Several months had passed since Ben; son of Belle and the Beast, had been coroneted as the new king of the United States of Auradon. Life was slowly returning to normal with the usual classes and activities, except for the four newest students in Auradon Prep.
For Mal; daughter of Maleficent settling into her classes was easy enough. She began to embrace her artistic talents and even reluctantly joined the cheerleading squad. She had formed a tenuous friendship with her former rival (and Ben's former girlfriend) Audrey, how well that worked seemed to depend on the day. The hardest, but most rewarding thing for her was settling into her relationship with her boyfriend Ben. It was harder to settle into the fact he cared for her rather than the whole king aspect.
For Evie; daughter of Grimholde the Evil Queen, she found herself thriving. Though she would never consider herself on the same level of a genius she was never the less proving to be very smart, even without the magic mirror that had been with her since they had shown up in Auradon. She had not only joined the cheerleading squad but was in fact the one to get Mal to join as well. She had developed a close friendship with Doug; the son of one of the seven dwarves Dopey and sometimes she privately entertained the idea that it could be more.
For Jay; son of Jafar, his days were filled with the usual classes all students took at Auradon Prep and with Tourney, one of the most popular sports in the land. With support from his friend Ben he had even began to take up another class, this one being training to be like a guardian or a knight. Mal once teased him that this seemed appropriate considering that he could be very chivalrous when he wanted to be.
For Carlos, the son of Cruella DeVil, he spent his time in classes and doing training for Tourney as he was not as able as his friend Jay was with it but he had still been placed on the team and had at least helped make several good plays. Never far from him was the school mascot Dude, the campus mutt. His three friends found this connection funny considering who his mother was, and Audrey and Jane had even agreed that had been very ironic considering the circumstances.
It would be on one of the practice days for both cheerleaders and the Tourney team that things would change forever. The day had started out a nice and sunny day that Mal sometimes still found herself silently poking fun at since it would be the opposite on her former home, the Isle of the Lost, where all of the Villains and minions had been exiled too after their various schemes. Among them would be the parents of her friends. Her own mother was in custody as a small lizard after an accident had allowed her to escape the isle and crash the coronation before she and her friends had stopped her.
By the time practice was starting the nice day had started to turn dark and cloudy. "This is unusual." Noted Jane with some worry.
"Like Auradon never has bad weather." Mal teased Jane with a laugh and a slight toss of her purple hair. "I mean, not even you mom could control the weather."
"But it is still odd." Ben said to his girlfriend, his arm around her shoulders as their group, consisting of Jane, Carlos, Jay, Audrey, Evie, Lonnie, Ben and Mal walked to the field. "The weatherman predicted perfect weather for the day, and he's never been wrong before."
"Whatever." Audrey; the daughter of Sleeping Beauty Aurora and Phillip, said with a dismissive wave. "It can rain down on us all it wants to, after we finish practice." Although she had learned to accept, and even on some level like the Isle kids, over all her general attitude never really changed. Privately Mal found it kind of refreshing, even if it could be annoying at times as well.
"Well let's just hope we can get through practice before the rain decides otherwise." Lonnie decided. She wished she could share her friend's confidence but for reasons she wasn't sure of found she could not feel that way. Something just felt so ominous in her mind.
Unlike some of the kids of Auradon, others had not gotten quiet as used to the Isle kids. One of those was Chad, the son of Cinderella, who glared in their general direction as the small group came onto the field. His friendship with Ben had gotten very icy since he started dating Mal and his relationship, such as it was in the first place, with Audrey had ended not long after she had come to terms with them as well. So he distanced himself from Jay and Carlos as much as he could when practice started.
The girls moved to the side of the field to stretch when there was a very loud clap of thunder, and Audrey flinched just a little. For reasons she was unsure of now loud thunderclaps scared her to no end when she was younger and it was something that still made her uncomfortable now.
"My mom always used to say that when she was mad her attitude would make the thunder." Mal said, half-jokingly. "I remember saying to Jay a few years later that must mean mom was almost always mad."
Audrey half laughed at that, though she wasn't so sure if it was really funny or just somewhat fitting. "Well tell your mom to chill with the attitude for another hour or so." The brunette princess just managed to snap out in return.
"Yeah, if she ever listened to me…" The purple haired girl was about to retort when there was not only another clap of thunder but it was followed almost immediately by a lightning bolt that struck very near the bleachers.
"Okay, this is getting just too close for any sense of comfort." Lonnie said as she looked to Ben and then Audrey. "It's time to cut practice short."
Both Ben and Audrey nodded in agreement. Nothing was worth the apparent danger that they could be putting themselves in. Then there was a crackling sound, the speakers coming on. From it emerged the voice of Fairy Godmother, Jane's mother. "Attention all students, please report to your dorm rooms until further notice, again all students report to your dorm rooms until further notice."
"No kidding." Evie said as she looked up to the ever increasing dark skies. "If I didn't know better I'd say this was unnatural."
Then there was a follow up announcement. "Ben, Mal, Carlos, Jay, Jane and Evie please report to room two zero three; again Ben, Mal, Carlos, Jay, Jane and Evie please report to room two zero three." This was again from Fairy Godmother.
"We'll catch you later." Lonnie said as she looked to them, and then she paused a moment. "That's where you guys took your remedial goodness class, isn't it?"
Jay nodded. "That'd be the one." He confirmed.
"Hope you guys aren't in any trouble." Lonnie said.
"We'll let you know." Evie told the Asian girl. "Get inside, we'll see you later."
Audrey started to follow Lonnie and the rest of the tourney and cheer team but hesitated as she saw her former boyfriend and the rest of them going in the opposite direction and couldn't help but be curious. If we're going to our rooms for safety, why aren't they? She wondered and then for reasons she couldn't be certain of us she changed course to follow them instead.
Fairy Godmother paced anxiously as she waited for her daughter, the King, and the four kids of former villains to show up. She sighed a bit as she thought; We had hoped this day would never come. None of us put too much thought into this one. We had to fight to stick with the original plan now that things have changed. She laughed silently to herself. Of course we didn't think if this were to ever happen that we'd be relying on children from the Isle of the lost to do this either, but times have certainly changed. Several objections had been raised about this, especially from the rival school that hosted the Auradon Falcons, the competitive rivals to Auradon Prep.
She heard them before she saw them, Jay was easy to hear as he was usually pretty loud though in this case Mal was easy to hear too as she was questioning the horrible weather, which was remarkable considering the different standards those from the Isle of the Lost would have over those from elsewhere. Her daughter was the first to enter, having a good idea of what was about to happen, and she came to stand beside her mother. Then came the five kids and of course Dude, who was never far from Carlos in most instances.
"I thought we were done in this room." Carlos remarked as he sat on the desk he and Jay used to sit at during their remedial goodness class.
"Forgive me ma'am, but why are we here when we have a storm like that coming on?" Ben asked Fairy Godmother. Technically he needn't be so polite since as the King of Auradon he was technically of a higher position to her, but he was a student still and she was the head mistress of the school after all.
"Under normal circumstances we wouldn't be." Fairy Godmother agreed, and then her expression turned even more morose if possible. She was about to continue…
Mal beat her to it. "But this isn't normal." She surmised. "But how is that possible, no one on the Isle of the Lost has the power for that."
"Not on the isle." Fairy Godmother agreed. "But, as hard as it might be for anyone else here to process, there are a few things more powerful and dangerous out there than those that were banished there."
The four former villain kids looked at each other in shock. Then Evie said, "But…that can't be possible or our parents would have bragged about it if there were." She glanced at Mal. "Yours certainly would have M." The purple haired girl had to nod in agreement.
Fairy Godmother sighed. "I can't say why Maleficent or anyone else never mentioned it." She answered. "But there are a few things that fall into that category, a fact we learned a long time ago." She gestured for the five of them to sit down at one of the chairs. Jane herself sat down on the stairs to listen to her mother. "Not long after the United States of Auradon was formed we faced our biggest threat." She started.
Jay couldn't help but laugh a little. "I assume you mean rounding up all the bad guys to the island." He said.
"No." Fairy Godmother answered, surprising them all. "We faced a threat from an ancient evil, which went by the name of Paradias. In fact we wouldn't have been able to repel it if it weren't for some outside help from a powerful wizard named Zordon; he was from a planet called Eltar."
"An alien?" Mal had to question a little dubiously.
Fairy Godmother nodded. "Well he looked human enough but yes since he wasn't from Earth that would make him an extraterrestrial of a sort. He was also apparently traveling through dimensions and happened to see what was going on here and wanted to help protect the innocent." She told them all.
"So this Zordon defeated the evil that attacked everyone…including my parents." Ben surmised, a bit shocked. He had never heard of this from his father or mother Belle.
"He didn't defeat them, he just forced them into retreat." Fairy Godmother corrected. "He didn't have the individual power to stop them. Instead before he went on his way he did a favor for us, preparing us for the day that the enemy might return."
"Whatever happened to this Zordon?" Evie asked curiously.
"We don't know." Fairy Godmother answered simply. She stood up and gestured for the others to stand as well. "Follow me please." The others got up and watched as Fairy Godmother approached the right side of the classroom and raised her hand to the wall. Amusement turned to shock as a light from the wall seemed to read her handprint and a secret panel opened. They started to descend the stairs, with Ben cocking his head a bit, swearing they were being followed.
Fairy Godmother lead them down the stairs and into an area full of consoles and what looked like a huge plasma TV mounted to one of the walls, far larger though than any of them had ever seen before. "This is our command center, where we will be able to monitor the activities of our enemies on Earth." She told them and then took a small case sitting on one of the consoles before turning around and opening the case. Inside were five items that looked like iPhone. Embedded in each of them was a small gem with the colors purple, red, blue, yellow and black.
"Wait a minute." Carlos said. "There are five of those, and six of us."
"Brilliant observation there Carlos." Jay mocked with a laugh.
"Oh, I'm not…" Jane started and then stopped and took a deep breath. "I'm here to help my mom run the command center and help keep an eye on you guys out in the field." She stepped up to one of the consoles and leaned over on it. "It's all you guys."
Fairy Godmother handed Mal the purple one, which glowed upon contact. "As we suspected that means that the crystals embedded in these phones have chosen to bond with your DNA and allow you access to your powers." She told them.
"But how is that possible?" Carlos asked Fairy Godmother as he got the yellow one, which glowed with contact just as the purple one had with Mal. "There's no way anyone, even Zordon, could have known that we would be doing this."
"It's not about your DNA specifically." Jane spoke up now. "It's a bit more complicated than that. When the crystals, which is the real source of power for you guys, come in contact with a person it looks for a certain strand in a potential hosts DNA."
Evie nodded brightly as she caught on. "I see, so the crystal can sense the particular strand it needs in order to cause the bonding." She supplemented. As if to prove her point she took the blue one which glowed upon contact.
"Theoretically several people in Auradon are capable of this kind of bonding." Fairy Godmother said as Jay reached for the black one which glowed upon contact as well. "And even on the Isle of the Lost. But there aren't many people who can handle this kind of responsibility, but the four of you proved you could when you faced down Maleficent at the coronation."
"The only given one here is you." Jane said to Ben a little shyly. "Everything we've been able to learn indicates that you should be able to bond easily and we knew you would be able to accept the responsibility of being a Ranger."
"Awesome." Ben commented as he took the phone. It was to everyone's shock when his iPhone did not glow upon contact as it had with everyone else. "Except for, apparently, not."
"Wait, what just happened?" Jane asked incredulously. "I thought…"
Fairy Godmother seemed equally shocked. "I don't understand it either." She admitted. "Everything we've seen indicated that you should have been able to bond with the power as well." At that point an alarm that sounded like an air raid siren went off and Jane quickly activated the TV to show tall creatures with dark purplish skin and glowing green eyes clad in some kind of metal armor, on their left hands they had a long blade attached to them. "The soldiers, Paradias has sent his army to scout ahead."
"Those don't look to friendly." Carlos noted uncertainly.
"Yeah." Mal agreed grimly. "And we have to go meet this thing shy of one person, when there were only going to be five of us anyway."
"Well we do have one other option." Ben said as he looked around at the four isle kids and placed the iPhone back into the box. "We can try to see if Audrey is willing and able to do this." He looked to the corner of the stairs. "She's heard everything that's been exchanged here anyway, isn't that right Audrey?"
The four of them looked to the stairs in mild surprise as Audrey came around the corner, looking something similar to embarrassed, at least as much as any of them had ever seen her. "So this is what the big thing was about." She said, trying to sound haughty but in truth was coming out surprised but obviously indignant that she was being excluded.
"Well Audrey," Fairy Godmother replied. "If you're so intent on being a part of this then why don't you try your luck?" She held the box up that contained the last iPhone, the one that had not responded to Ben.
She hesitated only a moment before reaching over and taking the last iPhone in her hand, the glow a moment later signifying the same bonding that had occurred with the Isle kids. Truthfully each of the four of them had slightly surprised looks on their faces now.
"Alright then." Fairy Godmother stated emphatically. "That's that. Now Mal, take your team and intercept those scouts before they cause any sort of trouble."
"My team?" Mal questioned in shock as Audrey also threw in with, "Her team?" Sounding Just as shocked and even a bit appalled.
"Mal, you better take them and do as Fairy Godmother says." Ben told his girlfriend. He looked to his ex and the rest of Mal's friends. "Go on, before we have other problems." With only another look passing between Mal and Audrey, the five teens went up the stairs and out into the storm.
Fairy Godmother came up and placed a hand on Ben's shoulders. "I'm truly sorry your majesty, I don't know what happened. All of our tests…" She started.
Ben interrupted her. "It's okay. As the King of Auradon I'm…not sure that me doing that kind of thing is really, you know a good idea anyway." He said. His voice was light but the disappointment was still palpable. Jane frowned a bit though as one thought struck her again and again, What went wrong with that? What did we miss?
The five teens ran out of the building, at that point wind had picked up and it was starting to rain. Audrey made a comment about the wind messing with her hair which caused a bit of laughter from Carlos. Mal wasn't sure how to even respond to that one and lost all ability to do so after she heard Evie actually agree with the princess.
Then the time for jokes and banter ended as they came across one of the soldiers. "That thing is even bigger in person." Carlos commented.
"Not to mention scarier." Audrey added. She looked to Mal. "Okay fearless leader, what do we do now?" She asked, perhaps a little more sarcastically than needed.
"I'll tell you what we do now." Jay interrupted as he leapt up and tried to charge the soldier. It brought up the arm that lacked a blade and drove the palm of its hand into Jay's chest and he fell back a bit. "Okay, this thing is as strong as it is big."
"Peachy." Carlos moaned.
"Again, what's the plan Mal?" Audrey questioned a bit more desperately now.
"We have to try and take this thing down." Mal decided. "Together." She added as she looked to Jay who was starting to stand up. "Watch out for the blade, we have no protection against that thing." With that both she and Jay leapt out and kicked the thing in the chest. It stumbled back a step and then looked at them again.
Dude came from seemingly out of nowhere and leapt at the soldier, taking a very small bite out of its forearm. It slapped out and sent the little dog flying. Evie responded quickly to catch the small animal while Carlos, full of sudden fury, lashed out to kick the soldier in the shin though it still resulted in little effect.
"This is nuts." Audrey said. "How are we supposed to fight this thing?" She questioned.
"By doing more than just talking." Mal retorted a bit irritably, hating to admit that Audrey had a point, something was missing here. Then the iPhones rang and Audrey was the first to answer it since she hadn't tried to fight yet.
"Sorry." They heard Jane say on the other end. "We forgot to tell you how to morph. Use your phones keys, input the last four digits of your student id number and then hit star. That will give you access to your powers."
"Finally, great to know. Thanks." Audrey replied and then entered her digits, 1728. She morphed into the Red Ranger. The helmet had what seemed to be a lightning bolt around the top where the eyes would be. The red colors on the upper arms, wrists, across the chest, and around the legs were interspersed in white.
"Wow, that is cool." Jay had to admit.
"Really cool." Evie agreed as she set down a shaken but thankfully uninjured Dude on the ground, who promptly stepped a little away from the fight.
Audrey came forward on pure instinct and punched the soldier in the chest. Backed up with her powers the thing went sprawling backwards. "Ow." Audrey groaned. She had never hit anything in her life before and the recoil shocked her a little.
Mal also nodded approvingly. "Alright then, let's do it." She said to her friends. She, Evie and the two guys also followed suit and transformed. Their suits looked exactly like Audrey's except with their own colors. Mal stood as the purple ranger, Evie as the blue ranger, Carlos as the yellow ranger and Jay as the black ranger.
"Let's try this again." Jay stated gleefully and then attacked the soldier. His fist connected with the soldier's face hard and it let out a grunt of pain and annoyance. The soldier swung the bladed arm but the ex-thief caught it and sent it right into his opponents face, causing the thing to finally just poof out of existence.
That was when over a dozen more of the purplish skinned soldiers stepped out of seemingly nowhere, each with glowing green eyes. These guys didn't wait to charge the five teens. One of them ran into Evie and Audrey so hard that the fell backwards hard. Carlos was sent flying next to them a moment later.
Mal and Jay kicked back one each but another came up with its blade arm and slashed both of them across the chest, where they both landed in front of Carlos and the girls. "Okay, plan b." Jay declared.
From an intercom in their helmets they heard Jane again. "Plan b would be your own weapons." She revealed to them. "Mal, Jay, Carlos and Audrey, hold out your hands. I'm going to transport your weapons to you."
"What about me?" Evie asked.
"You have your weapon on you already." Jane answered the blue haired girl. "Slide it behind your iPhone."
"You don't have a weapon." Audrey said as she looked to Evie. "What is she talking about?"
"Your mirror." Carlos realized as his blue haired friend also picked up on it. She withdrew her magic compact mirror and then combined it with her iPhone. This caused the mirror to grow into a large round object the size of a shield. One of the soldiers tried to shoot eyebeams at the five rangers but Evie used it to block the attack and reflect it back, destroying a few others in the process.
"Awesome." Mal said; a smile could be heard under her helmet. "Let's see what's in store for the rest of us." She said to her team. The four remaining teens out held their hands. Mal found herself with a staff. She could already tell that she could use it one handed but that it would handle much better with both hands. She could almost feel some sort of power within in but couldn't tell what that meant.
Audrey found herself holding a long elegant silver like bow. The string almost felt like silk. Twirling it up a little she could see either end seemed somewhat sharp, to serve as a close range weapon if need be. She wasn't sure where to find arrows though but didn't think it'd be an issue for this fight as the soldiers were getting closer. "Now this is a weapon fit for a princess." Audrey decided.
Jay found himself holding a weapon he had seen from his father Jafar a million times. It was a scimitar, a weapon where the sword blade was curved, about the size of a typical sword but with the blade width being the same size as two fists together. "Cool." Jay said.
Carlos found himself with two small objects in his hand. His first thought was that it was a dagger but instead of only having one blade it instead had three blades on each of the hilt, reminding him very vaguely of dog claws…in fact he was certain his mother Cruella DeVil once told him dogs had razor sharp claws just like this to reinforce the fear of dogs he had until recently. "Neat."
"Time to get to work." Mal announced. The other four stood up around Evie and then the five teens were immediately put up upon by the soldiers. Mal had to take her staff into both hands to block a soldier's blade. She moved her staff to the left to knock the blade back and then slammed the other end of the staff into the soldier's chest, which made it disappear upon impact.
Audrey found one saving grace; although the bow was longer than the batons that she and the rest of the cheerleading squad used in some of their routines she was basically able to move her weapon in the same way with the only difference being she needed to intentionally make contact with the enemy. She swirled around and slashed one across the shoulder and down its chest until that one disappeared too.
Jay used his scimitar easily to block one of the soldier's attacks, parried it backwards and then brought the scimitar down onto the monstrous soldier, making it disappear easily. He was now glad that his father made him spend hours a day practicing with the scimitar when he was younger.
Carlos dodged under the swing of one of the soldiers and then used his legs to propel a little up a tree and then twist his upper body around to bring three pronged daggers down the monsters back until it too disappeared.
Evie found herself blocking another of the soldiers and briefly wondered how she was supposed to go offensive on her opponents when she remembered family day, the only time she had used the mirror for anything other than chemistry and trying to find Fairy Godmother's wand. She had asked the mirror who was the biggest jerk in the land was after a confrontation and it showed Chad. Granted, that had been just a mirror. But she thought the idea might be the same. She focused her mirror shield on one of the soldiers just as it tried to attack her with the blade and it seemed to reflect the physical blow of the attack and force it to disappear as well.
"This is going to take us forever at this rate." Carlos said to them. "Somehow we have to speed this up."
"Dude, just start focusing on more targets." Jay said to his friend as he took his own suggestion and started to use the scimitar on cutting through more than one of the soldiers.
"Somehow that seems a lot easier for you than it would for some of us." Evie noted as she had to focus again on another of the soldiers.
"I never thought I'd say it, but Jay is right." Audrey agreed as she found it was easy to bring the bow further away from her body than she would a baton. Otherwise it was easy to twirl and cut through them just as Jay was doing.
Mal allowed both of her hands to one side of her staff and began swinging through them just as if it were a bat. She even found she could do some of the twirls and spins that Audrey could, having recently joined the cheerleading team on Evie's insistence. She lacked the same finesse since she hadn't been doing it nearly as long though it certainly got the job done.
"Aren't you glad now that I insisted we join the squad?" Evie teased her friend.
"Thrilled." Mal answered deadpan as she brought her long staff up off the ground and slapped a soldier in the jaw as if she were golfing.
"This is starting to go well." Jane noted with some pride.
"True, but it's best not to underestimate anyone." Fairy Godmother said to her daughter. "They've been waiting for this for a long time and they won't allow anyone, ranger or otherwise, to take it away from easily."
"Still, they're looking really good out there." Jane said and started to turn around, "Don't you think so…" Only to see to her shock that Ben was gone. "Where did Ben go?" She wondered.