WAR, PART 2.
12:30. Zone C.
"I mean that no squadron is going to be able to help us. This is happening all over the world," the commander answered.
"How is this happening all over the world?" Barry asked, while dodging a few blows and fire shots from the invading creatures.
"I do not know. All over the world, thousands, maybe millions of those things are in every country in the world. All of the Power Ranger squads are fighting at the same time as us. It clearly has to do with the object we found along with that thing. We have to find out what they're doing. A lot of people are being kidnapped just like the civilian last night," Commander Wayne explained, watching on the monitors as the creatures appeared through the mysterious portals that had appeared.
"Commander, I haven't made any progress with this box. The only way I can do this is if I use my mind to read it," J'onn said, speaking into his comlink.
Commander Wayne couldn't help but think that this was worse than he had imagined. He had never foreseen that a force, surely alien, would come to destroy the planet. Thankfully. at least the team was still here, but it was time to act even if it meant he let J'onn use his telepathic power.
"Do your thing, J'onn," he said before pressing the button on his chair to raise the monitor and remove the Morpho from him. "Justice League, actívate."
The Commander transformed, ready for action. The Dark Ranger jumped into the tunnel and headed for the car.
With the commander's orders, J'onn used telepathy to see if he could get information from the box the creature was carrying. He was a Martian, and Martians were telepathic. He decided not to tell the Rangers anything, because he would never read their minds unless the commander ordered it or the situation demanded it.
In this case, he needed to know. if there was any consciousness inside that box that would help him know where these creatures came from.
XXX
12:40
"Can someone explain to me how we ended up in one of the worst situations of all in just a few minutes?" Barry asked as he continued to pummel the creatures.
"I don't know. There must have been something in that box, but it's clear that these things have a purpose," Kal said.
"Better stop talking and behave like Rangers," Diana said, using her fist at the same time that she used the sword.
"Not even in Themyscira was there anything as catastrophic as this," she thought to herself.
On the other hand, she felt somewhat liberated. She had wanted to hit something because she was still so angry. It was helping her, but it made her even more angry to see that many people were being kidnapped by the creatures. Whoever was doing this will pay dearly she decided.
On Kal's side, this was strange. He had never seen anything worse than this. Now, he was feeling annoyed with himself. He had told the commander that it was nothing to worry about, and now he was on an endless battlefield it seemed. To make it worse, Diana, John and Shayera were mad at him and Barry for their pact to leave Zone C.
He hated how everything was turning out like this. He didn't want to create another division in the team, but he still wanted to leave Zone C once they were finished with this terrible business of immense proportions.
He suddenly remembered that Lois must be in trouble. He hoped she was in her apartment so he used the Morpho to call her even though he had to go into an alley.
"Lois, are you okay?" Kal asked once she answered him.
"Yeah, I'm on my way to the base to avoid being abducted by the flying things that keep taking people."
"Excellent. I thought you were in trouble," Kal said, heaving a sigh of relief.
"No, you know Bruce and my father wouldn't leave me to my own devices in a situation like this," she said.
It bothered Kal a bit to hear her call his commander by her name, but he was relieved to remember that her father wouldn't abandon her either. Supreme Commander Lane already knew about the situation, so he called his daughter to order her to go to the base to be safe from the army of creatures.
"Please stay safe, Kal. This has never happened before, so I don't want something bad to happen to you," she added. She really loved him. She didn't know how she would react if he told her that he was leaving the Zone soon.
"I'll stay safe, Lois, but go to the base first. I have to keep working," Kal said, letting out a calming laugh.
"I'm close. Good luck, I love you," she said.
"I love you too," he said before hanging up and running towards one of the creatures that was taking another civilian.
John was doing anything he could to destroy every creature possible from spiked platforms, trailers, giant boots, hammers, wrecking balls, planes, giant rocks, and his missile launchers. This heated battle had so far distracted him from the problems with Kal and Barry. He had earned respect for Barry, but seeing as he wanted to leave the area, a lot of that respect was gone, and as Diana was saying, it was hypocritical.
They had reacted badly when Diana told them about Themyscira, but not telling them that they wanted to leave because they didn't like being here was worse. He considered it unworthy of a Ranger which further increased their impatience to be the red Ranger instead of Kal. Right now, though, this was critical situation that needed to be resolved first, but he would not obey Kal.
Shayera was having some alone time, which helped her calm down a bit, but she was still frustrated that she hadn't seen the signs that Kal wanted to leave. Even though he was in a relationship with Lois, Kal had hidden those intentions pretty well.
On the other hand, Barry rarely kept anything from her, but this had hurt her. It seemed that they were no longer Friends. She had never confided in him like that even though she had told him about her past. She didn't know now if they should still be friends. This infuriated her even more, so she kept fighting, but with greater time anger.
Barry was very excited about this fight, but he hoped there would be time to breathe. He knew that he had to apologize to his comrades and friends…if they still were his friends. But, he felt angry and sad. Shayera, John, and Diana were his Friends. When they had been outraged by Diana's distrust of them, he and Kal had already made that pact.
He had hurt them, and now he had to make amends. After this, he didn't know if it was a good idea to leave Zone C. He was sure that Shayera would tell him to stay if she wanted him to, not to satisfy or eliminate a feeling of guilt. She hated when someone acted with that purpose. It wasn't the best place to decide that, so he kept fighting, but he had to decide at some point.
Elsewhere, the Dark Ranger was doing the same thing he had done when Ra's Al Ghul had released fast-growing mutant plants into the city, using the car J'onn had built for him. The base had its defense systems against big threats, but it was better not to use them. It would make the base a juicier target for the creatures, plus they would reduce it to dust in no time with the fire they spit from their mouths. They couldn't take such a risk in such a short time, especially when they still didn't know the purpose of those monstrous creatures.
By itself, it was difficult to see that the team was fragmented again, but the most difficult thing was not knowing what they were fighting against…even more so when their car was a greater machine for the destruction of those creatures. They had to be extremely careful not to be destroyed. He was getting shot from everywhere, and sometimes there were explosions that luckily didn't damage the car. But, of course, this was being overly optimistic when many more monstrous creatures kept coming through the portals.
XXX
J'onn had been using his mind, trying to access the consciousness of the box they'd brought, if it had a consciousness at all. He needed to know what information it had stored it held. He was annoyed with himself, but it passed quickly. He was the scientist from Zone C, but this box had a technology that he didn't have knowledge about.
Not even on his home planet had that kind of technology been used. Despite all that, he knew he had to do something. He couldn't let the commander and the Rangers he held dear lose a battle, not to mention all the other squads that were in a similar situation.
He rested for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and beginning to use his telepathy again. There was no success. Therefore, the most radical option was for him to put his hands on the object so that he could go deeper into it, mentally. This would even work with his Rangers, if a similar situation came up.
It took him quite a while. It was like going into a maze full of walls, dead ends, setbacks and sometimes some walls of fire. Funny, it worked like a normal computer, but he couldn't access one like any other. Finally, he made it to the center, and entered there.
Maybe it was a bad idea, or maybe it was a good one, but he began to receive a lot of information in the form of images about the creatures. The purpose of these things was not to eat any of the people they kidnapped, but to take them to a planet with an apocalyptic design.
It had craters on various sections of its surface. The creatures took them to that planet and put them in capsules. They took species from those planets and those capsules to subject them to a somewhat painful procedure in which they were brainwashed, turning them into creatures without wills.
Then, they physically transformed them to be just like those creatures with the sole purpose of following the orders of a rather large being that he could not see, but the obvious thing was that he wanted destruction and death wherever he went in whatever his goal with the planet Earth.
J'onn finally took his hands off the mystery box and fell to the ground. He was surprised by what he had just seen, but now he had to warn the commander and the Rangers about this conqueror, as well as the other squads in the rest of the world.
To his surprise, J'onn had seen that he had spent more time than he had thought, minutes more than he had expected to warn the Rangers. By the time he was going to call his Morphers, it was too late for that.
XXX
12:50
Ten minutes before J'onn called out to them, the army of creatures had begun to disperse in part. A good number continued to attack, but others had gone to who knows where. It was not important, because they still had to continue fighting against those who had stayed to fight.
The Dark Ranger knew this, so he knew that he had to order his Rangers to assemble in the Diamond District. That sector of the city was the best option for an open field battle. The Rangers set out upon hearing this, but it was easier to say 'yes sir' than to reach the Diamond District, especially for Shayera and Kal, who were in the north of the city quite far from the district.
The Dark Ranger knew he had to help them, so he went with his car to continue destroying the creatures so that his cadets could reach the bikes. Diana and John didn't have such a big problem, because they were closer.
Barry had basically everything going for him. He left his bike in The Bowery and ran there, destroying the creatures that he could. He arrived at the District and kept destroying the creatures, waiting for the others to arrive .
John was the second to arrive with his missile shooter. He used it to help Barry with some creatures that came towards him. After this, Barry tried to high-five him, but John just created a machine gun to keep firing, causing Barry to fight again as well.
Diana was the second to arrive, but in a way that was a mix between intimidating and amazing. She landed full force on the head of one of the creatures, then leaped at another and plunged her sword into its head. She landed on the ground, punched another, threw more, and impaled them all through the chest.
"At some point, someone has to come. We can't keep fighting forever," Diana thought to herself.
Yes, she was an Amazon ready for any fight, but she knew she couldn't fight forever. Her body wouldn't take it. She knew that when she tried to fight the best fighters on the island as a teenager she ended up fighting more than she should have and ended up collapsing. It didn't end badly when she trained intensely to beat Lady Shiva, but it was even why she fell asleep in the virtual training room.
Kal and Shayera arrived on their motorcycle and patrol car respectively along with the commander. The scattering creatures had made traffic easier for the three of them to cross. Kal immediately sprang into action, continuing to fire heat vision and hitting all creatures with his force.
Shayera kept shooting any creature she saw. The Dark Ranger ejected, thanks to the function of his auto. He took out the Dark Sword and continued helping his Rangers to finish off all the remaining creatures.
It took two minutes before all the creatures stopped fighting and went towards the ocean that was outside the District. Several of them still had people in their arms. It was not a good sign.
"Wow, they're finally gone," Barry said, sitting down on the ground. He knew this was serious, but he wanted a break.
"Don't relax. This is not a good thing. They're not killing anyone. They're just taking them away, and we still don't know why," the Dark Ranger said, looking at the creatures intently.
"So what do we do now, Commander?" John asked. He hoped he had an answer or knew what to do.
"I don't know, cadet. We don't know anything about them yet, and we still don't know what they want here," the Dark Ranger replied. He was sick of not knowing anything.
"We have to know something soon. This is happening all over the planet. I'm sure all the other Power Rangers squads are in a worse battle than ours," Shayera said.
She was getting desperate, but with the situation, not the Rangers. Not knowing the purpose of the invasion from a species they don't even know while they were relentlessly fighting them was frustrating.
To everyone's misfortune, three red and black towers rose in different parts of the city. They were so visible that everyone could see them. However, that was only the beginning. A few kilometers from the Diamond District, a whirlpool formed in the ocean. The creatures formed a circle around it. From one second to the next, a light formed in the center of the whirlpool, and seconds later, a figure emerged.
The figure was big, twice the size of a normal human. It was dark. Most of it including the torso, the arms, the legs, and the feet was dark in color except for a belt that had some kind of horseshoe symbol in the center of it.
Besides that, he had a small red box on his chest. Other than that, only the fingers of both his hands and his head were dark grey. Worst of all, though, were his eyes. Those eyes made him look even more threatening than any other villain they had ever faced. He didn't have pupils. They were just red. To top it off, the figure was flying with the other creatures following it as if they were his pets.
"I guess that's the boss of all bosses," John said, looking at the figure. In fact, all the Rangers were staring at him.
"You are right, cadet," the Dark Ranger told him. He only said it to emphasize the obvious. It was clear that the others already knew.
xxx
13:00
J'onn looked at the figure. It was clearly the same one he had seen when he had accessed the memory of the box that he had been analyzing. However, he was unable to decipher any more information from that large and menacing figure that was flying towards the Rangers.
He did know that he had to act fast, so he used the remote control and sent Kal's jet towards the figure. He didn't get close enough to hit him. He knew he had to keep his distance from him and fired the jet laser at him.
J'onn was proud of himself for putting a remote control system on the jets to use when the Rangers couldn't. He came up with it after putting the same thing on the Dark Ranger's car.
That pride was replaced with surprise and panic as the figure didn't get a scratch from the jet's shot. Within a second, he fired a laser beam from his eyes directed straight at the jet and blew it to pieces. It was similar to Kal's heat vision, but it could move in any direction possible, seeming to move to destroy any target he wanted.
J'onn didn't know what to do. The box wouldn't give him any more information, and he couldn't interrupt the Rangers. That figure could attack at any moment. He had to do something.
xxx
All six Rangers were shocked. The figure had heat vision far more intimidating than Kal's, but what kind of power it had besides that was still unknown.
"This is simply the worst case scenario, or can it get worse, Commander?" Barry asked, leaping up onto his feet. He was nervous for the first time in a long time. None of them had faced anything like this before.
"It can always get worse, cadet" The Dark Ranger said without looking at him. The figure was already entering the mainland of the district.
"I am an entropy," said the figure.
His voice was just strong, and monstrous. It wasn't high pitched, but it was very low, as if an old man had merged into the body of a monster to make that voice.
"I am death," the figure said as he slowly descended until he landed on the ground at his feet. "I am Darkseid, and this is my world now."
How are you? Did you like this chapter? I know this one had the fights very simple, but I didn't do it because I knew it would get very repetitive if I was too descriptive; creativity has to come when the Rangers go head-to-head against Darkseid, that's the highlight.
And I know that the conflict between the Rangers still has to be resolved, but as you can see, now they have to stop their greatest nemesis for the moment, and as we all know, Darkseid is not easy to defeat.
Well, with this I say goodbye for the moment. Do not forget to leave me your comments about the chapter. Until next time. Thanks.
NEXT: WAR, PART 3.