All about the climb

Posted on Thu Feb 5th, 2026 @ 11:00pm by Damien McGinnis & Spencer Gustaffson

1,797 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Earth
Location: Mount Kerass, Earth

The rock face was cool and dry. The sun beat down on it, reflecting off of the ice on the peaks above.

The metal pick slammed into the side of the rock face, before Damien pulled himself up on it, the spikes on the front of his left boot pushing into the rock.

"Not much longer now." He called down to Spencer "I'm telling you, you're going to love this."

Spencer grunted as he kept up the ascent behind Damien, his strikes in rhythm with the other ranger's. He looked up and grin. "Oh, I'm sure it'll be worth it." He pushed in with the spikes on his boot, anchoring himself carefully before pushing up another length, getting closer to the summit. "Just gotta put in the work. Same as anything."

"Exactly." Damien said, continuing to press up "Not going to lie here, it's nice that we've been given a couple of days leave before graduation day. Hell, nice they fast tracked our graduation from the Academy. Between you and me, for a while I thought I'd never get out of there!"

Spencer grinned tightly as he kept climbing, one grip at a time. He chuckled at Damien's comment. "Oh, I knew most of us would get out. I only worried about you." It was obviously a joke, a distinct difference from how he normally was. "But at least we're out of there faster. Now we don't have to try and balance homework with actually doing our jobs."

"Ain't that the truth." Damien remarked as he pulled himself onto the small ledge above, sitting on it "We'll stop here for 10 minutes, catch our breaths. Besides, it's a good view. Maybe it'll give me some inspiration for the speech I got railroaded into for graduation."

Spencer nodded, taking a deep breath and holding onto the rock face. It was a beautiful view, and Spencer thought for a moment. "Maybe remind everyone how beautiful this world is, no matter what timeline we're in, no matter what's happened, this world's worth fighting for. We need to face the Imperium head-on. And between the GPF's forces and the Rangers, we're going to do that. We're gonna win."

Spencer looked at Damien. "Because, end of the day, if you believe that, then the rest of us will."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure we'll win." Damien nodded before sighing "It's just that between the fact that the Imperium can infiltrate a maximum security conference as one of our own.... I'll just be glad when the Kaldore detector is complete."

Spencer thought about the detector for a moment, and nodded, “if it saves lives, yes. If it just creates suspicion and sets normal people against each other, like I think it probably will, it’s not going to help us. It’d be the greatest weapon in the Kaldore arsenal. We have to keep it quiet. One shapeshifter, one assassin, that won’t scare people. The GPF worrying that everyone could be? The world would fall apart at the seams.”

"You weren't in the elevator with him." Damien grimaced "I'd rather be safe than sorry."

Spencer nodded in a sad agreement, his own grimace matching Damien's. It wasn't like he didn't understand where the Red Ranger was coming from. The difference was the definition of safety they were working with. "No, I wasn't. I'd have preferred to be."

He shifted slightly and shrugged. "Fights, I understand. I was seeing people doubting everyone around them. Trained military people were scared almost beyond their wits that someone they'd known for years might be something else. We just got lucky that no one snapped."

"That surprised me if I'm honest." Damien admitted, chuckling as he added "I'd have expected me to... Wait, no, I did run off half cocked. Again."

Spencer snorted and glanced over at Damien with a smirk. After all, the blue ranger been just as guilty of the same thing. "That makes two of us. Thank goodness for Kilena and Stephi keeping us organized. That, along with your luck and my... whatever you call it, was the only thing that kept us from being really stupid. Though, tell you the truth, it felt for a while like you were in two places at once. Thinking about it, I've realized, that other Red bastard was there too. And we let him slip away."

"I'm sure he was." Damien grimaced "It's hard to explain but when he shows up, I get this feeling. Like a dull headache. I can't tell you where he is but can tell you he's there. No idea why."

Spencer thought for a moment and then nodded. "It's probably because of the way your powers are connected. You feel your own powers coming back from him." He took a breath of the mountain air. "Next time you get that headache, make sure you tell me and Kilena. We'll find him, and next time we'll figure his whole deal out."

"You're probably right." Damien laughed "I mean, what else could it be?"

Spencer thought for a moment. The number of things it 'could' be was high enough to be upsetting, but saying that would make Damien worry. "Yeah, basically. Like I said, you get that headache, you tell us. Our brains are wired sideways, so we might just be able to find the bastard."

"Here's hoping." Damien said with a small smile "Either that or it's dumb luck, something I'm kind of familiar with these days."

Spencer smirked slightly. "In spite of evidence to the contrary, I still struggle to accept 'dumb luck' as a plan. Then again, I have a problem accepting weird feelings that tell me where other Rangers are."

"Exactly. You can't even accept your literal Ranger Sense." Damien said, pausing before grinning "That is an awesome name for it, you know..."

Spencer actually chuckled as he shook his head. "You missed your true calling, y'know. You ought to write comic books, not be a soldier. Or whatever we are now." He had a realization, and then looked over with a curious expression. "Why'd you get into the GPF, anyway? You stay in it because you're a Ranger, obviously. But before that, why did you even sign up? Plus, maybe thinking about that'll help you with the speech."

"My Dad has been a farmer all his life. I didn't want that for myself. I wanted to see the stars and do more to help people than just tend cattle." Damien began, hesitating before continuing "Plus... My mother left when I was less than a year old. I hoped that I'd be able to find some record of where she went, but I looked into her. Her name doesn't appear in any database I can access. She's some kind of ghost. I don't know, some kind of intelligence operative maybe? Though why she'd need to give a fake name to the man she was in a relationship with and had a son with, no idea."

Spencer nodded quietly, listening to Damien's story. It was obviously difficult for the other ranger to really put it all into words. Like for himself, giving pain a voice made it more real. And so many of the rangers had trauma related to the loss of their parents. In a paranoid corner of his mind, he wondered if there wasn't some hunter, some force or group, that had known that these people could become Power Rangers and oppose the Kaldore and their allies. "Tending cattle would be a nice break for a while, but it's not the lifestyle any of us would choose. I get you."

He thought about Damien's mother again, and shrugged. "Sure, could be Intel. Doubt it though. Unless you lived totally off-grid, there'd be some knowledge of you in the system, and of your mother. Even - no, especially - if she broke rank for it."

The Blue Ranger wasn't the biggest brain in the group, usually. He was the fighter, and often his brand of brutal realism shaded into paranoia. He was also a hunter, which was part of why losing the mimic had galled him. He shouldn't have allowed himself to get distracted; or at least that's how his thoughts ran. "If you were born at a hospital, there ought to be video record of it somewhere. All we need is one clear frame of your mother's face. We can run that across every recognition database we've got. If need be, we can get Kilena's husband to let us into things. Or we just have Melody do it. Names change and too many jumps can make the systems lose sight of the beginning of the chain. Without something drastic, faces don't change, typically. So we track the image, not words."

"Tried it." Damien sighed "I spent probably days worth of time digging through photos and files. No dice."

That spark of paranoia couldn't quite leave Spencer's mind. He shifted slightly, looking at the Red Ranger. "Did you only check records for humans? What about suspected Mirinoi, Aquitian, or Kaldore agents?"

That last one, he tried to say quickly, because it was the one that scared him the most. And the one his paranoid mind thought was most plausible.

"I checked everything I could access." Damien replied "There were some files I couldn't access due to clearance levels. The problem is the directories were encrypted so I couldn't tell you what the files were."

"Encryption and clearance doesn't mean much when we have the galaxy's most powerful computer brain on our side." Spencer's response was brief, and lacked his usual sarcasm. "You owe nothing to people who want to hide your life from you. We've had to deal without them before. They'll abandon us the moment they decide we're not useful, Kilena being married to one of the leaders or not. We need to get Melody into that system."

“No we don’t.” Damien replied “The encryption protocols the Alliance use are second only to the ones Aetherion has in the grid, and let’s be honest, they won’t let me use that system for personal gain. Melody’s neural net would overload before she could get the information.”

The look on the Blue Ranger's face was one of deep suspicion - he'd obviously developed a high regard for Melody's abilities. After a moment, he shrugged. "Then I don't know. The only answer I've got is for you to point me at the person whose ass needs kicked in order to get the info we need."

Damien laughed for a moment before looking back out over the view.

“Thank you, my friend.” He said before rising to his feet “Come on. We’ve got a long climb to go, and like my Dad said. That’s what it’s all about.”

 

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