[TheFightingSpirit]

Incursion Twenty One: The Remnant

The helicopter carrying all but one of the Cross Rangers thrummed its way towards the mountains south of Steele City, and the Agency HQ.

“Thank you for doing this for us... again,” said Maria to the pilot, as she prepped her her equipment for the upcoming confrontation.

“The pleasure is all mine,” the pilot replied. He’d been the one to fly them the last time they stormed the base, and hadn’t taken much coaxing to do it again. “My daughter was student at the school you saved from that Black Water bastard. If it weren’t for you she could…”

Maria clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t thank me, okay? I was just doing my job… what should have been done from the start.”

“You’re far too modest.”

She chuckled. “Just get us to a hangar again and we’ll do the rest.”

“Sure thing, hoss.”

o0o

A first lieutenant gathered the General’s Elite Guard in the hangar.

They’d spotted the Cross Ranger’s helicopter in plenty of time, quite aware that Lt. Moses’ team must have used the same machine with the express purpose of alerting the Agency.

“The General is gone. We are the last garrison, the remnant.” The lieutenant’s eye bulged with thick black veins. “They want our head quarters. They want us dead. Well I say no!”

The Elite Guard roared with inhuman fervour. Some of them shed their armour and helmets and transformed into pitch black beasts. Other’s grew weapons from their own flesh and bone and bled black all over the battle-scarred hangar floor.

“It ends tonight.”

o0o

As they swung around the mountain, they saw the hangar bay doors were already open. And yet they’d seen no aircraft leave during their approach.

“I think they’ve taken the bait,” said Maria. “Now we just have to hope Catherine and her team can work their way in from the ground up.”

“Come on then,” added Robert. “Time’s a wastin.”

The pilot took a level swing close past the hangar doors and the rangers dove out. Allison called the winds to buoy them, and they arced down gracefully into the gaping maw of inevitability.

o0o

“Do you remember what I taught you about the Trinity clan?” said Brother Gray, sipping his coffee.

The Order had booked out the entire cafe for an emergency meeting as soon as they heard of Manuarii’s passing. There was much to discuss, and not only Catherine Moses taking over as the magi empress.

Brother Kline raised his hand. “It’s a power that comes from the very core of the Earth herself.”

“Quite right. So what precisely is the problem we face?”

One of the younger monks rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure I understand why you’re acting so… whats the word? Serious.”

“Brother, please,” Kline hissed.

“I’ll enlighten you all,” said Gray. “The infection is turning the Earth, poisoning her, and the one person who’s linked to the Earth in more ways than any of us is our new empress.”

“But what can we do?”

“See, that’s the million dollar question, ain’t it.” Brother Kline stood. “We’ll just have to destroy every single last molecule of Black Water before the taint becomes irreversible."

“Or, far simpler," replied Brother Gray, placing his mug calmly back on the table in front of him, "We go after the source...”

o0o

Greeted by already transformed, mutated elite guard, the rangers slid into their fighting stance, ready for whatever might happen to happen.

The Elite stood waiting as though giving them a little rope with which to hang themselves.

“Well, lookie here,” said Robert. “They’ve learned a little manners.”

Brad shook his head. "I hate stand-offs..."

“Cross Form!” The five core rangers summoned their morphers and crossed their arms at their waists. The mixed clan gems shone brightly. They swung their arms around in opposing arcs describing a circle, and magi power overtook them.

“Fire and Metal; Red Cross.”
“Water and Lightning; Blue Cross.”
“Air and Light; White Cross.”
“Earth and Water; Green Cross.”
“Sonic and Fire; Yellow Cross.”

“Magi Tribe… Cross Ranger!” they finished in unison.

The first to break the stand-off was an Elite Guard who now looked more like a giant beetle, complete with a carapace of black kevlar, topped with a tiny helmeted head. A true chimera. It clicked its oily black mouth parts, and let out a piercing shriek that sounded entirely too human, like the sound of being burnt alive.

The Beetle Guard surged forward on its humungous veined wings, knocking the rangers over like bowling pins.

By the time they recovered, the remaining guard were upon them.

Red Cross clashed first against the most human of the infected soldiers. The guard swung a bone-like sword tipped and edged with solidified Black Water. The red ranger blocked with the shaft of his hastily summoned fire spear. “Last of you guys I fought had no head… let’s take a look shall we!”

He ripped off the Elite’s full-visor helmet to reveal a face split straight down the centre, peeled back to show concentric circles of teeth. Tears of Black Water dripped from it’s eyes.

Red Cross shuddered and handed back the bewildered guard’s helmet. “Here you go buddy. You just put that back on, ‘kay?”


Blue Cross found himself hounded from the air by the Beetle Guard. He summoned his blaster and fired jets of magic-infused water every time the monster dipped close enough to get a good lock on it.

After a few passes the blue ranger got two shots in that drenched the beetle’s wings, forcing it to make an emergency landing. It screeched and produced from it’s hands the muzzles of two semi-automatics.

Thankfully, Blue Cross managed to leech kinetic energy from them with a shield of water, and deflect some of them with a few precision bolts of lightning, but it wasn’t quite enough. A round hit him in the chest and sparked against his armour.


With a flourish of her arms White Cross soared into the air. A guard, with spikes of blackness all of his body, lunged ineffectually beneath her. “Get down here!” He roared.

“Solar flare blitz.”

Her hand momentarily shone brighter than the sun. A point of light burst mere inches from the guard’s face. He spun away, shielding himself with his arm, but the flare seemed to follow him around the room. Truly disoriented, he ran headlong into the wing of a jet and collapsed.

Having dealt with her opponent, the white magi sunk to the ground and ran to join Yellow Cross.

The guard that had chosen her, though once a man and a soldier, had transformed into rock beast with skin of purest obsidian. He slammed his fists together once then a second time against the ground, shaking the rangers off balance.

They caught themselves in time to see the obsidian golem bare down upon them.

White Cross summoned her dagger and slashed up a cyclone blitz, a whirling vortex of slicing wind. It wrapped around the beast like a cloak, trapping it in place and dulling its edges.

“Sonic boom blitz,” said Yellow Cross, swinging her tonfas. Hundreds of pulses of sound pounded down against the cyclone blitz’s viel. The two attacks seemed to reinforce each other, shaking the guard apart from two fronts. Jagged cracks lanced their way across his chest.


Meanwhile a serpentine guard member, the only elite soldier remaining, set her sights firmly on Green Cross.

Rather than fight her head on, Green Cross ran. He slid passed a pile of crates and hard cases and under a jet’s wing to the side of the hangar.

The serpent slithered over the engine, along the fuselage, dropped down in front the green ranger, coiling herself around him. “Why run? Are you a coward?” She squeezed tighter.

“I’m not a coward!”

“You ran.” Her tongue darted in and out of her mouth.

The more he struggled the tighter she held on until he could barely breath, but with what air he could find Green Cross let out a battle cry. A ball of green light zipped in through the hangar door. It hovered momentarily over her head.

As she looked up, eyes wide in disbelief, the light resolved into Green Cross’ hammer, and knocked her directly on the head.

As she lost her grip on consciousness, the serpent released her grip and fell with a thud to the ground.

Green Cross reached out to grab the hammer. “You followed.”


On the other side of the hanger, the obsidian golem rolled free of it’s prison, trailing a landslide of rocks behind it. The beetle guard shook it’s wings dry and leaped back into the air.

The Cross Rangers thought about pursuing their opponents, but at the behest of Red Cross regrouped to think through the best course of action.

“How are we going do this?” said Red Cross. “We can hardly take on all three of them.”

“Hang on, Rob...” White Cross pointed passed the guard. “Look!”

The three remaining Elite spun to find someone behind their lines. Recognition passed across their faces.

It had been a while since they seen Catherine Moses - a lot had happened in the mean time, like the general opening their eyes to truth - but they knew her now as their enemy, the one they had sworn to eliminate.

Catherine, one arm to the ceiling and one to the ground, steeled her courage. Time to shine. “Clan form roulette!”

She dropped her arms and struck the roulette dial. Her black and grey base form armour materialised in a familiar tricolour burst of energy. Finally the dial ticked slower and slower, the needle landing on the red segment. The power of the fire clan rushed through her, the grey shifted to red and the fire staff formed in her hand.

“The ancestral head of the nine magi tribes. The magi empress… CrossTrinity!”

The familiar clack of a gun being cocked sounded behind her.

“You thought you could sneak past me, did you Moses?” The Lieutenant grinned maliciously. “Once you fall it's only a matter of time before I take out your traitorous followers. General Bryant is sure to promote me for this.”

She cringed beneath her helmet. “Oh… hey, you...”

In truth, she couldn’t recall the woman’s name, but had the vague sense that she used to tail the general like only the very best yes-man could.

“I bet you think those suits of yours are something, huh?” She circled around the rangers to join her mutated comrades, all the while keeping the gun trained on CrossTrinity. “Last time I checked, spandex does shit against bullets.”

“The General’s gone, lieutenant,” she said. “And believe me when I say this, he couldn’t give a crap about you.”

“I see what you're up to! You want his praise all for yourself,” she sneered.

“Far from it…” It was sad really, such a young officer twisted by that evil plague. “Bryant thinks only of himself. He’s not even on the base.”

The lieutenant lowered her gun a fraction. “And I suppose you checked?”

She nodded. “Funny you mention that.”

“No!” She said with disbelief. “No, he wouldn’t leave us.”

CrossTrinity walked toward her arms out stretched in surrender. It looked as though this upstart lieutenant had never fired a gun at someone in her life. With a bit of luck she never would.

The magi empress got close enough to disarm her and whisper in her ear. “I defeated him myself.”

She wailed and dropped to her knees. “You’re a monster!”

The split-headed guard, the Kevlar beetle, and the obsidian golem knelt and raised their hands above their heads like the well trained soldiers they’d once been.

They knew defeat when they saw it.

“Y- ... a… a monster…” The lieutenant backed away convulsing.

The elite guard shifted back into their human forms and dropped to the ground, dead. T

he Black Water that once coursed through their veins poured from them and splashed across the lieutenant, lifting her into the air and out of the bay doors.

“Is it me,” Catherine said, letting her armour dissolve, “or do they always leave just as the going gets tough?”

The others followed suit.

“It’s not just you,” said Ken. “In fact, the way things are going, we might see her and the general sooner than we think.”

Allison shot him a look. “Seriously, Kenneth... You’re a massive jinx, you know that?

Robert sighed. “I’m kind of disappointed. I was totally looking forward to a big fight...”