"Morphin Time" - Part Two

 

Part Two

            “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Gladiator of Gallifrey!” The being growled. Looking beyond Seana, he spotted the cowering Craig. “And I see you’ve brought along your pet, saving me the trouble of finding and exterminating him!”

            “Ya got a lot of nerve goin’ after an innocent lil’ boy, Yer Lordship,” Seana said. “All ‘cause the Hierarchy’s tryin’ to get my attention! Word of advice: never tick off the Gladiator of Gallifrey – especially now that she’s a fightin’ Irish lass!” On that note, she produced a device Craig had never seen before; it resembled a metallic belt buckle. When Seana held it out in front of her and pushed a red switch located on the right side of the device, she called out, “IT’S MORPHIN’ TIME!!!”

            She then transformed in a flash before Craig’s awestruck eyes.

            No longer was she just a redhead in plain clothes; she was a costumed superhero.

            Her costume was a suit of shiny armor colored in green and gold, topped with a helmet that encased her entire head, including her long flowing red hair. Craig wouldn’t have known it was her had he not seen the transformation itself. The only recognizable aspect of this morphed version of her was the voice, which still carried her Irish accent as she told Zedd, “You’ve made a big mistake, Yer Lordship!”

            “You are the one who’s made the mistake!” Zedd retorted. “Zordon may have gifted you with the powers of a Ranger, but you are forever cursed to be nothing more than a Gladiator!”

            The two combatants clashed.

            In her morphed form, Seana held up well against Zedd, who deflected her punches and kicks with that Z-staff of his.

            Craig watched the whole thing as if it were a Saturday morning show.

            “Get him! Kick his butt!” He found himself actually rooting for Seana, a woman he distrusted a mere moment ago.

            Seana could hear him cheering, fueled by his support.

            She managed a successful kick to Zedd’s chest, knocking the warlord back by several feet. Infuriated, Zedd pointed his staff at Seana and unleashed a blast of lightning that subdued her. She was pinned to the cold, hard floor of the throne room, writhing in pain. Zedd relished every agonized scream that escaped from her body. “I will accomplish the one thing no one in the Hierarchy has – destroying the Gladiator of Gallifrey! The Twilight Phantom will handsomely reward me for my efforts, and I will finally have the chance to destroy the Power Rangers, once and for all!”

            Zedd would have allowed the torture session to go on for a lot longer had his staff not suddenly been knocked out of alignment with Seana. He growled as he saw the culprit to be Craig, who used his own staff, which was a lot smaller than Zedd’s but still had enough force to strike it. “Leave her alone!” he told the warlord.

            “Outta my way, boy!” Zedd swatted at Craig with the vicious might of his right hand. The impact sent Craig flying back and colliding into a wall. He was knocked out cold, slumped against the wall while his staff clattered to the floor.

            “CRAIG!!!” Seana cried, witnessing the whole thing.

            Her gloved fists clenched in rage, another level of her power surging within.

            Zedd could sense it irradiating from her, putting fear in the warlord that he never quite experienced before. He watched as Seana rose back on her feet, a green aura glowing around her. Panicked, he attempted to blast her with his staff again, but she gripped its end and kicked Zedd square in the stomach. He fell back onto his throne, his staff no longer in his possession but now in Seana’s.

            She held it precariously close to his face, ready to deliver a taste of his own medicine. “You’re right, Zedd – I am the Gladiator of Gallifrey, and I should do what I do best and rid the multiverse of the likes of ya, right ‘ere and now, especially after what ya did to my lil’ brotha!” Her grip on Zedd’s staff tightened, resisting the urge. “But, instead, I’m gonna let ya live to deliver a message to the Phantom.”

            “What message?” Zedd asked.

            “Come for me lil’ brotha again, and it’s the end for ya!”

            She forced the warlord to depart from his own throne room afterwards, sans his staff. She left it rattling uselessly on the floor as she went to check on the unconscious Craig. Thankfully, he was only unconscious and nothing worse. Picking up both him and his staff, she carried them back into the TARDIS and departed from the moon palace.

-----------------------------

            Craig snapped awake, sometime much later, in his bedroom.

            Not the bedroom at his house, but the one inside Neas’s TARDIS, much to his chagrin. He had hoped the whole thing with the scary alien warlord and the Irish superhero was all a dream, and that he wasn’t back in the Infinite DC. Unfortunately, it was all real.

            His spare Creek clothes were neatly folded on a nearby chair. He had forgotten that he had a spare set that he kept in the TARDIS bedroom. He changed into them straightaway, swapping out of his school clothes that were tattered from the latest peril that he had no business being involved in. Afterwards, he wandered through the corridors, recalling the exact path he took, leading directly back to the console room.

            He found Seana there, working the controls while still in her Power Ranger suit, albeit without her helmet. Her fiery long locks swayed to her rapid momentum as she bounced around the hexagonal console with energy Craig hadn’t seen from any of the other Neas incarnations he met.

            She only stopped once she saw Craig in the room. “Oh! Top of the mornin’ to ya, lil’ brotha!” she tenderly greeted, though Craig was fairly certain the concept of a morning didn’t exist in the Infinite DC. “How’s the ceann feelin’?”

            “The what?!” Craig cringed. “Why do you talk like that?”

            “Talk like what?” Seana inquired, actually confused.

            “Like you’re a leprechaun.”

            “Well, I am Irish now, lil’ brotha.”

            “But you sounded American when we first met.”

            “Oh, you mean like this?” On the turn of a dime, her accent changed to what Craig first heard. “Or would you prefer a proper Brit who sounds all posh and circumstance?” It changed again to spot-on British. “Or would y’all reckon I use sumthin’ from the South, like I got myself a hankerin’ fer some grits and Granny’s peach cobbler?” It then changed to a southern drawl.

            Each one made Craig laugh for the first time he had stepped foot in the TARDIS.

            “Now there’s a smile, eh?” Seana savored the sight.

            Craig almost fell for her little scheme, but his smile faded just as she pointed it out. “Don’t think that means I want to travel with you again.”

            Seana huffed. “I don’t get it, lil’ brotha. Did somethin’ happen to us in the future?”

            “The future?!” Craig felt his frustrations resurging. “Which Neas are you?! Are you some kind of clone or something?! ‘Cause it’s like you’re some sort of freak of nature! You have all these memories of me, yet you can’t remember the one thing I wanted you to do, and that’s leave me alone! I want nothing to do with the Infinite DC or whatever’s this nobody version of you!”

            Hurt by his words and tone, Seana could barely respond to it. “Alright, Craigy,” she said with trembling lips. “Message received. No need to eat me head off, yeah?” She sniffled, verging on an emotional breakdown right in front of the boy she always thought of as her best friend – her only friend. “Just, um…Just watch this while I change, eh?” She handed him a data orb – a golden golf ball-shaped device meant to be inserted in one of the open slots on the control console.

            Craig watched her leave in a hurry with a hand over her mouth to stifle her shuddering breath. He didn’t mean to speak so cruelly to her; he was just so overcome with exasperations spurred from the spontaneous journey.

            He briefly gazed at the data orb she gave him and inserted it through a console slot. Without warning, a holographic image projected from the console template. It stood well over six feet tall – the height of the African American man in the hologram itself. Craig recognized him, his smile returning. “Thomas!”

            It had been so long since Craig saw this incarnation of Neas.

            This hologram of him looked the way he did before Craig discovered it was a synthetic mask that he wore over his real face, which was younger by comparison with long straight hair and blue eyes. Craig preferred how he looked in this hologram; it was how he best remembered his big brother.

            “I’ve missed you so much!” Craig moved in to hug him, but his arms went right through the projected image. He was saddened to realize that was all that it was and nothing more.

            Neither was it a live feed. As it turned out, the hologram was a recording.

            “Personal journal log seven-one-two,” the recording stated. “It’s been a while since I’ve talked with my Alternate…a few regenerations, in fact. I never understood why or how they exist inside my head, but they are very real. Pop thinks it’s some form of mental trauma I sustained from the experiments Rassilon put me through as a child. And she may very well be right. One night, alone in the cell they kept me in, there was this boy in the one next to mine. His name was Caden, and we were just about the same age at the time. Caden kept me sane through the whole grueling experience, reassuring me that Rassilon’s experiments were only making us stronger and that we would one day fight back and escape.

            Well, when that time came, I found out the truth: Caden was never physically there. He was in my head the entire time. And that’s the day I discovered my Alternates – other versions of my regenerations that exist inside each of them, including this one right now. Some are very different; some are somewhat similar. For the longest time that I’d been a woman, they were all men. But now, it’s the other way around. My current Alternate’s name is Seana, a very young Irishwoman who is about as passionate and tempered as my physical self. She wants a chance to live in the physical world – to breathe the air, eat the food, and hug a loved one. She deserves that chance. I may be able to give her that, after Everett gave me this…”

            The holographic image of Thomas reached into the left pocket of his black hoodie and pulled out a vial of glowing gold liquid.

            “Regen-8!” Craig identified it, right at the same time the recording did.

            “A concentrated, stabilized dose that will trigger a regeneration,” the hologram continued. “If successful, Seana and I will swap places – she’ll live in the physical world, while I’ll be the one on the inside. She’ll live for as long as the body will allow her, and as young as hers is, it will be for a long time. But it’s something she’s earned for keeping me sane all those years on Gallifrey. And I can’t wait ‘til Craig meets her…he’s the one person she’s always dreamt of meeting…dreamt of hugging. I know for certain, ‘cause I’ve dreamt of it, too.”

            The recording ended there, and the hologram of Thomas faded away.

            Craig felt worse about what he said to Seana than before he watched it.

            Wiping the tears from his eyes, he rushed straight to the TARDIS wardrobe room where he knew Seana to be. Luckily, she had just finished changing back into her military jacket, jeans, and boots when Craig arrived. They both paused, looking directly at each other with conflicting gazes. There was concern behind Seana’s, whereas there was joy behind Craig’s.

            Here this young Irishwoman was in front of him, but she wasn’t just a young Irishwoman nor was she just another regeneration of Neas. She was the one Craig had longed to see again, to go on adventures with again.

            Seana was Thomas. That was guaranteed from the look in her misty eyes.

            Craig’s big brother was looking through them right there and then, relieved that his little brother was finally seeing him.

            Reunited, they both fulfilled the same wish: to share a long, warm brotherly hug.

            “I won’t ever leave ya again, lil’ bro,” Seana promised. “I’m with ya forever.”

            Craig tautened his embrace, burying his tear-drenched face into her jacket. He began to enjoy the scent of Blooming Heather more than he ever did before.

NEXT TIME...