DISCLAIMER
This a fan-made, non-profit piece of fiction. Super Sentai and its related trademarks are the property of Bandai and Toei Company.
The Supersonic Power Rangers are based on characters from the Boom!Comics run, as featured in the story Psychotic, written by Trey Moore.
CHAPTER 1 — Lighting the Flame
|| Crux Calesius Galaxy, Planet Meldryn
Meldryn's capital was the most distinct of five planetary masterpieces in the solar system.
Partly inspired by the civilization's primal serpent deity, Oragate's design was an homage to the galaxy's aetheric beauty. Stretching as far back as ten thousand square kilometers, ten rows of ever growing structures spiraled around a towering spire of basalt. The house of the planetary royalty, the Obsidian Tower rose as far as Meldryn's lower atmosphere, casting a large enough shadow to regulate the city's day-and-night cycle.
But now Oragate was in disarray.
The plaza at the foot of the Obsidian Tower erupted with activity as aliens of all races fled to the surrounding ten-story habitation complexes and corporate colossi. Their screaming chorus bolstered the blaring of alarms that roared from within the central structure. Smoke, grimy and pitch-black, leaked from the spire's shattered panes and violated main entrance.
The ground floor reception desk once decorated with burnished furniture and awards celebrating Medlryn's prestige, had been long swallowed by tongues of azure flame. The elevation system was in shambles, the cars sunken past the Obsidian Tower's foundations, where the underground tunnels that once shaped Oragate trailed forgotten snake paths.
Inside these reaches, steel scraped against cold steel as blades met. One strike, followed by another, forced the Red Prism Ranger to parry. With the Prism Sword singing, he sidestepped his adversary's lunge and rolled to the side.
"You're not a worker. Who are you?" the ranger demanded between gulps of air. His posture was hunched in a telltale sign of exhaustion.
His enemy was a figure cloaked in an ashen white robe, laconic and unpredictable in movement.
"You Power Rangers are so thick-headed," said the stranger. "All I needed to do was exploit your fickle sense of justice." He pressed on the last word with a condescending sneer.
Irked by the insult, the Red Prism Ranger readied his sword in a defensive stance. Using the stalemate to his advantage, he retraced the events that led to this confrontation: The ranger team had responded to a distress signal, a call for aid from the planetary government after a terrible workplace accident had resulted in fire, with more than half of the Obsidian Tower's employees being trapped in the inferno.
A setup.
The Power Rangers had discovered a crater at the spire's base, the lip still sizzling with molten matter. Compelled to explore further out of concern for the endangered workers, they ventured inside, only to be met by a cloaked assailant that greeted them with a raised dagger; a silent dare of challenge.
The rangers had come at him, fighting with blade and blaster, but this opponent was leagues stronger than both the minions and monsters they'd faced countless times before him. Returning to the present, the Red Prism Ranger's gaze darted from left to right so as to spot his teammates. Blue, Green, Yellow and Pink had fallen. Bawled over and wincing in pain, their single comfort were the flames that crept closer by the second.
"For years you've saved civilian lives in this galaxy," the stranger continued, "but now you're the ones in need of rescue." He chuckled. "Ironic, isn't it?"
The Red Prism Ranger shook his head. "It doesn't matter. We're the Power Rangers, and you will soon be one less threat to the galaxy," he retorted and shifted his sword stance.
The cloaked figure cocked his head. "Oh Red, you stubborn fool. You've already lost. Your team never stood a chance to begin with. Why did they rely on such an incompetent guy?"
"I'm their leader!" the Red Prism Ranger countered. "What good am I if I can't fight when the going gets tough?! I'll defend them, both my team and this planet, till my last breath!"
The mysterious man stiffened. He scoffed. "That mentality of yours, this… stupidity, is what makes me really angry!"
Like a hungering predator, the man charged with torso lowered and arms spread, the fiery plumes surrounding him and his prey bouncing off of his dagger as brilliant, emerald light. The Red Prism Ranger raised his own blade overhead, ready to meet his adversary.
A flash of green crossed with a red, downward chop.
Silence.
"You… have no honor!" the Red Prism Ranger roared, a shower of sparks suddenly erupting across his body. His back arched and a strangled cry escaped the ranger's lips as he dropped to his knees, head dropped, the Prism Blade still in his hands.
"Honor can only take you so far," the stranger mused. He moved closer. "Sadly, it's too little, too late for you to learn this lesson."
His hooded face fell on the Prism Morpher, strapped to the ranger's wrist.
"I'll be taking that," he said and yanked it off, forcing the ranger into demorphing.
The Red Prism Ranger donned his Horathian heritage with pride. Bare from the waist up, a scalebound hide that coated his half-reptilian scalp ran along his back and covered the entirety of his left arm. The assembly was held together by an exoskeletal stabilizer that circled around his midsection.
"No, don't!" the ranger pleaded, ceasing the man by the forearm. A forked tongue unfurled with each wheeze.
"What," he breathed. "What do you want from us?!"
The man snorted at the question. "Quit your crying. It's nothing personal." He paused in what the Red Prism Ranger perceived to be a contemplative moment.
"I'm simply fulfilling a decade-old promise," the man said and inched closer.
The Red Prism Ranger stared into the shadowy abyss that lay underneath the stranger's white hood. Soft and perfectly round eyes filled with abject terror at the familiar sight of a Power Ranger's black lens.
"Lighting the flame for any ranger to come after them," the mysterious man finished.
He turned his gaze to the stolen morpher. "Well, I should be going now," he said nonchalantly. "And here I thought I'd have to cut your arm off to get this."
The stranger rose, dusted his cloak and walked away from the downed ranger team. His steps rang with deafening monotony as a curtain of fire closed behind him; the finale to the Prism Rangers' tragedy.
He'd blended with the panicked crowd like a needle in the haystack.
Authority troopers had flocked to the Obsidian Tower, armed with anti-fire barriers and hydro suppressors, and though they'd succeeded in preventing any additional damage, populace agitation had also attracted heightened security measures. To evacuate meant undergoing invasive check-ups, a process the cloaked stranger had no time or interest in.
For all the innovative systems Oragate had introduced over the millennia, its means of control were nothing the stranger hadn't bypassed before. He headed south, phasing past barricades and shadowing patrol routes. The thrill of the hunt was nonexistent when faced against automata, and as such his predatory bloodlust remained but an afterthought tickling at his senses.
He rode atop the catapult train and branched outward to Row Four, eventually stopping at the LifeStream manufacturing company. The geographical coordinates had been of little importance to the man, the landing choice based primarily on the ironic amusement he derived from the contrast between the logo and his purpose on Meldryn.
With every dagger swing, emerald steel bit into reinforced poly-fiber, which the man then used to propel himself higher, each leap an opportunity to admire the fruit of his labors. He relished the sight of the fiery afterglow casting a large shadow over Oragate's crowning structure, and even more so the new meaning he attributed to it.
A tomb for the Prism Rangers.
The stranger's spaceship had been docked on the rooftop, its cloaking system a primal thing, but effective nonetheless. With a thought he opened the side hatch, took his seat in the cockpit and dialed the activation sequence. The archaic engine would take some time to come alive, but the man wasn't in a hurry. Quite the contrary, he wished to prolong his stay in order to bear witness to one, final act.
There was another explosion.
Bigger than its predecessor, the release of condensed dark matter created a matching crater at the Obsidian Tower's opposite end. Once smooth obsidian crumbled to ash, the structure's grand foundations reduced to a sloppy deformity of their former selves.
The spire began to topple. Underneath his helmet, the man was grinning.
"Another ranger team down," he breathed, "many more to go."
Confident that nobody could land an inquisitive gaze on him any more, the stranger threw back his cloak and proceeded to DNA identification.
Psycho Green, the projector announced in robotic monotone. Once the right hand man of the Evil Monarch, Dark Specter, the corrupt Power Ranger had been classified as M.I.A. after a mission on planet Earth's satellite, and had stayed out of sight for many decades since.
A green light flashed at the edge of his vision, followed by a click and beep. Psycho Green pulled a lever and tightened his grip around the flight stick, certain the machine would attempt to wrestle for control.
The spacecraft raised itself on rusty thrusters, spewing twin streaks of cyan wash. It turned in mid-air, craned its beak skyward and took flight. The ship accelerated near the stratosphere, reaching speeds that broke the sound barrier and promptly switched to hyper-jump, blinking into temporary nothingness.
Like a creature of legend felled by an almighty blow, the most distinct of five planetary masterpieces landed with a deafening crash and split Meldryn in half.
|| Aquila Hyperion Galaxy
Reality was torn asunder.
A deep gash carved itself into the veil of space and forced the stars to part. Tongues of aethereal energy spilled out to the material plane, rippling with menace as if addicted to an insatiable craving. Ululations that came frighteningly close to laughter scratched at the edge of Psycho Green's hearing, but he paid no mind to the cosmic distortion as he stirred the ship out and away from the chasm.
FTL drive deactivated, the spacecraft's built-in AI sounded. Psycho Green proceeded to harness a fraction of the otherworldly energy and promptly buried it in a clenched fist. A screen to his left, connected to the ship's rear camera, projected the abnormal gate as it sucked back the immaterial pseudo-organisms and sealed itself shut.
Everything was made right again.
Psycho Green didn't need to dial predetermined coordinates into the astro-gram to find his way around the warped realm. A privilege granted to him by Dark Specter, he had traversed the plane many times before, each venture granting him improved clarity as to its subtleties. Psycho Green's maneuvering of the invisible winds had become so skilled, he eventually became able to actively control them.
And every time he did, his mind's eye would lead him to Xybria; the home planet Psycho Green had long abandoned.
The third of seven planets in the Hetta solar system, Xybria had thrived during the past two millennia. Faster-than-light travel had ironed out the planet's isolationist policy and had served as a gateway for a second era of prosperity that balanced economic renewal and environmental preservation.
Psycho Green tilted the flight stick and the ship banked on twin thrusters, trailing radiant luminescence. Breaking past Xybria's atmosphere, he soared northward and stopped at the continent closest to the pole. There, he dialed a new command, prompting the aircraft's thrusters to rotate into a stationary position and hover near the cliffside shore.
Anything to not scar the land any further.
Psycho Green disembarked and traversed the mended soil on foot, coming across a vast flower field that stretched as far as his eyes could see. His cloak brushed past buds tall enough to reach his knees, the array of multi-colored petals painting the fabric with striking shades of magenta, yellow and turquoise pollen.
Such a grand amalgamation of rare and exotic flower types required great amounts of care to sustain, and the meaning behind such an arduous task didn't go over Psycho Green's head.
"Even after all this time," he mused, the words pertaining to nothing in particular.
Slowly, carefully, Psycho Green walked to the flower field's center and stepped into an open marble memorial. Bleached white by the sun, six menhirs towered over his shrouded form, lined up and inscribed with Xybrian glyphs. Psycho Green walked past them, stopping at the second-to-last one. He knelt before it, removed his helmet and set it aside. He didn't bother sweeping back loose tufts of shoulder-length green hair as he pressed his fingers on the memorial, feeling the lettering etched into the stonework.
In a rare display of sentimentality, the corrupted ranger's touch was gentle, loving even, and his gaze stoic, but still betraying melancholy.
"Nyer," he read the name aloud. "Star."
Psycho Green didn't bother with the rest. He didn't much care about them anymore. Not even for his own menhir, situated next to Star's.
"Even though it was many, many years ago," Psycho Green mused, "everything feels like it happened just yesterday."
He kept his head dropped and the gem embedded on his forehead shimmered as he whispered a prayer for the most important person in his life.