Chapter Text
Prologue
Silver Strength
Zhane pulled the central processing unit out of the nearest combat drone and crushed it in his armored hand. Sparks flew out of the hole in the machine's body and it fell dead. Nearby, Andros bashed through another drone with his pickaxe and Trey took out an entire squad with a single swing of his scepter. Finally, after years of training and months of constant combat, the three finally had a chance to free KO-35 from the Machine Empire.
Ecliptor's tower, a hulking mass of machinery, dominated the landscape. It served as the Empire's operational hub on the planet. When the guard drones had all been dealt with, the three rangers regrouped at the base of the tower. A glowing white force field was all that stood between them and their target.
Trey took a moment to consider their problem.
"Give me the word and I'll call down an orbital bombardment," Zhane suggested.
"Never escalate a fight unless your enemy forces you, Zhane," Trey warned. "A bombardment of that magnitude would scorch large sections of the planet."
Zhane pounded his fist against the force field. "I'm not going to let this stop me!" Ecliptor had murdered most of their people and enslaved the rest eons ago. It forced them to mine ore for the Machine Empire's weapons and fleets. Zhane wanted to tear the damn thing apart, piece by piece.
Zhane's earliest memory was dragging rocks as a young boy. Faceless drones whipped him for not being strong enough to carry them. He grew up working in the the mines. The drones continued to punish him for not mining enough ore or not moving quickly enough. He was beaten bloody daily and given medicine and barely enough food. His body failed him. The other miners only watched as he got weaker and weaker, taking Zhane's punishment as an example.
"There's got to be a way in," Andros suggested, taking in the tower's immense height. If they could have only teleported inside, they would have been done with this fight months ago.
The day he met Andros, Zhane felt compassion for the first time in his life. Andros showed up in the miner's barracks one day, taken from a farm outside the mines. He gave some of the ore he had mined to Zhane, taking that day's beating for him. That night was the best night of Zhane's life for a very long time. He finally got to eat a full meal and Andros had given it to him. From then on, his beatings were only every other day until Zhane was finally strong enough.
"The drones came out of the tower, right?" Andros asked. "They walk right through the shield, but it stops our armor from getting through. What if we used their armor instead of ours?"
"We might be able to walk right through," Trey nodded. That was what Andros did best. He was always coming up with a clever solution, born to be a Power Ranger. He might even have been the best one.
They stripped all the armor they could from the drones they had destroyed earlier, demorphed, and covered themselves in it. Andros was the first to step up to the shield. He eyed it cautiously.
Zhane charged through the shield, before Andros could test his plan, and came out on the other side unharmed. Andros cocked his head at him, Zhane smiled. "It works," he said. He wasn't about to let Andros take yet another beating for him, Zhane owed him.
Once the rangers were inside the shield, Trey teleported them up to the tower's control room. Whirling blades, spinning gears, and all manner of torture devices laid in every corner. Cables running along the walls pulsed with energy. The very walls laughed in the rangers' faces. It was a testament to the agony Ecliptor had inflicted on the people of planet KO-35.
Ecliptor stood in the center of the room, clad in twisted black armor. It may have been twice as tall as Zhane, but that oversized arm would be useless when he ripped it off. It scanned them and stomped forward.
Trey was first to morph. His armor gleamed with gold, untainted and pure. The man from a planet called Triforia had given Andros and Zhane their coins. He had mentored them and trained them to be Power Rangers, guardians of the Zeo Crystal, protectors of the people. Even more than that, he had become a father to them, the only one Zhane had ever known.
Andros and Zhane followed Trey's lead by morphing. Zhane's silver grew out of his body in large plates. Liquid copper flowed over Andros in a wave. Zhane savored the power his coin granted him, the power to exact justice.
When they were training under Trey, Zhane always wanted more power so he could fight evil. He wanted to be able to take on armies of Ecliptor's drones by himself. He had learned to draw power directly from the morphing grid. Muscle dominated his new form. He was strong, no longer that weak boy from the mines.
The only thing holding him back was the fact that he would automatically demorph when he tried to hold too much power. It felt like dropping a weight when it got too heavy. Trey had told him that it was a fail-safe that protected him. It would shut off his connection to the grid before he could destroy himself. So he worked it like a muscle, slowly expanding the amount of power he could hold. He got stronger the more he worked at it.
Andros had found new ways to use the power he already possessed, uncovering unique powers. He could teleport, create a weapon of raw force, and he was even learning to move things with his mind. There was always something new he could do.
Trey teleported the short distance, and struck Ecliptor with his scepter. Ecliptor was caught off guard and staggered back.
Zhane kept up the assault by charging and slamming Ecliptor as hard as he could, to absolutely no effect. Ecliptor's metal body protected it completely. It countered by knocking Zhane into a wall.
Zhane fell to the floor and let his anger draw more power from the grid. His armor thickened and began to tear into his skin.
Ecliptor concentrated its attacks on Trey, its huge fist blocked by Trey's scepter. It grabbed at him with its smaller arm. Trey dodged the claw, but didn't see the bigger one had become a particle cannon until the last moment. A white beam of energy cut through Trey's armor and into his side.
Trey went down with his hands clutching the wound.
Andros focused his mind, forming his pickaxe. Ecliptor was too slow to avoid Andros' strike. The copper axe dug into its arm. Zhane leaped into the fray and slammed Andros' axe as hard as he could, breaking the arm off. It clattered onto the floor of the control room.
The small victory was short-lived. A cable shot out of Ecliptor's empty shoulder and picked up the severed arm. It pulled itself back to the body and reattached to the shoulder socket.
Before Andros and Zhane could react, several more cables shot out of Ecliptor's body. They connected to various devices on the walls and brought them to its body. A flamethrower attached itself to Ecliptor's shoulder and shot at Zhane.
Zhane leapt through the white-hot flame and bashed Ecliptor in the chest, beating it back. Hoarding more grid energy was working.
Andros cut one of the cables reaching for the wall, then another, but there were too many to stop. The parts merged with Ecliptor making him stronger, improving its armor, giving itself more weapons. Its right arm formed into the shape of a blade, its left claw crackled with electricity. It was already too powerful and its strength was only growing, they were going to lose.
Zhane pushed himself further than he ever had, collecting more and more power. He needed to protect Trey and Andros. His armor stabbed through his body growing thicker, larger. It hurt, but his focus dulled the pain. Zhane unleashed a kick that nearly broke the sound barrier, shearing off parts of Ecliptor's armor. He followed it up with a lightning-fast punch. Ecliptor's body crashed into the tower's wall.
Zhane was immediately on top of his enemy. Ecliptor's right arm managed to pull a buzz saw from a nearby machine. Zhane avoided its swings while Andros got into position.
Andros whipped a severed cable around Ecliptor's legs and caught the other end on its way back around. He twisted the ends around each other to tighten it, desperately trying to hold the machine in place.
Ecliptor cut into the cable with it's saw. Zhane began beating it again, avoiding its electrified claw and grabbing it by the wrist. Zhane bent it just enough to break it. It would need to repair itself before Ecliptor could use it again. He finally had his chance.
Zhane grabbed Ecliptor's head and started pulling. It wouldn't give, so he gathered the strength to rip it off. The metal creaked but didn't break. He was already close, he just needed a little more-
Zhane's armor exploded in a silver flame. He dropped all of the energy he had hoarded from the grid. Zhane stood in front Ecliptor wearing only his tattered miner's robes, weak as that little boy again.
Ecliptor grabbed Zhane and electrocuted him. All of his muscles squeezed. He couldn't move or think. While the lightning ran through him, he was in agony.
Ecliptor's saw inched toward Zhane's neck. With a flash of copper light, Andros appeared in front of Ecliptor and blocked the saw using a piece of drone armor.
Trey appeared behind Ecliptor and pounded on it with his scepter. His attacks weakened with each strike, but the machine began to smoke, severed cables whipped out of it.
Trey finally broke all the way through Ecliptor's body. One last hit broke off its head.
What was left of Ecliptor went rigid and fell into a wrecked heap. Zhane's victory was taken from him, he really wanted to be the one to take the damn thing down. He huffed in satisfaction watching the smoking corpse. Ecliptor was dead and that was all that mattered. He owed Andros another one, he added it to his mental tally.
A small white box crawled out of the hole in Ecliptor's chest, using wiry tendrils as legs. It scurried along the floor, probing for something.
"That's Ecliptor's central processor!" Trey shouted. "We need to destroy it!"
The processor dodged around Trey's attacks and Andros tried to lift it off the ground with telekinesis. It held tight and dug itself into the cables and machinery that comprised the floor.
The room shifted. The machinery and devices on the walls and floor came to life. Cables shot into the room, connecting everything.
"We need to get to the ship," Trey said. He grabbed Zhane and they teleported to the ground.
Andros followed after picking up Ecliptor's body. "I have an idea." He got inside and moved through the shield. They got back outside one at a time while the tower shifted above them.
Ecliptor's central processor had merged with its fortress. It slowly took on hulking humanoid form as tall as a mountain.
In a rush of golden energy, the trio teleported to the bridge of Trey's pyramid-shaped starship. Zhane stepped up to the weapons system and targeted Ecliptor with everything they had. Andros was already calibrating the shield while Trey piloted them into the atmosphere to get the best shot.
Zhane charged the weapons and unleashed the particle beam. The shield folded like paper and the beam cut straight through Ecliptor, destroying the ground behind it in a magnificent explosion. Zhane got his orbital bombardment after all. It was the exact same result as he suggested earlier except Trey wouldn't have been critically injured. Stupid rule.
"What's it doing?" Andros asked. Metal filled in the hole Zhane had drilled into it. The shield went back up a moment later. Zhane punched the console. Nothing he ever did changed anything.
"It repairs itself too quickly for our weapons to be effective," Trey stated. "I'll destroy the processor from the inside." He staggered to a nearby container and produced an explosive.
"Ugh!" Trey doubled over and his golden armor retreated. He ground his teeth through the pain. The wound in his side was getting bigger. "Armor's the only thing holding me together."
"I'll go," Andros volunteered.
"No! I won't let you do that," Zhane said. "It should be me. I'll take a transport."
"You'll never make it," Trey gasped. "Not without morphing."
Zhane was fine. He could morph. He focused on Andros and Trey, his brother and his father. But as much as he pushed, his armor was stuck. He needed more time, only a second or two. Any moment he'd be able to morph again.
"This one has to be me, Zhane." Andros looked at Zhane with an optimistic smile. "You bring down the shield and I'll teleport in and teleport out. Easy."
A hand grabbed Zhane's shoulder. "Trust your brother." Trey's speech was slurred. He stood up and attempted to look stoic. The old man could barely hold himself up. He put the explosive in Andros' hands. "May the power protect you, Andros."
Zhane stepped back up to his console and fired the particle beam when it reached full charge. Ecliptor's shield fell and Andros teleported away. Trey struggled through his pain with the flight controls.
Ecliptor unleashed its own attack on the ship. Plasma bolts began pounding the hull. Zhane took all the power he could from the ship's systems to keep the weapons charged. The second Andros was done, he would get him out of there.
The ship's armor melted and broke. Sparks blew out of the consoles. The bridge was scorching, but neither Zhane nor Trey let the heat distract them from their task.
"I've attached the bomb to the processor," Andros reported over the com.
Zhane fired the beam again and Ecliptor's shield went down. "Get back here, Andros!"
"Teleporting, now."
Ecliptor formed a sword with its arm and brought it down on the ship, shaking it to the ground. Andros didn't appear.
"The cables... They've got me." Andros struggled to speak. "I can't get free... trying to teleport."
"Cut your way through!" Zhane screamed. "Get out of there!"
"It's not working! I can't..." There was a long pause. It might have only been one second, but Zhane felt like it was hours long. "Zhane." Andros' voice had become calm. "I'm sorry."
"No! There's still time! There's still time!" Zhane concentrated on Andros. If he could just teleport to him... Rangers developed new powers in times of crisis, he could do it.
"Everything will be okay," Andros said as Ecliptor's shield went back up. "Zhane-"
An explosion cut through Ecliptor's midsection outward and tore it in half. Metal sheared itself apart, crumbling down. The bulk of the machinery slumped over, crashing into the ground in a cloud of dirt and smoke. Fire wrapped itself around it.
Zhane beat his way to the wreckage and dug through the debris with tears in his eyes. He didn't care how the metal tore up his hands, damn the blood, damn the pain. There was still a chance Andros was alive.
Andros was unmorphed when Zhane found him, his body wrapped in wiring. Cables were wrapped around his neck and he had been stabbed in several places.
Zhane fell to his knees. His heart was crushed. Andros' life was payment for Zhane's freedom, but it was a price too high. He wanted all of it to end there, he didn't want to go on.
Andros spent his life sacrificing for others. Zhane was the reckless one, the one that was supposed to die. He broke down on the pile of rubble knowing he had failed.