Town Square
Metro City, Canada
May 8th, 2015
10:32 PM
"Riley Bishop"
We all stared in awe at the stranger. His suit and helmet are almost identical to ours, which means his powers probably come from the same source as ours, but if our connection to the Morphing Grid was severed, then why didn't it affect him?
"See? What did I tell you?" said the Stranger, "If I had told you who I was before jumping down like that, your reactions wouldn't have been nearly as good!"
"But you still haven't told us who you are." said Marcus.
"I was getting to that!" sighed the Stranger, "Geez! Is everyone else in this city as impatient as you?"
"He's one of us, isn't he? A Power Ranger." asked Chloe.
"Hardly!" said the Stranger, "I am... The Renegade Ranger."
"Did Silver send you here to help us?" asked Rachel,
"If he did, I wouldn't have listened," said the Renegade, "I don't take orders from anyone."
"Then you don't deserve to be a ranger." I said.
"You've got it all wrong," said the Renegade, "Its people like me who deserve power more than anyone."
I glared at him.
"All you ever do is what you're told," said the Renegade, "If you wanted to, you could rule this city! But instead, you let your powers go to waste and play second banana to people that are weaker than you."
"It's not my place to rule this city," I said, "All I'm doing is protecting it for the people that do."
"That's exactly my point," said the Renegade, "You're so busy protecting everyone else that you never stop to think about yourself once in a while."
He punched me right in the chest. I was sent flying and crashed into a nearby building. If only I had been morphed, I might've been able to withstand the blow.
"RILEY!" shrieked Rachel, running over to me.
"Like that for example!" bellowed the Renegade, "You could've stopped me from doing that if weren't stuck on a leash held by your master."
"You'll pay for that!" snarled Oz.
"No, don't!" I groaned, "He's not worth it."
"If you didn't come here to help us, then why did you come here?" asked Marcus.
"This city is self contained," said the Renegade, "Isolated from the rest of the world. Which means that once I let people know who's boss, I can turn this city into my own personal playground."
"You'll have to go through us first..." I said, clutching my chest while trying to get to my feet.
"That can be arranged," said the Renegade, "I already destroyed all the monsters. I'll take you out without breaking a sweat."
"Download weapon!" he called.
His weapon was a glorious, elegant scythe. It appeared in his hand exactly the same way as ours. He stepped towards us, pointing it at us menacingly. But then he stopped. Even though I couldn't see his eyes, I could tell that he was staring at us.
"Ugh..." he said.
He put his weapon away and turned to leave.
"Consider yourselves warned," said the Renegade, "Stay out of my way or else."
He jumped high into the air and disappeared into the shadows.
"Riley? Are you okay?" asked Rachel, who still seemed to be in shock from when he punched me.
"I'll be fine," I grunted, "But we had better tell Silver about this."
"Stephen "Silver" Silverstone"
"You should not have awoken me," said the Phoenix, "Trojan is searching for me all the time, desperate to absorb my powers."
"I apologize," I said, "But I didn't know who else to turn to."
"The Morphing Grid has been damaged," said Jenna, "The rangers are powerless until it's fixed, and neither of us know how to do it."
"Well, at least you had a good reason for contacting me," said the Phoenix, "I will attempt to repair the Morphing Grid for you. But I cannot guarantee that it will work."
"Does this mean that you're counting on my ranger team to protect you?" I asked.
"It does." said the Phoenix.
"See, Stephen? You've done good." said Jenna, patting me on the back.
"After this I must go back into hibernation," said the Phoenix, "Only your chosen leader will have the potential to reawaken me."
"Riley said the same thing." said Jenna.
"Thank you." I said.
"What kind of program would I be if I refused to help one of the people that helped create me?" said the Phoenix.
To anyone that couldn't see the screen of the laptop Jenna loaned me, it would've looked as though I had gone insane and was talking to an inanimate object. But in reality, the Phoenix and I had essentially been having a sort of webcam chat, except, when looking at the Phoenix in its digital form, it looks just another string of binary.
"Silver!" moaned Riley's voice from behind us.
"What are you doing here!?" I gasped, "I didn't call for you!"
I turned to face them, hopped out of my chair and walked over to them.
"I didn't realize we weren't allowed to come here without an invitation." said Marcus.
"That's not what I meant," I said, "You just startled me is all."
It wasn't until just then that I realized something was wrong. Rachel and Heath both had their arms around Riley, and were helping him walk.
"I specifically told you not to try fighting viruses!" I snapped.
"We didn't," groaned Riley, "We met up at Town Square to talk about why there had been absolutely no virus activity during the last week."
"And then a purple ranger showed up," said Marcus, "Apparently he had been fighting all the viruses behind the scenes this whole time."
"But that's impossible," I said, "There's only five codecs that are currently active and none of them have access to the Morphing Grid at the moment."
"There's only five that you know of," said Rachel, "This purple ranger calls himself the Renegade Ranger."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"We didn't see his face," said Heath, "He was in ranger form the whole time."
"Maybe..." said Jenna, "His connection to the grid wasn't damaged because Trojan didn't know he existed."
"What do you mean?" asked Chloe.
"It seems to me that the Morphing Grid is simply too powerful for Trojan to just destroy outright," she continued, "So when he designed the time bomb, he had to take into account the possibility that by the time he decided to detonate it, that there would be more than just four rangers."
"So he got lucky and was able to sever Chloe's connection, but he didn't damage the gird enough to prevent other potential rangers from morphing." said Rachel.
"It's just a theory of course." said Jenna.
"And you're sure this Renegade has a codec of his own?" I asked.
"Positive," said Riley, "His ranger outfit looked nearly identical to ours."
"Which means that his powers come from the same source as yours." I said.
"I was right then." said Riley.
"Riley Bishop"
Just then, I felt a sudden surge of energy surge through me. It was the same sensation we felt when Silver first activated our Digitizers. I knew that feeling that sensation could mean only thing: our powers were back. I wasn't the only one that felt it either. I could see that the others had just gone through the same thing.
"Our powers are back." I said.
"The Phoenix did it," said Jenna, "It fixed the Morphing Grid."
"But we still can't morph, can we?" asked Marcus, "I mean, the Mainframe isn't fixed."
"No, it isn't," said Jenna, "However, while Stephen was working on contacting the Phoenix, I made a few alterations to your Digitizers."
"How did you alter them if we've had this whole time?" asked Oz.
"Okay, I altered their programming," she elaborated, "They used to be incapable of holding any sort of electrical charge. This was done as a safety precaution to make sure you wouldn't be able to use them frivolously."
"But by now you've more than proven yourselves to me," said Silver, "So, because I trust all of you, I asked Jenna to remove that feature."
"Now they should work more like cell phones," said Jenna, "Cell phones that will recharge themselves automatically as long as one of the new Mainframes is active."
"That, plus an old car battery, means the rangers are back in business," said Silver, "Just don't waste the charge in them. It has to last until the Mainframe is back up again."
In the blink of an eye, the Renegade landed right in the middle of Headquarters. But, since we're underground, something tells me that the way he falls from seemingly out of nowhere is how he teleports. Maybe he can also teleport like we do, but the only way he could land like that is if we were outdoors, which we weren't.
"You must be this 'Silver' character I've heard so much about." he said.
"And you must be this 'Renegade' character I've heard so much about." said Silver.
"You're not welcome here," I said, "Get out."
"Oh you're here too," said the Renegade, "Why am I not surprised? You wouldn't be much of a lap dog if you strayed too far from your master's lap, would you?"
"You heard what Riley said," growled Marcus, "Get out of here. This place is reserved for rangers that don't abuse their powers."
"You know what they say," said the Renegade, "If you don't abuse it, you lose it."
"Why did you come here?" asked Silver.
"I want information." he said.
"About what?"
"These powers," said the Renegade, "I don't know what they are, or where they came from. If I ever hope to conquer this city, I need to know more about them."
"Why should I help you?" said Silver.
"Download weapon!" shouted the Renegade.
"Because if you don't, you'll wish you had." he said, raising his scythe menacingly at Silver.
"Unfortunately," said Silver, "The Mainframe was destroyed by our enemy, Trojan. No matter how much you threaten me, I have no way to give you what you want."
"The Mainframe was damaged," said the Renegade, "But your brain wasn't."
"How do I know that you won't relay what I tell you to Trojan?"
"I'm not a spy. Trojan is my enemy too," said the Renegade, "As well as anyone else that gets in my way."
All five of us instinctively got ready to morph, but stopped when Jenna shook her head.
"Not yet," she mouthed, "Let the Renegade take the bait first."
"Very well," said Silver, "What do you want to know?"
The Renegade kept his weapon out, but lowered it. Then he held out his hand. A purple codec materialized in it seconds later.
"What is this?" he asked.
"I call it a codec. It's a crystal from Cyberspace that contains massive amounts of digital energy," said Silver, "I figured out a way to use the codecs in combination with the Morphing Grid to harness this energy and allow a person to become a Power Ranger."
"What would happen if someone else got their hands on my codec?" asked the Renegade.
"According to my research, nothing," said Silver, "Only people that possess a certain genetic trait can successfully utilize the power of the codecs."
Since the Renegade made it very clear that as long as we stay out of his way, he'll stay out of ours, I don't think him coming to Silver for information is cause for alarm. Even if he did end up telling Trojan what he learned, he wouldn't be telling Trojan anything he didn't already know.
I just wish I knew what this 'bait' that Jenna mentioned was. Would we know it when we see it? What if we missed the signal and morphed at the wrong time? If we ruined this perfect opportunity, who knows if we'd ever get another chance.
"Which means that the only people that could possibly stop me are them." said the Renegade, pointing at us.
"If you want, I can analyze your codec for you and see if it's in proper working order," said Silver, "The other codecs that I found needed a little bit of tweaking before they were-"
The Renegade swung his scythe at Silver's arm, which had gradually been reaching out for the codec in the Renegade's other hand.
"Do you think I'm an idiot!?" he snapped, "I know what you're trying to do! You want to put a leash around me and turn me into another obedient little lap dog!"
If Jenna hadn't pulled Silver's arm out of the way, the Renegade's scythe would've sliced it right off. She looked at us again and gave us the thumbs up.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Ready!" said the others.
"CYBER POWER, ACTIVATE!" we shouted together.
The Renegade turned around in time to see five fully clad rangers standing where we were just a few seconds ago. Without wasting any time, he charged at us with his scythe poised to strike.
"Let's get out of here!" I shouted, pressing the buttons on my Digitizer to teleport, "We need to go somewhere outside to fight him."
Seconds before I started to teleport, I felt something grab onto my leg.
"Gotcha!" said the Renegade.
We arrived in Silver's front yard. I guess that's why Silver always says not to teleport without a definitive destination in mind. It was pitch black outside because the enormous storm clouds were blocking the moonlight. There was definitely a storm coming and I had a strong feeling that it was going to be a big one.
The Renegade resumed attacking seconds after we arrived. The fight was extremely fast paced. We were literally fighting someone that could match us blow for blow. He dodged most our attacks with ease and yet still found time to get in a few attacks of his own. We dodged most of them too, but for some reason he seemed to be a bit faster than us.
"Agh!" moaned Yellow as he stumbled back a few feet.
"Uhh!" grunted Orange as she flew up into the air from an uppercut.
"Rangers, back off!" came Silver's voice, which sounded very garbled, "Return to Headquarters right now!"
That's easier said than done. If we just stop fighting, that doesn't mean the Renegade will. Yellow and Orange, who were about to return to the battle, stopped and stood back.
"Let yourselves get hit and then come stand by us." said Orange.
"Don't do it all at once though," said Yellow, "One at a time or he'll notice."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them teleport away, no doubt going back to Headquarters. It might seem cowardly, but in the heat of battle, it was hard to come up with any better ideas. Green let himself get hit next, and he teleported away while Blue and I kept the Renegade busy.
"You next..." I muttered to Blue.
She ended up catching a nasty kick right in the chest, but hopefully because she was morphed, she'll be fine. I had to tell myself that because otherwise I'd have followed her and risked having the Renegade follow me. Once I saw that Blue had teleported to safety, I dropped my guard.
"This is pointless!" I said while trying to catch my breath, "We're too evenly matched!"
"Evenly matched, are we?" laughed the Renegade maniacally, "Then why did your fellow lap dogs leave you to die?"
"They didn't leave me," I said, my voice faltering, "I volunteered to stay behind."
"You keep telling yourself that," said the Renegade, "But I think we both know that you're the weakest link. You're holding them all back. They saw a chance to ditch you and they took it. They don't care about you. That's why they left you behind!"
"Shut-up!" I screamed.
My sudden outburst seemed to have taken him by surprise, so I seized my chance and punched him in the chest as hard as I could. He barely seemed bothered by it, but it still bought me enough time to teleport.
"This isn't over, Red Ranger!" screamed the Renegade as I teleported back to Headquarters.
I felt quite confident that he wouldn't follow me this time.
I arrived in the main chamber this time. The others were already in civilian form, and Jenna was fussing over all of them. Chloe, Marcus and Oz all seemed to be fine, apart from a few nasty bruises. Rachel was still being examined by Jenna though.
"Power down." I said.
"Ow!" cried Rachel.
"I think you have a dislocated shoulder," said Jenna, "You should have a doctor look at it though."
"Oh, move over!" said Oz.
Jenna was taken by surprise and took a few steps back. Oz positioned himself where she had been standing and carefully took hold of Rachel's shoulder. Then he twisted and pulled at the same time very fast and very suddenly. There was a loud snap and Rachel yelped in pain again. Jenna felt Rachel's shoulder again and her eyes widened in amazement.
"He fixed it," she said, "Does this hurt?"
"No..." said Rachel, who seemed just as confused as Jenna.
"How did you do that?" asked Jenna.
"I get dislocated shoulders from playing football all the time," said Oz, "To save myself the hassle of going to the hospital every time it happened, I took mental notes on how to fix it and ended up being able to copy the technique."
"That's amazing." said Rachel.
"Not really," said Oz, "It's not even complicated; you basically just twist and pull."
"Funny," said Chloe, "My self-defense teacher says to do the same thing to a guy's-"
"Okay, that's enough of that!" said Jenna, "Riley, it's your turn."
"I don't want to be examined," I said, "I'm fine."
"You don't know that, just earlier tonight the Renegade punched you in the chest while you were unmorphed," said Jenna, "Your body hasn't had nearly enough time to let your codec heal you yet."
"I'm fine, Jenna, really," I said, trying to change the subject, "Silver, why did you call us back?"
"It won't take long, Riley," said Jenna, "As soon as I examine you, then Stephen will-"
"I SAID I'M FINE!" I screamed, throwing my arms in the air just as a deafening crash of thunder was heard.
Bad move on my part. My chest was still hurting from that punch, and when I threw my arms up like that, it started to throb worse than ever. I tried not to show that I was in pain, but it was a case of too little, too late.
"Just leave me alone!" I snapped.
I turned around and ran. I didn't feel like teleporting, I felt like running. I knew it would make my chest hurt again, but I didn't care. I also felt like screaming some more, to try and make my voice louder than the thunder. Then I remembered how late it was; if I screamed louder than the thunder, I'd probably wake up the whole city.
The rain started a couple of minutes later and it was an absolute downpour. I was drenched after only a few seconds. The water was freezing, but I didn't let that stop me. I knew where I wanted to go by now and I was going to run until I got there, no matter what.
It was like I had been on autopilot since I started running. I snapped out of whatever I was in when I realized that I was now outside the cemetery where my parents are buried. I didn't even know that I knew where the cemetery was. Amanda had come here several times to leave flowers for them or talk to them. She would always ask me if I wanted to come with her, but I would always say no. I never wanted to see this place again. It was in this cemetery that one of my most prominent memories takes place. My parents were gone and they were never coming back, but Rachel hugged me and let me cry into her arms. That reminded me that she and Amanda were still right by my side.
I opened the gate and put my foot down firmly on the other side. This was further than I had ever made it before. I followed the path, letting my feet guide me to their graves.
Now that I was no longer on autopilot, the pain in my chest was starting to bother me again and I started shivering from the cold as I knelt down in front the hole just like I did all those years ago.
"Hi Mom," I said, "Hi Dad."
I already understood why Amanda did this. It was depressing, yeah, but comforting at the same time. In a way, they hadn't really gone anywhere either. Their bodies were right where we left them, and this whole time, they had probably been watching over us from afar. I had just been too stubborn to reach out to them.
"I thought I had this whole ranger thing under control," I said, "Then in comes the Renegade to screw everything up. All those things he said, at first I thought he was just misguided, but when we fought against him... He was outnumbered, 5 to 1, and yet he still managed to beat us."
"People always tell me to do the right thing. But what does that really mean? What if what I think is the right thing, is actually the wrong thing?" I said, "As the leader of the team, I'm the one that has to make all the decisions and lately it feels like I'm afraid to trust myself..."
"If I'm too afraid to make hard decisions, then do I really deserve these powers?" I asked, "The Renegade isn't afraid. He does what he wants, when he wants. Did he beat us because I was too afraid to trust in myself?"
It took me a while to realize that I had started crying. The rain was coming down so hard that I didn't even notice.
"If that's true," I sobbed, "Then I'm a coward... And I have no business being in charge of anything! The Renegade beat us because of me! It's all my fault! I let everyone down!"
I let myself fall forward and just kept sobbing. Eventually, I either fell asleep or fainted, maybe even both. Jenna did warn me about my chest having not healed. Add in the fact that I apparently ran all the way to the cemetery in the rain, it's a miracle I'm not dead.
Or at least I don't think I'm dead. Pretty sure I wouldn't be thinking if I was dead. I also probably wouldn't feel the warmth that was gradually spreading throughout my body, or smell the mixture of vanilla and various hair care products.
I woke up to discover that Rachel had her arms around me and that we appeared to be in her bed with a blanket covering us.
"What's going on?" I yawned.
"You know you're an idiot, right?" said Rachel.
"Are you hugging me? Or restraining me?" I asked, trying to break free.
"Both." she said.
"Why?"
"So that you don't run off on me again," she said, "And so that I can do this..."
And then she kissed me. It wasn't a quick peck on my cheek, either. This was a real kiss, right on the lips. It didn't necessarily happen the way I anticipated, which is why it caught me by surprise.
But Rachel didn't seem to be bothered by it at all. I wouldn't say that it was a passionate kiss, mostly because I have nothing else to compare it to, but also because she was kissing me, we weren't kissing each other. It did however, feel as if she had wanted to do it for quite a long time.
After we broke apart, Rachel looked at me expectantly.
"So I take you're not mad about last night?" I asked.
"Of course I'm mad. But only because you could've been seriously hurt," she said, "That's why I called you an idiot."
"How did you find me?"
"I checked at all the usual places," she said, "But when I couldn't find you, Silver used his program codes to write a very basic version of his Digitizer tracking software on Jenna's laptop."
"Why did you all go through so much trouble to find me?" I asked, "I let you all down. If it wasn't for me, we'd have been able to beat the Renegade."
"Why do you think that losing one stupid, insignificant battle would have any effect on how much we care about you?"
"You weren't listening to me in the cemetery, were you?"
"Not the whole time," she said, "But I heard enough."
"It doesn't make any sense," I said, "I keep going over it in my head again and again, but I don't understand why the five of us working together wasn't enough to defeat the Renegade."
"And I don't understand why it's bothering you so much," said Rachel, "We lost one fight. Down the road, we'll probably lose a few more."
"Maybe I should be more like the Renegade," I said, "He's not afraid of the consequences of his actions, which means he can focus more on the things he wants, things that will make him stronger."
"You could never be like the Renegade," said Rachel, "Because you're a good person, and you never take risks if there's a chance someone could get hurt. The Renegade isn't afraid of the consequences of his actions because he's selfish. All of the decisions he makes are bad. The only way you could ever be like him is if you didn't have a conscience."
"Rachel..." I said, noticing that there were tears in her eyes.
I pulled her closer to me and ran my hand through her hair in an effort to soothe her. I could tell that she was gradually calming down, but before I ran my hand through her hair again, I stopped dead in my tracks.
"He doesn't have a conscience..." I muttered, repeating her words.
"What?" asked Rachel, lifting her head to look at me, "Wait a second... You have that look on your face; you have an idea, don't you?"
"Yeah," I said, "We have to get back to Headquarters right away."