Disclaimer; I don't own Power Rangers.
A/N: Um, yeah...did I ever mention that I really, really, don't like cliches?
Angel stared for a long moment, and then she started to laugh.
"What happened?" Raven demanded.
"I don't know," Hunter said, "are you sure you did it right?" He flicked his hands, dismissing the morph.
"Raven," Lothor said stepping close to her, he looked straight into her eyes, "what did she do."
Angel looked up as something hit her shield. In a heartbeat, her attention was there, where her doppelganger stood, glaring at her. "Can I help you?" Angel asked, not bothering to hide her amusement.
"What did you do to the morpher?" Raven demanded.
"Nothing," Angel replied, "you aren't a black ranger. You can't just hand off a morpher like it's a piece of jewelry or a gun, you have to be the right person. Could you be a Ranger? Stranger things have happened, but you aren't a black ranger. You have to have the right color to make it work. That's why your Thunder friends are those particular colors; that is why Brooks is a Ranger instead of Watanabe. For whatever reason, Brooks had the right combination of personality and ability to be a yellow, and Watanabe didn't."
"What about Oliver, he had three colors," Raven said with a tilt to her head that suggested she was accessing their shared memories.
"Because he belonged in those colors, some people, some very rare individuals, can be more than one. Whatever color, or colors, you could have, black isn't one of them." Angel crossed her arms, "If you would take five seconds to actually look at my memories from that miserable mud pit, you'd know that."
"Whatever," her doppelganger replied and vanished.
Angel chuckled and returned to her viewing. This was just starting to get interesting.
"Apparently, I'm not a black ranger," Raven said. She stripped the morpher from her wrist, "It's nothing more than some ugly jewelry to me." She tossed it over to Hunter, "Better luck next time." Then she turned to Lothor, "Can I take a monster down to Earth? I want to do something to keep my mind off this."
"You know the rules," Lothor replied, "I need a battle plan."
"Thanks, dad," Raven said, she smirked at Hunter and his brother, "Later, minions."
Angel giggled at the brief glimpse of outrage on Hunter's face. She didn't exactly care for the Thunders, but a part of her thought that might be because her father had trained with the Winds, and whenever he had told her bedtime stories about Earth, all of the bad people had been Thunders. She relaxed, letting her thoughts drift back to those days, when she'd been Angel Raven, the rescued and adopted child of Cateyla and Lothor, the Warlord's daughter. That was when Marah and Capri were her aristocratic cousins whose dad worked for the UAE, and her grandfather was a Warlord-Prince and she had trained as a Ninja under her father's watchful eye and learned about the galaxy at her mother's knee. It had been five years of an idyllic fantasy, no Zurgane and Choobo, just the human guards and occasional alien, a mansion on a small moon in the heart of their territory.
Angel shuddered, remembering how it had all come crashing down when she was thirteen. Her mother, Cateyla, had been a local asteroid racer and a good one. She had gone to the meet on her own, Angel had been sick and the Warlord called away last minute as someone encroached on his territory. After winning her race, and setting a course record, Cateyla had gone out with some friends to a small bar on a small mining planet. Someone had bought her a drink, which Cateyla had refused. The man had been so angry at the rejection that he'd followed her, and when she was alone, he had attacked her, leaving her dead in an alley.
After the funeral, her father had come to her to tell her a new story.
"Angel," he said, sitting on the edge of her bed, "you have asked me many times about why I left Earth and I would not tell you. It is time for you to know, because it has something to do with how your mother died. When I lived on Earth, I was known as Keya Watanabe and I had a twin brother named Kanoi. We were as different as our elements, Earth and Air. When we were in our final year of Ninja training a Samurai came among us. Samurai are not like Ninjas, they have certain abilities that Ninjas would never use, abilities that are without honor. The Samurai, a woman named Miko, bewitched our Sensei into letting her train at the Academy. I thought my brother felt as I did, that Miko was a danger to our school, but he did not. The source of Miko's dark power was an amulet. I tried to explain to my brother the danger she had brought, but it turned out he already knew. Kanoi used the dark Ninja powers to knock me unconscious and he dressed me in a novice's uniform. As we were identical, he was then able to don a similar uniform in an attempt to take the amulet for his own dark uses. When he failed, he took me to Sensei and accused me of trying to steal the amulet."
"But you didn't," Angel protested.
"No, I didn't. My claim of innocence was ignored and I was cast from the Academy and banished from the Earth. I can no longer use my true name that is why I am called Lothor. One day, I hope to return to Earth and prove that my brother is the true dark ninja. That is why I am now a warlord, because I will need that strength. My brother's reach is growing, it was his man that took your mother from us and I fear he will try to hurt you."
"But, why would he want to hurt me?" Angel asked.
"Because you are my daughter in all ways but blood," the Warlord said softly, he brushed some of Angel's hair from her face. "Raven, my child, I must ask you to do something that will be hard for you and painful."
"What?" Angel whispered.
"I am planning to send you away to school," the Warlord murmured, "Aurin is a planet far from the coalition, and it is unlikely that Kanoi has even heard of it. The Collegium there is very good and will prepare you to be my Heir and maybe even second in command."
"For how long?" Angel asked, staring at her father wide eyed.
"Until you complete your schooling, or the danger is passed," the Warlord replied, "I do not know how long that will be."
Angel nodded and sat up straight, "I'll go," she said, proud that her voice only shook a little, "I'll learn everything and I'll come back and help you take care of Kanoi. With the two of us, there's no way he can hide his evilness from the galaxy."
The Warlord kissed her forehead, "Thank you Angel Raven. Get some sleep now."
Angel watched him walk across the room, "Father," she said finally.
"Yes?" The Warlord asked, turning to face her.
"Do you think Kanoi had anything to do with what happened to me?" Angel said softly.
He smiled and came back to hug her, "I don't think so, little Angel. Even Kanoi would not fall that far."
Angel jerked out of her memories with a cry, when she opened her eyes, she found herself sprawled on concrete, in a courtyard. There was an odd, dead space in her mind, her doppelganger was unconscious; "It's time to finish this," a voice said, calling her back to the world outside her mind.
"Wait," Angel said, sitting up, she glanced around at the…concrete building, this was one of the places Lothor hated for them to fight in because his sensors didn't work. Her eyes fell on the trio of Power Rangers and she scrambled to her feet, "Shane, its Angel, not Raven. I told you about the spell. She's unconscious, but I don't have much time. There are things, the morphers, Lothor has morphers. Two of them bonded, but the third didn't take." She groaned and fell to her knees as Raven began to wake up, "Ask Watanabe…ask him…about…" she fought to get the words out, "ask him about child slaves."
Then Raven asserted herself and Angel fell through the darkness to her purple sanctuary, hoping that she had managed to say something that would make sense to them.