Chapter 3

Not more then fifteen minutes later she was dressed, but her belly was slightly pushing her shirt, it seemed like covering her stomach was becoming difficult, not that I minded looking at it, but I knew something was wrong, it had to be. Despite the impossible amount of food she had earlier I could tell she was giving into the hunger again. I could sense it in her movements, her mannerisms. She was trying to not give into what ever it was eroding away at her mind.

I had to take her home, I had to figure out what was going on. On the way home she practically begged me to stop at every restaurant on the way to get a snack. I said no. Giving into what ever this was seemed to be a bad idea to me. Giving into anything evil usually was in my experiences. At the time this didn't seem like one of Ayon's usual tricks and she was killed nearly ten years ago, I lost contact with the rest of the team on purpose and stayed a loner, up until now of course. I wondered if the others had something similar going on with them. So I dropped Ally off at her apartment and pleaded with her not to give in to what ever was going on. She agreed to it, I knew she was lying.

Not soon after that I got out of my truck and locked the door. It was time to pay the old team a little visit, not that I wanted to of course. I checked the time, or I made it look like I did. We were all given special multi purpose communication devices, they had the cool effect of teleportation. I hadn't used this in ten years. It was time to give it a shot. Pushed the button and that familiar silver light surrounded me once more, before I knew it I was standing beside a rundown house in the middle of nowhere it seemed like. "This is where you ended up, makes me glad I wasn't the leader.." I said to myself as I walked around and knocked on the door.

He answered the door, time had not been kind to him. "Ten years of hell has brought you to my door, although you look better than I do, tell me Justin. How did you escape the final curse." Damn. I knew it had to be Ayon's work but now I was sure, it depressed me some. "Well, it's good to see you too, gotta say. I thought you'd be better off then this for all we did for those people." I replied. Oh how I wish I could tell you their names, but no, I promised not to. Villains make deals, Heroes make Promises. I was still a hero, mostly. "That day the six of us killed Ayon, she cursed us with her last power. Victory would be ours at a high price, Justin. Don't you see. My curse is obvious. Being the leader, every choice I ever made from that moment on turned out bad, a decade of bad choices, failure and desperation." He continued, "The others didn't fare so well either. Each curse was based upon the direct opposite of our powers. They were meant for the people we were closest too, but we found away to take the curse onto ourselves, you were missing so you didn't get the chance." He would have said more but he was sick and he erupted into a coughing fit.

I haven't had anyone close to me in nearly a decade, I was completely unaware of the curse, but now I knew what it was meant to do for me as the ranger of strength. And it was attacking the person who was closest to me and...I was interrupted again in my thoughts. "The curse is in an item, you know. People close to you actually have to touch this thing to make it work, it only takes one single touch, then it can spread like a disease. The cursed person can spread the affliction by mere touch and make you watch as everything around you begins to fall apart." He told me more information, terrifying information, but I'd expect nothing less out of the space witch.

"Take the curse on yourself and be a hero, Justin, then go exile yourself like the rest of us did." He was laughing at me. I don't know if he was insane or what. The world never knew what happened to the Power Rangers after that last battle, now I know what happened to the rest of them. Sacrifice is disgusting, I was never a fan of that either I had other plans. "Thanks for the intel, you..well you just keep going. I'll find away to break this curse on us once and for all."

"You think after the things you did, and how you abandoned us like that, went missing for ten years and now out of the blue you want to save us, you are really a son of a..." I didn't care to listen to the rest of his rant and I pushed the teleport button again, I was gone and in seconds standing beside my truck. Nobody was there of course. I wasn't some newbie in keeping a secret. But now I had to get to her place. I wasn't gone for more then ten minutes but who knows what could have happened in that time. I hurried back to the apartment armed with new knowledge.

I opened the door to her place and it looked just like mine did, every possible thing that could have been eaten, was. I found her naked once again, she was mindlessly eating something. I couldn't see what it was at first but then I realized to my horror that it was one of her shoes, this curse, what ever it was had been accelerating and she was not even aware of what she was doing, no she was on some kind of terrible auto pilot mode. It was obvious she couldn't be left alone anymore, not if I wanted her to live through the night. Although she was human, I knew that all the food she had eaten could not have possibly been crammed into her stomach with out some kind of violent reactions, but the skin, it kept stretching. The curse must have changed her in more ways then were at first apparent.