Danielle walks into her kitchen in the morning, and finds her sister Tory-Anne sitting at the kitchen counter with a bowl of cereal in front of her.
"You're dressed rather sharply this morning." Tory-Anne says as she turns to look at her older sister. Danielle's dressed in a red blazer, a red dress with ruffles on the bottom, an orange scarf, and orange boots.
"That's because I have an interview with a worker at Dimex today. I need it for my paper on dimension travel." Danielle answers as she grabs some cereal out of the cabinet, then pours herself a bowl of cereal.
"Of course you pick a topic like dimension travel. Why couldn't you pick something easy?"
"Because easy's boring."
"So judging by the amount of boys you sneak out of the house, I'm guessing you're boring."
"Hey, I have an active sexual life. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as you practice safe sex."
"That's not what mom says."
"Well, mom's a prude that doesn't understand how things work in the modern world. Your big sister however does. It's 2035, a girl should be allowed to be sexually active without being shamed for it."
"But you're only sixteen."
"So? I use protection. I'm careful about who I sleep with. That's the right way to do it. Remember that when you're my age." Danielle ruffles her sister's hair. Then her phone dings. "Crap, I gotta go."
"What about your breakfast?"
"I'll grab something before I head to school." Danielle heads out the door, and walks over to her car.
Hanley stifles a yawn as she leans her head against the window of Chad's car. Lani had to be on set this morning, and just had to insist that Hanley see Chad's work. And Chad gets up a good hour before Hanley does so the petite girl had to be up an hour earlier than usual. And that might as well have been four hours.
"Come on. Aren't you excited?" Chad says, and Hanley lifts her head up just enough to look at him with narrowed eyes. "Dimension travel! You aren't the least bit excited about that?"
"No. Dimension travel hasn't been exciting since it was created. And that was five years ago. What's exciting is becoming a Power Ranger, and fighting monsters. And getting your own giant electric eel that can deliver fatal doses of electricity." Hanley says, and Chad goes silent. Then suddenly she sees a large pink asteroid crashing down to Earth, landing at the end of the road. The asteroid cracks open, and a woman steps out. She has blue-green eyes and hot pink long curly hair. She's dressed in a maxi dress with a pink skirt with splotches of varying colors all over it, and a blue sleeveless top. Her dress has pink fingerless mittens that go up to her elbows.
"What the hell?" Chad says. Then the girl opens her mouth, and sonic screams at them. All the cars on the road are pushed back, and Hanley grabs her ears. Finally, the screaming stops. Several people move to get out of their cars, and start to run away from the woman. Some of them make it, some of them don't. The woman opens her mouth again, and sonic screams. Everyone that was still left on the road, goes flying forward.
"Crap." She still couldn't morph nor use her powers with all these people still around. But that didn't mean she couldn't do something. So Hanley undoes her seatbelt, and gets out of the car. And ignores Chad yelling at her to get back in the car. But she's sure she hears him get out of the car himself. Hanley stops once she reaches the person closest to her. She bends down, and helps the person to their feet. "Come on, you've got to get away."
The person starts to walk away, or rather attempts to but howls in pain. They're about to drop to their knees when Hanley grabs them. She wraps the person's arm around her shoulders, and starts to run with them. But the woman sonic screams at them again, and they both go flying. Hanley hits the pavement roughly, and groans.
The music in Danielle's car stops playing just as she hears a deafening scream. She lets go of the steering wheel to cover her ears. Then just as suddenly as the screaming began, it came to a stop. Then people start to run past her car while screaming hysterically. She only picks up a few bits and pieces like 'monster' and 'screaming' and something along the lines of 'like a damn TV show'. If not for the events of the last couple of days, she might not have believed them. Then the screaming starts again, knocking several of the people on the road down. Once the screaming ceases, Danielle gets out of the car. She starts to run down the street then stops as she listens to the pained groans of the people around and behind her.
Despite every cell in her body telling her to keep running, she continues to stand there. Then feels someone grab her shoulders. She hadn't even noticed the Green Ranger in front of her. "You've got to get out of here!"
The green and purple clad superhero starts to push her down the road, and she can see the Blue and Yellow Rangers also helping people to safety. "Hello?"
She turns to the Green Ranger waving his gloved hands in front of her face. "Go!"
She starts running, and looks over her shoulder to see the Green Ranger running away. He has a nice ass. She shakes her head as she keeps running.
Just as Hanley starts to pull herself up from the ground, she sees the other rangers run toward her. Nate approaches her, and helps her the rest of the way up.
"Come on now, little girl."
"Little girl? Just because I'm 5'2 does not mean I'm-" she starts to argue, then feels his gaze through his black visor. She sighs, and starts to run, hoping to find a safe place to morph. She looks around, and sees nowhere. Then civilians start to run away, and she gets swept away in the crowd. She runs into Chad. "What am I going to do?"
"Once we're a safe distance away I don't think anyone's going to notice if you slip away."
"I hope you're right."
"Hey you!" Xander says once they've gotten all the civilians away, and have found the perpetrator of the attack. The woman looks at them.
"Rangers? No matter. No one is a match for the power of Mandili." She opens her mouth, and sonic screams at them. They skid backwards, and sparks come off their suits. But the attack has mostly no effect on them. Sensing this, Mandili keeps up the attack until they go flying backwards. They land on the ground roughly. "I will invade Earth!"
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Xander holds out his gloved hand, and a long vine comes out. It wraps around Mandili, who huffs. "Haha, I defeated a monster by myself."
"I got one to explode. You tied up one with a vine. Which one of us did more?" Jessica says as she dusts off her costume.
"Guys." Nate says, tapping his tall friend's shoulder. Xander swats his hand away. Nate sighs dramatically. "Guys!"
Finally, the twins turn to look at him. Then he points to Mandili. She's set herself free. "Well, shit."
"I can't be contained, puny humans!" Mandili stomps her foot on the road, and the ground shakes beneath their feet. A deafening sound fills the air. They all grab their ears, and drop to their knees as they scream in pain.
Once they've gotten what the crowd feels to be a safe distance away, the crowd splinters off, running off in different directions. While the injured take up residence in the patch of grass as some good Samaritans try to provide some comfort. Then she sees Danielle kneeling down to a guy with a decent sized gash on his forehead. Huh, Danielle's the last person she expected to help out. But she didn't have time to think about that. Right now she had to get to her team. Hanley turns, and starts to run as fast as she can. Once she's sure she's away from prying eyes, she holds up her Morpher, hitting the watch-like device.
"Element Masters! Charged up!" As she morphs, she teleports to the location of her team. And finds them kneeling on the ground while grabbing their heads and crying out in pain. "Guys! Guys, what happened?"
She doesn't get an answer. She looks up, and sees that the woman has disappeared.
"Chad, the monster's gone. And something's wrong with the others. I think her attack hit them hard."
"Alright. Meet me at The Cave."
The condition of the others don't get much better once they're in The Cave. Hanley chews on her bottom lip as Chad scans her injured teammates. After some time, Chad puts the scanner down and turns to face his sister-in-law.
"I don't know what she did to them but it's pretty bad. I'm going to have to put them in their capsules to reverse the effects." Chad says. She was starting to wonder what those things were for. "Help me put them in there."
Chad grabs Xander and Jessica off the medical tables they were lying on, and carries them over to their capsules. Hanley grabs Nate off his medical table, and puts him in a capsule. The capsules close, and a faint whirring sound starts.
"Now, that's going to take some time so until they're back to normal you are going to fight the monster on your own."
"What? I can't fight a monster if she did this to the others."
"Jessica fought the basilisk yesterday after you all got turned to stone."
"Because she's immune to petrification! I'm not immune to this!"
"No. But I've figured out who she is. Which means I know what her abilities are." Chad walks over to the monitors, and starts typing. A picture of the monster appears on the screens. "This is Mandili. A wanted intergalactic criminal. Which would explain why she travels in an asteroid. She has the power to manipulate sound."
"So what? Am I supposed to just… not hear?"
"No. But you have the power to generate snow. And snow cancels out sound. So-"
"I use snow to mute her!"
"Exactly."
Mandili is suddenly teleported away from the fight. She looks around, and sees that she's in a small black room.
"Mandili." She turns once she hears the familiar voice.
"Petra Matrimor. I thought you were dead."
"Nope."
"Ooh, does that mean-"
"Yes. But I think it will please you to know that Svetlana is still imprisoned in her ball."
"It actually does. So what happened? Last I saw your family, you were well on your way to invading Earth."
"Stupid humans happened. They created special technology to give themselves superpowers. All our monsters were destroyed, and father got sealed away in this tomb, us along with him."
"What about Dane? I mean, he could've-"
"Ah-na-na." Petra interrupts while looking over her shoulder. "We don't mention that name around here."
"Why not?"
"Because, he…" Petra leans in, and whispers, "betrayed us. While Svetlana is a bumbling idiot, she's at least sworn to the code of evil. You know who on the other hand… not so much. He ended up falling in love with a human then tried to convince us not to invade Earth. Father being father, killed his lover then tortured you know who as punishment. Once he was done with him, all three of us combined our magic to send him flying into space for the rest of his life. And he's immortal so that's like all of eternity."
"Petra! Where is that dra-" Oedious Matrimor himself appears in the room.
"Father, Mandili is here!"
"Of course, one of Svetlana's exes." Oedious marches past Mandili, and instead comes to stand next to Petra. Petra grabs his arm, and turns them around so their backs are facing Mandili then bend over.
"Father, we could really use her. She's really strong, and her Crushers could come in handy. We could use some foot soldiers."
"Fine. I hope you're right about this." The father and daughter stand up, and turn back around to face the smirking alien. Mandili has already produced the egg that houses her Crushers. She drops it on the floor, and it cracks open causing green smoke to come out.
"You're lucky I like you, Petra."
An alarm goes off in The Cave.
"Well, good news is not Mandili. Bad news is it's a whole lot of her foot soldiers." Chad says as an image of a bunch of red monsters stomping around a rock quarry. They each have a hot pink stripe across their chests, and a mane of similarly colored hair.
"I can't fight all those monsters."
"I don't think you have a choice. If they get loose, they could do some serious damage." Hanley sighs. He's right as much as she hates to admit it. "Look, you can do this. I believe in you."
"Alright." Hanley takes a step breath before morphing. Then teleports to the quarry. Standing above them, the little creatures don't seem to have noticed her presence. Exactly as she planned. She raises her hand, and sends out a wave of electricity down to the army. Several monsters go flying, before landing on the ground and twitching wildly. The remaining ones turn to her, and lasers shoot out of their heads. Hanley lifts off the ground, and blasts snow down to the ground. They wail as they get buried by the snow. But her blast didn't take all of them out as some of them trudged through the snow. Then more red laser beams come at her. She flies out of the way, narrowly missing one beam.
Hanley spins around in the air, and a spiral of electricity forms around her. The spiral reaches the ground, splintering off once it does, and shocking all the monsters. Some of them fall to the ground and explode while others go flying before exploding. Once her attack has finished, she floats down to the ground, landing on her knees. That attack took a lot out of her. But she did it.
"Mandili!" Oedious shouts, turning to look at the pink haired alien.
"I know your mad sir but I have thousands of Crushers. And there are several friends I've made over the years as an intergalactic outlaw, aliens and demons alike. I'm more than happy to call in some favors." Mandili says. Oedious visibly relaxes.
"Well, then I have a perfect plan."
Hanley teleports back to The Cave unmorphed. She probably wouldn't have been able to stay morphed for very long after all the energy she used up. Her friends are still in their capsules. But that's not all. Lani is standing in The Cave!
"Hanley?! What are you doing here?! What is she doing here?!" Lani looks between both Hanley and Chad. Chad rubs the back of his neck.
"Okay, I told you that the Blue and Pink Rangers made themselves Rangers by accident after a glitch in the system let them into The Cave. I just kind of let out that the Pink Ranger is Hanley."
"Why? I told you that I didn't want Hanley being involved in this."
"I know. I knew you were going to be mad so I didn't tell you. But Hanley has been a very good Ranger so far. She just fought off an entire army of monsters by herself."
"Correction: I destroyed an entire army of monsters by myself."
"Yes. And it's not like I did this on purpose. It was an accident."
"Fine. I guess you can't reverse it but I'm still not happy about this."
"Okay. Well, now that that's taken care of, there's something else we need to discuss. We need a Red Fire Ranger." Chad says as he walks over to the monitors, and leans over to start typing.
"What? But we've been doing just fine without a Red Ranger." Hanley says.
"That's just the thing. We really haven't. Your first fight as a foursome, three of you got incapacitated leaving only one Ranger to fight. Then in this fight, three of you got incapacitated leaving only one Ranger to fight."
"So what? That's all going to get better if we have a Red Ranger?" Hanley says.
"I don't know. At the very least, it'll even out our odds." Chad says as he continues typing. "So I've started a search for a perfect candidate for the power. I've limited the search to teenagers as that's the age group the power is most compatible with but it's still going to take some time."
