Author's notes - Whitebeard, thanks for that :). Jokermask - in the same way we never really learned a lot about Zedd's backstory, they never really explored Rita or Goldar's background, either, and I've got a couple of stories planned where I'd explore where Rita and her crew came from (the short of it is that Rita originally hails from the planet Morlock, ergo, Goldar's line in the last chapter). There's a scene here too, where Goldar explains a little bit about his own background. Anyway, while the first two chapters were mostly dialogue, this chapter, we get to the fighting. And how. Enjoy :).
Chapter Three
The galaxy spun around us as Goldar and I shot through the comforting black void of deep space. Before long, the planet Morlock appeared in the distance, and a second later, we materialised on the planet's surface. With luck, we'd managed to land anywhere near where I'd intended. Because of the sheer distance involved, even someone of my magnificent power has trouble mastering interplanetary teleportation. My only consolation is that, for all his lectures and plans, Zordon has never quite figured it out either.
Gravel crunched beneath my feet, and I gazed around the landscape to see where Goldar and I had landed. We were standing on a windswept mountain peak, made of little more than crumbling red rock. There was hardly any vegetation in sight, which was reassuring. Nothing annoys me more than life growing for the sake of it. Down a rocky slope lay a wide plateau that was surrounded on three sides by jagged cliffs. I knew this was the right place. There was wreckage and rubble from one side of the plateau to the other. I could see the rusting remains of overturned tanks and crashed starfighters jutting out of the dirt. The shattered ruins of stone towers lay scattered around the plain as if they'd been the play things of angry giants. The entire plateau screamed of battle, of frenzied combat and blood spilled in rage. There was no life here beyond poisonous weeds that had long since choked out anything competing with them.
"Isn't it a glorious sight Goldar?" I asked.
"The view, Lord Zedd?"
"No, you dolt," I shot back. "All that destruction and ruin. And to think, we missed it all. What a lost opportunity. But thank you for ruining the moment with needless human sentiment."
"You're welcome, my liege."
The fourth side of the plateau was a gentle slope that led down to a green valley in the distance. A small village was built along the shores of a wide river. Farms were dotted around the surrounding countryside, and none of the town's buildings looked more than a few storeys tall. They posed no immediate threat, and I put them out of my mind. Turning back to the field, I leaned close to the cliff edge and swept my gaze over the plateau, from one end of the battlefield to the other. The more I studied it, the more I could see a path through the wreckage that steadily narrowed as it approached the only structure still standing, a stone bunker overlooking the valley.
"That's it," I nodded. "That's where the last piece of the Omega Sanction is buried. But don't you see Goldar? The entire landscape is a trap, and Crulger and those hateful Rangers won't even realise it."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Goldar asked.
I shot him a look. "Not today," I said. "Not from what I need of them."
Without warning, a great roar filled the air, shaking the stones and rocks at our feet. I noticed Goldar's fur standing on end. The sky above the mountains opposite twisted and shimmered, and the Iron Vulture suddenly appeared before us. Hanging in the air for a minute longer, the ship began to descend, its talons extending as it prepared to land.
"He teleported the entire ship here," Goldar murmured.
"That idiot," I spat. "That much power used all at once was a neon sign to half the galaxy, who all know exactly what Crulger's looking for. Time is even more of an issue. And speaking of nuisances," and I paused as six streaks of light shot down out of the sky, vanishing behind the hills over to our right. "Goldar, there's only one team of Rangers in the galaxy who travel like that. All the pieces are in play. Let's begin."
Goldar nodded. "What's the plan?"
"I have to time this carefully," I replied, and we began making our way down the mountainside. "We can't teleport any closer. I can sense something blocking it. The Destroyer knows what would happen if we tried. But at least it keeps us all at a similar disadvantage. Now, there's never a monster around when you need one."
I glanced down to the weeds twisting around a piece of wreckage at my feet. "You'll do," I said. Raising my Z-staff, I sent a bolt of lightning into the plants. We watched as the vines grew longer and thicker, twisting together into limbs and a torso. Before long, a figure emerged from behind the debris. The creature had bright green eyes over a body of weeds and leaves, with pieces of wreckage and rubble trapped within the thorny vines. "Excellent," I said.
"How may I serve you, Lord Zedd?" the creature hissed.
"I name you… something vaguely threatening," I began, waving my hand. "Crulger and his soldiers are on their way here. You need to stop them, no matter what. But do not tell him that I sent you. Do you understand?"
"Of course master," the weed monster nodded. He slunk off, and Goldar and I watched him disappear into the maze of rubble before continuing.
But as the two of us stepped through the wreckage of a great starship, we turned to see a small boy picking through the debris. Seeing us, he froze, and his eyes grew wide. He looked all of six or seven. He had a head of dark curls with dirt smeared across his face and clothes. He must've been from the village, either looking for usable scrap metal or just playing in the ruins. I stabbed my staff into the ground with a flash of flame.
"I am Lord Zedd!" I growled. "Tell your kin to fear me and stay away if they value their pathetic lives!"
The boy nodded, terror on his face. Without waiting, he bolted away from us.
"Ah, fear," I said, and turned to Goldar. "How does Crulger not get this?"
"I don't know, my lord."
"I can't understand it. Is he stupid?"
"He must be, Lord Zedd. Shall we continue?"
"No," I said. "There is something else I need accomplished," and I leaned in close. "If Crulger listened to me, then he'll do what I expect him to. So I need one thing of you Goldar, and you'd best not fail me…"
With his black cloak flapping behind him, Crulger stepped down off the Iron Vulture and onto the battlefield. Gazing around at the barren red landscape facing him on all sides, Crulger's mouth curled into a grin.
"Hmm," he said. "This must be fate. It's my favourite colour."
Footsteps on the ramp told him that Drektor had followed him outside. "Can you believe it?" the slimy general asked. "We are so close to triumph."
"Indeed," Crulger said. "But our goal isn't within our reach yet. This whole field is rigged to deter intruders. It's why we couldn't approach any closer," and he gestured around the clearing that the Iron Vulture had come to rest in. "Gather my troops."
"How many?" Drektor asked.
Crulger considered it for a second. "All of them," he said. "Leave the Iron Vulture here. Even if we leave her unguarded, my magnificent beast will only respond to me. And I suspect I'll need my full army if we are to reach the final piece of the sanction safely."
Drektor nodded, and was about to turn back when Crulger reached for his arm. "One last thing," Crulger began. "We watched the Rangers from Earth touch down a minute after us. Zordon obviously tracked us here. They're on the wrong side of the mountain, but I believe Zedd's warning was genuine, even if he's the laughing stock of the galaxy. Once you've assembled my soldiers, I want you to intercept the Rangers and stop them from interfering. They matter little, but they'll be one less irritant I'll have to worry about."
Drektor leaned in close and grinned a cruel, predatory smile. "As you wish," he said. "I like to give the audience what they want," and he slithered back into the ship.
The path through the labyrinth of wreckage was trickier than I'd expected. But with my gifted sight, I was able to make a path through the maze, stepping around the obstacles in my way or destroying them outright. It was an advantage neither Crulger nor the Rangers shared, and I knew that with every step, I was buying myself time. I was even starting to suspect that parts of the ruined battlefield had been deliberately engineered by the Dhalians to help protect the sanction.
By the Destroyer, that had been an obnoxious planet to conquer. Really, I'd been doing them a favour.
I'd just stepped around a pile of rusting tanks when I felt the air sizzle and crackle, charged like lightning. Of course, I'd guessed right. There must've been automatic defences designed to stop the Omega Sanction from being reassembled. This reeked of the Dhalians. They'd always been so impressed with their own accomplishments. I raised my Z-staff defensively. The air began to shimmer, and a towering holographic warrior soon materialised before me. He was dressed in traditional Dhalian armour with a stern expression on his face, and he held in his grip a gleaming silver spear. He was transparent, but I was familiar enough with hard light constructions to know the threat he posed was dangerously real.
"Who dares approach the Omega Sanction?" the warrior boomed.
"I do," I said. "Now get out of my way."
The warrior swept his gaze over me, and his expression twisted into one of fear and hate. "You are…"
"Lord Zedd, the ruler of all I see," I finished. "And I'm staring right at you."
"Fiend!" the warrior thundered. "You are the reason I exist! You are the reason the Omega Sanction was devised! Above all else, Zedd must never assemble the sanction for his own means! This day is your last!" As he spoke, eleven more copies of the warrior appeared in a wide circle around me. As one, they aimed their spears straight for me.
Hmm. Always twelve.
I held my ground. "Scan the area," I said. "The Omega Sanction is here, and so am I. That means the weapon is already mine. You exist for a single reason, and you've already failed. And since you're nothing but a program, an alarm clock with delusions of grandeur, I pose you a question. What happens to all programs that are both unnecessary and obsolete?" I paused to let my words sink in. "You get deleted."
The warrior's eyes flew wide. "No," he said. "No!" but it was too late. The Dhalians had always been too clever for their own good, and the programming code that they'd written kicked in before the sentinel could stop it. The eleven shadows vanished into thin air, while the central figure disappeared into nothing a second later, fading away as if he'd never existed.
I looked around, suddenly alone.
Damn it. Nobody had noticed. I only hoped that someone in orbit or with long-range scanning equipment had been watching. It's always the way, isn't it? You do your best work, and nobody's around to appreciate it.
I sighed, and continued on.
With a wall of soldiers surrounding him, Crulger marched through the battlefield on a course straight towards the concrete bunker. They'd just reached the ruins of what had once been a towering fortress when Crulger held up his hand and brought the entire troop to a halt. A second later, the air sizzled, and a curious buzzing filled the plateau. Then it was gone.
"Lord Crulger?" one of his lieutenants asked. "What was that?"
Crulger shook his head. "I have no idea," he said. "But I fear we're not the only ones trying to reach the sanction. Be on your guard, all of you," and he paused as the soldiers raised their pistols and unsheathed their swords. "There is something strange at work here."
"You're not wrong!" came a sudden voice. Thick vines whipped up from the ground, grabbing the soldiers at the front of the troop and throwing them aside. More vines sliced through the crowd, forcing the soldiers to scatter. Crulger spun on the spot as vines wrapped around the ankles of the two lieutenants closest to him and spun them into the air. With no bodyguards left protecting him, Crulger reached into the folds of his cloak and withdrew a pair of long daggers, raising them as the soldiers nearby fought to free themselves from the constricting vines.
"Show yourself!" Crulger shouted. "How dare you attack me! What are you?"
Two thick vines twisted themselves around a piece of rubble and shattered it to dust. As the cloud cleared, Crulger looked up to see a tall figure with piercing green eyes emerge from the smoke. A tangled web of thorny vines was hovering in the air around the creature, and Crulger's soldiers immediately pulled back to protect their master.
"I am called Something Vaguely Threatening," the weed monster boomed proudly. "And you will never reach your goal!"
"Watch me!" Crulger shouted, and he charged forward.
The monster screeched an inhuman cry, and its vines spun through the air towards Crulger and his men. A thorny tendril slashed for Crulger as he ran, but the soldier to his left sliced the vine with his sword. Two more tendrils whipped towards Crulger, but his daggers flashed through the air, slashing at the vines as they came close and leaving them in pieces on the ground.
Reaching the monster, Crulger dived under a vine as it sliced towards him. Finding his footing, he stabbed the two blades straight for the monster's chest. A swinging vine struck his arms away, and he sliced the blades low, forcing the monster back. The beast recovered quickly and retaliated, aiming more leafy tendrils straight towards him. His arms nothing but blurs of motion, Crulger slashed the vines as they closed in around him, a pile of torn weeds falling at his feet. With the air free of swinging tendrils, he leaped forward, but the weed monster stepped around Crulger and kicked him away. He crashed to the ground and was instantly back on his feet.
But with the monster's attention on Crulger, his soldiers had regrouped.
"We've got a clear shot," one of Crulger's lieutenants called, standing by a troop of soldiers all aiming plasma cannons. "Fire!"
Crulger clamped his hands over his ears as a barrage of blasts whistled over him and slammed into the monster. The beast was instantly torn apart in a fiery explosion that sent debris raining down over the battlefield. With their opponent gone, the soldiers lowered their cannons, but Crulger threw his daggers to the ground and furiously spun back to face them.
"You idiots!" he screamed, as the cloud of smoke from the explosion rose high above them. "Why did you do that?"
The lieutenant who'd given the order to fire shrank back. "Sir, we were saving your life!"
Crulger struck the man across the face. "And you just told the Power Rangers exactly where we are!" he said, and pointed to the smoke cloud, as obvious a sign as there could've been. "All of you, stay here!" he barked, and reached for his fallen blades. "Guard this position! When the Rangers get here, do what you can to delay them. The final piece of the Omega Sanction is not far from here. And from this point on, I travel alone!"
The six Power Rangers climbed down a small ridge to be faced with a maze of wreckage that looked no different to every other part of the battlefield they'd encountered since they began their trek.
Zac gazed around despondently. "This all just looks the same," he said.
"And I think this is the second time we've passed that overturned tank there," Trini added, pointing to a rusting hulk a few metres away.
In the centre of the group, the Blue Ranger tapped the tablet-device he was holding. "My best estimation," Billy began, looking helplessly around the group, "is that the field disrupting our teleportation is also causing our navigator to malfunction."
"But we have to keep going," Tommy said. "Crulger's way ahead of us by now. Is there anything we can use?"
Jason turned to the White Ranger, about to reply when the sound of an explosion reached them. Glancing ahead, the six Rangers could see a cloud of smoke rising above the battlefield.
"What about that?" the Red Ranger said. "I'm betting that Crulger or Zedd ran into trouble. Either way…"
"That's totally where we need to be!" Kim nodded. Without wasting another second, the six Rangers lowered their heads and raced off in the direction of the smoke cloud.
Stumbling down a steep incline, Drektor found his footing at the bottom of the ridge and glanced around to see where he'd landed. Towering over him were gigantic stone columns that had once been the wall of an impressive fortress. But now, the slabs of red stone were teetering on the edge of collapse, the dirt beneath them eroded by wind and rain. As he made his way past the ruins, he heard the clink of armour and spun around, ready for battle.
Goldar was standing in the shadows of a nearby starfighter.
Drektor's eyes flew wide but his surprise soon faded, and he shook his head in disdain. "Of course," the slimy general murmured. "You and Zedd followed us here. I should've guessed that Zedd's interest in the sanction wasn't as trivial as he claimed."
"Yes Drektor," Goldar replied, then looked past Drektor's shoulder and raised his sword. "We should be on guard. The Rangers are close."
"We may have a common enemy," Drektor began, "but you're still a buffoon long since past your best days, while Zedd is a simpleton thwarted by children. This is as good a place as any to set an ambush, but when the Rangers reach us? Stay out of my way."
"That will not be a problem," Goldar said. Drektor turned back to the field of ruins, and Goldar continued. "My master Zedd gave me specific orders to do whatever I could to remove one of the pieces from the playing field today."
"Good."
"There's one problem," Goldar growled. "You are that piece."
"What?" Drektor shouted, and spun back to Goldar.
He was too late. Goldar's eyes flashed, and fireballs smashed into the dirt around Drektor, slamming the slimy general back into the walls of the old fortress in a cloud of smoke. Shaking his head, Drektor fought to regain his bearings, but Goldar charged forward, slashing in wide arcs with his sword. Drektor dodged one slice and struck away another, and when Goldar stabbed the sword for Drektor's chest, Drektor easily stepped around the blow. The tip of the sword grazed where his hip should've been, and absorbing the blade into his torso, he struck out with his arm, throwing Goldar away.
Goldar crashed to the ground across the clearing. He picked himself up off the dirt as Drektor threw Goldar's sword away behind him. Keeping their distance, the two warriors circled each other warily.
"I should've known!" Drektor shouted, his voice loud with fury. "I always knew Zedd was traitorous filth, betraying his own ally Crulger like that! Did that alliance mean nothing? Are you jealous of my master's superiority?"
Goldar's lips pulled back to reveal his fangs. "Yes," he growled. "That must be the reason."
Drektor roared with rage and charged across the field, aiming high with his slimy arms. Goldar dodged the blow, ducking under a second punch and stepping back around a third. While Drektor was off-balance, Goldar raked his claws across Drektor's face. His hand was lost in a glob of slime, and unfazed, Drektor aimed low. Goldar kicked his foot away and slammed his boot into Drektor's chest. Goldar's foot hit something solid and Drektor staggered back, but Goldar's leg was covered in blue slime. As the golden warrior hobbled back, trying to shake the slime free, Drektor swung his arm in a wide sweep. The blow caught Goldar on the chest and spun him into the air, where he fell to the ground and rolled to a stop near his fallen sword.
Reaching for the weapon, Goldar stood up to face Drektor. The slimy general was now standing directly under the crumbling stone slabs.
"You're worse than useless," Drektor spat, "you great gold ape. It's little wonder that Zedd is such a failure with you by his side."
Goldar stood tall, and Drektor suddenly realised that the golden warrior towered over him. "I am a warrior griffin of the planet Morlock," Goldar replied. "For all your talk, I have something you don't."
"You're not going to say something ridiculous like conviction or experience, are you?" Drektor laughed.
"Actually," Goldar began, "I was talking about this," and his eyes flashed. The battlefield lit up as blasts of fire slammed into everything in Goldar's line of vision. As the smoke cleared, Goldar glanced around the scorched, burned wreckage, and there was Drektor before him, totally unharmed. He hadn't even moved.
"All of that, and you couldn't even hit me?" Drektor asked.
Goldar sneered. "I wasn't aiming for you."
Drektor was suddenly aware of a slow creak that was steadily growing louder. As a shadow raced up his back, he spun around to see one of the giant stone columns tilting towards him with ever-increasing speed. Before he could react, the column crashed down onto him, landing with such force that the entire field shook. Goldar dived to safety as pieces of rubble were shaken free by the crash and rained down over him. After a few seconds, he climbed to his feet, raised his sword and shook the dust off his wings. He quickly saw that he was alone, save for a small trickle of blue slime from under the fallen stone column.
"Good riddance," Goldar grunted, and faithfully turned back to find his master.
To be continued.