Where's the Planet. || An Epsilon Squadron Oneshot
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Space Patrol Delta's Epsilon Command Ship, also known as the Defiant Striker, was a technological marvel. Sure, on the outside, it was the shape of a silver croissant, but on the inside, it housed a marvel of engineering. Beneath its sleek, crescent-shaped exterior, the Defiant Striker boasted an array of advanced systems designed to push the boundaries of technology. Its core was a fusion reactor, compact yet powerful, capable of generating immense energy with minimal emissions. The ship's hull was composed of a state-of-the-art alloy, both incredibly durable and lightweight, allowing it to withstand extreme conditions while maintaining exceptional maneuverability.
It also housed one very ticked-off Power Ranger, whose patience ran thinner and thinner with every second.
Li Na Song paced back and forth in the briefing room, her footsteps echoing sharply against the polished metal floor. Her current expression was like if you combined an Old English Bulldog with the worst uncanny-valley Mr. Beast-style YouTube video thumbnail in the universe. The Epsilon Squadron Mobile Unit Blue Ranger activated the communication function of her sleek rectangular Morpher for what seemed like the hundredth time that hour, and she gritted her teeth when it played the familiar voicemail.
Hey, it's J.J. If you're hearing this, I'm about to die, or I'm ignoring you. Byeeeeee.
"Crash," she muttered. Her left eye twitched as she tried everything in her power not to scream and shout. "Please get me an aspirin and a megaphone."
Crash Masronk stood near the back of the room, his grasshopper-like skin beading with sweat. He couldn't afford to lose focus, not when the championship title was on the line. The Silver Ranger's beady bug eyes observed the field, his three-fingered hands gripping a cold metal bar. In a single circular motion, he flicked his wrist.
The foosball man kicked the plastic ball into the wooden goal, scoring Crash's ninth point and winning him the game.
"Noooooooo!" cried out Crash's opponent, Sora Harlbeng, falling to the floor as she slumped in dramatic defeat. Sora's bright pink hair splayed out on the ground, and she groaned in disbelief. "How did you even get that last shot? This game is rigged!"
Crash, barely containing his glee, gave a triumphant chirp. "It's all in the wrist, Sora. All in the wrist."
"Crash. Megaphone. Now." Li Na commanded, about to pop a fuse.
"I'll get it!" Sora leaped to her feet, her earlier defeat forgotten. The Gold Ranger extended her right arm, and when it couldn't reach quite the length she was hoping for, she simply extended it even further, her Tractellurian physiology allowing for her "Super Rubberiness," as Crash had called it once. Her arm reached a nearby supply closet, where her blue hand rummaged through the cluttered shelves, tossing aside various gadgets and tools before finally emerging with a sleek, black megaphone. She retracted her arm back to her usual, comfortable length before tossing the megaphone to Li Na, who snatched it up with a barely contained snarl.
Li Na took a deep breath, then flicked the megaphone on. The resulting feedback squeal made everyone wince, and Crash's antennae flattened against his head.
"Jason Jarvis Oliver!" Li Na's voice echoed through the ship's corridor, magnified and amplified by the megaphone. "If you don't get your butt here in the next five seconds, I will personally fly this ship into the nearest star and blame it on a rogue asteroid!"
Crash, sensing the tension in the room, tried to lighten the mood. "Come on, Li Na, maybe he's just caught up with something important."
Before Li Na could retort, the door to the briefing room slid open with a hiss, and in strolled J.J. Oliver, looking completely unbothered. He adjusted his uniform, a pep in his step and a half-eaten strawberry donut in his left hand.
"Hey, what's up?" J.J. took a leisurely bite of his donut, crumbs falling onto his already wrinkled jacket.
Li Na's eyes narrowed into slits. "Where. Were. You?"
J.J. took another bite of his donut, thoughtfully chewing as if considering whether or not to bother answering. "I was, uh, making sure our systems were calibrated properly. You know, standard protocol stuff." J.J. quickly stuffed his copy of "Top 20 Vehicles You'll Never Be Able to Afford" Magazine into his back pocket, away from Li Na's view.
"Calibrating the systems?" Li Na's voice was dangerously low, her grip on the megaphone tightening. "For two hours?"
"Well, I had to make sure everything was running smoothly," J.J. said, shrugging as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He grabbed a chair and plopped down while nibbling his donut. "So, who are we going after?" He asked, kicking his feet up on the briefing table.
"Precisely," chirped Crash.
Li Na glared at J.J. with the intensity of a thousand dying stars. "Who we're going after, J.J., is not the point. The point is that you've been wasting time while the rest of us have been preparing for a mission that's critical to the safety of the entire galaxy!"
J.J. raised an eyebrow, completely unfazed. "Right, right, but if we don't know who we're going after, how can we be ready? So, seriously, who is it?"
Li Na's eye twitched again. "That's what I've been trying to tell you!"
"So tell me already," J.J. said, his tone light and teasing. "Who are we chasing?"
"Yes!" Li Na said, frustrated. "That's what I'm trying to explain!"
"No, no, no." J.J. leaned forward, wiping his fingers on his uniform. "You're supposed to tell me who we're after. Not just agree with me!"
Crash, sensing another misunderstanding brewing, decided to jump in. "J.J., listen. We're chasing Who. He's the criminal we're after."
"That's what I'm asking!" J.J. threw his hands up in exasperation. "Who's the criminal?"
"Yes!" Sora chimed in, bouncing up and down with excitement. "We're going after Who!"
J.J. blinked at them, trying to process what they were saying. "So…we know the name of the criminal?"
Li Na pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to maintain her composure. "Yes, we do."
"Good!" J.J. nodded, pleased with the progress. "So who is it?"
"Precisely!" Crash chirped, antennae flicking.
"Precisely, okay…" J.J. remarked, his head spinning. He paused briefly before speaking again, choosing his following words carefully. "So, we find Precisely—"
"No, we find Who!" Li Na yelled.
"Precisely!" J.J. responded.
"Then say it that way!"
"That's what I'm saying!"
"No, you're not!"
J.J. threw up his hands in frustration, "Then who's Precisely?!"
Li Na placed the megaphone on the table, "No. Who is Who."
"Who is Who?" J.J. repeated, puzzled. "Is this some sort of existential crisis thing? Because I'm not mentally equipped to deal with that right now. Who am I?"
Sora giggled, "No, silly!" She tapped J.J. on the shoulder, and when he was looking in the other direction, she extended an arm to snatch the remnants of his donut for herself. She booped his nose. "Who's Who. I'm Me, and You're You!"
"Wait, wait, wait," Crash interjected, "But I'm Me, too!"
"No, no, you're you." Sora insisted.
Crash nodded as if this made a ton of sense until a thought crossed his mind. "Wait, but if you're me, and I'm you, then who's he?" Crash pointed accusingly at J.J..
"Can we please just get back on topic?" Li Na held her head in her hands, rapidly losing her sense of sanity.
"Oh, I get it, now," Crash whispered to Sora, who was enjoying the donut she stole from J.J. far too much for her own good, "I'm me. You're you, and she's a buzzkill."
"I CAN HEAR YOU!"
J.J. took a deep breath, trying to regain control of the situation, "Okay, so whoever we're chasing—"
"You don't have to add 'ever' after his name, J.J. It's just Who!" Sora clapped her hands together, almost dropping her stolen donut before Crash caught it for her.
J.J. simply chose to ignore that comment. "Where is he?"
"Precisely!" Crash piped up, antennae flicking with excitement.
"No, no, don't start this again," J.J. said, pointing at Crash. "I just want to know where he is."
Li Na rubbed her temples, feeling a headache brewing. "He's on Where."
J.J. stared at her blankly. "Where?"
"Yes," Li Na replied, a strained smile on her face.
J.J. scratched his head, visibly confused. "Who's on Where?"
"The planet? Yes," Li Na continued.
"Where's the planet?!" J.J. yelled.
"Precisely," Crash said for the sixth time in this conversation.
"Wait, I thought that was the name of the criminal."
"No," Li Na uttered. "The criminal's name is Who."
"Precisely!" J.J. yelled.
"Then say it that way!"
"I'm saying it the way you're saying it!"
"Hey, Crash. Why do you keep saying that word, anyway?" Sora whispered, trying to law low. J.J. and Li Na looked like they were going to kill each other, getting very close to Crash to use an Orthropterrier shield just in case.
"Oh, no reason," Crash replied, his smile beaming with pure contentedness. No one had to know that if you tried to flip to the word, Precisely, in the Epsilon dictionary, the paper was mysteriously shredded with teeth marks. No one.
J.J. groaned, rubbing his temples. "Why is this so difficult? Just tell me where!"
"We just did," Crash said helpfully.
"Where?"
"Precisely."
J.J. threw his arms up in despair. "No! Where is Who?"
"Ohhhhhh," Sora realized, her eyes lighting up. She laughed to herself, briefly facepalming before rolling her chair to the other side of the table. She tapped Li Na's shoulder, catching the Blue Ranger's attention before she absolutely fried her brain.
"I think J.J. is asking where the planet is, y'know, geographically," Sora explained, her voice slightly hesitant as if she was trying to navigate a minefield carefully. "Like, in the star system. He wants to know where Where is."
"Exactly!" J.J. exclaimed, seizing onto Sora's explanation like a lifeline. "Thank you, Sora! Someone here understands!"
Li Na blinked, her fingers twitching as she resisted the urge to hurl the megaphone across the room. "Okay, fine. It's in the I Don't Know cluster."
J.J. tilted his head, a hint of suspicion in his eyes. "Wait a minute…you don't know where the planet is? You're supposed to be the one who's briefing us!"
Li Na sighed deeply, her patience now wholly evaporated. "No, J.J., I know where the planet is. It's in the I Don't Know Cluster."
J.J. stared at her, then at Crash, then back at Li Na. "So you're saying we're heading to a cluster that you don't know about?"
"Yes—no!" Li Na caught herself. "I know about it, but it's called the I Don't Know Cluster."
J.J. raised an eyebrow. "So, where are we going?"
"I just told you!"
"No, you told me you don't know where we're going."
Li Na took a deep, steadying breath. "Listen very carefully, J.J. We are going to the I Don't Know Cluster. It's a star cluster. The name of the star cluster is I Don't Know."
J.J. rubbed his temples, trying to suppress the growing headache. "Okay, okay. Let me get this straight. We're chasing Who, who's on the planet Where, and that planet is in the I Don't Know Cluster."
"Precisely!" Crash and J.J. yelled at the same time. "Haha, you can't get me this time, buddy!" J.J. said, looking as if he was on the verge of either breaking into hysterical laughter or committing space homicide.
"And I thought this mission was going to be simple…" J.J. muttered to himself. "Okay, I get it. Now, what are we after?"
"What?" Li Na asked, confused.
"The artifact!" J.J. threw his hands up. "What's the artifact that Who is trying to steal?"
"I'm going to get a slushie," Sora announced to no one in particular, hopping out of her seat. The door opened as she made her way to the snack bar, her footsteps drowned out by confusion.
"What," Li Na said again, with a straight face.
"Yes! What is it?"
"Precisely!"
J.J. leaped over to Crash's table and grabbed his Epsilon Max Blaster, pointing the barrel directly into the Silver Ranger's mandibles. "I hope you value your mouth because unless Li Na tells me what the artifact that low-life criminal is trying to get his grubby paws on."
Li Na rubbed her forehead. "The artifact is What."
J.J. blinked, staring at Li Na as if she'd just spoken in an alien language. "The artifact is…What?"
"Yes," Li Na replied, her voice almost robotic from exhaustion.
"So, let me get this straight," J.J. said, his tone cautious as he pieced it together. "I don't know where we're going, who we're chasing, and what they're after."
"Precisely."
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
J.J. grabbed Crash by his thorax and hoisted him off the ground. The Silver Ranger's legs flailed helplessly, his antennae twitching in sheer panic. The two quickly became a pile of pure violence, kicking, punching, and shouting at each other, with J.J. threatening to dismantle every joint in Crash's exoskeleton. At the same time, Crash squealed and buzzed in protest, his wings flapping frantically.
Amidst the chaos, Li Na just stood there, her patience fully depleted, staring at the two of them with a mix of disbelief and resignation. She stared into the proverbial camera, looking directly at you, yes, you, the viewer, with a deadpan expression, simply raising an eyebrow before leaping off the table and joining in the violence.
The door to the briefing room slid open with a hiss and some air, revealing the Gold Ranger holding a blue raspberry slushie. Sora stood in the doorway for a minute, utterly oblivious to the chaos unraveling right in front of her because of the deliciousness of her slushie. The sounds of slurping exceeded those of the violence. When she finally did look up, she blinked twice, slurped her slushie some more, turned around, and then walked in the other direction, humming a merry tune.
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Sometime Later:
The Planet Where was primarily made up of hot desert terrain, orange plains, and plateaus as far as the eye could see. Cacti sprung from the ground, and not a day went by without a local complaining about the blistering heat from the many stars in the I Don't Know cluster that shone even in the daytime. This climate was particularly fitting, as the Wherereans' culture mainly followed something akin to Earth's Wild West: small villages with saloons, horseback riding being the main form of transportation, though the horses here had 14 legs, heck, they even had cowboys!
On this particular day, a mole-like creature maniacally laughed as he held up a red crystal in glory. The Epsilon Squadron Power Rangers surrounding him reached for their weapons, ready to fire at any moment.
"Oh, I wouldn't be too hasty," taunted the notorious Wherean criminal, Who Dunnit. He grabbed his pistol from his back, his fingers laced around the trigger as he reveled in the jewel's radiating glory. "You Rangers underestimate the power of What. With it, I'll be able to rule the whole galaxy, and then everyone will know the name of Who!"
"Wait…" Crash paused, "Who?"
"PRECISELY!"
J.J. charged up his two Epsilon Max Blasters; one pointed at Crash and the other at Who. "I'm going to give you both a five-second headstart."
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Welcome one and all to the notes! Congratulations! You finished the fic! Good job. If you liked it, press the kudos button and leave a comment (Please, I crave human interaction and validation /lhj). Now, you probably want an explanation of who the flying fish sticks these characters are, or you don't care and are still here for some reason.
Regardless, allow me to introduce The Epsilon Squadron Mobile Unit to you! See, a couple of years after canon SPD, and more importantly, the betrayal of the Earth Branch's A-Squad, ol' Space Patrol Delta realized that maybe, just maybe, the most potent energy source in the multiverse (The Morphin Grid) shouldn't be mass produced and given willy-nilly to law enforcement, especially when someone could easily sneak into the force to abuse the powers of the Morphin Grid for themselves. Of course, some Ranger teams remained, Earth's SPD Branch specifically, because Earth needs as much help as it can get. Let's be honest. However, a lot of SPD Ranger teams were decommissioned, and more training was put in place to make them strong enough to deal with threats without Ranger powers.
However, to deal with intergalactic threats that exceed even that training, the Epsilon Squadron Mobile Unit was created, with four rising cadets with skills in every field as a sort of prototype for how this would work. Those cadets were
Li Na Song - Blue Epsilon Ranger - A technical genius and expert detective, 17-year-old Li Na Song excelled during her training at the Academy, performing better than her fellow cadets in strength, speed, intelligence, and critical thinking. She had a lot of time to develop them, as she had been at the Academy since she was a young girl. It was these skills, plus…another reason, that led to her being chosen as the Blue Ranger and the leader of the Epsilon Squadron. She's a no-nonsense, tactical, by-the-book, serious type and has a hard time dealing with all the other Rangers on her team, who carry a much more whimsical aura than her.
Jason Jarvis Oliver - Green Epsilon Ranger - Please call him J.J.; he hates it when you call him Jason. The son of Legendary Rangers Katherine Hillard and Tommy Oliver, 19-year-old J.J. Oliver knows more about the weirder aspects of being a Power Ranger than most Rangers do themselves. Since he was a young boy, he has lived in the shadows of his parents' legacy, and he joined the SPD Academy to escape. Little did he know that he would end up taking the same power. He is a lazy fellow, prioritizing what he thinks is funny over following protocols. Rules are too hard to memorize anyway. Don't underestimate him, though. He's a savant strategist and an excellent fighter, trained in tons of martial arts, which is why he was chosen to be the Green Ranger in the first place. He often acts as a foil to Li Na; the rest of the team usually follows him because of his attitude rather than Li Na…being a buzzkill, making it hard for the two to get along at first.
(Yes, Li Na and J.J. are entirely different from their canon counterparts. I'm reworking them to fit my goals because screw you.)
Crash Masronk - Silver Epsilon Ranger - The pilot of the Defiant Striker, 17-year-old Crash Masronk, has always wanted to visit the stars. He's the first Orthropterrier to be a Power Ranger, and he's proud of it! This bipedal grasshopper-like alien species is very traditional, and their entire economy is centered around farming. Not wanting to waste his life away in the routine of the harvest, Crash entered the SPD Academy in hopes of fulfilling his dreams of having a grand adventure. Chosen as the Silver Epsilon Ranger for his marksmanship and vehicle expertise, Crash makes an excellent comic relief and an even better friend. His lighthearted and goofy nature always makes sure he has a pun on standby, even if the situation might not call for it.
Sora Harlbeng - Gold Epsilon Ranger - At only 16 years old, Sora Harlbeng is the youngest member of the Epsilon Squadron. She's a Tractellurian, which means she can stretch her rubber-like body in ways that one could only imagine. She lives with a childlike sense of wonder and loves being alive more than most people should. But that doesn't mean she doesn't know what it's like to have a hard life. She joined the SPD Academy because she knew that if she didn't pick up that badge, someone else would abuse its power. Sora was chosen for the Epsilon Squadron because of her innate ability to make friends and diffuse a situation peacefully. She'd rather play cards with a criminal than try to arrest them. Her somewhat aireheadedness means she gets along great with Crash, and also is willing to be more of a follower than a leader, utterly content with life.
Now, onto the actual notes…in which there's only one. Uh…I wanted to write a "Who's On First." parody because I watched it a lot yesterday, and I reenacted it on a Discord server with a buddy. APN, signing off.