The Terran Rangers/X-Men by Heather Ray (short books for teens TXT) 📕

you were, Power Rangers. No matter, though. In the end, all seven of you will end up dead, and the Zeo crystals will decorate Solar's throne room!"

With that, Holocaust leaped at the rangers. He slammed into an invisible magnetic shield, erected by the Silver X-Ranger, and fell back to the ground. The others immediately leaped into action.

"Time to rock his world!" roared Jason, slamming his fists into the ground. The force of Jason's punch caused the ground to crack, and the small canyon stretched under Holocaust. Holocaust leaped off the ground and fired a tight plasma beam at Jason. Jason moved to dodge the beam, but he didn't move fast enough -- the beam sliced through the flesh of his shoulder, narrowly missing the bone. Holocaust moved in for the kill, but was met with an explosive flying kick from the Green Ranger. Usually, such a kick wouldn't even make Holocaust flinch, since he wears a mighty exoskeleton. But Aisha propelled herself with her wind power, making an impact like a cannonball. Holocaust was thrown back, and there was a faint crack in the chest area of his armor.

"I'm not through yet, girl!" roared Holocaust, charging up his arm cannon. He fired a very wide, less potent beam, which not only knocked out Aisha, but it also hit Jason, who was trying to recover from his shoulder injury. Holocaust was then struck by a steel beam, part of the imploded Command Center upon which the battle took place. He angrily picked up the beam, and crunched it into a ball. He proceeded to throw the ball mightily at Zack, who had to concentrate to magnetically stop the ball's momentum. While he was momentarily distracted, Holocaust fired his mightiest plasma beam at Zack, penetrating his magnetic shield and striking him largely in the helmet. The helmet cracked with the force of the hit, and Zack fell motionless to the ground. Holocaust smiled and started to laugh mightily.

"Don't laugh too soon!" called Alexis, pointing her fists at Holocaust. "The fun's just starting!"

Invisible streams of ultraviolet light poured forth, striking Holocaust in the chest. Holocaust laughed at her.

"What is light going to do against my impenetrable armor?" he asked her. Alexis stopped firing and pulled out her Laser Whip.

"We'll see what some concentrated light can do!" she declared, wrapping the whip around his arm cannon. Holocaust smiled.

"That was a mistake," he said, as plasma energy streamed from his cannon, through the whip, and into the Purple Ranger. She screamed in pain, and fell to the ground.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!! I defeated the Power Rangers in three minutes. Amazing! How on Earth did these puny teenagers manage to defeat evil for so long? Could their usual enemies possibly be any more incompetent than these twerps?"

Holocaust approached the bodies of the rangers.

The Purple one was unconscious, but there wasn't much physical damage done.

The Black one, on the other hand, had a nasty injury to the shoulder, and a few other minor cuts through the suit.

The Green Ranger, who was thrown back with the blast, had landed on a jagged piece of steel, slicing through the flesh of her side.

The X-Ranger lay in a heap, with a severe dent in his silver helmet, and a part of the mouthpiece chipped off.

He's probably dead,

Holocaust mused. That's three more Zeo shards for Sol -- wait a minute. THREE?!

Weren't there four Terran Rang --?

Before Holocaust could finish that thought, he was struck by a wave of liquid. It instantly hardened, and he suddenly couldn't move a muscle. He was trapped in a frozen heap. His eyes widened as he saw a massive mechanical alligator approaching him menacingly.

^That's my liquid oxygen ray, Holocaust,^

said the voice of the Blue Ranger from inside the Alligator Terrazord. ^Don't even bother trying to escape. No doubt the cold will make your exoskeleton very brittle...^

Holocaust struggled to free himself from his icy prision, by he couldn't. He watched in a red-hot rage as the Blue Ranger leapt out of the Zord and landed gracefully on the ground. She walked right past him and checked on her three unconscious friends.

"Aisha? Jason? Lex? Can you guys hear me?"

Aisha moaned and sat up. She struggled to stand up, and touched the slash on her side. She gasped at the loss of blood, but managed to remain standing. Kat had helped Jason stand. Alexis slowly rose to her feet, and joined them.

"Where's Zack?" whispered Jason, clutching his shoulder to try to stop the bleeding.

Aisha ran as quickly as she could to where she saw the broken body of X-Ranger One. His left leg looked crushed and his helmet was nearly shattered. Red patches of fresh blood stained the pale silver of his costume.

"Billy," whispered Aisha into her communicator, "teleport Zack in now. He's been hurt..."

^I'm on it,^

answered Billy, and Zack disappeared in a flash of silver light.

"What do we do about Holocaust?" asked Katherine, who was still helping Jason stand.

"I don't know," said Alexis quietly. "We certainly can't destroy him. We don't have the power!"

"I guess the question is, should we destroy him?" Kat asked, still holding her boyfriend tightly. "Is he a magical creature?"

Their conversation was interrupted by a muffled scream. They all turned their attention towards Holocaust, whose yellow translucent exo-skeleton seemed to turn blue. They all saw utter terror in his eyes as even his blood red skull became blue.

"The crack!" squealed Aisha weakly, moving to Holocaust. Alexis, Katherine and Jason slowly followed.

"What crack?" asked Alexis.

"The crack I made in his armor with that kick! The LOX must have penetrated the armor through the crack, freezing Holocaust's organic parts from the inside!"

"I had only intended to imprison him, not to freeze him to death!" said Kat, still surprised.

"But, is he really dead?" asked Aisha, removing her helmet and staring closely into Holocaust's frozen eyes. He certainly looked dead, but one can never be sure.

"He will be in a minute," said Jason emotionlessly, raising his uninjured arm to the sky. The Earth Sword appeared, and Jason painfully clutched the hilt with both hands. Katherine, and the other rangers, stepped back to give the Black Ranger some room. He then focused his energy, and the blade began to glow with black energy. He pointed the sword at the frozen form of Holocaust, and released the pent up seismic power. Holocaust was hit by a seismic force equaling a 7.3 earthquake on the Richter Scale. The force of the quaking energy shattered the LOX crystal, and Holocaust within it, into billions of sand-sized pieces. Jason dropped his sword in exhaustion, and collapsed to his knees. Both Aisha and Alexis caught him before he fell on his face.

"We'll take him to the CAC," said Alexis, looking up at the Blue Ranger. "You park the Alligator Terrazord and follow."

"Right," said Katherine, leaping onto the snout of the zord. She entered the cockpit, and steered the mighty Alligator back into the Terrazord Hangar. Alexis and Aisha had teleported both themselves and Jason to the CAC, where Billy and Adam were hurriedly working on Zack's injuries. Rocky was inside a storage closet, digging thought a pile of high tech medical tools.

"What happened to Jason?" asked Billy, sounding exhausted.

"He has a severe shoulder injury," answered Alexis, sitting the unconscious Black Ranger on a chair against the wall. "Don't you have another bed?"

"Just a minute," said Billy, activating one of the various healing devices attached to the medical unit Zack was lying on. He immediately reverted out of costume, and a soft blue force field surrounded his injured leg. A beam of white light was focused at Zack's head, where his injury was.

"Adam, keep an eye on Zack's EEG readings," ordered Billy.

"You got it," said Adam, focusing on Zack's brain waves on the small screen.

"Well, Zack's leg should be healed soon," said Billy, wiping the sweat off his forehead and approaching Jason, Alexis, and Aisha, "but he has slipped into a coma. He's lucky to have survived such a blow to the head. Help me with Jason."

Billy was examining the gash slicing through Jason's shoulder. "I need to get him out of this uniform in order to treat him," he said irritatedly. "It was so much easier to un-morph you guys when you had morphers. Now that the Zeo crystals are inside your bodies, I can't very well take them away. The med-unit has an automatic un-morpher, but since its being used at the moment...Rocky, hand me the negative-proton ray? It's the one that looks like a rifle."

Rocky searched for a few minutes, and then jogged across the room, giving Billy a machine that looked like a rifle. He held it in two hands, and fired a beam of blue light directly at Jason's heart. In a flash of black light, the Black Ranger uniform vanished, leaving Jason in his street clothes. He then put the rifle-like machine back in his desk and typed some commands into the teleporter, making a cot appear next to the chair Jason was slumped on.

"Too bad we only have one med-unit," muttered Billy, as he and Rocky gently lifted Jason onto the cot, "This cot will have to do. Zack's injuries are more life-threatening."

Aisha slumped into the chair Jason was sitting on, pressing her side discreetly with a towel.

Suddenly, the Blue Ranger appeared in a flash of light blue light.

"How are they?" she asked, immediately un-morphing.

"Zack's been stabilized, and Jason should be fine," said Billy, finishing cleaning the cut on Jason's arm. He then wrapped the arm tightly in bandages, and attached a small machine onto Jason's arm above the bandage.

"That ought to stop the bleeding, but the flesh has to be re-generated," said Billy, standing up straight and stretching his back, "I'll have to wait 'til Zack's healed before I can put Jason on the med-unit."

"Aisha!" Rocky cried suddenly, staring at his friend in shock. "You're bleeding!"

"It's nothing," she said weakly, "I'll be fine."

Billy shook his head and once again typed commands into the teleporter. Another cot appeared, near the one Jason was resting on. Rocky helped Aisha lie down while Billy picked up the negative-proton ray to un-morph her. Once that was done, he began to scan the cut.

"You were cut by a piece of rusted metal," he said sternly. "That's very dangerous, Aisha. You could have gotten a serious infection. Rocky, get me some more bandages, please? And that antibiotic ray?"

Once again, Rocky ran to the closet. Billy ran some other device over Aisha's injury. Rocky handed both items to Billy. Billy first ran the warm blue beam over the length of the cut, and then unwrapped the bandaging.

"This'll need stitches," he said, wrapping Aisha's wound. "But I can't regenerate the flesh until Zack is out of the danger zone. Adam, how are his brain waves?"

"He's out of his coma!" announced Adam, "but he's still unconscious."

Billy ran to the teleporter, and in two beams of bright light, Aisha and Zack switched places. Zack was sleeping peacefully on the cot, while Adam started running the flesh regeneration program on the med-unit, which immediately starting closing the horrible gash on Aisha's side. While Adam kept an eye on Aisha, Billy turned to Zack, and examined the formerly broken leg.

"It's still a little tender," he mentioned, "I'll finish the second stage of