"Doc! Doc! Someone is looking for you!" a young girl screeched.
A dark-haired woman looked up from her papers and frowned. School had just ended. Who would be knocking on her door?
She opened her door and she saw a grizzled man in military fatigues who promptly saluted her.
Dr. K nodded apprehensively.
"How may I help you?"
"I'm Warrant Officer Hicks. Colonel Truman ordered me to bring you this. You need to see the message inside it."
He took out a holotape and handed it over to her.
She raised an eyebrow, "Shouldn't he be promoted by now? It's been nearly a decade."
Dr. K let Hicks in and shut the door behind them. She took the holotape and inspected it.
"Ma'am, I think you must be speaking about Colonel Truman's father. Colonel Truman said he served under your command as Ranger Operator Series Red."
Dr K. snorted.
"If this is about a job offer, he can save his breath. Scott should know me better than this. I gave him the morphers because he surrounded this school with soldiers and threatened to shut us down if we did not comply. When I asked him to help me find Ziggy, Did he help me? So tell me why should I help him?"
"Ma'am, that is why I think you need to see what is in the holotape"
Dr. K frowned and she pressed the play button on the holotape. A hologram sprang up from the tape.
It was Ziggy. There was only a single light hanging from the ceiling and he appeared to be in a large disused server room.
Dr. K felt her throat go dry instantly.
He was unshaven, bruised and haggard, almost unrecognisable, except for his eyes. The same eyes she stared into for a long time.
"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have occurred before the Venjix virus decimated the world. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Stella, about how Alphabet Soup[1] started it all -"
Hicks suddenly raised his hand. Irritated, Dr. K paused the video and glared at him.
"Ma'am, What is that [1] thing? If you don't mind me asking?"
"It's a footnote that is placed into the video to help viewers get more context to the video. Just press ctrl-F and search [1] and you'll find what is the thing the author is referencing to."
"Ma'am, do you know who is Stella?"
Dr. K shrugged. She felt a lump rising in her throat and a sudden panic. Who was this Stella and what did she do which would make him abandon the children...and her?
She pressed the play button.
Ziggy swallowed hard.
"As I was saying. Dr. K was the one who created Venjix. However, she created the Power Rangers and everything that took down Venjix in the end. If it is not for her, humanity would have been extinct. But the pardon that Scott's dad gave[2] would not save her if the public found out that she was the one who created Venjix. We have tried looking for She will never be safe and I'm running out of time and ideas.'"
Ziggy looked absolutely miserable and defeated. Dr. K's hands clenched tightly into fists.
"I've been looking for any and everything I can to prove her innocence. I've been to four bases linked to Alphabet Soup already and I have been reading as many reports I can get my hands on. I don't understand many of them, like this list that gives callsigns to the geniuses[3], which I'm sure that there is a secret code in there somewhere. That is why I've dumped the documents into this tape[4] ."
Ziggy's voice started rising "K is no monster. She lived as a prisoner for her entire life just because of her abilities."
Ziggy covered his face and blew his nose really loudly. His eyes were red and wet.
"I miss K and the children badly. I missed K's birthday and I never got to say this to her, but I -"
Then was a sudden crash and there was a chorus of ominous beeps.
Ziggy got up and swore, "Grinders...They found me. Good thing I 'borrowed' Scott's morpher[5] when he wasn't looking."
"It's time to get in gear." Ziggy intoned and he tapped his morpher.
Nothing happened.
A laser bolt grazed his shoulder instead. Ziggy went down screaming
"Shoot. Looks like I need his DNA[6] to activate this after all."
Ziggy took out a syringe from his pocket and stabbed it straight to his thigh.
There was a sudden flash of light and in the place of Ziggy Grover was the Red R.P.M Ranger.
That was when he caught another laser bolt straight to his chest.
Then the screen went dark. Dr. K's eyes were as round as saucers.
Hicks coughed, "We need to know ma'am, is this Ziggy Grover?"
Dr. K muttered, "It is him. We have to help him before the DNA rejection[6] kills him."
Her eyes shot up to Hicks, "Where did you find this holotape?"
"We found it when we raided one of the dumping grounds of Alphabet Soup, Ma'am."
Dr. K got up.
"I have to go there."
The Red Ranger sat down, clutching at his sides and breathing heavily.
Then an all-too-familiar voice was heard.
"Begin the download."
[1] The Alpha Unit was a think-tank that came into being in 1993 after the government decided that the protracted state of alien attacks in Angel Grove required a military response.
After a mutant threat had nearly destroyed Silver Hills in 2001, the government reorganised Alpha Unit into Alphabet Soup, with Ms. Angela Fairweather serving as the first Director of Alphabet Soup.
Alphabet Soup was given the mandate to develop technologies that can enable the government to respond to any existential threat to the planet, be it alien, demon or mutants from the future. This is in recognition of the fact that there may come a time when there may not be a Power Ranger team to defend the planet and its way of life.
- History of Alphabet Soup
[2] This happened during the time when Dr. K. was charged with treason as a result of her actions at Alphabet Soup. However, Colonel Truman granted her a full pardon - Power Rangers RPM episode "Ancient History".
[3] In its early days, Alphabet Soup developed a geniuses programme which supervised ten young women from their childhood to their deaths. These are their callsigns and from that, inferences can be made about the work they did:
Aisa, Seeker of worlds
Bia, Tamer of forces
Clotho, Explorer of worlds
Decima, Leveller of worlds
Eurus, Lost One
Fortuna, Architect of Corinth
Gaea, Creator of Corinth
Hestia, Homemaker
Iris, Engineer for Humanity
Juno, New Age Strategist
The new subject known as K would be endowed the callsign: Kirke, Transformer of men, in reference to her work on the Ranger Operator Series.
- Excerpt from Ziggy's notes: Month 5
[4] Directory of C:\Alphabet Soup\K\Night-time reading
Aisa (1994). Preliminary observations of the Morphing Grid for interstellar exploration
Bia (1996). Application of Zeo Crystal Radiation in aerospace engineering
Clotho (1997). Turbo-boosters: Efforts from reverse engineering from the wreckage of the Turbo and Rescue Zords.
Decima (1998). Test-flight results of Turbo-boosters for the Terra Venture project
Fortuna (2000): Applying designs from the Lightspeed Aquabase into the construction of Corinth
Gaea (2001): Time for Grinder Technology: Reverse engineering the wreckage of Frax and the Doombot to create a robotic workforce for project Corinth.
Hestia (2002): The myth and power of Animarium. Unpublished Manuscript
Hestia (2003): Power of Ninjutsu: Interviews with Kanoi Wantanabe and Sensei Omino. Unpublished Manuscript
Hestia, Oliver, and Mercer (2004): DNA-Machine interfaces: Preliminary work with prehistoric DNA.
Hestia (2006): Briarwood Incident: A study in magical energies. Unpublished Manuscript
Iris and Hartford (2007): Enhancing humans in post-birth DNA modification. A comparison of subject G and H's embryos.
Juno (2008): Proposing a scientific response to the Dai Shi incident
- Contents recovered from a data drive in an Alphabet Soup computer
[5] When Major Scott Truman confiscated the Ranger Operator Series technology from Dr. K in the name of national security, he kept his morpher by his side as a precaution while the rest remained locked up at an undisclosed base. With a little bit of shadow puppetry, Ziggy lured Scott away long enough for him to 'borrow' Scott's morpher.
- Excerpt from Ziggy's notes: Month 0
[6] Due to the fear of the morphers being stolen from the owners and being used against them, Dr. K designed the morphers such that only the DNA of the registered user can unlock its morphing powers. The only possible way to cheat the morpher's authenticators which is to flood one's entire body with DNA of the registered user to trick the morpher. However, such an act is tantamount to suicide as DNA rejection would most certainly grant the user a very excruciating death.
- Security assessment of the Ranger Operator Series morpher
