"Okay. So, where in the world are we gonna strike first?" Rainbow Dash was the first to break the silence. She and the team had been staring at a map of the planet, with all of the continents painted red, with the Wolfpack logo at the center of each. There was also one tiny dot of non-red land with a small rainbow logo at the center of it. "If we're gonna hit the Wolfpack, I say we strike them where they're holed up the most; cause some real havoc."
"Well, that's a mighty-fine suggestion, but if the Wolfpack ain't dummies, and ah know they're not, then they'll have souped up their defenses right proper. If we go in and hit 'em now, they're gonna shoot us down like a fly under bug killer spray." Applejack folded her arms. "Ah know, we all just want this over and done with too, but if we just go in guns-blazing in the more advanced Wolfpack territory, we're gonna be sitting ducks."
"Indeed. I'm already scanning the areas that Rainbow Dash is suggesting, and I'm already seeing massive anti-air, anti-ground, even anti-subterranean gear in place to prevent any kind of entrance." Elaris sighed as she swiped her hand over one of the consoles. "Still, what I wouldn't give to see them destroyed right there and now. Especially those Feral Five wolves that Mar'Zek freed."
"Yeah. They're running the show now that they've disposed of their former captain. And if they were able to beat him, then I'd say that we've got a mountain to climb if we wanna try and stop them now." Sunset Shimmer brushed her hair to the side. "But, on the bright side, we've got a little extra firepower. Isn't that right, Twilight?"
"Yes." Twilight nodded, looking down at the crystal that gave her the power to turn into a Power Ranger. "We've got all of the crystals together at last. Elaris's Perfect Ones are assembled. Now, all we need to do is hone ourselves, get stronger, and the Wolfpack are history."
"That being said, we can't just spend the rest of time floating in the air." Fluttershy took another look at the map, walking closer and closer towards the consumed continents controlled by callous Wolfpack soldiers. "We've got to make a move before they become too hard for us to beat."
"I agree. If we just let those Wolfpack ruffians fester, then they'll get stronger and stronger; almost to the point where we won't even matter anymore. They could just flick their hands at us and be done with it..." Rarity, using the tips of her foot, rhythmically tapped on the wall of the ship as she leant against it.
"I think I can help with that." The screen changed to show Espy's face on the other side. "Hey, Rangers. How's it hanging?"
"Well, Espy. We were just thinking about potential incursion sites where we could fight back against the Wolfpack." Twilight wandered closer towards the rebel wolf's eyes. "And... since you're part of the Wolfpack, perhaps you could leak some of their weaker points to us?"
Espy just sucked in some air and tugged on her collar. "See, that's the thing about the Wolfpack. They don't do weak; not after what they pulled sending all those carriers and warships down to earth. The whole planet's in shambles. Seriously. Even some of their easier bases to break are incredibly fortified and durable."
"True, but they don't know that you're telling us everything we need to know to beat them." Rainbow Dash smirked and folded her arms. "That's right, isn't it? They don't know? You made sure that they can't listen in on your little chats with us?"
"Yeah. It's taken some work, but I've encrypted my channel for talking on this frequency, so the Wolfpack know that I talk. Just not to you. A handy little trick if you wanna make sure that the big dogs upstairs don't come crashing down on top of you." Espy gave her own prideful grin as she folded her arms. "But anyways, I'm mapping out the planet now and am analysing some of the Wolfpack's bases as we speak. In the meantime, I think I should let you girls know exactly what you're up against in terms of the Feral Five."
"That sounds great. We're gonna need every single little tidbit, gossip, and low-down on those meanie-bo-beanies if we don't wanna get flattened into magical rainbow-coloured paste when we fight 'em!" Pinkie Pie waved her arms all around, almost as if she was using them as weapons."
"First up, we have Uon'Buhl'let. A master sniper and one of Lupus' greatest scouts. He served over thirty-nine years in the Lupurian Shadow Fang; a group of assassins who prowled the galaxy, eliminating people as dictated by their clients." As Espy spoke, the picture changed to show the Wolfpack wolf in question. "Every single kill he made, he got richer and richer. Naturally, it wasn't long before he too was hunted down. And who better to go after him than the old captain himself, Mar'Zek?"
"Of course he would. That braggard always went after the best soldiers in the universe..." Rarity rolled her eyes.
"Anyways. Uon only sees loyalty in riches. The Wolfpack promised him all of the spoils he could ever have so long as he served their cause. Naturally, he quit the Lupurian Shadow Fang to become a bloodthirsty space-pirate; still armed with the same rifle that they gave him back on Lupus." The screen changed back to show Espy pushing her fingers together, making a crunching noise as she did so. "Nasty piece of tech, that. You could be miles away and his shots would still be able to strike you in the head pretty cleanly if he was all lined up right."
"So. We go in close on Uon, make sure that he can't snipe us, and take him out. Right?" Sunset tilted her head.
"He's not a Feral Five wolf just for that sniper, you know." Espy looked out at the back of her hand. "By now, I would imagine that Uhp managed to overclock that gun of his; give it more uses than a large-barrel sniper. Don't think that he's limited to just one gun with the name Uon'Buhl'let. If you're not paying attention, he'll land a killer shot and your lives as Power Rangers will be over."
"Oh my..." Fluttershy could already imagine the feeling of a gun bullet piercing her skin, lacerating her flesh and causing blood to spill. Then, she thought of more and more slicing through her friends as they came face-to-face with Uon and his gun.
"Second up, we have Deh'Mehn'Sha. The guy who calls you hurty-dolls over and over again." The screen showed the next wolf in the Feral Five. "One of the craziest wolves on the planet, he was. Subjected to a vat of neurotoxic chemicals and hallucinogenic drugging compounds mixed together, it's a miracle that he even survived. The result? His ability to mindbend; to get into a person's head and stay there forever. No matter how much you beg your friends to stop, no matter how much you try to bring them back, no matter what, Deh'Mehn'Sha's little mind games are inescapable unless you somehow manage to kill the guy or he escapes. There's no inbetween."
"One must wonder what he thinks from time to time, if he can mindbend, but is utterly insane through and through..." Twilight scratched her chin as she examined Deh'Mehn'Sha.
"When Deh'Mehn'Sha flexed his powers of mindbending, he completely wrecked the Starstringer Festival of the Lunaria Galaxy and, thanks to his mind alone, is the reason why that galaxy doesn't even exist anymore. Guess it's no surprise that he was eventually locked up and taken to Abyssica; the craziest crazy house in all of the cosmos. He was gonna be there for life had the Wolfpack not completely blown the place to kingdom come. Now, all that crazy mind-magic stuff's in his head, and ready for him to use; to play with his hurty-dolls for as long as he wants." Espy's face came back.
"I'm... almost afraid to use my geode on him then, if that's the case." Sunset felt the red crystal draped around her neck. For all of her power to see into someone else's mind, would she even be able to snap back to reality having taken in what she would see in his head?
"Anyways. Deh'Mehn'Sha's overreliance on mind-games and trickery is his weakness. If you can somehow break out of his nightmarish, hallucination worlds and come back to reality, then he's really not that strong in the body department." Espy struggled to smile. "But, see... that's the thing. Whenever Deh'Mehn'Sha uses Insanity on his targets, absolutely NO-ONE ever has been able to escape it. Nobody. I've seen all 32,918 of his fights when he was on the Wolfpack. And yes, that includes the fight he had with Mar'Zek during the mutiny. I've never seen the captain so... afraid like that." Before Espy could shiver, she hastily pounded away at the keys of her computer. "A-a-anyways, girls. Feral Five wolf number three is Uhp'Grahy'Der."
"Upgrader?" Pinkie Pie parroted. "Sounds pretty on the nose, don't you think?"
"You could say that. Like his name implies, Uhp is a massive megalomaniac and paranoid that other people are getting stronger and stronger than him." The screen showed the cybernetically enhanced wolf as Espy gave the description. "He was working on an assembly line on the planet Torvrex-23, applying all of the finishing touches to robots, weaponry, armour, basically a massive quality control guy. But one day, his arm got caught in one of the machines he was working on, causing it to become amputated. Naturally, he had to have a cybernetic enhancement made for it. And that... is when it all started for him."
"He couldn't stay away from the machines, I'm guessing?" Rarity lifted a brow as she examined the mechanical arm. "Well, it's highly unfashionable, given how it's all one shade of chrome and lights."
"He purposely harmed himself, breaking down his squishy flesh body to replace it with machines, until in the end, the only part of him left that wasn't cyber-ised was his face. Even his heart and brain have been hooked up to the machine body he now has, making them completely invincible. You can't destroy his heart or brain without first tearing through his armour, and even then, he's always adapting it for future battles." The screen showed Uhp's armour taking damage from various sources. It got dented, then repaired, then struck again by the same objects that caused the damage in the first place, only for it to leave no impact whatsoever. "It's a special kind of alloy he's made for himself from various different metals and synthetics, woven together into a new alloy he calls Infinitox. Infinitox armour, added with all his cybernetics make him one of the most deadly wolves out there. And if your Power Ranger toys can't kill him, then they will do absolutely no damage to him whatsoever in the next fight."
"Now that's scary. Someone that we can't beat, even if we use everything against him..." Sunset Shimmer shivered as she watched some video footage of Uhp's Infinitox armour in action. She watched as he faced some of the most rigorous fights in his life, watched the armour take a pounding, then take no damage whatsoever in the next video. "I'm assuming it only works for his body and not his face, right? Like, if we hit his wolf face, then he'll be destroyed?"
"That's if you can even get past him to give you a chance at his face. That armour not only improves his durability in the field of combat, but he's also jerry-rigged together a bunch of upgrades to it and will keep making more." Espy's face popped up in a small corner window as the upgrades for Uhp showed up on screen. "Temporal displacement wave engines, microjets in the feet and hands, augmented reality neural uplink, omega-class infiltration software for hacking, even some tricks that not even I know about yet. Be ready for anything, girls..."
"What about the last two?" Fluttershy lifted her hand.
"The last two are brother and sister. Mah'Jehs'Tie and Ahl'Mai'Tie. The Demon Queen of Beauty and the Celestial Scourge as they're known on the ship," One last screen change showed the new wolves. "Mah was the ruler of a colony of Lupus wolves until her lust for beauty drove her wild. She absolutely refuses to accept anything that isn't beautiful and leaves it in pieces; including people, cities, even planets have been razed by her beauty-or-death mantra." Some more footage was shown to accent Mah's cold-hearted nature. Her gaze petrified a crowd of people in a temple hall, before her war-fans shredded through their stone bodies. "A beauty pagent almost a century ago was completely sabotaged by her savage nature, with everyone in it from contestants, to announcers, to even the audience watching, all turned to stone. Naturally, the Wolfpack saw the broadcast and scooped her up very quickly."
"I suppose then, that I would have no problem dispatching her? Seeing as how she believes in make-up, fashion, and the like, we should be able to fight without her turning me into stone. Though I can't say the same for the rest of you, girls." Rarity rubbed the back of her neck as she rejoined the Rainbooms. "N-n-not that you aren't beautiful, darlings. It's just that..."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. She's a raving-loony who's so stuck up and self-centered about fashion and the stuff. We'll take the hit for you so that you can finish her off, Rarity." Applejack put her hand on Rarity's shoulder, causing the fashionista to blush and lay her own hand on Applejack's shoulder in return.
"And the last of the Feral Five and easily the deadliest of all, is Ahl'Mai'Tie, the Celestial Scourge." Espy took control of the chat again, showing the last wolf in all of his glory. "There's a long line of reasons as to why Ahl'Mai'Tie was wanted by the universe. The most damning of all is his power of sun-bending."
"Sun-bending? Now that just sounds ridiculous..." Twilight couldn't help but stifle a small chuckle.
"See for yourself, girls." Espy changed the screen to show a galaxy, with Ahl'Mai'Tie looking out at the sun. He bent and twisted his hands, moving them around in archaic motions, before making a gesture that looked like he was ripping something in half. As he did this, the sun in the galaxy ripped into two pieces and exploded, causing a supernova to form in its' place.
"What?!" The Rainbooms all lurched back at the destruction of the sun and the planets around it.
"The Celestial Scourge. The bender of all suns in the universe. One of the most feared beings ever made." More videos were shown, which demonstrated him calling down pillars of flame directly from the sun, or causing the sun to grow in size, incinerating the planet around him, or shrinking in size to plunge the planets in ice. "If he's not outright destroying suns, then he's using their power to funnel his own. Actually... now that I think about it, he might target you specifically, Sunset Shimmer, since you're named after the very thing he hunts for." Espy pointed at Sunset's sun-emblem on her shirt.
"But how? How can he do all of that?!" Sunset still couldn't close her mouth at the sight of all of Ahl's destructive acts.
"He was once a battle-hardened criminal himself, going around the world, robbing and raiding all that he could see. And he was pretty good at it too. That is... until he got captured and was exiled to the sun of Eta Carinae; the hottest star in the universe." Espy's face took over the screen again. "His exile pod crashed into it and everyone believed him dead, but instead of being consumed by the sun, he absorbed its' energy and became one with it and every other sun he could see. It took him some time to recover after that, but as soon as he did, sun-bending became second nature to him, like breathing and moving."
"If he can control the sun, then why hasn't he already decided to blow it up or mess around with it? Surely, he sees this as a power play and an easy fix to end the Power Rangers once and for all, right?" Elaris lifted a brow. "Think about it. Just a click of his fingers and all of this is over."
"I heard from Ahl'Mai'Tie himself that destroying the sun would be detramental to his goal. He wants the crystals all for himself. He wants all seven of them in his claws so that he can become a god in terms of power." Espy's face came back for the umpteenth time that day. "If he destroys the sun and causes a supernova, not only would the blast wave knock the Alpha Slayer into pieces because of the fact he still needs to take the crystals, but the resulting black hole would destroy him, the other Wolfpack wolves, and everything else in the galaxy. No. Instead, he wants to steal the crystals, then blow up the sun and destroy the galaxy, so that he and his wolves have a safe distance to flee to once the chaos unfolds."
"Technically, in order for him to even survive a black hole, he would need to be in another galaxy at least, given how ferocious a black-hole's pull is. Unless the Alpha Slayer has engines and devices that can outrun the pull of a black hole—which even eats light, by the way—then there's no chance he'd even be able to escape." Twilight went over to the console and pounded in some commands, showing a diagram of the solar system and the Alpha Slayer. "Considering how close these planets are to the sun and how they all obrit around it, a black hole would easily consume them, since they have no means of escaping the hole's pull. As for moving spaceships, there's been no evidence or study of them on this planet, so we have to assume that if the Feral Five do destroy the sun, then they'll be killing themselves as a result. It's a very confusing move to make, to be a sun-bender in this kind of situation. But at the same time, if they've done this stuff before, then it still boggles me as to how much thrust, torque, and power is needed to actually outrun a black hole..."
"True. If you girls want, I can download some schematics of the ship while you're going out liberating the world from the Wolfpack's claws." Espy typed away ferociously at the buttons on her computer. "In the meantime, I've finally finished up the scans and I've pinpointed multiple areas where you girls can move in and strike." The map of the earth came back, with certain points popping out. They extended to show pictures of the area. "I've marked three targets where you girls can make your next moves. Marrakesh in Morocco, Santiago in Chile, and a place in Italy called Florence. The Wolfpack are still barely setting up there, so you could move in and take those places back."
"Sounds good. I say that we all split up into teams so we can handle each area at the same time. It might be a bit complicated, but Elaris can still provide us support with her ship, be it air support or Zord transit." Sunset turned to Elaris and gave her a pat on the back, causing the alien harmonite to blush a tad and give off a slightly dopey smile. "Rarity and Fluttershy, you handle Florence. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Pinkie will move on Santiago, and me and Twilight will handle Marrakesh."
"Alright. I'll provide recon and tac-support from right here, your little friend Elaris handles close-range air support and other needs, while you girls move in and take back the world. Sounds good to me." Espy turned back. "And while we're at it, I'll have some of my friends in the Omega Pack cook up some gadgets and gizmos that'll help you later on." As she spoke, she heard a clanging noise followed by some distant shouting. "I'd better go. Sounds like Vi'Al is rallying the troops to fortify the areas. I'll contact you as soon as I can. Espy out." The screen cut off, emptying the digital screen."
"Let's do this, girls. It's time to save the world." Sunset gave a confident nod, then watched the others do the same. "Elaris. Plot our courses and let's get moving."
"Got it. L.U.C.Y. Bring up the chairs." Elaris typed away on the console once again.
"Understood. Materialising." L.U.C.Y. gathered light at seven different areas of the bridge, spawning some chairs that not only had the Rainbooms' logos on them, but were also themed around them and their personal tastes. Rainbow's was very intense, Applejack's was country-esque, Rarity's was like a regal throne, Pinkie's was made out of candy, Fluttershy's was very cosy and covered with frilly-kind things, Twilight's chair was cybernetic and computerised, and Sunset's chair was designed to look like it was made out of flames. "Power Rangers, take your seats and prepare yourselves for departure."
The seven girls took their seats and, as they did, belts emerged from the chairs and clipped tightly around their bodies, securing the girls in place. Once they were all sitting comfortable, a view of the world was shown in place of the holographic wall they had been staring at for the past few moments.
"Now, if you've never expererienced space-travel before, I advise you to hold on. Because this is gonna be rough..." Elaris puleld out a throtlle and rammed it forward. The ship started to accelerate slowly, but then the space around the girls started to creep in on them, as clouds were pulled blindlingly fast towards them. Contrails of colour formed as the ship gathered power, then with a powerful lurch forward, the ship burst forward in a burst of colours and energy, moving at light-speed through the skies.