Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The Gap Sensor detected Mooger activity not far from you, just keep looking,” Jii’s voice said through Jayden’s Morpher.

Jayden sighed as he walked through the alleyways of Panorama City. He’d been circling this area for the last hour but yet there wasn’t a Mooger in sight. At this point, Jayden wondered if it would just be better to call it quits. It wasn’t like six foot tall yellow monsters with fangs and swords were easy to miss.

“I don’t know, Jii,” Jayden said, “I’ve been wandering around here for ages and there’s been nothing but radio silence. Maybe the Gap Sensor is faulty.”

He could feel Jii’s tired glare through the Morpher. “The Gap Sensor is never wrong.”

“The Gap Sensor,” Jayden pressed, “hasn’t gone off in nearly ten years. What makes today so special that it would?”

"If that's how you really think, then you have a lot to learn about vigilance. It’s dangerous to become complacent with the status quo.”

A groan bubbled up Jayden’s throat. He knew better than to argue with Jii. The old man had him wander the city for nearly three years in search of any Nighlok activity. Honestly, Jayden was happy for any excuse to get out of the house, especially on a nice day like today.

The sky was a perfect, cloudless blue. The city bustled with people, as usual, going about whatever mundane activities they had planned, whether it be work or just enjoying the summer afternoon.

Jayden had to admit he’d stopped listening to his grandfather ramble on about vigilance after about five minutes. He was much more entertained with kicking a pebble as he walked. As much as he loved Jii, Jii’s long winded lessons tended to get boring.

Squinting in concentration, Jayden launched his new pebble at the loading dock of a passing building. It pinged off the safety rail, the ring echoing down the abandoned alley.  

“Jayden? Are you even listening?” Jii asked.

Jayden sucked in a breath. “Yes?”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Jii, you have to see it from my side,” Jayden said, “I’ve been on patrol all morning and this entire time not a single Mooger…” his attention tapered off as he noticed his own breath puff out from his lips.

Out of nowhere, the August heat dissipated into a cutting chill. Heavy clouds rolled in from nowhere, choking off all sunlight and shrouding the city in shadows. The ground rumbled, toppling over a stack of crates outside of the loading dock.

A faint cry pricked at Jayden’s ears. He swallowed hard. A blood red glow pulsed from the edges of the alley’s opening.   

“I’m…gonna have to call you back.” He shoved the Morpher in his pocket and took off in a sprint out to the street.

The light emitted from a nearby demolition sight. One after another, like an out of control firehose, sprang the ugliest yellow monsters Jayden had ever seen. Massive fangs jutted out from their red faces, snarling and dripping with drool. 

Jii could’ve told him a thousand times what Moogers looked like. He could’ve pointed out the old paintings in the story books every night, but those paintings and stories could never capture how grotesquely these creatures twisted free of the cracks. Bones snapped back into place as they stood, their flesh morphed into crimson swords which they recklessly swung at anything that moved. 

Jayden didn’t realize he’d frozen in place until the blare of a car horn yanked him from his thoughts. He barely managed not to get plowed over as an SUV veered to one side and surged down the street in a mad attempt to escape the monsters. People scrambled like rats for shelter. Another rumble erupted from below. A large tree lost its grip on the earth and tumbled onto the road. It smashed into an office building. More cars laid on their horns, screeching to a halt. The drivers tumbled out, melting into the hectic crowd. 

From the tree’s crater sprang more and more monsters until the whole block was swarming with fangs and swords. 

Jayden’s heart leapt into his throat. He fumbled for his Morpher. On instinct, he drew his symbol and an invisible force yanked at his gut. Everything around him, for a moment, became unbearably hot. All he could do was squeeze his eyes shut and grip his Morpher so hard he feared he’d crush it.

When the heat dissipated just as quickly as it appeared, his jeans and jacket were replaced with the bright red ranger suit and a katana rested at his hip.

He targeted a Mooger who had backed a woman against the wall of a nearby building. Using the weight of his whole body, Jayden slashed down the monster’s middle. The Mooger shrieked, it’s flesh instantly turned to dust.

Before Jayden could check on the welfare of the woman, she grabbed her purse, which had spilled out onto the pavement, and, without collecting her things, ran away as fast as she could.

“Wait!” He tried to call out, but the lady was already too far to hear him.

A sharp pain slashed against Jayden’s back. He grunted, spinning on his heels to find several Moogers brandishing their swords behind him.

He dodged the next slash and countered with a jab. The Mooger in front of him disintegrated around his blade, but before he could block the next attack, another kicked him in the side, sending him skirting across the pavement.

His sword fell out of his hand. Every muscle ached. His head hit the sidewalk hard, causing the world to spin much faster than it was supposed to.

Moogers, more than he’d ever seen, surrounded him. His heart hammered in his chest. Jayden squeezed his eyes tight, preparing himself for the fatal blow.

But nothing came. Pained shrieks erupted from the Moogers. Their once bright yellow bodies now faded to a sickly gray. They crackled with each movement as if all the moisture in their body transmuted into quick dry cement. They scattered, disappearing into several glowing red gaps, leaving Jayden on the ground completely alone and very confused.

Each limb throbbed to separate beats as Jayden lay sprawled on the couch at home. He’d taken a cab back to the Shiba house, which provided a little bit of rest, but as soon as he stumbled through the front door, all his adrenaline came crashing back down.

Jii set a glass of water on the coffee table in front of him along with a bottle of ibuprofen.

Jayden arched an eyebrow.

“Modern medicine is a wonder,” Jii said, handing him two pills, “it’s what got your father through his tougher fights.”

Jayden’s shoulders sagged at the mention of his father. “My father didn’t get his butt kicked the way I did.”

“You’d be surprised,” Jii mused.

He gently tapped Jayden’s shoe, beckoning for the teen to give him room to sit. With a heavy groan, Jayden sat up, a hand still on his burning side.

Jii gave him an apologetic smile. “I think it’s time to call the team.”

Jayden’s eyes went wide. “No, absolutely not!”

“Jayden,” Jii tried to reason, “based on today—”

“I was caught off guard,” Jayden argued, “it won’t happen again.”

“There were too many. You couldn’t have possibly handled it on your own. You’re lucky they dried out when they did, or else it would’ve been much worse. With a team it would be easier and—”

“My father could’ve handled it.”

“Your father ,” Jii said slowly, “also knew when it was time to call for help.”

Jayden’s heart sagged. He fished out the Morpher from his pocket, running his thumb over the buttons. He knew the number to call the team by heart, it was one of the first lessons he’d ever learned, but he just couldn’t make himself dial it in.

He looked back up at Jii, his throat getting tighter. “What if we aren’t ready? Sure, I’ve been training all my life, but how do you know they have? How can you be sure that…”

That I can lead them…? The words caught in Jayden’s chest, refusing to be said.

Jii let out a long sigh. Even in silence, Jayden knew any excuse not to call would be useless. He couldn’t change his grandfather’s mind. 

With a shaky breath, Jayden dialed in the number. He squeezed his eyes tight as he pressed send . And just like that, it was done. There was nothing left he could do. Either Jayden’s team of strangers would answer, or the next Mooger attack would destroy the city. Jayden wasn’t sure which option was worse. 

Chapter Text

Mia’s hand hovered over the withered door to the Shiba House. Her knuckles barely scraped the wood before she reeled back, shook the jitters out, and tried again. Each time her hand trembled, unable to actually commit to simply knocking. So she’d reel back, shake the jitters out, and try again once more. She’d considered peering into the windows, praying a shadow of the owner would notice and answer for her, but that just seemed too pathetic.

This ritual had been going on for nearly fifteen minutes already. Mia had no clue what was making her so nervous. After all, had she not been training to take up the mantle of the Pink Ranger since birth? It’s what her mother did, and what her grandmother did before her.

As soon as her family’s Morpher, which she always carried in her purse, went off for the first time in her life, Mia actually felt excited . It was the start of the new phase of her life, the one she’d been preparing for. But that didn’t seem to matter if she couldn’t do something so simple as knock .

“Come on, Mia,” she scolded herself. She took a few steps back, walking in circles as she tried to psych herself up. “It’s just a stupid door.”

Taking a few more deep breaths, she raised her hand to knock. Before she could, the door creaked open. She let out a squeak, throwing her hand behind her back as if she was hiding something.

The boy who answered was about a head taller than her with a bemused grin on his face. “Can I help you?” he asked.

Mia gave a tight smile . “Maybe… What makes you think I need help?”

“Because you’ve been standing here for like — what, twenty minutes?” he said, “at some point, it stops being funny.”

Mia’s face went bright red. “O-oh. Wait, you’ve been spying on me?”

“This place may look old, but we’re not above installing security cameras.” He pointed to a little white camera in the corner of the doorstep that Mia failed to notice.

“Oh…”

The boy let out a small chuckle. “Anyways, you wouldn’t happen to be a Watanabe, would you?”

“Y-yeah.” Mia rifled through her purse and pulled out her family’s Morpher. “I’m Mia, the Sky Ranger.”

He held his hand out for her to shake. “Jayden. Wanna come inside?”

Jayden led her down the hallways of the traditionally Japanese styled house, complete with wooden walls and tatami tiled floors. There was ancient artwork and decor everywhere, right down to a full suit of antique samurai armor. Some of this stuff looked older than a hundred years.

Mia gaped. Here she thought her mother kept around a lot of heirlooms from when her family immigrated. The Shiba House was like an entire museum.

“Is all of this yours?” she asked, delicately running her hands over the iron plates of the six foot display of armor.

“Yeah,” Jayden said, “it’s stuff my family’s kept throughout the years. Doesn’t your family have stuff from Japan?”

“A little,” Mia said,  “but nothing like this.”

Jayden simply shrugged. He led her to the main room and plopped down on the sofa. “You’re the first one here, so I guess just… make yourself at home?”

“Thanks…” Mia trailed off, slowly seating herself at the farthest end of the sofa. “So it’s just you?”

“Nah, I live with my grandfather, but he’s at the market right now. Old man insists on doing things on his own. He says it’s what keeps him young.”

The two sat in uncomfortable silence. Mia neatly kept her hands folded in her lap and tried not to make too much eye contact with Jayden, who was equally trying to  avoid her gaze.

Jayden coughed, grabbing her attention. “Sorry…I just… I’ve never done this before— Have people over, that is.”

Mia arched an eyebrow. “Really? Never?”

He shook his head and the tips of his ears turned pink. “Consider me ‘Ultra Homeschooled,’” he said. 

This was essentially how the rest of the impossibly slow hour went on. Long moments of silence broken by very awkward conversation, and then another long moment of silence. Mia couldn’t help but be skeptical of Jayden. If he was the Red Ranger — and therefore the de facto leader — Mia imagined he’d be at least sociable. Though the way Jayden kept his eyes glued to the floor, and absentmindedly ran his thumb over the tiger indentation of his Morpher, told her that he’d probably had as many interactions with people as she had fingers on one hand.

She was about to ask when an alarm suddenly blared, drenching the entire room in a red emergency light. Mia leapt from her seat, slamming her hands over her ears. The alarm rattled her all the way to her bones, but Jayden was unaffected.

“What is that?’ Mia yelled over the noise.

Jayden didn’t answer. He pressed a button on the coffee table Mia hadn’t previously noticed. A map soon appeared, and the area near the city’s central plaza was lit with a similar light.

Was that the market place?

The color in his face drained as he scanned over the map. He muttered something, but Mia couldn’t hear him over the alarm. She squinted, trying to read his lips and only made out one word.

Jii .

Mia didn’t understand why Jayden was so worried, but he was deadly silent all the way to the plaza. She’d tried asking him anything to get him to explain, but his eyes remained cold and focused.

When they arrived, Mia understood completely. Today was a Friday, meaning the Market was open. Not only was it open, but it was being demolished by red and yellow monsters. They were knocking down booths, chasing people away, and brandishing swords with the intent to kill.

A pang stabbed into Mia’s heart as she scanned through the wreckage. She used to come here with her brother when they were little. Terry would tug her all over the plaza to look at all the stands, and Mia always found herself gazing up at the glittering skyscrapers that surrounded the plaza. The way the sunlight bounced from one stretch of window to another almost gave the summer sky a soft blush.

Now, it was all ruined. The bags of art and produce were trampled into the pavement by the crowd. One booth that used to sell blown glass had been lit on fire. 

A swarm of monsters surrounded a car, trying desperately to claw open the doors and get to the cowering family inside.

Everything in Mia froze — everything except the rush of blood that pounded against her skull. The screams of the people grated against her ears, but for some reason her legs refused to move. This was what she was waiting for, right? She was supposed to be saving these people, but her feet melted  into the ground. 

Jayden didn’t waste a second. He bolted towards the chaos, not even bothering to Morph.

She watched Jayden weave through the screaming people and monsters alike. He wasn’t trying to chase out the monsters, he was running towards something.

That’s when she saw it. Jayden’s grandfather trying to usher others to safety. He was pushing past the crowd to get to someone pinned under a ruined stand. He must’ve been too preoccupied to notice the monster slowly creeping behind him., its sword raised over its head.

All thoughts cleared at once. Only one remained.

Help Jayden’s grandfather .

Mia pulled out her Morpher with new clarity. She flicked it open and quickly drew her symbol. Immediately all the air was sucked from her chest. She gasped, spots dancing before her eyes. Just as she thought she was going to pass out, everything settled. She found herself fully dressed in her rangers uniform with dual steel fans the size of her forearm clutched in each hand.

Her transformation caught the attention of nearby monsters. They took no time to swarm her.

An embarrassing squeak caught in her throat as she unfurled the fans and slashed at a monster’s throat — or at least…what looked like a throat. It shrieked in agony and disintegrated on the spot. Mia paused, glancing between her fans and the pile of soot that was trying to kill her then back at her fans.

This was what her mother used to do for a living?

A blinding light exploded from the center of the market. A flash in a red suit wielding a katana was tearing through monsters without even sparing them a glance.  

Was that Jayden?

Not letting herself get lost in her own head, Mia took off after Jayden through the swarm of monsters. He was trying to create distance between his grandfather and the monsters, giving the elder enough room and time to get the last of the citizens out.

Rough arms snagged around Mia’s neck from behind. Without a second thought, Mia kicked her leg out and threw her body weight forward, flipping the monster off of her. It slammed into the ground and she stabbed the hilt of her fan into its chest.

“Pink really suits you, yknow,” Jayden said beside her, trying to catch his breath.

Mia suppressed an eye roll. “Is that everyone?”

“Yeah,” Jayden said, “Jii had the situation handled long before we got here.”

Jayden’s grandfather, Jii, returned from leading a child back to his parents. His gaze fell on Mia and his face brightened.

“I see our call didn’t go unheard,” he said in a kind voice.

Jii was a mirror image of Jayden in fifty years. Same dark hair, though slightly thinning at the crown of his head, and warm eyes that must’ve had a thousand stories to tell. Despite his age, he stood tall and confident, so the notion that Jii was able to handle a monster ambush wasn’t at all far-fetched.

“This is Mia,” Jayden said.

“From the Watanabe family, I presume,” Jii said.

Before Mia could respond, the monsters started to regroup and began closing in.

Jii winced. “I don’t think this is an ideal time for introductions, so I think I’ll be on my way.”

Mia watched with wide eyes as Jii casually strolled through the ruined plaza with his hands behind his back like it was any boring afternoon. When he got to the road, he politely raised his hand and hailed a cab to take him home. When the first one sped past him — for obvious reasons — he simply shrugged and disappeared around the block.

That settled it. The Shiba family was a whole bag of mixed nuts.

“He likes you,” Jayden said. Mia could tell he was grinning behind his mask. At least his spirits were returned to normal.

This time, Mia couldn’t suppress the eye roll. “So what’s the plan?”

“Moogers dry out after a certain point, so we’ll just have to wait them out until then.”

Luckily, most of the civilians had made it out. Now it was just the two of them and a dozen Moogers.

“I can do that,” Mia said, more to herself than anyone else.

She unfurled her fans once more and spun out of the way of a Moogers charge. Each dodge and weave came uncannily natural to her, like it was what her body was meant to do. It almost made all the hours of training to gain some kind of glint back in her mother’s cold, distant stare worth it.

Almost.

A Mooger jabbed the hilt of his sword into Mia’s gut. She bent over in pain. From the corner of her eye, that same Mooger brought the blade over his head, bearing down with the intent to slice her in half. Ignoring the pain best she could, Mia narrowly rolled out of the way.

Mia scrambled to her feet and the Mooger was struggling to yank his sword out of the concrete. She used both fans to slash against his back, causing him to turn to dust before her eyes.

She tried to keep this momentum going but there were just so many of them.

Jayden, who was a few yards away, was slashing and hacking best he could but even he was beginning to get swallowed up by the crowd. 

Two Moogers grabbed Mia’s arms from behind. Her stomach dropped as they pinned her down. She desperately thrashed but it was useless. Their grip was too strong. Another Mooger began to charge her when bright blue arrows rained down from nowhere. The tips plunged into the monstrous crowd. They shrieked in pain, shriveling away into nothing and leaving the plaza completely empty.

Mia whipped her head back and forth, craning to catch a glimpse of who — or what — freed her.

From a balcony of a nearby office building descended a man in a bright blue suit, in his hands an equally blue bow.

This blue ranger didn’t say anything. He only stared at Jayden and Mia expectantly, and all the other two could do was stare back at him.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, “I guess you want my name, huh.”

The two slowly nodded.

The blue ranger rubbed the back of his helmet nervously. “Sorry about that. I’m Kevin— uh, Kevin Johnson. The blue ranger! Well I guess that’s kind of obvious. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier. I went to the address but no one was there and I wasn’t really sure where to go and then I just kind of stumbled on all this and thought—”

“ Kevin !” Jayden interrupted, his tone patient. “It’s okay. If anything, it was a good thing you came when you did.”

“Really?” Kevin asked, as if he didn’t just save both Mia and Jayden’s lives.

“Really really.”

Kevin nodded. “Oh good! So…is that it? Did we win?”

Jayden glanced around and shrugged, sheathing his katana. “Well, no more Moogers, so no more danger.”

Kevin glanced around, plucking at the string of his bow. “That can’t be all, can it? I mean, isn’t it that when you get the call that Master Xandred came back? There’s never been an attack at this scale before, and…”

Kevin kept going on and on but Mia wasn’t listening. Her head was reeling with all this new information.

Master Xandred ? The name was utterly foreign to her.

Sure. It wasn’t like her mother was exactly vocal when she came back from the war. Mia could at least understand that, but her mom couldn’t even be bothered to tell her anything about why she was actually here? It was bad enough her mother wouldn’t even so much as look at her and Terry for the first months of her recovery. Anytime she did, her expression would dissolve into shame.

In the past, Mia tried not to hold it against her mother. Though, now that she was in the suit, surrounded by others who clearly knew way more than her, Mia felt resentment bubble inside of her. Her mother had been training her for ten years and never bothered to mention exactly what she was supposed to be fighting?

Kevin continued to spew question after question, not giving Jayden any time to answer. As he spoke, the sky began to darken and the wind picked up. The cracks in the pavement pulsed a threatening shade of red.

Mia tightened her grip around her fans. “Guys? That’s not normal, is it?”

Jayden and Kevin turned to the glowing red crevice. From it slowly crawled a creature Mia couldn’t name. Its upper half was bright red, but the further it got, the more blue its waist became until she could make out the gaping maw of a face that decorated its skirt.

It looked like a man, but not quite. It was twisted and sick. If the Moogers from before were monsters, then what stood before her was a full fledged demon.

“You rangers,” he grumbled in a nasally tone. He slowly pulled out two swords from behind and pointed one at them. “Have no idea what you’ve unleashed.”