This is a very loosely-handled request from ChillPillBerry/Xoxogirly/AquitarStar (or whatever name she's using now). She wanted "a 60 chap. Tommy/Kim fic set in Megaforce" and was very specific with details about the premise...I somehow came up with this instead xD But I am going to try to hit all the key points as closely as possible, even if that means making some radical changes/additions here and there. Sorry, Aquitar ^_^'
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe where the existence of the "New Ranger Powers" in Super Megaforce actually makes sense…
Battle for Mirinoi
Chapter One: Ashes of Terra Venture
A crimson boot's heel thrust open the doors to the grand hall, revealing the once-majestic chamber to be just as dark and corpse-ridden as the rest of the palace. AkaRed stood paralyzed in the opened doorway, austere and horrified at the treason his own students committed. The only light shone from the expansive windows lining the far wall, where the cloud-obscured sunlight splayed over slain politicians and their families, whose blood soaked the lavish walls, floor, and furniture that separated them from the rioting, murderous citizens three stories below.
All activity in the chamber halted. The offenders—four members of the Power Rangers Legendary Squadron clad in blue, green, yellow, and pink—turned their gazes and trained their weapons on him. The fifth, the one in red, only stayed in place, holding a blaster inside the kneeled, quivering emperor's mouth, but noted their mentor's presence all the same.
AkaRed fought to still his breath, to fathom that four of his best students all had their guns primed on him and his greatest protégé led the coup. The gold-crested helmets shrouded their expressions, yet their mentor doubted there was any humanity left in their eyes. But that they hadn't yet attacked him proved otherwise, that some parts of them could still be saved.
"What have you done…?" The man in the doorway breathlessly asked his students, only half-expecting an answer.
All were silent, the four aiming at him slightly trembling in their superior's presence. But Red Legend—the young woman holding a blaster in the emperor's mouth, calmly replied to her master, "Don't act surprised, Billy. You've known a long time your Rangers never supported this pig's rule, that our hearts bled for the thousands of innocents he let starve in the streets or sent to die as cannon fodder in meaningless wars."
Billy protested, "But what you're doing—"
"The people of Terra Venture shout for true relief," his student continued, "an end to the oppression these incompetent fools have forced on them—to sleep with a roof over their heads, with real food in their bellies, and to live without always fearing a government official will come to drag another family member off to die in the Lost Galaxy. Heavens forbid the Power Rangers don't act on what's best for the people."
"By committing high treason and murdering dozens of innocents?!" Billy Cranston shrieked, his fists trembling and the other four inferiors growing tense under his rising hostility. "There is always a better way, Hydrina! We could've found a peaceful solution, kept using our influence in the courts to advocate relief for the people, and maybe even pushed for democracy when the time was right—"
"Democracy?" Hydrina scoffed. She chuckled, then Red Legend removed her blaster from the paled king's mouth and motioned all around the blood-streaked chamber with it in a half-frenzy. "You think democracy could've kept all this blood from being spilled? Will a corrupt corporatocracy of squabbling fools give these starving people the aid and security they need?"
The emperor moaned, "Please don't let them hurt me, Sir Cranston! I'll—I'll give you any reward if you save me!"
"Quiet!" Hydrina struck the emperor across his temple with the barrel of her gun, drawing more blood from him. Billy winced at his former prodigy's animosity, but held firm in the doorway, understanding the delicate gravity of the room. The Legendary Squadron's Red Ranger spoke again to her ex-mentor, "Right now, those peasants with pitchforks you hear outside fight for themselves because nobody in this oaf's regime will. They've torn each other apart in the streets for scraps of the bread they'd have to sell their own kidneys to afford because of the insane taxes this man's government has forced on them. And you know what makes it worse? Ninety percent of all the crimes we respond to are nothing more than victims of the empire being forced to take extreme measures just to survive. Meanwhile, the true criminals—the ones who make these impossible laws and drive innocent people to the brink of savagery—go unpunished and it has been nauseating watching the Power Rangers, who are supposed to fight for the common good, become pawns of the empire. All of this—this incompetence, this malice, this division of classes—has only led to chaos. And I will not stand by and let my home and the people I love degenerate into anarchy!"
Red-suited Billy shook his head. "The way you're speaking…there were people on Earth a long time ago who said the same thing. They were right in believing things needed to change and I admire the aspiration they might've shared in wanting to do what's right for the people, but they were wrong in the application. Violence only breeds violence. This revolution you've ignited won't end with Emperor Caiden's death. The fires will rage on long after your new system's established, and one day, you'll find yourself exactly where he is: barrel-end of a gun in your mouth and millions chanting your death."
"It's a helluva lot more successful than any coward plan you came up with," Hydrina said as she retracted her helmet, allowing the tresses of her raven-black hair to fall over her shoulders and reach her mid-back, her blue-grey eyes almost glowing in the ambiance of the dark room and the fires that burned outside. Now, more than ever, her young visage—a genetic blend of western and oriental features devoid of any makeup—reminded Billy of…
Scorpina… He swallowed, suppressing the bile rising in his throat.
"Look at my face, Mentor," she demanded firmly. "I know you can still see it: the face of my mother, whom you battled twenty years ago when you still served Zordon. And though you never met his human side, I know you can also sense my father in me. So, tell me: did you not use violence when you faced my parents in battle? How did 'fighting peacefully' stop the United Alliance of Evil?"
"That was a different threat, Hydrina," Billy shot back from under his helmet. "They were a brand of evil that responded only to force. There were no alternatives. But Emperor Caiden is not Lord Zedd. He's only human, and that means there's something inside him that will listen to reason and give the common good a chance."
"There are a lot of humans in Earth's history who could give Zedd a run for his money," Red Legend replied, her face ever cold and stoic as a bang fell over one eye. "But that is irrelevant. I agree Caiden here's not on the same level as your villains of old, but be it through malice or stupidity, he let his people suffer and die. There is no redemption from the countless he's killed since he rose to power. His victims cry for guilty blood and I'm the one they chose as the empire's reckoning."
AkaRed released a heavy sigh, his heart aching every second he spent in this room confronting his former students. He declared with a steely resolve, "I'm not giving up on you."
A signal chimed from within Billy's helmet and he reached to answer it, drawing the hostility of the other four armed Rangers.
"Let him answer it," Hydrina said with a smile, "I'm expecting some calls." Legends Green, Yellow, Blue, and Pink lowered their weapons.
Once sure he was safe but still perplexed by Hydrina's words—that she was expecting some calls—Billy answered the transmitter built in his helmet. "I'm here, Karone."
The Pink Galaxy Ranger's voice was frantic on the other end. "Billy, we need your help right away! This is a losing fight up here and I don't know how much longer we can last!"
"What?! Who are you fighting?—can a blockade of civilian fighters really do this much?!" Billy shouted back in fear and alarm.
"It's not civilians we're fighting! It's Sun Vul—!"
An explosion on Karone's end rocked the transmission with static, but Billy heard enough to grasp her meaning: Sun Vulcan.
My God…Hydrina has more of Terra Venture's younger Rangers on her side too?
He could hear Karone cry in a soul-splitting shriek through fluctuating static, "LEO!"
Horrified, Billy looked on through his visor and the expansive window at a burning wreck of flame careening from the grey sky: the Galaxy Megazord. It plummeted into the distant ground, far beyond the ravenous mobs at the palace doors. AkaRed's heart bled at wondering how many of the Galaxy Rangers survived, if any did at all.
Then, another call which he hesitantly answered. "Carlos to AkaRed: the Space Rangers are under heavy fire! I repeat: we are under heavy fire! It's the Prism Corps—they ambushed us—" Static and shrieks of pain soon replaced the Green Space Ranger's voice.
A call from the Aquitian Rangers and his heart already sank. "Billy, it's Delphine! We are under attack from Dragon Brigade! They've betrayed—"
More calls came in, this time from various leaders of the colonial marines, all asking for backup and all giving the same story: Terra Venture's Power Rangers—the Galaxy Rangers aside—had betrayed them and were the ones behind the coup. As the panicked calls rushed ever onward and more charred remains of Zords plunged from the sky like falling stars, the mantle of AkaRed grew too heavy for Billy Cranston to handle and he lost his balance, falling to his hands and knees in a disoriented despair. His ears fell numb to his allies' torment and all became a vague blur to the aging veteran, making him almost forget how to breathe.
Hydrina looked down on her old mentor in shame, scarcely believing this was the hero of legends she looked up to when she first joined the Rangers. With her gun back in the emperor's mouth, she forced him to his feet and repositioned the trembling man back-first against the wide glass window that reached from floor to ceiling. "Your hero's failed you, Emperor," she taunted. Then she lowered the gun and stepped aside so that none stood between her royal captive and the broken Cranston. The other four of the Legendary Squadron stood confused, yet never protested their leader's ambiguous actions. "So, let's see if you can save your hero," she said with an unreadable tone.
Emperor Caiden scarcely believed his ears. He looked back at her in wide-eyed confusion, unsure of what to do.
Hydrina spoke again, "It's painful seeing him broken like this. I looked up to him once and I'd rather not have this be the last I ever see of him. So, go. Give him something to fight for."
Caiden gulped, drenched profusely in sweat and asked nervously, "H—how?"
Billy looked wearily up and saw the emperor unguarded, praying he could somehow resolve this without further bloodshed. Yet as his war-weary soul hoped for the best, he saw Hydrina suddenly roundhouse kick the emperor in his ribs, the extreme force of her power launching him through the glass of the window to flail helplessly over the crowds chanting his death until the ground would rise to meet him. In that instant, AkaRed came back to life and sped after the screaming man, darting past the corpses on the grand hall's floor, bolting through the broken window, and reaching his arm out to catch the emperor in mid-air. Yet a moment before he could grasp him, a blaster bolt fired by Hydrina struck Billy in the small of his back, throwing him off so that he and the politician landed separately and helplessly in the bloodthirsty crowd, smoke and embers trailing in Billy's pained descent.
Wounded AkaRed beheld in glimpses through shuffling bodies the emperor being beaten and hacked apart to death, but his terror intensified when he heard a member of the mob cry, "Hey, he tried to save Caiden! He's with the empire too!"
And with those fatal words, Billy became another target of the mob and they descended on him with every shred of violence they inflicted on the now-dead emperor and he could only defend himself against so many.
From the shattered palace window, helmetless Hydrina gazed down on the violence in stoic austerity, her true feelings for her mentor's fall unreadable, but even her four subordinates seemed worried to certain degrees as they gathered around her.
"Aren't we going to save him?" asked Erethus, the Blue Ranger of Legendary Squadron. He stood incredulous at his leader's side, but also daren't move without an order. Black feathered wings protruded from his back and he said with repressed urgency, "Give me the order and I'll extract him immediately. Only say it."
But Hydrina was motionless, grim as a statue and watching the carnage with stone-cold eyes. Whether she was conflicted between sparing and condemning the man they all knew as their mentor from childhood or was only enjoying the show was impossible to discern.
"Hydrina…?" Erethus almost pleaded, but no reply came.
The mob roared. A strike on the back dropped AkaRed to his knees and a swing of a bat shattered his visor, dozens of dark scarlet fractals and drops of Billy's blood splaying through the air as time slowed to a mystifying crawl.
