Something about hearing them coming, but being unable to do anything, only made matters worse.
They had come just a few minutes after Kit had woken up. Four of the AREs droids - the twisted, mechanical faces of doom - that haunted the prison. They must have preformed some sort of scan on the ship itself and detected that someone else was aboard. Perhaps whatever false information his captors had used to gain entry had finally been revealed as a fraud. Either way, the droids knew exactly where the young man was waiting. He had heard them approaching, the soft buzzing of their thrusters across the concrete floor of the landing terminal, and had hoped that they had a different destination in mind. A second of silence came next, offering a very short amount of hope before they pried open the docking ramp at the base of the ship. The ripping sound of metal almost sounded like the shuttle was crying out as it's belly was ripped open. The whole thing rocked from side to side.
Their lifeless, robotic eyes offered no explanation, no words, as they burst through the door into the cabin that had become his makeshift prison. Light poured in behind them. As Kit struggled to put together words, to form some sort of a story that made sense, the closest of them grabbed him around the chest and ripped him out of his seat. His restraints crackled and burst like a small child's toy, landing uselessly on the floor of the transport.
In a moment, they were outside the ship - two droids and their prisoner - hovering along quietly across the landing bay, headed for parts unknown. The other two droids had remained on board and, from the sounds of it, were completely dismantling the shuttle from the inside. Their giant, metallic hands ripping through the ship's innards seemed to be the only thing creating sound in the entire space station.
Kit was no longer being dragged - he had learned quickly that he would rather cooperate than have his legs shredded by the cement. The droids had not even attempted to restrain his hands or even asked him questions. One gripped each of his arms as they went, and they were plenty confident in their abilities. They didn't seem to care about how had gotten where he was, or what he was doing there. They just knew that he was where he should not have been, and they clearly had some sort of plan to deal with him. He looked himself over, wondering how the the situation could get any worse and beginning to give in to despair. His clothes had been reduced to little more than a matted mess of dried blood and cotton. His pockets and belt were both empty - he had nothing to assist him even slightly.
Kit began to give in to despair. He had usually been very good at maintaining a confident, calm attitude in the face of danger. It was one of his more valuable skills, when it came to his job. He had thought his way out of more than his fair share of sketchy situations. This, however, seemed to be the worst he had ever ran into. He knew that, if they desired, the two security droids holding on to him could tear him into two pieces in a second. He could almost feel the vast, untapped power flowing through the lifeless arms that gripped his own. Why had he even taken the stupid job? He had been doing fine before it, supporting himself well on low-risk jobs. They had been relatively bland, monotonous thefts - but they had never landed him a prisoner aboard the highest-security prison in the galaxy.
A few yards ahead of them, a blast door hissed open. Beyond the opening, a tall shadowy figure stood. Looking more human than his counterparts, but still decidedly machine, the thing seemed to be built from a dark metal that was more the absence of light than any deep shade of black. Four pieces of silver metal - that seemed like a small part of a complex machine - met in the middle of the things chest. Their meeting point was studded with all sorts of blinking lights and switches, but in the very sent seemed to be the most important. A red ruby, still pulsing brightly despite the relative brightness in the corridor around it.
The head of the droid had silver and gold metal outlining a large tinted-black view screen. Kit wondered why a robot would require something like this - a visual window into the world around it. Then he realized what he was looking at.
"The Phantom Ranger." Kit spoke quietly to himself. One of the few Rangers he had heard of, but had never actually seen. Very little information seemed to exist concerning this Ranger, and what people did know only seemed to add to the mystery surrounding it. The thief had thought of this particular Ranger as a myth - a phantom, but only because it did not exist.
The droids, at first, seemed to not notice the man standing before them. In fact, Kit could register no reaction from them at all, until the shadowy figure stepped forward. A strange warping of the air occurred in his right hand. It looked as if the light and air were being bent by some supernatural force and forming into a particular shape. The shape of a blaster - that then solidified and seemed to draw a real existence from within. A second after it appeared, the man lifted the arm and pointed the new weapon directly at them.
"Phantom Blaster!" The voice coming from the thing sounded only slightly robotic - mostly human, really. The voice echoed throughout the vast, open space of the landing bay. A blast of black energy - again, more the absence of light than any particular color reflecting it - shot forward from the end of his weapon.
The two droids stopped and released Kit instantly. As he collapsed to his already-damaged knees with a groan, the two security machines raised both of their arms and took aim at the newcomer before them. Kit could hear the blaster weapons hum as they charged up, and a second later a volley of blue blaster bolts was shot forward.
Just as their own weapons fired, the blast of dark energy coming towards them separated into two. Each blast bent in it's path and smashed into one of the droids. Right after they each finished firing on the man, they were each blown through the air. The head of one of them exploded as the jet-black energy burst made contact with it. The other droid's chest exploded in a rain of black flames as it, too, was caught in the blast's destructive path. The first droid collapsed to the ground and began buzzing in circles - it's thrusters seeming to misfire. The second droid's eyes seemed to fill with the same black energy that had hit it and it, too, fell uselessly to the floor.
Their own blaster fire danced across the floor at the Phantom's feet. Seemingly not bothered, the Ranger did not flinch or make any effort to dodge these attacks. They all seemed to miss him completely, somehow. After the blasts stopped and the droids slumped uselessly to the ground, the Phantom Ranger vanished for a second.
The roaring sounds of blaster fire and tearing metal were beginning to sound all-too familiar to Kit. His close proximity to this particular firefight, though, sent a pain burning through his ears and head. For a moment, when everything was still again, the young man heard nothing but silences - as if his hearing had left him.
The Phantom reappeared just inches in front of the thief. Kit gave a fearful yelp and collapsed backwards, his hearing returning suddenly with a fresh wave of pain.
"It's okay. I am here for you. We have some work to do. But first, you will need this." The Ranger stepped forward and held out his hand. Kit flinched for a second, but when he opened one of his eyes he saw that the Phantom's weapon had been replaced by something else entirely - his DigiMorpher.
"How did you get that? Who are you?" Kit's head began to spin and he realized suddenly that he was very tired. The world in front of him began to swim for a moment, warping and twisting as he struggled to stay conscious.
"Focus, Kit! We don't have much time!" The Phantom Ranger seemed to be trying, poorly, to hold back the annoyance in his voice. One of the droids at his feet crackled into life, opening one metallic hand and trying to grip the man's boot. The mysterious Ranger quickly lifted it and brought the boot back down onto the droid's half-rebuilt face. The thing crunched like little more than a small bug beneath him, and the rest of the droid collapsed yet again.
Kit reached out and took the DigiMorpher from the other man's head, remembering suddenly that the security robots next to him were slowly rebuilding themselves and would be fully-operational killing machines once again, in only a matter of seconds.
The young man did not hesitate any longer. Squeezing the sides of the device and causing it's key cover to flip open, he extended it out and above his head as he quickly punched in the appropriate numbers for the third time.
2-5-8-0
The feeling of alertness and strength hit him before anything else. As his muscles pulsed and seemed to grow, Kit could already feel the soreness in his body begin to dull. As the silvery light once again engulfed him, a small smile cracked across his face. His internal connection to the Silver Ranger suit seemed to grow immensely with each Morph. Now, the inside of the suit felt almost like a welcoming home to him. He was relieved to see that none of the damage the robotic suite had sustained earlier had been permanent.
"You said we don't have much time. Much time for what?" The Silver Ranger sounded much more alert and confident than his human form had.
"The people that brought you here. You know what they are here for. We need to stop them before they can reach the Morphers." The Phantom's blaster had reappeared in his hand and he lifted it up to adjust it's power level as he spoke.
Kit didn't think now would be the best time to ask how the other Ranger knew everything that he knew - the thief's name, who had brought him to the prison, what they had came for - but he did feel a touch of worry. If the man knew the story, the full story, then he had to know that the suit Kit had just activated did not belong to him.
Deciding that it would be better discussed at another time, Kit stepped forward and raised his left hand.
"Super Silverizer!" In a single pulse of bright energy, the Ranger's weapon was in his gloved hand once again. The blaster looked shiny and new, like the armor around him.
"Alright, Phantom," The Silver Ranger stepped forward and stood next to his mysterious partner for a second longer, "You lead the way, let's do this!"
The Phantom Ranger nodded and turned, taking off at a sprint down the corridor he had just emerged from. The Silver Space Ranger followed, closely on his heels.
The tram struggled to a halt with a series of mechanical shrieks. In the pitch black of the tunnel around it, small blasts of sparks could be seen extending from each side of the tracks as the brakes worked in ways they hadn't in years - if at all.
"This seems right." Nico had began handling the situation must more seriously since they had boarded the train transport. She was standing over the man as he worked the controls, staring at a view-screen in her hand. They had modified their plan, slightly.
Roland thought that it was perhaps his injury that had caused the young woman to take things more seriously. He had used a ripped-off portion of his coat to create a makeshift bandage for the wound, hiding how bad it truly was from his partner. He slowly felt the feeling draining completely from his right leg, and he did not know if standing up was an option for him any longer.
"Okay, it's time." The man pulled the Power Morpher from his belt and held it above his head, still not entirely sure how this whole process worked. It still felt sort of silly, to him - like he was a child playing pretend.
For a split second, the man's vision filled and it seemed as if he was passing through a tube of light at an incredibly fast rate. Then, the strange feeling of warm energy being blasted onto his body. He took a slight step backwards as the first burst hit him square in the chest - a brilliant flash of blue-white light they slowly dulled into the now-familiar black armor. Soon, several more of the blasts were hitting him at a quicker pace, engulfing the rest of his body in the bright light.
"Black Ranger Power!"
When the light cleared, he was back in the powerful Ranger outfit once again. Behind the helmet, the man smiled. The pain in his leg was still there, definitely, but it was far more manageable. He also could already feel the strange healing sensation coming from it - as if the armor was somehow repairing the damaged man beneath it.
"Your turn." The man's voiced sounded deeper and slightly robotic coming through the Ranger helmet. He looked down and clenched his right hand, watching the way the bulging muscles in his arm rippled in response. Roland could understand how someone younger and feistier like Nico would have a hard time resisting the urge to use these powers all of the time. He felt great.
"It's about time!" Nico raised her own silver device above her head and was engulfed in a similar light, for a moment. She threw the device into the air directly in front of her, and it hung there on it's own for a moment, glowing. The device's parts rearranged themselves into that of a small tiger figurine before it flew backwards and was adsorbed by the woman's body.
"Wild Access!"
As Nico became energized and felt her muscles expanding, the figurine in front of her grew and began to crackle with raw energy. In a second, girl and statue became one and her entire body was wrapped in shining, white-and-pink armor. The woman moved her limbs and assumed a karate pose - something that Nico would never have knowledge of on her own - and a blast of white light burst from the back of her head. It surrounded her face for a second before it faded, leaving behind the helmet of the White Wild-Force Ranger.
"Noble Tiger!" The woman slashed her left hand through the air once, the claws embedded in her glove making a sharp, violent sound as they extended out.
The pair looked themselves over for a few more seconds, still coming to terms with Morphing and everything that came with it. They hadn't had very long to train inside the suits before they were given this mission, so the intense feelings of energy and seemingly magical properties of them were still very impressive. When they had finished admiring their newly-armored bodies, they quickly got to work.
Nico turned and exited the control car of the vehicle, moving quickly in to the end of the first passenger car and picking up their unattended bags from a pair of seats. As she darted back, she paused for a second to look over the pair of energy rifles they had discarded on their way in to the control car. She briefly considered taking them - somehow stowing them away within their bags - but then realized that it was not important. If they somehow were involved in a battle and had their powers removed, they would very likely be defeated. She took a moment to pick each blaster up and destroy it - splitting one into two pieces over her right knee and bending the barrel of the other into a pretzel-like shape.
For a moment, the woman simply stood and giggled at her handiwork. The ability to reduce two military-grade weapons to broken, toy-like pieces was something that suited her well. The sound of shattering glasses drew her attention back to the situation at hand, and she sprinted toward the front of the train.
Nico burst into the control car just in time to see Roland's white boot disappear outside of the broken windshield as he climbed into the top of the car. She could actually see where his gloved hands were powerfully gripping the metal on the outside of the vehicle, pulling the man to it's roof one punch after the other.
The Wild Force Ranger leaned her upper body out of the smashed window and turned it so the mouthpiece of her helmet faced upwards.
"Thanks for waiting for me, jerk!" She tossed one of the two backpacks straight upwards, and Roland's gloved hand reached out in a lightning-quick grab to catch it. Slipped her own pack on, quickly, and extended the claws on her right glove.
"Me-Ow!" Nico's sing song voice was also slightly altered by her own Ranger helmet, though not as dramatically as her partner's. In one fluid motion, she stabbed the claws of one hand into the side of the train and whipped the rest of her body out through the shattered windshield. A quick second was spent hanging in the darkness by just one claw, and then she shot upward quickly. Her second glove barely slid across the tram surface to guide her as she twirled onto it's roof smoothly.
Roland had already managed to get two of the explosive packs fixed to the tunnel ceiling. Their usually-steady red lights changed to a much quicker pace as he pressed the arming button on each of them and began running down the length of the train. His partner gave a dramatic, cartoonish purr and took off after the man. While he ran on two booted feet, Nico threw herself down the roof the train with hands and feet. In just a couple of seconds, she had already passed her partner and reached the end of the vehicle.
"Ignite!" The man held up his right glove and spoke into it, guessing approximately where the communicator underneath it would be located. They had somehow managed to find a type of tech that melded perfectly with the Ranger suits, allowing them to utilize communications with individuals outside the base while remaining full Morphed.
The whole tunnel roared as the explosives went off. The place where they had been attached was the first to vanish - an incredible flash of white light that provoked a low rumble from the rest of the tunnel. The tram underneath the spot was blasted into it's own tracks, the top of it crumpling like foil under the incredible pressure. The two Rangers, even in their current state, would likely have been blasted off of their feet if they hadn't crouched down into defensive positions.
The paired had to take a moment to allow their vision to return, once the blinding lights of the initial explosives were over. When they could finally see once again, their was a massive hole blown into the roof of the tunnel. What seemed briefly like a never-ending wave of pulverized cement trickled out of the hole even after the blast, covering much of the decimated tram cars beneath it. A small speckle of light poked through the destruction, only visible because of the complete blackness around them.
"The vault should be two floors up." Roland began slipped his pack back on and began walking towards the destroyed end of the train. His partner dashed forward, cutting him off.
"I got this! Crystal Saber!" Nico's boots left the top of the train as she performed a front flip upwards, seeming to pluck the purple-and-gold hilted saber from the air as she did. She swung the weapon up above her head and sent a blast of white energy from the blade's tip.
Her weapon caused a much smaller explosion than the bombs before it, but it worked. More concrete reinforcement was blown out of the hole, it's surface already blackened by the previous blast. It was followed quickly by pieces of what looked like shattered white tile. Then, only smoke. The tiny pinhole of light had been expanded to several feet white. Through it, the room beyond seemed incredibly bright. No color code be seen, only pristine white.
"That material is what coats the inside of the prison cells. Be careful, we don't know who or what we are dealing with." Roland cautioned the young woman as he pulled his own side arm from it's holster. He pointed the Blade Blaster directly up into the hole and fired two shots. For a moment, there was only the sound of the blasts ricocheting around inside the cell before dying out. Then, a face emerged.
Red-eyes glowed from otherwise empty black sockets in a strange, twisted face. The upper body of a creature seemingly constructed from black stone peered down a them. Glowing, neon-green lines traced across his face. His right shoulder twisted out a couple of feet away from his body - a jagged, lightning-bolt shape. His head, similarly, had sharp points coming off of it where a human's hair would have grown.
"Power Rangers!? I can't even escape you in a prison cell!?"
Ecliptor's voice was to be as twisted as the rest of him. He seemed to be speaking with a mixture of anger and amusement.
"So, what have I done to deserve such a visit?"
