Power Rangers is owned by Haim Saban. The only thing that's mine here is the current Ranger theme.
There are many universes, realities, and multiverses across the omniverse. All of them are different in some way from one another, be it something simple like someone deciding to go left instead of right one day or a terrorist attack being stopped before it could start, to something as complicated as whole swaths of space and time not existing in some continuities. However, in all continuities, there is one constant. A field of energy that envelopes all things.
There are many names for this field. The Force. Dark energy. Magic. Psionics. Chakra. Zero point energy. Life energy. The Bio-Field. Chi. Ki. Nen. All names for the same empowering phenomenon as understood and accessed by different cultures and realities. Few know of its true potential though, but those that do and become its champions know it by its true name: the Morphing Grid.
While many can tap into the energies of the Morphing Grid, none actually tap into the Grid itself. That honor is reserved for a select few. Where others harness the energies of life the Morphing Grid inherently radiates throughout Creation, those the Grid chooses harness the very Grid itself, becoming the champions of life and all things innocent and good. They are known by many titles, but these champions are known best by one name: Power Rangers.
Under the protection of the Power Rangers, galaxies and universes flourish. Almost invariably, the Power Rangers emerge from crisis undefeated and victorious. And when it is time to give up their powers, each Ranger's memories and skills are taken into the Morphing Grid to guide and empower the next generation of Power Rangers. Thus does the cycle of life and its protection continue and grow.
However, in one section of the omniverse, this cycle is threatened. It stands, sealed off from the rest of Creation by powers beyond mortal ken. Giant, eldritch beings seed civilizations across dimensions with portions of themselves, granting abilities and sowing conflict, before harvesting and destroying all versions and iterations of the afflicted to feed themselves and stave off their own inevitable deaths.
These beings, these multidimensional worms, threaten the very fabric of reality across all of creation. And as they sink their tendrils into a new world, a blue-green planet orbiting a yellow star, one of the worms suffers from a lapse in concentration that results in its death. Its demise causes the walls sealing off the reality cluster to flicker. With the barrier between worlds weakened, the Morphing Grid acts, choosing a champion in the short time it has…
---
Rain lashed and wind howled as the skies above Brockton Bay unleashed the fury of nature. A puddle lost its shape as a woman—a girl, really—splashed through it in a frantic run. She was unheeding of the rain and the wet chill of the stormy night air as she ran, terror shining bright in her brown eyes. A figure appeared before her, causing the brown-haired girl to careen into an alley.
The girl's ankle turned, sending her crashing to the pavement with a whimper. She started to crawl away, only to stop as a pair of ratty boots filled her vision. Scrambling back, the girl found herself surrounded by several unkempt men in filthy, ratty clothes.
One of the men pulled a syringe from his pocket, a smile flashing yellow, rotted teeth. "No hard feelin's, eh? It's only bid'ness."
Another man began to unbuckle his belt. "Yeah, but thi' is pleas're."
The men began to chuckle sadistically as they converged on the girl.
Two vast beings, almost incomprehensible in their scale, slowly fall towards a blue planet. Stars fall from their sides as they descend.
---
"Guh!"
Taylor breathed hard, casting about frantically as she took in her surroundings. Sighing in relief as she recognized her room, she put a hand to her face as she hunched over. 'That dream again. That night…'
Taylor fished about on her nightstand. Finding what she searched for, she put on her glasses and looked at the clock. The digital face read 6:45. Time for another day in hell.
---
The first day back from Christmas break was…not as bad as Taylor had expected. For some reason, the Trio had been cutting back on their bullying campaign, and now it seemed they had given up completely. There had been no glue on the seats, no "spilled" juice or soda on her backpack, not even any snide comments in passing in the halls. And now, with the school day coming to a close, it seemed like Taylor would get off scot-free.
Sadly, it was not to be. "Oof!" Someone crashed into Taylor, sending her down onto her rear.
"Oh, geez, sorry Taylor." Taylor looked up to see Phil Colins, the local cape geek and tech nerd. "Here, lemme…" He offered a hand to help her up.
Accepting the help, Taylor let herself be hauled to her feet. "Thanks."
Phil shook his head. "Don't mention it." With that, he left into the throng of people leaving the school.
Taylor peered after Phil before slowly opening the crumpled paper that had been pressed into her hand.
Don't go to your locker.
Taylor looked after where Phil had vanished. 'Why did he…?' Something dawned on Taylor. The trio. They did something to her locker, or planned to do something to her at her locker. But why had Phil warned her? No one had done anything like that for her before, lest they invoke the wrath of the Bitches Three.
Taylor worried her lip. Was it a trick? Was the note just a ploy to get her to stay away from her locker? Come to think of it, it didn't really matter what they did to her locker, she didn't have anything in it at the moment. It would just mean she'd have to carry her textbooks home with her instead of leaving them in the locker.
Mind made up, Taylor turned and went with the throng heading for the main doors. She'd find out what they did to her locker tomorrow. Maybe it'd be enough to get the Winslow High School administration to finally get up off their butts and do something.
*Snort* Not likely.
---
The bus ride home was relatively uneventful. There was that homeless guy who vomited on someone, but they both got off a few stops back. Honestly, that was par for the course here in Brockton Bay.
Taylor sighed. Brockton Bay was, quite frankly, a hellhole, a gang-ridden urban wasteland. It hadn't started out that way though. Brockton Bay had once been a thriving port city, with one of the largest shipping hubs operating out of a man-made harbor on the Eastern Seaboard.
Then, in 1995, during a rare visit of a ULCV, a group of eco-terrorists hijacked the Container Ship and sailed it into the channel connecting the harbor to the sea. The ship barely fit, and so when the eco-terrorists scuttled the vessel with explosives, the harbor was effectively sealed. The costs to remove the sunken vessel were nothing to laugh at, and it was determined to be cheaper to dig a new main channel into the harbor. However, with the death of the oceanic shipping industry following the emergence of the Endbringer Leviathan, there was no point in reopening the bay when what little shipping remained went elsewhere. Now, the only traffic the Brockton Bay docks received was from fishing boats and leisure craft that came in through side channels.
With the loss of its main source of employment, Brockton Bay began its slow decline into cesspit-dom. The gangs, already a nuisance thanks to the parahumans leading them, began to take over. Nowadays, you couldn't go five feet without seeing fresh gang tags painted on the wall. Crime and corruption was the rule of the day. Not even the Protectorate and the PRT could stop that, not with the way they had been carrying on lately.
If things continued as they were, Brockton Bay was doomed.
Taylor shook her head. Now that she was able to do something about it that was going to change. She clenched a fist. With this power, she could save everyone. She could—
With the crash of shrieking metal and shattered asphalt the world was upended and everything went black.
---
When Taylor came to, the bus was on its side and abandoned. Looking around, Taylor found that the left side of the bus—which was now the top—had been crumpled inward, like someone punching a sheet of tinfoil. It was a miracle no one had been sitting there. 'What happened?'
The bus radio crackled.
~Dispatch to all units. Cape fight ongoing between E88 and ABB at 9th and Palms Ledge. Divert to detour routes until further notice.~
Screams and gunfire—'How did I miss that?'—snapped Taylor's attention away from the radio. No, she, she wasn't ready, it was too soon.
The terror and denial was pushed aside. Clenching her teeth, Taylor balled her hands into fists. 'No. I am ready. I just have to try.'
Ignoring the bloody marks on her hand, Taylor stood. Thrusting her left arm out, the teen pulled back her coat sleeve to reveal a red and silver watch-like device. With her right hand, Taylor gripped the kite shield that made up the face. "The moment of truth.
Going Medieval!" She squeezed two hidden buttons.
With a flash of red right, the bus exploded—
---
Taylor walked down a corridor made of grey stone, the hall lit by candles and sunlight shining through arrowslits down low and stain-glass windows up high. At the end of the hall was an archway filled with white light. Behind the teen, a stream of fire came roaring from around the corner. Taylor walked on, unheeding of the flames. The stream of fire began to spiral around the girl. Where the serpentine flame passed, Taylor's body was covered in a gunmetal grey bodysuit that shone bright with a small hexagonal pattern. As she continued to walk, her forearms and lower legs ignited in red fire before the flames condensed into red, greave-like boots and red, gauntlet-like gloves with white trim. The flames pulled away from Taylor's torso, leaving behind a short, red tabard with a white dragon coat-of-arms and secured around the waist with a white belt. The stream of fire reared up and formed the open maw of a roaring dragon that came barreling down on Taylor. As the jaws closed around her head, the fire exploded into embers, revealing a black-visored red helmet reminiscent of a Stechhelm. With a final step, Taylor stepped out of the corridor and into the light.
---
—and out of the flames strode a knight in red. The knight's right hand reached out low to the side as if reaching for something before a great sword with a white-trimmed red hilt materialized in a flurry of golden motes. The knight stopped and brought the sword up in a vertical salute. "With noble intent and dragon's rage, Ranger Red!" The bus exploded behind the Red Ranger once more, letting off a plume of red smoke.
The fighting had come screeching to a halt, skinheads of the Empire Eighty-Eight and the red- and green-clad Azn Bad Boys alike staring openly at the girl in red who had just walked out of an exploding bus.
One of the skinheads cursed. "Shit! Hero!"
It was like someone had fired a starting gun. As soon as the E88 thug spat his words, every gang member turned their guns on the hero clad in red, E88 and ABB alike forgetting the other in the face of a common enemy. They opened fire.
To Taylor, it was as if the world was at her fingertips. When like this, when
morphed, there was nothing that could stop her. The power, the energy, the sheer confidence. It was exhilarating. When the gangbangers opened fire, she could almost see every bullet racing towards her.
Behind her helmet, the Red Ranger grinned, bullets passing harmlessly through as her form blurred. And then she was among them. With a devil-may-care smile glued to her face, Taylor tore through the gangbangers. Neo-nazis and yakuza wannabes fell like bowling pins before the hurricane in their midst.
A Korean with an AK knock-off tried to bash in Taylor's head with the butt of his gun only to be knocked out by a sidekick to the chin. A skinhead with a swastika tattooed on his scalp found his nose smashed in with a vicious punch that sent him crashing into a pair of E88 with knives. A leg sweep and a powerful back kick sent a short-haired blonde flying ass-first through the windshield of an abandoned sports car. Two ABB members came at Taylor, one swinging a tanto while the other racked a sawed-off shotgun. A moment later found the two dropping the shattered remains of their weapons. They collapsed bonelessly as sparks flew from where the great sword had slashed across their torsos. As the gangbangers continued to try and swarm Taylor, the Ranger took her sword in a reverse grip in both hands. Channeling the energy flowing through her, Taylor drove the sword into the ground. A shockwave of red energy sent the gang members flying.
Their moral broken, the E88 and ABB members that could fled in opposite directions, leaving their wounded and fallen behind. The E88 member stuck in a windshield stopped struggling when he noticed the Red Ranger looking at him. After a moment's hesitation, the blond promptly played dead.
Taylor surveyed the battlefield that the street had become, her hand on the pommel of her sword. Her other hand came up and rubbed the chin of the girl's helmet. "I feel like I should be making a quip of some sort."
The Power Ranger shook her head. "Oh forget that, I need to call the police." Taylor reached for a nonexistent pocket before pausing. "Oh wait, I don't have a phone." She began to look around. "Pay phone, pay phone, pay pho…?" Something occurred to Taylor at that moment.
"Wait. Didn't the radio say this was a cape fight?"