Disclaimer: See chapter 1.
Beta-reader: Marie, a.k.a. DiscoHippie382
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POWER RANGERS: UNITED STRENGTH
Part 2: The Coming of Evil
As the light disappeared, the orb was still glowing in the middle of the room. The only thing that had changed was the gang. No more were the running shoes, the shirts and the pants. Now they were clad in a kind of colored suit, its main color varying on each of them. Gui was in a red suit with silver stripes running down the arms, on his stomach and on his knees. It also had a silver belt. There was the lion medallion on his chest. Also, he wore a red and black mask with crimson stripes coming from the rear of the head to the ears. There was also proof that his animal was the lion: above his brow was something that looked like an upper jaw, A white spot on his head reminded of eyes. The others as well wore something similar. Marie had the beak of the eagle and claws on the sides of her chin, Fred had some kind of claws over his ears, Kenny had wolf jaws and Marilyn had small antlers on her head. Andrew had dragon ears that went down to the center of the head. He didn't have the usual white eyes; his were gold. All their costumes were similar but one. Andrew worea green suit that looked like the others', but instead of the silver stripes,hiswere gold and bronze ones.
They were all gaping at each other's suits until Kenny saw that the old man had woken up in the sphere. The man on the hologram was gone. After one last look at their suits, they turned to the old man. He, too, was gaping at them. It seemed he couldn't even breathe. Andrew tried to help him but the sphere was still there, blocking the way. Again, they nodded at each other and punched the sphere. This time, it didn't even react. Not even a shiver! Why didn't it work? As they waited in hope of an answer, the old man advanced within the sphere and started talking in a old, surprised tone.
"Who are you, Rangers?" said the old man.
"Rangers?" said Kenny as Marie finally understood.
"We're now Power Rangers, guys!" She giggled and jumped around, not in a really 'ranger-ish' manner.
"What?" they all exclaimed.
"You didn't even know? Did the Earth already forget the moon base Atlas?''
"Hey, we only found this in a 2000-years-old library!" said Andrew.
"And we only came because it was our only chance, we didn't even believe it. It was kind of a lost hope," said Fred.
"Well, it's real. Its purpose was to guard Earth from Nuitaria, but now, she's free, thanks to you."
"Hey, did we know that there was an evil chick whose ambition is to take over the world?" said Gui who started to turn red.
"You should have," replied the man, getting angry.
The souting and yelling continued between Gui and the man as the others looked at each other, sighing. How many times had Gui started arguing for nothing? Finally, the near-fight subsided as the hologram man appeared. He looked different than on the hologram, which was weird. Now he was tall, had brown hair and moved with some kind of grace. He was surprised when he saw the Rangers. Not by the fact that they were Rangers but mostly because of their costumes. He had never seen them out of all the Power Rangers teams he'd seen. Astonished, he fell to the floor. He also saw the orb and gasped. The orb had subsided the hit of the punches. He was so preoccupied with the orb that he didn't notice two things: firstly the old man looking at him with surprise and angriness, and secondly the Yellow Ranger staring at him. After a few moments, she launched herself at him.
"Conner!" Marie said.
"What the hell...?" he said, pushing her away.
"But... but... but…" she said, surprised of his reaction.
"Um, Conner, right?" Said Fred as he approached.
"Yeah," he said as he thrust out his hand.
"Why did you have white hair in the hologram?" Andrew interrupted, throwing a look at Marie, meaning "We'll talk about this later''.
"Um...um… well…" he said.
"And now you've got brown hair. Were you having some fun disguising yourself?" Andrew said with a smirk on his face.
"You don't want to know," Conner said evasively.
"Yeah, we want to know!" said Marilyn, grinning broadly.
"Look, it's simple," Conner said as he thought of something.
"Great, so it won't be hard to understand," Andrew said, still wearing his smirk.
"Ok... look, to you, I'm Conner..."
"The sexy Red Dino Thunder Ranger," interrupted Marie.
"Um... yeah, and how do you know that?" he said, starting to back away from her.
"You don't want to know," said Fred, grinning.
"Go on," Kenny butted in, nodding at Conner.
"Alright, to you, I'm Conner, to other people, I'm from Earth's 11th team of protectors."
"That makes sense," said Gui.
"Alright, would anybody respect me if I looked young and dumb?"
"You're not du-" Marie started as Andrew poked her in the ribs.
"Ok, so," said the old man in the orb, butting in the conversation, "what are you going to do about Nuitaria?"
"Well, we'll fight her with our new powers," said Fred, raising his closed fist.
At that moment, a red dial flashed and another hologram appeared. Instead of Conner now stood a building. At first, nobody recognizes the cloud-scrapper until Marie said, "A giant Popsicle!"
Fred, Kenny and Andrew laughed. During a school trip to New York, they had visited the Empire State Building. Before entering it, Fred had said it looked like a giant popsicle with the red, blue and white lights at the top.
As they were staring at the hologram, they all jumped when... BOOOM! It crumbled down in a few seconds. They all saw the small people running away, yelling and screaming. They also saw a gigantic plane labelled BlackBird. A giant panel on his side slid to reveal Nuitaria's face smiling at the people down there.
"Good day, people of New York. My name is Nuitaria and I've come here to announce you that there's a shift in the leadership of Earth... Bow before the Empress of Earth, Nuitaria!"
At that moment, a dark ray shot from the front of the ship and hit the debris of the Statue of Liberty. Pieces of white-hot metal shot in every direction as the explosion shook the ground. There was no more waiting allowed. The newly-appointed Power Rangers formed in a line and waited. After a few moments of stupor, Marie took a step forward and asked, "What must we do to teleport?"
"Oh, right," said Conner, "just imagine that you're pure energy, white light. Sense it flowing through your veins, in your head, to the end of your toes."
They closed their eyes and relaxed. After a few seconds, dazzling light literally flew from within their bodies. Each teen had its respective color, and from Conner's point of view it seemed like a rainbow. "Now, think about the place you want to go and let go of the energy," said Conner, finally.
They did as said. They felt the rocks passing through every space between their atoms, they felt the bitter cold of space… they finally felt the ground under their feet and reintegrated their material form.
They immediately felt the wind. There was no wind on the moon, so they had lost this sensation. They all shivered as they looked around. They were standing in the middle of mere destruction and, hopefully, they were all there. They split up and started rescuing anyone in need of help.
As Fred was running down the street, he heard a loud scream. He went in the direction of the scream and entered a small restaurant. What he saw through the window took him aback. There was a man – well, Fred thought it was a man - wearing a dirty, bloodstained white suit. He wore a mask and this is what really caught Fred's attention. It represented mere horror. There was pain, envy, death… every bad feeling an human being could feel on it. It wasn't a pretty sight. Fred resisted the urge to throw up and saw beside the man some weird creatures. They were humanoids but seemed made of rock. Their texture was similar to that of a rock, and their eyes were red. Not just the pupil; the whole eye was red. They seemed to be underlings; the commander was talking with the white-costumed man. The commander looked similar to the underlings but its texture seemed smoother, kind of like granite, and his eyes were blue.
They were talking over a body, the source of the cry. It was a teenager, around eighteen, her face holding a terrified look. She held what were the remains of her clothes close to her body. Fred, seeing – and sensing – her horror, just went crazy. He entered the place and shouted to the creatures to let her go. There were about six or seven people in the room and they all looked at each other, seeming to laugh inwardly. One of them even cracked his knuckles in a unpleasant noise.
Fred just grinned under his mask. As he was readying himself to throw himself in the fight, he heard a voice. It was the voice of a black man; he recognized the slight accent. "You're not equipped enough to take on all of them alone. I'll explain what you must do to access your ranger weapon..."
Fred sat down before the rock-men and seemed to listen. After a few moments, the rock-men were all impatient to kill him but their commander and the man stopped them. They wanted to see what he was doing. Finally, Fred stood up and raised his arms. Doing a hard and intricate series of movements, he clasped his hands together. There was a spark and a second later, he held claws in his hands. Closing his fists around them, he made a vicious movement toward the rock-men. They all jumped at him...