CHAPTER 3
One year ago, several former power rangers were gathered at Cape Canaveral, Florida for the awarding of their annual MORPH (Mathematics OR PHysics) college scholarship. However, the night before the awards ceremony disaster struck in the form of a space shuttle being prematurely launched, then crashing into the town.
Many were killed, many more were never found, but afterwards, one thing was made very clear: The group of people responsible for the attack...was the power rangers.
At first not many believed it, but gradually, it began to make sense. After all, how many cities had hosted power rangers over the years, and bore witness to the power they possessed, and the violence they exhibited? And how many times had the innocent people of these cities witnessed rangers fighting other rangers? The news channels didn't always know what was going on, but they could always tell when a ranger had turned evil. This time, it seemed that every ranger had turned evil.
Or were they all evil to begin with?
Had the power rangers been pretending for almost two decades to be good, just to earn the people of Earth's trust so that when the rangers finally struck, no one would see it coming?
Rhonda Fitz, American politician, had never liked the idea of the power rangers. She had never trusted them. And before a week had gone by after the shuttle crash, she had many more agreeing with her.
There was no other explanation, after all. And added to it was the fact that no ranger had come to help The Cape after the crash. Not one.
And it got worse.
Soon after, a computer virus named Venjix infiltrated the country's technology, and gradually took over. Literally. It developed it's own army of robots who's purpose was to destroy humans...and still the power rangers did not come. But little did the people of Earth know, it wasn't the rangers fault.
When the accusations were made against the power rangers, they were publically exiled. Not only that, but a group of private militants were given the responsibility of tracking down any former or current power ranger and exterminating them.
A bounty was on the head of every living power ranger.
Rangers who survived the initial assault were forced into hiding. They traveled on foot towards Briarwood or Angel Grove.
The woods surrounding Briarwood, home city of the Mystic Force Power Rangers, contained many trees that served as portals to the Mystic Realm. The Bad Guys quickly discovered this and laid waste to as many trees as possible before the rangers could make their way to safety in the Mystic Realm.
Angel Grove, home city of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, was serving as the safe house for exiled rangers to camp out until they could make their way to Briarwood.
The Bad Guys took control of the original Command Center, of course, but they didn't know about the Zeo Rangers hidden command center below the original. The rangers stuck in the human realm were hiding literally right under the Bad Guys noses.
In the past year, the rangers have managed to learn bits and pieces of information about what was occurring, but at a cost.
A scientific method was developed that made it possible for the rangers to be hunted down, and they were. Rangers always carry with them fragments of The Great Power, and the Bad Guys had learned how to follow these particles to find former rangers and annihilate them.
They did not die only from being targeted, but also from trying to learn more information. Teams of rangers were dispatched, led by Jason Lee Scott in the human realm, with the mission of discovering the true perpetrators and saving the human race.
They learned that there seemed to be a specific group of bad guys, whom they had dubbed simply "The Bad Guys", as no one actually knew who was really behind the apparent genocide.
They learned that the shuttle crash was not an accident. Rather, it was the first domino in the take down plot against the power rangers.
They learned that the attack on Cape Canaveral was a plan to take out a large group of rangers all at once while they gathered for an unofficial reunion, innocent casualties be damned.
They learned that they weren't as clever as they thought in naming their scholarship MORPH, as someone discovered that it was being led completely by former rangers and their associates.
They learned that even Rose's involvement in the shuttle launch project was no accident, and The Bad Guys were even using that against the rangers, saying that they had infiltrated NASA on purpose.
And perhaps the most troubling piece they learned was that this was an operation that had taken years of planning and execution.
It seems that for almost 20 years the extinction of the power rangers and the defeat of Earth has been in motion.
And the remaining rangers were left with the haunting thought that after two decades of victory against the forces of evil, the bad guys were bound to become more dominant and organized.
All of the events caused by the initial attack at The Cape were, in fact, inevitable.