RyoSanada
08-11-2004, 11:07 AM
Power Rangers Cyber Strike
Episode 3: Overload
Two days into the semester and the Rangers were already bogged down with work. Dax and Amber had a four page paper to write by Friday, Sara, Evan, and Scott all had to attend lab observation rotations and write about them, and all five of them had a book to read for their honors class. None of them had ever been this busy into the beginning of any semester. All the work on top of all the activities they were in, plus the ever present worry that a virus would attack was nearly driving them insane.
“I quit! I can’t do it!” Amber announced at a coffee table at a place they affectionately referred to as “Honors HQ,” or “HHQ” for short. It was their place. A place only honors students were allowed to go and hang out. Of course anyone could come in as long as a meeting wasn’t going on, but generally the honors kids were the ones holding down the fort.
“Come on,” Dax joked, “Its just two days into our second year. It’s too early to quit. Wait until tomorrow and I’ll quit with you.” Exasperated, he flipped his pencil down on his text book and slumped back in his chair.
Sara sat with a lab manual in her hand, feverishly trying to memorize everything in their next rotation. She always wanted to be prepared, but this week may prepare her into insanity. She looked up from her book, “How can I memorize all this? There are six pages of safety procedures before the experiment even starts. God I love being a biology major.”
Scott sat in a remote corner of the room, doing his best to explain the quadratic formula to a history major who had been flung in calculus. Occasionally, his eyes glanced over an open Genetics book which sat on top of the same lab manual Sara was reading from, under which a psychology book rested with a neon orange bookmark sticking out denoted the pages he needed to read by tomorrow.
Evan rolled across the carpeted floor with and hit the wall with a thud. Instinctively he stood up and advanced toward his practice partner, Angela. She flipped him again but this time he rolled more smoothly and came up on his feet as opposed to hitting a wall. Scott looked up at Evan.
“Do you honestly have time…and room to do that in here? I mean, you’re a bio major too, you have this lab stuff and that stupid book to read. But, what are you doing now? Getting your but kicked by a girl and rolling into a wall. I honestly think your time can be better spent doing something else.”
Evan stood up and fixed the belt on his gi, “Point noted and taken, Bro. But you also have to realize that Sensei is testing me this Friday. I’m studying for this test too. I’ve also got the Honors Student meeting to plan for and some crazy curriculum planning committee meeting for a new class they want to start.”
Angela looked at the rest of the group. “Plus you do have the rest of the week. And classes only meet every other day, so you really have two days to do the stuff,” she explained.
Amber glanced back at her, “Easy enough for a theater major to say. A production doesn’t start for four weeks, and until then you don’t have a lot to do.”
Evan didn’t want to see a fight start, so he interjected, “And we have the rest of the night. We don’t have to quit at like six or eight or something. We can work little by little until we get too tired to stay awake. We’ve got more time than you all think.”
That statement seemed to hit a spot with the diligent students. Simultaneously they all closed their books and put away their pens. They decided to take a well needed, and deserved break. No sooner had their books closed than all five of the Cyber Morphers rang.
Angela looked up with a puzzled look on her face. “That was the weirdest thing in the entire world. Please tell me that was just a coincidence.”
Dax spoke up while Sara answered the call, “Um, yeah. I mean. Weird things happen.”
Angela looked around at the rest of them, “Well, aren’t you going to answer your phones?”
“No, I’m just going to wait until they call back. Plus, I need to go anyway,” Evan hurriedly explained.
“Yeah…I need to head out, too,” Amber said standing up.
Scott stood, expressing his apologies to the student he was tutoring as he headed for the door. Outside, all five of them met on the lawn where Sara explained what was going on.
“It turns out that there is something wrong with the way the powers are stored in the Morphers. Brittany wants us to come in so she can check it out,” Sara relayed to the group.
“So there’s no virus attack?” Amber asked in a concerned tone.
“Well, apparently nor,” Scott said, “But this could take a while and we all have a lot of work to do. We better get going.” The group agreed and headed off toward DataSys Corp.
* * *
“Congratulations, Progran. Your pilot-virus works amazingly,” Shiiro said to his follower.
“Thank you, Master. I do my best to serve you…,” Progran hesitated, then finished following a penetrating gaze from Shiiro, “…and the Taker, of course.”
“Heh, I like it just because I don’t have to fly the ship now,” Etheran said with a chuckle. Etheran was a gigantic battle-virus. His deep green and black armor glinted in the light of the control room. He leaned on his gigantic waraxe, that could easily transform into a cannon that carried destruction in its barrel. He was their chief warrior. Along with Servia, his “sister” of sorts, he was the main general of the Viral Army.
“And now I may be able to actually get some work done since the ship won’t be tossing and turning,” Servia, a virus in the form of an attractive young woman in navy armor, said with a slight grin. “You may be the brawn behind the generals, but I am undeniably the brains.” She was right, what she lacked in pure firepower and strength, she more than made up in her intelligence and her control of cyber abilities, which in the real world would be referred to as magic.
Shiiro turned to Pilot, the only name they ever bothered to give the creation. “Pilot, we need to travel to destination R10AG3X-00791. Get us there quick.”
Pilot swiveled his head, which was actually disconnected from his body and hovered above his torso just a few inches, back to look at his master. His “eyes,” which was more like a continuous, red visor, flashed as he spoke, “Those coordinates identify a power plant. Are you positive this is your desired destination?”
“Yes, Pilot. Never question my orders again,” Shiiro reprimanded.
“Affirmative, Maser,” replied the pilot. He swiveled his head back forward and stretched out four spider like arms to control the functions of the ship. The vessel was in motion, and soon Shiiro’s plan would take shape.
* * *
“It appears that, while your Powers are stable for the time being, that they keep drawing power from the main computer,” Brittany explained with a tone of finality in her voice. “We’ve stored all the data for the rangers in the morphers so we could eliminate the need for an external reader, but it looks like that may have been a mistake.”
“So…what are you saying? What’s going on?” Dax asked.
Kendall looked back at them from a monitor that displayed the parameters of their power levels, they were all in the red zone. “What she’s saying, is that we either have a very small problem that can be fixed in a matter of minutes, or a very big problem that may never be fixed. What’s happening is that your individual powers are drawing more energy from the main source than they can hold. It could be that we just have to tweak something so that it doesn’t draw any more power off the main source, but that could damage the powers. The other way it could turn out is that your individual powers draw up too much energy, become unstable, and destroy themselves.”
“If they’re destroyed is there a way to get them back?” Sara asked.
Brittany responded, “We could recode them, but that could take another two years, and by that time the viruses would have broken free.”
“So its really not an option to just let them do what they want and see what happens,” Evan mentioned.
Brittany looked at him. “That’s really all that we can do at this point. I can’t think of anything that would fix it.”
Kendall looked at his small group of faithful, concerned soldiers. “I know you’re all busy, and we just wanted to let you know what was going on. We were hoping that bringing you all here, one of you would have an idea. But, since you don’t, I guess you all can go on back. Study hard,” Kendall said as they all stood up and began to leave the lab. After they were gone, Kendall turned back to Brittany. “Are they really that unstable?” Kendall asked.
“Yeah. That unstable and then some. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, we’ll keep thinking. Maybe the energy just needs to be expended somehow.” Almost on cue, Kendall was cut off by an alarm sounding on a computer monitor. He and Brittany rushed over to the monitor and looked. Glitches were attacking a cyber-structure that had pipes and conduits entering and leaving a central structure. There were similar structures places around, but the one the Glitches were focusing on was the largest. “Call them! This my be the expenditure they need.”
“But they’re unstable.”
“Risk it. We don’t have a choice. We’ll pull them out before the worst happens.”
“Got it,” Brittany said, calling Dax. She looked up from the screen, “I hope you’re right about this.”
“Me, too,” Kendall said as worry washed over his face.
- - -
The five had not quite made it back to campus when Evan’s phone rang. “Hello,” he said into the device, “WHAT! Ok, we’re on our way.” He hung up the phone and looked at his friends. “There’s trouble. We need to get in,” he spoke to his friends.
“Okay. Over there,” Dax said pointing behind a fence. The five teens raced over there and looked for any passers-by. “Remember what we practiced?”
The five nodded, took out their morphers, and crossed their arms, “Cyber Ready!” they yelled as they hit the button to open their morpher, they hit the button and brought the phone back up to their ear, “Download!”
With that, the college transformed into appropriately colored gridlines then, with a flash of light disappeared.
They reappeared in the cyber world, at the place where Kendall and Brittany saw the Glitches attacking earlier. This time however, Shiiro was there to meet them. “Hello, Rangers,” He said as he watched them approach. “I believe introductions are in order. I am Shiiro, current emperor of the Cyber World and Herald of the Taker.”
Red Ranger summoned his courage to speak, “What are you talking about? Taker?”
“Yes,” Shiiro said even more confidently, “The taker is the actual master of this world, but since he is currently lacking an effective form, it is up to me to do his bidding. The technology held at the university can give us physical forms and restore the Taker to his previous glory. Earth, and the cyber world, will belong to the viruses.”
Evan interjected this time, “Yeah, I don’t think so, Creepy! To do that you’re going to have to go through us!” he said as he rallied his friends behind him.
“Easy enough,” Shiiro said as he brought his left wrist up to speak into a communicator. “Progran, it’s time.” His words were followed with a flash of light. Random polygons were flowing together and taking shape, a new virus was being formed.
The virus took shape…an interesting shape. For all intents and purposes, it was the same size and shape of a human. He wore red, black, and yellow armor adorned with what looked to be wall power socket designs for decorations. His head and right arm looked like the end of a power cord, the part that gets plugged into the wall, and his left hand looked like the part of an extension cord other cords get plugged into.
Shiiro chuckled, “Meet Voltistar. He’s going to be your play thing for a little while, so you better make friends. And speaking of friends, I think there are some more people you should meet.” He snapped his fingers and Servia and Etheran appeared from no where.
Servia spoke to the Rangers, “Hello…you all better be fun.” She drew her thin rapier from her belt and held it at ready.
Etheran flung his axe over his shoulder and glared at the bellowed, “And you better make pretty colored explosions when you are destroyed!”
That was all the taunting the rangers could take. Dax ran straight at the new virus. Evan and Sara silently decided to tackle Servia, while Scott and Amber were content at fighting Etheran. The battle was raging, but only momentarily when the Rangers’ powers started to fail them.
Evan summoned for his axes and blue and yellow sparks erupted from his hands. Sara, seeing that accident drew her CyberStriker and fired at Servia. When she pulled the trigger, sparks fell from her and she went flying back, like she’d been hit. Scott’s powers seemed to surge, sending sparks all around as he wound up face first on the ground. Dax had even less luck against the virus. Something was wrong.
“Kendall, come in!” Amber said as she tapped the right side of her helmet.
His voice crackled over their communicators, “We’re pulling you out. Your powers are unstable.” In a flash of light, the Rangers were gone and the viruses stood dumbstruck.
“Well, that was definitely…interesting. Voltistar, don’t forget what you’re here to do. Come Etheran, lets report back to Shiiro,” Servia commanded. The two generals disappeared leaving Voltistar and a small battalion of Glitches at the power plant. He walked closer to the central structure, and used his right arm to channel more electricity into the grid. He was attempting to overload the power plant.
* * *
The rangers all sat around a table at the lab. “What happened?,” “Will we get our powers working right?,” and “What happens now?” were the questions being shouted at Kendall. He walked over to the table where the students sat, and took a seat himself.
He looked at each of them in turn and spoke gravely, “Your powers were becoming more and more unstable as a result of them drawing too much energy. There may be an option to fix it, but it will take rewriting of the code of the Rangers, and we wanted to know what you thought.”
Silence still fell over the Rangers, but it was apparent that they wanted to hear what Kendall had to say. They were open for anything. Their sense of duty was so great, that even though they’d only had their powers mere days, and mountains of other tasks to focus on, they knew that this was the most important of them all.
Brittany walked over to the table and began explaining what they were going to do, “Originally, and currently, everything the CyberRanger program needs is stored in the morpher and in a program file somewhere on the computer. What we think we need to do, is just leave the basics of the Ranger there, upgrade the suits to incorporate an external scanning device and sending items to be scanned to power the weapons and other things we think you’ll need.”
“So you’re talking about putting a barcode scanner on the suits,” Sara asked, she didn’t mean it to sound like a joke.
“More like a card scanner, actually,” Brittany told the team. The five looked at each other, and it seemed to make sense.
“How would we get cards?” Scott asked.
“We’d send them to you,” Kendall answered simply. “The new devices on the suits would be able receive the cards then be able to scan them.”
“How long will this take?” Dax said.
Instead of hearing minutes, like they all thought, Kendall answered with a few hours. Kendall didn’t want all of them to leave, because the changes may not take as long as they thought, so he let Amber and Evan walk to the university to get their work so they would have something to do while waiting.
And on they worked, even though it was slightly harder to concentrate now. Amber and Dax used one of the many computers to begin writing their horrendous report. Evan, Sara, and Scott used the group method to splice together the pieces of the lab they would be watching tomorrow. Elsewhere in the building Kendal and Brittany worked feverishly on the new code. They needed it done quick.
“Their morphers won’t be able to work,” Brittany said as she was altering the code for CyberRed.
“Why not?” Kendall asked as he dashed over to where she was sitting.
“Because we literally have to pull the information out of them. There won’t be enough there in one chunk to let them be able to morph. We’re going to have to give them new morphers,” she said nodding slightly.
“Do it,” Kendall said squeezing her shoulder slightly, “Put them on the card-swipe system that we’re using for the suits. I’ll start the machine to get them out of the digital code.”
“Do they know we have the prototype of what the viruses want?”
“No, but they’ll figure it out soon enough. They’re smart kids,” Kendall said as he walked past where the rangers were sitting and working. Really smart kids, he thought to himself.
* * *
Shiiro listened to the report from his generals. He couldn’t have been more pleased. How could he not be happy? It was only their second battle with the team and they had already been defeated. He didn’t want to abandon his post yet. Shiiro figured he knew their controller and that the rangers would return, with some trick up their sleeve.
For the time being, however, he was content to watch Voltistar push more and more power into the grid. Soon, Shiiro confided in himself, It won’t matter what trick the Rangers have because there won’t be the electricity to get them here. Then Shiiro turned and walked away from the window and walked between his generals, laughing a maniacal laugh.
* * *
It didn’t take the rangers long to figure out what was going on in the cyber world. Computer monitors would erupt in sudden showers of sparks and lights, from random places in the lab would explode. They could no longer keep their minds on their assignments; they just sat and watched Brittany and Kendall at their work. Brittany walked back to their table carry something else on a tray-type thing.
“These are your new morphers,” she said handing them out to each of the students.
“They look like the wrist mounts from the Primary console,” Evan said.
“That’s where we got the idea,” Brittany said. She kept one morpher for herself so she could demonstrate. “This is where the cards for you to morph are stored, and this is where we’ll transmit cards to you in the field. Push the tight button and the right card pops out.” she said pushing the big, central button and pulling a black card from the space on the morpher. “You can slide it through either side and it’ll take care of the rest.”
“What about the morphers we have now?” Amber asked.
“Let’s just call them Data Callers and use them as communicators. I’ll be working on a way for you to hide your new Cyber Morphers easier so you don’t have to announce who you are to everyone when they ask why you’re wearing a contraption on your arm.”
“Okay,” Scott said. He stood up and drew his card, “I think we have a job to do.” The other Rangers stood up and drew their cards.
“Cyber Ready!” they yelled in unison as they prepared to swipe their cards. “Download!” was cried as their cards were swiped and the rangers flashed off once again to the cyber world.
- - -
Instead of being transported directly to the power plant, they ended up in the transmission room. Kendall’s voice came through their communicators, “Listen. Just so you know, there are buttons on your morphers.” The rangers looked down, and sure enough, on their left gauntlet rested their new Cyber Morpher. The buttons on the side that are lit up are the cards you can use. The top button is to change your CyberStriker into sword mode. The next button gives you the card to summon your weapons. We’re working on a third card, and you’ll get it when we’re done. Good luck. I’m sending you to the power plant now.”
Instantaneously, the rangers were ready to charge the virus. With his back to them they were able to catch him by surprise. Scott connected with a well placed kick and the virus went sailing through the air. Voltistar stood up and fumed at the Rangers, “What! You’re back! But how?”
Dax strode forward and tapped hid morpher, “Easy. We got upgrades.” And with that the Rangers all flew into battle.
Voltistar detached his hands, revealing normal, actual hands underneath, and what had once been his hands connected with a pole and formed a staff type weapon. Seeing this, the rangers all pushed the weapons buttons on their morphers, and a card materialized. When they slid their card through, it disappeared and light on the end of the morpher ignited., when then light went off, the weapons were in their hands.
Together, they fought Voltistar. Dax’s swords caught against his staff as the virus parried all his attacks. Even fighting five on one, the Rangers were barely able to strike the monster. Scott separated his staff into the two clubs and began attempting to pummel them virus with the rest of the rangers.
Voltistar let loose a volt of electricity that knocked all the rangers to the ground. “I grow tired of this,” he said pulling a CD from behind his back. He flung the CD like a Frisbee and it hovered just above the ground. Gridlines formed, and Glitches now swarmed the rangers. CyberBlue, CyberGreen, CyberYellow, and CyberPink once again fought the Glitches while CyberRed tackled the monster. Dax, however, ended up fighting a losing battle without the other rangers there to help distract Voltistar.
After being blaster with electricity four times, his communicator crackled, “Try this.” Looking at his morpher, the third button had lit up, “It slides through the space on your sword.” Being obedient, he pushed the button and slid the card. The sword he slid it through started glowing. He charged the virus once again.
Dax leapt into the air and swung his sword with a downward stroke. The monster was struck and flipped back. When he landed an explosion rocked the ground. The other four ran up to Dax, staring at the spot where he landed, listening to a cackling laugh.
“Thought you could beat me that easily, did you? Well, you’re wrong. I can absorb energy from anywhere to make me stronger. You can’t beat me!” Voltistar said as he was standing back up. Blue lines of electricity circled around his body. He was puling energy from the power plant.
Their communicators crackled ones again, “This is your chance. You have to overload him. Combine your weapons and finish the job,” Kendall said.
“Right!” the Rangers yelled in unison. They combined their weapons like before and stood flanking CyberRed. “Fire,” they all yelled again. The bolt slammed into the virus and another explosion lit the air. This time, when the smoke cleared, no virus stood there.
“We did it,” Evan said to Kendall through the communicator, “Now get us out of here. We’ve got a lot of homework to do.”
- - -
Back at the lab, the students fiddled with their watches. “So…these are the morphers?” Sara asked.
“Yep,” said Brittany, “Push the button on the bottom and they turn in to the morphers, hit the same button on the morphers and they turn back into watches.”
The team attempted it a few times until they were satisfied. “How did you do this?” Scott asked.
Kendall was the one that answered this time, “All we did was set up the Data Callers to emit a weak cyber-field. That way your morphers would always be able to draw on their digital powers.”
“Well, guys…I really need to go,” Scott said with finality, “I’ve got a lot more work than the rest of you thanks to that darn Psychology class.”
And with that little bit of urging, the team left, back to campus, to once again work on their mountains of homework..
* * *
“Pilot, take us to destination R7-36-GH0991! Now!” Shiiro said as he stormed across the control room of his craft. His generals just stood and stared at him. He had a new plan, and he would not let all the rangers interfere this time.
Episode 3: Overload
Two days into the semester and the Rangers were already bogged down with work. Dax and Amber had a four page paper to write by Friday, Sara, Evan, and Scott all had to attend lab observation rotations and write about them, and all five of them had a book to read for their honors class. None of them had ever been this busy into the beginning of any semester. All the work on top of all the activities they were in, plus the ever present worry that a virus would attack was nearly driving them insane.
“I quit! I can’t do it!” Amber announced at a coffee table at a place they affectionately referred to as “Honors HQ,” or “HHQ” for short. It was their place. A place only honors students were allowed to go and hang out. Of course anyone could come in as long as a meeting wasn’t going on, but generally the honors kids were the ones holding down the fort.
“Come on,” Dax joked, “Its just two days into our second year. It’s too early to quit. Wait until tomorrow and I’ll quit with you.” Exasperated, he flipped his pencil down on his text book and slumped back in his chair.
Sara sat with a lab manual in her hand, feverishly trying to memorize everything in their next rotation. She always wanted to be prepared, but this week may prepare her into insanity. She looked up from her book, “How can I memorize all this? There are six pages of safety procedures before the experiment even starts. God I love being a biology major.”
Scott sat in a remote corner of the room, doing his best to explain the quadratic formula to a history major who had been flung in calculus. Occasionally, his eyes glanced over an open Genetics book which sat on top of the same lab manual Sara was reading from, under which a psychology book rested with a neon orange bookmark sticking out denoted the pages he needed to read by tomorrow.
Evan rolled across the carpeted floor with and hit the wall with a thud. Instinctively he stood up and advanced toward his practice partner, Angela. She flipped him again but this time he rolled more smoothly and came up on his feet as opposed to hitting a wall. Scott looked up at Evan.
“Do you honestly have time…and room to do that in here? I mean, you’re a bio major too, you have this lab stuff and that stupid book to read. But, what are you doing now? Getting your but kicked by a girl and rolling into a wall. I honestly think your time can be better spent doing something else.”
Evan stood up and fixed the belt on his gi, “Point noted and taken, Bro. But you also have to realize that Sensei is testing me this Friday. I’m studying for this test too. I’ve also got the Honors Student meeting to plan for and some crazy curriculum planning committee meeting for a new class they want to start.”
Angela looked at the rest of the group. “Plus you do have the rest of the week. And classes only meet every other day, so you really have two days to do the stuff,” she explained.
Amber glanced back at her, “Easy enough for a theater major to say. A production doesn’t start for four weeks, and until then you don’t have a lot to do.”
Evan didn’t want to see a fight start, so he interjected, “And we have the rest of the night. We don’t have to quit at like six or eight or something. We can work little by little until we get too tired to stay awake. We’ve got more time than you all think.”
That statement seemed to hit a spot with the diligent students. Simultaneously they all closed their books and put away their pens. They decided to take a well needed, and deserved break. No sooner had their books closed than all five of the Cyber Morphers rang.
Angela looked up with a puzzled look on her face. “That was the weirdest thing in the entire world. Please tell me that was just a coincidence.”
Dax spoke up while Sara answered the call, “Um, yeah. I mean. Weird things happen.”
Angela looked around at the rest of them, “Well, aren’t you going to answer your phones?”
“No, I’m just going to wait until they call back. Plus, I need to go anyway,” Evan hurriedly explained.
“Yeah…I need to head out, too,” Amber said standing up.
Scott stood, expressing his apologies to the student he was tutoring as he headed for the door. Outside, all five of them met on the lawn where Sara explained what was going on.
“It turns out that there is something wrong with the way the powers are stored in the Morphers. Brittany wants us to come in so she can check it out,” Sara relayed to the group.
“So there’s no virus attack?” Amber asked in a concerned tone.
“Well, apparently nor,” Scott said, “But this could take a while and we all have a lot of work to do. We better get going.” The group agreed and headed off toward DataSys Corp.
* * *
“Congratulations, Progran. Your pilot-virus works amazingly,” Shiiro said to his follower.
“Thank you, Master. I do my best to serve you…,” Progran hesitated, then finished following a penetrating gaze from Shiiro, “…and the Taker, of course.”
“Heh, I like it just because I don’t have to fly the ship now,” Etheran said with a chuckle. Etheran was a gigantic battle-virus. His deep green and black armor glinted in the light of the control room. He leaned on his gigantic waraxe, that could easily transform into a cannon that carried destruction in its barrel. He was their chief warrior. Along with Servia, his “sister” of sorts, he was the main general of the Viral Army.
“And now I may be able to actually get some work done since the ship won’t be tossing and turning,” Servia, a virus in the form of an attractive young woman in navy armor, said with a slight grin. “You may be the brawn behind the generals, but I am undeniably the brains.” She was right, what she lacked in pure firepower and strength, she more than made up in her intelligence and her control of cyber abilities, which in the real world would be referred to as magic.
Shiiro turned to Pilot, the only name they ever bothered to give the creation. “Pilot, we need to travel to destination R10AG3X-00791. Get us there quick.”
Pilot swiveled his head, which was actually disconnected from his body and hovered above his torso just a few inches, back to look at his master. His “eyes,” which was more like a continuous, red visor, flashed as he spoke, “Those coordinates identify a power plant. Are you positive this is your desired destination?”
“Yes, Pilot. Never question my orders again,” Shiiro reprimanded.
“Affirmative, Maser,” replied the pilot. He swiveled his head back forward and stretched out four spider like arms to control the functions of the ship. The vessel was in motion, and soon Shiiro’s plan would take shape.
* * *
“It appears that, while your Powers are stable for the time being, that they keep drawing power from the main computer,” Brittany explained with a tone of finality in her voice. “We’ve stored all the data for the rangers in the morphers so we could eliminate the need for an external reader, but it looks like that may have been a mistake.”
“So…what are you saying? What’s going on?” Dax asked.
Kendall looked back at them from a monitor that displayed the parameters of their power levels, they were all in the red zone. “What she’s saying, is that we either have a very small problem that can be fixed in a matter of minutes, or a very big problem that may never be fixed. What’s happening is that your individual powers are drawing more energy from the main source than they can hold. It could be that we just have to tweak something so that it doesn’t draw any more power off the main source, but that could damage the powers. The other way it could turn out is that your individual powers draw up too much energy, become unstable, and destroy themselves.”
“If they’re destroyed is there a way to get them back?” Sara asked.
Brittany responded, “We could recode them, but that could take another two years, and by that time the viruses would have broken free.”
“So its really not an option to just let them do what they want and see what happens,” Evan mentioned.
Brittany looked at him. “That’s really all that we can do at this point. I can’t think of anything that would fix it.”
Kendall looked at his small group of faithful, concerned soldiers. “I know you’re all busy, and we just wanted to let you know what was going on. We were hoping that bringing you all here, one of you would have an idea. But, since you don’t, I guess you all can go on back. Study hard,” Kendall said as they all stood up and began to leave the lab. After they were gone, Kendall turned back to Brittany. “Are they really that unstable?” Kendall asked.
“Yeah. That unstable and then some. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, we’ll keep thinking. Maybe the energy just needs to be expended somehow.” Almost on cue, Kendall was cut off by an alarm sounding on a computer monitor. He and Brittany rushed over to the monitor and looked. Glitches were attacking a cyber-structure that had pipes and conduits entering and leaving a central structure. There were similar structures places around, but the one the Glitches were focusing on was the largest. “Call them! This my be the expenditure they need.”
“But they’re unstable.”
“Risk it. We don’t have a choice. We’ll pull them out before the worst happens.”
“Got it,” Brittany said, calling Dax. She looked up from the screen, “I hope you’re right about this.”
“Me, too,” Kendall said as worry washed over his face.
- - -
The five had not quite made it back to campus when Evan’s phone rang. “Hello,” he said into the device, “WHAT! Ok, we’re on our way.” He hung up the phone and looked at his friends. “There’s trouble. We need to get in,” he spoke to his friends.
“Okay. Over there,” Dax said pointing behind a fence. The five teens raced over there and looked for any passers-by. “Remember what we practiced?”
The five nodded, took out their morphers, and crossed their arms, “Cyber Ready!” they yelled as they hit the button to open their morpher, they hit the button and brought the phone back up to their ear, “Download!”
With that, the college transformed into appropriately colored gridlines then, with a flash of light disappeared.
They reappeared in the cyber world, at the place where Kendall and Brittany saw the Glitches attacking earlier. This time however, Shiiro was there to meet them. “Hello, Rangers,” He said as he watched them approach. “I believe introductions are in order. I am Shiiro, current emperor of the Cyber World and Herald of the Taker.”
Red Ranger summoned his courage to speak, “What are you talking about? Taker?”
“Yes,” Shiiro said even more confidently, “The taker is the actual master of this world, but since he is currently lacking an effective form, it is up to me to do his bidding. The technology held at the university can give us physical forms and restore the Taker to his previous glory. Earth, and the cyber world, will belong to the viruses.”
Evan interjected this time, “Yeah, I don’t think so, Creepy! To do that you’re going to have to go through us!” he said as he rallied his friends behind him.
“Easy enough,” Shiiro said as he brought his left wrist up to speak into a communicator. “Progran, it’s time.” His words were followed with a flash of light. Random polygons were flowing together and taking shape, a new virus was being formed.
The virus took shape…an interesting shape. For all intents and purposes, it was the same size and shape of a human. He wore red, black, and yellow armor adorned with what looked to be wall power socket designs for decorations. His head and right arm looked like the end of a power cord, the part that gets plugged into the wall, and his left hand looked like the part of an extension cord other cords get plugged into.
Shiiro chuckled, “Meet Voltistar. He’s going to be your play thing for a little while, so you better make friends. And speaking of friends, I think there are some more people you should meet.” He snapped his fingers and Servia and Etheran appeared from no where.
Servia spoke to the Rangers, “Hello…you all better be fun.” She drew her thin rapier from her belt and held it at ready.
Etheran flung his axe over his shoulder and glared at the bellowed, “And you better make pretty colored explosions when you are destroyed!”
That was all the taunting the rangers could take. Dax ran straight at the new virus. Evan and Sara silently decided to tackle Servia, while Scott and Amber were content at fighting Etheran. The battle was raging, but only momentarily when the Rangers’ powers started to fail them.
Evan summoned for his axes and blue and yellow sparks erupted from his hands. Sara, seeing that accident drew her CyberStriker and fired at Servia. When she pulled the trigger, sparks fell from her and she went flying back, like she’d been hit. Scott’s powers seemed to surge, sending sparks all around as he wound up face first on the ground. Dax had even less luck against the virus. Something was wrong.
“Kendall, come in!” Amber said as she tapped the right side of her helmet.
His voice crackled over their communicators, “We’re pulling you out. Your powers are unstable.” In a flash of light, the Rangers were gone and the viruses stood dumbstruck.
“Well, that was definitely…interesting. Voltistar, don’t forget what you’re here to do. Come Etheran, lets report back to Shiiro,” Servia commanded. The two generals disappeared leaving Voltistar and a small battalion of Glitches at the power plant. He walked closer to the central structure, and used his right arm to channel more electricity into the grid. He was attempting to overload the power plant.
* * *
The rangers all sat around a table at the lab. “What happened?,” “Will we get our powers working right?,” and “What happens now?” were the questions being shouted at Kendall. He walked over to the table where the students sat, and took a seat himself.
He looked at each of them in turn and spoke gravely, “Your powers were becoming more and more unstable as a result of them drawing too much energy. There may be an option to fix it, but it will take rewriting of the code of the Rangers, and we wanted to know what you thought.”
Silence still fell over the Rangers, but it was apparent that they wanted to hear what Kendall had to say. They were open for anything. Their sense of duty was so great, that even though they’d only had their powers mere days, and mountains of other tasks to focus on, they knew that this was the most important of them all.
Brittany walked over to the table and began explaining what they were going to do, “Originally, and currently, everything the CyberRanger program needs is stored in the morpher and in a program file somewhere on the computer. What we think we need to do, is just leave the basics of the Ranger there, upgrade the suits to incorporate an external scanning device and sending items to be scanned to power the weapons and other things we think you’ll need.”
“So you’re talking about putting a barcode scanner on the suits,” Sara asked, she didn’t mean it to sound like a joke.
“More like a card scanner, actually,” Brittany told the team. The five looked at each other, and it seemed to make sense.
“How would we get cards?” Scott asked.
“We’d send them to you,” Kendall answered simply. “The new devices on the suits would be able receive the cards then be able to scan them.”
“How long will this take?” Dax said.
Instead of hearing minutes, like they all thought, Kendall answered with a few hours. Kendall didn’t want all of them to leave, because the changes may not take as long as they thought, so he let Amber and Evan walk to the university to get their work so they would have something to do while waiting.
And on they worked, even though it was slightly harder to concentrate now. Amber and Dax used one of the many computers to begin writing their horrendous report. Evan, Sara, and Scott used the group method to splice together the pieces of the lab they would be watching tomorrow. Elsewhere in the building Kendal and Brittany worked feverishly on the new code. They needed it done quick.
“Their morphers won’t be able to work,” Brittany said as she was altering the code for CyberRed.
“Why not?” Kendall asked as he dashed over to where she was sitting.
“Because we literally have to pull the information out of them. There won’t be enough there in one chunk to let them be able to morph. We’re going to have to give them new morphers,” she said nodding slightly.
“Do it,” Kendall said squeezing her shoulder slightly, “Put them on the card-swipe system that we’re using for the suits. I’ll start the machine to get them out of the digital code.”
“Do they know we have the prototype of what the viruses want?”
“No, but they’ll figure it out soon enough. They’re smart kids,” Kendall said as he walked past where the rangers were sitting and working. Really smart kids, he thought to himself.
* * *
Shiiro listened to the report from his generals. He couldn’t have been more pleased. How could he not be happy? It was only their second battle with the team and they had already been defeated. He didn’t want to abandon his post yet. Shiiro figured he knew their controller and that the rangers would return, with some trick up their sleeve.
For the time being, however, he was content to watch Voltistar push more and more power into the grid. Soon, Shiiro confided in himself, It won’t matter what trick the Rangers have because there won’t be the electricity to get them here. Then Shiiro turned and walked away from the window and walked between his generals, laughing a maniacal laugh.
* * *
It didn’t take the rangers long to figure out what was going on in the cyber world. Computer monitors would erupt in sudden showers of sparks and lights, from random places in the lab would explode. They could no longer keep their minds on their assignments; they just sat and watched Brittany and Kendall at their work. Brittany walked back to their table carry something else on a tray-type thing.
“These are your new morphers,” she said handing them out to each of the students.
“They look like the wrist mounts from the Primary console,” Evan said.
“That’s where we got the idea,” Brittany said. She kept one morpher for herself so she could demonstrate. “This is where the cards for you to morph are stored, and this is where we’ll transmit cards to you in the field. Push the tight button and the right card pops out.” she said pushing the big, central button and pulling a black card from the space on the morpher. “You can slide it through either side and it’ll take care of the rest.”
“What about the morphers we have now?” Amber asked.
“Let’s just call them Data Callers and use them as communicators. I’ll be working on a way for you to hide your new Cyber Morphers easier so you don’t have to announce who you are to everyone when they ask why you’re wearing a contraption on your arm.”
“Okay,” Scott said. He stood up and drew his card, “I think we have a job to do.” The other Rangers stood up and drew their cards.
“Cyber Ready!” they yelled in unison as they prepared to swipe their cards. “Download!” was cried as their cards were swiped and the rangers flashed off once again to the cyber world.
- - -
Instead of being transported directly to the power plant, they ended up in the transmission room. Kendall’s voice came through their communicators, “Listen. Just so you know, there are buttons on your morphers.” The rangers looked down, and sure enough, on their left gauntlet rested their new Cyber Morpher. The buttons on the side that are lit up are the cards you can use. The top button is to change your CyberStriker into sword mode. The next button gives you the card to summon your weapons. We’re working on a third card, and you’ll get it when we’re done. Good luck. I’m sending you to the power plant now.”
Instantaneously, the rangers were ready to charge the virus. With his back to them they were able to catch him by surprise. Scott connected with a well placed kick and the virus went sailing through the air. Voltistar stood up and fumed at the Rangers, “What! You’re back! But how?”
Dax strode forward and tapped hid morpher, “Easy. We got upgrades.” And with that the Rangers all flew into battle.
Voltistar detached his hands, revealing normal, actual hands underneath, and what had once been his hands connected with a pole and formed a staff type weapon. Seeing this, the rangers all pushed the weapons buttons on their morphers, and a card materialized. When they slid their card through, it disappeared and light on the end of the morpher ignited., when then light went off, the weapons were in their hands.
Together, they fought Voltistar. Dax’s swords caught against his staff as the virus parried all his attacks. Even fighting five on one, the Rangers were barely able to strike the monster. Scott separated his staff into the two clubs and began attempting to pummel them virus with the rest of the rangers.
Voltistar let loose a volt of electricity that knocked all the rangers to the ground. “I grow tired of this,” he said pulling a CD from behind his back. He flung the CD like a Frisbee and it hovered just above the ground. Gridlines formed, and Glitches now swarmed the rangers. CyberBlue, CyberGreen, CyberYellow, and CyberPink once again fought the Glitches while CyberRed tackled the monster. Dax, however, ended up fighting a losing battle without the other rangers there to help distract Voltistar.
After being blaster with electricity four times, his communicator crackled, “Try this.” Looking at his morpher, the third button had lit up, “It slides through the space on your sword.” Being obedient, he pushed the button and slid the card. The sword he slid it through started glowing. He charged the virus once again.
Dax leapt into the air and swung his sword with a downward stroke. The monster was struck and flipped back. When he landed an explosion rocked the ground. The other four ran up to Dax, staring at the spot where he landed, listening to a cackling laugh.
“Thought you could beat me that easily, did you? Well, you’re wrong. I can absorb energy from anywhere to make me stronger. You can’t beat me!” Voltistar said as he was standing back up. Blue lines of electricity circled around his body. He was puling energy from the power plant.
Their communicators crackled ones again, “This is your chance. You have to overload him. Combine your weapons and finish the job,” Kendall said.
“Right!” the Rangers yelled in unison. They combined their weapons like before and stood flanking CyberRed. “Fire,” they all yelled again. The bolt slammed into the virus and another explosion lit the air. This time, when the smoke cleared, no virus stood there.
“We did it,” Evan said to Kendall through the communicator, “Now get us out of here. We’ve got a lot of homework to do.”
- - -
Back at the lab, the students fiddled with their watches. “So…these are the morphers?” Sara asked.
“Yep,” said Brittany, “Push the button on the bottom and they turn in to the morphers, hit the same button on the morphers and they turn back into watches.”
The team attempted it a few times until they were satisfied. “How did you do this?” Scott asked.
Kendall was the one that answered this time, “All we did was set up the Data Callers to emit a weak cyber-field. That way your morphers would always be able to draw on their digital powers.”
“Well, guys…I really need to go,” Scott said with finality, “I’ve got a lot more work than the rest of you thanks to that darn Psychology class.”
And with that little bit of urging, the team left, back to campus, to once again work on their mountains of homework..
* * *
“Pilot, take us to destination R7-36-GH0991! Now!” Shiiro said as he stormed across the control room of his craft. His generals just stood and stared at him. He had a new plan, and he would not let all the rangers interfere this time.