Chapter Seventeen: Regroup, Refocus, Revenge

Betrayed by our own classmate. The shame! Ren thought as their helmets blared with an ‘emergency teleport’ alarm.

Rather than fall the full kilometer down to the hard rocky surface of the western Japanese coastline, the squad was teleported dead center into the Power Command Center and dropped a comparatively tame meter and a half. It still hurt Ren, with his suit frayed and offering minimal protection.

“She shrugged us off,” Yuto said, before performing some gratuitous swearing in English.

The flying six-legged Trojan horse of a mecha appeared on the Command Center’s repaired central screen. It continued to fly through the air, fully visible to all. Traffic stopped both on the roads and along pedestrian sidewalks.

“There’s going to be panic,” Miyu said, her voice also quite panicky.

Ren stretched, still sore from the thrashing he’d received this day.

Mahourangers that weren’t too injured—mostly Sakura and Miyu—were warped into a back alley near the city center, back in their school uniforms. This allowed the castellan to use their pendants as makeshift cameras. Though Ren really needed that medical pod, he stayed back to see what the damage was to the town.

Citizens panicked in the streets as the spectral horse continued its streak through the sky. It turned toward the mountains, disappearing behind an old castle in the style of a Warring States period fortress. A castle, notably, that wasn’t there the day prior.

“The damage to the Temporal Fortress prevented us from blocking Umbral resonance with your worldline,” reported the castellan.

“So you’re saying that’s…” Ren began.

“The Umbral Stronghold itself. Why, it seldom manifests before a worldline is entirely conquered. The Kagehime must truly be taking an interest in this timestream.”

On the video feed, the mecha-horse had completely disappeared behind the castle. The strangest thing happened: panicked civilians turned to look down the street, then resumed their previous business. Though panicked moments before, it was as if everyone forgot in an instant. Another consequence of the Umbral Court’s strange reality-warping powers, no doubt.

The Castellan recalled Miyu and Sakura back to the Temporal Fortress.

“We heard someone talking about the castle that wasn’t there yesterday,” Miyu said. “They said it was a tourist attraction.”

“The Kagehime has come to oversee the assimilation of this world personally!” the castellan threw his hands up and flailed about.

“Why does it always kvetch everywhere?” Haruto asked with a teeth-gritted sigh.

This was, of course, the first any of the mahourangers had heard of such a thing, isolated as they were from the Umbral Court’s reality warping-machinations. But for the ordinary people of Tenshigurobu, the castle seamlessly inserted itself into the town’s history, just as the sight of a flying mecha-beast expunged itself from their memories.

Ren’s chest ached through the ribbons that remained of his sentai uniform. He wasn’t bleeding, as far as he could tell, he just needed to hop in the Power Healing Pod to heal up whatever internal damage the afternoon’s waylaying had inflicted upon him. But first…

“Hey, Castellan-san. Becc—the Malachite Ranger, rather—said we were never told what happened to our families. Is there something you’re not telling us?”

The castellan’s helmet-head bowed. It appeared almost solemn.

“Aye. Mahourangers. As you know, the Power Coins have arrested leyline decay for your individualized fates. Why, were it not for that, a ranger could simply be erased from existence. That wouldn’t do. Not at all!”

The sentai squad gathered around, paying rapt attention to the castellan.

“Power Coin recipients are selected from orphaned fate-lines.” The living armor chirped as if this news was commonplace and nonchalant. “It’s simply the most efficient way of doing so. It only makes sense. Yes, yes.”

The command center remained deathly quiet, punctuated only by Ren and Haruto’s pained breathing.

“So what does that mean?” Yuto asked eventually.

“Impossible. Our parents were in Montreal for work,” Miyu added. “They said they were going to be back…” her voice trailed off.

“Mine were overseas too,” Ren said. “I had the run of the house for… well, it’s been so long now I can hardly remember.”

“Mine were in Tokyo for the week,” Haruto said, though it was clear in his voice that he wasn’t sure how long they’d been away.

Hadn’t Ren had a sister, too? Why, their whole family. Their surnames. When had he heard the surname last? Roll call at homeroom, surely. But..

“You’re saying our parents are…” Ren began, then changed the subject mid-stream. “Wait, my siblings. My family name. I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard it…”

“Surnames have been redacted to protect identities and the innocent,” chirped the castellan. “To protect from the Umbral Court’s nefarious agents, we conscript only rangers who were at risk of erasure—whose family histories have already fallen victim to erasure.”

The squad gasped.

“Our families. We’re definitely cousins.” Miyu looked to Yuto, her voice shaky.

“I can’t remember our family name either,” Yuto said with a shrug.

“What does this mean?” Sakura asked. “Not only are our families… gone… but we don’t even have our names left?”

“My college application,” Haruto said. “I’m supposed to be at Tokyo U in a few months.”

“Rest assured, mahourangers, there are surely ways that will allow you to retrieve your government Individual Number cards, even with previous generations of your family erased from history.”

Ren’s head spun, both from the pain of his beatdown courtesy of Becca and from these latter-day revelations.

Miyu looked at her Power Pendant as if she were about to tear it off her necklace and dash it against the floor.

“You all would have been erased already if you were not conscripted into the Lifestream Regulators,” the castellan said, defensively. “So really this is for the best. Rest assured, the surest way of avenging your nonexistent families is to save your world from continued degradation by the Kagehime’s forces. It is the Umbral Court that is to blame, most assuredly.”

“Why didn’t you tell us any of this from the get go?” Ren asked.

“Why, rangers, you simply never asked,” the castellan said with a faux-innocent air about it. “It was assumed you would infer as much by context clues!”

+++

Regardless of any feelings over the castellan’s forthrightness or lack of information withheld, the crew still needed to heal up. They remained in the Temporal Fortress, trading off in the Power Healing Pod. Ren and Haruto went first, as they were the most injured. Yuto and Miyu were next, then Sakura for a light treatment. Miyu’s stint in the pod was slightly longer than Yuto’s, leaving the three male members of the squad alone to talk it out in the command center.

“What does this mean?” Yuto asked, pacing about.

Ren looked out at the castle that had appeared in a flash. It sat on a cliff face beneath the town’s old, empty quarry.

“What it means is that we should head up there, slay this Kagehime or whoever, and save the day.”

Before any other timeline-bending shenanigans ruin their lives further, that part went unsaid.

“Let’s do it, while Miyu and Sakura are still in the pod,” Yuto said.