Chapter Five:
Capturing the Pharaoh Mask
A loud clang filled the Vienna base as a high-security door buckled on its hinges. "Everyone get ready!" a commander shouted as soldiers rushed around, gathering weapons and taking positions along the corridor, every barrel aimed at the crumpled door.
Another bang, and the door crumpled even further. For just a moment, there was silence before one more bang sent the door flying off its hinges, slamming into the corridor and just missing a pair of troopers. The blue ranger appeared, framed in the open doorway.
"Open fire!" the commander shouted.
Guns blazed through the corridor, bouncing off the ranger's armor as he stood unfazed. Like a bullet, he took off at top speed, slamming into those soldiers closest to him, tearing their guns from their hands and crumpling them like paper.
He went after the next group, then the next, taking them down one by one with the slightest of ease. At the end of the corridor, the commander and her lieutenant fumbled with a familiar bomb, specifically designed to take down rangers, as Sean rapidly approached.
"Load it! Load it!" the commander said.
"I'm trying," her lieutenant shouted back.
Too late, Sean rushed up to the pair, knocking their heads together with a gentle push from his hands, and grabbing the bomb. He started up his birdies and raced back out of the base, taking off into to evening air and throwing the bomb with all his might into the stratosphere before it detonated. He then returned to the ground where he had left Khamun and Doctor Kuchar, picked them up, and flew back inside the base.
The commander and her lieutenant had been guarding a second heavily armored door. Sean flew right up to it, setting his passengers down and stepping over the bodies to grip the edges of the frame, tearing the door right off its hinges. Doctor Kuchar just barely managed to duck as Sean tossed the door backwards, and it slammed hard into the corridor behind them.
"Ah, here we are," Khamun said, stepping into the vault beyond. The room was large, and contained a number of items EAGLE had taken an interest in protecting over the years, a pedestal in the center prominently displaying a box full of five glowing jewels.
"Open it," the mummy ordered Sean, and the ranger obediently stepped up to the box, gripping it in his gloved hands and crushing it into pieces. Khamun reached in and withdrew the blue jewel from the wreckage, turning it over in his fingers. "We finally have you."
He looked up at Doctor Kuchar, who had had his arms crossed, a perpetual scowl on his face that he'd been wearing since the moment they left the first base. "Doctor," he said. "You studied these jewels for a time, did you not? Tell me, what did you learn of them?"
Doctor Kuchar's mustache bristled, but he obviously saw no point in being obstinate. "Nothing, really," he said. "We knew they were powerful, and we knew that the Black Cross wanted them, but they were unlike anything I had ever seen on Earth. We were at a loss for even where to start with them. So we kept them under tight security until we were sure the war was over."
Khamun studied the crystal in his hand. "I see," he said. "Way back when I was a boy, Soto used to tell me their story. It was his sole goal, you see, to find these. Would you like me to tell it to you?"
For just a moment, a glimmer of curiosity crossed Doctor Kuchar's face, but he held himself back and turned away. "Not particularly."
Khamun smiled behind his mask. "There once was a people called the Denji," he said, telling the story anyway. "Aliens, you'd call them. They lived in a," he stopped for a second, "another dimension?" His eyes glowed for a moment. "I see, the concept of the Duat is no longer a regarded concept. They lived in another dimension. They were a peaceful people, who had never known war in their history, and lived to explore and discover and learn everything they could about the world around them.
"They built for themselves a machine that would take them in an instant to any other world they wished. With it, they had explored thousands of other worlds, and met thousands of other peoples.
"Then they met the Vader Clan."
Khamun looked up at his two companions. "The Vader Clan were mighty warriors who had achieved a utopia much like the Denji's own. But their world was dying, rotting from its very core, and they had little time left. Their new queen presented a plan, a plan to use the Denji people's machine to take a new world for themselves and preserve their society.
"But the Denji stood in their way, selfishly keeping their technology to themselves, so the Vader Clan destroyed them. As they knew no war, they never stood a chance. But the Denji princess, before she was taken, broke the machine, removing the sources of its power and sending them to our world, hidden from the Vader Clan."
"These gems," Doctor Kuchar said.
Khamun nodded. He placed the blue gem back in the pile and brushed at the gray stone in his chest. "The Vader Clan did their best to replicate the technology, but it was unstable, unreliable. They couldn't keep it open long enough to send an army through. They needed the real thing. So they sent my friend through, Soto, to find them, and restore them to the machine. But the Denji's last cruel joke was to make it so that no member of the Vader Clan could ever find them, no matter how they searched. So Soto waited, biding his time, hiding in the shadows, gathering followers and steering history until humanity was advanced enough to detect them on their own."
Khamun's eyes glowed for a second. "Then one did. The Iron Mask. But he chose to use them for his own gain and kept them from the Fuhrer, selfishly letting them fall into EAGLE's hands."
The Pharaoh Mask reached into the box and withdrew the five jewels. "But now we have them," he said. "And Soto's new era can finally begin."
He stepped over to Sean and placed his fingers along the side of his head again. "Soto found the gateway itself centuries ago. You will find it at these coordinates. Find it. Unearth it. And place these gems in their intended slots. You will know them when you see them." He glanced at Doctor Kuchar. "And don't allow him to sabotage it."
Sean nodded. "Yes, sir," he said.
Doctor Kuchar looked between them. "You won't be coming with us?" he asked.
Khamun shook his head. "No," he said. "I won't be. I have a task to complete, a favor for my old friend." He looked Sean in the visor. "Come and collect me in twenty-four hours' time. I should be ready for you then. Now get going."
He placed the jewels in Sean's hand. The blue ranger clenched them and grasped Doctor Kuchar by the shoulder, starting up his birdies and taking off down the corridor. Khamun watched them go, stepping out of the vault behind them. On one wall, a screen displayed a silent alarm alerting other EAGLE bases.
"It won't be long now," he said. He looked down at the bodies at his feet to see that the base's commander had started to stir, her eyes flickering open to look up at him. "Might as well make a little more noise."
He pulled out his scepter and fired its bright red beam at her. The commander screamed as her body rapidly decayed, her skin and flesh peeling away until her skeleton collapsed into dust. Khamun turned to see her aide, wide-eyed, scrambling to get to his feet and get away. Khamun turned the scepter on him, and within seconds, he was nothing more than a pile of desiccated bones.
The Pharaoh Mask slowly made his way down the corridor, firing off his beam at every living thing he came across. Many of the soldiers were still unconscious, making them easy prey, while others got to their feet and ran as fast as they could, Khamun catching many of the slower soldiers in the back before they could get far. As he reached the end of the hall, an alert sounded, and a nearby display showed that a brightly colored flying machine had just entered the base's airspace. Khamun's eyes glowed as his mask showed him a similar image of another flying machine that had crashed some time ago.
"Here they are," he said. He stepped out of the base and looked up to see the airship from the image floating above him. A hatch on its belly opened up, and three figures descended, one a bright red, another yellow, another pink. Khamun waited calmly as the rangers touched down around him, slamming into the pavement.
"You must be Khamun," the red one said.
"Where's our friend?" the pink one demanded.
Khamun didn't answer, merely waiting as his mask gave him a positive identification on each. "You must be the Power Rangers," he said, looking at each in turn. "Soto's speculations: Joshua Cage, brother of James Cage, deceased inventor of the Ranger technology."
The red ranger clenched his fist but held his composure.
"Margaret Madison, former lover of the Tiger Mask, a deceased traitor."
Khamun thought he heard a distinct growl come from inside the pink ranger's helmet.
"And Dayton Owens Hernandez . . . the funny one."
The yellow ranger looked distinctly offended. "Oh, okay, I see how it is."
Khamun tilted his head. "Forgive me," he said, "but I'd been led to believe there were five on your team. You wouldn't happen to know where you companions are, would you?"
He reached into his robe and withdrew a small beeping tracker, the tracking device he had had the blue ranger extract from himself days before. With one clench of his fist, he destroyed it.
"Why, you!" the pink ranger shouted, launching at him at top speed.
"No, Peggy, don't!" the red ranger shouted.
Khamun brought his staff forward and blasted the ranger in the chest, hard enough to send her flying backwards and slamming into the ground. Her fellow rangers rushed to her side, helping her to her feet as the nanites covering her chest filtered out the demolished pieces there and filled the space with new ones.
Khamun tilted his head. "Interesting. Strong enough to do damage but not enough to penetrate the armor." His eyes started to glow. "I will add that to Soto's records, so that he can adjust his plans accordingly."
He clenched his fist, feeling energy coursing through his armor, similar to the energy Soto had endowed him with on the day that he challenged and killed all of Pharaoh's guards so many centuries before. "Let's learn some more."
He rushed at the rangers, grabbing hold of the red ranger and yanking him backwards. Though initially taken aback, Joshua worked himself around and grabbed hold of Khamun right back, the pair grappling with each other for a few seconds before Joshua ultimately overpowered him and threw him right into the waiting arms of the yellow ranger, who wrapped him in a tight bear hug.
Khamun pushed and strained against the ranger's grip until his armor started to creak. He stopped fighting, knowing that wasn't going anywhere, and started searching the images inside his mask for a new tactic. His eyes fell upon one possibility listed as "The Flames of Ra."
The gemstone in his chest started to glow, lines of bright light crisscrossing every crease of his armor. He let off a blast of energy that broke Dayton's hold and threw him backwards.
"Aah," the yellow ranger shouted. He tried to get up, but his suit wouldn't respond, moving in a stilted, glitchy manner. "Guys, he did something. I think he disabled my suit."
Khamun laughed, drawing his staff from within his robes again. "Let's see how your suit holds up now," he said.
Before he could fire, a long white whip lashed around him, sticking to him and binding his arms tightly to his side, the skull's jewel eyes pressed into his thigh. "I don't think so," the red ranger said, yanking him backwards.
Khamun struggled and fought against the whip, but it was no good. It held him as tightly as the yellow ranger had, strengthening itself with his every strain. He attempted to light the Flames of Ra once again, but they failed. He apparently could only use it once in a given setting. I see, he thought, making a note to himself. He stopped fighting and spread his hands, dropping the skull staff to the ground.
"Alright, rangers," he said. "You've caught me. I surrender."
The power rangers all looked taken aback, glancing at each other as Peggy helped Dayton to his feet. Five minutes later, Khamun had let himself be cuffed and bound, led onto the Tempest and up to the door of a high security cell. The pink ranger pulled it open and the red ranger pushed him inside, locking it up behind him.
"He just gave up?" General Kenpachi asked, standing beside them. The rangers nodded, Dayton rubbing at his still-glitching right arm.
Inside the cell, Khamun sat down cross-legged on the floor, meditating and touching the gemstone at his chest. A bright glow had started to burn from deep inside the stone, growing brighter and brighter every minute. A glow Khamun recognized all too well from the day he had first met Soto. "So, you're already on your way, are you?" he said. "It will be good to see you again, my old friend."