The barrier collapsed by shattering, sending out the barrier shards in all directions, but before hitting me or Cliff it dissipated.
The sight would have been beautiful, had it not meant that we were shortly about to die. I was thinking to myself surveying the situation, it was just me and Cliff, Ranger Green is dead, we have our firearms and our squad car is about 20 meters from where we stand currently. We still do not understand the great villain's ability, and I do not know the positioning of the other rangers. This is pretty much the worse case scenario. We continue running towards the squad car when we heard laughing from behind. It must be the great villain gloating in it's victory.
"That will buy us enough time in order to escape"
is what I initially thought, but once it saw that we were running away, it started to give chase. Given the size difference and it's physical speed it will catch us way before we even reach the car, let alone start it up and drive away.
"CLIFF KEEP RUNNING!" I order.
"Sergeant?" Cliff responded
"RUN TO THE CAR AND GO!"
I halted to position my gun to aim at the creature, not hesitating to fire. Of course I knew the shots were going to do nothing to it , but seeing it completely ignore the bullets when rushing towards us was spine-chilling. I saw its hand reach out for me but then something collided into its side so imperceptibly fast, that it was sent careening into a building. A figure stood where the villain once was.
"Are you guys ok?" The figure asked.
"Ranger blue?" I asked pretty pathetically.
"I'm sure green was supposed to be here where did he go?"
"Green is-"
Before I can deliver the bad news, Blue turned his head to the great villain and started firing his blaster. The rapid fire pushed the villain back down before it can recover.
"We're not supposed to be separated this badly, " he grumbled. " Come in, this is ranger Blue, the Great villain is just about 35 meters from pillar no.1. Green was supposed to be here and-" he turns to me expectedly "-where is he right now sergeant?"
"He's... Dead."
"Ah I see- Red is missing for now, the rest of you rendezvous at my location I'll stall the GV as long as I can."
I was shocked that he didn't seem to care that green died, was this just what was expected of the rangers?
"Sergeant, I'm going to need you to get out of here, please run over to the squad car"
The car was closer than before... Did he?
"COME ON SARGE WE'RE GETTING OUT OF HERE!" Cliff bellowed from the car. The crazy guy didn't even try to ditch me behind.
I hopped in the passenger's seat and he started flooring it, We started getting away from the area when we saw another vehicle run past us. It was decked out full to the brim of advanced gear, with "green team" branded on the side. That must have been the team they told us was coming.
I start up the radio and begin screaming reports of what I've seen.
"The great Villain is currently at the first pillar, blue is supressing it and the other rangers should be coming for reinforcement. I believe the green ranger to be dead."
I pause for a moment delivering this solemn news. They've been protecting us for so long, their record pretty much flawless, one of them dying now is completely unprecedented. Before I was about to say more, I got a response from the radio.
"Sergeant, you may want to get yourself checked out because Ranger green is currently at our location pillar no.2 where the pink ranger was previously. The pink ranger is knocked out and green is here providing cover fire against the Great villain."
What? That makes absolutely no sense, just now Blue was stalling the Great villain. And Green being alive? What could possibly be happening? But just before I got too deep into my thoughts, something landed on top of our squad car.
"It's me ranger blue, there has been a complete change of plans. We've uncovered what the Great Villain's ability is. It it something seemingly related to space travel as it has been sighted traversing large distances in impossible times. It also seems to able to transport villains with this ability as well. We don't know the specifics, but we know now that nowhere is safe, so the new strategy is to gather everyone in one spot so us rangers can form a united front against the enemy."
That made a lot of sense. It explained why those villains started pouring from the sky, and how it appeared to kill green even though green was confident that red was stalling it. I'm not sure how green is supposed be alive after what we saw, but Cliff turned the car around and started driving to the centre of the battlefield. I utilized the radio to relay the information to the other squad cars.
"Everyone drive to the centre of the battlefield. That is Ranger Blue's command. We are going there because the rangers believe this to be the most optimal strategy."
I put the radio down as we speed past the first pillar, the green team had already changed the batteries. Giving us the thumbs up for us to drive through. It makes me wonder why wasn't the green team with us from the start? As we drive further to the centre, we see the all the others gathered already, with ranger green and yellow standing guard.
The car had hardly stopped and I immediately unbuckled my seatbelt and leaped out of the car to see Ranger Green for myself.
"You're alive?" I asked in complete disbelief.
"I guess it must've looked real convincing that I died" Ranger green said.
It must've looked real convincing?
"What do you mean by that?"
"We have no time to discuss that, green team! Boot up the inner barrier!"
And just as he was saying it, the area we were standing in became surrounded by a familiar green barrier similar to the one that was originally covering the designated parameter, with the three rangers standing outside of it.
"And now activate the parameter barrier!"
The Parameter Barrier reformed itself from the outside. It was quite the unusual experience, even on TV you only get to see this from the outside. We can hear more distant shots of ranger red's blaster. The other rangers started aiming in that direction. Soon enough the Great villain was visible with some other smaller villains in view, green started firing at on the small remainder of the regular villains whilst blue and yellow trained their sights on the Great Villain. Red kicked the Great Villain upwards as he was firing his blaster as follow up shots. The Villain managed to block it and disappeared again into ripples in the sky.
"IT'S ENTERING THE SUBSPACE AGAIN, IT SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO BREACH CONTAINMENT WITH THE BARRIERS UP, RED GET BACK HERE NOW!" Green Yelled on the communicator.
Without much delay, red was already making his way back to us and he began to speak.
"So Any Casualties?"
"None from law enforcement, pink has still been unresponsive, but the Pink team has already extracted her. She's breathing just fine" - Green responded.
"Somebody gotta tell me what the hell is going on, our calculations was off by 2 entire hours."
"I have 3 hypothesis so far to as what could be the reason but I'm not sure if I have the time to go through them all right now."
"Red well somebody has to-"
Without warning the Great villain reappeared again slamming into red, however red has superior reflexes and manages to mitigate most of the damage towards his body by rolling with the villain. All the remaining rangers rain fire on the villain as it hisses again but also begins laughing.
"BRAINS NOT GONE? Kehehehehe! WILL LOBOTOMISE AGAIN!"
"Yeah, I'm a hard guy to get rid of, not denying that!" Green replies, whilst shooting another thunderous shot that echoes across the street. Soon more duplicates of Green started to appear, and the villain started taking each one out in a single swipe but every time seemingly guessing wrong as with every missed attack it was rewarded with a shot from Green. The sound, up to the very same motions was mimicked perfectly across all the clones. Was what I saw before one of his clones?
Red took to the sky, as if he was completely weightless and yelled "IMPACT!" Suddenly gaining momentum and speeding down faster than a bullet he managed to dive on the Villain's head, making the ground beneath him break apart. Blue followed up by bouncing on the surrounding buildings and providing fire from many different angles, whilst Yellow seemed to be standing still. The villain began to screech and it grabbed Red Seemingly trying to crush him.
"Red! I can use it again!" Yellow said.
Red managed to kick off the Villain, Blue used his speed to slam into the villain sending him flying into some buildings. Red joined up with the other rangers and barked the order - "EVERYONE FIRE!"
All the rangers charged their weapons and focused it into a single point. The began to aim at the Villain who was still recovering from Blue's attack. The blast was building up and Yellow was exerting some sort of yellow aura, then together it came out as a singular shot, spiralling as it penetrated right through the Villain.
The shot bore a hole so big in the Villain that It's internal organs was falling out as it collapsed to the ground motionless. I watched from behind the barrier, and once again the rangers have saved the day. None of them moved from their position however as green sent out a drone to observe the body.
"It's vitals are gone, the chance of the Great Villain using an "Amp-Up" is zero, as we're detecting zero C.O.D.E. energies from the corpse as well. With that, finally the other rangers allowed themselves to move.
"Holy shit, what the hell was that? 2 Hours early? That's the most inaccurate measurement of a rift we've had in over two decades." Yellow said.
Green started to Ramble apologetically
"I don't understand, none of the gear was faulty, we've already done these calculations many times and we got to the same answer. I don't understand how something like this can happen I was sure -"
"Stop." Red said softly. " Thanks to the barriers you developed, damage was minimized today." Giving a thumbs up, he was quite the spirited individual. He put his hands on his hips almost triumphantly as he looks over the corpse of the Villain.
"We could've prevented Pink from getting done in like that, besides have you heard anything from her?"
"Nothing yet, but compared to 13 years ago, that had a wave amplitude of 9.200 this one hardly classified as a Great Villain, that's why we even felt confident enough to try out some of that new tech. This one was like a what? 5.127? We pretty much had it beat from the start."
Green then spoke into his communicator "Green team, take down the internal barrier"
No response
"Green team?"
The signal was jammed "Detecting --- -------- of a Villain ---- 4.8-- ------ ------, there -- -- advanced -------- inside -- --- barrier!"
This however did not deter Green's quick thinking
"Z3 SCAN THE ENTIRE PERIMETER QUICKLY" From a distance the complex machine that green brought with him into the parameter began to scan the entire area whilst relaying some information to green.
Green without saying a word trained his sniper in a certain direction and he screamed "ENEMY!"
However, before he can even take his shot, He was blown back by a speedy shadow. A semi transparent version of himself that was beginning to take shape vanished. Whatever got him this time, got him for real and he was the only one that seemingly knew what we was up against.