"Bring her around" the cold, partially rasping voice uttered, a command to two men in black velvet ski masks surrounding an unconscious prisoner.
They produced a small studded pin from their pockets and pinned two of them to the left and right of her neck, then pressed down on their centres.
An eletric jolt surged through the priosner, a woman, and she sparng to life.
"Good, you weren't totally out of reach" the voice continued.
"What the fuck do you do to me Rocky?" said Kimberly as she managaed to recgonize the face of one of her former teammates and friends.
"We gave you a little lapse into the field of eternal dreams...simulated death by condensing the levels of pink energy contained in your body to override the flow of the central artery...a little power play so to speak" he said.
"You should have finished me, but then again, a little Kill Bill can do wonders to motivate the dead" said Kimberly as she tried to budge from her chair, only to find she was shackled.
"Not what we're here for, the information you possess is quite valuable. Besides, after all those years of pachinko addiction, I think I've found a much more entertaining game" Rocky gloated.
"One you'll never win" said Kimberly.
"I've scored a couple of early hits already...remember Zack Taylor?" said Rocky, showing Kimberly the security feed of a warehouse in South Korea, and of an apartment complex situated somewhere in Los Angela, where a frustrated African american was charging his fists passionately into a punching bag, so quick and ferocious were they, it was almost as if the devil were after these hands.
"We picked this up in South Korea a few days ago..he was trying to bust an operation, they were supplying considerable amounts to his hip-hop kiddo classes. So many kids, he was trying to teach them a more physical kind of hit, a much more literal kick, but you know how easily led young souls are"
Kimberly watched on the feed as a black suited Power Ranger crashed through the roof and engaged in hand to hand combat with the drug peddlers, some brandishing knives. One of the Ranger's side kicks smacked a gun clean away from a thug's hand, he reached for it, and, with a soul touched far too easily by temptation, he pressed the trigger and took the dealer's head clean off.
The power of life and death in both their hands, it was a clash of equals between the Ranger and his opponents. The Ranger ducked the shots from other guns and unloaded another round, managing to inflict shoulder wound on the ringleader, he then grabbed a dealer from behind and took control of the arm controlling his weapon with a forceful grip.
Controlling the weapon, the Ranger made the dealer wipe out most of the surrounding henchmen and capped the ringleader in the knee. The Ranger trained the gun on the man he was holding hostage and pulled the trigger once more, resulting in a satisfactory head-shot.
Zack picked up the knife dropped by the ring leader and finished him off, slitting his throat.
The feed cut off, and all that was left was the feed showing Zack Taylor engaging in a fist fit with a punching bag. He detected a swift noise from behind.
"It's all good, get on with it" he said, almost as if were making peace with the God he had appalled by his reckless and murderous display a world away once upon a time.
A powerful blast of firepower smashed through the back of his skull, and he fell to the floor dead.
"It's sad isn't it? Seeing your friends murdered one by one, especially by one of your own...but it's all perfectly legal. Great thing about the Machine justice system is you don't need to be present for a trial to be found guilty if the evidence is stacked against the convict. We get the order, we swoop in for the kill, it's only logical"
"As logical as your turn was?" Kimberly said.
"When the Venjix virus crippled our defense networks and enabled the empire to override most of our nations, I realized who the winning side was...the human race can be a disease, just like this kid I met years ago called Kyte said, they can only be redeemed by assuming the role of the anti-body"
"You're still a traitor" said Kimberly
"No, I'm just not a child, and you're not a little girl, so where's your Prince Charming? Where's Tommy?" demanded Rocky.
"Tommy Oliver is a ghost, you'll never find him, I don't even know where he is" Kimberly insisted
"Bullshit is an ugly color on you" Rocky replied.
He brought up screens of various news reports, all of them were discussing several stings on illegally organized street fights.
"We know the Mariner Bay ''Commissions'' have been hit heavy in recent months. We know it's a Ranger, but some can't quite place who the Ranger in question is, but the same two colors keep being described. Green as envy and clear as White" Rocky explained.
"So I was right" Kimberly said, smiling warmly.
"He is a ghost"
"Yeah, and he's also the fucking boogeyman of this whole operation, and I'm not one to be spooked. For the last time, where is he?"
"I don't know" said Kimberly.
Rocky took a look at a nearby device that was scanning her
"The regular machines don't lie either, they were scanning your beats per second for signs of a fluctuation, they told us exactly what we want to know, your story checks out"
"So you lose" Kimberly said.
"Oh Kim, we never needed you for information, I was stalling so the machines could check your beat. Your testimony one way or the other is meaningless...we have what we need. You as bait"