Zordon of Eltar stood waiting, he could have been many things.
He could have been afraid; a millennia's worth of conflict, a coin toss, if there were wars won or lost on less he had never heard of them. There was the war of a thousand fleets that had ended in a whisper. There was the war of the fallen prince that had ended in a chance encounter and a pair of reunited lovers. But surely never anything as trivial as this.
He could have been angry; for the witch, he was sure, all of this was just a game she liked to play, and him just an obtrusive piece of a puzzle that she would never really have the fortitude to complete. Angry at her, or angry at himself just the same. Thwarting plans is all well and good, but winning isn't winning if you never wanted to play in the first place, nor could it be called winning if you lose just a little bit every time, just enough so that when you finally turn around and look at what has been, you find only wasteland.
He could have been sad; wastelands are want to make a man sad, especially when they're littered with the bones of everyone he has ever known and ever loved. True evil is not the bomb-maker or the doomsday seeker, only a teenager thinks that. True evil is someone for whom failure is part of the eternal process, not someone who seeks chaos as an ultimate goal, but someone who pleasures in its company. Chaos is not their end, but their ally.
He could have been happy; after today, he and the universe would know peace once more. A coin toss, yes, but not a fair one. Zordon of Eltar felt the majesty of coins corse through his every fibre. If it's a coin toss she wants, he thought, so be it. There is only so much one can take, only so many times one can remain passive in the face of anarchy. There comes a point when to not take up arms against your foes is the same as taking up arms against yourself. A friend had taught him that. So here he was, his offence at last. He had come bearing great power, he had come not to thwart her as he had done so many times before, but to devastate her. This was the end of it.
Yes, Zordon of Eltar could have been all and any of these things, but what he was, what he was…
There was a burst of energy, the sound of roaring flames, and a flash of dark light, followed only by the vacuum of space and the scratch of a witches dress, scraping across pale stones.
"Zordon." She opened her arms wide, her blood-orb staff pulsed in waves of furious power. "Alone, a secret meeting, a game of chance… What would your dear Lerigot make of this? I wonder."
"Lerigot has no power over me. You would do well to remember that."
"Oooooh," she smirked. "So forthright, so rebellious, so unlike you. If I didn't know you any better, I'd say that that you mean to trick me. I'd say you've some mischief lurking beneath those absurd sleeves of yours."
It didn't matter if she knew, he'd assumed she might. Ignorance was not Rita Repulsa's weakness. "I'm not you, I've still my honour. Something you lost a long time ago, if you ever had it to began with."
Her face twisted… Who? Me? It said.
"My dear Zordon, I'm offended. I'm as straight a shooter as they come." With the subtlest of movements, a twitch, she loosed a bolt of energy from her staff that screamed up into the blackness and exploded into thrumming ripples of bright red light. The ground shook beneath them. Zordon remained unmoved.
"Tell that to them," he said, nodding towards a cluster of jutted rocks.
She smiled, and twitched a second time. The rocks tore themselves apart, debris rained, and a familiar ensemble revealed itself. He'd not discovered anything that she didn't want him to. Underestimating her opponents was not Rita Repulsa's weakness.
Her entourage was a motley one; A golden lion with muscular wings that arched high over plated shoulders; a thin, pale terrier with blue slit eyes that peered out over half-moon spectacles; a vampiric mass of silken black fur, with red lips, pointed claws, and crippled wings; and a bulbous, blue, smirking, cowering hob-goblin with plate-mail as shimmering as the day it was forged.
"Your council?" said Zordon.
"My dogs," she replied. "I'm afraid they'd go savage without me. I apologise, Zordon. Have I broken our agreement?"
"Not at all. I said we were to meet alone, but I made no mention of pets."
"Nor machines?" Rita smirked, and bit down on her bottom lip.
He'd assumed she knew about Alpha as well. He'd had to assume she knew about everything but the contents of his still clenched fist, still aching with mountains of energy, still waiting to be spent.
Not long now. He needed them all together, though. If even one escaped they were like to free the others, and the whole ploy would have been a waste of time.
"What?" she said. "You think after all this time you can still deceive me? Come now, Wizard. I've shown you my hand, now you show me yours."
Her eyes glanced down at his clenched fist, or he might have imagined it. Is this my trap or hers?
"Alpha," he said, "reveal yourself." His little machine discarded his cloaking features and appeared at his side, his gold and ruby casing a wonder of colour in contrast to the drab, moody scene. His little machine uttered a syllable, but the witch twitched, and his little machine burst into a thousand pieces. His beautiful colours rained from the sky and fell in around them, along with wires, cogs, coils, and glass.
"Oh, I'm sorry, was that valuable?" The witch smirked. "Was that the third? Or the fourth? I've lost count."
"Enough games. I want your people were I can see them, all my secrets are out."
"Not all, I hope." With a movement smaller than the one she used to destroy his Alpha, she called her party over. And… Was that another glance down at his clenched fist? It was getting so hard to tell. A brave move to bring her party over if she did know. Of course, cowardice was not Rita Repulsa's weakness.
And that was how it looked, right at the end, or the beginning, perspective depending. An old wizard on a white world, with a fist full of coins that he clung to like hope. And a mad witch, with all the power of a dying sun at her fingertips, and an entourage of madmen gathered in a crescent around her.
By all rites, Zordon should have died, there and then. Rita Repulsa should have twitched and summoned oblivion to devour her nemesis. But she didn't. Because this wasn't just any witch, and Rita Repulsa had a weakness.
Zordon tossed forth his five coins of power and they exploded in a prism of fantastic light. Over the scream of swirling dust, he bellowed:
"RITA REPULSA, BASTARD DAUGHTER OF VILE, MURDERER, TERRORIST; I ,ZORDON OF ELTAR, SENTENCE YOU BY THE POWER OF THE FIVE COINS TO BANISHMENT, FROM THIS REALM AND THE NEXT, FOR ETERNITY."
Alpha 4 had prepared the container, and the shaman's incantations had strengthened the seal, it was only small, but it could have held entire civilisations if needed. He watched in relief and horror as the coins did their work, as they pulled at her flesh, as she began to disintegrate, piece by awful piece.
Rita Repulsa's weakness was that she liked to play the odds. Zordon of Eltar was never a nemesis, he was a mouse, a plaything; and in play, its always worth letting your opponent go first, let him show his hand, let him give it his best shot, because if you by some chance survive their best, they will have beaten themselves. And, after all, there is always a chance…
By the time he saw it, it was already far too late. A flash of green light, a sixth coin, a myth, a dragon, he could almost feel its fire. He closed his eyes.
Zordon of Eltar, in a swirling second, was blown from the realm of potential, of should's and could's - He felt, and was, everything all at once.
He saw the birth of the chaos witch, of the devil man, and of… Rangers. He saw her weakness, how she couldn't resist playing his game, he saw his own, arrogance, to think that he alone could effect the stream of time. He saw a magic prison boom into the blackness, and in an eternity that to him was but a heartbeat, he saw it come back again.
"After ten thousand years, I'm finally free…" he heard echoed throughout time and space again, and again, and again.