A/N: Another meta-ish chapter with some exposition. I'm also sure many of my readers will be able to do turf resting, shrub pruning, effective mowing/hedging/whipping, and the like after this story is finished.
Chapter 5: Metafiction Issue
Bri's eyes widened in amazement.
Weihan had been engulfed by a fireball, his features concealed, and when it had dissipated…was this what holding an Ultra Crystal did? Power Rangers wasn't really her cup of tea; she had watched a few seasons on occasion, but the acting and plot were almost too silly to take seriously. Even the Japanese source material, while slightly more mature and darker, was wacky and strange. A part of her reasoned it had to do with the suits they wore. No fighting force could, realistically, be taken seriously in bright spandex, leather, or armour. At least, that was what she had believed until a second ago. In the distance, she heard a soft thumping sound.
"Weihan?" There was no anger or fear in her voice, just pure awe and amazement. "Is that you in there? I mean…it'd have to be, but…that's just wild."
A bright orange bodysuit covered him, the solid colour only broken up by his white gloves and boots, the black belt around his waist with his hip holsters, and the golden coin emblem on his chest. Said emblem was emblazoned on an orange breastplate that seemed to shimmer in the morning light. Her eyes moved up his form to his helmet and she unconsciously took a step back. The details were so realistic and the teeth that lined the visor were…she shuddered, very grateful that large carnivorous dinosaurs didn't exist anymore. The Ranger, because of course he was a Ranger now, jerked his head up to retrace his visor and his, somewhat sheepish, grinning face.
"Yeah, Bri," he breathed, face covered in a thin sheen of sweat. "It's me in here. That was a wild transformation, felt like I was in there for a few days at least."
"A few days?" She shook her head. "It was more like only a few seconds, if that. What happened to you in there?"
Weihan paused, mouth slightly open as he wondered what to tell her. Yes, the Power had been presented to her. Yes, she had declined it, though he had a sinking suspicion she would need to accept it before too long. And, yes, she was technically his boss and needed to know how things would fit into the schedule. He wondered if he could create a magical duplicate of himself, like the ones he had written about. Surely it was something in his realm of possibility, but he would have to experiment when he was at home. Alternatively, he thought with no small measure of anticipation, it would be in whatever Ultra Cavern the Power furnished him with.
On the other hand, Bri had declined the Power. There were other things that made him a bit reluctant to reveal too much, namely that she was extremely close with her family…and Joshua's. While Weihan's opinion of Joshua Scarlet was positive, the same couldn't be said about his brother, Isiah. The younger Scarlet brother was aggressive, impatient, and held grudges over perceived slights. For some strange reason, Isiah pinned AJ's no-show at the wedding on him and had convinced most of his cousins this 'fact'. The newly appointed Orange Ranger knew that if Isiah knew of his identity, nothing would stop him from causing all kinds of trouble. The only good news he could think of was that Isiah was a rusted-on bachelor; partly due to his abrasive personality…and mostly of his sexist views. Weihan would have pegged him as being on the spectrum somewhere, but some people were just like that. At least he knew he wasn't going to be invited to any family reunions in the near future.
"Let's just say time seemed to crawl in there." He stifled a yawn, willing the armour off his body. "I…oh man, that's not good. It's a good thing we just had that refresher on turf resting, huh?"
Bri swallowed hard at his tone, slowly turning around to see where he was pointing. She was expecting all manner of creatures, monsters, and psychopaths to materialise out of nowhere…and then she saw it. Her hands flew to her mouth as she tried, desperately, to stifle the snickers welling up in her throat.
"Well," she managed to choke out, "we've got our work cut out for us for the next few hours. You couldn't have aimed a bit better?"
The Orange Ranger, and how good was it to think of himself that way, sighed and palmed his face. To his credit, the majority of Apollonia's charred remains were splashed out on the road in front of them, that would take at least a few blasts from the high-pressured water truck to fully clear. The only other issue was the two-metre-long burn mark on the nearby turf. The blackened grass stood out like a sore thumb, even with a similarly long scalped area. Stretching his arms above his head, he unhooked the net from the tray and started searching for the pigtail posts he knew were there, though he doubted they had enough to fence off the area fully. Counting them mentally, he groaned under his breath – if the rope held out, they would be just fine.
"Come on, Bri," he snorted, "I had other things on my mind at the time. Aim wasn't one of them. At least it wasn't me accidentally puncturing one of the irrigation pipes again."
Bri walked over to help him, lifting out the handheld aerator, grabbing the length of nylon rope under the rake handles, and locking the toolbox. Outwardly, she was smiling but internally, the whiplash was taking its toll. Her emotions had spiked and plummeted several times over the past few minutes, and she knew that a hard conversation would have to be held between them at lunch. On the other hand, she knew that he was hiding things from her; she wasn't sure how to feel about that. As his boss, she needed to know that she could trust him to do a task to the best of his ability. Sure, he still couldn't use a hedger but he helped her in other ways. It also helped immensely that he was a diligent worker, unlike some of the others on the West.
Her lips quirked upward sadly as she glanced at him, the Asian still looking for the wayward posts. It was subtle, but there was a strain in his body language that hadn't been there an hour ago. A slight creasing of his brow that spoke of…something that had happened in the fireball. His facial twitches, explained by him as a way of stimming and regulating his emotions, seemed to happen every few seconds. She also wondered how her life was going to change. Even though she had declined the Power, she hadn't rejected it completely – and she wasn't sure she wanted to. It wasn't always going to be there, waiting for her to accept, and she knew it but – as she had stated to herself – it would take a lot for her to take up the mantle of the Purple Ultra Ranger.
A shiver ran down her spine as she recalled the images she had seen in the Crystal. A ferocious Ranger attacked rocky, reptilian, and leathery humanoids alike, wielding terrific weapons that defied anything she could have come up with. She also saw the untransformed form of that Ranger, a young girl with medium-length brown hair, staring at a slightly larger Crystal in a church of some kind. All manner of Purple Rangers were in those images as well, including a pony or unicorn that could transform into a humanoid form. Why would any pony be bestowed with such abilities? She had also seen herself in that armour, wielding two handheld weapons that looked like hand rakes.
For the next hour, they mostly worked in silence, only speaking when asking about the length of the sides and a curious inquiry about some strange banging. Bri called Ethan about the impromptu turf resting; also, to complain about the wild goose chases they had been sent on. Finally, the last post was hammered into the ground and they stepped back to admire their handiwork. Twelve posts surrounded the scorch mark, the nylon rope threaded in the loops barely holding its shape – stretched to its absolute limit. Weihan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Twelve posts and twelve Crystals. Was the Power trying to send him a signal?
"Twelve Crystals? What do you mean twelve? There's only two, right?"
Blinking at Bri's voice, he grumbled under his breath about being more tired than he thought. Voicing his thoughts was not the way for Bri to realise he knew more than he did. On the other hand, there was no sense in keeping this a secret; it would more than likely do more harm than good anyway. Frowning slightly at another, closer, mysterious crash, he opened his mouth to speak – his voice wavering at times.
"OK, no, and this is where is gets really meta." Weihan licked his lips to prepare himself. This was going to be fun. "Around the start of February 2004, a plot bunny wormed its way into my brain about a superpowered team of Power Rangers, a team that would be so overpowered that the only thing they could match was a similarly overpowered evil. Around a month of light planning later and I wrote the first chapter of what I called The Ultra Crystals."
Pulling his water bottle out of his pocket, he took a long swallow. The day was looking to be a scorcher, the people that had fled from the attack had now come back, and news crews were descending on the park. Thankfully, the police were keeping them away from the 'hapless gardeners', though he wasn't sure if that would continue.
"In the story," he continued, "I wrote about a set of twelve all-powerful artefacts that granted individuals powers greater than anything ever seen on that Earth. I'm also not really sure what possessed me to pick eleven of my friends from school to hold the Powers, but, at the time, I thought it was just a strange whim. Now, I'm not so sure, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, the takeaway here is that, all in all, there are twelve Crystals. From memory, the Orange Crystal is slightly stronger but only just. Even if you, or someone else, takes up the Power, I'm not going to single-handedly destroy all things that come our way."
He nervously tugged the collar of his work shirt, disguising the tic as cooling his body. That was all well and good in theory, but he had been pushing the main character into the spotlight more and more – if only because he didn't really have much experience in putting himself into the shoes of other people back then. He hoped he was better at it now but, as they said, the proof would be in the pudding. Briefly mulling over how weird that phrase was, he opened his mouth to continue before being interrupted.
"What the hell is that?" Bri raised a shaking arm. "Is that what I think it is?"
Weihan sighed and turned around, blood freezing in his veins as the first screams reached his ears. Peeking above the nearby towers that made up the university were two giant boulder-shaped objects. They bobbed in an exaggerated manner, the movement accompanied by an earth-rattling thud. One of the boulders split lengthways, revealing rows of malformed teeth glistening wetly. A brief shine in the back of its throat was all the warning received before the Ranger felt his body move, tackling Bri away from the ute and covering her body with his own – not caring about the rather intimate position they landed in. The air sizzled above his head as the yelling behind them stopped abruptly, the sound replaced with a crash of thunder.
Daring to look up, the Orange Ranger's eyes widened in shock as he struggled to keep his morning snack down. Vowing not to eat anything chunkily chopped in the next few days, he looked at the monster and swallowed hard, eyes picking out details as they appeared. Obviously, it had two heads with four eyes on each. Eight eyes to see you he thought dumbly. The upper floors of a tower crumbled as it was struck by four giant fists, alarms shrieking for scant seconds. Blistering balls of energy streaked through the air, impacting against trees, turf, shops, and uncomprehending people alike. Brakes screeched as vehicles crashed into each other on Parramatta Road, tanker trucks overturning, rupturing, and exploding – catching more innocent lives in the carnage.
This wasn't the neat and ordered chaos he had written about, nor was it the 'slight shakes but everything is mostly OK' battles on TV. No, this was real life and he had a responsibility to step up. Pushing himself off Bri, and trying to ensure he didn't fall over her legs, Weihan's right hand rose to his chest, fingers flexing inward to summon his Ultra Crystal as he ran towards the Ogre. As it emerged from his chest, he couldn't help but wonder what the battles ahead would be like. However, this was no time for ruminating on thoughts.
He had a job to do