[TheFightingSpirit]

And now back to our regular programming...

Incursion Nine: Stardom.

Ken, Robert and Allison stood outside Brad’s flat.

Robert scratched the back of his head, and suppressed the urge to whistle. “Have you ever…?”

“No Rob,” said Allison with a sigh. “I’ve never had to tell someone they may have mystic powers coursing through their veins, that they might be the next Cross Ranger, sworn to do battle with a vile evil.”

“Then how should we do this?”

Allison glared at Robert. “I thought you said you weren’t going to joke around anymore?”

“It’s who I am.” Robert shrugged. “Deal with it.”

Ken shook his head at their antics. “Just let me do it. He’s my friend, I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

He knocked once on the door and Brad answered in his pyjamas, bowl of cereal in hand. “What’s up, uh, guys? It’s still pretty early, you know?”

Ken chuckled. “Sorry about that. Look, my friends and I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can’t it wait until I finish my breakfast?” He took a bite and spoke with his mouthful, “And maybe get dressed properly.”

o0o

Half an hour later, they sat together in the ranger’s flat.

“Brad,” said Ken. “Allow me to introduce Lt. Catherine Moses of the, uh, Agency.”

“Pleasure.” He fiddled with his glasses and looked from the Powel siblings, to Robert, and the lieutenant.

He couldn’t begin to imagine what the military would want with him. He’d always kept his head down. Even on the internet. “Hey, so what’s this about? I’ve got a couple of other things to do today…”

Lt. Moses took a second to compose herself. “This is going to sound somewhat… crazy, I know, but the Agency has a few questions to ask you.”

Brad frowned. “I’m not in trouble am I?”

“No,” she chuckled. “You’re not.”

He didn’t think he was being paranoid. Everyone assumed they were in trouble when the phrase ‘a few questions’ reared its ugly head, right?

“Hear her out, yeah?” Ken said.

Catherine nodded. “Now, what do you know of your family’s heritage?”

“Not a lot,” he shrugged.

She produced the manila wallet she’d compiled and spread a few documents across the coffee table.

Brad’s face lit up at the DNA result print out. “Oh hey. That’s cool. I’m studying the genome project in class at the moment…” Realisation dawned on him when he spotted the subject’s name at the top of the sheet.

“This is of me isn’t it…” He studied it closer and tapped a sequence Catherine had circled in red pen. “What’s this?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Allison, Ken and Robert all have similar such sequences in their own DNA.” She shuffled a three new pages to the top of the pile. As promised, the same code repeated itself, circled by the same red pen.

“It marks you four as part of an ancient bloodline that...” She too began to wonder. How did you tell someone a truth you knew to be real, but one that sounded utterly ridiculous.

“Alright.” Robert stood suddenly. “This is going nowhere.”

He held out his hands and summoned his magi symbols.

Brad gasped. “Oh… wow, that’s…”

Catherine shook her head and pushed passed her trepidation. “That fact is, we believe you are descended from one or more of the nine ancient clans—though I can’t say for sure which ones—and may be in possession of a… power.”

“I’m not sure I follow.” He tilted his head.

Robert shook his head. “For goodness sake.”

He stood back and crossed his arms at his waist. “Cross form.” He swung his arms, manifesting his morpher and gem.

Brad shielded his eyes against the red light, and when he opened them again he saw a Red-suited superhero in Robert’s place.

“You’re Red Cross, one the rangers from on the news! You three battled a … guy down on the UFL football field.”

“Bingo!” Thank God he finally gets it… “And we think you’re one of us.”

“How would I know? I certainly can’t do anything like that.”

Before anyone could answer him or he had time to process what was happening, an alarm sounded from within the lieutenant’s bag. She retrieved her military-issue communicator and pressed the button on the side.

She considered asking Brad to leave, but, since she was pretty sure he was the one, she ignored her gut for a change.

“This is Moses. Go ahead.”

“A Black Water infested beast is on its way towards Fort Lowsdale,” a voice said. “The rangers are cleared to intercept and stop it before it reaches the town border.”

“Understood.”

“Brad.” Robert demorphed. “Come with us. Maybe if you’re part of the action, we’ll figure this whole thing out quicker.”

“I don’t know… I’ll just get in the way, won’t I?”

“You’ll have to decide later,” Allison said on her way to the door with the others. “We gotta go. Now.”

o0o

The beast, a hair bigger than a two story house lifted its huge foot from the wreckage of a building. It shook its leg to rid itself of the masonry, and howled in pain when it found it couldn’t. The masonry clung to it, grafted right into the flesh.

The creature had once looked like a cross between a red howler monkey and a six-banded armadillo. Before that… who knows.

Since crossing the quarantine it had grown larger and larger still, as more material fused with it; huge tree trunks for legs, parts of destroyed buildings for makeshift armour. Vines snaked their way across it’s skin, and sticking out of its flank was a half-submerged car, a Nissan. It’s eyes were hollowed out black pits of nothingness that would forever haunt the people of the towns it left in its wake.

Lt Moses’ Agency car skidded to a halt in the beast’s lumbering path of destruction. The rangers leaped out, but hesitated seeing the size and extent of what they were up against.

“Kind of makes that Elk look like a mouse, huh.” said Robert.

“And we almost didn’t bring that down…” Her voice monotone.

Ken popped his knuckles and stretched his arms above his head. “No time like the present?”

They ranked up and crossed their arms in a x by their waists.

“Cross form!” they called in unison, and swung their arms in opposing arcs. The power overtook them and their armour formed in less than a fraction of second.

“Any bright ideas?” Red Cross asked, painfully aware the beast, which he decided to call the Howlerdillo, was getting closer, far quicker than he imagined a creature it’s size could.

Brad jumped out of the car followed by Lt. Moses and stared in a horrified kind of awe at the mutant monstrosity.

“That shouldn’t be possible.”

The lieutenant sighed, “You have seen the news recently, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, but nothing like that. Men with huge arms, rabid animal attacks, rangers… just not… Damn!”

He now knew first-hand what the military and the Cross rangers fought against day in day out along the quarantine wall. He had only an inkling of what it meant to stand up to such heinousness, to be a hero for the people. It was one thing to want to help teach kids affected by the disaster, but that was akin to treating the symptoms, not the cause, of a disease.

It was another thing entirely to do something practical about it.

“I didn’t have time to explain earlier.” Lt Moses hung her head. “What we’re asking of you is a lot. Evidently.”

She looked on as the rangers did their best to grab the lumbering beast’s attention. “It’ll consume your life if you let it. My boss, General Bryant is a controlling man and… well I still haven’t got the rangers out from under him… that’s not- my point is this. If you are a magi, I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into, before you agree to anything.”

“I understand.” Brad nodded. He looked Catherine in the eye and winked, “and hey, we both know that genes never lie.”

He took a step forward, as though instinct told him to follow the rangers lead, but he stopped himself and looked down at his hands.

Nothing.

“What if I’m not magi?” He called back over the din of elemental attacks.

“Then everything goes back to normal,” she replied. “... As long as you sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

“Oh.” Brad stared at his hands again. “But that life is boring.”

In that instant, pain lanced through his brain unlocking the centuries’ worth of genetic memory within him.

Now he really understood. “Here it goes.”

Brad thrust his hands into a x formation at his waist. One hand lit up with a shining blue droplet symbol, the other with three blades of grass and the earth beneath all in green.

Catherine smiled. One point to the science of tracking down magi. Have Bryant’s men even figured this out yet?

She hadn’t told the rangers she’d kept the search to herself. She hadn’t even told them what she suspected about Bryant. Most of all she dreaded the morning, when the General found out about this, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

Consequences be damned. I might have just saved the world by finding Brad.

Brad swung his arms out to the side in opposing arcs like he’d seen the others do, then crossed them again in a plus across his chest.

“Cross form!” His morpher shimmered into existence, as did a green gem baring his mixed clan power symbol. “Green Cross.”

Green energy, a force from across the generations, crackled outward and overtook him. Lt. Moses took a step back.

When the light died down, he once more looked at his hands now clad in green armour with blue accents here and there.

Without a second thought otherwise, the new Green Cross leaped forward into battle, to join his team mates and grab destiny by the neck.

To actually do something for a change.

Not in the future… now.