Kanto Sentai Pokéranger
(a.k.a. Power Rangers: Pocket Monsters)
Usual
disclaimers apply. These characters do
no belong to me.
Jessie,
James and Meowth slowly dug themselves out of the rocky debris they crashed
headlong into after being blasted away by those Power Rangers. It was late at night, and they were miles
from civilization. All of their Pokémon
were away, and they were in a much worse mood than they previously were.
“I
don’t get it, Jessie,” James whined, “everything was going so well! What happened?”
“I…don’t
know, James…” Jessie started, slowly, like she was in a trance. James knew that she would be taking this a
little hard, especially considering how well things were going with the
would-be heist. She suddenly snapped to her
feet, her fist shaking in anger. “But I
am not going to take this lying down! Do
you hear me? I don’t take shit like this
from no one—not some dorky little twerps, not the boss, and especially not from
some color-coordinated costumed clowns!”
“Nice
to see she’s back to her old self,” Meowth said.
Jessie
snatched James up by his collar. “Mark
my words, James, I will have my
revenge on those wretched ‘Power Rangers’ if it’s the last thing I do!”
“But
how are we going to do that, Jessie?” James asked.
“Simple.” She let go of her partner. “You see, someone
has to be under those gaudy costumes and funny looking helmets. My plan is to find out whom, exactly, and
expose their identities to the entire world!
They’ll be humiliated right down to their very core! And they’ll never want to put on their pretty
little costumes and go around picking fights with us ever again!” Her laugh echoed throughout the valley that
housed their crash site.
* * * * *
Even
into the next day, the
In
the 13th precinct of the PCPD, Officer Geoff moved through a maze of
desks and papers over to where his supervisor, Officer Jenny, was busy under a
mountain of paperwork.
“Here
are those files about the Power Rangers you asked for,” he said, placing them
in a relatively clear part of Jenny’s desk.
“Thank
you Geoff,” she said, not looking up from her paperwork. Her glasses slipped slightly, and she paused
only to push them back onto her face properly.
“I swear, these ‘Power Rangers’ or whatever the hell they call
themselves are making more trouble then they’re worth.”
“Yeah;
hey, what do you think about them, Jenny?” Geoff asked. “I think they’re pretty awesome. It’s like something you’d read in a comic
book.”
“I
try not to let my personal views get in the way of my better judgment,” she
said flatly.
“But
don’t let that stop you. Come on, you gotta
have some sort of say on the whole thing.”
Jenny
looked up from her work and addressed Geoff.
“What do I think, you ask? I’ll
tell you. I think these Power Rangers
are nothing more than vigilantes.
They’re a bunch of masked cowards ruining everything the police are
trying to accomplish and making us look bad to boot. They’re no better than the criminals they’re
supposedly trying to stop!” She rose
from her seat. “How do we know they’re
not working with Team Rocket?”
“Jenny? Hello?
They were the ones who stopped Team
Rocket the other day! Weren’t you paying
attention?”
“They
may simply be playing with us, you know.”
Jenny sat back down and focused on her work. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to
do.”
Geoff
fell silent for a second before saluting.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He turned
and walked away, leaving the exhausted Jenny to her work.
At
least, that’s how he remembered her.
As
soon as he was out of sight, Jenny ignored the papers around her and ran a
peculiar program on her computer. Her
fingers moved like lightning across the keyboard as she accessed information
that not even the local police force should have access to. Within moments she hacked into the computer
networks of the local
Five
trainers – only one of them a native of Pewter City and only three of the five
native to the Kanto region – checked in to said Center yesterday…shortly
afterward, Team Rocket struck. And so
did the Power Rangers.
She
smiled a wicked smile. As she removed
her glasses, her eyes turned from blue-green to a deep crimson. She quickly copied the data to a CD and shut
down her workstation. Once she was done,
she walked to a secluded part of the station, and when she was sure no one else
would notice her, she flung her hand at the ground. The ground magically split open, and she
promptly disappeared into the magical fissure.
* * * * *
Pandion
paced slowly around his throne room, hands behind his back, his gaze shifting
from the floor to the ceiling every so often.
There was a bit of tension in the air, and Melkid could feel it. His blue face spun forward as he tried to
work up the nerve to address his master.
Eventually
he found said nerve. “Um, sir?” he
asked. “Is everything alright?”
“She
is late,” he said flatly.
“She, sir? Who’s she?”
Pandion
spun around and faced his loyal yet bipolar servant. “She...oh
yes, you haven’t been introduced to her yet, have you?” Melkid shook his head
‘no’. “No matter, you two will have
plenty of time to get acquainted when she arrives. Her name is Shadowench, and she has the power
to assume any human form she desires.”
Melkid’s
white face spun forward. “So she’s a
changeling, huh? Interesting.”
“I
plan to have her infiltrate the human world and find out just who is underneath
those helmets. Once we have the
identities of the Power Rangers we can truly break them. The very people they work so hard to protect
will be the first to turn on them.”
Pandion’s cackle echoed throughout the cavern.
A
flash of light interrupting his laughing fit.
He and Melkid turned to the source of the disturbance. Officer Jenny of
“Give
me your report,” Pandion said.
“Those
imbeciles calling themselves Team Rocket did much more for us then they could
ever do for themselves,” Shadowench explained.
“After their terrorism shot in Pewter the whole city became divided over
the presence of the Power Rangers. And
when the cops decided to investigate them…” She drew the CD with all the hacked
information out from a satchel on her belt.
“…I did some investigating of my own.”
Shadowench tossed the disc to Pandion.
He glared at it, and it came to a halt about a foot from his face. It drifted into his open hand. With a small incantation, the data projected
itself above the disc like a hologram.
“Interesting,”
Pandion said. His attention was brought
to the images of five trainers who had used the
“These
so-called trainers,” she explained, “showed up after both Team Rocket and the
Power Rangers disappeared. From what
people said, they acted as though very little went wrong at all.”
“Then
perhaps they are connected somehow.”
Pandion took his seat on his throne.
“Find out as much information about these five individuals as you
can—where they live, what they’ve done, who they are. We will start our search with them.”
“Yes,
my lord!” She saluted with a fist across her chest before disappearing in a
magic-made crack in the floor.
“As
for you, Melkid,” he said, turning his attention to his loyal servant, “I have
a job for you…”
* * * * *
“You
were stopped by whom?” Giovanni
growled into the telephone.
“The
Power Rangers, boss,” Jessie explained. She,
James and Meowth were crammed into a phone booth at a rest stop on the side of
Route 2. “Don’t you watch the news? The networks can’t keep them out of the
public eye if you paid them!”
“Hmm…I
do recall hearing about a raid on the
“Y-yes,
that was us,” she stammered.
“Unbelievable!”
he shouted. Giovanni’s Persian growled
in anger. “How could you let yourselves
be beaten so easily?!”
“You
don’t understand, boss, they were for real!” James suddenly snatched the
receiver from Jessie’s hand. “They
weren’t playing around, they were the real thing! They shot down our balloon like it was held
together with duct tape and faith (and the duct tape wouldn’t hold up any
longer)!”
“Well,
what did they have?”
Jessie
regained control of the phone. “It was…I
dunno, they were unarmed at first and then they were…I guess you could call
it…magical technology.”
Giovanni
paused. “…isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“Well
they did draw their weapons out of thin air, boss.” She twiddled with the phone’s cord. As they spoke to the boss they glanced out
the windows of the booth. There weren’t
many people around, and the few who were here probably wouldn’t recognize
them. “And they had swords, guns,
hammers, you name it.”
“I
see.” Giovanni leaned back in his plush,
leather chair. “This complicates
things. I was not expecting you to cross
paths with these costumed do-gooders.
But since they interfered with Team Rocket, well then, their fates are
sealed. Where were they last seen?”
“
“Very
well. Now listen closely. Your new purpose in life is to find out who
these so-called ‘Power Rangers’ are at all costs. Torture whoever you have to—city officials,
common folk, I don’t care. So long as
you bring me their heads, I don’t care what levels you stoop to.”
“You
got it, boss!” Jessie saluted the receiver, a smile on her face.
“And
one more thing…” Jessie, James and Meowth fell silent on the other end, their
ears as close to the earpiece as possible.
“Don’t show your face around Team Rocket until they have been destroyed.” Giovanni hung up the phone.
The
Team Rocket elite members stared at the phone as the dial tone clicked on. Jessie hung up the phone, and the three
pushed their way out of the crowded space.
“Well,”
Jessie said, “that didn’t go half as badly as I thought it would.”
“True,”
James agreed, “the boss usually launches into a tirade when we report this kind
of stuff to him.”
“He
must be in a good mood,” Meowth said.
“No,
he was plenty upset,” Jessie reassured.
“I mean, he told us that we don’t destroy the Power Rangers we aren’t to
show our faces around Team Rocket anymore.”
“That’s
harsh.”
“But
Jessie,” James started, “as ridiculous as they look, these Power Rangers are
pretty bloody strong. We’d have to build
a pretty powerful war machine to stand up to them.”
“Don’t
worry Jimmy,” she crooned. “All in good
time. Besides, who said the next time we
run across them we’re going to fight? I
figured we could pick up on their trail, observe how they act in combat, figure
out their weaknesses and the like and when the time is right…” she clenched her
fist tightly. “…smash them!” She laughed heartily at the notion.
“And
how long do you think this’ll take?” Meowth asked.
The
Pokéball containing Wobbuffet snapped open on Jessie’s belt, releasing the big
blue Pokémon inside. “Wobbuffet!” {“Oh
shit, son!”} it shouted. Jessie returned
it back into its ball without missing a beat in her explanation.
“We
weren’t given any deadline, so I suggest we take our time on this. After all—hey, what are you two doing?” Jessie was upset that her two associates
suddenly holed themselves up in the phone booth without much pretense. And when she glared at them, they merely
pointed to her left, back towards the parking lot. “What are you…aaaaaaaaaaaie!”
Seeing
what they were pointing at, Jessie banged furiously on the door of the booth,
desperate to gain entry. The sight of an
animated suit of samurai armor with four faces made her skin turn as white as
her uniform.
“Grrrr…where
are those miserable Power Rangers?” Melkid grumbled. “Why haven’t they showed up yet?” Melkid looked at his surroundings. There were a few people standing around,
looking no doubt at him. Their faces
displayed expressions of fear. “Perhaps
they’ll come out of hiding if I start blowing some shit up.” And he did, launching a wave of neon green
energy at a cluster of parked cards.
They exploded in a fiery blast.
People immediately started to scream and run in terror.
* * * * *
Ash
rushed into the command center, his fellow Rangers hot on his heels. “I got the message, what’s the problem?” he
asked.
“It’s
Melkid,” Degenhart explained. “He’s
attacking a rest stop out on Route 2.
For what, though, I don’t know.”
“And
check out who else is in the area!” Max shouted. One of the monitors zoomed in on a group of
five phone booths on the edge of the parking lot.
“Team
Rocket,” May said. “What’re they doing
there?”
“I
have no idea, sis.”
“They
cannot learn your identity, Power Rangers,” Degenhart said. “Once you engage Melkid, do not demorph until
you’re clear of them – especially those two – or back here at the lab. If they find out who you are, this town will
be smothered by Team Rocket.”
“That’s
not going to happen,” Brock said.
“See
to it that it doesn’t. Go, Rangers, and put
a stop to Pandion’s forces. And may The
Power protect you.”
“Right,”
Ash said. He grabbed his
Pokémorpher. “Ready?”
The
others did the same… “Ready!”
…and
went through the motions.
“POKÉRANGER! GO!”
* * * * *
Five
flashes of light – white, blue, red, green and yellow – flared up in the middle
of the parking lot, and when the light dissipated, the five Power Rangers were
standing there. They turned towards
Melkid, who had sliced through an eighteen-wheeler with his pike. When he noticed them, he approached, not
flinching at the huge explosion it made.
“I
was wondering when you were going to show up,” Melkid said, his blue face in
front, “I was bored to tears!”
“What
do you want, Melkid?” Pokéranger White shouted.
“If it’s a fight you want, then look no further!”
“I
think the real question here is whether or not you five can give me a challenge,” Melkid said through his white
face. He thrust out his hand, sending another
wave of green energy at the Rangers. It
exploded around them, blowing them off their feet. They quickly regained their feet. “Oh. I
see. So you mean business.”
“Protecting
the world from scum like you is our
business!” Pokéranger Blue shouted.
“I
don’t have time for this.” He raised his
arms, and a great wind whipped up around them.
It was one of those winds that were used to create Fossiloids. And that’s just what it did. Twelve fresh Fossiloids stood between Melkid
and the Rangers, their dusty bodies shambling this way and that.
“We
do not have time for this,” Pokéranger Red said.
“I
know,” Pokéranger White said. “Just keep
collateral damage to a minimum if you can help it. Now let’s go!” The Rangers charged forward, meeting the
charging Fossiloids. This time, there
wouldn’t be any breaking down into Ranger-vs.-Fossiloid groups like usual;
everyone went after whatever enemy was closest and not fighting an ally. Although, only the Rangers knew what an
“ally” was in the truest sense of the word; the Fossiloids knew only one thing—destroy
the Power Rangers.
And
they tried. But it wasn’t good enough.
The
Fossiloids the Rangers faced this time around were a little stronger than last
time, but in their morphed forms, the Power Ranger didn’t notice it much. If there were a few more of them, the
Fossiloids would have more of an advantage.
But as it stood, they were merely to distract the Rangers from the
bigger issue at hand.
And
they did that mostly because they didn’t know what that bigger issue was.
Half
of the Fossiloids battled the Green Ranger after he grabbed two of them and
smashed their heads together, resulting in four more pouncing on him. The other six bounced back and forth, from
one of the other four Rangers to another.
Also, a lot of the aforementioned bouncing came from as the Rangers
struck them, sending them sprawling away.
Brock
had one cornered, and for a moment, he forgot about the four or five other
Fossiloids he was brawling with. He laid
into it with a few hard punches into its chest and stomach, and finished with
an uppercut that made it dissolve into the same dust used to summon it.
Meanwhile,
the other four approached in formation behind him. With each holding up the wheel of a large SUV
above their head. Brock turned around as
he saw the shadow of the car fall over him.
Just as he turned around, the Fossiloids all gave a mighty heave, and
tossed the SUV onto Pokéranger Green. It
crumbled on impact, sending the heap of now scrap metal crashing down all
around him. Only his helmet covered head
poked out from the wreckage as two of the terra cotta soldiers danced in joy
atop the wreck.
“Brock!”
Tracey shouted. His attention was
brought to the wreck as the car slammed to the ground with a loud crunch. This left him wide open to the Fossiloid he
just ignored, prompting it to jump on the Yellow Ranger’s back and try and
choke him out. Tracey was focused on
fighting again, and after a few moments of struggling, threw the creature off
him. Now that he was free, he snapped
his wrists down at his sides, summoning his ScytherSickles. “Screw this,” he grumbled, slashing into
another Fossiloid.
Brock
wasn’t the only one who had Fossiloids using cars as projectiles. Two Fossiloids managed to get under a
Volkswagen Beetle, one for the front
and one for the back. They threw it at
Pokéranger White, driver’s side first.
Ash reacted quickly, though, cutting the car in half with one clean
slash from his Pikatana. Ash wasn’t
about to throw one of the halves back at them, as he had less confidence in his
physical strength than, say…Brock. But
he did feel good enough about his quickness and reflexes, and his skill with
his sword. He rushed in at one of the
Fossiloids, cutting it down with a cross slash followed by a rising slash. The other one tried to hit him from behind,
but Ash stopped it with a well-placed kick before jumping, twisting his body
around, and impaling it on his sword, disintegrating it.
“Alright,
on the count of three…” Brock explained.
Having dealt with the rest of the Fossiloids, the Red and Blue Rangers
worked to get the Green Ranger out from the broken care he was under. “One, two, three!” With a might shove, the
remains of the car rolled onto its side, allowing Brock to free himself. The Yellow and White Rangers ran over to the
others, the remaining Fossiloids defeated.
“Brock,
are you alright?” Ash asked.
“Eh,
I’ll manage,” he said, dusting himself off.
They turned their attention towards Melkid, who was trying to get some
strange blaster to work.
Melkid’s
black face was spun forward, and he cackled with glee as he brandished the
weapon. “Excellent,” he said, “now that
this is up and running, the Power Rangers will never know what hit them!”
“And
if you don’t mind, we’d like to keep it that way!” the White Ranger shouted.
Melkid
didn’t seem too worried that the Power Rangers all had their weapons out. After all, if Pandion was right, this would
be greater than anything they could dish out.
Melkid’s
white face spun forward. “Perhaps you
don’t see what this thing is capable of,” he said. “Allow me to demonstrate.” In the blink of an eye, he angled the gun at
45 degrees and fired a grenade-like projectile out of its lower barrel. The projectile sailed clean over the Rangers’
heads and exploded upon impact with a line of phone booths.
The same booths Team Rocket was hiding in.
The
resulting explosion shot them into the sky.
“Looks like Team Rocket’s blasting off agaaaaain!” Jessie, James and Meowth wailed as they disappeared
over the horizon.
“Was
that Team Rocket?” May asked.
“Was,” Ash answered. They could tell he was smiling underneath his
helmet.
“And
a much worse fate is in store for you, Power Rangers,” Melkid said, taking
aim. “This here is far superior to those
puny little pop guns you carry around.”
What
Melkid failed to notice was that they weren’t going to use those “silly little
pop guns”. Instead, they took the time
to assemble the Master Blaster and take their appropriate positions around
it. It gleamed in the sunlight as Ash
held it in his hands.
“If
you don’t mind,” Ash started, “we’d like to test your little hypothesis.”
Melkid’s
blue face spun forward. He didn’t make a
sound. There was no time to. The Rangers didn’t give him the chance to
react. “Readyaimfire!” they shouted simultaneously, firing the Master
Blaster at Melkid. The impact didn’t
kill him, but it did send him flying and onto his back a few yards away. The strange gun clattered against the ground
some distance away.
The
Rangers slowly advanced, Ash holding the Blaster in his hands, trained on
Melkid the whole time. He struggled to a
half-sitting position, one hand stretched out.
When he did get to his feet, he sensed the mission was going to be a
bust.
“Forgive
me, lord Pandion,” the blue face whimpered, “I’ve failed you!” He pointed at
the ground, and a magical fissure appeared, which he disappeared into.
With
the threats gone, the Power Rangers disassembled the Master Blaster. Since they were still in public, though, they
didn’t demorph yet. “So much for
Melkid,” the White Ranger said.
Pokéranger Blue approached the mysterious weapon Melkid left behind, and picked
it up. “What do you suppose this is?”
she asked. “It must be pretty important,
the way he was carrying it around. You
think there’s something more to it?”
“Could
be,” Pokéranger Red answered. “I’ll have
my brother look at it when we get back to the lab.”
“Good
idea,” Pokéranger White said. “Let’s get
back to the command center and see what this is about.” In that next instant, the Power Rangers disappeared
in a flash of light.
* * * * *
About
a half hour passed while Max analyzed the weapon. Aside from the grenade launcher, there didn’t
seem anything too extraordinary about it.
Until the ammo clip came off.
Max
looked at the clip thoroughly. He pulled
the ammunition from it and found something strange.
“These
look like tracking devices,” Max explained.
“I think the idea was to plant them on you and discover your secret
identities.”
“What
would be the point of that?” Ash asked.
“If
Pandion or any one of his minions found out your secrets,” Degenhart explained,
“they would be able to go after not the Power Ranger him or herself, but
rather, the person under the helmet.
They would attack your families, your friends, anything to bring about
your destruction more quickly.”
“Well,
let’s be thankful that we didn’t let that happen,” Ash said. He looked at the devices in Max’s hand. “Hey Max, do those things only trigger when
they’re launched, or re they sending out a signal now?”
Although
he didn’t mean to, everyone in the room suddenly became very frightened. What if what Ash asked (innocently enough)
was true? What if, at this very second,
they had information on every last one of them?
Were they and their loved ones screwed?
Max
looked over the bullet-like projectiles again.
“No, I’m pretty sure they only activate when fired.” Everyone exhaled at once. “And even then, if they somehow missed and
hit someone else, it would’ve been a waste.”
Max tapped the tip of one of the bullets. Nothing happened. He tapped it again, three more times. It accidentally went off, flying across the
room in the blink of an eye and landing in Brock’s forearm.
“Yeow!”
Brock shouted, clutching his new wound.
It was only in his arm for about a second, but that was all it
needed. The light on the end of the
device started to glow a pale green, even as it fell to the ground. Misty was quick to step on it, and it cracked
under her heel.
“I think
we better run the rest of them through a garbage disposal,” Tracey suggested.
* * * * *
Back
in the lair of Pandion, deep within his secluded, salt marsh, Shadowench
fiddled in vain with the receiver that went along with the tracers in Melkid’s
blaster. Those tracers were supposed to
be imbedded within the Power Rangers’ individual persons. But that didn’t happen. Not only did Melkid fail in his mission – a
mission that was her idea and made her look bad because of his failure – but
those damn Rangers got the weapon as well.
Of course, that didn’t really matter, as it only had five shots and
served them no use. I mean, they had no
way of figuring out where they were, and they wouldn’t dare set food in Pandion’s lair; their lives would be forfeit.
Pandion
was in the middle of accosting Melkid when Shadowench shouted at them. “Quiet, you two!” she yelled. “This thing is picking up a signal. Apparently one of them went off anyway.”
Pandion
and Melkid turned to Shadowench. The
former slowly rose from his throne and approached her. “What is it?”
She
looked at her radar again. She
remembered seeing a green blip, but it was now gone. “I…” she stammered, “I had one of them. It was only for a moment, but it’s gone. They must’ve destroyed it somehow.” She looked at Pandion. “And it was a green light, too. Meaning…”
“It
appears you’ve found the Green Ranger,” Pandion finished. “It’s not much, but we can at least track
him. Where was he last?”
“It…”
Shadowench looked at the locator. The
blip was gone, but she could still see it as though it was still there. “It was in a town called Pallet.”
* * * * *
Somewhere
in the Viridian Forest, Jessie, James and Meowth were still in what’s left of the
handful of phone booths – one of which they were in – that were destroyed and
launched miles away from the Power Rangers’ last sighting. The three Team Rocket members made little
effort to move from the crash site, as their morale was far too low to warrant
any real movement.
They
had been silent for about a half hour before James finally spoke up. “Hey Jess,” he said.
“What
is it, James?” she asked. Her tone
indicated she wasn’t in the mood for talking.
“Do
you remember that fight with the Power Rangers and those…whatever the hell they
were?”
“What
about it?”
“I’d
like to forget that if it’s possible,” Meowth added.
“Well
anyway…moments before we were…evicted from the premises, I couldn’t help but
notice that the Rangers didn’t call themselves by their code names.”
“Code
names?” Jessie asked. She was now
sitting up straight on one of the few not broken glass panels.
“Yeah. They would’ve at least called themselves by
their colors, right? I swear, it was
only once, but I heard one of them call another one ‘Brock’.” Jessie and Meowth now gave James their
undivided attention. “Now where have you
heard that name before?”
“Brock…you
mean the twerps!” Jessie shouted.
“What?”
Meowth shouted. “Them? The Power
Rangers? Are you sure?”
“Wait…there’s
usually only three of them at a time.
And that little brat with the glasses is too small to be one of them.”
“Well…there’s
the main twerp, the black twerp, the red-headed twerp, the coordinator
twerp—May, I think her name is…” That
last one drew a disgusted grumble from Jessie.
“That’s
four,” Meowth said, ticking them off on his fingers.
“So
who’s the last one?” Jessie asked.
James
paused to ponder that question. Who,
indeed. “Wait…remember when we went to
the
“That’s
all five of them,” Meowth said. “Wow,
this could be big, Jimmy.”
“Could
it be?” Jessie questioned. “Could those
five costumed superheroes, with all that weaponry and power, really be the twerp and his little
posse? Are the people we’re trying to
hunt down and present to the boss as trophies really them?”
James
and Meowth were silent, still trying to process all of this information. While they have seen some pretty strange
stuff in their career as Team Rocket members, this just seemed unfathomable. But this was way, way out there. And they’ve
been blasted (repeatedly) by legendary Pokémon.
It seemed too good to be true.
Almost too easy.
Jessie,
James and Meowth looked at one another.
Then, at the same time, they all came to the same conclusion. “Naaaaah,”
they said, each shrugging his or her shoulders.
TO
BE CONTINUED……………