Play "Falling" by Cryoshell

Instrumental

The screen starts off black. One by one, spotlights come on, revealing the three Rangers looking at the ground. They then lift their heads as the title Power Rangers: Paleo Force shatters through the remaining darkness above them.

Lights out.

Duncan, Brody, and Cooper stand together at the generic quarry, looking at their Zords and smiling.

No one's here.

Kenny is working on a circuit board with a robotic hand sitting on his desk. He grins as he taps the circuit board with a stylus, making the hand twitch.

Hear the silence.

Jane and Brody are together at the hospital, Jane bandaging Brody's leg.

Scent of fear.

All the heroic characters look up to the sky.

You start running.

The view moves up into space, where we see our main villains in their spaceship, followed by a close-up of each of them.

With mistrusting and skeptical eyes.

We get a shot of Cooper, Duncan, and Brody staring down an army of Shadows.

Are you haunted?

The three look at each other before nodding.

I call out.

One by one, they take fighting stances as they ready their morphers.

I'm counting on you.

The screen cuts to black.

Falling.

All three Rangers charge in slow motion as an explosion goes off in the background.

Is this the end of the line, and can we make it in time?

In a rotating shot, Brody slashes Shadows with his Carnage Sword, Cooper shoots them with his cannon, and Duncan blasts enemies with his Switch-Gun.

Falling.

CJ extends her arm, directing her Zords to charge forward.

My world is spinning around. I'm crashing into the ground.

Calios descends from space like a comet and, after landing, steps forward, slowly drawing his sword.

Falling.

Moses folds his arms as three silhouetted figures gather on either side of him.

Now I need you to see it's up to you and me.

The Paleo Force Megazord shifts into sword-and-shield mode. It slashes a monster, then uses its Cryo Slash on it, making it explode.

I'm counting on you.

Consecutive shots of Cooper doing a Ranger Punch, Duncan doing a Ranger Slash, and Brody doing a Ranger Kick at the screen.

Cut to the end of the song as the music fades out.

The Rangers stand confidently in front of their respective Zords, who roar behind them as the screen fades to black again.

Chapter 24

"I'll see you later!" a young, blonde woman called out to her boyfriend. As she began walking home, she suddenly got an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach and the hair on the back of her neck rose. She was being watched.

Play the Jaws music

"What the fuck?" The woman said out loud.

She looked around, trying to figure where the sinister music was coming from. She couldn't see anyone sinister around, but with the sun having already set, there were plenty of places for a stalker to hide. She backed away, which somehow made the music to get louder.

Taking that as a bad sign, she ran in the opposite direction, causing the music to dull. Her relief was quickly ruined when the music picked up again, getting louder and louder.

"Somebody, help!" she shouted as a hand grabbed her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks.

The pursuer forced the woman to the ground.

The soon-to-be victim turned her head just in time to get a glimpse of her attacker in the moonlight. To her horror, it was a humanoid shark, giving her an idea of what was about to happen.

"Good. Call for help," the shark growled, a vicious smile on her face. "It attracts more victims." With that, she opened her mouth wide and began her feast.

"Inland shark attack?" Brody read off his phone. "I think we can both guess who did this."

Duncan nodded. "Yeah, the mailman."

Brody facepalmed and sighed. "You're high, aren't you?"

"You couldn't tell? I feel like my eyes should be bloodshot by now," Duncan replied, the snark obvious in his voice.

"Well, let's have the Cryos scout around," Brody said as he tapped his morpher. With that done, he figured all they could do was wait.

The next day, the brothers checked the news.

"So the shark lady attacks at night?" Duncan observed. "Guess we should put the Cryos on the night shift."

"Hmm, if she's only attacking people at night, then I guess me and Jane won't have to worry about being interrupted while we hang out." Brody grinned.

Chazz chuckled and not-so-subtly asked Duncan, "you think he'll get to first base?"

"Actually, I was picturing him asking her to that dance I heard our school was gonna have, and then get to first base," Duncan added. "Which means they're obviously doing awkward hand holding while hanging out."

"Oh, that's even better," Chazz agreed.

"Alright, that's enough," Brody said, annoyed. "I'm heading out. You two do whatever."

"Roger that," Duncan said as he started browsing through Netflix.

Going by Jane's text, Brody entered the mall and made his way to the food court where he found her waiting for him.

"About time you showed up," she teased with a smile.

"Did I keep you waiting?" Brody asked.

Jane sighed, rolling her eyes until her grin returned. "I'm kidding, Brody."

"Aw, and I was about to make a joke about using my raptor speed," Brody fake pouted, making Jane giggle a bit. Dropping his bit, he asked, "Since we're here, wanna grab a bite?"

"Eh, I could go for a snack," Jane agreed with a shrug.

The two split an order of fries and began exploring the mall.

"You know, I don't think I've been in here since last Christmas," Brody thought aloud.

Jane looked at him as they walked. "Oh, were you getting something for your brother?"

Nodding, Brody answered, "Yep, I ended up getting him a stuffed sloth."

Jane raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess, because he's lazy?"

"Bingo," Brody replied with a laugh. "When I gave it to him, he hugged it and cuddled it and named it George."

"Are you serious?" Jane asked, amused.

Having wandered around the second floor for a bit, Brody leaned on the guard rail, looking over the rest of the mall as he answered. "Well, he did name it George," he shrugged.

"Very funny," Jane said as she leaned on the rail as well. "So, I feel weird for asking this but, how did Duncan end up with that whale girl?"

"I don't know, and I don't think I want to know either," Brody cringed as he chuckled.

"He hasn't brought her over, has he?" Jane wondered, her morbid curiosity obvious.

Brody awkwardly looked away, "Well…"

Opening the front door, Brody was still panting from his latest workout session. "Why, Mr. Cooper? Why you gotta work me so hard?"

The sweaty, young man walked to his room and put a hand on the doorknob, only to stop when he heard grunting coming from within.

"Oh, please no," he muttered.

"For the record, you're the fugliest chick I've ever seen!" came Duncan's voice from within.

Bailey's voice angrily replied, "Shut up! I'm hot back on my planet!"

"Yeah? Well, we're not on your planet now, are we?!"

CHOMP "YEOWCH!"

"…Maybe you should take the couch tonight, Mother," Carl suggested.

"I don't get why he's into that in the first place," Brody shook his head. "If I were with a girl, I'd want it to be a girl I actually like."

Jane grinned flirtatiously. "Like me?"

"Yeah, like you," Brody said. He blinked, "I mean, wait, what?" He gave a blank stare as Jane started laughing. Taking a deep breath, he went on, "Well, since you tricked that out of me, I may as well be blunt. Do you wanna go to the dance with me?"

"I'm surprised you're thinking of going to the dance at all. I'm fully expecting a monster to show up and crash it," Jane stated, only half joking.

Brody thought about that for a second, "Oh, yeah, that sounds pretty much exactly like the kind of thing I'd expect from a Kamen Rider show."

"You really love Kamen Rider, don't you?" Jane teased.

"I do. I really do." Brody smiled. "It's one of the reasons I became a Power Ranger."

"Living the dream, huh?" Jane surmised.

That made Brody's smile even brighter. "I guess I am. So, how are things going with school?"

Jane's smile faded a bit. "They're going great. But, speaking of school, what are you gonna do when this is all over?"

"What do you mean?" Brody asked.

"I mean, this Power Rangers thing won't last forever. The bad guys are probably gonna run out of monsters eventually, right? What are you gonna do then?" Jane elaborated.

Brody stared off into space, pondering his friend's words. Finally, he shrugged noncommittally. "I guess you're right. Maybe when it's all over, I'll get my grades back up."

"You're grades went down?" Jane raised an eyebrow. "Well ... that makes sense. What with all the monsters and stuff."

"Yeah, so, you wanna go to the dance with me?" Brody repeated, determined to go home with a firm answer.

"Hmm, alright, I'll go with you. I just hope you have a nice suit." Jane elbowed him.

'Okay, play it cool,' Brody thought to himself. "Uh, great. I'm gonna go look for that shark girl now. See ya."

"Not your most shining departure, Mother," Carl pointed out.

"I'm in too good a mood to be bothered by that," Brody sighed with a dopy smile.

"Another victim, huh?" Brody asked with a frown.

"Yeah, the Cryos didn't get there in time," Duncan said with a sullen nod. "There was hardly anything left of this one. Just a few scraps of him."

Brody was about to reply when a new sound caught his attention. "Do you hear music, or am I just going nuts?"

Putting a hand to his ear, Duncan listened, his eyes widening, then narrowing in concentration. "Is that the Jaws theme song?"

"It's coming from next door." Brody looked at Duncan. The two nodded and dashed over to the house to the left of theirs.

Duncan kicked the door down and they barged inside. Unfortunately, all they found was their neighbor's corpse with a bite missing from the torso. It didn't take a scientist to know it was a shark bite.

"Fuck, she killed Ms. Nicholson," Brody said softly while cringing back.

Seeing a sticky note on the corpse's forehead, Duncan picked it up and read it, "'Too slow.'" He looked back at his brother, "She's fucking taunting us."

Brody glared and morphed into his Electric-Type form. He listened for a second and huffed. "I can still hear the music. She must've left out the back door."

The Yellow Ranger sped out of the house and followed the music, which led him to the next house over.

"I know you're in here," he scanned over the house's living room, figuring the Anthro-Megalodon was hiding somewhere. Getting an idea, he began generating electricity from all over his body.

"AAAHH!" Megan burst out of a nearby closet, holding her snout. "How'd you know doing that would fuck with my senses?"

Grinning under his helmet, Brody replied, "I watch Shark Week."

He fired his feathers at Megan, only for her to disappear in a flash of red energy. Brody looked around for a second before realizing that Lensia must've teleported the shark monster away.

Duncan made his way into the room, "Did you get…You didn't get her, did you?"

"She got teleported away before I could hit her," Brody ruefully reported.

"…So now we just wait some more?" Duncan wondered.

Brody nodded with a sigh, then glanced towards the neighbor's house. "I guess we'd better call the cops about our neighbor."

Later that night, Jane finished writing in her notebook and sat on her bed, biting her bottom lip, and shaking her head. She still couldn't believe he'd asked her. She stared at her ceiling.

"So I'm really going to the dance with Brody. It's been a while since I bothered going this far with a guy," she commented to herself. Taking a deep breath, she reassured herself, "Why shouldn't I? He's not like all the others. He's just a lovable dork."

With that, she turned off the lights and went to sleep.

Hours passed before the window opened and a certain shark crawled through.

Megan thought to herself, 'Hehe, what do you know? I happened to pick the house of the Rangers' team doctor. This is gonna be-" She paused in her thoughts when she noticed the open notebook sitting on Jane' bed drawer. Her keen eyes allowed her to make out what was written on the page, even in the dark. "No way."

She picked up the notebook and flipped to the beginning of it and began reading from there. As she did, her grin was replaced with open-mouthed shock. "Oh, my God," she muttered to herself. "Holy shit!"

That was more than enough for Jane to wake up. She flailed about in a panic, hitting Megan with a stray kick. She quickly flicked on her lamp so she could see what was going on. Her eyes widened as she took in the creature standing in front of her. "You!?"

Rather than snark or make a threat, Megan just held up the notebook. "How much do you want for this?"

Jane blushed as she realized that Megan had read what she'd written, "Just…Just get out of here!"

"Oh, I will. Once I'm done with you that is!" Megan lunged, only for Jane to reach under her pillow and spray her with a bottle. "What the fuck?! You have shark repellant?!"

"What? No, this is just pepper spray," Jane explained before spraying the shark again.

Megan quickly decided this wasn't worth the trouble and leapt back out the window.

Jane's parents burst into the room right after, both in a panic. "We heard noise! What the hell happened!?" her father demanded.

"The latest monster snuck in here," Jane explained. Before her folks could ask if she was okay, she continued, "Fortunately, it really hated pepper spray."

"Hahahaha! You got sent packing by a spray bottle!?" Simba cracked up, actually collapsing from his laughter while clutching his belly with both arms.

"You wouldn't be laughing if you were the one that got sprayed!" Megan yelled.

Leopold nodded. "Fair enough."

"Anyway, I've learned my lesson," Megan said, crossing her arms. "From now on, I'm just sticking to random victims."

"Not even gonna bother with the Rangers? That's kinda boring," Calios commented, resting his chin in his palm.

Simba got back up. "If you need excitement, I could go challenge the fast Ranger. I've been itching for a rematch."

"Eh, whatever floats your boat," Calios said as he waved Simba away .

"You heard him, Megan. You go do your thing and I'll do mine," Simba said happily, beckoning the shark girl to come along.

"That's another victim," Cooper commented as he read the paper. "There's gotta be some kind of pattern."

"What pattern could there possibly be?" Dickson asked. "The victims didn't know each other and had nothing in common."

Once he met up with the rest of the team at Kenny's house, an idea struck Cooper. He couldn't keep it to himself. "Duncan, you think you could call up your whale of a girlfriend and have her give us a clue?"

"First of all, don't say the word 'girlfriend,' man. That implies there's love involved," Duncan droned before perking up. "And second, we got lucky that she helped us with the tentacle guy. Just because we're fucking doesn't mean we're on the same side."

That made Cooper shrug. "Well, I'm out of ideas."

"Shark," Jane muttered to herself. "Holy shit. I think we've been overthinking this."

"What do you mean?" Duncan asked.

"I mean, what do people do on shark programs all the time?" Jane asked rhetorically. "They draw them in with bait! We don't have to try and get to her when she shows up, we can make her come to us!"

Brody smiled. "You watch Shark Week too?"

"Yup." Jane nodded.

"Genius idea, lass," Cooper complimented.

Duncan grinned, bit his bottom lip, and barely kept a straight face while talking. "Don't you mean Jane-ius idea?"

"Are you high again?" Brody asked.

"You know I am," Duncan admitted shamelessly.

"Okay, here's the plan," Jane announced. "We all go out and get some raw meat and leave it out for the shark to find. We'll all head to different spots to cover more ground."

The rest of the team nodded, and they all headed to their local grocery stores.

Later that night, the team spread out throughout the town and lied in wait.

"Alright, everyone in position?" Brody asked. He spoke into both his phone and morpher to ensure he could contact everyone at once. "And Cryos, if you guys are eating your bait, you're all grounded."

One of the Cryos growled back, which Chazz translated, "Shut up, man. You ain't my mama!"

Another Cryo growled, "Yeah, you're just Carl's mama!"

Everyone listening in chuckled while Brody himself sighed, "Just keep watchi-oof!" He couldn't finish his sentence as he was swept away by a tan blur.

"Brody? Brody!?" Jane asked in a panic. "Guys, he's not answering! Fuck, did the shark see through our trap?"

"Negative," Kenny reported. "I see her coming near my bait. Something else attacked Brody."

"Alright, some of us should go help Brody. The rest of us will take down that shark," Cooper instructed. "Move out, people!"

After being carried around for a little bit, Brody found himself crudely dropped off on Bobby Ray Boulevard. He quickly got up and saw that it was Simba who'd gotten the drop on him. He groaned, couldn't one thing go according to plan? "You again? I'm kinda in the middle of something here."

"Well, now you're in the middle of something else," Simba said, his hands on hips. "You'd better suit up now."

Having little choice, Brody activated Alicia's powers and morphed. The two speedsters began moving about all over town. Brody drew his Switch-Gun and fired, keeping Simba on the defensive.

"You know, this won't be fun if all you do is take potshots at me," Simba complained. Getting an idea, he managed to get ahead of Brody and started tearing up asphalt as he went, causing it to spray into the Yellow Ranger.

Brody wasn't fazed and simply shot the debris as it came at him.

Meanwhile, the Cryo gang stood by, watching the blurs of motion. The pink one asked if there was anything they could do, to which the blue one answered that there probably wasn't, and they should just head back to the others.

Megan nimbly dodged some of G2's eyebeams, allowing Duncan and Cooper to get in close.

Watching from nearby, Jane asked Kenny, "Do you have a way to stop her from getting teleported out of here?"

Kenny looked bemused by her statement, "How exactly could I do that?"

"…Okay, good point," Jane admitted.

The Rangers and G2 were already making good progress against Megan, and things only got better when the Cryos rejoined them and helped gang up on her. It was hardly a minute later before they had her right where they wanted her.

Cooper charged up his fist for a Ranger Punch and thrust his arm forward.

"WAIT A SECOND!" Megan cried out, prompting Cooper to politely halt his attack just an inch away from her face. "Before I die, I just want you to know..." she pointed at Jane. "That one over there writes gay porn about you guys." While the Rangers' helmets covered their faces, Megan got the feeling their eyes were wide. "Suckers. Beam me up!"

As she teleported away, everyone looked at Jane. The tense silence dragged out. The shock of the reveal and the sudden teleportation phased everyone for a full minute as Jane took a step back.

"Do you really do that?" Kenny asked.

"Nnnnnnnno?" Jane answered hesitantly.

"Oh my God, she does," Cooper said with obvious shock.

Whatever composure Jane had crumbled. "Okay, fine! I write about three muscular guys and one average guy getting it on! Sue me!"

Kenny tilted his head, pointing at himself. "Average?"

Walking up to Jane, Duncan put a hand on her shoulder. "I don't really care what kinda shit you might be into, Jane. But I need you to answer this one question…Do you ship me with Brody?"

"No."

"Oh thank Christ." Duncan slumped in relief.

"Um, where is Brody?" G2 asked.

The white Cryo growled and snarled a bit, which Dickson translated as, "Eh, I'm sure he's fine."

As if to prove that statement wrong, Brody came sliding in on his back. The rest of the gang looked the direction he came from and saw Simba in the distance.

"Thanks for the workout," the Cymbospondylus said as he rolled his shoulder. "Catch you later!"

As Simba was teleported away, Cooper sighed. "I guess tonight was a bust."

Everyone grumbled.

"Great. How do we stop a monster who just runs whenever they're cornered?" Duncan wondered aloud.

No one had an answer.