More Than One Bolt From The Blue

“Boy, Billy was just full of surprises, wasn’t he?” Aisha whistled quietly, and Kimberly sighed.

“I wonder what else he had built into this place.”

“We’ll ask him when we find him,” Rocky put in, and again, silence reigned over the group.

“You really think we can find him?” Adam asked, and Zack answered him, his voice sure and steady.

“Of course we will. Anything less is definitely not an option.”

“Okay, gang, let’s get going,” Tommy said. “We’ve got a friend to rescue.”

A moment later, led by Tommy, seven brilliant, gleaming spaceships flew out from the mountain and hovered briefly as they formed a shaky ‘V’ that slowly synchronized. Once they‘d gotten their bearings, they streaked into the atmosphere, where they once more hovered for a moment, and promptly zipped out into space.

“Whoa!” Adam grinned as they cleared the atmosphere, and stopped their ships.

“That was amazing!” Kimberly grinned, and the others agreed.

“Okay, everyone,” Tommy smiled, though it was gone a moment later as seriousness took over. “Set the autopilots. We are officially on our way.”

Their fingers flew over controls they’d made themselves familiar with as they’d worked on the ships, and sat back as the ships leaped forward, and headed to the moon.

“Hey, guys? Have you thought of what we‘re going to do if we can‘t . . . if we can‘t, you know, like find him? Or . . . or worse?” Kimberly asked, hesitantly, and unable to voice her true concern.

“We keep looking,” Jason answered stubbornly.

“Yeah, and then we find him and bring him home. No . . . no matter what condition he’s in,” Rocky nodded. “There’s no way he’d leave us in . . . well, like we saw him, and we won’t leave him either. We‘ve already established all of this.”

“We’re Power Rangers,” Aisha put in. “This is the kind of evil we‘re supposed to fight,” she blinked. “Well, maybe not exactly, I mean, fighting intergalactic sex slavery wasn’t in the original job description, but evil is still evil, no matter what form it’s in, and I’m not even going to think that Billy may be . . . well, not able to be rescued.”

“You know,” Zack said quietly. “We know we’re going to find Billy. But it’s what else is out there that I’m concerned with. I mean, this is a case in point. I guess no one thought that when Zordon and the Space Rangers defeated Dark Specter and the other monsters and creations of Super-Evil, it left the ‘regular evil’, if you want to call it that, behind.”

“And by that, you mean the evils that were either ignored, or considered not as important as what was going on with the Super-Evils at the time. Like this situation with Billy. The sex slave thing,” Adam clarified, and Tommy nodded thoughtfully.

“Which may be another reason Zordon brought us back together,” he said. “We know there are other Power Rangers in the universe fighting a new ‘crop’ of Super-Evils’, as Zack called them, so maybe we’ve been brought back together to deal with the ‘regular evils.”

“It took Zordon a long time to gather enough loose energy together to get us to the Power Chamber/Command Center,” Kimberly mused. “And when we were all together, the Power Chamber/Command Center came back to life. I can’t believe that all this happened just to rescue Billy, and then let matters stand as they are.”

“Good thinking, Kimberly,” Adam sounded surprised, and Kimberly laughed.

“Don’t sound so surprised, Adam. We’ve been apart for five years. A person can do a lot of thinking in that amount of time.”

“I didn’t mean for that to sound the way it did,” he said, his tone embarrassed, and she laughed.

“It’s okay. While I was never really an airhead, I came off sounding like one a lot of the time. I know what people thought,” she sighed. “And then, when I left like I did, and sent Tommy that note . . . well, it did seem like a pretty cold, air headed thing to do.”

“Why did you do it, then?” Aisha asked, and Kim sighed.

“It’s really lame, looking at it now, but really, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” she finally answered. “I thought I was going to be away a lot longer than I actually was, and I also knew that Kat had a thing for Tommy, and if I was going to lose him to anyone, I preferred it to be her. After all, they had so much in common, especially the way they both ended up being a Power Ranger to begin with. I knew they could help each other. Besides, considering how long I thought I was going to be away, I didn’t want Tommy waiting for me indefinitely . . .”

“I would have waited,” he said, his tone hurt, and she nodded.

“I know, Tommy,” she answered. “But I didn’t think, at the time, that it was fair to make you wait.”

“Well,” Zack said after a moment of uncomfortable silence passed. “At least you’re together now . . . and that‘s the important thing.”

“Yeah,” Rocky said, and they heard the grin in his voice. “All it took was us trying to kill him to get them to talk.”

“Not much at all,” Adam laughed, and for a long while, they flew on in compatible silence.

“Okay, look sharp people,” Tommy said, his voice all business. “We’re approaching the Machine Skybase. Fly silent and sharp. Keep all your ears and eyes open for anything that might be the least suspicious.”

The others did as he directed, and for a long while, they flew on, and they passed the silent, darkened, very ominous, and oppressive hulking mass of what had been the home of one of their toughest adversaries -- ever.