Hi all. Kira centric chapter with some actual episode mixed in with the T/K stuff. Also, please note that I skipped “Burning at Both Ends” because most of that deals with the uniform stuff and evil Trent stuff. Which isn’t this universe. Anyway, that said, let’s get to the story…

Legends and Heroes

By Jeannine Trevizo

-x-

Chapter 12: Under Your Spell

As morning arrived, Tommy stretched and noted with a small smile the warm presence next to him that was snoring softly. He hadn’t noticed before, but now, without the looming presence of an evil ranger, he was more aware of how Kim’s hair stuck out in odd angles on the pillow, how she curled up into his side, the way her mouth was partially open as she slept and how she snored.

The sight of her beside him warmed his heart and made it threaten to take flight.

But the little snoring sound… it was just cute.

And then the cuteness was gone as his alarm clock began buzzing, causing the woman in his bed to turn over and complain.

“God, is it 6am already?” she moaned as she forced herself to not pull the covers up over her head.

“Sorry Beautiful. But I have to get cleaned up, get some coffee and get to class.”

“No, no… I understand. You head for the shower and I’ll get some coffee started, okay?”

Nodding, Tommy threw the covers aside and padded off to the bathroom. Once he was started on his routine, Kim threw off the covers, quickly throwing on her clothes from the day before and then focused on making the bed before moving on to the kitchen to start the coffee. Before Tommy was finished showering and shaving, Kim had thrown in bread into the toaster as well, scrounging out a container of butter and jam from the refrigerator to go with it.

“Get dressed! I have the coffee and some toast made,” Kim called out from the kitchen, making Tommy smile as he walked back to the bedroom in a towel.

After quickly dressing, Tommy headed into the kitchen to find Kim already dressed, buttering and spreading jam on a stack of toast. On the table as well was the sugar bowl and milk for her coffee. As he watched her, the feeling of domestic bliss struck him hard.

“You’re way too quick for me.”

“I figured I would shower and change when I got home.”

At her words, Tommy frowned as he poured himself some coffee and took a sip. They’d said a lot of things the night before, and he wasn’t sure if maybe she’d changed her mind. They were going pretty fast…

“So, you’re getting up and heading back to your apartment and clearing out your things, and coming right back here?” he asked nervously before shoving a piece of toast with jam in his mouth.

“That was the plan. Of course, since you have to go to school,” Kim mentioned with a happy tone, looking at the clock on the kitchen wall. “I figured I would come back after you get home from classes and move my things in then.”

“No need,” Tommy said as he moved quickly to the living room, where he opened a wooden box near the door and returned, item in hand. “I figured you might need this at some point.”

With that he passed her a copy of the house key, and she smirked at him.

“You were planning on asking me to move in before last night’s impromptu invite?” she asked, holding the brass key in her fingers.

“Eventually. Things just… well, sped up a bit, in the light of all the days I lost stuck in that amber stuff. I realized once I was out that I didn’t want to waste any more time.”

“Understood handsome,” she replied, reaching over to lay a hand on his before removing it to pick up a piece of the toast for herself.

“Anyhow, you’re very right… I need to get to class. You can see yourself out, right?”

She nodded and moved to stand and kissed him lightly on the lips.

When the door closed, she sighed and finished her coffee and toast, setting the dishes in the sink before heading for the door herself. When she closed and locked it behind her, she couldn’t help but smile at the fact that if everything went well, she would be doing this for a long time to come.

-x-

When Tommy arrived home that afternoon, he found Kim already at home and he moved to meet her at the couch.

“Good day?” she asked, her eyes coming up to meet his as she tossed a composition notebook on the coffee table.

“Okay. I kept it light since we’re going on a field trip tomorrow to Anton’s museum. They’ve got a great dinosaur exhibit that I hope will inspire some of the students.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“You try corralling 40 teenagers into one coherent group and move them through scientific exhibits,” Tommy retorted.

“Okay, maybe not so fun.”

“I see you’re all settled in,” he said as he looked around, not seeing a box in sight.

“I really didn’t have much to bring. The apartment is furnished, so it was mostly clothes, shoes, accessories, musical equipment…”

Tommy noted that by his desk a guitar was propped up against the wall. Beside that was a laptop bag. On the coffee table, he suspected her incomplete lyrics were being penciled in as she worked on her latest hit.

“So, do you have anything that’s finished?” he asked, reaching for the notepad.

“A few things. I’m working on a new tune that hasn’t fully come together. Why?” she questioned, snatching the notebook from his hands with a look of nervousness.

“I just thought… I haven’t heard you sing in a long time…maybe you’d share one with me…”

Kim blushed and swatted at his hand.

“Maybe another night,” she demurred. “I was just hoping for a nice dinner and some cuddling on the couch. You still have a fondness for bad horror films?”

“Guilty as charged,” he stated with a cringe and Kim punched him lightly in the arm. For all the years that had past, some things stayed the same.

“Good… I saw “Creature from the Black Lagoon is playing at 8pm on the SciFi channel. What do you say to dinner then settling in for bad movie night? I might even pretend to be frightened and jump in your lap.”

Tommy laughed and leaned over to kiss her. After a short but passionate kiss, Tommy pulled away and smiled, mischief in his eyes.

“Okay, I do believe that I have spaghetti and meatballs in the freezer. I’ll go take them out of the freezer to defrost for dinner tonight. Since it’s still early, I should use the time to prepare the tests for Friday I’m supposed to give. If I work on that, you said you had a song you were working on… I can go downstairs and you can work up here… how about we meet back on this couch after dinner?”

“Deal,” she said with a smile as Tommy moved to kiss her again before they settled into their own individual lives with the promise of time together to come.

-x-

“That was a horrible movie,” complained Conner as he walked Kira out of the Reefside multiplex, his arm around her shoulder following the evening showing of what he considered his worst nightmare – a chick flick.

“What? I thought it was beautiful,” she complained, the remains of her tears still on her cheeks and her arm around Conner’s waist.

“It was all… girly. I mean, it was sort of romantic, but did he have to grovel like that to get her back?”

“You mean you wouldn’t grovel for me?”

He looked at her and sighed. Of course he would. He shrugged and she let loose a small laugh and grinned at him. Their second attempt at a date seemed to be going rather well, and neither of them really wanted things to end.

“Did you want to swing by the café?” Conner asked, hoping for a little more time before they had to call it a night.

“It’s a weeknight. I doubt Dr. O would appreciate either of us falling asleep during the museum field trip tomorrow.”

“Fine. So, if I take you home right now, do I get that kiss I was promised?” Conner questioned hopefully.

“Maybe.”

Conner smiled and quickly escorted her to the car, with Kira leaning into him as if it was where she belonged.

-x-

The following day Dr. Oliver led the group of students up the walk to the front of the museum, with Kira, Ethan and Conner trailing near the back. As they passed a huge T-Rex model outside, Kira slowed down and looked at it, letting other students pass.

“What’s the matter?” Conner asked as he slipped up beside Kira, giving her a smile.

“That thing just gives me a creepy vibe. It’s like it moved.”

“You know dinosaurs are extinct, right?” questioned Ethan with some concern for his friend’s mental health and got a piercing look from the yellow ranger. “Okay, I see your point.”

With that, Ethan and Conner hurried to catch up with the rest of the class, leaving Kira behind to throw one last look at the beast watching her.

“Stop staring,” she demanded, and then hurried to join the others.

As Dr. O lectured about the bones they were passing, the class trailed behind, leaving Conner and Ethan to make note of some of the more ironic comments by their teacher.

“Gotta love the T-Rex,” said Conner, jostling Ethan.

“Whatever bro.”

At the tail end of the tour, Kira wandered, until she heard something, and turned to see a shadow of something moving among the cases. Thinking perhaps she hadn’t been all that wrong when she’d been feeling weird vibes outside, she moved to check it out, unaware she had company.

When she crossed the room and started to turn to peek around the corner, she found Cassidy right beside her.

“Hey. Where are you going?”

“Uh… to the bathroom?” Kira offered lamely.

“Oh great. Me too, ‘cause my lip gloss is totally wearing off,” replied the blond.

“Cassidy, just stay here, okay? You’re just gonna get us both in trouble.”

“Whatever. I’m going to the little girl’s room, and you can do whatever you want,” she said, and left with a swing of her hair.

Once Cassidy was gone, Kira hurried off, moving along the rows of glass cases until she found herself outside of the exhibits and in the corridor where she found herself staring at a storage room door. Curious, she opened the door and entered the mostly dark and dusty room.

Wandering through the partially lit room, Kira didn’t see much of note besides vases and statues. Then suddenly she was caught from behind, the arms of a TryanoDrone holding her. Quickly she broke it’s hold and launched a few punches at it, making it backtrack. Landing a hard kick to its midsection, it went flying back towards the door.

Then from the shelves jumped another three TyranoDrones in front of her and two behind her. Knowing that the odds had just gone from bad to worse, she launched into an attack, kicking at the first one before her, then spinning to block the punch of a second, and turning again to do a step kick on a third.

Her hands and feet were a flurry of movement as she sent one after another TyranoDrone flying into shelves and walls.

That was until she was hit from behind and sent sprawling into the arms of two of the TyranoDrones. The caught her by the shoulders and hauled her around.

“Let me go you freaks.”

Dragging her towards the back of the storage room, and before her she watched as a dinosaur skull started to glow from within the cavity of its eye sockets. With a blinding flash, she began to hear a voice directed at her.

“Kira, you must listen to me. You will do as I command.”

As the voice spoke on, Kira’s eyes went white, the spell she was now under taking hold.

Unaware of Kira’s predicament, Conner and Ethan had slipped away from the tour in the hopes of locating her.

“Where could she have gone?” asked Conner, worried inwardly and fighting not to show it.

“There she is! Kira! Kira!” called out Ethan as the two rushed to catch up with her, and instead nearly ran into her as she came towards them, her hand to her head for a moment before she looked up at them.

“Are you all right? What happened?” Conner questioned, fighting not to check her up and down for injuries.

“Uh yeah, I’m fine. I just got lost.”

“Lost?”

“Yeah, as in not found. But I’m fine. Are we leaving?”

“Yeah, we’re leaving,” replied Ethan, confused.

“Great, let’s go.”

With that, she breezed past them both, leaving the two rangers left behind to wonder what was up, and they hurried after her to join the group.

-x-

That afternoon at the cybercafé, Kira had moved to the counter, leaving Ethan and Conner alone at their table. The red and blue rangers were becoming increasingly concerned with her behavior. Conner was having a hard enough time worrying about her, he was glad Trent wasn’t there, or things might have gotten worse, and he would have been sorely tempted to take his frustration out on his former rival.

“Something’s not right,” commented Ethan softly as he tapped his pencil on the table.

At the counter, Hayley had come up to Kira, wondering nearly the same thing as the others.

“Hey Kira, how come you’re not sitting with the guys?”

“What? We have to do everything together?” she answered in a dull tone.

“Well, no. But you usually do, don’t you?” retorted Hayley.

“Not anymore. Look Hayley, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to finish this homework.”

Shrugging, Hayley walked off, and Conner decided that he really needed to see if he could figure out what was going on. With Ethan right behind him, he moved to stand beside her at the counter.

“Hey, you wanna go to a movie tonight?” he asked with a smile.

“No,” Kira said with a tinge of annoyance in her voice.

Conner felt a bit taken aback. Hadn’t they just had a good time the night before?

“You know, when someone doesn’t wanna hang out with people, they usually come up with some sort of excuse.”

“Look, we had a nice time last night, but I just don’t feel like spending any more time with you than I really have to, okay?” she said, turning and staring Conner straight in the eyes. “I have to go. I have something to do.”

With that she picked up her books and headed out, leaving Ethan bewildered and Conner wounded.

-x-

“So you think Kira’s been acting kinda strange?” Tommy asked as Conner and Ethan looked at him and Kim, having come over after Kira’s brush off of them.

“We just don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Conner explained, obviously concerned about Kira’s sudden change in attitude. “I mean, I didn’t say anything to make her mad.”

“Are you sure? Sometimes you say things you don’t think is gonna get people angry and things end up getting thrown at you,” remarked Ethan.

As the team walked into the command center, Ethan and Conner continued to debate the issue, Ethan knowing the two had been out the night before, and Kim watched them argue while Tommy focused in on some boxes that he’d mentioned to Kira a few days before that now held artifacts he’d acquired since his days working with Anton Mercer. Moving towards them, he noted there was nothing inside one of them.

“Dude, I promise I didn’t say anything. As it was… I got a kiss goodnight last night,” Conner said quietly, and Ethan and Kim’s eyebrows both rose at that admission.

“I was just asking,” Ethan explained, now even more sure that something was wrong with Kira.

“All right, I think we may have a bigger problem than that,” Tommy said as he turned towards Kim and the others with the open box. This box contained the final bone to a creature that was created by Mercer and me years ago.”

“What kind of creature?”

“Fossilador. We were trying to create a dinosaur at one time that had the power of mind control. We scrapped it when it got out of hand.”

“That was a dangerous thing to do handsome,” Kim said with a tone of concern in her voice.

“Great,” interjected Ethan, his eyes wide at the implications.

“As long as I had the main support bone, it could never come to life.”

“And that’s what was in that box,” Conner realized as Tommy moved to set the empty box back down.

“Yes.”

“So, who do you think took it?”

“If it wasn’t one of us or Hayley, that seriously cuts down the suspects,” Tommy noted with some measure of trepidation.

There was a brief pause, and Ethan’s eyes bugged out, “Kira?”

“She called me and said there was a group of TyranoDrones in the forest behind the house. Kim and I went to investigate… but there wasn’t anything out there when we arrived. She could have come in here then.”

As the team looked around at one another, the monitor behind them clicked on, and alarm sounding throughout the chamber. Everyone hurriedly moved to the screen and saw the skeletal monster ravaging the city.

“I’m gonna take a wild stab and say that’s your fossil monster?” Ethan commented.

“Unfortunately it is.”

“Any word from Kira?” Conner asked Kim, who had been trying to raise the yellow ranger on her gauntlet communicator since the suggestion of Kira’s part in the bone’s theft had been suggested.

“Nothing… I’ve been trying but she hasn’t answered.”

“Think you guys, where could she have come in contact with this thing?” asked Tommy, nervously running a hand through his hair.

Conner and Ethan seemed to consider this, and finally Conner realized what it had to be.

“The museum. When we went on the field trip…”

“Yeah,” Ethan interjected, coming up with the same idea as Conner, “and she disappeared for a while. When she came back, that’s when she started acting all weird.”

“Kim, you go to the museum and look for Kira. If you find her, join us on the battlefield if she’s okay. We’ll try to hold this thing off.

Kim nodded and grabbed Tommy’s hand in hers, giving it a squeeze before running out the door.

“Better take the raptors,” Tommy said to Ethan and Conner, making the young men’s eyes light up.

“You don’t have to convince me.”

Hurriedly the three morphed and jumped onto their bikes, heading out to stop the monster from Dr. O’s past.

-x-

After Kim had located Kira at the museum, they had hurried to join the rest of the team that was doing it’s best to keep from being made mincemeat by the monster and the Triptoids that had been released by Ethan’s journey into the video game world weeks earlier. Obviously Mesogog had located them and turned them into his newest minions.

When Kim and Kira arrived at the scene, they saw the Megazord doing battle with the Fossilator and Tommy fighting alone the Triptoids in hand to hand.

“You go help the boys, I’ll take care of Tommy,” announced Kim, and Kira nodded as they both hurried to their tasks.

“Hang on guys,” Kira said as she jumped up into the air and landed on her zord, soaring towards the incomplete Megazord.

“Kira!” Conner cried out, his heart starting to beat again in his chest at the normal sound of her voice.

As the fully formed team battled with the Fossilator, Kim came to Tommy’s aid.

“You look like you could use a hand,” Kim said as she launched over a parked car and shot at two Triptoids with her laser blaster.

“I have been known to take aid from sexy female power rangers,” Tommy replied as he struck one of the Triptoids with his staff.

“You damn well better have meant just me.”

“Only you Beautiful.”

Grinning behind her helmet, Kim launched herself into the fight, just as Tommy was sidetracked with Zeltrax. Even with two of the most experienced rangers ever, the odds were ridiculously stacked against them. They had to get Zeltrax to retreat, and soon.

Above them, Ethan, Kira and Conner continued to fight with the Fossilator, the Megazord barely holding its own.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Tommy got the upper hand with Zeltrax, striking him across his midsection with his staff and sending the cyborg flying into a parked car. As Mesogog’s henchmen pushed himself up to glare at Tommy, Kim came to his side in a show of unity, the majority of the Triptoids sprawled on the ground.

“Looks like you lose again,” Tommy said defiantly.

“It matters not Dr. Oliver. Your rangers are finished, and without them, you will be nothing.”

With that he opened an invisiportal and escaped, taking what remaining Triptoids that were still standing.

As soon as Zeltrax was gone, Kim and Tommy refocused on the battle above them.

“Should we call our zords and help?” Kim asked, her hand immediately going to her morpher.

“No, I have an idea,” Tommy replied, and he opened up the communications channel with the others. “Kira, aim for the spot where you put the missing bone. That’s where he’s most vulnerable.”

“You got it,” Kira replied through the channel. “Lock on – Tyrano Drill.”

With a precision strike, the team launched the drill arm of the Megazord into the spot Dr. O had directed them towards, the results causing the monster to explode.

Hurriedly the team joined Kim and Tommy on the ground, the teens receiving congratulations from both their teacher and their team mate.

“Okay… power down,” said Tommy, the threat now gone.

White light flashed as the team changed back to their civilian garb.

All except the black ranger.

“Tommy?” Kim questioned with a frightened tone in her voice as she noted that he’d not un-morphed.

“It’s happening again,” he said, his hands turning over back and forth as he looked at his still gloved fingers.

“But you changed back before,” said Conner, confused and a bit worried, but this time over Dr. O and not Kira.

“Yeah. How did you do that?” asked Ethan.

“I don’t know. I was trying to de-morph over and over again, and then suddenly I could…”

Kim watched as Tommy’s helmet swung her way, and she felt his gaze through his visor. Before she knew what he was doing, he’d caught her hand with his, and the same effect of his uniform sliding off him happened once again.

“What did you do?” Conner questioned, stunned to see Dr. O in his civilian clothes again.

“Pretty much what I did last time… Kim touched me.”

“You think I un-morphed you?” she asked, stunned.

“I don’t know. All I do know is that last time you touched my chest, and suddenly I was able to un-morph. The same thing happened when I grabbed your hand just now.”

“Wow. But why would Kim touching you have anything to do with whether or not you can un-morph?” asked Ethan.

“I don’t know. But hopefully Hayley can come up with a few ideas. Let’s head back to the cave.”

-x-

“So glad you’re back to normal Kira. You were pretty scary there for a while,” Conner said as they walked down the stairs into the command center to join Dr. O and Kim.

Kira looked back up at him with an apologetic gaze, and he felt his heart stutter in his chest.

“I’m so sorry I was mean to you guys. You know I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Don’t worry about it, seriously,” Ethan added.

“Yeah, I mean… I’m kind of getting used to it,” Conner said with a slightly sorrowful tone.

Her eyes went to his, and the hurt evident in them from the reminder of her not trusting in him enough to ask him about breaking their date had caused. Ethan immediately smacked Conner on the arm.

“See? That would be one of those things you say from time to time.”

“Oh… Kira, you know I…”

“It’s okay. I know what you meant,” she said with a small smile and reached to grab his hand in hers. “I’m just glad that everything worked out.”

“I think we all are,” Tommy said from where he was sitting at the console, Kim perched beside him. “But I think that there are still a lot of questions still to be answered.”

-End-

So, what’s going on with Tommy’s morphing? Are things okay with Conner and Kira? What’s going on with Jason? These questions and more to be answered in the next chapter (and continuing chapters). As usual, thanks for reading – J.