Author's Note: Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.
Disclaimer: I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.
If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.
WARNING!: This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind.
Note: Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, maybe. Slightly AU, since I have Tenaya on the team as Ranger Purple.
Normal people in Corinth generally trusted the Power Rangers with their protection. They trusted that the group was best equipped to fight Venjix to keep them safe, and so far it had proved pretty true. And yet, Ziggy was pretty sure if any regular person saw one of the rangers while they were sick, they wouldn't think half as highly of the team. While usually being in tip top shape and highly respectable individuals (all except the Green Ranger, he mused sourly,) when the team got sick, all hell would break loose.
Scott was unbelievably self-conscious about getting sick. He was supposed to be the perfect one – the one to set an example, the one to make his father proud, the one with the best hair even – but if you caught him sick, he was a miserable wreck who'd shut himself up in his room and not let anyone in. Dr. K couldn't reason with the team leader when he was like that and Summer could barely talk her way in to see him. Generally when she DID get in, he would hide under the covers and tell her to leave soon as possible.
Their Scottish Blue Ranger, on the other hand, was very active when sick. He preferred to take sick time to work on pet projects he'd put aside till this point. Flynn was often very quiet and didn't bother with the others while he was sick, instead choosing to just quietly work on anything and everything from repairs to spring cleaning. So long as he had medication to keep him off his back, the man was content.
Of course, it was impossible to forget Summer. The blonde was very calm about getting sick, choosing to just take some medicine and curl up in bed to read. When she ran out of meds, however, the woman tended to get a little sobby and whiny till she got more, particularly if the cold or fever was bad and leaving her in a lot of pain.
Gem and Gemma? Gods, they were like pouty little children, always asking everyone to go back and forth to get them things. They had the weirdest requests sometimes too – pickles, a plush unicorn with a ripped neck named Bubbles, coloring books, crab soup. Just having them sick was enough to keep a person on their toes forever. Especially because they NEVER got sick independently – if Gem was sick, Gemma was sick (or pretended to be), and there was no two ways about it. Thankfully, they had amazingly adept immune systems, so they didn't get sick often and when they did, it was over in a day.
When the good Doctor got sick, she had to be coaxed out of the Ranger Room and sent to bed or she'd never deal with it. K's immune system wasn't as good as it should be, so if any one person on the team got near her while sick, she'd be sneezing in moments. Tenaya had had to be trained in how to take over the other woman's duties during this time. Before that, they had to just let K work sick, and the group would have to hope and pray that she recovered soon. K did tend to get better quickly, but she always wanted to stay up and read huge textbooks and had to be force-fed her medicine.
And then there was Dillon. Ziggy utterly DREADED when the older man got sick, because that was the most terrifying thing he had had to deal with in a long time. When the Black Ranger was under Venjix's control he could be pretty deadly and scary, but give him a fever and he was a nightmare. Thrashing wildly, often having to be restrained from hurting himself or other people; having horrific dreams that sent him into spasms and screaming; then there was the pain and heat from it, meaning he would sweat like crazy and always be in severe pain, his mechanics not at all agreeing with his body when it came to getting sick. He was generally safest being restrained and sedated during this time, but Dillon HATED that and did his best to avoid getting sick whenever possible.
When the whole team - save himself, Tenaya and Dillon - got hit with a an awful attack from Venjix's last bot, they'd all gotten sick. And with more than half the team sick, it wasn't long before Dr. K got it too and Ziggy already knew where this would lead. It was a pretty daring plan on the virus's part – take the power rangers out by getting them horribly sick. Their enemy had intended to use the Attackbot to spread the sickness to the whole city, but hadn't counted on Tenaya being immune to its effects, leaving her able to get in and disable the damn thing after it's first hit. Before everyone'd gone down for the count – the effects not hitting them till after they de-morphed – the team had managed to get rid of a ton of grinders and even do some pretty good damage to the generals Venjix sent along for the attack.
Usually, when a member of the group got sick, Ziggy'd take care of them for the most part and Tenaya'd fill in for their spot in weapon combining and zords. However, with so many sick, there was no way he could deal with all of them, so they'd cut their losses and sent Flynn, Summer and Scott to their families. In Scott's case, it meant being left in the care of the military since the Colonel wasn't the homey type and his son was self-sufficient enough to just stay inside and keep out of the way so his dad didn't get sick too. Summer got to be babied by her parents and Flynn got to work on his projects where his Dad could make sure he didn't get into trouble.
Dillon was to keep a watch for security breaches and try to employ as much stealth and sniper power as he could if Venjix did start an attack. Till the twins and Dr. K recovered, Dillon was pretty much the only one free to fight, and he had to stay the hell away from the others, lest he end up sick too. The man resented having to take orders from his best friend, particularly since he didn't actually remember what he was like sick most of the time. Fevers for Dillon tended to involve a whole lot of delirium, so he often wasn't aware of what had happened after-the-fact and tended to be severely opposed to being sedated and restrained since he was pretty sure that being sick could NOT be that bad.
As soon as they'd gotten back and Ziggy realized people were getting sick, he had stopped and practically seemed to switch into a different mode or personality. Tenaya'd been both surprised and amused by this change, having not been on the team long enough to have seen what happened while certain members were home sick. Seeing the short brunette ordering the much older and higher ranked members of the team to their rooms to get their things because he was sending them to their respective homes had to be one of the funniest things in the world to watch. She probably would have stayed to watch it and gotten a laugh in at how obediently they were already behaving, but he was barking orders at her to get K to bed before she started sneezing, since the woman was already showing signs of getting sick.
"Why K was training me to use her equipment is starting to make sense now," Tenaya commented with surprise when she returned from putting her girlfriend to bed. The young genius had begun staggering and sniffling along the way and started grumbling about stupid viruses setting medical technology back decades as she was put into bed. It was shocking how fast K could get sick, it really was.
The Green Ranger was just getting off the phone with the Landsdowns when she came in, and he nodded. "You don't know the half of it. She's pretty sturdy most of the time but the second any of the others gets something, K's immune system just goes to hell."
Taking a seat at the main desk in the ranger room, the woman raised a brow, smirking as she asked, "So why is it you suddenly jump in rank whenever someone gets sick? Do you have medical training or something I don't know about?"
Ziggy laughed, waving his hand a bit as he spoke, "The arrangement's just habit for everyone. I learned how to deal with sick people after growing up in an orphanage, and when I first joined the team I wanted to do whatever possible to be useful. So I just sorta tried to help out wherever and when people got sick, I'd do the running around for them. Taking people meds, making soup, all that stuff."
"So everyone just got used to you playing doctor and bossing them around?" that seemed a bit strange for some of the more pigheaded members of the team. Gem and Gemma she could see willing to take orders from Ziggy when they didn't feel good, especially if he was at their beck and call, but someone like Scott or Dillon? They were too stubborn to take orders from each other or Dr. K while at full health, and being sick probably wouldn't make them any easier to deal with.
The curly haired male snorted at that, "If only it were that easy," he said before shrugging at her confusion, "Scott, Summer and Flynn are fine being left alone when they're sick, and Scott actually prefers it – you just have to convince them they need to go where you want them to, and I've had to do that enough times that they know why I say what I do. K has to be physically forced to bed and to take her medicine – which HAS to be flavored or she'll spit it back out – and sometimes you even have to make sure she isn't sneaking out to work again. Gem and Gemma are the only ones in the group I can just say 'go to bed and call me if you need anything' and they'll do it, and that's cause they enjoy making me run all over the place to get them stuff."
She smirked, noticing who he left out, "And Dillon's immune like I am?"
Ziggy shuddered visibly at that and carefully reached down to tug at the cuffs on his jacket, "Let's just pray Dillon listens to me and doesn't get himself sick."
As she watched him walk off – the sound of a bell in the distance probably announcing the arrival of someone's leaving party or saying that Gem and Gemma needed something – Tenaya puzzled over what her teammate had said and how he'd acted on saying it. Let's just pray he doesn't get sick? Somehow, that didn't bode well, and the ex-Attackbot wondered very much if it might've been safer to stay with the crazed evil virus and his minions than be anywhere near her brother when he might be getting sick. But then, she'd be fighting people she cared a lot about again and Dillon sick couldn't be worse than doing that, could he?