War of the Rangers
"Stand fast
rangers!" The white ranger screamed over the roar of gunfire.
"Do not let them advance!"
He stood
outside of the trench for a few seconds, before an energy mortar
struck the ground beside him, tearing off a chunk of his armor and
sending him hurtling into the trench amongst a group of grey armored
rangers.
"Dammit!" He cursed,
standing up and drawing the sidearm from his holster. "They
ruined my armor, they all die now."
Further
down the trench, a ranger poked his head out of the trench and opened
fire with his las-cannon, only to have his head impacted by a
projectile and torn to shreds, with pieces of brain matter, skull,
and blood splattering onto the ranger next to him. The ranger looked
at his fallen comrade and vomited inside of his helmet.
"Calm down," said the ranger next to him, "we
need to advance, you see that ship over there?"
He nodded to his friend, and looked at the ship, which while
was only about fifty feet away, might as well have been a thousand
miles.
"They're sending their
communications from that ship, it's a field communications center, we
take that out, we stop their reinforcements."
"We need to tell the white ranger!" He gasped.
The other ranger grabbed him by the
shoulder. "We go now! Myriad, Rachel, Thomas, with me!"
The five of them, crawled out of the trench. Thomas raised his
rifle and shot an incomming putty in the face as the others crawled
past him toward the ship.
The high pitched
whine of laser rifles, and the roar of projectile weapons filled the
battlefield, the rangers could barely hear themselves think as they
crawled through the mud, occasionally stopping to fire their weapon
into the horde of oncoming puttys. Myriad looked over long enough to
see Rachel meet the impact of a laser mortar, causing her to explode
and her innards spread all over the team.
"Keep
going! Don't stop!"
Behind them, the white
ranger screamed something about getting the hell out of the trench,
they ignored this and crawled until they reached the ship.
"Myriad, get to work on the door panel!"
Myriad stood up and studied the holo panel next to the airlock.
She frowned and started to open the service panel on the side of the
unit, just before her head exploded into a brilliant red gush of
blood.
"Dammit!" The ranger leading
the team yelled.
Meanwhile, the white ranger
lead the rest of the rangers out of the trench and toward the masses
of puttys.
"There is glory in death!"
He shouted angrily. "But not today! KILL THEM ALL!"
A cheer erupted from the grey rangers as they followed him out
of the trench and out onto the battlefield, firing as they ran. The
puttys almost seemed to freeze in panic as no less than a thousand
rangers charged toward them.
"Lord Zedd, according to
our intel, the candle reactor is..here," The putty pointed to
the holo map before him. Lord Zedd grunted.
"They
put their reactor a mile behind their front line, are they really
that stupid? Launch the missile!"
"Yes,
my lord," The putty said, bowing off as he moved away.
Lord Zedd looked up at Rita and tossed her the data pad.
"There are seven classes of rangers according to this,"
He said. "Class 1 is basic infantry, it has no zord access.
Class 2 is slightly more powerful, it has basic zord access, they can
be multicolored, such as blue, pink, red, black...Class 3 is a solid
black ranger, no distinguishing marks, he can be
stealthed—practically invisible. The Class 3 ranger has armor like
our assault vehicles."
Rita bit her lip,
a strand of her black hair falling across her face, she brushed it
away.
"That ranger out there," She
said. "The white one, what is that?"
Zedd
looked at the pad for a moment, then looked up again.
"That is a Class 7 ranger," He said. "Rangers
beyond Class 1 are called Power Rangers, Rangers beyond Class 6 are
called Ultra Rangers, there are only three Ultra Rangers in the known
universe."
"But..the standard
rangers--" Rita gasped.
"Yes,"
Lord Zedd agreed. "They have the power to withstand a fusion
missile strike by themselves, the white ranger...wow."
Rita turned white. "What do we do?"
"Don't worry my dear," He replied. "I have a
plan."
Above them, they heard the
screeching of missiles flying through the air, toward the
reactor.
--
"Fight you cowards!" The white ranger screamed. "Show
them what happens when they mess with the forces of Zordon!"
He reached out with his blade and
decapitated an oncoming putty, then pulling out his sidearm again and
blasting off the head of another.
"I will
not stop until you are all dead!"
Suddenly
overhead, the sound of missiles was heard, everyone, including the
putties looked up.
"The he-" The
white ranger started to say, but then, if his face had been visible,
it would have been seen to turn white and his jaw drop, a look of
horror crossing it. Suddenly, an explosion erupted from behind the
battle lines, and a low pitched hum could be heard all around. To his
horror, all of the grey rangers around him demorphed.
"They hit the candle reactor! RETREAT!" He
ordered.
The rangers tried to retreat, but the
masses of putties ran through their lines, leaving a trail of
destruction as they went. Near the white ranger, the face of a former
ranger was grabbed and torn off, then a blade was shoved through his
jawbone. The man was left to die on the battlefield as the putty
moved onto his next victim.
A female ranger
cried and screamed as her arms and legs were sawed off and used as
weapons to beat her to death.
The
white ranger howled in anger. He had not demorphed because his
reactor was contained within his morpher.
"I
don't believe this!" He yelled, as he held his wrist
communicator up to his helmet. "Pelgryth, this is White Ranger
calling, do you copy?"
An oversized putty
came up to him preparing to strike, but he simply raised his sidearm
and killed it without even looking.
"This
is the Pelgryth," came a crackling voice over the communicator.
"We hear you, how can we help you today?"
"I need Tigerzord, now."
"Got
it White Ranger, hot dropping Tigerzord to your location in ten
seconds."
"We may have a problem," Lord Zedd announced.
"Problem?" Rita inquired.
"We
just heard over a secure channel that the White Ranger has requested
his zord. He called it...Tigerzord.
Rita's
face turned white.
"We...do we know what
it looks like? What can it do?"
Lord Zedd
simply shook his head and walked over to the control panel in the
wall. He pressed a button and spoke. "Helmsman, prepare for
takeoff. No, forget that, don't prepare, just do it. I don't care how
many of our people we leave behind, if we don't take off now there
won't be anyone left."
He then hit
another button, triggering a channel for all of the troops.
"Attention forces of Zedd, this is your Commander, the
mothership is taking off, I suggest if you want to live, you retreat
to the ship now."
"White Ranger this is
Pelgryth, the drop pod has malfunctioned, I repeat, the drop pod has
malfunctioned!"
"What?! What do you
MEAN it malfunctioned?!"
"The pod
came apart in the atmosphere, the Tigerzord is dropping from orbit by
itself."
A second later, he heard a huge
crash behind him, he spun around to see the white Tigerzord laying
crumpled on the ground, with one leg missing.
"You've got to be kidding," He mumbled, as he ran
toward it.
"Lord Zedd, we've found something on the planet you should
be aware of," A putty said, in the usual distorted voice of a
male putty.
"What? What is it?"
The putty held his hand out, and dropped a coin into Zedd's
hand.
"A power coin!" Zedd cried.
"But this is—this coin!"
"What
is it?!" Rita screeched happily as she ran to his side.
"It's a Class IV power coin!"
"Zordon, this is White
Ranger, do you read?!" The ranger screamed as he opened fire in
all directions with the damaged Tigerzord. "Zordon this is White
Ranger, come in, please!"
"White
Ranger, this is Zord, report."
The Ranger
sat in the damaged zord, firing beam weapons in every direction, it
couldn't move with a missing leg, but it was holding it's own.
"Zordon, the Grey Ranger platoon has been destroyed, I
repeat, the Grey Rangers have been eliminated, Tigerzord is down."
There was a moment of silence, and then.
"Understood White Ranger, what do you advise?"
"There are no teleport pods available on Tigerzord, so
personal teleportation is out of the question. Do you have enough
power to raise the Tigerzord?"
"Negative,"
Replied Zordon.
"Understood, please lock
onto my power coin and teleport it out at my signal."
"White Ranger?"
"Zordon, I
am not going to make it out of here alive, I want my power coin saved
for future generations, who might use it better."
With that, he reached down and removed the coin from his
morpher. Instantly, his armor dissolved into what could almost be
described as yellow flame, leaving nothing but him—just flesh and
blood.
"Teleport now."
The power coin flashed white, and was gone.
"Good luck Power Ranger," Zordon said over the radio.
"And may g--"
The radio died, leaving
the ranger alone.
--
"Taking off now, Lord Zedd,"
Said the putty at the helm.
"Excell--"
He was interrupted by a loud thump on the side of the ship.
"What the hell was that?"
"It
appears to by a leg of some sort," the putty noted.
"A human leg?"
"No, a
mechanical leg.."
Lord Zedd shrugged.
"Continue ascent.
"Did you know,"
Lord Zedd said to Rita. "That the first power rangers were
permanently joined with their armor?"
Rita
shook her head, staring at the main viewscreen.
"They were bred, trained from birth to be power rangers,
and finally, when they were old enough, they were joined with their
armor. They and the armor worked as one..they were..almost
unstoppable."
"Almost?" Rita
said.
"Yes..almost." He turned his
head to the weapons operator. "When we reach orbit, bombard the
planet with all the missiles we have."
"...All
of the missles?" Asked the operator.
"Yes,
all of the missiles."
"My Lord, we
have over ten thousand fusion missiles onboard, each capable of
taking out a destroyer."
"I am
aware."
"Yes my Lord."
"Imagine it Rita," Zedd said. "Thousands of
children who know nothing but weapons and training. Imagine them
lining up eagerly, waiting to receive their armor. Do you think they
understood that they'd never leave their armor once they put it on?
Do you think they knew, as they put on their helmets, that they were
going to be anesthetized, taken to a small room where the procedure
would take place? That the helmet's control inputs would be wired
into their brains? That their skin would be burned and replaced
with steel armor?"
Rita shook her
head.
"Now you understand why we fight
these monsters that call themselves...the Forces of Zoron. Sure, they
quit this practice years ago, but the point is, they did it."
Per his orders, the weapons operator began to fire all the
missiles, sixty missiles at a time, ten thousand total, at the
unsuspecting planet below.
"They did it
to my friends...yes..I was there, I was to be joined with an armor as
well. I was to be their 'power ranger'."