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Description
In the heart of the dark cloak of stolen powers where Iris had enshrined herself, Hans’s ghostly shape was forming, amidst the listless bodies of so many hundreds of Starlight Rangers who had been lost to Iris’s hunger for acceptance. The pain of being split between his true body and this place beyond time was so great that he could actually feel it, a sharp, stabbing sensation that made his eyes roll whenever it grew stronger, sweat standing out on his forehead as his rapidly fading hands slid uselessly along the unbreakable wall of the power that imprisoned him.

He coughed up blood, and looked down at it in surprise. Sometimes, he forgot that he was still human, beneath all the weighty, exhausting reality of his existence as guardian, off in the Nothing.

Looking up, he found it difficult to focus on the clash of bodies before him; on the blindingly bright form of the Omega Ranger-- whoever it had turned out to be, he had been less than conscious by that point-- and Francine beside her, on Jonathon and on Iris.

They were explosions of color in a grim, gray sky: Iris, using Hans’s power, hovered in six places at once, three of them grappling with the Omega Ranger, one trying to wrest Francine’s gun from her hands, two trying to catch Jonathon as he led them on a merry chase into the natural pitfalls of this broken landscape and shoved them in to die on them, and disappear. From beyond Hans’s line of vision, a red and white blur of fire struck into the heart of things, knocking the Omega Ranger free of Iris’s illusory doubles and disintegrating them.

When the smoke cleared, the blur had resolved into the screaming, drooling mad form of Gustavo, struggling against a headlock. Adras, blazing white and wreathed in the wings of an angel, held the madman in place; Colette, flaming red in her true, demonic form, crouched down, helping the Omega Ranger back to her feet.

She pulsed erratically with the light of the Omega star, and disappeared just as quickly as Hans had focused on her, followed by twelve screaming Fallen Stars and Iris, manifested as a monstrous exaggeration of herself, charging after the Omega Ranger with a banshee howl of challenge. Gustavo elbowed Adras in the gut and broke free, only to take a solid kick in the face from Colette; the two of them herded him away from the rest of the battle, batting him back and forth to each other with wicked grins of pleasure at tormenting the man responsible for the heartache in so many Rangers’s lives.

Francine, having dispatched the clone Iris had sent after her, leapt up to the top of the nearest building with a little help from Jonathon, and perched there, firing down on their enemies in the wasteland below. Not far away, Felix picked himself up from where he’d fallen, staggering a bit until his healing powers seemed to fix the damage that had knocked him out. He rushed forward again, this time joining Colette and Adras in their fight with Gustavo, tackling the man to the ground to give them a temporary respite.

High above, the Omega Ranger reappeared, wielding a crackling bolt of lightning and tossing it casually at the Fallen Stars that had been chasing her. It struck every one of them true, wringing a chorus of screams from their dying bodies and leaving them charred, smoking husks. She dropped down, landing lightly beside Hans, and waved to Iris, not attacking her.

When she spoke, he recognized her at last: it was Alice. “Come on, Iris. Think on it for a minute: how can you gain what you want if you try to kill us all?”

Iris swung about, charging, her gigantic monster-form breaking into a cadre of smaller, normal-sized Irises, each wielding a different weapon. With scythe and sickle and sword and dagger and staff and axe and bow and sling she struck, with gun and with shield, but Alice nimbly evaded each attack, circling around and back and up and down and under, until she was surrounded by Iris’s clones and all of them were pulling back for another attack.

Catching his breath, Hans felt the distant pulse of something bordering on an emotion. He and Francine had worked so hard for this. Surely now-- surely now it would not all be for nothing, would it? If Iris succeeded, kill Alice and took the power of her two stars--

From the midst of those attacking illusions, Alice seemed to simply disappear. Those of Iris’s clones that had weapons long enough skewered their other selves, and faded in a flash of crow’s wings and shadow; those left standing melted away into one, confused Iris, looking about wildly for signs of Alice.

She reappeared sitting atop the ruined shape of a car that lay half-buried in the dirt and sand, one leg dangling carefree, her arms crossed as she leaned back against the cracked windshield.

“Think, Iris. I want you to think.”

Hans wanted to reach out and shake Alice, to shout at her to take this seriously, if she’d ever taken anything seriously in her life. He wanted to demand to know whether she cared or not, if she could so coolly dismiss all the struggle around her and treat her battle with Iris-- with a murderer, no better than a Fallen Star, who had consumed hundreds of their fellows, and was still consuming Hans-- like a game.

She looked over at him, from across what must have been thirty meters, and he was startled to realize that he could see her eyes.

There was not the faintest sliver of humor there. Instead, he found a boiling compassion, and it seemed to him that her next words were for Hans, and not for Iris.

“How can you be accepted by your friends if you kill them all? Think. Think. This isn’t what you wanted.”

Iris screamed, leaping upon the figure on the ruined car, and again Alice disappeared, leaving the vehicle to be crushed under a powerful strike of Iris’s fist. Iris swung about, and ravaged the air beside her with one of her two swords, slashing deep into a flash of energy that abruptly resolved, stumbled and fell, tumbling to the ground and taking form as Alice. She was cradling her hand to one eye, and laughed dizzily; the almost pinkish red of freshly oxidized blood began seeping past her fingers and down her face.

“Oops!” Alice laughed, cheerfully. “Thought you hadn’t noticed, yet.”

From not far off, Gustavo charged towards them both, howling madly I worked TOO HARD for this! It’s MINE! IT’S MINE!

In hot pursuit, Colette and Adras flew with their claws and weapons out, Felix running close behind them.

A bright pink bullet struck the ground where Iris had just been standing, and Jonathon slammed the clone he had been fighting face-first into the ground, turning to rush over and join the others at the heart of battle.

The storm that Alice had called broke open into a torrential rain, and Hans beat one hand against his tiny prison, feeling the last of himself start to slip away, gasping, “No--!”

Description
In the heart of the dark cloak of stolen powers where Iris had enshrined herself, Hans’s ghostly shape was forming, amidst the listless bodies of so many hundreds of Starlight Rangers who had been lost to Iris’s hunger for acceptance. The pain of being split between his true body and this place beyond time was so great that he could actually feel it, a sharp, stabbing sensation that made his eyes roll whenever it grew stronger, sweat standing out on his forehead as his rapidly fading hands slid uselessly along the unbreakable wall of the power that imprisoned him.

He coughed up blood, and looked down at it in surprise. Sometimes, he forgot that he was still human, beneath all the weighty, exhausting reality of his existence as guardian, off in the Nothing.

Looking up, he found it difficult to focus on the clash of bodies before him; on the blindingly bright form of the Omega Ranger-- whoever it had turned out to be, he had been less than conscious by that point-- and Francine beside her, on Jonathon and on Iris.

They were explosions of color in a grim, gray sky: Iris, using Hans’s power, hovered in six places at once, three of them grappling with the Omega Ranger, one trying to wrest Francine’s gun from her hands, two trying to catch Jonathon as he led them on a merry chase into the natural pitfalls of this broken landscape and shoved them in to die on them, and disappear. From beyond Hans’s line of vision, a red and white blur of fire struck into the heart of things, knocking the Omega Ranger free of Iris’s illusory doubles and disintegrating them.

When the smoke cleared, the blur had resolved into the screaming, drooling mad form of Gustavo, struggling against a headlock. Adras, blazing white and wreathed in the wings of an angel, held the madman in place; Colette, flaming red in her true, demonic form, crouched down, helping the Omega Ranger back to her feet.

She pulsed erratically with the light of the Omega star, and disappeared just as quickly as Hans had focused on her, followed by twelve screaming Fallen Stars and Iris, manifested as a monstrous exaggeration of herself, charging after the Omega Ranger with a banshee howl of challenge. Gustavo elbowed Adras in the gut and broke free, only to take a solid kick in the face from Colette; the two of them herded him away from the rest of the battle, batting him back and forth to each other with wicked grins of pleasure at tormenting the man responsible for the heartache in so many Rangers’s lives.

Francine, having dispatched the clone Iris had sent after her, leapt up to the top of the nearest building with a little help from Jonathon, and perched there, firing down on their enemies in the wasteland below. Not far away, Felix picked himself up from where he’d fallen, staggering a bit until his healing powers seemed to fix the damage that had knocked him out. He rushed forward again, this time joining Colette and Adras in their fight with Gustavo, tackling the man to the ground to give them a temporary respite.

High above, the Omega Ranger reappeared, wielding a crackling bolt of lightning and tossing it casually at the Fallen Stars that had been chasing her. It struck every one of them true, wringing a chorus of screams from their dying bodies and leaving them charred, smoking husks. She dropped down, landing lightly beside Hans, and waved to Iris, not attacking her.

When she spoke, he recognized her at last: it was Alice. “Come on, Iris. Think on it for a minute: how can you gain what you want if you try to kill us all?”

Iris swung about, charging, her gigantic monster-form breaking into a cadre of smaller, normal-sized Irises, each wielding a different weapon. With scythe and sickle and sword and dagger and staff and axe and bow and sling she struck, with gun and with shield, but Alice nimbly evaded each attack, circling around and back and up and down and under, until she was surrounded by Iris’s clones and all of them were pulling back for another attack.

Catching his breath, Hans felt the distant pulse of something bordering on an emotion. He and Francine had worked so hard for this. Surely now-- surely now it would not all be for nothing, would it? If Iris succeeded, kill Alice and took the power of her two stars--

From the midst of those attacking illusions, Alice seemed to simply disappear. Those of Iris’s clones that had weapons long enough skewered their other selves, and faded in a flash of crow’s wings and shadow; those left standing melted away into one, confused Iris, looking about wildly for signs of Alice.

She reappeared sitting atop the ruined shape of a car that lay half-buried in the dirt and sand, one leg dangling carefree, her arms crossed as she leaned back against the cracked windshield.

“Think, Iris. I want you to think.”

Hans wanted to reach out and shake Alice, to shout at her to take this seriously, if she’d ever taken anything seriously in her life. He wanted to demand to know whether she cared or not, if she could so coolly dismiss all the struggle around her and treat her battle with Iris-- with a murderer, no better than a Fallen Star, who had consumed hundreds of their fellows, and was still consuming Hans-- like a game.

She looked over at him, from across what must have been thirty meters, and he was startled to realize that he could see her eyes.

There was not the faintest sliver of humor there. Instead, he found a boiling compassion, and it seemed to him that her next words were for Hans, and not for Iris.

“How can you be accepted by your friends if you kill them all? Think. Think. This isn’t what you wanted.”

Iris screamed, leaping upon the figure on the ruined car, and again Alice disappeared, leaving the vehicle to be crushed under a powerful strike of Iris’s fist. Iris swung about, and ravaged the air beside her with one of her two swords, slashing deep into a flash of energy that abruptly resolved, stumbled and fell, tumbling to the ground and taking form as Alice. She was cradling her hand to one eye, and laughed dizzily; the almost pinkish red of freshly oxidized blood began seeping past her fingers and down her face.

“Oops!” Alice laughed, cheerfully. “Thought you hadn’t noticed, yet.”

From not far off, Gustavo charged towards them both, howling madly I worked TOO HARD for this! It’s MINE! IT’S MINE!

In hot pursuit, Colette and Adras flew with their claws and weapons out, Felix running close behind them.

A bright pink bullet struck the ground where Iris had just been standing, and Jonathon slammed the clone he had been fighting face-first into the ground, turning to rush over and join the others at the heart of battle.

The storm that Alice had called broke open into a torrential rain, and Hans beat one hand against his tiny prison, feeling the last of himself start to slip away, gasping, “No--!”