In an underground lab, sterile and completely controlled, a machine hummed with electrical energy. This machine was a charging mechanism of uncertain origin, with parts from all over the world stuck in it's metal frame. The machine itself was attached to a glass box that contained a smaller silver box. Inside the silver box was a power that no one had seen for many years. Only two people were in the lab, the first was a young woman with dark brown hair and glasses, pressing buttons on a control panel for the box, observing the electronic readouts. The second was a man, only slightly older than the woman, with blonde hair, observing the silver box, waiting for a reaction.
"Bring them up to fifty percent power," the man stated to the woman, his assistant.
"Yes Doctor, fifty percent power," the woman stated as she twisted a knob on the control panel. The readout showing the power input rose, showing that fifty percent of the maximum power the charging mechanism could produce was flowing into the silver box. "Fifty percent power, stable," the woman said confidently.
The Doctor pondered the situation for a moment, watching for a reaction from the box. There was none. Frustrated, the Doctor stated to his assistant, "One hundred percent power."
"But Doctor, the last time we went to one hundred percent," the assistant began, hesitation showing in her voice. A quick look from the angry eyes of the Doctor silenced her, and she twisted the knob slowly, watching the readings. When the reading stopped at one hundred, she immediately removed her hand from the knob. She waited for what she thought was next, but nothing happened. Breathing a sigh of relief she stated, "One hundred percent, stable."
The Doctor smiled, his dream had come true, he was finally able to bring an ancient power back to the world. The assistant joined him, watching the small arcs of electricity wrap around the silver box. This was the moment they had both worked towards for years. A loud beeping akin to a warning signal from a crashing ship alerted the two scientists to a problem. The assistant ran to the readout, panic showing in her face.
"Power spiking out of control, one hundred twenty-five percent! One hundred fifty!" the assistant yelled as she flipped a switch labeled Emergency Shut-Off. After the fifth flip, she screamed, "I can't shut it down! The system is overloaded!"
"The power couplings are fused now. No one can stop it. Leave now," the Doctor stated coldly.
"But Doctor-" the assistant began, unwilling to leave her boss.
"Leave!" the Doctor interrupted loudly. The assistant's feet moved on their own towards the elevator. Pressing the button for the ground floor, her last sight of the lab was the Doctor placing his hands on the safety glass surrounding the silver box. The Doctor, one he heard the elevator doors close, rested his forehead on the glass cage and whispered, "You are complete again, but at what cost?"
Once the elevator opened to the outside air, the assistant ran down the dirt road leading to the elevator in the middle of nowhere. Acid pumping through her legs couldn't stop her, but a cramp in her calf brought her to a painful halt about a mile away from where she had just ran from. As she hit the ground, an explosion rocked the earth under her. Her eyes snapped back to the elevator, which had flame and smoke pouring out of it's top.
"No," she whispered, her head sinking to the ground, tears flowing despite her wish to control them. "Doctor, why did you have to stay? The coins were overloaded and were going to take you down, you had to have known that."
Lying on the ground, unable to stand, and trying beyond all hope to hold the tears back, the assistant remembered her boss and love, the pain of loss hitting her like a freight train. The sound of car engines brought her attention back to the present, and she looked up. Three black government issue trucks slid to a stop on the gravel, kicking up dust. The assistant managed to get to her knees, but couldn't stand. Two dark haired men, wearing black suits exited the back of one of the vehicles and helped her stand. A third, the one that looked to be in charge, came from the driver's seat of that vehicle, approaching the limping scientist and her helpers.
"Ms. Thompson, please come with us," the man stated, more of an order than a request. Ms. Thompson had no choice but to nod, and the two suits helped her into the back seat of the vehicle. The lead suit pressed his hand to his ear, saying, "We need fire suppression and recovery teams at the Charlie site, now. Ms. Thompson has been secured, the status of Doctor Miller is unconfirmed at this time."
Within a few hours, the fires were put out and excavation of the underground lab was well underway. The construction crews used machinery to dig out the first thirty feet of ground, but when there was evidence of artificial construction, the workers began digging with shovels and picks carefully, as if they were archeologists digging in ruins. One of the workers suddenly stopped as his pick hit metal. He carefully wiped the dirt away, revealing a silver box. Carefully opening it, the worker looked inside. Six flat, golden objects glinted in the sunlight. Closing the box, the man saying loudly into his walkie that he had them and the suits should come get them. Moments later, five men in black suits grabbed the silver box and placed it into a black padded suitcase.
A day later, and the assistant found herself and the medallions in a new home, far from prying eyes, under an abandoned airport in the middle of nowhere. This place was just as sterile, and more controlled than her previous lab. The projects that were underway here were entirely outside of the public's eye, hidden by layers of bureaucracy that would make any conspiracy theorist weep with joy. The assistant's new home was drab, with the silver case for the coins replaced by a stainless steel box that had three different locks responding to her voice, a code she had memorized, and her left index fingerprint. The box lay on a desk with a desktop computer for note taking. There were various measuring devices, along the opposite wall of the desk, with an X-Ray machine and printer just down the hall in a room specially designed for such a thing. The door to her room was made of solid steel, the floors and walls painted white. The only colors that stood out in the blank room were the black of her desk chair and the off-white of the phone that hung on the wall. The assistant sighed as she took in the details of the room. This place felt cold and lifeless, a perfect match for how she felt. The phone on the wall began ringing after she entered the room completely. Her body moved on instinct and picked the loud electronic device up.
"Janice Thompson, you will be studying the coins under strict surveillance. Your government is very interested in what technology they contain and how they can best be used in our interests," the monotone voice droned through the phone. Ms. Thompson sighed again at the order.
"I can't promise any sort of breakthroughs other than what we had discovered before the " Janice replied, unable to say the rest of the sentence. Even in her half-dead mental state, she couldn't believe that Doctor Miller was gone. The voice quietly continued, sounding a little warmer.
"I understand this is hard for you, but all of your notes were lost after the explosion at the lab. You will need to write them all again."
"I don't remember all of the things that we wrote, but we had studied their uncharged states extensively," Janice continued, trying to shuffle through her memories for all the information that her and the Doctor gathered.
"We need those notes as soon as possible, Ms. Thompson," the voice requested one last time before hanging up, leaving only a dial tone. Janice sat at the computer and began typing, frustrated with her situation. She reminisced about how Doctor Miller told her that he didn't want his research being used for some pompous governmental bureaucrat, but for the good of all. Janice felt that the work was good for her though, allowing her time to reconnect and say goodbye to the late Doctor Miller.
Days, and weeks passed before Janice was confident about the complete notations that she had typed up. With that out of the way, she finally opened the stainless steel box that the coins came in. Her initial reaction was shock, because the coins looked different than the ones that were in the silver box, but after measuring all the relevant dimensions they were the same coins. Quickly running to the X-Ray room, she took pictures of each of the coins from a top and side view. Those X-Rays proved invaluable for her notes, and she typed furiously for hours on end, only taking breaks to take more measurements. She continued typing and measuring, making sure to take pictures of each stage of the process. When she finished, she picked up the phone and called for a briefing of the administration.
The administration level she was led to by the man in a suit was a level she had never been on before. At that time, she had stuck to her lab and her living quarters, wasting very little time exploring. The suited man opened the door to a dark-colored conference room, with a U-Shaped table centered around a projector. Janice was busy setting up her presentation when older men in various colored suits and ties began taking seats around the table. When she was finished with setup, she waited for the noise of conversation to die down before she began.
"Gentlemen, I have discovered something completely new about the coins. In their uncharged state, they are just flat pieces of an exotic, golden metal. In their charged state though," Janice stated as she put the first sheet up on the projector, " the coins expand in certain places, roughly in the middle, forming a raised shape that as you can see, takes the shape of six different creatures. Three of the shapes have been identified as prehistoric relatives of lizards, otherwise known as dinosaurs, two are prehistoric mammals, and the last one is a yet unidentified mythical creature that seems to be related to lizards. All of these forms seem to be artist renditions-"
At that point, one of the men sitting on the start of the curve of the U-shaped table began laughing, "Hold on, are you kidding us? I remember these shapes. My son was obsessed with this show as a little kid. What was it called Oh yeah, Power Rangers. He still has the plastic kid's meal promotional things we got at a fast food place."
The room exploded with laughter at the man's comment. Janice sighed and waited for the noise to die down, pushing down her exasperation to remain calm. Eventually, the entire gathering realized it wasn't a joke and the scientist was serious. This quieted the disbelief in the room and gave Ms. Thompson the undivided attention of some very powerful men.
"The show that you refer to was originally titled 'Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger' in Japan. There is a reason the coins in the show were so similar. One of the workers, an amateur artist, took impressions of these coins much the same way that one would make an impression of a name on a well worn grave."
"Wait a minute I thought the coins had depleted the charge that they held. 'Exotic, golden metal' I believe were your words a few minutes ago," the man at the curve stated loudly.
"Yes, over the past ten years, what little charge they had left has dissipated and they were just flat pieces of metal. Ten years ago, they still had enough charge to get a small impression of an outline. The worker filled in the detail and took the designs to the producer of the Zyuranger show in Tokyo. Uncharged, X-rays show one solid coin-shaped block of metal. Charged, though," Janice said as she put the next sheet on the projector, showing a network of small white lines inside the coins, "These impressions have wires and one tiny black-box that I assume acts as a capacitor and holds nanotechnology advanced well beyond anything we have. This technology holds powers of mythical proportions."
"Excuse me, but what exactly do you mean by 'mythical'?" another man, this one closest to Janice, asked.
"Nearly every single myth of warriors with supernatural powers defending people against supernatural threats has one thing in common," Janice answered, her voice picking up speed and volume from excitement of her profound discovery, "These coins are in all of them. Hercules wore the lion skin cloak that was latched by one of these coins."
"You mention in your original notes that an archeological dig that originally found these coins, where was that?" the man seated at the head of the curve asked.
"The coins were found in the aftermath of an earthquake in Japan," the scientist responded.
"How were you involved in their excavation?" another man questions.
"Doctor Jackson Miller got a call from a personal friend about a huge scientific find in the hills of Japan. I was his assistant at the time and went with him," Janice explains. An unseen nod permeated the room, agreeing with the logic set forth by the woman.
"Yes, we all know your history with the late doctor Miller, but how did everyone else end up dead at that site except the artist that copied those designs, you, and the good doctor?" another administrator asked.
"Dumb luck, really. The artist was away from the dig to sell the designs while Doctor Miller and I were out getting more supplies for the dig. While we were out in a nearby town, another earthquake struck the dig site. When we got back, everyone was dead from a fire caused by a leaking gas tank. Dr. Miller and I took the coins with us after the police were finished investigating."
"Alright, I do have one more question for you Ms. Thompson," the instigator of the laughter probed, "How do we harness the power that you and Doctor Miller used to charge these coins?"
"All my research with the myths that involved the coins indicates that the mythological person could use the power inside the coins, but no one else could. Since the similarities of the stories that I researched were so close, I would assume that the coins responded to a specific sequence of DNA. That would mean in the black boxes there are tiny scanners that identify the DNA of the holder of the coin," the scientist continued, "Every story has the coins close to the body of the warriors in the myth. The hilt of a sword, on a necklace or a bracelet. I believe that the coins need close proximity to identify the genetic coding."
"Outside of that proximity, how do we know which person will react with which coin?" came another question from another man.
"We don't. The only way to know if the genetic sequence is right is if the person is there and in contact with the coin," Janice replied.
Chuckling, the man closest to the scientist stated, "There are over six billion people in this world and less than a thousand of them know that this place even exists. How do you expect us to get all those people running through here without them realizing that our government is hiding a big secret?"
"You just need a sample of DNA, blood or saliva would work. If my theory is correct, any sort of reaction we get out of the coins would give us the people we need. I assume that you gentlemen can make that happen."