Remember, kids: Earth's moon in the Power Rangers universe has its own breathable atmosphere and a predominantly arid/desert-like topography.

Remember, bronies: "Luna" is the Latin name for Earth's moon, and as such, our beloved Princess of the Night will not be appearing here. Sorry about that :(


Battle for Mirinoi

Chapter Two: Luna's Last Stand

A white-gloved fist crushed the underside of Creepox's mandible with what seemed all the power of an exploding dam, the uppercut's force jolting the Insectoid general several feet back in the air to the battle-ravaged Carter Grayson's bellowing roar.

His Red Lightspeed Rescue suit was heavily charred from blasterfire with his helmet demolished to nonexistence, yet the middle-aged, short-haired veteran held his own against Warstar's elite, following through on the uppercut by rushing Creepox before the Bug could recover and pummeling him further with his fists and feet. But then the vermillion-skinned Insectoid parried and held one punch with his arm-attached sickles and then another, leaving he and the veteran Ranger at a brief impasse before Carter bolted forward and head-butted the Insectoid to break the deadlock, unyielding and merciless in their skirmish. Despite Creepox's shelled skin and the blood that broke through Carter's own fleshy forehead on impact, the human succeeded in driving the Warstar general back, uncaring for his own injuries, and continued his bare-fisted assault. Mortar-fire exploded all around them, kicking up the moon's grey-white sand high into the air.

In a fiery battlefield on Earth's atmospheric moon, the soldiers of the Galactic Space Alliance—a joint military organization created by Earth, KO-35, Aquitar, and Triforia in 1999—clashed with the endless hordes of Warstar's infantrymen—the Loogies and their superiors—in the second week of combat since the alien conquerors' arrival to Earth. It was the GSA's intense valor and determination that held off the brunt of Warstar's invasion, and whatever forces of the invaders actually reached the Earth were sooner or later dispatched by any of the various Power Ranger teams on the world below. But Warstar's efforts intensified in recent days and Lightspeed Rescue and the Silver Guardians were called as backup for the GSA at Earth's dwindling first line of defense.

A Squad of Loogies rushed Carter Grayson mid-brawl, sparing Creepox a moment of reprieve as he watched the damaged Ranger flail under their charge. Yet through a mix of savagery and skill, the empty-handed Red Ranger turned the tides and exhausted Creepox could only marvel as Carter wrestled a short sword away from his aggressors and wildly yet precisely cut them apart with it or used the blaster attachment to vaporize many of them pointblank.

He's…he's something else—the alien general pondered. This Ranger is far deadlier than any other we faced on this planet's moon. I'll take no chances with him.

The scarlet-shelled Insectoid yelled into his communicator, "Air squadron, I need an aerial strike at these coordinates now!"

"Sir," a Loogie in a one-man starship replied, "there are still many of our own near the target. They'll be hit—!"

"Now, Sargent!" demanded Creepox as he retreated.

The order was reluctantly carried out and what few Loogies survived this long against Carter's onslaught attempted to flee as they saw a squadron of Warstar starships flying toward them and priming their laser-cannons. Grayson caught his ground-borne enemies' caution and turned to find death from above rushing to end him. Immediately, the helmetless Ranger dove for the nearest fleeing Loogie and shoved him between himself and the laser-cannons, disintegrating the Warstar infantryman in the blast and others nearby suffered the same as the discharges continued. And when the first of the starships in v-formation drew near enough to the Red Ranger, Carter vaulted upward from a doomed Loogie's shoulders and skidded to a rough landing on the lead dogfighter's surface with his stolen short sword impaled through the hull, the high-speed winds blowing against his face and hair.

Alarmed cries sounded from the lead pilot, who was separated from Carter's wrath only by a thin shield of glass, and seconds later, those behind him opened fire and the ship exploded into a ball of flame. Carter released his hold in the nick of time and careened for another, his own blaster now drawn and firing repeatedly for the next ship's cockpit, killing the Loogie inside and then jumping from that falling dogfighter to the next.

Fleeing Creepox watched on from far away, scarcely believing just how much he underestimated this one. He prayed to his dark gods that the Power Rangers on Earth wouldn't be a tenth as strong as the one above him.

Hopping from another ship he destroyed to the next in that high-velocity deathtrap, Carter finally leapt too late and his near proximity to the exploding starship behind him threw off his flight. A Warstar dogfighter whose wing he heavily damaged with a shot from his blaster crashed into him, breaking several of his ribs and severing the burning wing that collided with him on impact. They scattered separately but brutally in their descent, the starship crashing in a fiery mess on the sandy ground and Carter landing dozens of yards away amid demolished tanks and fallen soldiers of the GSA and Silver Guardians, the Ranger's breath almost gone and his body scarcely able to move. Amazingly, he never dropped his blaster.

He didn't know how much time passed before he attempted to crawl away to hopefully find reinforcements this far out in the battlefield, but aside from two alert Loogies separated from their unit whose brains he quickly blew out, Carter somehow avoided conflict and mortar-fire in his desperate retreat. He landed far away from Creepox, who no doubt already fled the fight, so there was little chance of confronting him again. Carter took a moment to rest behind a small dune and turned his focus to the morpher on his wrist to call for backup.

He found there was one missed call: a top-priority distress signal from Aquitar addressed to every Ranger on Earth. He must've missed it while surviving all the carnage on the lunar outpost, yet he afforded no time to ponder what sort of menace threatened Aquitar, his greater focus on protecting his own planet, and so he sent his own distress call to his allies on the battlefield.

His breathing was labored and his wounds were critical. "Carter to…anyone out there…I need immediate extraction. …Warstar's too powerful out here…we'll have to retreat."

He waited for a response, but there was only static.

He called again, his voice weak and raspy. "Please…is…is anyone out there?"

A heavy crunching of sand resounded nearby, and Carter's caution turned to dread when he saw one of Warstar's elite emerge from the other side of the dune: a six-winged Insectoid named Dragonflay. Carter quickly raised his blaster to fell the enemy, but the Insectoid moved with a speed beyond any the wounded Ranger had ever seen and evaded the shot. Before he could fire again, Dragonflay almost instantaneously appeared inches away from him, swatting the gun away and seizing Carter by his throat. He raised the wounded Ranger overhead and a wicked laugh emanated from his steely maw.

"You're a slow one," the Insectoid leered, his eyes charging with optic energy and ready to fire. "But I'll make this quick."

Carter anticipated the end, fearless but spiteful that he couldn't do more.

Lightspeed Yellow and the Quantum Ranger leapt over the dune in unison and fired on Dragonflay, their blasts grazing the Insectoid as he barely used his speed to evade their attacks on time. He dropped Carter in his retreat, but the Red Lightspeed Ranger clung to his enemy around his neck, refusing to let go.

"Carter, get away from him!" Kelsey called after her comrade with heavy concern in her voice.

Carter Grayson was too weak to reply and only justified his actions in his mind. I can't let go of him. With speed like this, he'll be impossible to catch again. They need me to slow him down.

With what strength he had left, Carter used his weight to drop Dragonflay to the ground and held him in a headlock, attempting to break his neck.

"You slow-minded human! Release me!" the Insectoid screeched, but to no avail.

In the time Dragonflay wrestled with his prisoner-turned-captor on the moon's soil, Kelsey and Eric almost covered enough ground to finish him, Kelsey with her V-Lancer and Eric with his bladed Quantum Defender. But Dragonflay elbowed Carter in his broken ribs and returned to his feet, only to be slashed repeatedly by the other two Rangers.

"Good work, Grayson," Eric complimented his fallen predecessor as he struck Dragonflay across his chest.

Kelsey used her lance to sweep away the Insectoid's footing and sent him falling flat on his winged back only a few feet away from Carter, then just as quickly plunged her high-tech halberd into the alien's abdomen, prompting a pained screech as sparks exploded from the alien's armor. But as she drove the lance deeper and deeper into her enemy, Dragonflay's eyes glowed, charged again with power, and he shot a strong, concentrated beam of optic energy directly into her visor, violently bucking Kelsey's head back and jolting her off her feet several yards away. In that brief window of recovery before Eric could impale him with the Quantum Defender, the alien scurried a meter away at hyper-speed as the blade struck the sand where he once lay, and as Eric turned to lunge for the Insectoid again, Dragonflay—now back on his feet—used his unrivaled speed to clutch Carter by his collar and hoist the wounded Ranger between himself and Eric's sword. The blade of the Quantum Defender plunged through Carter Grayson's torso, to the horror of the Red Ranger and the Silver Guardian behind him who unintentionally did the deed.

With Carter paralyzed of shock and Eric of disbelief, Dragonflay dropped the dying Ranger, his skewered weight lowering the Quantum Defender as well, and the Insectoid rushed the Silver Guardian with a barrage of melee attacks, carrying him far out of Grayson's failing vision.

Carter landed on his side with the Time Ranger's blade protruding from his torso, his eyes peeled, jaw agape, and bare face resting atop the grey sands of Luna. When his wrist hit the ground, the jolted morpher played the SOS he neglected earlier. With his consciousness fading, he accepted that the message from Aquitar before him and his friends' pained cries behind him would be the last thing he ever heard.

The visage of an Aquitian woman spoke in a recording on his morpher's view-screen. "My name is Cestria Cranston and I send this message to all Power Rangers beyond our borders who may be listening. Aquitar is under heavy siege by an army from Mirinoi's new dictator: a former Power Ranger from Terra Venture named Hydrina…"


Cestria's message was later viewed all the way to its conclusion in the throne room of the Warstar Spaceship, her visage now a hologram displayed atop an advanced projector of Warstar engineering.

"…I don't expect we'll survive Hydrina's onslaught much longer or even that my husband and his friends are still alive, but if there is anyone out there listening, please, please stop this madwoman. Don't let her unleash on the galaxy what Dark Specter did sixteen years ago." A heavy explosion rocked behind her, demolishing the blast-doors that protected her and her family.

"Mother, get down!" an Aquitian soldier called to Cestria, and the female soldier and her brother raised their guns and opened fire into the smoke that flooded from the doorway. Blasterfire returned on them and the last image was of Cestria hastily pressing buttons off-screen to end the recording and send her message.

Then the projection dissipated.

Admiral Malkor sat upon his cathedra, stroking his curled, golden goatee in contemplation. "It seems we're not the only ones who've declared war on these Power Rangers. This Hydrina could make a formidable ally."

"Provided she is loyal to our cause, your Eminence," Vrak interjected. "I agree we seem to share a common enemy, but a common goal?"

"Your caution is noted, Vrak," Malkor conceded. "Yet it is also moot. Today, we learned these Power Rangers can be destroyed, and though one nearly defeated Creepox singlehandedly, our battlefield reports suggest he was only a rare anomaly among his kind. By these estimates, the rest of Earth's warriors will perish under our might."

Creepox asserted himself, rage seething in his voice, "The human who faced me was merely lucky, your highness. But as we know—" the red-shelled Insectoid reached into the projector and then held up Carter Grayson's damaged, bloodied morpher, "—even his luck ran out. Only permit me to travel the planet's surface, and I will prove the rest of these Power Rangers can be squashed with relative ease."

Admiral Malkor replied, "You've failed me once today, Creepox. But I will grant you this opportunity for redemption. Scour the area where Scaraba met his end at the hands of Megaforce one week ago and prove to me these humans are as weak as you claim."

Creepox bowed. "It will be done, my lord," and he departed from the throne room, leaving the admiral and the prince alone to their own devices.

"And Vrak," Malkor called, "you're certain this Aquitian woman's message never reached the Earth?"

"I'm positive, Admiral. Our jamming technology has cut off all interstellar communication to and from the planet below. These poor fools are completely unaware that another superpower is conquering their allies as we speak. The only ones who received the message were those on the moon, but they have been taken care of. None but Warstar know of this Hydrina's plans. How do you wish to proceed, sir?"

Malkor thought for a moment, then declared, "For now, we will focus our efforts on conquering Earth. Yet relay our information to your father, the emperor, that he may deal with Hydrina as he deems fit. Emperor Mavro can decide for himself if she is worthy as a temporary ally or just another whelp to be crushed underfoot."