Primal Protectors
Chapter 10: A Grand Reveal
Disclaimer: I don't own Power Rangers or the source material for this fic, Doubutsu Sentai Zyouhger or any other things referenced such as certain games.
The characters appearing were made by: AyatoHattori, Dash master 48, KidF1ash, bobmanv2.0, Thewhatzupwriter26 and Me. Gadget The Critic is the man behind the monsters.
It had only been a few days since the strange goings on during the battle against Poison Queen Barely, now the five rangers were sat in the back room watching the large screen as Flynn explained to them why such things could happen and what he had been hiding from them since they became rangers.
"Alright, you remember the glowing white cubes that I said were your morphers' power source? I kinda lied about that. While they are used to power it, they're actually a complex crystal supercomputer. While I'm saying this I might as well also tell you they're from another planet." He informed them, finally revealing what the crystalline cubes actually were.
"Okay, so if this' alien tech, I'm guessing the casing you put them in lets us use them right?" Kyle asked, getting a quick nod from Flynn.
"So why was my zord acting about, and what about the mole zord we found?" Nel chimed in, bringing Flynn into the next point he was about to make.
"We only just managed to make a machine interface last year, it's taken me this long to fully understand some of the code hidden in the cores. Essentially each of the zords is alive, still a machine, but alive like any other animal might be. They have some sense of friendship like you all have from what I understand and it went after the mole zord to help it."
As the mentor finished, Val cleared her throat, getting the other's attention. "You still didn't explain why the mole zord was there, and the giraffe zord too. Where'd they come from?"
Flynn gave a sigh and placed his hands on his hips as he decided to tell them what else he knew. "Catering to any conspiracist here, they were sent here by the same alien race responsible for the cores centuries ago in asteroids. You've actually seen one before. Everything you're fighting with comes from Zooland, these Zoolanders sent all this here and now it's in your hands."
"You mean the same planet with the dancing Gorilla? If they came up with all this, we're probably doomed." Kyle sighed as Flynn got an alert on his phone, the Racers were back, and anything more he had to tell them would need to wait.
"Looks like everyone's least favourite aliens are back. It looks like they're surrounding a heavily populated area, watch out for civilians." He finished as he watched the rangers run out to deal with whatever threat came next. 'Hopefully I can tell them the rest of the story, before something goes wrong.'
[Primal Protectors]
Within the Racer command ship, the door to the side opened revealing Meizong, who was holding a steel container of some kind. As she headed further into the viewing room, both Fuse and Hexagon caught sight of the container and knew what it meant.
"The-The beacon, it's that time already?" Fuse asked as Meizong headed over giving the container to Pivillinous.
"Cross your wires tin man, this' about to get exciting." Hexagon chuckled as Meizong placed the container on the armrest of the racer leader's seat.
"It should still be working after Hexagon stepped on it last time, but you really need to send someone to clean that repair bay, it smells worse than deck nineteen." The young Racer complained as she glanced over at Fuse, who in turn gave a gulp to express his displeasure.
Pivillinous placed his hand on the top of the container and gave a chuckle. "For once, I think I'll play a game myself, show them how great a leader I truly am, especially with a certain madman as my player." He chuckled as he lifted his hand off of the container, which Meizong opened to reveal a silver capsule sporting a large red button on its surface.
[Primal Protectors]
In an area of the city composed primarily of stone structures, the Quarter footsoldiers of the Racers were attacking civilians mercilessly, dragging them down to the floor and attacking them with their weapons.
As one of the Quarters was about to land a finishing blow on one of the terrified civilians, the red Primal Protector leapt towards it with his blade configured Pixelator, cutting it straight down the chest.
While Demetri did so, the other rangers also joined the battle with their own Pixelators in hand, fighting off the foes that were an immediate threat to any remaining civilians.
Darren was now stood atop a small stone structure fighting off two Quarters at once that stood either side of him. He struck them both diagonally down the chest before diving off of the structure as the Quarters fell off defeated. As he landed, he rolled under the sweeping blow of one of the Quarter's weapons before blocking another of the weapons with his Pixelator.
Closer to a small restaurant with a glass front to it, Nel grasped the neck of a Quarter with help from her sword and lifted herself up to flip over the foe and drop it to the ground as three more of the minions tried to attack her, only to miss.
Val was facing up against three Quarters underneath a sort of shelter in the area. As one came to attack the white ranger, she hopped up onto a small platform in part of the shelter, blocking a Quarter weapon with her Pixelator. From there she rolled along another part of the shelter, dealing two kicks to one of her opponents as she touched down on the ground again before bashing her Pixelator against another Quarter weapon and finishing her foe off with a slash down it's chest.
Just outside the shelter, Kyle slammed a Quarter into the wall before tackling another and throwing it over his shoulders. From the side, one of the Racer minions charged forward to attack him, the green ranger managed to block the blow just in time before proceeding to run at and jump of the wall to deal an downwards slash to the Quarter, finishing it off.
Demetri was now fighting in a similar sheltered area, yet it had large metal columns holding it up. As he blocked one attack from his foes, he ran forward, jumping over the platform with the metal columns with a flip before cutting down the quarter behind him.
"Alright, enough games. Primal Power Ups, Unleash!" The red ranger called as he summoned his wings and the others called upon their own Power Ups.
Flying up high before swooping down and spinning quickly, Demetri was shrouded in a fiery tornado, shredding through a line of Quarters atop one of the buildings. As he did so, Nel spann quickly to become a fast spinning disk of water, striking down a group of Quarters above the first shelter As Val attacked with her winter powered claws and Darren unleashed powerful chains of lightning from his claws. To finish off what was left of the foe, Kyle stomped on the ground hard, causing a minor quake and wiping out the remaining Quarters.
As Demetri landed on the ground by the others, they gave a sigh of relief that another fight was over for now. Or at least they thought it was. On top of a large cube that was part of a building with a pyramid on top of it, Meizong stood.
The five Primal Protectors heard a slow mocking clap coming from that direction and looked up to see the young Racer stood there. "Not bad, but you were a little slow." She said, giving a small yawn.
"It's her from before, but what's she up to?" Kyle asked as they dispelled their Power ups and came closer together, getting more tense by her sudden arrival.
"Whatever it is, she's up to no good." Val added before Meizong spoke up once more.
"My name's Meizong, my uncle sent me down here to make sure you'd all come and play his little game." She introduced herself, explaining her intentions in the process.
"Game? I don't like where this' going." Darren pointed out, being weary of what the Racers were planning today.
Nel planted her fist into her other palm. "Well, whatever it is, I'm not one to back down from a challenge."
"Trust me this game is a challenge, but aside from me having to stay here and provide some support to the game, I'll let my uncle explain it to you." She informed them, gesturing to the pyramid as a large hologram of Pivillinous Cenoric appeared behind it startling the five rangers.
"We finally meet, Power Rangers. I am Pivillinous Cenoric, leader of the Racers, the finest team in the galaxy." He introduced as the five rangers tensed up even more.
'He's their leader? At least we finally know what we're up against.' Demetri thought to himself as the Racer Leader continued.
"Every time you fight one of my players, you always insult me. Today is a matter of pride for myself, but also to test you. So today I invite you all to play a very special game." He explained, snapping his fingers and causing a large energy dome to materialise over a large portion of the city.
"I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, but I don't like where this' going." Nel added as Pivillinous let out an unsettling laugh.
Meizong began to laugh hysterically. "The forcefield is here to keep you from getting away. Inside the dome is a bomb that will kill everyone inside if it goes off, your time to stop it is getting shorter and shorter. If you want to stop it then find the bomb and press the big red button on it." She said as a hologram of the silver capsule from before appeared above her hand.
"If you beat the game, I have a special surprise waiting for you." Pivlillinous added.
"Stop screwing with us, we don't play to entertain you, no matter what you promise!" Demetri called out to the large hologram.
Once again he laughed in amusement. "Don't you see red ranger? Of course you play to entertain me, if you didn't put up a fight this entertaining, I would've destroyed your planet from the start." He finished as the hologram faded with the sound of maniacal chuckling coming from him before it shut off completely.
"There you go, get finding that bomb now, the clock's ticking." She said to the rangers.
"Wait you're staying here too? Thought you'd run off by now." Darren asked Meizong who smirked.
"I'm not too happy about being blown up, but he always makes up for getting me into these situations, either way it turns out." She replied calmly.
Demetri turned around and looked at the others. "Come on, we have to find this bomb and stop it, otherwise this whole place goes boom." As he finished, they all nodded and set off into different directions to find the bomb before it was too late.
[Primal Protectors]
The rangers began searching throughout the wide city area they were now trapped in, due to some interference from the dome around them, they couldn't contact Flynn for help. Searching high and low, the rangers either found nothing or objects that appeared to be the bomb capsule at first glance, but were just ordinary objects.
Finally, the rangers regrouped on a walkway near a building where Kyle thought he had found the object, only for it to be some sort of gardening tool.
"This' hopeless. We'll not find it, I'm not surprised really, we've got this far on sheer luck and now we're faced with a real challenge that we've got no chance of winning." He grimaced as the others gathered around.
"We can't be thinking negative here, every Racer we fought was picked to try and finish us off, the fact we keep beating them's gotta count for something." Demetri said, disagreeing with the green ranger.
"Well it isn't like we can trust all that now. We're ordinary people, we can hardly do anything that we can when we're morphed. From what Flynn says about it being alien tech, we can't even trust that now either. If we're supposed to beat this challenge with our heads, good luck with that." Darren replied as both he and Kyle walked off.
Nel looked at Val and Demetri for a moment. "I'll see what I can do about those two, get searching in the meantime." She told them as she left to fix the problem at hand with the other two rangers.
After the small row, the white and red rangers were now at an overlook in the city looking out to see if there was any sign of the bomb.
"What do you think, do we even have a chance now to beat this Pivillinous? The Kyle and Darren don't think so, and they're kinda right in their arguments now I think about it." Demetri asked Val as they leant forward on a railing.
"I don't care about the odds to be honest, if we're getting results then that's enough for me. Flynn didn't tell us the whole truth though, that's what's got them on edge, now they aren't confident with using our ranger powers and it's gonna be hard adjusting to the reality it's alien tech." She explained to him.
"You sound like you know what you're talking about." Demetri replied, before either of them could say anything else however, the red ranger winced in pain and shut his eyes tightly. "My eyes, they feel like they're on fire." He told Val as he opened them with a grunt. To his surprise, his perception of everything before him was enhanced as he looked around. Though it hadn't occurred to him, the pain was now gone as he viewed the world with much more focus before placing his eyes on a tower where he spotted the bomb capsule.
"Hey, is everything okay?" Val asked holding him steady as she did so.
"I don't know what happened, but I saw the bomb, it's up on that tower." He informed her, pointing to a cubic tower with extending platforms at the top which the silver capsule was attached to.
"The others went down there when we split up, they're closest, let's try get in contact with them." Val suggested.
Demetri was about to shout when he realised that it was too great a distance to shout over. "How're we gonna tell them from all the way over here.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Val quickly drew her Rubik Primer and flipped it open, pressing down on the communications button. "Hey, Nel. We've found the bomb, it's on a tower nearby, looks like a cube with some platforms at the top, the bomb's stuck to the underside of one of those platforms.
The other three rangers were sat on a set of steps outside an office building when they got the call from Val. Shutting her Primer and putting it away, the blue ranger scanned the area in front of her until she saw the tower containing the bomb. "It's up there! Darren, you think you can get it down?" She asked, pointing it out for the yellow ranger.
"I'm no crack shot, but even I can't miss that one. Kyle, get ready to catch it." He responded while drawing his Pixelator as Kyle stood up.
"Just try not to blow us up, I like living." Kyle replied as his teammate gave a smirk.
Taking aim, Darren fired off a few shots that hit the capsule, sending it hurtling down to the ground. As he did so, Kyle dashed forward, just managing to catch the capsule before it hit the ground. Pressing down on the large red button the three gave a sigh of relief.
As Val and Demetri regrouped with the others, they looked up to see that the large dome around them slowly dissolved into the air. As they celebrated their victory over the challenge Pivillinous hat set for them, the red button on the capsule glew brightly.
From the sky, a metallic object began falling, coming closer and getting bigger as it descended. With a heavy thud, the metallic object slammed into the ground, crushing the capsule under a large metal foot. The rangers turned around quickly to see a large and bulky machine stood before them.
The rangers' eyes widened as a red laser beam shot out from one of the mechanical arms. "What is that thing?" Kyle asked as the five of them scrambled to their feet, seeing the ground it had hit with a large area blasted away.
From the foe they were now facing, a voice came, sounding like it came from a radio of sorts. "They call me Tophats, and you're up against my super destructive Power Armour." The voice introduced himself, he sounded like a kid, an unusual foe to go up against.
From nearby, on top of one of the buildings, a laugh came, turning, they saw Meizong stood there watching. "Good job getting the bomb stopped, at least I don't have to get blown up today. This is Tophats, some genius kid in power armour my uncle and Fuse bought a while ago. That button you pressed stopped the bomb and activated a homing beacon for him to follow, the only real way we can get him down here to destroy your world really. He's also the prize my uncle promised you for beating his challenge, enjoy playing you lot." She finished as Tophats began to move again.
"Then all this was just some ploy to get us to fight another Player." Kyle realised as they braced themselves to fight Tophats.
"We should've known this' what he wanted to happen, guess all we can do now though is fight him and beat him like the rest of the Racers we've come up against." Demetri said as they stood firm.
Now facing Tophats, the five rangers drew their Rubik Primers and keyed in their numbers before bringing them around and twisting them to complete the animal symbol. "Primordial Powers, Unleash!" The five called out as they morphed in a stream of coloured pixels.
"Lord of the Skies! Primal Protector Red!" Demetri began.
"Predator of the Deep! Primal Protector Blue!" Nel called out, following on.
"King of the Jungle! Primal Protector Yellow!" Darren exclaimed, letting out a roar.
"Behemoth of the Forest! Primal Protector Green!" Kyle announced while pumping his arm.
"Stalker of the Blizzard! Primal Protector White!" Valerie finished off.
"Virtual Players, Real Heroes! Power Rangers, Primal Protectors!" The rangers called out in unison.
Wiping his helmet from bottom to top, Demetri took a breath in. "Now you're messing with pros!" The red ranger called out as the rangers drew their Pixelators in blade mode.
"Do you really want to face me and my invincible machine of doom so badly? Well it's your funeral, come at me!" Tophats challenged from within his heavily protected suit of armour as the five rangers charged toward him.
As Tophats fired off a round of explosive energy projectiles, the five rangers jumped into the air, cutting down the ones they could while dodging the numerous ones they couldn't stop. Charging forward as the barrage ended and leaping into the air, Demetri proceeded to hit Tophats with a downwards slash, only for his opponent to side step before it hit, causing the red ranger to clash with the ground instead.
"You'll have to be faster than that!" Tophats mocked as he blocked an incoming slash from Nel only a second after Demetri's attack.
Demetri stood up again and went to attack, only for Tophats to catch his leg and knock him to the ground. Darren came in quickly with his Pixelator, clashing against one of the power suit's arms before he pulled it away where Tophats then slung the yellow ranger to the ground.
Val and Nel attacked from the front and back of the armoured player, but he easily knocked the Pixelators off course. As the rangers kept unleashing an unrelenting amount of attacks, one after the other, Tophats eventually became tired of their constant and unsuccessful attempts. The next time each ranger attacked, he clamped down on their weapons and locked the rangers in place before releasing in a throw, knocking most of the rangers back and off of their feet while jabbing any of them that got close with his clamps.
Slamming his armoured arms into Demetri two more times, Tophats knocked down the red ranger, leaving them all now struggling to get back up.
Nel gave a grunt as she tried to get up. "He's strong, but we can't let him beat us yet."
"Alright rangers, I'm bored and there's an issue of mad scientist monthly I've gotta get back to reading, so I'll make sure to finish you all off quickly." Tophats explained to them as the red core in the chest of the Power Suit began glowing and lightning began surging from the suit.
The electricity grew stronger and the chains of lightning became larger until Tophats unleashed the powerful surging chains upon them electrocuting the rangers, leaving them helplessly stood there being shocked, the only thing they were able to do was scream out in pain. When the lightning stopped, the five rangers collapsed to the ground, heavily wounded.
[Primal Protectors]
Fuse, Hexagon and Pivillinous were all inside the viewing room of the racer command ship. Fuse walked toward the viewing monitor with a confident air about him.
"Tophats the child genius trapped inside a mechanical powerhouse. I've got to admit, when I first bought him from that slaver a while back, it was more out of curiosity. Seeing you use him so effectively, I'm surprised you weren't happy when we acquired him." Fuse said while looking at the Racer Leader.
"In truth, he's a liability. I send him out if I want someone dead. If he succeeds, he can keep playing for me, if the rangers beat him, I won't have to worry about keeping a crazed brute on my ship." Pivillinous explained.
Fuse smirked and looked at the other Team Leader in the room. "Hear that Hexagon, he's talking about you."
Hexagon gave a growl and began stomping after Fuse. "Get over here bowling ball head, I'm gonna carve you into something useful for a change!"
[Primal Protectors]
The rangers panted heavily as they got up to try and beat Tophats again, but they were clearly in trouble if things kept up like this. "P-Primal, Power Ups. A-Awaken!" The five of them called, struggling through the phrase as they donned their powered up forms.
In unison, the rangers charged forward, Nel diving down to deliver a surprise attack from below while Demetri soared high to come down with an attack from above. While they did so, Darren, Val and Kyle charged forward ready to hammer Tophats with everything they had.
Darren attacked first with a chain of lightning from his claws, only to be blasted aside by Tophats. Val struck with icy cutting energy only to suffer the same fate. Kyle stomped the ground, only to be blasted back by the intense power of Tophats. Nel span quickly to use her signature spinning water attack, only to be knocked into the air where she collided with Demetri causing them both to crash into the ground.
From one side of of Tophats, Val readied herself to pounce on and cut through the armour, while on the other side Darren quickly did the same, striking out to claw the mechanical shell open. From behind Kyle was also ready to attack, but Tophats easily stepped aside and watched as the green ranger went past him and straight in between the yellow and white rangers as he was struck with powerful attacks from both of their claws, staggering him while Tophats unleashed a powerful red beam of energy from the armour's core, sending them flying to the ground.
"You idiots, did you really think you'd pull one off on me, Tophats, the greatest mind in the universe? Imbeciles." He mocked as the rangers staggered to their feet.
Before they had a chance to counterattack, Tophats unleashed another barrage of red energy projectiles, blasting the rangers back to the ground and knocking them out of their powered up forms.
Darren stumbled to his feet, almost falling over. "We won't lose, to someone like you. Morphosis!" He called out, flipping the front of his helmet up and transforming into his Gorilla ranger form.
With the immense might of his Gorilla form, Demetri leapt into the air and towards Tophats, ready to slam against him with all his might. Before he could however, Tophats began sniggering as the Power Suit around him spontaneously increased in size to the size, if not greater than the size of the rangers' Megazord.
As Demetri descended, he was kicked back to the ground by the enlarged foot of the machine. The others rushed to help up the red ranger as they looked up at the now enlarged Tophats.
"He's huge. We didn't even destroy him yet, I don't get it." Val said as they watched Tophats begin to wreck the city.
"These villainous Racers never fight by the rules, I'm not that surprised." Darren added as they heard a thunderous and clearly insane laugh come from the built in speaker in the armour.
"Look who's mighty now! People laughed at me for being wrong. But now I'm gonna laugh at all you for being wrong about me!" Tophats laughed as he tore through buildings.
The rangers raised all of their current miniature zords up high as a synthetic voice sounded off from their morphers. "Primal Mounts, Awaken!" As it did so, the cubic zords raised up high, rendering into their larger forms.
Quickly forming up, the zords combined into the Primal Sharpshooter and Primal Warrior. With the Primal Warrior taking point, it began it's attack with it's standard sword, slashing down the front of Tophat's suit of armour, more accurately now, a mecha. Yet the odd shape Of Tophat's mecha entrapped the sword momentarily while the Player commanded his mecha to hammer the Megazord away with its arm.
From behind, the Primal Sharpshooter unloaded a round from it's Primal Rifle as the Primal Warrior slashed down with it's sword yet again. But Tophats was too fast and caught the weapon in its Pincer-like hand, trapping the Megazord. Coming in close the buzz saw and drill attached to the front of his Mecha began spinning until they came upon the Primal Warrior and Sharpshooter, causing them tos spark violently as they stood there helplessly, before falling backward onto the ground.
Tophats turned ready to end it as the rangers caught wind of something hurtling down from the sky.
"What's that thing coming down from the sky?" Nel asked as the Megazords heads looked over at some sort of spinning cube, coming in closer and faster.
"I don't know but it's coming straight toward us!" Kyle exclaimed as Tophats began charging up a powerful finishing move.
As the Megazords rose, Tophat's mecha unleashed two powerful green beams of energy that made contact with the two Megazords and began tearing them apart.
"Can't hold it…" Demetri groaned as the Megazords were tore apart and the rangers were flung from the cockpits to the ground.
As the beam began descending towards the rangers, now demorphed and lying helplessly on the ground, the fast flying cube from before flew into the line of fire, it was primarily dark, yet resonated with vibrant colours too. A large explosion came from the cube as it was sent hurtling into the forest where it went down in a fiery crash. Yet it had also caused the green beam to backfire, causing Tophat's weapon's to backfire and damage the mecha for the time being.
"My systems, who did that!?" Tophats exclaimed in anger as the mecha shut down to repair itself. "When my machine is operational again, you're in big trouble earth. Mark my words!" He finished as the speaker shut down so that repairs could begin.
The wounded rangers slowly rose, wincing in pain as they did. Looking around, all they could see were ruined buildings and their damaged Primal Mounts that dissolved and returned to the rangers' morphers for repair.
Although they were safe for the time being, it wouldn't be long until Tophat's and his destructive mecha were back in action. When they were, they would have to be ready for it. But with the arrival of the strange cube that just barely saved them, things would become a lot harder and a lot stranger from here on out.
|Primal Protectors|
That's Chapter 10 everyone. It turns out Flynn's being lying about what exactly the rangers had been using to morph, and it got them a little on edge about the reliability of their morphing arsenal. With the arrival of Tophats, the adaptation of GIFT, which has a character to it in this version, something I enjoyed doing this time around. Demetri's enhanced vision that found the capsule is also another thing that's gonna factor in more later, and this new stuff I'm introducing is gonna bring some more of the unique stuff of Zyuohger. For now though, the mystery is, what could that flying cube be and why is it now on earth.
The power went out for a bit last night so I got less time to write this up than I could have, but I managed at least. Yesterday I watched the new Doctor Strange Marvel film that's out over here now, so that set me back with writing this a little, but I did enjoy it, so I can't complain really. Last of all I'd like to thank everyone for the positive comments on the last chapter, it being a repetitive one I'm happy it was well received. I hope this one goes just as well. So until whatever I write next, see you all later.
Next Chapter: Primal Awakening
Synopsis: With the rangers injured and the clock ticking until Tophat's mecha is fully repaired and ready to destroy the earth, the rangers must gather all of their strength to defeat him. But with the crash landing of a mysterious cube that now lies in the forest, are the rangers prepared for what is to come? Will this sudden arrival prove beneficial or will it mark their end? Find out next time on Power Rangers: Primal Protectors.