Timeline 717-Gamma — Terra-Mars, Outer Perimeter City Ruins
The air smelled like rust and ozone.
A blood-red sky hung above a shattered colony dome, its glass ceiling webbed with cracks. Skyscrapers lay collapsed in slow-motion, caught mid-fall by the broken timefield that blanketed the region. Everything here moved wrong—like reality was lagging.
And at the center of it all stood a tower of obsidian and gold.
A Morph Core spike.
Kael stood at the edge of a crumbling overlook, visor flickering from interference. "We're too late. They've already planted the anchor."
Below, the corrupted core pulsed like a heartbeat. And guarding it…
Five figures.
Once known as the Quantum Rangers—legendary defenders of Mars's frontier colonies—now twisted mockeries of their former selves. Their armor was darkened, mutated by siphoned Grid energy. Their visors glowed unnatural colors. They moved in perfect, mechanical sync.
"No Morph signature," Mira whispered. "They're hollowed."
"Like puppets," Thorne growled.
Kael's hand twitched toward his saber. "Then we cut the strings."
But Rin stepped forward, voice low.
"No."
The team turned.
"They're not just puppets," Rin said quietly. "They're warnings."
Scene 1: Into the Wound
The team made their descent carefully—Kael taking point, Mira scanning for traps, Ayla somehow managing to skip across debris without making a sound, and Thorne dragging behind, always watching their rear.
"Anyone else getting the willies?" Ayla murmured. "Because this place feels like it wants to chew us."
"It does," Mira replied bluntly. "Chrono-energy here is inverted. Time isn't just broken—it's feeding off itself. This entire sector's decaying like a looped memory."
Rin walked silently. Every step he took echoed strangely, as if the ground wasn't sure if it should exist.
They reached the base of the tower. Strange sigils pulsed along the entrance—glowing with fractured Morph energy.
Kael raised a hand to halt the group.
Then… they came.
The Quantum Rangers descended the outer stairwell like ghosts—silent, heads tilted unnaturally. Their armor was chipped but alive, pulsing like veins.
The red one—once known as Quantum Nova—spoke in a voice that echoed from beneath the world.
"You should not be here."
Kael stepped forward. "You were heroes once."
"We were… nothing." The red one tilted his head. "Now we are eternal. We serve the one who freed us."
"Eclipse Knight," Mira said, lips tightening.
The black Quantum Ranger twitched. "He showed us truth. That the Grid was always broken. That loyalty is just obedience in costume."
Ayla muttered, "I liked them better when they were shiny."
Kael gritted his teeth. "We don't want to fight you."
The red one raised a corrupted blade.
"But we do."
Scene 2: Broken Legacy
The battle erupted instantly.
Kael surged forward, striking red-on-red with Quantum Nova. Sparks flew as blades clashed. He blocked a swing, ducked under, then blasted the corrupted Ranger back with a short-range burst from his Morpher.
"Come back to yourself!" Kael shouted. "This isn't who you are!"
"This is who I always was."
Elsewhere, Mira and Ayla fought side-by-side. Mira ducked behind a broken generator, firing off energy pulses while Ayla zipped around the yellow Quantum Ranger like a hummingbird of chaos.
"You like lasers?" Ayla shouted. "Try two!" She fired twin bolts from modified pistols she definitely wasn't authorized to build.
"They're not responding to Grid frequencies," Mira snapped. "It's like they've been scrubbed clean—no Ranger code left."
Thorne and the black Quantum clashed in brutal melee. Blade against fist. Their styles were too alike—raw power, no wasted movement.
"You ever wonder what happens when evil wins?" the corrupted Ranger hissed.
Thorne smirked darkly. "Yeah. It looks like me saying no."
He drove his elbow into the Ranger's side, then followed with a vicious spinning slash.
Rin didn't fight.
Not yet.
He stood still, watching. Calculating.
And then he saw it.
A flicker beneath the tower—beneath the core spike.
A tether. A root of pure, pulsing darkness feeding up into the tower and into the Rangers.
They weren't just corrupted.
They were linked.
"Strike the core!" Rin shouted suddenly. "They're feeding from it! Break the connection!"
Kael heard him and broke from his fight, dodging a plasma slash and leaping onto the side wall. He charged forward, saber drawn.
"Cover me!" he barked.
The team responded instantly.
Ayla lobbed a sonic grenade.
Thorne took a blast to the shoulder but threw the black Ranger into a wall.
Mira overloaded a conduit and blew open a path.
Rin finally moved—sliding in like a wraith, planting white energy charges directly into the tower's base.
Kael reached the core.
His blade glowed.
He slammed it down—
And the world cracked.
Scene 3: Ashes and Echoes
A pulse exploded from the tower.
The Quantum Rangers froze mid-strike. Their visors flickered. Their armor sparked.
The red one whispered, "I… remember… the sky."
And then they fell.
Not dead. Not alive.
Suspended—unconscious and flickering with unstable Morph energy.
The core dimmed.
And then collapsed into itself.
Kael dropped to his knees, panting. "Is it… over?"
Rin stared at the fallen Rangers. "No."
Mira approached the red one, scanning. "They've been drained for too long. Their Morph connections are gone. We can't restore them."
Ayla frowned. "Then what do we do with them?"
Zara's voice echoed again, low and tired.
"You leave them."
Kael stood, fist clenched. "They were Rangers. We don't leave our own."
"You have no 'own' anymore, Kael. Not in the Fractured Realm."
"You're not saving heroes. You're cleaning up the wreckage of what used to be."
Kael turned away, jaw clenched.
The others said nothing.
And behind them, the sky began to crack again.
A new fracture.
A new timeline.
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