There was a lot of metal on Titan. Indeed, it covered almost every inch of the moon's surface. Even the frozen lakes had been built over. If what Fauna knew about satellites like this was correct, then many of its natural resources lay under the surface. In that way, the infrastructure might have even protruded well underneath the crust, and possibly even into the mantle. Omega had told them about what became of the solar system in the year 3100, but never hinted at just how bad it was. It made her skin crawl.
The process of getting there answered one of Fauna's questions, however, which was likely the one and only silver lining. Since Omega made it clear their mission would take place through time and space, literally, that raised the obvious concern of how they would go about fighting such a battle. Omega, in all of their strange powers, had the ability to teleport them through the continuum to more or less wherever they wanted. This allowed them to pick the perfect moment to intercept one of the five Great Generals and eliminate them. So, that was how they ended up on Saturn's largest moon.
Where they ended up, though, was cause for a bit of contention. Fauna would have liked a nice little quiet corner. Or, failing that, a dark alley, or abandoned house, or anything else, really. But, no. Instead, Omega plopped them right down in the middle of a busy sidewalk. The people, to their credit, didn't seem overly phased by a quintet of girls appearing out from a cloud of sparkles. That may have been a bad thing, though. How disaffected did the populace have to be, that they wouldn't even take notice of something so strange?
Fauna took a look around. In their explanation of the setting, Omega had called this a space colony. While Fauna wasn't the interstellar expert among them, this place certainly looked the part. This was an inner-city of some sort, the very heart of a metropolitan area. The buildings all around them were tall and slim constructions of metal and glass ever-so-slightly blue tinted. This may have been a strange comparison, but it reminded her of a futuristic and more densely packed New York City.
Behind them and on the other side of the street was a sort of memorial park, green grass with a two-tiered elliptical fountain and a metal statue of some guy. Even from this distance, Fauna could tell everything about it was fake. The grass was astroturf, the water was being recycled, and the statue contained so many different metals it might as well have been a super-alloy. It was everything she hated about Earthly cities condensed into one little square plot and amplified ten-fold.
The people, for the most part, looked clean and well put together. They wore a mix of casual affair. None looked overly fancy, but there were only a few slobs amongst them. They kept their gazes down and mostly appeared concerned with their own tasks, whatever they might have been. Fauna never spent much time in cities, but she assumed this was how the people from them always looked.
"Alright, Omega, we're here," Sana said into her Morpher. "Any idea where to start?"
"Try chatting up the locals." Omega's voice came out of Sana's Morpher, a utilization of the communicator functions the devices all had.
Baelz leaned in. "You think they'll just tell us what they know?"
"No, I don't, because I'm pretty sure they don't know. They might be able to point you toward someone who does, though," explained Omega.
"So it's a wild goose chase in a haystack? Great." Kronii rolled her eyes.
Baelz laughed. "Never heard that one before. I like it."
"Get it done, Rangers," Omega said. "Figure out where you can find the General and take them down. I wouldn't have chosen the five of you if I didn't think you were up to the task."
"Thanks, Omega," Sana said.
"Let me know if you need anything." A click signaled that Omega had terminated the connection.
A silence spread through the girls, just long enough for Fauna to feel uncomfortable. Here they were, plopped right into the middle of a strange city, on a foreign planet, at a time far in the future, and they were supposed to just start talking to people? She didn't consider herself particularly socially anxious, but the thought of it made her heart race.
"Well, come one, guys. Let's go, I guess," Baelz said. She began walking up the street, away from the park, which was enough for the other members to fall in around her.
"Any idea where we should start?" Fauna asked.
"Let's see if there are any good juice bars around," suggested Mumei.
"Any what?" Kronii demanded.
"I mean, doesn't most of Power Rangers take place in a juice bar?" Mumei defended her suggestion.
"I thought that was a gym," Baelz said.
"It was both, wasn't it? A gym and a juice bar? Kinda like Planet Fitness," said Sana.
"That's as good a place as any, really. Salons, bars, malls, anywhere the people gossip," Baelz said.
And so it was decided. The girls would wander aimlessly until they found a place of gossip. It shouldn't have been too hard. Cities like this were usually packed with services. People always needed a whole variety of things, after all. When people gathered, they tended to talk. All the five of them needed to do, then, was find a group to integrate with and then start asking questions. Easy enough.
As they continued to traverse the municipality, however, Fauna realized the flaw in the plan. While the futuristic buildings were all neat ant tidy, they were also quite samey. Humankind figured out long ago, both in her native time and in the future, the best ways to build things. Efficiency gave rise to expansion, but also to process. Where logic prevailed, creativity dwindled. All of these buildings looked exactly the same. Fauna had no idea where she was, nor where to go.
The citizens were of no help, either. Normally, as one moved through a town like this, the crowds would change in composition based on location. However, after an hour of walking, the people remained rather uniform. The same casual dress, the same silence, the same downcast gaze. These folks clearly had places to be and things to do, none of which involved anyone else. The task for the Power Rangers, then, became all the more daunting. If these people weren't even talking to each other, what reason would they have to speak with a bunch of strangers?
Through the seeming monotony, however, Fauna found prosperity. These folks were clean and focused. They lived in an expansive metropolis that had quite obviously done well for itself. That they had tasks to complete meant they probably had jobs. More than one of them held shopping bags, further confirming this suspicion. There were plenty of cars congesting the motorways.
So, the people had money to spend on lives full of engagement in a town of endless possibilities, all of this under the rule of Solstice Flux. And he was supposed to have an iron fist? If not for the time period and the knowledge that they were on a different planet—technically a moon—Fauna would have no reason to think this were anything other than a typical gotham.
There was one weird thing, though, something she began to notice more and more as they continued to trek. There were robots everywhere. These creations were vaguely cylindrical in overall shape, with flat octagonal heads atop spindly corrugated necks. This same pleated pattern followed their limbs to disturbingly human-like hands and boots. Their torsos could be thought of as two sections. The upper-chests were made of solid, smooth sheet metal. The lower comprised a big spiraling section that transitioned into the aforementioned legs, the gaps between these thick bands large enough to just barely see through.
Everywhere they went, they were avoided. The people, already focused mostly on the ground, turned their faces away and gave a wide berth to these robots whenever they came through, which they did at regular intervals. Both sides of the road were heavily patrolled, and the robots stopped for nothing. Several of them had already barged their ways past the girls, who didn't know at first to get out of their way. The machines weren't overly bothered by this, at least not on the outside, but they also made no attempt to apologize for barreling on through.
The roads weren't much better. At times, it seemed as though every other vehicle was a cop car, done up in broad swaths of blue and silver with red lights on top and the appropriate writing to denote their status. Each car had at least two patrolmen inside. Seeing this made Fauna realize there were no flying cars like she would have expected of the future, but that just made the police presence even worse. Less ground to cover meant the population of police officers was even denser that it would be otherwise.
All of these authority figures walking about may have seemed unsettling on the surface, but they helped maintain a healthy order. There was no obvious crime to speak of, and the machines never interacted with the populace outside of walking past them. Perhaps they didn't inspire overflowing amounts of joy, but they kept the peace. Such was the trade-off for a functional society. Lions, wolves, and bees displayed similar traits. It was natural.
After walking for their first hour in silence, Kronii finally broke the ice.
"You know, I'm not really getting any evil emperor vibes," she said. "This place doesn't seem all that bad."
"Neither does Detroit from downtown, but walk ten minutes in any direction and the illusion falls apart," countered Mumei. "Look around. Has anyone met your eyes yet? Have they spoken a single word?"
"I... don't think so? I didn't notice," Kronii admitted.
"Well, they haven't. They don't even look at each other let alone us. I'm not sure how, but these people have been beaten down. They lost hope a long time ago," Mumei determined.
"It probably has something to do with all of the mooks walking around," observed Sana. "They're the same ones we fought back on Earth, right?"
"Pretty sure, yeah. I remember how dumb they look," Fauna confirmed.
"Screwbots. I've been calling them screwbots," Baelz added.
"Insulting yet funny, I like it," commended Sana.
"It'll probably tick off Solstice Flux, too, which I'm all for." Kronii added her approval.
Fauna change the subject. "This is fun, but we aren't getting anywhere. How long have we been walking? What have we learned?"
"Nothing," said Sana.
Mumei shrugged. "I guess none of us really know what to do."
"I have an idea. Excuse me, sir." Baelz stepped slightly away from the group and stood in front of a passing middle-aged gentleman. He stopped and turned wide brown eyes up to her, clearly shocked that he'd been spoken to.
"Yeah?" He croaked.
"Know anywhere around here a bunch of girls can let off some steam?"Baelz asked.
The man hesitated before pointing over his shoulder. "Two blocks, that way. Coffee shop."
"Okay. Thanks, mister!" Baelz said. The two parties went their separate ways, with the man jogging away for a few steps. "Well, he was kinda jumpy."
"I would be, too, of some random girl started talking to me out of nowhere," Kronii said.
"What? I'm not random," Baelz protested.
"Bae, sweetheart, you're easily the most random of the group," Sana said.
"What? I don't believe this," Baelz continued to argue, but this time in jest.
"Going off what Mumei said, you might be the first stranger to talk to him in quite a while," suggested Fauna. "You probably spooked him."
"Oh." Baelz downcast her eyes. "Now I feel kinda bad."
"Don't," responded Kronii. "We would've had to ask someone eventually. Might as well have been him." While these words didn't seem to improve Baelz's mood, she at least refrained from bringing it up further.
Walking the described two blocks brought them right to the promised establishment. Red and silver signage denoted the place as The Grindhouse, a clever name all things considered. Situated at the bottom of a tall building it was, far and away, the most normal thing any of the girls had seen so far. Seating both inside and out suggested the place was rather popular, with few of the table unoccupied and many of them hosting multiple occupants. There was still little in the way of conversation, however, even among groups. What talking did occur was kept to low levels, like loud whispers in a library. The Rangers stood on the sidewalk just before the fenced off outside dining area.
"Alright, now what?" Mumei asked.
"I guess we can start with the waitstaff?" Sana suggested. She followed her own ida and approached a short, cute girl in a red apron. "Excuse me, ma'am."
"Oh!" The waitress startled at Sana's presence. "Yes, can I help you?"
"I was just wondering," Sana began. "I'm looking to start a small business here in town. Do you know where I might go to file the paperwork?"
Just like the man had, the waitress hesitated. She took a small step back, leaning to create even more distance. She quite overtly looked up and down the street before responding.
"I'm sorry, I can't help you. I... I don't know anything about that." The waitress scurried off, disappearing inside the establishment.
Sana returned to the group. "That was odd. Was it something I said?"
"Maybe they don't like small businesses here," joked Baelz.
"What was that about, anyway?" Kronii asked.
"I was trying to find a government office. Get someone who knows what they're talking about, like Omega said," explained Sana.
"In that case, what you want is a post office. Watch." Baelz broke off to approach a man sitting alone, fiddling with some sort of ultra-thin tablet computer. "Hi, sir. I was wondering if—"
"No," he cut her off.
Baelz recoiled at his brashness. "I just wanted—"
"You deaf? I said no." He glanced up at her before returning to his work. Baelz hung around him for a second, stupefied, before shuffling back to the group.
"Well, that didn't work," she said.
"Hey!" A voice called out to them. They looked up in relative unison to see an older woman shouting from inside. "If you're not gonna order anything, then please leave!"
"We were just—" attempted Kronii.
"I don't care. Order something or leave. Stop harassing my customers."
"Alright, sorry," Sana said, and then turned to the girls. "Come on, let's go."
Confused and a little bit dejected, the Rangers moved on from the little shop, continuing up the road in the direction they had been traveling.
Now that they knew more or less what to look for, finding establishments like this was easy. Dealing with them, however, was not. Everywhere they went told more or less the same story. Indeed, some of the people the interacted with made these ones seem positively pleasant. No matter what they tried, what conversation the started, what tone they took, all they ever received was the cold shoulder. On more than one occasion, little earpieces Fauna assumed were cellphones came out. It didn't take a genius to figure out who was on the other end of the line. In these instances, the girls beat feet faster than normal away from the premises.
This went on until the sun began to set. The avatar of nature in Fauna realized this must've been an artificial occurrence. She'd noticed immediately upon arriving that the cloud-splotched blue sky was a fake projection. According to Sana, Titan's atmosphere was not breathable, which meant the entire colony had to be closed in. How could a closed system have a sunset? That none of this bothered her too much indicated just how frustrating the day had been.
Presently, the Rangers walked out of an electronics store, having received the same treatment as before. Fauna closed her eyes tight against the outside lighting as it overtook her senses. Even though it was nowhere near her bedtime, she was exhausted. Dealing with the most uncooperative people in the galaxy took it out of her. She wanted to make this her last stop of the day, but knew they couldn't afford that. Titan couldn't afford that. They had no time to slack off. So, Fauna grit her teeth and set her resolve. Maybe the next one would be better.
"Oh, now what?" Kronii said.
Her tone caused Fauna to open her eyes. Instead of the monotonous humdrum of an uncaring populace, she instead beheld a mob of robots. The were screwbots, as Baelz had christened them, but one was unique. He—it?—followed the same basic design principle, except that he wore a blue and gold sash across his chest.
"What do you want?" Sana asked, crossing her arms.
The unique screwbot answered. "We heard you lot have been asking questions. We don't like it when people ask questions." It spoke with a typical- sci-fi robot voice, though he had no mouth.
"Okay, that's nice, but it doesn't answer my question. What do you want?" Sana reiterated, forcefully this time.
"We want to figure out why you're so curious. Come with us, so we can talk in private."
"You're arresting us?" Baelz scoffed. "Mate, that's not a good idea."
"Don't make this difficult. All we want is to find out who you are, and what you're doing." The screwbot tried to be reasonable.
"I don't think you understand. We're not going anywhere with you. Period." Kronii made her decision final.
"If you won't go willingly, then we will bring you in by force."
"Try it and see what happens," threatened Baelz.
"Have it your way. Take them!"
The screwbots surged forward. The girls assumed fighting stances before covering the short distance to meet them. Fauna greeted the first to reach her with a pair of fists to the face. One came at her left and received a push kick for its troubles. Then, swinging her foot down, Fauna twirled into a big jumping heel kick with a backspin. This vicious attack brought down three screwbots.
To her left, Baelz managed to jump, catch the head of a screwbot between her knees, and then use her momentum to wrench the enemy down. Then, from the ground, she rolled onto her back and kicked up with both feet at a robot trying to fall atop her. It popped up into the air, destined for the ground. Baelz made it around to one knee and threw out both fists at diagonals to score another pair of victories.
She was probably fine. Seeing this, Fauna focused on her own battle. She trapped an incoming punch against her collarbone, and gave the attacker a backfist. As she released this bot and it fell, two more came at her. She gave a sidekick to one, while the second fell pray to a flying kick from Sana. The two girls fought side-by-side. When Fauna threw a kick in one direction, Sana punched in the opposite. The separated briefly for a flurry of punches into their enemies, and then came back together to assault the ones that had made it between them. Sana performed a crescent kick. Fauna ducked beneath it so the attack could hit a bot. At the same time, she spun there low to take out the legs of another opponent. Sana jumped so as to avoid falling to the same sweep. She did a backflip over Fauna's head to land on the other side of her, coming down with a kick as she did. The wrecked bots piled up around them, as they were unstoppable when working together. After this, Sana broke off to pursue other enemies.
The screwbot wearing the blue and gold sash finally joined the fray. Convenient, that it only did when Fauna was alone. It came at her and actually managed to place a kick into her liver. Fauna held where the attack had hit and stepped back, just out of range. It followed with a trio of fists, two to the head and one to the body. Fauna blocked all three before answering with her second backfist. The screwbot took the hit on its cheek and spun with the impact, a wheelkick at the termination of this twirl which Fauna leaned away from.
Fauna closed the distance with a jumping double kick, an attack that made contact twice on the chest. The screwbot absorbed the kicks. A lack of facial expressions made it impossible to tell how effective the hits were, but it did sport a nice dent in the torso. So, obviously injured, the bot made an attempt to step back, but Fauna was on it. The enemy tossed out a desperate jab. Fauna caught the arm and pivoted, using one foot to latch behind the bot's knee while the other planted on the ground. She bent double, hauling the helpless foe up over her back, past her head, and flat onto the concrete.
When it was down, Fauna went for the mount. She placed one knee in the dent on its chest, holding it down. The other laid over its metal neck. This probably had no real effect on an entity that didn't breath, but it gave her further control. One fist drew back, ready to punch. The two combatants locked gazes. Strange, those mechanical glowing white eyes almost looked afraid.
"You wanna know what we want, fine," Fauna said. "All we want is to know who's in charge of this colony."
The screwbot, of course, hesitated. No being at any level of consciousness wanted to give up important information at a whim. Its tongue loosened, however, when the other Rangers gathered around. Each of the girls made sure to stand next to Fauna in an arrangement where they could be easily seen. On its back and surrounded by superior opponents, the screwbot knew it was beaten. Its posture relaxed and it almost seemed to sigh.
"His name is Bracer. He won't be there right now, but you can find him at the city center municipal building from nine to five."
"Thank you." Fauna showed her gratitude by punching out the screwbot. It did whatever the robot equivalent of losing consciousness was. Its eyes blinked dark and it slumped. She stood.
"Well, that was easy," Baelz said. "We should've fought with the cops way sooner."
"I'm not sure I like brute-forcing my way through every situation, but I agree that would've been a lot faster," echoed Sana.
"I've never encountered a problem a fist couldn't solve." Mumei said. Whether she meant it or not was unclear, which was kinda scary.
"Speaking of problems, though," Kronii said, "what do we do about our current one?
"All we can do is wait," Baelz decided. "We find some place to lay low, and then go find this Bracer in the morning."
"Lay low where? I don't think this place takes Australian dollars." Kronii brought up a good point.
"I think I have an idea." Sana held her Morpher to her mouth. "Hey, Omega."
A pause before they responded. "I'm listening."
"We have a lead, but we can't pursue it right now. Think we could stay the night in your house and then you can teleport us back here at, like 6 AM?"
"Sure, that shouldn't be a problem. Stand by."
Technicolor sparks rose up from the ground all around the five girls, encompassing their every sense for a split-second. When they dissipated, the Rangers stood in the same living room they'd been in the day before, complete with its big television and beanbag chairs. They did have a room to stay in, which they had done the previous day. It was probably just easier for Omega to put them there. No matter. Now that the girls knew how to navigate the strange little dimension, getting to their rooms was easy enough.
Fauna wasn't sure how she would sleep. They had a big day tomorrow, and most assuredly a long road ahead after that. Bracer was only one piece to a much larger puzzle. Just—she suspected—like the others, she wanted to finish this Solstice Flux business soon and go back to her life. However, given how taxing this day had been, a quick solution seemed impossible. At this point, the most she could hope for was that their plan went off without a hitch.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: A fan has created a TV Tropes page for my other PR fic, Power Rangers Mythos! I'm shocked and almost at a loss for words that something like this would happen. That my work resonated so much with someone means the world to me. Huge shoutout for Marcus S. Lazarus for creating the page. I know it's bad form to promote a different fic in author's notes, but this is too cool to not share. Please take the time to give it a look at: tvtropes /pmwiki/Fanfic/PowerRangersMythos (just add the .org)
This is quickly becoming a comfort fic for me. My other two require a lot more research and a delicate attention to existing lore. Since HoloCouncil is fairly new, and what I'm dealing with here is basically an AU, I have a lot more freedom to improvise. I can really feel my creativity flowing whenever I work on this project.
Please remember to leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed this chapter. What do you think the Rangers will do now that they have the beginnings of a plan in place? How will they deal with the first Great General? Fauna borrowed some choreography from a fellow Green Ranger in the fight. Can you figure out what move she used?