Joe's Notes: I'm not going to lie, while I'm working from an expanded Dino Thunder Ranger roster that I've used in other stories - notably a triple crossover between Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Harry Potter that featured Cordelia Chase as the Pink Dino Thunder Ranger and Luna Lovegood as the Green Dino Thunder Ranger - I'd never actually thought about how the extra rangers contributed to megazord fights. So… let's see if I can make this shit work.
Dedications & Thanks: To Alexander, Nicholas, Howard, MJ, Chris, George, Koby, Emily, Judedeath, Ken, Thyatira, Daniel, William, Wil, Thomas, Christopher, Jack, Pat, Chris, Juan, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

Pulling her Raptor Rods free of the upgraded Z-Rex Blaster, Dawn sulked as she slid down the side of Conner's Raptor Rider and landed on the ground. Her lips quirked upward slightly as her own pink-armored raptor came trotting along with Kira and Ethan's, crooning softly as it rubbed its head against her shoulder. But as cute as her new pet was, life still wasn't even remotely fair. The others each had a giant robot version of their dinosaur to run around fighting monsters in, and all she got was… it was pretty much a bitier version of a horse. And considering she'd seen what looked like motorcycles under construction in one corner of Doctor Oliver's basement, the Raptor Riders would probably be obsolete soon enough. Ugh. Lame. Then a pocket of unnaturally dark storm clouds appeared in an otherwise clear blue sky, unleashing a torrential downpour on the chunks of dead monster and causing it to ooze back together before growing to truly massive size.

Right then. Fight the monster again now, whine about the unfairness of crappy raptor-horses later.

Despite actually having the means to fight their newly enlarged opponent, her fellow Rangers seemed far more freaked out by the sudden twist than Dawn was. Recoiling from the massive, gun-toting bird, Conner brought his morpher up to his mouth. "Doctor O, we may have a problem on our hands."

"Let me guess. A thirty-story version of that guy you were just fighting?"

"You've done this before, haven't you?" The fact that Ethan's question didn't seem wholly rhetorical made Dawn wish she was demorphed so she could facepalm. It wasn't like she'd called their mentor out on being a past Power Ranger several times over in front of the others. Oh wait! She had!

Thankfully, Doctor Oliver seemed just as dumbfounded by the question, reassuring Dawn that she wasn't overreacting. "…I can't believe you just asked me that. I'm sending the Dinozords. Good luck."

As a roar echoed through the artificial canyons of Reefside, Dawn's lips slowly curled into an outright smile as she realized that she was being given a chance to test the theory she'd developed over the past few days. There was a definite connection between each of her fellow Rangers and their zord, which had allowed them to break the semi-sentient machines free of Zeltrax's control and was the reason the biozords continued to obey the Rangers' instructions now. While Dawn hadn't been able to feel a connection between herself and a theoretical Raptorzord, she also had no idea what she was looking for. And although Kira was about as magically sensitive as a rock, she obviously possessed such a connection with the Pterazord… and it was active as hell at the moment. "Kira! I need you!"

Stepping away from the others, Kira let out an uncharacteristically girly squeal of surprise as Dawn lunged forward and grabbed her by the wrists, reeling her in. After eyeing her girlfriend for a few seconds, Dawn spun her around before hugging her from behind, keeping her left arm around Kira's waist as she brought her right hand up to rest on the girl's chest. "Dawn? Not exactly the time for-"

"Mind out of the gutter, baby. If you really want, we can fool around in our Ranger suits when we get home tonight." Dawn ignored the strangled gasps that emerged from Ethan and Conner at her words, and Kira's whimper of embarrassment as well. Gathering her power, Dawn let it flow into Kira and permeate the smaller brunette's body. "Focus on your zord for me. There's a connection between the two of you. If we can find it, I think I can use it to find my zord."

"Didn't you tell me the other day that I'm about as magical as a rock?"

"No, I said you're as magically sensitive as a rock. You're plenty magical, or else this wouldn't work."

"Oh. Rock on."

"…and you say that my puns are bad." Dawn rolled her eyes at Kira's giggle before pulsing a bit more power into her girlfriend, making the smaller girl gasp. "You can do this. Just think back to when you freed the Pterazord. Focus on how you felt when you were freeing it." Kira nodded as she leaned back against Dawn, and then Dawn felt it: a thick tendril of power winding its way from Kira's wrist up her left arm to her chest, and then out through her heart to connect her to her zord. And just as she'd suspected-slash-hoped, Dawn had one too: while it was slender and tenuous compared to Kira's, it was most definitely there and connecting her to something. "Clever girl." Reluctantly drawing her power back out of Kira's body, Dawn carefully fed it into the fledgling bond between herself and her zord, systematically reinforcing it and then enlarging it before giving a harsh tug on the eldritch tether. "Raptorzord, now!"

The next few seconds were the longest of Dawn's life, and then came an almost musical trumpeting noise as the Tyrannozord, Tricerazord, and Pterazord were joined in their charge by a bright pink Raptorzord. "You did it!" Stepping forward out of Dawn's embrace, Kira bounced on her toes excitedly before looking over at their fellow Rangers. "Hey guys, where do you think it goes? I mean, we've already got an entire megazord…"

The two male Rangers exchanged looks, Ethan raising a finger before pausing and slumping a bit as he realized he didn't have the answer. Conner, on the other hand, decided that a more direct approach to answering the question was in order. "Only one way to find out. Let's go!" Bending his knees, the Red Ranger launched himself up into the air, phasing through the Tyrannozord's head as it charged through the space he was occupying. Ethan and Kira copied his move, entering the cockpits of their zords, and Dawn gave a shrug before following suit. Much to her surprise, instead of landing in anything remotely resembling a cockpit, she found herself floating in a white void with only a brown and pink ball for company. What was she supposed- "Combine powers!"

Without really thinking about what she was doing, Dawn let her hands drift down to rest atop the brown and pink ball, the black circle that adorned the sphere's top surging to life and filling with yellow light as she became one with her zord. With that accomplished, it was child's play to trigger the transformation sequence and join the others in merging into a gestalt form. It was surreal, Dawn mused; she could feel 'her' body shifting and reforming itself as the Raptorzord became a new left arm for the Thundersaurus Megazord, the tail splitting in half to form a pair of wicked claws. Then she was locking into position to replace the Tyrannozord's tail, and her void became a lot less empty as Conner, Ethan, and Kira shimmered into existence to her right. It was only going to get more crowded, Dawn realized, once Olivia managed to take possession of the Green Dino Gem and claim its power for herself.

…hopefully Olivia would go to the Reefside farmer's market and not the Albertsons near Dawn's apartment. Their avocados were shit.

"…sweetie? Why is there a strange naked girl on your couch?"

To be honest, Dawn was wondering the same thing. While granted she'd given Olivia free access to her apartment, she hadn't been expecting the girl to make herself at home to quite this degree. Although her inner perfectionist felt compelled to make an important correction to Kira's question. "She's wearing underwear. So… technically not naked."

Kira shot Dawn a withering look before reaching down into her purse and pulling out a canister of pepper spray that was cannily masquerading as a slightly oversized tube of lipstick. "Is mace going to fuck up your laptop, or can I spray her first and then drag her off the couch?"

"Bloody hell. If I'd known this was the kind of welcome I'd get, I would've just robbed the place and left." Olivia slowly closed the lid of Dawn's laptop and pushed it away to the end of the couch before bursting into motion, kicking off the back of the couch and launching herself into a spin that ended when her foot lashed out and connected with Kira's chest. Even as the brunette went stumbling back, Olivia landed in a crouch and wound her arms through a complex series of motions that ended with her slamming her Zeonizers together. "It's morphin' time! Zeo Ranger One: Pink!" There was a blinding flash of pink light, and then the Ranger from the forest was rising to her feet in the middle of Dawn's living room. "Let's go, Songbird."

Her morpher appearing with a flash of yellow light, Kira slipped into what Dawn recognized as the beginning of her weird little morphing dance. "Woah! Time out! You two are not doing this in here. If for no other reason than I want to get my damn security deposit back someday." Slipping to stand between them, Dawn put a hand on each girl's chest as she looked back and forth. "Three choices. One: we act like the adults we almost are and work this out with words like civilized people. Two: you two go out into the forest behind the complex, beat the shit out of each other, and then the winner drags the loser back here in time for dinner. Or three: I conjure a kiddy pool full of chocolate pudding for you to fight it out in and two bikinis, and you can get changed while I try and see how many video cameras I can borrow from my neighbors."

Kira's mouth moved soundlessly for a few seconds as her expression slid from anger to disbelief to confusion, and then she finally managed to complete a thought and vocalize it. "…why would you need video cameras plural?"

"Oh come on, you've seen what I can do with Final Cut Pro and stuff from our iPhones. Can you imagine what I could do with a better setup?" Dawn wiggled her eyebrows before removing her hand from Kira's chest and gesturing to the large expanse of open floor between them and the bay window that looked out onto the street. "I'm thinking I want at least eight cameras: four for setting up at ordinal points around the pool, then probably one each low and looking up at due north and south… and definitely one pointing straight down on the action from the ceiling. Oh, and obviously one for me to roam with so I can capture the action from whatever the best angle is at any given moment. Although I doubt anyone here has a high speed camera, so I'd have to figure out how to attach our phones to the tripods so I can get some hundred and twenty frames per second action…"

By the end of her detailed explanation, Kira's face was almost as red as Conner's Ranger suit, or at least the bits that Dawn could see were. The brunette was doing a really good job of trying to permanently merge her face with her palms. Demorphing with another flash of pink light, Olivia let out an incredulous chuckle. "I thought Rangers were supposed to be all good and pure and shit."

Peeking out from between her fingers, Kira's eyes raked up and down Olivia's underdressed body and then the brunette let out a snort. "Says the Ranger who lays around strangers' houses in her underwear."

"Hey, nobody ever chose me to be a Ranger. I stole these things from my mum's room before I flew over here to… err, because reasons." Olivia looked down at her hands, summoning and dismissing her Zeonizers with twists of her wrists. Bringing her arms up to cross over her breasts, she shot a baleful look at Dawn. "And I wouldn't have stripped if a certain someone here had a normal thermostat. I have no idea how to turn on the air conditioning here, and that dress isn't meant for stuffy ninety degree rooms."

Dawn did her best to look innocent as she pulled out her iPhone and used the appropriate Notification Center widget to set the house's desired temperature to a more comfortable seventy-five degrees. In her own defense, she had the app on her phone and so did Kira; forgetting that a visitor to her house would be unable to mess with things was a totally honest mistake. "So. About those avocados…"

Shivering as a burst of cool air brushed over her skin, Olivia snatched an abandoned t-shirt off the back of the couch and pulled it on. Thankfully, Kira didn't protest the appropriation of her Amethyst shirt, following the smaller girl as she wandered into Dawn's kitchen. "Got 'em. They're over here on the print out for… avocado shrimp things. Which is why I didn't go with my backup idea of robbing you and leaving a note, if you're curious. I haven't had a meal that wasn't served by a pimply bloke in a polyester shirt since I landed here in America."

"Avocado shrimp ceviche-estillo sarita."

"Yeah, that."

"Hmmph. 'Avocado shrimp things'. Philistine." Joining the pair in her kitchen, Dawn nodded in the direction of the fridge. "Kira, there's a big bag of shrimp in there. I trust you to devein and chop them without removing a finger or three. Olivia, you get to peel them for her since I don't know you well enough to say the same. I'll do the rest of the chopping and dicing. And while we work, you can explain why you're after a Dino Gem and why you didn't just take it from your dad's house before I stole it."