Chapter 1
The tunnel sat quietly. Five minutes or five thousand years… it made no difference. The passage through the rocks had not seen a living, breathing soul in eons. The darkness and the silence continued. But… soon it was at last disturbed. By a single pebble falling from the ceiling… the another… and another… until, at last, the for the first time in living memory, the tunnel was open to the outside world again.
“Good Greif…” a voice called… “Get Dr. Carter! Now!”
Dr. Melissa Carter was the greatest archaeologist of the modern age. Ever exploring for new old things. She had discovered no less than fifteen tombs in Egypt alone…
At forty five, her hair was beginning to gray, but her dashing good looks had every boy on every continent swooning over her… so how she got talked into taking this meek little mouse of a boy as a husband was beyond her.
“Hurry up Joshua…” She yelled at him.
“I’m sorry… I’m coming… this thing is heavy…” He said.
Dr. Carter sighed. His mother was her boss. She was financing all these expeditions. She ran the university Carter taught at. She owned the museum all these artifacts would end up in.
The Carters were exploring an ancient tunnel network recently discovered in the Andes. The local laborers were clearing part of the tunnel when the floor opened up and they found this new tunnel. The tunnel was blocked only a few yards further away, sealed by a massive stone block the figured might connect back to the main network. But in the other direction, the tunnel just went on.
“This might be of the Yzma dynasty…” Dr. Carter noted as she looked down into the hole. “We have so few records of that period, but it looks like the stonework matches.”
Joshua caught up with his wife and handed her the heavy camera she’d ordered him to bring.
“Some days you are useless and some days you earn you keep… I’m not sure which one Today is, so be quicker from now on…”
“Yes dear…” Joshua said meekly.
The women brought in a ladder as Carter snapped pictures.
“Come on…” She said.
Josuha sighed and followed her as she started down the ladder.
When his mother told him she’d arranged for him to marry Dr. Carter, he wasn’t expecting her to be so verbally abusive… but he was a boy in a woman’s world, after all. He was half surprised he wasn’t in a house dress baking a pie right now like all his friends were. Going on these adventures was not a manly pastime. Men raised the kids and kept the house. Men wore their pretty dresses and looked good for their wives.
Joshua stood at the bottom of the ladder, putting the heavy backpack with all of his wife’s tools and equipment back on. This was his third trip since they’d been married, and his job describption could be summed up as “pack mule and climber into narrow crevices Mel couldn’t fit in.”
He noticed a small stone lying in the dusty mess on the floor and picked it up. It was smooth and light. He decided to keep it as a souvenir and maybe for good luck, slipping it into his purse.
Mel lit a torch and the two began to trek down the passage.
“No carvings so far” Mel dictated to him, Joshua writing it down in Mel’s journals. “No texts…”
The tunnel was long, but straight. The two could still hear the voices of the women speaking Spanish echoing down towards them.
“I estimate we’ve walked at least 500 yards at this point…” Mel continued dictating “Still no sign of who dug this out… Are you getting all this, boy?”
“Yes dear… I… AHHHHH!!!!” Joshua screamed.
He’d looked up, and his vision was filled with a massive eye.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“That!!!” Joshua said, pointing at the wall.
“Well, looks like this is an earn your keep day…” Mel said, brushing off the dirt. The tunnel had a large mural on it at this point.
“It’s… like a dragon…” Joshua said as the painting was revealed.
“Don’t be silly. Dragons don’t exist in Inca lore…”
“Well, it still looks like one.”
The snapped a few photos and continued deeper.
At last, the tunnel opened up into a circular chamber. Nine pillars held up the roof with a large, stone circle set into the floor inside the pillars.
“Wow…” Mel said, “This might have been intended as a tomb…”
“Everything is a tomb to you…” Joshua whispered quietly. The two walked into the center of the room.
Suddenly, the whole tunnel began to shake…
“Damn it… we must have set off a booby trap!” Mel said.
She looked at the ground and saw the ring on the floor had begun spinning, rising up into the air as if by magic.
Soon, it stopped, and one of the pillars began to glow a dim but white light… from the inside.
“SHO…” a voice boomed out. The ring began to spin again.
“Joshua, stay close to me…” Mel said.
The ring stopped again and the booming voice returned again as another pillar lit up. “VOU…”
The ring repeated the process multiple times. Each time the voice calling out another sound
“LOH… CHA…. MER… SEE…. GAA… DO… FIE… RAD…”
Once all nine pillars were glowing,,, the ring separated into a series of thinner rings.
“I don’t like the look of this…” Joshua said.
“Oh will you shut up…” Mel snapped. The two heard the sound of stones moving and looked up. Above them, the celing of the chamber had vanished and millions of bright strings of ligh crisscrossed above their heads.
“It’s beautiful…” Joshua said.
“It is…” Mel said. She couldn’t help but agree… even if this was impossible.
The voice repeated itself again, each of the sounds in quick succession. The rings began to spin again, this time as fast as the propellers on the airplane that had brought them there.
Joshua got close to his wife out of fear for what was about to happen. The rings rose into the air futher and little bolts of what looked like lightning grabbed onto them.
“Welp… I guess this is it…” Mel said. The rings snapped back together and the two were thrown upwards into the massive void of lights. They looked down and saw that instead of the tunnel, they had exited another strand of light and that these strands surrounded them on all sides. The flew through the air, like some cartoon character you’d see during a break between the double feature. They dodged the various streams, and soon found themselves flying through a gap between them.
“This is the greatest discover in the history of womankind, and I’m probably going to be dead in the next few minutes…” Mel muttered to herself…
Soon, they entered another tangle of strings and began flying directly towards one of them.
“This is it…” Mel yelled as Joshua held on for dear life.
The struck the stream and found themselves standing in a cave. Not a stone passageway. Not the room they’d just been in. A normal, run of the mill natural cave. And yet, they noticed the same ring on the floor.
“What… was that…” Joshua said.
“I… I don’t know…” Mel said. The two stood there in shock for a second. Wherever they were, it wasn’t where they’d been moments before.
The two were snapped back to reality when they heard a buzzing/hissing noise coming from nearby.
Out of the shadows, a small group of cloaked figures approached them.
“Ah, hello…” Mel said “I’m Doctor Mel Carter… You may have heard of me… My husband and I were wondering where we are right now…”
One of the figures raised a cloaked hand towards them and pointed a finger. The two could see that hand was not human…
The buzz/hiss noise returned and the figures threw their cloaks away. In the flickering touch light, somehow still lit even after all this, they could see they were facing giant, bi-peadal insects…
Joshua let out a high pitch scream in terror as the monsters approached the two.
They were suddenly blown off their feet by green lights zipping past the couple from behind.
“Get down you two!” a voice yelled.
A figure in a green and black jacket ran out of the shadows.
“Are you allright?” they asked. Mel could not tell if the person was a man or a woman…
“What are they… and what are you…?”
“Them… surprised you’ve never heard of the Ferrox… and as for me…”
The stranger held up a strange looking gun and a small, green gemstone…
“I’m a Power Ranger…”
The figure walked towards the giant bugs.
“Get lost before I kick your asses…”
The creatures made more of the buzz/hiss.
“You guys think this is funny… suite yourselves… Dragonizer!!!”
They held the gun straight out at arms length, and shoved the gem into a slot on the top.
An odd voice called out “It’s Morphin’ time!”
“Dragon RISE!!!” The figured yelled, pulling the trigger.
In a flash of light, a figure dressed head to toe in green with a helmet with a black visor stood before them.
“Dragon Force… Green Ranger…”
It fired off several shots of green light from the gun before running towards them, punching and kicking them until the creatures retreated back into the shadows.
“Come on, you two, let’s get you out of here before the come back with friends…”
“Now wait just a mintute…” Mel said in her tone used to getting her way. “Where are we, who are you and what in the name of all that is holy is going on around here?”
“I’ll explain once we get you away from here… this cave might collapse at any second if my teammates get their part of the job done… now move it.”
The ground began to shake. This time not coming from the rings. “MOVE!”
The three began running up the passage, soon finding themselves outside in the bright sunshine. Looking around, it was clear they were not in Peru anymore…
“Where are we?”
“Yosemite national park…” The figure said “I’m gonna guess you’re not from around here, are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
They removed the gem from the top of the gun and the green suit vanished.
“My name is Alex… Dr. Alex Morgan. I’m the green ranger of the Dragon Force Power Rangers… last team left…”
“What’s a powerful ranger?”
“Yeah… I guess I was right…”
“Seriously… what are you?” Mel demanded. The figure held themself like a woman but didn’t have breasts.
“Um… I’m a botanist?” Alex answered, still confused.
“I mean, are you a human being?”
“Just a normal guy… one man trying to help save the world.”
“So you’re a man?” She asked, scoffing…
“yeah, and? So is about half the planet, aside from the non-binary community…”
“What are you even…”
“Look, from what I can tell, you two must have just jumped from one dimension to another…”
“You say that like it’s normal…”
“There are at least three or four we know about, not counting sub dimensions and the dark dimension… and… well… I’d be here all day… but we don’t have time. We need to find the others…”