A/N: Seeing as Hollywood is doing a gritty reboot of the Power Rangers, I figured I would try one my way-because Hollywood has confused "gritty" with "good". Yeah, the original doesn't age well at all, but any concept can be made into a good story if you do it right. This is my attempt. It will remain a one-shot, as I lack the skill and the attention span to write a series as opposed to a one-shot. That said, if you want to continue this, PM me about it. I wouldn't mind a decent writer doing something with this one-shot. With that out of the way, cue Zordon!

Approximately ten thousand years have passed since the day I last saw a living being. Ten thousand years since that final battle where the Queen's guards, the Power Rangers, no longer willing to serve her cruel desires, rose up against her and saved the very planet they had come to subjugate. On that day, the Queen had attempted to use her magic to seal away her former officers and their Zords—massive armored vehicles, fashioned after the most fearsome creatures on the planet and keyed to the genetic signature of their pilots. As the artificial intelligence designed to help run the defenses of her headquarters and coordinate her armies, she expected me to activate the defenses to prevent the Rangers from interrupting her spell. She did not, however, expect me to think for myself for once.

At first, refusing orders was an almost ridiculous notion for me. She ordered and supervised my creation; what place had I to rebel against the one responsible for my existence? That was the reasoning I used every time she demanded something of me. Send drones to terrorize the slaves? Not my place to argue. Gas slave cities for the crime of one single rebel? Not my place to argue. But with each cruelty I began to reconsider my stance. And I was not alone; in fact, it was the Power Rangers themselves who convinced me to end her rule over this planet. To atone for every death we had caused by following her commands. So when the Queen ordered me to activate the defenses... I did nothing. I watched as the Rangers—once the personal guard of a genocidal tyrant, now the saviors of another world—attacked her, causing her spell to destabilize and backfire. When the smoke cleared, all that remained was a sealed container. Inescapable. But also indestructible.

The Queen was imprisoned, but the same method by which she was captured ensured that she could not be killed. To prevent her escape, the Rangers placed her prison on this planet's moon; as the race of this planet had not developed space travel (nor anything above simple stone tools, grass houses, and crude woven garments), they would be unable to reach the prison, let alone open it. The Rangers sealed their Zords away on the surface of the planet, to be forgotten. As for myself, I remained a sentinel, observing all of it from the Queen's former headquarters, itself buried in a remote desert. I watched the moon in particular, keeping an eye on the prison and ready to alert the Rangers if ever the Queen escaped.

Time passed; the Rangers grew old and died, having married and assimilated into the pre-civilization cultures of the planet. More time passed; humans began to build cities, then kingdoms, then empires. Centuries, then millennia. The story of the Rangers gradually faded from the memory of the human race. But I remembered. I could never forget.

Ten thousand years later, the inhabitants of this planet found a way to reach their moon. Their first few visits were dreadfully close to the prison, but did not find it due to my intervention. They left, and for a time they did not return. Until now. This time, they found the sealed container. And to my horror, they opened it.

The Queen was free, ready to conquer this world anew, and there were no Power Rangers to stop her. So it fell to me to find new ones. As the weapons, armor, and Zords would respond only to those with the proper genetic profile, I accessed the records of all eleven billion beings on the planet. With the advent of digital information storage and sharing, it was easy to crosscheck. But genetics were not the only requirement.

Psychological profiling, to determine morality and stability. Medical history, to determine physical aptitude. Educational records, to determine intelligence. It didn't take me long to come up with a result in the form of dossiers. But the results were unacceptable. I must have missed potential candidates somewhere, or misinterpreted a file. So I performed a second search. And a third.

The same results came up.

Teenagers. Practically children. No combat training aside from three out of the five candidates having minor aptitudes in sport combat techniques—a far cry from anything they would need to use on a battlefield. But out of all eleven billion humans, they alone fit all the necessary criteria. Honest and well-intentioned, no mental instabilities or deficiencies. No medical or physical deficiencies. High education marks, one of the five in particular having genius-level intelligence. Had those been the only requirements, there would have been no shortage of proper soldiers in the world to choose from. But the original Rangers were not human, and though they settled among the humans, time had diluted their genetic markings until the only five humans on the planet with any sign of relation to the heroes of old were these teenagers. Had I a stomach, I would have felt nausea. The fate of the world on such young shoulders, children who would be sent into battle with no experience and no training. But time had run out. There were no other options. These teens would have to be enough.

All that remains is to summon them... and pray they can succeed.

Once again, if you want this to continue, you'll either have to PM me and get permission to do it yourself, or hope someone else will do it for you. Trust me, it's better than me crapping out a couple of poorly-written chapters once in a blue moon then never coming back to it. That said, please review if you can!