Author's notes - ChibiDawn, thanks for your kind words! I'm glad to be back, put it that way :). I haven't done a story with flashbacks in a while, but I really wanted to use them for this one, because they really work for the story. Like you said, I get to tell two stories instead of one. With the flashback battle against Father Time, my goal was essentially to write an MMPRs2 episode. There's an army of putties, and Father Time fits the DaiRanger monster scheme (with his name and design, particularly his eyes and different faces). There's also the moment where a Japanese family gets captured by the monster? That's the Rangers watching DaiRanger footage in the viewing screen, as they often did :). And although the two stories are very different, when you get to the end, you'll see how they connect. Anyway, on with chapter 2, I hope you enjoy it :).
Chapter Two
The three of us morphed in a storm of light and sound. Half a second later, we were on our way, streaking into the sky and shooting across the galaxy at incomprehensible speeds as the stars whirled around us. Time is weird when you're teleporting. It feels instantaneous but also not. I try to remind myself to count the seconds while we're in the air, but either I always forget, or we arrive before I get the chance to start counting.
In a flash of light, I touched down on solid ground, and the world took shape around me. I'd arrived in a small rocky hollow, with pebbles and gravel underfoot. On all sides, the ground curved up and away from me. A second later, I realised I was standing in a crater. I quickly checked the transmitter was still strapped around my back, then looked up past the rim. High above my head was a starry vista, but I didn't recognise any of the constellations. Stepping to the side, a planet came into view with a swirling atmosphere of yellow and brown, and darker cloud formations I assumed were storms. Our suits protect us whenever we're in a vacuum, but standing there in the shadows, I started to feel the bite of the cold. With my teeth chattering, I climbed to the top of the crater and peered around the landscape.
I was standing on a small plateau that sloped down to a wide rocky plain, with nothing around me but rocks and craters. Far above, the planet was now fully visible, while down the slope and over to the right was the junkyard of rusty, broken spaceships. But a few kilometres away stood Lumelian, impossible to miss on the stony landscape. Now with the space colony right in front of me, I could see the city was built around the tallest, central building, with what looked like giant observation windows all around the top floor. Actually standing before the city was so amazing that for a second, it took my breath away. Then I realised how dark all the towers looked. It was like the shadows outside had consumed all the light within. There was no movement anywhere, no maintenance crews or spaceships taking off or any astronauts working outside. All the windows were dark, and there weren't even warning lights flashing on any of the buildings.
Something was really wrong here.
And worse, the Aqua and Pink Rangers were nowhere in sight. Brendan, Kim and I must've been separated by the long teleport.
The silence of space is something I don't think I'll ever get used to. It's such a bizarre trick on your senses. But our Ranger tech is designed with that in mind. At the very least, our communicators should still have been working.
I stepped towards the distant city and raised my wrist to my helmet. "Brendan? Kim? You guys there?" I asked.
"I'm here," Brendan's voice crackled out of the communicator. "I guess we split up on the trip? I landed near, I don't know, it looks like a junk pile."
I scanned the landscape and caught a hint of aqua, in the shadows of a rusting troop carrier. "I see you," I said. "I'm up on the hill. Kim, where are you?"
"I'm here," Kim replied, and I let out a sigh of relief. "But I can't see a junkyard or a hill, so I'm guessing I'm on the other side of the city."
"You're closer than us?" I asked.
"Yeah," came the reply. "Everything's dark, and I can't see anyone. It's creepy."
"Follow the city around and meet us on the side nearest the junkyard," I said. "Don't worry, you won't miss it."
"Got it," Kim replied.
"Race you there," Brendan called.
I shook my head. "Brendan, focus," I murmured. "I'll be there soon," and I jogged down the slope. Reaching the rocky plain, I felt a slight tremor from somewhere below. I watched as the pebbles around me vibrated from the motion. Putting it down to a mild moonquake, or maybe even a meteorite strike on the far side of the moon, I put it at the back of my mind and kept going.
The other two Rangers were waiting in the shadows of one of Lumelian's buildings when I reached them. Kim was right. Up close, Lumelian seemed dark and abandoned. It was unsettling. I couldn't help the thought, what kind of nightmare were we about to walk into? I mean, the city was built in a place without heat or air. If something had gone wrong here, it would've gone really wrong.
Watching me approach, Kim raised her communicator. "Zordon, we're here," she said. "It took us a while to find each other, but we're outside the city now."
"That's good to know," Zordon replied. His voice was faint, but still reasonably clear. "We're sorry about the landing. We thought we could get the three of you closer together. Any clues so far?"
"It doesn't look like there's any damage to any of the buildings," I began. "But it's like nobody's home."
"That doesn't bode well," Zordon said. "Where are you exactly?"
"I'm not sure," Brendan replied. "It's not like there's many landmarks around."
Over to the right, I saw several low, huge buildings with large hangar doors facing away from the city. "Guys?" I began.
Kim didn't hear me. "We're on the junkyard side, if that helps," she said.
"I think we're right by the spaceship hangars," I said impatiently.
The communicator crackled immediately. "Right, we've got you," Zordon said. "Keep heading around to the left. You'll find a roadway that will take you to a maintenance access point. Go through a triple airlock, and you'll be in the city proper. Follow that into the grand entry hall, find a computer terminal and then plug the transmitter in. We'll go from there."
Brendan glanced over to the spaceship hangars. "Good eyes Scotty," he said, and followed after Kimberly. "C'mon."
We found the roadway of flattened stone soon enough, and followed it past several buildings until we came to a short, round structure with two doors on the outside, the entry chambers jutting out from the walls. One of the hatches was the size of a garage door and was probably used for exploration rovers and other vehicles, but the other one was a lot smaller. We immediately made our way to the second door.
"Can we open this from the outside?" Brendan asked.
"You'd think so," Kim replied. "I can't imagine they'd lock it. It's not like they have to worry about the neighbours, is it?"
"And in an emergency, you'd want to get back inside in a hurry," I added. Scanning the surrounding wall, my eyes settled on a small box with a hinged lid, sticking out from the wall and secured by a sturdy padlock. Breaking the lock open, I flipped open the lid to see two large buttons, one red and one green, with instructions beneath them printed in a curling alien language I couldn't read. On a hunch, I hit the red button. Nothing happened, but I didn't think it would. Then I pressed the green switch. The door groaned, there was a hiss of air, and the hatch lifted open.
"It was the…" I began.
"Our way in!" Brendan interrupted. The three of us stepped through the hatch into a narrow metal corridor. There was more writing on the walls we couldn't read, but beside the airlock was another panel with red and green switches. The last one inside, I hit the red switch and the door sealed shut with a hiss.
"That's easy enough," I said. Kim hit the green switch beside the second door to let us into the second chamber, and before long, we were standing in front of the final door. But just as Kim reached for the last green button, I drew my blade blaster and held it ready.
Kim froze. "What do you think we're gonna find in there?" she asked.
"I don't know," I replied. "And that worries me."
Brendan immediately drew his own blaster and held it close. With a nod, Kim opened the door and unholstered her blaster in one smooth motion. The hatch swung open, and we were finally inside the city proper, ready to face … nothing.
Nothing at all.
We stepped into a large garage, our footsteps the only noise in the oppressive, heavy silence. In front of us was a sunken work bay with several six-wheeled rovers sitting idle between workbenches piled high with tools. The walls were lined with equipment lockers, storage cages and barrels. Above our heads, the lights were dim, filling the room with soft shadows.
"Anyone here?" Kim called. We listened as her voice echoed through the building.
"Hello!" shouted Brendan for good measure, but there was no response.
I looked up to the roof to see a tattered strip of plastic billowing in the current from an air vent. "They still have oxygen," I said, as Kim and I reholstered our blasters. I noticed Brendan kept his raised. "Power too," I continued, "although it looks like they're running on emergency back-up or something."
"Creepy," Brendan murmured. "I've seen this movie. You just know this is the part where the alien shows up."
Kim and I glanced to each other, and held our gazes longer than we needed to. "Guess we should keep going?" Kim said brightly.
"Good plan," I agreed. The three of us made our way through the garage and found ourselves staring down a darkened corridor, with doors along the walls and a wide staircase off to the right.
"I guess, through here?" Kim said. "What do you reckon?"
"It's as good a way as any," I said. Kim nodded, and we followed after her.
Keeping silent, we made our way down the dimly-lit corridor, on the look-out for danger and wary of any traps. But we encountered no signs of life at all, and found no clue where the residents of the city were. Half the doors we passed were open but dark, which made everything worse. I glanced into a few and saw labs filled with computers and scientific equipment, offices with desks and chairs, and shadowy corridors that must've led to other parts of the city. I found myself holding my breath with every doorway we passed and every turn the corridor took, but I noticed Brendan and Kim doing the same.
The main hall we were following must've acted like a boulevard, with smaller corridors and stairwells branching off to different parts of the city. Large signs along the walls gave directions in the same alien language we couldn't read, but the silent journey was easy enough without a map. At one point, the three of us passed what couldn't have been anything other than a bar for the city's workers and maintenance crews, with the walls adorned by flags and uniforms of what must've been alien sports teams. The bar was lonely and eerie, but it made me remember something Zordon once said. It turns out that yes, some things really are universal.
"Can you believe this place?" Kim whispered, hesitant to make too much noise.
"I can't believe half an hour ago I was having breakfast and watching Saturday morning cartoons," Brendan said softly.
"I was training," Kim said. "I was kind of glad for the break, actually. I've spent so much time in the gym lately that I've started to have conversations with my pommel horse. Her name's Beatrix, she's lovely," and Brendan giggled.
Finally the three of us stepped through a narrow connecting tunnel into a gigantic room, with the roof high above our heads held up by arching support struts. All around were desks and pollards directing queues with nobody in them, while on either side of the room were enormous doors presumably leading further into the city. Facing us from across the room was a huge window, offering a panoramic view of the stark lunar landscape and Lumelian's interconnected city buildings. But immediately in front of us was a free-standing computer screen that towered over us, with a bank of buttons and switches underneath.
The enormity of the building made the silence even more unnerving. The three of us kept quiet for a minute. No sound registered in any direction, even with our enhanced Ranger senses.
Kimberly leaned down to pick up a stack of papers that had blown onto the floor. "So I'll ask the question," she began, sliding the papers onto a nearby desk. "Where is everybody? There were, what, five hundred and twenty-seven people living here according to Zordon. Where are they all?"
"It's not like they could've ducked outside for some fresh air," said Brendan.
"It's not gonna be much of a search and rescue mission if we can't even find the people we're supposed to be rescuing," Kim added.
"I don't like this," I said softly. "Something bad happened here. Doesn't it feel like we're being watched?"
"Where do we even start?" Brendan asked, and pointed to the window. "It's a big place."
Something Brendan said earlier made me stop and think. No, the citizens couldn't run outside, but where could everybody go, if there was some kind of emergency? "Guys?" I began.
"Look at how large some of these buildings are," Kim replied, turning to Brendan. "Five hundred people could easily be hiding in one of those towers and we wouldn't know until we check them all."
"Guys," I said again, louder than I intended. My voice echoed through the space, and both Rangers spun to face me. "Just stop for a second," I said. "Look around. We're in a space colony. We're standing in what's obviously an entry hall. How would people leave from a place like this?"
"In the spaceships they all came in," Kimberly realised. "And we passed one of the hangars on the way in, didn't we?"
I pointed to the large doors at the end of the building. "Going by where the hangar was," I began, "I'd say those doors lead straight to them."
"Okay, Brendan and I will check out the hangar bays and find the valet," Kim said. "You stay here and figure out how to plug in that transmitter."
I frowned and glanced to the device I assumed was a computer sitting on top of a nearby desk. It didn't seem to have a keyboard, and most of the casing was transparent. "Um, I don't … I'm not sure how, but okay," I said.
"You're in the blue suit," Kim said, and I could hear the smile beneath her helmet. "You'll think of something. Call us if you need us," and they dashed away.
Leaving me at the desk, the Pink and Aqua Rangers sprinted across the hall. Kim pointed to the closest door and they ran over, Kim hitting the switch to unlock the entryway. The corridor curved away from the other two and ended in a short flight of stairs. With the steps clanging underfoot, the two Rangers climbed to the top and found themselves approaching a large floor-to-ceiling window.
"So what are we hoping for?" Brendan asked.
"All the ships are gone," Kim replied. "Or maybe a line of people boarding the last one who can explain to us what happened here."
But as they reached the window, their faces fell. Down below, a dozen small ships sat lined up in a row, all facing the enormous bay doors. The ships were all different shapes and about the same size as Kim's Phoenix zord or smaller. But the hangar was full, and there were no empty docking spaces. Gazing around the hangar, they soon saw that it was as abandoned as the rest of the city.
Kim sighed. "Well, we can try the other two," she said.
Running back towards the great hall, the two Rangers tried the middle door. This led immediately up a flight of stairs and over a covered walkway, again ending in a wide observation deck. The ships parked in this hangar were larger than the first, but like the first hangar, every space was taken, with no evidence that any of the ships had left recently. The final door led to the third hangar. This hangar was smaller than the first two, but like the others it was full of idle space craft, resting quietly in the shadows and waiting for their crews and passengers to return.
Brendan slumped dejectedly against the railing. "So their spaceships are still here," he began, "but the actual people aren't."
"It tells us one thing," Kim said. "Wherever the citizens are, they're still in Lumelian somewhere. Let's get back to Scotty. Maybe he's had better luck than we've had," and they turned and raced away.
To be continued.