FicWad

Immortal at Count Down To Destruction (sequel In the Immortal Ranger Series)

Summary: Tommy takes a break from his racing career, to see if he can find out what happened to Jason, the trail leads him to a new Jason, and some of his friends, all of whom carry swords.



Sequel to Death of Goldar



Don’t own a thing though I have lost track who the official owner of Power Rangers is these days, so I’ll just say that they belong to Saban/Disney and hope that I’m right. All the unknown characters belong to Highlander.



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Tommy grunted as he dodged yet another weapon that had tried to hit him, and returned the favor by kicking the creature that he was fighting with a swift kick in the face, or to the helmet that was where the face would have been. He was still trying to get over his shock over what had happened. They had just been invaded like they had never been invaded before. Shock troops had rained down first, Piranatrons and some kind of foot soldier that the current Ranger team often fought. The fish heads carried the same types of weapons as always, but the newest grunts had carried different types of weapons. There had been some swords, some type of gun, and then a two handed curved weapon that had briefly reminded him of the weapons from those Star Trek shows, Billy used to, like to watch, so much. He could almost hear the genius saying, that the shows were inspiration for him when he was in the lab. He had fought the various creatures long, and hard, he had seen the other Rangers try to push the invading army back, but they were just to many, and the one Zord that they had that would have been good against the air support, had been MIA for quite a while giving a person the thought that the Zord with the machine gun like hands was gone.

Tommy sighed, how had he gotten into this situation? He thought back to how he ended up here, it had been a little over a year since he had last seen his friend that hadn’t been acting right he had cut the head off one of their worst enemies. True, none of them would ever shed any tears, for the flying monkey, but no one should die like that He had followed rumors about where he had been from place to place, sometimes the leads he got were months old, but he couldn’t stop trying. He had to know what had happened to his friend that would make his friend do what it was that he did now. He had come across over a dozen bodies in his search, and while he wasn’t as hot on the trail as he would have liked to have been, since he was busy on the race circuit as well, he couldn’t just rush after every clue he found. Fortunately the other former Rangers were willing to spare time to check out the clues as well; even Zack and Kim had been willing to help, after everything had been explained after Trini’s death. There had been some leads that led to New York and Seacouver, but no one seemed to know what they were talking about. Tommy was sure that one of the men there had been the guy with the white handled sword, he just couldn’t prove it. According to Alpha 6, he had spent several months in those cities before he disappeared off the sensors, that Zordon and Alpha 5, had set up to watch for where the various Rangers were. The official record said that Jason had died in a motorcycle accident a week after the entire incident with Maligore. Tommy had checked the files relentlessly, to see if there was some kind of typo or something. He had even gone by the Scott’s place, to see if he could have found out what it was that was going on. Mr. Scott had simply told him, that Jason had died on his way back from his trip with Kimberley, and that he hadn’t wanted any kind of ceremony. The Rangers might have believed this, if they hadn’t seen Jason walk away from getting stabbed in the stomach, thrown off a cliff and into the ocean, and walk back up and kill a monster, which had been fighting Power Rangers in one form or another for nearly five years. In his search for his former friend, he had dug into his friend’s past, and discovered that the person that he had loved as a brother was actually adopted like himself. The latest bit of information, said that Jason was in Angel Grove, looking into something for a friend, his sources said. Mr. Scott Lee was supposed to be having a meeting here, and was also hanging around to see the rangers, and how they performed. It was just like Jason to use his name like that, he had always been proud of both parts of his heritage; the Scottish pride, along with the Chinese warrior, had been something to watch at times.

Tommy shook his head, now was not the time to worry about his friend, and his pride but, whether or not he could catch up with him. He had come across something else that had disturbed him, even more than the apparent fake deaths that his friend was doing. It was the fact that in a number of towns, that they had trailed him to, the various Rangers had found people had been killed by decapitation, in about half the towns. None of it made sense to any of them. The Jason they all knew, was an honorable person, and would find no pleasure in killing a person like that. But, he was doing it for some reason. Tommy had intended to just come here corner his friend, and yell at him, and maybe try to talk some sense into him. But that wasn’t what happened, and now they were once more fighting back to back, along with a number of other people.

Snarling, Jason was thrown back into a chair, after saving a friend from getting knocked through a window. Tommy blocked the weapon of the creep that was trying to skewer a civilian, who was running away from one group of foot soldiers, and running into theirs.

Swearing Jason reached for the blanket roll that he had been wearing on his back when the attack had started, but was now laying on the ground. “C’mon guys, let’s take care of these guys our way.” Jason said, in his familiar leader voice, that he had used to use all the time, when he had been the Red Ranger, and Tommy had been the Green Ranger.

“If you say so cutie,” a woman that had just flipped over a foot soldier over her shoulder said. Each of the people around him drew out some kind of sword from beneath their jackets, except for Jason who brought his out of the blanket roll. There was about a half dozen swords now flashing around him. The woman was carrying a kind of rapier two of the men had katanas, another man had a two handed broadsword and, Jason was holding a broadsword that was designed after his old power sword. The people worked well together, Tommy thought, though they seemed a bit hesitant about Jason, they still followed his orders. He watched as the two men with Katana’s worked together as a team and dispatched two of the foot soldiers by slicing the arms off of the things that appeared to be some kind of robots. The woman sliced through where the Achilles heel would be on her fish head and was splashed with blood. The guy with the heavy sword was holding his own against four of the robots and Jason was slashing at three more. Tommy shook his head duck another blow he had to finish this before he did something he regretted. He had two to deal with they were both fish heads so they shouldn’t be too much trouble to take down he started off with flipping one over his leg then began to pummel the other one the thing finally had enough and stayed down after he kneed it in the head and it didn’t bother getting back up he turned to see the one he had flipped over had been caught under the joint attention of the katana boys.

“I told you all this was a bad idea!” The man with the long sword said, as he sheathed his own weapon. The others all followed suit, and soon there was no indication that the six had been holding weapons, and wielding them like they knew how to truly use them. “But no,” the man continued as they stood there in the shadows for a moment, “everyone had to go and help the baby with his whole coming home trip, and it was all because he was worried about his buddies, who seemed to be coming off the worse for the fight, that was going on.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say old man.” the woman said. None of the others seemed to really be paying attention to what the two were saying. Tommy shook his head, as he looked at the remains that had been left behind. These people, had just destroyed these machines ruthlessly, and the blows had been ones, that would have either killed a person, or wounded them beyond belief. And they were just making jokes about it! Even Jason was just smirking at the remains, as if he found something funny about the whole thing.

“So, what do you say we find a place to hide out for a while?” The man with the heavy Scottish accent said, motioning toward another group o the silver robots, slowly making their way toward them, with a large group of prisoners with them Tommy wasn’t sure, but he thought that he saw Bulk and Skull in the front. The two of them looked like; they were trying to put on a brave face for the others.

“One of the smartest things I’ve heard you say Boy Scout” The man said as he looked away from his mock argument with the woman.

“Got no argument from me.” The group all ran toward a building, then quickly scaled up the fire escape.

They watched silently, as the team of foot soldiers gathered more and more people, they paused briefly, when they saw the destroyed copies of themselves, but they continued their roundup anyways. Tommy looked over his shoulder, at the other people with him. Jason looked angry, at what was happening to his old home, the guy, that they called old man was actually eating a candy bar, the woman was admiring a piece of art in an antique shop, and the other two were just talking. How could they all be so calm, after all that had just happened? “You want to tell me what you’re doing with this group?” Tommy asked, keeping his irritation to a minimum

“Not really Rainbow,” was the only reply he got.

“Fine Red,” he growled, “then how about, what we’re going to do now.”

“You’re the leader of the rangers, why don’t you go find some more of our colored coordinated friends, and you can scratch the whole lot of them up.” The first red ranger replied sarcastically “While you do that, we’ll try and survive doing what we can, and doing it our way.” He looked at him, as if daring Tommy to argue about their methods. The former ranger leader wisely kept his mouth shut for a moment as they returned to watching.

“That use to be your job.”

“And now it’s yours. Go visit the power chamber, and Zordon. He’ll tell you what you need to do.”

“He’s not there anymore.”

“What?” Jason said glaring at his old sparring partner. “What do you mean that he’s not there?”

“Just what I said, he’s been captured man. The current team is doing what they can, but it looks like they’ve just been overwhelmed, so we’ll try to figure something out in the morning. “

“Yeah, fine whatever. We’ll get some sleep tonight,” he said before walking over to his friends. Tommy shook his head, there was no way that he could make his friend tell him what had happened, he had recognized the tone when he had been told no. But it was hard; it was almost like they were some type of gang. A gang that was deadly with swords, but a gang all the same. They even all wore the same type of jackets, that were all long enough to hide, the swords that they wore, and black.

Tommy sighed as he sat with his back against the wall. The group was tense with him around especially Jason and Adam one who wouldn’t open up, the other was just plain angry at him, and seemed to think that bumping into Tommy was the worst thing that could have happened. When Tommy had heard the announcement made by Astonema the new and improved version of Rita, as Jason had called her. Jason had, had to hold his old friend down and talk some sense into him before he had gone down to sacrifice himself for no reason, he thought back to what Jason had said.

“This isn’t Zedd and Rita man, and it sure isn’t Mondo or Vile or any of the other of the other psychos that you’ve gone up against. The fact of the matter is, that this girl doesn’t care about the retired, or former rangers, all she cares about is the current group. She’ll try and deal with us later if she doesn’t send for someone else to take care of us. Now then, the rangers may or may not have a plan, but we will. Now get a hold of yourself, before I have to knock you out. Tommy had calmed down and listened to the plan if the current Rangers turned tail, and did nothing they had several assassin methods setup. He had argued with these ideas at the very beginning, but had been quickly outvoted. It was after that happened that he got the feeling that he was there by necessity than the fact that he was actually wanted. He was now drinking his first beer the others had been drinking before one of the Scotsmen had said that they were with the compliments of Joe, whoever that was.

“A penny for your thoughts lad?” Tommy looked at the man that was leaning against the wall, but had not sat down, and watched him coolly.

“Not really.” Tommy said shrugging, “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to my best friend.”

“Life lad; and not the kind one would even wish upon an enemy. I would tell you more, but this is between the two of you. Sides, he should be the one to tell ya, not any o us.”

“And if he won’t tell me?”

“Then ah suppose that you don’t need to know. It could be that he feels that he’s protecting ya.”

“Maybe,” the teen said doubtfully after all they had fought alongside each other for a while, and his ability to handle himself had never come up except for when his powers kept getting weaker and weaker. ”Whatever you guys did to him though, you changed him.” Tommy said accusingly, glaring at the man who seemed to know his best friend better, than he did these days.

“Maybe lad, but because of us he’s also still alive, and now that he understands the rules of the game he’s almost ready to be his own person again.”

“Sure.” Tommy said, “I’ll take first watch.”

“Adam’s got it lad.” The man said nodding to the man who carried the two handed sword. “He’ll be up off and on all night watching for something or other. Bit paranoid he is.” Tommy nodded, and found a corner to sleep in he looked briefly at the ship that was hovering over the city for a moment he thought he saw a red energy flare but, there were no other following flares and surly the Rangers wouldn’t split their forces right before this.

Tommy watched Jason, as he polished each of the bullets in his hand before placing them gently in the clips “Hollow point, and explosive rounds.” Jason said, answering the unasked question. “We’ll be using assault rifles, which can double as sniper rifles. Adam thought it was a bit of over kill. Till I showed him some of the video clips, of what people like Zedd are capable of.”

“You’ve told these people a lot about yourself.” Tommy said almost accusingly

“It just kind of happened after McCloud got himself a little too drunk one night. I was busy moving into my own apartment at the time.” The other man said shrugging, as if it wasn’t that important

“How did he find out?”

“He followed me to Atlantis.”

“How? The only way anyone could have gone to that place is if they were teleported. And last I checked the only teleporter in human control at that time was at the command center.”

“Had the kid check out the location didn’t ya?” Jason stated more than asked, as he filled the last cartridge up, and slammed it into the gun.

“Well yeah, I mean it’s underwater and everything. How could you have gotten to it? And how did you survive those stab wounds?”

“Trade secret.” He responded to his friend.

“Like what we were? You know, maybe that’s the reason we were forced into retirement. Dimtria was scared what might happen if we became as bloodthirsty as you.”

“Blame it on me if you need to Tommy; just remember though, that you held the power the longest. Maybe she was afraid of you becoming addicted to the power, and was only trying to save you from the power.”

“That’s insane, she would have said something!” Tommy said

“I don’t know.” Jason admitted as he field stripped the other rifle. “I didn’t know the lady, and I’m only guessing at this. Could be that Zordon made an age limit then wanted you to go and have a life of your own. They still should have at least given you a new watch though.” He said teasingly.

“Maybe.” Tommy said unconvinced ignoring the attempt at humor. “But it’s been a little over a year, and look where we are? Maybe none of us should have left.”

“After the whole thing with Maligore I had to.” Jason said, “Now let’s get back to this.” He said, as he rebuilt the gun wiping a bit of stray grease out of the way. Tommy shook his head in disbelief, as he watched Jason pass the three rifles out.

“We set lad?”

“Yeah,” Jason said nodding. He then headed toward the center of town Tommy, shook his head again, as his friend headed for the crowd that was forming.

“Your with him I presume lad?” Tommy nodded, and followed after Jason, followed by two of the others. The other three headed to their positions, for when the supposed queen of the galaxy made her move.

“They’re all a bunch of fools.” Adam’s voice said into his radio, as he watched the idiots began making fools of themselves, by declaring themselves as Rangers despite the obvious fact, that there was no way they could be rangers.

“Fools maybe, but brave fools.” Amanda said into her radio, she and Duncan were with Jason and Tommy in the crowd. The three of them had, quickly covered the mouth of the longhaired teen, before he joined the crowd declaring himself a Ranger and telling his history of duty.

“Destroy them all.” Was heard by the red headed girl, she was interrupted by the current team, which put on a show, on top of a nearby building.

“Those costumes teach you those dance steps?” Ritchie’s voice asked amusedly over the mikes, as he chuckled at the show the five put on.

Jason groaned, “I’ll never here the end of this,” he complained, as the Rangers jumped to the ground and began battling the forces of Astronema.

“Blast it,” Adam shouted, “She’s gone!” The ground team watched in shock, as they turned back to the platform, that they had been watching a moment ago, and saw that the old man was right the Red Head was gone.

“Great, plan B then. I want you guys to take the heads off of those monsters. I’ll handle the one that looks like a cone head with fangs though.” Jason said, as he noticed that Elgar was amongst the troops. “Besides he owes me a fight, after what he helped do to me.”

“You got it.” Richie said. Then to both former Rangers shock, they watched Bulk lead the town against the foot soldiers enforcing the Rangers when they need it the most. “Go!” Jason said shoving Tommy one way while he went the other heading for Elgar

The other two that were with, him drew their swords, and began slicing into the army of monsters, the gunfire kept the foot soldiers, from overwhelming the crowd of revolters. Tommy shook his head, as he grabbed a forgotten metal pole, and with a few twirls had cleared a space. He then began attacking the creeps knocking them back slamming his staff into countless brainless robots, or whatever these things were. He felt the weirdest sensation when he found himself back to back with Bulk and Skull.

“Hey Tommy, I thought you were supposed to be off to the Indy 500, or something like that.” Bulk said, as he picked up one monster, and tossed it into another while Tommy tripped another one with his staff.

“Well you know me; I can’t resist a good fight.” Tommy said, he thrust his staff forward beside Bulk’s head, catching another that was heading for the large young man that seemed to be a tempting target to all of them.

“Yeah, that sounds like you Tommy.” Skull said, as he started punching another monster in the ribs Tommy brought his staff down on the monsters head before it could retaliate to the punk. “Got to go help some others.” He said over his shoulder, he had seen Elgar, and he remembered what Jason had told his friends about leaving the clay skinned general alone, and there was only one reason why he would do that. Flipping over another group of foot soldiers he was now right in front of Elgar.

“Why if it ain’t the former Red Ranger,” he said cackling. “This will be fun,” he hefted his heavy sword, and swung at the young man in front of him. Tommy brought his staff up to block the blow, and was holding two pieces of smoking metal as the pole broke. “You thought you were going to fight me with that, and no Ranger powers?” The creature laughed as it backhanded Tommy sending him flying back into the crowd.

“Well since you’re even dumber than Rito, it had a fairly good chance of working.” Jason said, as he walked up to the creature, which had just thrown Tommy across the street.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the guy that killed Goldar, that’s really all that you need to know about me. Because by just about any other name I’m already dead.”

“Sure, whatever you say, so how bout we get it over with already there’s a planet that needs conquering.” The creature said, holding up his sword. “Wait a minute, did you just say, that you’re the creepy guy that killed Goldar?”

“That I did.” The figure said, as he brought his sword down on the arm of one of the foot soldiers that got too close to him.

“Well then, okay then.” Elgar said, as he nervously faced off against the unknown warrior, Zedd and Rita had been furious when they had heard about the death of their head general, which had been killed by this guy who had carried some super sword or something. The two charged at each other the unknown ducked under the heavy swing and brought his own up in a blow that caught the monster in the ribs only this blow didn’t hurt him like a ranger weapon did which caused explosive destruction on his body, but rather a pain on the inside like he was unused to.

“We’re not done yet cone head.” The figure said, the figure then began to attack, his sword always darting in and making small scratches on the monster, but jumping out of the way at the last minute before the heavy sword could connect. Ducking under a counter swing he kicked the monster in the face. He smiled beneath his helmet, as he heard the shattering of some of the long fangs the creature had. Spinning again he brought his fist into one of the sword wounds ripping the wound open slightly. The creature fell to his knees. Nodding Jason brought his weapon up to finish him off.

“That’s enough Jason, he can’t fight any more.” Tommy said, as he held the arm that held the blade. “Let's go help someone else.”

Shaking his head sadly Jason stared at his friend. “I thought that you were beginning to understand man.” Sighing he elbowed his friend in the face then side kicked him in the gut knocking his friend down. He turned back to the monster that was struggling back up, and swung the sword clean through the neck,

Jason watched calmly as Tommy refused to look at the body that had fallen, knowing that his body would try to barf again but since he hadn’t really had anything but a can of beer since lunch he doubted that he would throw up, since there was nothing to throw up. That didn’t mean he had to look at the sight though.

“You got to mean it when you go into a fight Tommy.” Jason said, as he looked at the broken remains of the monster.

Tommy glared at him. “You really aren’t the person I remember, are you?” He said, as several more of the gray things got up to face them again, though they seemed more wary around Jason then Tommy.

Jason sadly nodded his head. “This is war for survival Tommy sometimes you have to do the job that no one else wants to do. “If you ever understand that, call me.” He said slipping a small piece of paper into his old friends hand, before he walked into the fight his sword flashing all over the place, his motorcycle helmet was quickly becoming battered as he took various hits, his body was also taking the occasional hit Tommy winced in pain as he watched his friend get skewered.

Tommy stuffed the paper into his pocket, before he picked his pipes back up. Hissing in pain, as he felt the broken ribs rub against each other, as he began battering the monsters, he was near the end of his line when he saw a white light that erupted from Astronema’s ship. The light touched everything and he fell to the ground as he felt a familiar presence briefly brush his mind then was suddenly gone, and a feeling that he had always had, was suddenly gone. He didn’t even notice the way his enemies all were turned to stone then shattered upon themselves. He saw his body was glowing with various colors briefly as he fell to the ground on his knees, and cried for the loss of the most powerful source of good. He absently noticed, that the light had healed all f his injuries, but he just remained where he was, as if he remained there long enough his fierce denial of what had just happened would be the truth.

When he finally got himself back under control he watched sadly, as a longhaired teen in a gray uniform with a red shirt whom, he thought might be the red space ranger brought out Astronema, who looked like she was dead as well. The ranger laid her sadly down and somehow changed her into some girl that was a blonde who didn’t seem to have any real memory of what she had done. Tommy just shook his head in understanding sympathy, and looked around for any other familiar forms. He saw Bulk and Skull near the Rangers; Stone was off to the side. He looked behind him and smiled slightly, as Rocky and Adam fought their way through the crowd till they were next to him. There were still tears in their eyes, and he knew, that they had felt the loss of their mentor just as he had. He looked beyond them and saw the black clad figure of Jason holding a red bandanna in his fist. Tommy wasn’t sure, but he thought that maybe this would finally shock his friend back to them, but he merely wiped the tears from his eyes and tied the piece of cloth on over his head then turned away, following the already retreating figures of his new team.

Tommy sighed, and looked at the paper in his pocket it was a cell phone number with the words emergencies only written below it. Tommy nodded, Jason had moved on, and it was time for the rest of them to try and move on. He turned back to the scene of seeing the rangers holing each other and his thoughts wandered back to a photo of the original team that stayed hidden in his garage that had been taken right before Jason left the first time with Zack and Trini for the peace conference. The picture had all of them morphed, and without their helmets on. He just shrugged, and turned back to his friends.

“Its better this way, you know lad.” Duncan said to his student, as they found their motorcycles.

“I guess,” Jason said as he placed the visor down over his face and revved the engine, before taking off. His thoughts wandering back to various things he had done in his life so far, the first time he was in the command center and talked with Zordon the time he invited a guilt ridden green ranger to the team rejoining the team as the gold ranger the various Zords he had seen the original five Dino Zords, Thunder Zords, Dragon Zord, Tiger Zord, Titanus, Tor, the Zeo Zords and Pyrmidus. He would remember his mentor he swore, as he thought on the golden coin that he had felt fall into his pocket when he had been hit y the white light riding away again from his friends.