Fanfic / Power Rangers Mythos

Power Rangers Mythos by ThePimpKnight is a mass crossover in the Power Rangers universe. In the year 2600, the alchemist Avanth has conquered the world and disrupted the Morphing Grid itself, killing all but one of the currently active Ranger team (the Exo-Power Rangers, an-insect themed team) after rendering it impossible for them to morph. Lost for options, Fae, the surviving Yellow Exo-Ranger, is able to steal some of Avanth’s potions and use them to power a time machine to recruit five Rangers from the past to form a substitute team. As a result, Tommy Oliver (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, during his time as the Green Ranger), Z Delgado (Power Rangers S.P.D.), Flynn McAllistair (Power Rangers RPM), Shelby Watkins (Power Rangers Dino Charge) and Adam Park (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in Tommy's relative future) must come together and acquire the Mythos Morphers- the last usable Morphers after Avanth’s attack- to defeat Avanth’s plans for world conquest.

The fic can be found here and here.

Power Rangers Mythos contains examples of:

• Ascended Fanboy: Z and Flynn each come across as this when they're excited after Tommy uses "It's Morphin' Time!" prior to a battle.
  Flynn: He said the thing!
  Z: I know!
• Attack Its Weak Point: When facing a monster in armor, Flynn realises that they can focus on attacking its joints to get through the armor.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • When the displaced Rangers learn about the medical nanobots of the future, Flynn suggests using the nanobots to cure the Grid of Avanth's poisoning, but Fae explains that such an idea wouldn't work as it would require far more nanobots than she can acquire.
  • While Flynn's axe is an impressive weapon on its own, he is unable to use it when fighting a monster in the Paris catacombs as the tunnels are too narrow for him to swing it properly.
• Bad Future: By the time the Mythos Rangers arrive in the future, Avanth has already basically conquered the world and killed the era’s original Rangers; it’s not a total dystopia, but it’s not a positive future.
• Behemoth Battle: Once all five Rangers have acquired the Mythos Morphers, Adam and Shelby face Tommy, Z and Flynn with their respective zords, although the Cohort Megazord ultimately loses to the Templar Megazord.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Avanth tells himself that he doesn't like resorting to methods such as manipulation and open brainwashing to assure himself that he's not a "villain", but when he so quickly resorts to controlling Adam and Shelby's minds to make them fight for him it's clear that he's just making up excuses.
• Benevolent Boss: While it’s undermined by the fact that he brainwashed them in the first place, Avanth shows understanding about Shelby’s initial failure to acquire the Green Mythos Morpher and doesn’t punish her for losing to Z.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Adam and Shelby are abducted and brainwashed by Avanth before they can meet the rest of the team, forcing the other three Rangers to fight their would-be teammates as well as trying to deal with Avanth.
• Brought Down to Badass: Fae may lack her Ranger powers, but she's still a skilled enough combatant that she manages to defeat a brainwashed and demorphed Shelby while preparing to treat her brainwashing.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Learning that Avanth is likely responsible for mass cow purchases in Wales, the Mythos Rangers speculate that he might be using them for potion ingredients, and muse that they've all heard weirder in their Ranger careers.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: The Mythos Rangers all use the call "Mythos Rangers, all for one!" when morphing, but Tommy also uses the 'traditional' "It's Morphin' Time!"
• Chekhov's Gun: The Mythos Morphers, an ancient form of Morpher tied to mystical creatures such as the Phoenix and the Unicorn, and the only Morphers still usable after Avanth’s attack on the Morphing Grid due to their great age.
• Closest Thing We Got: Basically sums up the reason Fae had to resort to time travel to recruit her new Ranger team, as she needed new allies as fast as possible and didn’t have the time to try and recruit a new team in the present, so recruited past Rangers at relative random.
• Combining Mecha: The Mythos Zords are capable of assembling into ‘smaller’ zords rather than the traditional format where all five zords can combine into a single Megazord and that’s it; when the brainwashed Rangers first fight the other three, the Zmei and Gryphon zords combine into the Cohort Megazord (the Gryphon in human form while the Zmei is its sword) while the Phoenix, Unicorn and Kraken zords become the Templar Megazord (the Phoenix as the body and the other two the arms).
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: To a point; as well as each Ranger being able to take on some of Avanth's henchmen on their own whether morphed or not, at one point Adam manages to hold his own against Tommy, Z and Flynn all at once (although it's still a tough enough fight that he's forced to retreat).
• Crazy-Prepared: Fae notes at one point that she would like to be this, but since the loss of her team she's had to improvise more than she usually should.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Essentially features when Tommy and Adam fight; Tommy is the better natural fighter, but Adam's experience training with Tommy's future self allows him to predict some of Tommy's moves and counter them, to the extent that Tommy needs aid from his teammates to actually win.
• Designated Girl Fight: Z tends to focus on fighting the brainwashed Shelby when the Mythos Rangers fight their brainwashed counterparts one-on-one.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: The displaced Rangers initially assume that they’ve been brought to the future to use their morphers after Fae’s own was disabled, but Fae reveals (and Flynn confirms) that the damage to the Grid has disabled their morphers as well and the Mythos Morphers are their only option.
• Easy Logistics: Defied; during their mission in Wales to track down Avanth's recent mass purchase of cows, Tommy, Z and Flynn are able to intercept one such convoy, but Fae confirms that they don't have the time or resources to track down every other such convoy.
• Energy Absorption: Fae speculates that Avanth has disabled the Morphing Grid by setting up his various nodes to draw on its power and use its energy for himself. With its power drained, the Grid is too weak to support the use of a conventional Morpher, particularly with Avanth still contaminating the Grid to further his own plans, requiring the use of the Mythos Morphers due to their mysterious special connection to the Grid.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Avanth has such a warped opinion of himself and his role in the world that he assumes humans rushing towards him during a public appearance are fans asking for autographs rather than people trying to assassinate him. He believes that he has earned humanity's loyalty, but for the most part people are just too afraid of his power to openly rebel.
• Fighting from the Inside: Adam demonstrates a subtle version of this while he's guarding an outpost for Avanth. While he shows no sign of directly rebelling, he questions his master's reliance on goblin forces rather than diversifying with humans and goblins, hinting that he realises on some level that something isn't right about this situation.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: For the most part, Tommy can cope with what he witnesses of the future as he's more focused on fighting Avanth, but he's still bemused by moments such as the discovery that it's possible to pause live TV.
• Foregone Conclusion: When Avanth first learns the identities of the other Rangers pulled into his time, he reflects that Tommy Oliver being one of those selected is almost inevitable, and he can see how Z makes up for their numerical disadvantage, although he admits to being surprised that Flynn is one of those chosen.
• Foreshadowing: On top of the obvious questions about the nature of the Mythos Morphers, there have been hints that Fae and Avanth aren't what they appear;
  • Avanth reflects at least once that he's sure he killed all of the Exo Rangers, explicitly thinking of Fae in that regard. While he could simply mean that he believes he killed them all in some attack, such as destroying their zords, that it's unlikely they survived, it raises questions nevertheless.
  • Avanth displays a surprising knowledge of Ranger history for a villain; as an example, at one point he reflects that he might have been able to convince Billy (MMPR) or Kendrix (Power Rangers Lost Galaxy) of his motives if he brought them to the future at a suitable point in their lives.
• Fragile Speedster: Ogma, a monster seemingly made of paper, is very fast in a fight, but once the Zords manage to make contact with him he goes down relatively quickly.
• Future Badass: Particularly applies to Tommy Oliver, as Fae has recruited him during his time as the Green Ranger, meaning that he’s still early in his career even though Z and Flynn know of his future reputation as Earth’s greatest Ranger.
• Gotta Catch Them All:
  • The first few chapters of the fic focus on the displaced Rangers’ efforts to find the Mythos Morphers so that they can gain new powers to oppose Avanth before he acquires the Morphers himself; this particular "quest" ends in Chapter Seven, with Tommy, Flynn and Z wielding the Red, Green and Blue Morphers respectively, while the brainwashed Shelby and Adam have the Yellow and Purple.
  • With the Morphers retrieved, Fae explains that their next step is to find and destroy the various nodes that Avanth is using to poison the Morphing Grid and drain its power for his own use.
• Heist Episode: Chapter 18 opens with Tommy, Z and Flynn stealing medical nanoprobes from a transport to help Fae devise a cure for Adam and Shelby's brainwashing.
• Hero of Another Story: Fae has apparently a long history with her own Ranger team, the Exo-Rangers (an insect-themed team), before they were killed by Avanth.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Avanth is working on making the Rangers this in the eyes of the general public.
• Hidden Depths: Indirectly; Fae mentions that the Pink Exo Ranger collected old-fashioned technology, giving the Mythos Rangers access to old radios to bypass Avanth's control of more modern systems.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Z attempts to invoke this when she first faces Adam in a fight, and Tommy makes a similar effort when he has his first one-on-one confrontation with Adam, but Avanth’s control is too entrenched for either of them to help Adam shake him off that easily.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: Naturally applies, as the depicted Ranger team consists of an OC from the future acting as the mentor to five canon characters from four different series (and the two from the same series are from different times in that series).
• Irony;
  • The Mythos Rangers' morphing call is "Mythos Rangers, all for one!" when the team are initially divided due to Avanth's brainwashing two of the original five.
  • Z's swift bond with Tommy and Flynn prompts her to privately hope that she might form a similar bond with A-Squad if they ever return to Earth, when viewers know that Z and her team will have to actually fight A-Squad when they come back.
• Jumped at the Call: While Flynn is initially hesitant to get involved in the fight against Avanth when he has his own threat to deal with back home, he, Tommy and Z all swiftly agree that they have a duty as Rangers to help stop Avanth.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Tommy affirms that he admires how Z did this based on her stories of her past, even if he's less comfortable taking part in similar operations himself.
• The Leader: Tommy falls into this role immediately after he, Z and Flynn arrive in the future; the other two initially object, but once they learn who he is they have no problem following his lead.
• Legendary Weapon: Even Fae doesn't know where the Mythos Morphers came from or how they can work despite how the Morphing Grid is too weak for a regular Morpher.
• Living Legend: From Z and Flynn’s perspective, Tommy is one, given his status as Earth’s greatest Ranger (even if he hasn’t done most of the things he’ll be remembered for yet).
• The Lost Lenore: The male version; Fae's words all but explicitly state that she was married to Mark, her team's Red Ranger, before Avanth killed him and the rest of the Exo Rangers.
• Make My Monster Grow: Avanth's monsters consume a potion to make themselves grow.
• Me's a Crowd: Z uses her ability to duplicate herself when faced with a challenge in the absence of a working Morpher, most notably allowing her to take on the brainwashed Shelby.
• Monster of the Week: Unlike most series where the monsters are created or unleashed based on a particular theme troubling the current team, here the ‘fiends’ are guardians of the nodes Avanth is using to drain off the Morphing Grid who are actively confronted by the Rangers at their own pace.
• Mook: As with a standard Ranger series; in this case Avanth’s main mooks are green-skinned pig-like goblins.
• Mundane Solution: The nodes that Avanth is using to drain the Grid can be destroyed with a relatively simple physical attack; the problem is that there are a great many nodes and they are all defended.
• News Monopoly: At one point Avanth tries to capture the Rangers opposed to him by shutting down all social media sites and taking direct control of official news broadcasts, essentially trying to turn the Rangers into Heroes With Bad Publicity.
• Not So Stoic: Despite his history as a Ranger, Flynn is clearly uncomfortable with even the idea that ghosts might be real when investigating strange occurrences in the Paris catacombs, prompting some teasing from Z.
• Obliviously Evil: Avanth at least believes that he should be above manipulating others or using his alchemy to build up his empire, and has at least convinced himself that he's making Earth better, but he's still taken control of Earth for no clear benefit to anyone but himself.
• Old Shame: Avanth at least seems to acknowledge that his costume is this, as he particularly reflects that his hat looks ridiculous but it's become part of his look now and he can't easily change it, taking the compromise of simply wearing it when he has to make a public appearance.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Flynn is shocked to learn that Fae hasn't heard of Ghostbusters.
• Pragmatic Hero: While the displaced Rangers don't like the idea of breaking the law, they all recognise the need to steal medical nanobots to cure Shelby's brainwashing; Z recalls her own criminal past despite her current role as (essentially) a cop.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Essentially applies after some of the Rangers' victories, such as intercepting a convoy transporting cows to Avanth for unknown reasons or saving the employees of a local news station that tried to oppose Avanth's control of the media; such victories only achieve a short-term goal while leaving Avanth to pursue his own long-term plans.
• Rock Beats Laser: The Rangers learn that Avanth is passing instructions to his minions on paper because nobody would think to look for such messages. Later, they use an old-fashioned radio to intercept a message about his latest scheme.
• Rookie Red Ranger: Since Tommy is from a point where he's still the Green Ranger and has given no indication that his powers are weakened, he's from a point relatively early in his career, and ends up leading the team despite other potentially more experienced Rangers being present.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Avanth's human forces decide to retreat after Tommy, Z and Flynn subdue and capture the brainwashed Shelby, leaving only a few goblin forces that even other humans can handle.
• Shout-Out:
  • Flynn is surprised when Z makes a reference to Indiana Jones as they’re investigating a tomb for the latest Mythos Morpher, as he didn’t think she would still know about the films in her time.
  • When the team investigate an apparent ghost in the Paris catacombs, Flynn comments that they should hope it's not a real ghost as they aren't equipped with proton packs, which Tommy recognises as a reference to Ghostbusters.
  • When Tommy learns about Z's past as a thief, he compares her to Robin Hood.
• Sole Survivor: Fae was the Yellow Exo-Ranger, but is now the sole survivor of her team after the other five were killed by Avanth.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Avanth genuinely hadn't considered trying to use his human servants as a fighting force before Adam suggested it.
• Take Up My Sword: Loosely applies; the Mythos Morphers themselves haven’t been used before, but the Rangers all end up in a different colour to the one they were familiar with;
  • Tommy finds himself wondering how Jason would feel about him acting as the Red Mythos Ranger.
  • Tommy and Flynn later discuss how strange it is to see Flynn in Green when that was Tommy’s colour just hours ago.
  • While still under Avanth’s control, Shelby claims the Yellow Mythos Morpher, while Z retrieves the Blue Mythos Morpher (Adam acquires the Purple).
• Three Plus Two: The Mythos Rangers begin divided in this manner, with Tommy, Z and Flynn fighting to avenge the fallen Exo-Rangers and save the world from Avanth, while Avanth has brainwashed Adam and Shelby to serve him.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Obviously applies to Fae’s assembled Ranger team as they come from five different points in Ranger history, but is particularly relevant for Tommy and Adam, as Adam comes from a time when he has fought alongside Tommy for over a year whereas the version of Tommy summoned by Fae hasn’t even met Adam yet.
• True Companions: Even when he’s only met Fae, Z and Flynn a short while ago, Tommy reflects that he considers them his brothers in arms just as much as his team back in his home time, recognising that the bond they share as Rangers transcends the distance between their times of origin.
• Underestimating Badassery: Avanth provides his human soldiers with weapons that can hurt the Rangers, putting them at a disadvantage in later fights.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Z observes that it's strange how the confrontation with Avanth defies what she 'expects' of being a Ranger; she's used to reacting to monster attacks, but the Mythos Rangers have to actively seek out the nodes and confront their guardians.
• Water Source Tampering: Fae eventually explains that Avanth has essentially done this to the Morphing Grid, somehow 'poisoning' it consistently via various nodes set up on Earth so that only he can draw on its power, requiring the Rangers to find and destroy the Nodes to restore the Grid to full power.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Fae nonchalantly reveals that basically everyone in her time has medical nanobots in their blood that have eliminated diseases from the common cold all the way up to cancer.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Z suffers from a minor example of this. While she can create duplicates of herself to give the Rangers extra fighters, the duplicates still draw from her stamina, so it’s as though she’s fighting three times as hard while her duplicates are active, leaving her particularly tired once such fights are over.
• Willfully Weak: When facing Avanth's human minions, the Rangers choose to fight such foes with their bare hands so that they won't accidentally cause serious injury.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Avanth takes advantage of this (inspired by a suggestion from the brainwashed Adam) to recruit humans to help fight the Rangers, as the Rangers are less willing to attack humans than Avanth's goblins even if said humans have weapons that can hurt the Rangers.
• Young and in Charge: An interesting example of this as Tommy will be a great Ranger when he's older, but at present he's a teenager leading at least two adults (Flynn and Z).

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