[Author's note]: The only ships I intend to ship here are friendships. Mwahaha.

I really wanted this to be K+ but FanFiction's rating system suuuucks. If Secret of NIMH, Chronicles of Narnia, most of the Star Wars movies, and almost every Disney movie ever made are either G or PG and are allowed to have death and serious injury, why can't a K+ story on this site? Even Power Rangers, the franchise this story is based on, kills-off monsters en masse in fiery explosions every episode. Sometimes even a Ranger dies or is critically injured and that show is rated Y-7, as in made for 7-year olds. But FanFiction insists that such content is far too explicit for even 9-year olds to handle and must be rated T. So, to my eternal displeasure, this PG story is now rated T. Confound it.

Also, I'm practicing on-and-off with the present tense in this first chapter. Sorry for the inconvenience :(

The Puppet Master

Chapter One: When the Sun Comes Up

[Scene 01]

The requiem knell struck four under the dawn sky. In what seems an eternity, a wounded Red Ranger falls along the clock tower, crashing and skidding against its surface and only barely failing to catch the slanted hour hand that would have broken his violent descent.

His sword and blaster are already dozens of feet beneath him—far out of reach.

Troy looks through his broken visor and sees Creepox standing victoriously at the tower's ledge, relishing in watching his enemy fall.

The city awakens hundreds of feet below and already some are leaving for work. In those moments, Troy wonders who would see him descend from here to the pavement. His friends are too far gone and his helmet receives only distorted static of pleas and battle reports.

Would anyone save him in time?—he wonders. Yet with every passing second as Creepox grows smaller and the ground rises to meet him, hope fades into despair and harsh acceptance.

A small photograph loosens from his charred suit and Troy's eyes widen at seeing the image flit away from him. There, frozen in time, was the perfect snapshot of a moment shared with his friend, Emma. She held the camera, took the picture of them wrapped in a blanket and enjoying hot cocoa together on a midnight not so long ago and Troy knows this may be the last he ever sees of the beautiful world he loved and swore to protect.

The photo skitters away.

Troy falls.

[Scene 02]

The refrigerator door opens, illuminating a small light into the darkened kitchen.

The sun hasn't risen, yet Troy's disciplined lifestyle has forced him to meet the day before it even begins. It's no small help that his recent nightmares of Creepox make sleep difficult. Even in death, the Warstar general haunts him.

Troy reaches for the protein shake he made less than a full night's sleep ago and closes the door. He paces as he drinks it and sees Emma's unconscious form resting peacefully on the living room couch. To think that only several hours ago, he found her in the greatest distress he'd ever seen her in. Her foster parents haven't called her yet, no doubt still passed out from all their drinking, and the Red Ranger wonders why Emma chose to stay with him without first calling Gia, the one who'd acted as her big sister her whole life.

Troy finishes the drink and throws on his sweatshirt for a pre-morning jog. He takes a final look at Emma on the couch, praying she'll be safe here with him.

Her parents don't know him. They'd never find her on his couch.

Then the Megaforce leader quietly exits and locks the door, making sure not to disturb his guest.

He jogs for some miles through the suburbs, then into the park. While the sun rises over the sleeping city, he muses if Robo Knight might be brooding atop a skyscraper at that very moment, guarding the earth's creatures while sparing no time for sleep. Ironic that he chose to defend industrialization in spite of his programming.

Or was the robot only observing the humans' urban life, lamenting the absent nature that preceded it?

Or was he just brain-damaged and mistook buildings for trees made of concrete and cars for metal horses? Troy chose not to dwell on it.

Approaching a park bench, Troy halted at hearing his communicator ring. Pausing to catch his breath, he answered.

"Hello?"

"Troy, it's Gia." She sounded anxious as she spoke, "Thank goodness you're awake. Listen, the police were at my door just a bit ago looking for Emma. Apparently, her foster parents kicked her out of the house again and, since she hid at my place last time, this is the first place they looked. But she wasn't here and I've been looking all over for her—"

"Gia, it's alright. I've got her. She spent the night at my place."

Gia released a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank God!" Then something clicked with her, "Wait—hold up: why would she go all the way over to your place?—I'm much closer."

"I was already in her neighborhood following a lead on a new monster. I'll brief everyone after school."

Gia paused. "Really. I'm just glad Emma's alright. But why didn't she call me?"

"She didn't exactly have time to grab her morpher when her parents threw her out."

"We have phones too, Troy."

"She probably didn't have time to grab that either."

Gia sighed. "Why didn't Gosei tell us about this? Shouldn't a Ranger being kicked out of her own home be a priority alert? What if you weren't there and Emma had to wander through the streets all night trying to reach us? Something could've happened to her."

Troy sat on the bench, still calming his breath. "Gosei doesn't care about our personal problems. He's not our babysitter. He's our commander. Ranger business is only that to him: business." That sounded colder than he intended.

"Personal problems?! Emma was in danger—she needed our help—and Gosei did nothing?! I thought the Rangers were a family, Troy! We look after our own! What kind of family leaves someone behind and doesn't offer help when they need it the most? Gosei always keep tabs on us anyways—I don't think he even sleeps. He could've teleported her back to the base, or at the very least, alerted us that she needed help—"

"Gia." Troy cut her off. His breathing was still dogged. "We are a family. But maybe Gosei just isn't part of it. …By the way, he's probably listening to every word we say on these things."

"Good. I want him to know how I feel about leaving us in the dark about this. I thought we actually meant something to him, aside from just being his soldiers." Gia brought a hand to her forehead to calm her nerves as she paced the sidewalks of Emma's neighborhood. "Is Emma awake too? Can I talk to her?"

"She's still asleep. It's only five-thirty, Gia."

"Right. Right."

"I'll have her call you on my morpher after breakfast. She needs her rest."

"Okay. Good plan. …Why are you breathing so heavy?"

"Jogging."

"Ah."

There was some silence between them. In both the park and the suburbs, the stillness was a welcome peace. The early birds chirped and graced the scenery with their music. It wasn't often either Ranger could appreciate daybreak's serenity. Even Troy, who jogged every morning at this same time, never stopped to truly take in the beautiful surroundings.

Gia broke the silence. "I'm going back to Emma's place to pick up her stuff. Give me your address. I need to see her."

[Scene 03]

7:30 AM.

Cameras flash and shutters click before City Hall. Atop the steps at the front of the building, the Blue Ranger, fully morphed, stands beside the mayor of Harwood. Tensou resides by Noah's side, unaccustomed to publicity but confident all the same.

Behind the podium, the mayor declares to the excited crowd, "At long last, we'll reap the benefits of what we've sown these last few months with the Power Rangers' invaluable aid. We commissioned from them a satellite to warn us of any impending attacks by the Warstar Empire and our heroes spared their brightest scientific minds to construct it for us. In addition, they even built us this city-wide force-field powered by the Morphing Grid itself to ensure our safety in the face of danger." He turned to Noah and beamed, "Blue Ranger, will you do the honors?"

Standing proudly like a monument, Noah answered through his helmet, "It would be my privilege, sir." At that, Noah produced the remote connected to the generator atop City Hall. Before activating it, he knelt to his robot companion's side and asked, "Tensou, will you give me a hand?"

The little robot was ecstatic. "Oh boy! Oh boy! You know I would!"

A white-gloved hand held the remote and a small metal appendage turned it on. At once, a beam of blue light shot from City Hall's roof and into the sky, where it diverged into a vast semi-transparent energy dome encompassing the entire city and county. The crowd erupted in cheer, knowing this would be the end of preemptive monster attacks.

Noah hands the control to a serviceman, who guards it with his life.

The hero and the mayor stand before the podium. Under the brilliant light of the energy dome, they shake hands in front of hundreds of flashing cameras, each photographer vying for a place in the history books.

The cameras flash.

[Scene 04]

Steel explodes, crashing against Robo Knight's outstretched arms. His feet cratered firmly in the asphalt, the speeding semitrailer truck crashes to a violent halt when faced with the robot man's incredible strength, saving the petrified mother and daughter just behind him in the downtown street. Sirens blare in the distance.

He turns to the trembling pair. "Humans, are you alright?"

The mother holds the daughter in her arms and chokes between sobs, "We're—oh, God. Thank you, Robo Knight!"

She runs away while carrying her daughter and the robot sentinel returns his focus to the front of the massive truck bludgeoned around his fists.

Another monstrosity of human development—he processes internally. Three axles. Eighteen wheels. Eighty-thousand pounds. Over one-hundred-twenty-thousand gallons of gasoline consumed per year and a carbon footprint that would turn my stomach if I had one. I should thank the smugglers hiding inside; it isn't often human law permits me to dismantle such a horrid beast. I shall savor this.

Digging his fingers through the hood, Robo Knight tears and shears away the covering and engine of the truck, scattering the pieces left and right as oil sprays over him like gore. Drawing his sword, he slashes the front tires. Then he leaps atop the vehicle, over the unconscious driver and onto the vast trailer, and hacks and carves it apart. The police cars finally arrive. The crowd is mesmerized by his animosity.

His scanners alert him to danger and he weaves aside just as laser bolts fire through the roof from within the trailer, nearly clipping him.

The shots continue and grow in rapidity. "Take this, you metal freak!" the masked men inside scream.

Robo Knight draws his own blaster pistol and, using thermal vision to map his targets through what remained of the roof, returns fire, disabling or disarming the majority of them before leaping in to apprehend the rest.

The crowd holds its breath as sounds of conflict thunder within the semitrailer, followed by an eerie silence. Then at length, Robo Knight crashes against the back door and breaks it from its hinges, skidding violently through the street before tumbling onto the asphalt and slamming into the side of a police car.

A ten-foot-tall cyborg troll trudges from the dark interior of the truck into the morning light of day. His bionic framework is bronze and almost archaic in design, like something out of the Machine Empire in the days of Zeo. The onlookers are startled and some scream at beholding the new challenger. He stands, a lumbering beast set only on demolishing the warrior who stirred him.

Robo Knight struggles to pull himself up. A cyborg imported from Briarwood. Equipped with heat-cloaking technology to disguise himself from thermal scanners. I didn't see that coming.

Gosei's champion holsters his gun and holds his sword in a double-handed grip, preparing for round two. The cyborg troll protracts a hefty blade from his right wrist and the left is suddenly protected by large and dense shield. He roars carnivorously at the knight and they charge at each other, blades and shield swinging and crashing against one another like thunder and fighters shirking about at lightning speed.

Robo Knight convinces himself in the blitz: Though my enemy, this creature is also a child of the earth. I do not know by whose hands he was tainted, but a life is a life. Beneath all that evil machinery screams the soul of a confused being begging to be free. I can tell. He doesn't know where he is or why he became this way. Trolls are not dumb animals, yet this one appears greatly limited. What forces dared to tamper with nature in this way?

With the wrist-blade parried aside amid the fighters' frenzy, Robo Knight plunged a precisely-aimed and power-charged hand into the troll's cybernetic torso, seeking out the cables and generators polluting its body. His hand in position, the knight immediately absorbed what he could of the cyborg's inorganic power source. The troll screamed in pain, his nervous system tragically intertwined with the metal attachments, and blasted Robo Knight back with a strike from his shield.

Tumbling away and regaining his feet, Robo Knight analyzed the wound he inflicted and contemplated stunning the troll with a nonlethal blast from his gun to the freshly exposed area. He drew the weapon and took the shot, yet the troll blocked it with his shield, roared, and then charged for the knight again. Gosei's sentinel rushed the troll as well, but moments before the warriors would meet, Robo Knight swerved to the low side, only barely missing the cyborg's crashing blade, and repeatedly shot the troll in the back of one metal knee with his gun set to full blast. The troll staggered and Robo Knight took full advantage of its loss of balance and wrapped his pistol-wielding arm around the beast's neck, locking it in a one-armed stranglehold and lunging his sword through the cybernetic shoulder connected to the arm-shield, paralyzing the entire limb so long as the sword stayed in place.

The troll attempted a yell, but only suffocated in the robot's strong grip. He couldn't reach the parasite clinging onto him, but instead allowed himself to fall on his back, smashing the figurative wind out of the robot while also driving the sword in his own shoulder deeper still. A double-edged tactic.

Robo Knight weakly released his grip and the troll rolled off, yanking out the knight's sword after rising to one knee—his good knee. To the troll's dismay, one knee was all he could afford without limping, courtesy of the robot's gunshots. And it seemed as though that left arm was nearly dysfunctional, courtesy of the sword. Robo Knight slowly lifted himself upward against the truck and beheld his own blade spinning at him through the air. The troll had thrown it with his good arm and it impaled Robo Knight through his left shoulder, pinning him to the semitrailer.

After a moment's shock, he saw the troll attempting to rush him again, limping knee and all. Not completely helpless, the knight leveled his gun once more and a perfect shot to that same knee forced it to bend inwards, ultimately severing it and forcing the troll to lose his balance. Robo Knight had pulled the sword from his shoulder just an instant before the troll crashed uncontrollably against him, forcing the semitrailer to tip over and land on its side, nearly carrying Robo Knight with it.

The troll struggled to rise from the ground, where the flipped underside of the big-rig looked directly at him and Robo Knight lay crumpled against it. They couldn't have been more than a few feet apart. Even with one metal leg missing, the cyborg troll had lifted itself to a standing position, using its barely functional shield-carrying arm to lean against the truck for balance. Robo Knight had only elevated himself to a sitting position and found himself staring down the massive blade affixed to the troll's right arm, preparing for the kill. The guardian of Earth weakly raised his blaster—now set to stun—at the penetration he'd made earlier in the troll's metal torso and suddenly feared in attempting to only disable him, he might take this earthling's life to save his own. The consideration vexed and confused him.

A streak of violet tore through the distant sky, dashing between buildings until a vague form could be discerned at the apex: the Black Ranger, wielding his mighty Snake Axe and preparing to strike. Before the troll knew what hit him, the violet missile plummeted beside him, tearing up the street as he landed. The axe cleaved off the cyborg's head midflight.

The beast fell dead and Robo Knight hastily rose to catch him in his arms. The champion of the Earth froze in disbelief at what happened, then gently lowered the unburdened victim onto the ground.

Jake arose from his landing position, steam surrounding him from the dramatic entrance. He slung the Snake Axe over his shoulder and turned to approach his companion.

"Pretty cool, huh? It's called 'jetting.' I saw Zordon's Rangers doing it in the archives and thought I'd try it with our teleportation feature. The sky's not really my element, sure, but waddaya think? Was that sweet or—?"

Robo Knight seized him by the throat and slammed him against the flipped underside of the truck.

"Why did you kill him?"

His axe dropped at the ground and his hands clutching the robot's grip for air, Jake replies, "Waddayou mean?! He was a monster on a rampage! Isn't killing monsters in our job description?!"

"We slay minions of Warstar. Not the children of the earth."

"Does it matter what planet they're from?! If they're a threat—!"

Robo Knight's grip tightened. "I could have saved him! He was a slave to the machines which oppressed him, retarded by whatever outside force corrupted him! He was a victim!"

"What about Bigs and Bluefur?" Jake choked, "Weren't they 'just victims' of that toxic waste? Weren't they also 'children of the earth'?"

Robo Knight releases his grip and staggers back. Jake falls to his knees and gasps for air, undoing the front part of his helmet at an angle obscure enough to hide his face. The crowd is scared and enraptured at seeing the two heroes turn on each other.

After some seconds of heavy breathing, Jake fixed his helmet and stood to look his partner in the visor. "So maybe I could've just disabled him. I'll keep that in mind next time. But excuse me for not knowing we determined our enemies' fate based on what planet they're from. Think what you want of me for being a loose cannon, but at least I'm not a racist."

"No. You only jump the gun and make premature judgments. You took an innocent life today, Black Ranger, all because he looked like a monster. Were this creature human, you would've held back."

"So we're both racist scum. Point taken. Remind me to bring up public relations at the next Ranger meeting." Jake dug his boot under the axe's blade and flipped it in the air, grabbing it by the handle as it spun and then sheathing it on his back.

Silence drifted between the two and the crowd was unsure what to think. Jake addressed them in his outgoing manner.

"It's okay, people. Nothing to see here. Please move on with your daily lives. Enjoy the weather, enjoy our fancy new force-field. Take your kids to school, stimulate the economy—" Jake's eyes widened beneath the helmet and he froze in place. Then he panicked. "School!"

In the next second, he blasted off into the air in another violet streak, leaving the crowd perplexed before they finally dispersed. Robo Knight watched him dart through Harwood City's skyline in that panicked daze.

The knight's optics remain on the luminescent field encompassing the city. "Blue Ranger really has done an exceptional job with his project."

Then he turned back to the troll and knelt beside it. He called into his communicator, "Gosei, I've apprehended a band of smugglers transporting a male troll-turned-cyborg. The troll, presumably an unwilling victim, appeared mentally impaired and is now unfortunately dead. I request a background check on him so that we may find and inform his family. Given his species, he is likely from Briarwood. Though the troll's cyborg components resembled those of the Machine Empire, the smugglers were human, though abnormally strong, and I do not yet know if they are part of a larger ring or are working independently…"

He turned at hearing one of the smugglers groaning and crawling out from the semitrailer, still disoriented from the lost fight as the police closed-in on him. Robo Knight focused his sights on his soon-to-be interrogation victim and continued ominously, "…but I intend to find out."

[Author's note]: To be honest, I hesitate to call this fan-fiction because I'm not a fan of Megaforce (and that's putting it in the most civil terms possible). However, I still really want to give a genuine effort to write a good story for this season and I won't think less of any readers or reviewers who think differently of this particular season and its "Super" sequel than I do. I promise to treat every character in this story as fairly and respectfully as I would treat any other character for every other fandom I write for. ...If you've read what I have so far of The Infamy (Teen Titans) and February, a Decade Ago (Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep), that may not necessarily be a merciful thing. -THUNDER CRASHES MENACINGLY- 8)

Things to ponder before the next chapter:

1) Troy told Gia on the phone that he was tracking a new monster before he found Emma. Any early guesses on what kind of monster this was?

2) What do you think of Gosei seeming to not care about Emma's predicament? Is Troy right to defend him or is Gia right to criticize him? Is there a middle ground?

3) What could the results of the new city-wide shield be? Do you think it will be a success or a failure?

4) Who's side do you take on the debate about killing the troll? Jake's? Robo Knight's? Neither? Both?

5) Jake did something really stupid before he left. Did you notice what it was?

6) Did the off-and-on present-tense writing style get on your nerves? Should I just stick to past-tense?

7) Should FanFiction's rating system be revised to be less restrictive? (YES IT FRIKKING SHOULD!)