The Blue Ranger, Chapter Ten

 Chapter Ten:

Doctor Kuchar

An hour later, Aquila and Tammy outside a small apartment high up in the hills overlooking Silver City.

“At least the view is nice,” Tammy said, looking down the hill where they could see the entirety of the city glistening against the coastline and trying to ignore the big smelly dumpster a short distance away.

“Yeah,” Aquila said. “Ready to meet my maker?”

Tammy smirked. “Born ready,” she said.

Aquila reached out and knocked on the door. Three times. Then one. Then two. After a few agonizing seconds, they heard a quiet voice ask, “Who is it?”

“Pizza delivery,” Aquila said.

“What kind? I’m a little picky.”

Aquila breathed slightly. He was still safe. “Tater tots. No cheese. Extra chicken.”

Tammy raised an eyebrow at him.

“What about the sauce?” the voice asked.

“Only one sauce,” Aquila said. “It’s chicken too.”

Silence, but only for a moment. He heard the sound of several locks being undone. The door flew open, and a large, heavyset man with olive skin and a big bushy mustache stood inside wearing a big smile on his face, his dark eyes twinkling.

“Sean, my boy!” he said, rushing forward and wrapping Aquila in a big bear hug, lifting him off the ground despite his enhancements.

“Hey, doc,” Aquila said, patting his back.

The doctor set him back down, and Aquila stepped back to take a closer look at his old mentor. What he saw was a bit concerning. His hair was a mess and his lab coat was more gray than white. Despite his large size, he was much thinner than when Aquila had last seen him, and he had enormous bags under his bloodshot eyes.

“Are you okay, Doc?”

Doctor Kuchar looked at him in confusion for a second. Then he looked down at his dirty lab coat. “Oh, this. I just haven’t done laundry in a while.” He turned his attention. “And who might this be?”

Tammy stepped forward, holding out her hand to shake his. “Tammy Hayes,” she said. “Aquila and I were friends at Corinth.”

Doctor Kuchar shook her hand, a bit too roughly for her still healing burns but she didn’t say anything about it.

“Friend, you say?” he said, glancing at Aquila with a knowing look. Aquila scratched the back of his head and looked down. “Come in, come in,” he said, stepping back into the room. “I just made cookies.”

Aquila and Tammy followed him into the room. Once inside, Doctor Kuchar shut the door tight and did up every single one of the locks he had just undone. The inside of the apartment looked every bit as much of a mess as the man living in it. A bed took up most of the space where the main living area should be, and piles of dirty clothes and empty chip bags buried any sign of the floor. A pile of dirty dishes lay stacked in the kitchen sink, a small swarm of flies buzzing around them.

“Sorry about the mess,” the doctor said, stuffing his hands inside his pockets. “My lab is right back this way.”

He stepped over a pile of clothes and led them down a short hallway to where, if Aquila had the apartment’s layout figured out right, the bedroom should be. “I do pretty much all my work in here,” he said, unlocking the heavy locks that lined that door as well.

He pushed it open and stepped inside.

Doctor Kuchar’s lab was immaculate compared to the main room. He had a bunch of equipment set up all over the place, but it was all kept neat and tidy, not a speck of dirt to be seen anywhere, except for a small pile of dishes stacked on one table, where he’d probably eaten a few recent meals. A plate of cookies that smelled fresh sat on the desk beside them. Tammy stepped over to them and picked up a small, framed photograph nearby.

“That’s my family,” Doctor Kuchar said, joining her. “That’s my wife Rosa there, and my daughter Emily. She’d be about ten now. There’s another one now too, a little girl named Maria. She would have turned two about six months ago.”

“I bet she’s adorable,” Tammy said.

Doctor Kuchar looked down. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. He slumped into a nearby chair, his whole frame sagging. “I’ve never actually seen her.”

Aquila pulled up another chair and sat down beside him. “Are you really sure you’re alright, Doc?”

Doctor Kuchar looked Aquila in the eye, trying his best to maintain his normal cheery demeanor. The facade only lasted a few seconds though. “No, not really,” he said, looking away. He tried to smooth out his lab coat. “I don’t think I’ve been okay in a while, honestly.”

Tammy set down the photo and sat down in another chair nearby. “How long?” she asked.

Doctor Kuchar glanced at the photo Tammy had just put back. “About six months, probably.”

The doctor shook his head. “Never mind all that,” he said. He sat forward to face Tammy, putting on a serious face. “So, Miss Hayes,” he said. “I assume you are the one Sean here went to see today, before all that mess took place downtown.”

Tammy sat up a little straighter. “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s me.”

“He said something about you offering possible protection for the two of us?”

Tammy nodded. “That’s right.” She glanced at Aquila for support. “At Corinth, I served as an agent representing EAGLE high command, for a special project called the Ranger Project. When the Black Cross attacked, coming after Aquila, I offered him protection with the people I was working for.” She chewed her lip and looked at her notes for a second. “Before we go any further, I think you should know, the Ranger Project is a Super Soldier project. Like the one you and Aquila thought you were a part of when--”

She didn’t finish, but Doctor Kuchar got the gist. He sat back in his chair and studied her face. “This that red superhero I’ve been hearing rumors about down in the city?”

He dug around in his pockets and pulled out a small phone, bringing up a blurry image of what was clearly the Red Ranger in action and showing it to her. “That him?”

Tammy nodded. “That’s the one,” she said.

Doctor Kuchar didn’t say anything for a moment, looking down at the image on his phone. He got up and paced the room, fiddling absentmindedly with his instruments. He went to the window, where a small cage sat. He reached inside and pulled out a tiny hamster. He came back and sat down again, letting the small rodent crawl around his fingers. He brushed the fur on its back for a couple seconds before speaking again.

“I knew a young scientist a few years ago,” he said. “His name was Will Cranston. Brilliant mind. Gifted inventor. Good friend. If I remember right, he’d been working on a super soldier design that looked almost exactly like this.” He glanced up at Tammy. “He ended up dead a couple months later. Supposedly mugged in an alley by some things. His designs went mysteriously missing.”

Aquila’s eyes widened. He looked at Tammy, who fiddled with her hair and looked down, avoiding his gaze.

“Tammy?” Aquila asked.

Tammy gritted her teeth. “I hope you’re burning in hell, Anthony,” she muttered under her breath. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, looking back up at Doctor Kuchar. “I know,” she said.

She pulled a file from her stack and handed it to him. “He was killed by a Black Cross mole working within EAGLE.  He went by the name Anthony Starr, but his real name was Roger Stevens. He was part of our team for years, passing off Cranston’s designs as his own. He was my friend, or at least, I thought he was. He’s dead now. The Red Ranger took him out a couple months ago, but he took out a lot of my other friends before that.”

Tammy wiped her eyes a little. “We found all of that there among his files after he was caught, including details of his conspiracy to kill Dr. Cranston.”

Doctor Kuchar flipped through the file, his eyes moving back and forth as he took them all in. He looked up at Tammy, his eyes uncertain. Finally, he set the files down and played with the hamster for a few seconds as it crawled along his shoulder.

“I used to be young and naïve,” he said, looking up at Tammy. “I wanted to put my talents to good use, to help the war effort, and I believed the best in everyone. And because of that, I was taken advantage of, my inventions were used for evil purposes, and Sean and I haven’t known a moment’s rest since. You can imagine how difficult it might be, for me to willingly put my trust in anyone any more.”

He got up and returned the hamster to its cage. Tammy looked down at her hands, not saying anything. Doctor Kuchar returned and took his seat again.

Tammy looked up at him, her jaw working as she tried desperately to find the words she wanted to say, feeling grossly inadequate to the task. “I’m sorry,” she said, “about all of this. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, what the Black Cross has done to you. I get it, not wanting to trust anyone.”

She took a deep breath and sat back. “I struggle with that sometimes. After Anthony, and David Ban, and what both of them did, all the people who died because of them, it’s hard to trust anyone. I see enemies everywhere, even among my closest friends, and I have no idea what to do about any of it.”

She spread her hands helplessly, looking Doctor Kuchar in the eye. “I can’t convince you to trust me,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can say or do that will. I want to help you, both of you. I want to put an end to all of this. But if I can’t,” she bit her lip, rubbing her bandaged arm for a second, “I’ll let you go. I’ll leave here now, head back to the base on my own, and you can both get away, go wherever you need to go. And all I can do at that point is wish you good luck, wherever you end up.”

She looked at Aquila, reaching out and taking his hand, locking eyes with him. “Just remember me, alright.”

Aquila swallowed. He didn’t want to have to add one more to the list of people he’d had to leave behind. Finally, he nodded. “I will,” he said.

Doctor Kuchar looked back and forth between the two. He looked down at his hands, then back at the photo of his family on the desk. After a moment, he made his decision.

“Do you swear you can protect us?” he asked.

Tammy pulled her eyes away from Aquila and looked at the doctor in surprise. Doctor Kuchar looked back at her. Tammy’s mouth fell open and she glanced between him and Aquila. “I promise,” she said. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you are both safe.”

Doctor Kuchar scanned her face. Tammy set her expression, determined not to show any doubt.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

Tammy’s face lit up. “Really?”

Aquila sat forward, looking at his old mentor. “Are you sure, doc?” he asked.

“I’m sure, Sean,” the doctor said. He got up, straightening his hair with his hand and smoothing out his lab coat. He picked up his family’s photo and looked at it for a second. “I’m tired of running too. I want to see my family again.” He turned to Tammy. “So how do we do this? I assume there was a plan.”

“Right,” Tammy said. “Aquila—I mean, Sean has a tracker.”

Hope filled Aquila’s heart. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the tracker. He cast one last look at Doctor Kuchar. “Are you sure you really want to do this?”

Doctor Kuchar nodded. He stepped over and picked up the hamster’s cage. “Do it, Sean.”

Aquila closed his eyes and pressed the button.

Two days later, Aquila sat on an operating table, allowing himself to be strapped down by EAGLE lab techs as Doctor Kuchar got his Icarus serum ready. The doctor looked a lot better than he had back at the apartment. His hair was combed, and he wore a nice, clean lab coat. He was still thinner than normal, and the bags under his eyes hadn’t entirely gone away, but clearly working in a real lab again was doing wonders for him.

Doctor Kuchar stood over him, holding a syringe full of glowing white liquid. “Are you sure about this, Sean?” he asked. “You could still be a hero.”

“I’m sure,” Aquila said. “I’m ready to be normal.”

“Alright,” he said. “Now, I should warn you, this is going to hurt. A lot. Every bit as badly as the first operation did, but with one major difference. You won’t have any enhancements to help you recover afterward. You understand that, right?”

Aquila nodded. “I know, doc,” he said. “Give it to me.”

Doctor Kuchar nodded, looking over Aquila with concern. He nodded to his aides, and two of them took hold of his arm, holding it out for him. Doctor Kuchar placed the special syringe against his skin and switched it on. Aquila clenched his fist in pain as the tip drilled itself into his flesh. Once through, Doctor Kuchar injected the serum into his bloodstream.

The pain was instant, just like before. The glowing liquid surged its way up his arm, disintegrating every single nanite it came across.

“Hold him!” Doctor Kuchar shouted, as his body convulsed involuntarily, pulling at the straps holding him down. The pain wracked his brain, making his thoughts fuzzy. It creeped its way up his arm and around his shoulder. Finally, it reached his heart, and, just like before, he found himself blacking out.

He woke several days later in a small recovery room. A bright fluorescent light shone down on him, making him squint and his head throb. A machine beside him beeped at a steady rhythm with his heartbeat. He sat up, his whole body feeling red and raw.

“Aquila!”

He turned to see Tammy sitting in a nearby chair, a bunch of notes and files spread out around her and a clipboard in her hand. “You’re awake,” she said, putting the clipboard aside.

“Sean,” he said, rubbing his temples and trying to clear his head.

“What?”

“Sean,” he repeated, looking up at her. “My name is Sean. Not Aquila anymore.”

Tammy looked at him, a small smile crossing her face. “Right,” she said. “Sean then.”

Sean stared at his hand, turning it over and over again in the lighting. No metallic sheen any more. Just a normal human hand. He clenched his fist and felt only the strength of a regular human’s grip. “I’m me again,” he said, looking at Tammy.

Tammy smiled. “Yes, you are.”

Elation filled Sean’s body. He flipped the blankets off of himself and jumped off the bed, embracing Tammy and squeezing as tightly as he could, glad to not hold back any longer.

He squeezed maybe a little too much though. His back flared with pain. He yelped and pulled back, sitting on the bed again.

“Are you alright?” Tammy asked.

“Yeah,” Sean said. “I’m fine.” He shook his head, rubbing his back. “Doctor Kuchar wasn’t kidding. That really hurt.”

He looked around, realizing no one else was in the room. “Where’s Doctor Kuchar?” he asked. “Is he safe? What’s been happening?”

“He’s fine,” Tammy said, rubbing his shoulder. “Everything’s fine. He’s safe. He left here yesterday.”

Sean looked up. “He left?” he asked. “Where did he go?”

“Stone Canyon,” she said. “To get his family. He didn’t know how long you’d be out and he didn’t want to wait too long.”

Sean sat back, running his hand through his hair. Tammy handed him his hat, which had been placed on his side table. Sean smiled at it and put it on.

“They’ll be back,” Tammy said, sitting back down in her seat. “He’s traveling in a heavily armored caravan, surrounded by some of our best troops. He’ll be well taken care of. And when you’re back on your feet, we can head out to Texas and find your family too.”

Sean looked up. His family, he thought. Their faces came immediately to his mind, his mother, his father, his three brothers and five sisters. He could see them all again. It was really over. A wide smile spread across his face.

A noise in the hall drew their attention. General Kenpachi’s raised voice met their ears, talking to someone on a radio. “What do you mean you can’t find him?” he asked. “He melted a wall. Surely that means there’s something you can track. A heat signature or something.”

Another voice responded, crackling and muffled like through a radio. Tammy and Sean looked at each other and went to the door, opening it to find General Kenpachi pacing back and forth with a communicator held to his ear. Katie and a captain with short, slightly curly hair stood beside him. The general looked frustrating, rubbing his bald spot as he listened to the person on the other end.

“What’s going on?” Tammy asked.

General Kenpachi looked up from his communicator, surprised to see them both there. “You’re up?” he said.

Sean looked down at himself. “Yeah,” he said. “I am. Is everything okay?”

“The Sun Mask has escaped,” Katie explained.

“They found his cell empty this morning,” the general continued. “The cameras were fried, one wall melted clean through, and his guards’ faces burned off and their bodies stacked in his bed. We’re looking for him now.”

The young captain stepped up. “I can head out immediately if you need me to, General,” he said, holding up his wrist, where a small, strange device was attached.

General Kenpachi nodded. “Please do, Captain Cage. And be careful. We don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t want to hear about your face being melted off too.”

“Anything we can do to help?” Sean asked.

General Kenpachi shook his head. “I’d rather not send out any troops except the Red Ranger until we know more.”

His communicator blared with another loud signal, the sound of a high-security alert. “What now?” he said. He clicked it on. “Kenpachi.”

“Sir,” a voice said from the other end. “We’ve lost Doctor Kuchar.”

Sean’s eyes widened. General Kenpachi stared at the communicator. “What do you mean, you lost Doctor Kuchar?”

“We lost contact with the caravan. Communications, tracking, they’re all down, sir. They’ve gone completely off the grid.”

The Blue Ranger, Chapter Nine

 Chapter Nine:

Everything on the Table

            Aquila sat on a cot in the secret EAGLE base’s medical bay. After the battle, General Kenpachi had led him down here, through the door he had believed led to a bathroom and down a long elevator ride. A medic was working on fixing him up, but there wasn’t much to fix. His burns had pretty much healed on their own already. Tammy lay on another cot a few beds over, her eyes closed, while medics worked to cover her burns in salve. Katie sat beside her. Aquila swallowed and tried not to look at her or the half-dozen other burn victims being treated there.

A commotion outside the room drew his eyes to the door. He watched as a team of guards passed, surrounding the Sun Mask and his top five. The Sun Mask’s eyes turned as they passed, briefly meeting his for just a moment. Aquila looked away.

“This is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” his medic was saying to General Kenpachi. “There’s barely a scratch on him. You’re sure he got burned, right?”

“Can I ask you to do something?” Aquila interrupted. He chewed his lip, thinking about what the Sword Mask had said to him out on the street. “I would like a scan of my back.”

Both Kenpachi and the medic looked at him. “Why do you want your back scanned?” the general asked.

Aquila hesitated, looking around the room. “During the attack on Corinth, the Sun Mask hit me with some kind of incendiary that burned through my enhancements. I think he may have planted a tracker on me then. I think that’s how they found me today.”

General Kenpachi looked at him in surprise for a second before turning to the doctor. “Do it,” he said.

“Yes sir.” A scanner was brought over and Aquila stripped off what was left of his shirt. It took a few seconds, as they had to account for the metal in his enhancements, but soon the scanner showed a slightly larger object right in the middle of his back, in the exact spot where the incendiary had initially hit.

Aquila closed his eyes. Of course. It really was all his fault. “Remove it, please,” he said. He looked back at the general. “You’ll need your best stuff to get through.”

General Kenpachi nodded at him. “We’ll handle it,” he said. He turned to the medic. “Prep him for surgery.”

Twenty minutes later, Aquila found himself in a separate room, lying face down on a surgical table. The medics set to work, using a heavy-duty bone saw to drill into his back, past the skin, to get at the tracker, and even then it took them a bit to get through. Aquila clenched his fist and bit the pillow placed in front of him, the pain hitting him full force as no amount of anesthetic would affect him.

After what felt like an hour of grueling torture, the tracker was removed. A plate was set before him, and a grotesque blood-covered device shaped like a drill and no bigger than a pea was placed inside of it. A minute or two later, a technician was brought in to deactivate and dismantle the device. Aquila was bandaged up and wheeled off to another room, this one bare with a high-security door where he was left to recover.

Aquila waited alone, his back aching but steadily healing itself. He knew what they were doing. Why they had left him alone in the room. For the moment, he was content to just let his back heal and not worry about it.

About an hour or two later, a knock on the door made him jump. He sat up, the wound on his back feeling like no more than a paper cut. “Come in,” he said.

The door unlocked itself and Tammy Hayes stepped inside.

“Tammy!” Aquila said. “You’re okay.”

Tammy smiled and looked down. She looked much better than she had when he’d last seen her so many hours before. Her face had more color to it and she was wearing a fresh uniform, her left arm covered in bandages. She held a clipboard tightly to her chest as she always did. She looked up at him. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay.”

She stepped further into the room, fingering her clipboard and glancing at the bandages wrapped around his torso. “I heard about the tracker,” she said.

Aquila scowled and looked down. He looked at the bandages on her arm, covering wounds that he caused. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It’s my fault they came here. If it weren’t for me, you—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Tammy said, taking a seat in the small chair beside him, holding her injured arm as she did so. “This kind of thing is what we signed up for when we joined EAGLE, right? We’re pretty tough around here, you know.”

She flashed him a small smile. Aquila leaned back against the bed. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Tammy said. She shuffled through the files stacked on her clipboard for a second. “So, um, if you don’t mind me asking,” she said. “Why are the Black Cross after you, exactly?”

She looked up at him, trying her best to act natural, but he knew her better than that. Her ears went red. “I mean, that was why you came here today, wasn’t it?”

Aquila looked around the room. “I suppose there’s no point hiding anything at this point, is there?” he said. “Even if this does all turn out to be some elaborate Black Cross ruse, they already know most of it. And if it’s not, it would be nice to have some help for once.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll tell you,” he said.

Tammy’s eyes widened. “Really?” Out of pure instinct, her hands whipped out a pen and she got herself ready to take notes. After a slight pause, she glanced down at her clipboard, chewing her lip for a second. Taking a deep breath, she set the clipboard and pen aside. “That’s probably not appropriate at the moment,” she said.

Aquila smiled at her. He sat up and told her the story. He told her all about how he had joined EAGLE as a young man named Sean Cassidy, how he had been recruited for a secret super-soldier project by his commander, who had turned out to be a Black Cross double agent.

“I knew that part, actually,” Tammy said.

Aquila stopped, confused. “What?”

Tammy went red again and pulled over one of the files she’d brought in. “A few months ago, one of our team’s old techs created a program that would expose Black Cross spies within the system. We didn’t catch them all, but your trainer was one of them. Rita Repellato, right?” She handed a sheet of paper up to him. It looked to be an arrest report with his old trainer’s mugshot plastered across the top corner. “I noticed that when I was going through Sean Cassidy’s file. Some of the higher-ups thought that proved your defection, but that didn’t seem right to me.”

Aquila turned over the sheet, breathing a small breath of relief as he did so. It was nice, in a way, to know that she had been caught. That she wasn’t still out there, hiding among EAGLE’s ranks.

Aquila continued his story, telling her about Doctor Kuchar and the nanites he’d injected right into Aquila’s bloodstream that had converted him into a superhuman cyborg. Then he explained how he and the doctor had discovered the truth about who they were working for and had escaped from the compound.

“We’ve been on the run ever since,” he said. “Our old handlers spread the story that we had defected, so we changed our names and tried to keep a low profile. Every once in a while, we’d slip up and they’d come after us again.”

“Like in Corinth,” Tammy said.

Aquila nodded. “Like in Corinth,” he said. He stared at his hands, remembering the helpless feeling he felt when the base burned. “I got careless and Corinth paid the price for it.”

Tammy looked up at him. “You were saving me,” she said. “It was my fault if anything.”

“No,” Aquila said. “It was all theirs. The Black Cross’s.” He shook his head and covered his face with his hands. “This whole situation is so messed up. I can’t even use these powers to save someone without a whole base going up in flames.” He looked at his hand, turning it over and seeing the faint metallic sheen his skin gave off in the right light if you were looking hard enough. “I wish I’d never gotten them in the first place.”

He and Tammy sat together in silence. Tammy looked at his hand and tilted her head like she had noticed the sheen too. She looked down at her files and then up at the door, biting her lip. “You’ve told me your secret,” she said. “It’s only fair that I tell you mine.”

Aquila sat forward. “What do you mean?”

Tammy looked up at him. “You know I work for EAGLE high command, and that I was at Corinth on a secret mission for them, right?”

“Right,” Aquila said.

Tammy picked up her files and set them on the bed in front of them. “I work for a secret project called the Ranger Project. It’s a super-soldier project.”

Aquila’s eyes grew wide. He looked up at Tammy. “You mean, like—?”

Tammy nodded, avoiding his eyes.

Everything in Aquila’s body told him to run. He shifted, ready to get off the bed and fight his way out of the compound if necessary.

Noticing his movement, Tammy quickly placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We’re not Black Cross, though. I promise. We are completely totally one-hundred-percent EAGLE.” She looked him in the eye. “Just hear me out, please.”

Aquila stared back at her, his body tense. He eased back onto the bed. Slowly. Carefully. One eye kept firmly on the door.

Tammy sat back, removing her hand from his shoulder. She opened up her files and pulled out a diagram. “You saw the first one today,” she said, holding it up to show him.

Aquila recognized the blueprints of the bright red suit of armor he’s seen out on the street a few hours before. “The Red Boy,” he said, taking the image and looking it over.

“That’s right,” Tammy said. “The Red Ranger, more precisely. Our project took a slightly different route than yours did, I think. Yours was a physical change to your body, with all the nanites and stuff you talked about. Ours is more like a superpowered suit of armor that uses an internal harness that works with the body to perform superhuman feats.”

Tammy looked down at her hands. “My job was to scout out possible candidates for the job,” she said. “That’s what I was doing at Corinth.”

Aquila lowered the diagram and looked at her. Tammy avoided his gaze, pulling at her hair for a second. “I was looking for people who could handle the physical needs of the job, strong, fast, with lots of stamina. Basic stuff, you know. But even more importantly, I was looking for certain personality traits. Kindness, loyalty, bravery. Someone willing to go above and beyond to protect other people, someone we could trust not to abuse the suit’s power. Someone who wouldn’t go rogue or let the suits fall into the wrong hands.”

Aquila studied her face. He was starting to suspect where this was going, but he wanted to hear it from her first. “And did you find someone?”

Tammy pulled a file from the very bottom of her stack and opened it up for him. Aquila’s own face stared back at him on top of the file, stapled to a recommendation sheet filled out in Tammy’s handwriting. Two large red stamps covered the first sheet, one reading “APPROVED,” and another, fresher, reading “REJECTED.”

“I submitted you as a candidate,” Tammy confessed, looking up at him. “This was all before the fight on the mountain.”

Aquila stared at the file, picking it up and looking it over. “I got your approval back the same night Corinth was attacked,” Tammy said. “I never got to show it to you.”

“And then you looked up Sean Cassidy,” he said, brushing his hand across the “REJECTED” stamp.

“That’s right,” Tammy said. “Going AWOL, defecting to the Black Cross, forgery, impersonating a soldier, your commanding officer being Black Cross too. It wasn’t a good look, most of the higher-ups felt. I didn’t believe it was the whole story though.”

Aquila sat back, stunned. Another Super-Soldier project. And he’d been selected for this one too. He must be a magnet for this sort of thing.

Something occurred to him that made his heart sink a little. “So, all this,” he said, “all that time we spent together at the base, talking, having lunch together, was all just because you thought I would be a good candidate?”

Tammy kept her eyes fixed firmly on the files before her. Her eyes glistened slightly. “Not exactly,” she said. “Kinda. Maybe. About fifty percent. It started that way at least.”

“Started?” Aquila asked.

Tammy glanced up at him. “I, um, may have let myself get a bit personally attached,” she said.

Her whole face turned red, and she looked away again.

“Oh,” Aquila said.

Tammy twisted her hair around her finger and looked at the door. “Some agent, huh? So much for keeping things professional.”

Aquila smiled. He watched her sort through her files the way he had so many times before. “It’s okay,” he said. He reached out and took her hand. “I let myself get personally attached to you too.”

Tammy stopped in the middle of her sorting. She looked up at him. Aquila smiled softly at her. Tammy smiled back and looked down, squeezing his hand slightly. She was so close to him. Aquila felt himself leaning toward her for just a second. But then, he remembered himself. His current situation. He let go of her hand and leaned away.

“But I can’t let myself get attached,” he said. “I can’t get someone else involved. Not until all this is over. Not until I, and Doctor Kuchar, and our families are all safe from the Black Cross for good.”

Tammy looked up at him. “Right,” she said, sitting back. She looked down at her files, her eyes moving back and forth across the paper for a second. “This scientist you mentioned, Doctor Kuchar,” she said. “Where is he?”

“He’s safe,” Aquila said. “Nearby. Well hidden. He was expecting a message from me when I finished here today.” He looked up at the ceiling. “He’s probably heard all about what happened today already.”

“Will he have run?”

“Not yet, I don’t think,” Aquila said. “He’s probably ready to run, but he’ll wait for my message for probably a couple more hours.”

Tammy considered. “If everything had gone according to plan today, if we turned out to be trustworthy, what was your plan from here?”

“I would have contacted him, gone to get him, and made sure he was completely secure. Set up protection for our family. And then,” Aquila looked at his hand again. “The doctor’s been working on a method to remove the nanites from my system, ever since all this began. He just barely managed to perfect it. As soon as I make sure he doesn’t need my protection anymore, I’m going to take it.”

Tammy looked up at him. “Are you sure?” she asked. “You wouldn’t be superhuman.”

“Yes,” Aquila said. “I don’t want this anymore. I just want to be normal, and do regular human things again.”

Tammy looked at him sympathetically. She sat back and looked through her files. “Would you trust us to take care of him?” she asked.

Aquila looked at her, remembering everything she’d done for him so far. Three times now, she’d stood with him against the Black Cross. He knew full well she wasn’t one of them. If she was, there had been plenty of opportunity to betray him before now. The people she worked for, he couldn’t say as much for sure.

“What if you and I went together to talk to him,” she suggested. “Without the rest of EAGLE. Let him decide whether to trust us or not.”

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a standard-issue tracking device that EAGLE gave to soldiers heading out on dangerous missions. “You could carry this on you. If he agrees to come, I’ll let you activate it and EAGLE will come straight to us and he can be extracted safely. If not, you two can get away and I’ll just go back on my own.”

Aquila looked at the door. “Can we do that?” he asked, glancing at the door.

“I think so,” Tammy said. She got to her feet. “General Kenpachi agrees with me, that there’s more to your story than what your file shows. If he agrees to let you go, no one will stop us.”

Aquila looked back and forth between her and the door. “Alright,” he said, taking the chance. “Let’s do it.”

Tammy smiled, crossing to the door. “I’ll be right back,” she said, tapping a secret knock on the door and being let out. A few minutes later, she returned, followed in by General Kenpachi.

“The general wants a word with you first,” she said.

General Kenpachi stepped forward, looking Aquila dead in the eye. He was now dressed in full military uniform, a far cry from the smock and apron he’d been wearing upstairs. “Mr. Cassidy, is it?” the general said. “Or do you prefer Shumway.”

“Both are fine for now, sir,” Aquila said.

“How’s your back feeling?”

“It’s fine. Healed up already.”

General Kenpachi pulled up a chair and sat down. “Miss Hayes tells me you’ve been through quite an ordeal,” he said. “If I may, I’d like to confirm it all in your own words before I let you both leave here. Is that alright?”

Aquila nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can, sir.”

The general sat back, putting his fingers together and keeping his eyes locked on Aquila’s face. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

The Blue Ranger, Chapter Eight

 Chapter Eight

Aquila vs. the Sun Mask

Waves of heat washed over Aquila’s back. Tammy and her commander covered their heads as Aquila did his best to spread his body out to cover them. The heat wasn’t nearby as bad as the incendiary had been, but it was still uncomfortably warm even for him. Civilians screamed and ran as the street all around him burst into flames.

Aquila glanced up to see the carnage around him. Several storefronts were in flames, with a number of civilians lying on the ground covered in severe burns. He sat back, letting his companions up.

“What was that?” Tammy asked, looking around.

“The Sun Mask, I expect,” Aquila said.

The general scowled, looking around at the burning street. He pulled out a small communicator. “We need an emergency response team out here now!” he said. He looked over at Tammy and Aquila. “Change of plans,” he said. “Hayes, get him into our safe room and keep him there until further notice. Let’s go!”

The three got to their feet and ran back through the flames to the storefront. The door blew open as they approached, and the waitress and the patron couple rushed out, all three brandishing firearms. A team dressed in EAGLE medical uniforms followed them out, rushing immediately to the nearest civilians.

“Get inside,” the general said, holding the door open for Tammy and Aquila. “If what you’ve told me is true, Tammy, and the Black Cross really are after him, we have to make sure they don’t get him.”

He glanced at Aquila for just a second, his eyes scanning his face uncertainly. “I certainly hope Tammy is right about you.”

He handed off the door to Tammy and pulled a gun from under his apron to join his troops.

“Come on,” Tammy said, holding the door and pulling on Aquila's arm. “There’s a safe room in here. You’ll be safe there.”

Aquila pulled back, hesitating at the door, staring in to the security the restaurant offered. He glanced back at the fire behind him, at the burn victims now being treated, the EAGLE agents ready to face whatever threat came their way. A threat that was only here because of him.

“Aquila,” Tammy said again. Aquila looked back at her, her eyes pleading. “Please,” she said. “We’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

Aquila’s heart yearned to just go with her. He looked past her, into the shop. It could still be a trap, he knew, but even more than that, he couldn’t bring himself to let someone else fight and die in a battle he caused while he sat in a room and did nothing. He stepped back, pulling his arm from her grip.

“No,” he said.

Tammy looked up at him, her eyes questioning.

Aquila looked away from her, turning to face the street once again. “I can’t do it,” he said. He stepped forward to join General Kenpachi and his agents. “I can’t run away from this.”

Tammy opened her mouth to argue, but just as quickly closed it. She looked down, pulling her gun from her hip and joining him. “Alright,” she said quietly.

General Kenpachi and Katie both looked back at him. Katie fixed him with her glare once again, but she didn’t try to stop him. “Don’t get yourself captured,” she said.

A single door opened on the far side of the street, the building where Aquila had seen the figure on its roof. Five figures stepped out, each wearing a distinct mask. The first wore a bright rainbow-colored mask, wielding a bladed staff in one hand. The next one over wore what looked like a mirror with holes for the eyes. On the other end of the line stood a mask with a mop of long black hair draped around their face, this one standing beside a mask dressed as a cyclops. In the center, leading the group, was a man dressed in full musketeer regalia and carrying a rapier at his belt.

“Well, well, well,” the swordsman said, stepping around a flaming car. He tilted his head as he looked over Aquila. “You must be this Mr. Cassidy we’ve heard so much about.”

Aquila scowled, clenching his fist. “How did you find me?”

The swordsman drew his rapier. “Oh, please, we’ve been tracking you all the way from Corinth. Do you really think someone like our boss would let you get away that easily?” He tossed his sword back and forth between his hands. “You should watch your back a little more often.”

The other Masks around him chuckled. “Now,” the swordsman said, holding out his rapier in a challenging stance. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? En garde!”

Aquila crouched low, his muscles tensing. Tammy and the agents behind him held their guns at the ready. “We’ve got your back,” Tammy said.

Aquila nodded. Taking a deep breath, he faced his opponents and charged forward. The swordsman raised his blade charged to meet him, followed by his fellow masks.

“Let’s back him up!” the general behind him shouted. Bullets rang out around him, striking the Rainbow and the Cyclops. Aquila raised his arm and blocked the oncoming rapier, grabbing it and snapping it in two before delivering a powerful kick to its wielder’s chest. He then spun and punched the Mirror Mask in the face, shattering it on impact. The Mask screamed and fell backwards. The Rainbow Mask had recovered enough to charge at him with his staff lowered. Aquila grabbed the end and used it to flip the Rainbow Mask up and over his head, bringing him down on top of the Long-Haired Mask.

The Cyclops barreled into him. This guy was clearly the bruiser of the group, and quite nearly took Aquila out on his own. Aquila turned and planted his feet, grabbing the Cyclops by the shoulders and tossing him over on top of the Rainbow and Long-Haired Masks. He turned to see the Sword Mask coming back at him, pulling a knife directly from his mask. Aquila caught him on the strike, wrenched the blade from his hand, and stabbed him in the side with it.

After only a few minutes, all five were down, and Aquila stood in the middle of a pile of unconscious bodies, Tammy and her fellow agents around him.

A loud clapping sounded from the building where they’d come from. Aquila turned. “Well done,” the Sun Mask said, stepping out of the shadows.

“You,” Aquila said.

The Sun Mask laughed, turning his flaming staff in his hand. “I knew you were good, Mr. Cassidy,” he said. He patted a spot on his side where Aquila distinctly remembered punching him. “I felt that for myself.” He stepped closer, stepping over the Cyclops Mask. “But to take down my best men, almost without help. I truly am impressed.”

He looked around at the agents standing behind Aquila. “You seem to have made some friends.” He tucked his staff into his arm and clapped loudly. “So have I.”

At his command, dozens of Black Cross foot soldiers started emerging from the woodwork all around them. Some appeared from dark alleys between the building, stepping out of the shadows like they were almost an extension of them. Some stepped out of the various shops lining the street, where they had likely been lying in wait. Still more flooded out of the building the Sun Mask had just emerged from, surrounding their leader and brandishing heavy firearms.

“So, Mr. Cassidy,” the Sun Mask asked. “Shall we do this the easy way or the hard way?”

Aquila swallowed and looked around. He imagined he could fight his way through them all, at least enough to get away, but Tammy and her comrades couldn’t. He hesitated, briefly considered giving himself up when he felt a light touch on his arm. He turned to see Katie standing with her gun pointed at the nearest soldier.

“Don’t worry,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “We’ve got some backup too.” She tilted her head slightly toward General Kenpachi. Aquila glanced back to see him subtly whispering into a communicator.

“Wait for my signal,” he heard him say. “Is Red Boy on his way.”

“Not yet, sir,” a voice said on the other side. “He will be soon.”

Red Boy? Aquila thought. He shook his head and turned back to face the Sun Mask.

“Well, Mr. Cassidy?”

Aquila took a deep breath and chose, for now, to trust in them. He rolled his shoulders and flashed the Sun Mask a cocky grin. “Well, you know,” he said. “I grew up on a farm. I’m not particularly used to doing things the easy way.” He tipped his hat to him. “And I don’t mind a little sun.”

The Sun Mask scoffed. “Have it your way, then,” he said. He lowered his staff and pointed it at them, the gemstone in its center starting to glow as heat emanated from it. Aquila crouched down, his back still throbbing from the last time he went up against that staff. He charged forward, slamming into the Sun Mask with all his might, throwing him backwards and grabbing the staff to thrust it upwards, just as a burst of fire shot from it, going wild and striking the side of a building nearby.

The Sun Mask hit the ground hard. He sat up and got back to his feet. “Nice,” he said. “Very nice. I can’t wait until I have your power coursing through me.”

He raised his staff to his troops. “Keep the others busy for me, will you?”

He rushed back at Aquila and hit him with a surprising amount of force, striking him with the edge of his staff. All around them, Black Cross soldiers surged forward, surrounding Tammy and her companions as they circled up and stood back to back. “Now!” the general shouted into his comm.

Gon’s entire storefront shifted open as EAGLE soldiers spilled out onto the street. Figures appeared on the rooftops above them, tossing ropes down the side to scale down them. And if that weren’t enough, strong winds started to pound down on the battlefield as a shadow blocked out the sun. An enormous airship appeared in the sky above the skyscrapers, painted a bright white with red flames along the sides. Huge turbines spun in the wings, creating the terrible winds that whipped at the army below and keeping the airship aloft. The airship’s belly opened up, releasing even more EAGLE soldiers on parachutes, descending right into the middle of the crowd.

“Let’s take them down!” the general shouted.

Aquila smiled, despite himself. He turned back to face the Sun Mask.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, pushing back on the staff and grappling with the Sun Mask for it.

“My pleasure,” the Sun Mask said. His staff glowed again and blasted a beam of fire onto his shoulder. He screamed out in pain and yanked with all his might, pulling the staff out of his hands and throwing it away.

“Enough of that!” he shouted, rushing in and pummeling the Sun Mask in the gut with his fist.

The Sun Mask stumbled slightly but stood his ground. He carefully felt the spots where he’d been hit. “You’re not going to beat me that way,” he said. “I have trained my body through years of intense discipline to take hits like that and keep going. I can do this all day. Can you?”

Aquila stepped back. He rubbed his shoulder where he’d been burned and tried to think. He didn’t have much of a mind for strategy. He never had. In his training, he found he worked much better in a support role rather than as the leader. Meanwhile this was one of the Black Cross’s top brass, a man who clearly knew how to command a battlefield better than he ever could.

“Is that really all you’ve got, Mr. Superhuman?” the Sun Mask asked. “Nothing but punches?” He shook his head in disgust. “These powers truly were wasted on you, weren’t they? You’re like a stupid little monkey, pretending at being a god without understanding the real power that it entails.”

He bent and picked up his staff where it had been dropped. “Would you like a little more fire, monkey?” He held the staff up and the gem started to glow. Aquila braced himself to dodge out of the way just as a gunshot rang out just behind his ear, striking the Sun Mask right between the eyes and knocking him back.

Tammy stepped up beside Aquila. “Can you take one of those?” she asked. She glanced over at Aquila and smiled at him.

The Sun Mask stumbled, reaching his hand up to feel his mask, which now had a massive crack splitting it down the middle. He glared at her, holding it together as best he could. He gestured to the soldiers closest to him. “Get them,” he shouted, falling back.

The soldiers flooded forward, allowing the Sun Mask to escape. Aquila and Tammy looked at each other and nodded, standing back to back to fend off the oncoming swarm of enemy soldiers as they rushed toward them. Tammy picked them off one by one with her gun, while Aquila fended them off with his fists. He glanced back at her, wishing he had a firearm of his own. He’d always been a better shooter than a melee fighter, but he hadn’t managed to hold on to one for a few years now.

He and Tammy fought valiantly for a few minutes as the battle raged all around them, Aquila focusing primarily on the soldiers directly in front of him. He sideswiped a soldier that tried to get in close to Tammy while she was focusing on another target, and she sniped another soldier who was taking aim at Aquila through a crowd that had rushed in on him.

The battle was nearly over when he felt a burst of heat behind him and Tammy let out a scream of agony. Aquila spun on the spot to see Tammy hit the ground, her left side covered in severe burns. “Tammy!” he shouted.

He looked up to see the top of the Sun Mask’s head retreating through the crowd beyond her. General Kenpachi and Katie appeared through the crowd, kneeling beside her. “She needs medical attention,” Katie said, as Tammy’s body shivered, her eyes rolling with pain.

Aquila’s eyes followed the Sun Mask, anger building inside him. He moved aside, letting General Kenpachi move in to help her up. He got to his feet and charged after the Sun Mask, plowing his way through the crowd and throwing soldiers left and right, crossing the distance in a matter of seconds. He slammed into the Sun Mask, grabbing him and forcing him to the ground with all of his might.

The Sun Mask fought back one-handed as Aquila pummeled and beat at him in a furious rage, his other hand holding the mask tightly to his face. Aquila reached in and grabbed at the edges of the mask to pry it off of him. The Sun Mask fought and struggled, clasping his gloved hands around Aquila’s wrists to stop him, but it was no use. With a mighty tug, Aquila tore both halves of the mask off his face and sent them skittering across the pavement nearby.

The battleground fell silent around them as Aquila stared at the Sun Mask’s exposed face. He was a bald, slightly older man, with a stern, stone-like expression covered in heavy scars. His cold eyes stared back at him before falling on the pieces of his mask nearby.

“It seems you have defeated me, Mr. Cassidy,” he said, dropping his hands and laying his head back with quiet dignity. “I am a Mask no longer.”

Aquila rose, staring in shock. He turned to face the rest of the Black Cross soldiers around him, all of whom were staring at the boss in stunned silence.

“Who else wants some?” he asked, bracing for a fight.

Before any could respond however, a shout drew their attention to something in the sky. “It’s him!”

Aquila followed their gaze to see a tiny, bright red figure flying through the sky toward them.

If the loss of their boss hadn’t been enough to scare them off, clearly the arrival of this person was. While several soldiers stood their ground, the majority went into full panic mode, scattering like mice back into the shadows they came from. In a flash, the figure hit the ground right in front of Aquila, rising to give Aquila his first real look at a full-fledged Power Ranger.

“Well, hello there,” the ranger said, looking at Aquila through a blue, slightly transparent visor. “You must be the person responsible for all this trouble.”

Aquila nodded, his mouth slightly open. “That’s me,” he stuttered.

The ranger was silent for a moment, looking around at the chaos around him. “Well, thanks for the help, anyway,” he said. He turned away to face the remaining Black Cross. “You’d best get inside now. I’ll take it from here.”

The man clenched his hand to his side and a blaster seemed to almost magically appear there.  “I see all the smart ones cleared out,” he shouted to the remaining soldiers. “Time for me to clear out the stupid ones.”