave and Tommy's shoulders as they each grabbed Billy's arms before fading into white orbs.