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Disclaimer: I do not own the Power Rangers, they belong to the Mouse. This is a not for profit fan series. The first few scenes of this story belong to Ellen Brand.
Author's note: This story takes place in the Conquest of Evil Multiverse and shares its alternate time line. In case anybody is wondering, the basis of this story was written by Ellen Brand as part of a series called Fallen Heroes, which was later picked up and abandoned by Hellfire.
The Mysterious Refugee Part One - Crash and Burn
Angel Grove,
"Go Rocky!" Rosa DeSantos yelled. The Power Rangers of Angel Grove had attended a number of competitions and sporting events over the years. Football games, martial arts tournaments, baseball games, martial arts tournaments, broomball games, martial arts tournaments, and a few martial arts tournaments thrown in for good measure. This event, however, was different from anything they had done before. Rocky DeSantos, Blue Zeo Ranger, was currently entered in an eating contest.
"Good grief," Adam Park remarked, folding his arms over his chest. "What does that make, six pies he's put away so far?"
Rocky's latest girlfriend nodded. "Yeah, and the contest only started five minutes ago."
The contest was the result of a good-natured bet between Rocky and one of his classmates. The girl, Kittie, had declared that she could put away more food in a ten-minute period than Rocky could, and he had decided to call her on it. Currently, it looked to be anybody's game.
"I'm gonna be sick," moaned Tommy Oliver. "How does he DO that?"
The Zeo Rangers had turned out to cheer their teammate on. As the clock ticked on, the crowd watched in awe as the pie plates piled up beside the two contestants. Finally, the ten minutes were up and the final bell rang. Everyone was silent as the judges slowly counted the plates.
"The winner, with twenty empty plates-- Rocky DeSantos!"
Rocky got to his feet, clasping his hands over his head in the classic "boxer's cheer." Kittie stood as well, clapping him on the back.
"So what do you have to say for yourself, Rocko?" she asked. He grinned mischievously.
"When's lunch?"
Everyone groaned. "ROCKY!"
An hour later Rocky jogged along the pathways of Angel Grove Park, soaking up the warm sun. Jogging was his second-favourite form of exercise, right after the martial arts. And since he needed to burn some of the calories his recent snack had dumped into his system, he was taking a jog through the currently quiet park.
"This is nice," he thought aloud. "Why don't I do this more often?"
As if in response to his question, the sky above him began to cloud over, and a cold wind started to howl through the park. Rocky squinted, quickly raising a hand to shield his eyes. "Oh yeah," he muttered. "Now I remember." In the clouds above him, lightning started to flicker and was almost instantly followed by rumbles of thunder. Not more than a hundred feet away, however, Rocky could still see golden sunlight pouring down on the park.
"I've heard of local weather, but this is ridiculous," he grumbled. Eyeing the clouds above him carefully, Rocky tapped his communicator. "Zordon, this is Rocky. I think we've got trouble in the park."
"I see it," Zordon acknowledged. "I shall inform the other Rangers immediately. In the meantime, I would suggest you--" A large burst of static cut the inter-dimensional being off.
"Zordon? Zordon!" Rocky yelled. The wind was picking up now, and the Blue Zeo Ranger had the uncomfortable feeling that he was about to be caught in the eye of a hurricane. Suddenly, from the air around him came a ringing sound, like feedback from an amplifier. As the sound rose in pitch, Rocky clapped his hands over his ears, his face contorted in pain. Suddenly a bolt of energy shot from the clouds down to where Rocky was standing, knocking him aside as it tore off toward the city, a trail of fire remaining as he moved onward.
"I hear you Rocky," Zordon replied. "Whatever caused the disturbance is moving away from you at high speed."
"I saw it," Rocky announced. "Whatever it is leaves a trail of fire and was heading towards the freeway."
"You will need to intercept it, Rocky. Morph and use the Zeo Jet Cycle to pursue. I will have your fellow Rangers meet you there."
He was alive; with the pain he was feeling it was impossible for him to be dead. The explosive energy that had created the intense vibration, which had in turn allowed him to penetrate the barriers between his previous and current location, had overloaded his powers.
"Gotta stop before I hurt somebody."
It seemed the speech center of his brain had been affected by the abuse of his powers; morphers were not supposed to have been use self-inducing amplifier circuits for a reason. Coupled with the flames that engulfed his suit and his apparent inability to stop moving, the momentum from his final attack pushing him onward, he was in serious trouble.
"Power down! Power down! It's not working, why is it not working?"
Things were moving too quickly, he needed to slow down, to think. But the power from his morpher, which failed to respond to his commands, kept him erratic, in a constant state of motion and incapable of rational thought.
"Need help... Zordon, must find Zordon. He should be here."
His morpher sparked, sending another jolt of energy through his body, forcing him to accelerate harder. He was in danger of breaking the barrier again and taking off to who knows where. Doing so would demolish everything around him and he realised he could not allow that. This was not his home, not the burnt out remains of a dying world that he had unintentionally left behind.
The Rangers pursued the burning mass as it accelerated down the highway. The flames that followed him were impossible to extinguish and when they saw him collide with a fuel tanker, they had feared the worse. The Jet Cycles had rapidly extinguished the fires by sucking vital air into their powerful engines and robbing the flames of vital fuel. An Ice Pellet from one of the Gem Coin Blasters that Billy had made available to all the Rangers, soon dealt with the incredible heat. There had been a terrifying moment when Rocky had disappeared into the cab to rescue the unfortunate driver. Adam had seen to the rapid evacuation of the minibus the fuel tanker had collided into. They had been fortunate that there had only been one fatality.
"Guys, that thing is moving," Pink Zeo warned.
The Rangers aimed their weapons, waiting for the creature that had caused so much destruction to attack them. All they heard though were the pained moans of an injured man.
"Zordon, we need a Power Box," Red Zeo said.
The Emergency Protocol Survival Pack, referred to as a Power Box by the Rangers, appeared in his hands and he used the advanced scanner inside to lock onto the strange creature.
"He's human," he confirmed, causing the Rangers to relax slightly although they didn't put their Zeo Pistols away; the scan had revealed he was human, not friendly.
"Got find Zordon, Rangers, future... need Zordon," they heard him say as he crawled from the burning wreckage. "Need help, help!"
"Calm down!" Adam commanded, his voice harsher than he intended. He didn't want to harm this strange looking human, but they needed him to relax while they decided what to do. It seemed the slightest movement on his part caused the air around him to burst into flame.
"Zordon, we're bringing him back to the Power Chamber," Tommy decided. "Have Alpha, Trini and Billy there." He thought and then added: "Make sure they have a fire extinguisher."
Meanwhile Tanya had approached the stranger and was trying to strap a communicator to his wrist. He instinctively recoiled from her touch, leading to another burst of super heated plasma.
"Hey, calm down," she warned. "Nobody will hurt you."
"Oh my god, you're them, thee Power Rangers!"
The Zeo Rangers glanced around nervously. He knew them, a fact that placed him at a considerable advantage.
"You are them, oh boy I heard all about you."
"We're going to teleport you to the Power Chamber," she explained, holding up her hands, as he was about to nod. "Just - try not to move."
"Let's go," Tommy said at last and the five Rangers along with the mysterious newcomer were teleported back to their headquarters.
"How is he?" Tanya asked some hours later.
When they had teleported him back to base, the Rangers had placed his body in a pressurised chamber. From there they could control the bursts of explosive energy that emerged whenever he moved.
"He's sleeping," Adam told her as he adjusted the controls.
Billy, Trini and Adam had been working hard trying to analyse the stranger and had already confirmed that he was indeed human, a badly injured human.
"He's a Ranger," Billy had confirmed after a few tests. "I don't recognise the signature of his powers, but whatever they are he is suffering from abusing them."
"You mean he's evil?" Jason asked.
"Negative," Billy answered. "His powers have been altered to function outside of their original parameters. He is suffering from the side effects."
"He's also not completely human," Trini said, causing some confusion. "His mind is human, he contains human DNA and some human organs, but at some point he's been altered, possibly following an injury."
"Ai-yi-yi, every bone in his body has been lined with metal, his joints have been reinforced and his muscles replaced with synthetic rubber."
"You said he had some organic parts?" Kat asked.
"His heart, lungs, a simplified digestive tract, part his brain - he has some sort of processor in there - and the inner portions of his spinal column are organic. His entire body has been augmented to survive the forces he experiences while morphed."
"Wait, there's something else," Billy called. "As you know, the cellular structure of every human has a unique chemical makeup determined by their planet of origin. It's not a genetic variance, but reflects the differing conditions of many human worlds."
"And your point is?" Kimberly asked.
"This Ranger was born on Earth."
"So who is he?" Rocky wondered. "And how did he end up like this?"
"I'm running his identity through the computer," Alpha told the Rangers after their guest had been stabilised. "If he is from Earth, then I should be able to locate his individual energy pattern within the Morphin Grid."
There was silence as the lights on the computer flashed.
"Alpha, can you find anything?" Trini asked.
"His energy signature is incompatible with our scans," Alpha told them.
"I was afraid of this Alpha," Zordon rumbled, "this Ranger may come from Earth, however he does not come from this Earth and has never lived here, which is why the computer cannot identify him. He must come from somewhere else; reconfigure the search translate his personal signature into base readings and then find a human with similar results."
"This could take time Zordon," Alpha warned as with Billy's help, he set to work.
He started to jerk, arms flailing wildly as he thrashed on the bed. The Rangers moved quickly, managing to hold him down long enough to secure his limbs with heavy metal plates; anything weaker would have lasted mere seconds against his struggling form.
"His powers are in flux," Billy said, watching the monitors as heart and blood pressure monitors continued to rise and fall erratically.
"He's going into metabolic shock," Alpha told them.
"What's metabol-- what's that?" Kim asked.
"His powers are almost exhausted but refusing to shut down, so they're feeding on whatever fuel they can find. In this case: his body."
"If we can't find a way to stabilise him, he could die. And given how his morpher is responding, the lack of a living mind could send it into overload and take a large chunk of the planet with it," Billy confirmed.
"One morpher could do that?" Tommy asked.
"Our mysterious friend is drawing his powers from a source similar to the Morphin Grid. If his powers overload he could collapse the local grid and wipe out everything in the vicinity," Zordon warned. "We must act quickly Alpha, prepare for a Forced Demorph procedure."
"Zordon that's too dangerous," Billy warned. "The backlash could just as easily trigger an explosion."
"There is little choice Billy, we cannot risk a full scale overload."
"Don't worry man, Alpha and Zordon know what they're doing," Tommy said.
Billy tried to smile, but it was difficult to share Tommy's optimism. There was a good chance that whoever was inside that suit would perish during the procedure. Of course there was a good chance that he was already dead and that the powers had simply locked into place to protect a corpse.
"Activating now," he said resignedly as he pushed the series of buttons and watched as a sickly green beam of energy washed over the prone figure.
"Zordon, something's wrong!" Trini cried.
The readings were going haywire as the beam continued to sweep over the mysterious Ranger's body, a body that was slowly vanishing before their eyes.
"Alpha, stop the process immediately. I have made a serious error."
Alpha obeyed as Billy and Trini rushed forward to examine him.
"Zordon, he's still experiencing metabolic shock," Trini warned. "We have to continue."
"Negative," Billy told her. "Our original hypothesis was erroneous."
"Billy?" Tommy prompted.
"When I instructed Alpha to use the energy probe, I had hoped to short circuit his suit's power-down mechanism," Zordon explained.
"The problem," Alpha continued, "is that his suit doesn't have a shutdown sequence."
"You mean he's trapped inside his uniform?"
"I would postulate at this time that his powers are an intricate part of his body. He is a part of the Power and when Zordon and Alpha tried to demorph him, he was transferred back into the Morphin Grid."
"That is correct Billy," Zordon said. "If we had continued to use the beam, he would have disappeared to wherever his powers came from. And without a means to call them back, he would have been lost forever."
"His powers are still killing him," Tanya pointed out.
"Alpha, try to stabilise his powers. If we can control the fluctuations and dampen the energy waves we might be able to save him. If we do not stop the overload there will be nothing left of him to save."
"Yes Zordon," Alpha said.
"Billy, do you have any idea how he ended up like this?" Trini asked.
"The only logical explanation is that it was self inflicted, the pertinent question would be why?"
After hours of considerable effort, the Rangers had finally managed to pierce the strange armour and had injected a strong relaxant. With his body sedated, his powers had switched into standby mode, allowing the Rangers to study him.
"Why would somebody build a morpher that couldn't be turned off?" Rocky asked. The others were wondering the same thing.
"Desperation," Tommy suggested finally. "He's been in some sort of battle, so maybe he had to morph."
"Ai-yi-yi, I'm reading additional signatures," Alpha reported. "He has Triforian DNA!"
"Just who is this guy?"
End of Part
<post_date>2009-12-09 12:00:01</post_date><post_modified>2022-11-15 14:09:31</post_modified>
