Darkness crept over what appeared to be an ancient tomb. For countless centuries, it had stood there, quiet and undisturbed since it was constructed. Nothing human nor animal had even dared to go near the crypt. Words scribed in old symbols and runes covered the tomb as warning, and guard against what was kept within.

It did not aid when a flash of light deposited the cloaked figure before the spot. Standing and looking the tomb over, he stepped forward, then pulled out a rifle and fired to blown open the doors. The air outside suddenly suctioned in as the pressure in the tomb equalized to that of the surrounding area. The figure paused, brought his rifle back under his cloaks, then continued on into the tomb.

Bones littered the walls and floor, but these were not concerning to the mysterious intruder. He continued on towards a stone sarcophagus, then, standing before the alter, pushed the lid off to reveal the mummified body inside. "The future has need of you," he whispered before stepping away and allowing the flecks of light that began to swirl about to enter the corpse.

He knew well what those streaks of light were; broken souls that were imprisoned here to prevent them from ever escaping and resuming their agendas again. However, his leaders had need of the being trapped there, much need. He again stepped back when the body, slowly reforming, sat up and turned to glare at him. "I see that the legends are then true, Queen of Fangs."

"Who are you?" the corpse spat in anger. She pulled herself out of the sarcophagus and stepped towards the interloper, eyes flaring with a bright silver light. "Why have you freed me?"

The figure bowed, but kept his form and face hidden under his cloaks. "My employers have need of you," he stated calmly. "In exchange for your services, you will be allowed to free yourself upon the world again, Queen of Fangs."

As her body at last regenerated, the woman looked about and snapped her fingers. Torches blazed with fire in an instant, revealing her own tan skin and jet black hair. Sparkling red eyes shined like rubies in the light, and she chuckled at the offer. "Tempting," she replied. "But you've already freed me, mortal. Unless your masters are like I am, I very much doubt that they can enforce their terms upon me."

The figure looked up to reveal glowing red eyes under the shadows of his hood. "I am most certainly not mortal," he stated, then held out a hand to reveal intricate machinery in his mechanical limb. "And I assure you, we have ways of putting you back where you were, Raksha."

The woman growled. "A golem, are you?"

"This is not the world you knew," came the reply. "And as such, things are beyond the scope of what you imagined. However, it's possible you could have your world again."

Battle Fury
Part 1

In the clock tower, Cassidy was looking over the destroyed Circuit in her hands while having a data link from her Quantum Commander connected into him. "Well, Cipher?"

A resounding sigh from the speaker on the device. "Sorry Cassidy," came the reply. "No way we can get the little guy back online. The AI isn't even completely salvageable as far as I can tell, and even if we could do it, we don't know if we could figure out who is really the great puppet master around here."

"I'm not really concerned about that," Cassidy responded, narrowing her eyes at the damage to the little robot. "I just think that he deserved a better fate than this. So do what you can."

"You going to tell them about this then?"

She hesitated, then sighed. "No, I don't want to get their hopes up if we can't bring the little guy back from data hell."

"Gotcha," came Cipher's reply. "So how are the modes working? Angela is just begging me for status updates on them, she's been thinking of adding more designs."

"Sky didn't get used, but Shinobi worked out well thanks to the data Kendrix sent along to you in that email," Cassidy stated with a smile on her face. "I'll bet Fairweather will be miffed that she didn't think of those correction algorithms first."

"Yeah. Repairs to the mobile base will be done in three days, but after that what do we do? I mean, the Mavericks are gone, so now this might be a good time to look into maybe taking a vacation. I hear Hawaii is a very nice place to go this time of year."

She said nothing for a long moment. "I'm not sure," Cassidy at last replied. "I just have this feeling, ever since we stopped Lilith."

"You can't still be thinking about that," Cipher's voice groaned. "I mean we haven't gotten hit by the Emperor's main troops ever since we left Mariner Bay, and Lightspeed is holding their own. The world can do without the Quantum Hunter for a while."

Cassidy just shook her head. "You didn't see what was on the other side of that gate," she continued. "He's not going away, Cipher. He will never be gone until he is dead. The Emperor is coming."

She stopped when voices were heard coming up the stairs of the clock tower. "I'll talk to you later," the young woman stated quickly, then ended the comline and turned to see the group of seven Rangers step up into the loft. Wes of course recognized her, but the looks on the faces of the other six suggested he hadn't informed them of who she was yet. "Hey Wes. Was wondering when you'd get back here, and I see the rest of your team is with you."

"What the?" Lucas exclaimed.

"Wes-kun," Yuuri began with narrow eyes. "Who is this woman?"

"And just how the hell does she know about you guys being Rangers?" Eric added. It was publicly known that he was TimeFire, but as for the Time Rangers, only Bio-Synth knew their identities.

"Geez, think you could show more courtesy to the person that helped save you." Cassidy rolled her eyes as she held up her right arm, showing to all her transformation tool which had every Ranger, save for Wes, widening their eyes at the sight of it.

"How the hell did she get the V-Fire!" Domon exclaimed.

"She didn't!" Eric snapped as he looked to Matt. The boy nodded, confirming that it was impossible for the V-Fire he had built to have been activated. "There is only one V-Fire online, and I have it!"

"It's called a Quantum Commander," Cassidy stated with a smile. "But yes, it was built based on the V-Fire."

Wes sighed as he walked over to Cassidy's side. "Guys, I should have told you earlier, but I didn't exactly have the time to. This is Cassidy, she's the Quantum Hunter."

Eric gave the young woman an odd look, then snapped his fingers as he realized where he had heard the name. "You're the girl from three months ago!" he announced. "You took out that ram Maverick!"

Cassidy nodded. "Yeah...I don't recall you being around back then as TimeFire. You were with the Guardians, right?"

"I was at the time I saw you," Eric clarified. "A few weeks later, I got the V-Fire, but after that first attack no one ever saw or heard of you since. Where have you been?"

"A good question since the Mavericks were attacking the city and you only appeared at the end," Yuuri added, still eyeing Cassidy.

Cassidy glared back. "First off," she snapped, "just because you didn't see me publicly didn't mean I wasn't doing anything. And second, who said the Mavericks just restarted attacking the city just in the last few weeks?"

"What do you mean?" Lucas asked.

"You obviously know the destruction that a Maverick leaves where it goes. After my first battle as the Quantum Hunter, the debut that Eric got to see first hand, Ares decided to keep people in the city in the dark, preferring to keep his attacks in... undesirable parts of town."

There was confusion with the four from the future. "Undesirable parts of town?" Syon asked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Shadowside Lane," Wes muttered as he turned to look at Cassidy, "That's where the attacks kept going?"

"For about a month," Cassidy confirmed.

"Excuse me, but what is Shadowside Lane?" Yuuri asked.

"Shadowside Lane...is the dark side to Silver Hills," Eric stated after a long pause. "It's where the less than fortunate live. It's also where the most crime in this city happens. Human criminal anyway."

"Drugs, gambling, and various other illegal activities, it's dangerous at night the most. Even the police have problems handling things there," Cassidy explained. She nodded when Eric had a pained look in his eyes. "With the Silver Guardians selling their serves to protect the rich, even more of the city's crime lords have flocked to Shadowside."

"Real estate companies have also tried to drive people out of Shadowside Lane because they wanted to build more condos or business buildings." Wes said that with a disgusted tone to his voice. His own father, he knew, once made such a bid. "The sales pitch is trying to make Silver Hills even more beautiful, but the truth is just trying to build more for the rich, which is why it would make sense for Ares to have had his Mavericks moving in there."

"Attack in a place where the general public doesn't give a damn, and you don't appear as a blip on anyone's radar," Matt spat in revulsion at the deceased Maverick leader's style of tactics. "I know way too many guys who tried that in the old days."

Cassidy nodded before she continued. "For a month, my friend Cipher and I worked on stopping the Mavericks. I was the fighter, he was my tech support. He was constantly examining my Quantum Commander, examining the files left behind by Blade to find ways to fine tune and improve the armor's systems." She paused. "Ares must have lost it though, because in an effort to get me out of the way, he sent out a horde of Mavericks, twenty three all together, out of Silver Hills and out through the entire country. That's why I ended up leaving. When I did, Ares must have decided to lay low and wait for his chance to come back again, in public and without me being a factor at all."

"He was probably hoping he had gotten you killed," Domon quipped.

Cassidy let a small smile come on her face. "He would hope that. My travels hunting the Mavericks took me mainly across the West Coast. Angel Grove, Starlight Bay, even ended up in Mariner Bay."

"You were in Mariner Bay?" Matt stated with surprise. "You ran into the Lightspeed Rangers then."

She nodded with a faint smile. "I did get to see them in action once," Cassidy said as she glanced at Matt. "Anyway, Cipher managed to create two new modes for my armor, Sky and Shinobi, the latter of which I used during the battle with Ares earlier. I managed to destroy all of the Mavericks Ares had sent out in his plan to get me out of Silver Hills, and not long after that, I found out about Ares coming out to attack the city himself. After receiving a visit from a man who calls himself Prophet, he gave me some info about all of you. I made my way back to Silver Hills, found Wes here and gave him a bit of a talk to get him set straight. The rest you know."

"That's interesting, but where does your powers come from exactly though?" Matt asked. "And why does it look like the V-Fire?"

"Your secret design plans aren't so secret, Matthew Corbett," Cassidy replied "At least they weren't to Blade when he found them."

"Blade?" Yuuri blinked in disbelief as did the other Time Rangers from the future. "Are you saying the first hunter ever created gave your powers?"

"More like became them," Cassidy answered softly. "Blade was mortally wounded by Ares back in the thirtith century, and coming to our time crippled him even further. He wanted to leave behind a legacy before he expired and give humanity a chance at stopping the Mavericks. When he found your V-Fire plans, he found a way to turn everything that he was into a power source." She held up the wrist that bore the Quantum Commander and looked at it longfully. "This is all that remains of Blade now. What he gave to me stop the Mavericks."

Yuuri had a worried look on her face. "Including all of his data files," she concluded.

"Yes..." Cassidy said as she focused her eyes on the time Rangers. "And I'll just say that I am disgusted with humanity's decisions in the future it created."

"Excuse me?!" Lucas blurted in shock.

"Your society calls itself advanced, benevolent and tolerant of others? That is the biggest lie I have ever heard in my life!"

"Just what the hell do you think you are saying?" Yuuri hissed. "How could you even possibly understand-"

"What I can understand," Cassidy cut in with a stern glare, "from Blade's own memories is that human prejudice has grown by leaps and bounds! I have seen human beings just walk up and shoot a 'mutant' for absolutely no reason other than he looked different from them. I saw the murderers laughing over the body and the police helping them put the body in a dumpster! A garbage dumpster for God's sake! What kind of human being does that?! Answer me that, Time Ranger!"

Yuuri didn't even have an answer. She tried to, but couldn't say a thing. She looked to Domon, Syon and Lucas, but they said nothing. As she looked toward Wes, Eric, and Matt, various facial expressions could be seen. From Wes, it was more disbelief at the future and a bit of disgust. For Eric, it was shock since it was his first time really hearing about such an act of the future. For Matt, it was easiest to read; absolute disgust and horror. It was the future of his kind.

"You didn't just stop with 'mutants' though," she continued. "Once you saw them appearing out of a mother's womb, you decided that natural pregnancy was too risky, so you created a way to just 'make babies'!" Cassidy growled, as she had been waiting some time for this. Ever since learning all of this from Blade's files, she had this pent up resentment over the future, and now she was finally letting it out. "Do you know how inhuman and wrong that is to me?!"

"It was to prevent mutations," Yuuri replied, trying to defend the world she knew.

"But it didn't, now did it?" Cassidy retorted, clear that she was referring to the horrible mutantions that came to result in Ransik and others like him. "Nature refused to let you control it, so it punished your perfection. But you people still didn't get it, did you? Even the Replicates that you made, you hunted down. Not just the Mavericks, but also the Replicates that were innocent from blame and the Hunters who actually protected you and saved your ancestors from being wiped out by the Mavericks. They saved your lives and you repayed them with trying to wipe them out! Are you all insane?!"

"You don't... you don't understand anything..." Yuuri shook her head, trying to make sense from everything that just been spoken. The future that was her history was all she had left now to hold onto, the reason she was fighting to preserve history as much as possible.

"Oh, I understand more than you know," Cassidy snapped as she shook her head. "So much so that if I can, I am going to prevent a massacre that will happen in your future."

Yuuri's eyes went wide at that, "Are you insane?! You can't do that! You'll cause a temporal rift that could destroy everything!"

"The question is," Cassidy shot back angrily, "are you insane for wanting to allow a massacre that will end in the deaths of over a million human beings?!"

"They weren't humans! They were mutants!"

Cassidy walked over to Yuuri and spun her around, making her look right at Matt. "Then what do you call him, Yuuri?! What do you call the person who is practically the savior for our universe?! You're going to say he isn't human?! That he's a mutant?! Well, since it's your 'job' to arrest mutants, why don't you go freeze him and lock him away?!"

Yuuri stared at her in disbelief then as she continued on. "Or how about my cousin Elizabeth, who happens to have the power to generate and control fire...oh wait, I'm sorry. The government term would be 'mutant'. Maybe she ought to be taken away then as well!"

"What...what are you..." Yuuri blinked, not understanding anything anymore here.

"You don't get it do you? No matter what we look like or what special powers a human or 'mutant' might have, they are both born of the same race! There is no difference. Only what you feared because you couldn't understand, or what your leaders couldn't control." Cassidy then walked away from Yuuri and started for the door. "I'll be in town for a few more days. After that I'll be gone...but if you need an ally, I'm always around." With that she walked down the stairs.

Everyone just stared in stunned silence. Matt, however, still had some things he wanted to add. "I have to go take care of something," he stated softly. "I'll be back later." With that he left to follow Cassidy.

Cassidy leaned against a tree in the park, taking a look over to seeing children playing ball with their parents. She smiled a little when she saw the looks on their faces. Suddenly, the ball came over to where she was. She picked up and tossed it back to the children, who thanked her and went back to their parents. The smile on Cassidy's face never left. Even when she felt someone behind her.

"You do this often?"

"If you mean sit in a park under a tree, watching children play happily," she stated without turning back. "Then yes. It helps remind me of why I fight. I'm fighting for a future for those kids to grow up feeling just a little more safer in the world." She looked up and saw Matt, who took a seat on the ground next to her.

For some time, he said nothing. "Those kids could very well grow up in a world where they learn to hate people like me," Matt remarked softly. "It'll be worse than any comic book, because it'll be all too real. There's already been word of 'mutant registration' proposals headed to congress."

"Not if people like me have any say in the matter," Cassidy replied sharply. "I've seen the future Yuuri comes from through Blade's own eyes. It's not pretty and it's not a world I want to live in." She paused before continuing. "I never set out to be a hero, Matt. I never wanted to be one to begin with. I would have been perfectly content living out a peaceful normal life." Cassidy sighed, reminiscing about her life choices. "But I don't regret the choice I made when I accepted Blade's offer and became the Quantum Hunter. I have been able to do so much because of it, and I am grateful for being able to help people."

Matt smiled softly. "You might not be a Ranger," he stated. "But you definitely have the heart of one."

Cassidy blushed at that comment. "You have no idea how much that means to me coming from the legendary Silver Ranger."

Matt had an amused look on his face for a moment. Not often in these modern times did he receive such respect. It almost felt like the world he was seeing unfold before him was not to be. But then, remembering his other question, he became serious again. "You were Mariner Bay for longer than you let the others know, weren't you?"

Cassidy hung her head a little bit and let out a sigh. "I figured you would have known there was more to it."

"I happen to have friends back there," Matt replied. "I have to know if they're alright or not since the last time I was there."

She hesitated. Cassidy wasn't sure of Matt would be ready for the knowledge of what she had seen. "Have you ever heard of the Dark Empire?" she asked.

Matt's eyes widened slightly as he heard that name. He was silent for several moments before slowly nodding. "I know about them, more than any human probably should know. How do you?"

"I've fought them."

He sucked in his breath. "You've what?"

"About two thirds down the line of my Maverick hunt," Cassidy clarified. "I ended up getting assaulted by a General of the Dark Empire, one of the big ones. Her name was Lilith, the Succubus Queen." She paused. It was obvious she didn't like remembering this. "The first time that we fought, she ended up leaving suddenly. Her Succubi I could handle, it was Lilith herself that I couldn't. She was more powerful than any Maverick I ever faced. I don't know why she left but I was glad. I thought that it was my end... but after the battle I had time to reflect about it all. About what Lilith said, that I had a potential that they were concerned about and wanted to eliminate. Realizing this, I knew my hunt on the Mavericks had to go on hold, much as I hated to do so. The Dark Empire had become my priority, if nothing more than to find a way to get them off my back."

"And you made your way to Mariner Bay then?" Matt assumed.

"I heard about demons being the chief villains there. Lilith herself is one. It just made sense to me." Cassidy replied, "When I got there, Lilith had apparently taken over control of the demons there, her Succubi were beating the Lightspeed Rangers, and Lilith herself was about to turn Kendrix into a Succubus, a servant of the Empire."

Eyes flashing, Matt looked out onto the park crowd. The expression on his face said he was filled with horror.

"Don't worry," the young woman said with a tone of concern. "I stopped Lilith from sinking her teeth into Kendrix. After I took care of the Succubi, Lilith retreated. I ended up going after Lilith underground, but she defeated me with one blast from an insanely powerful item known as the Scepter of Shadows. The Rangers took me to their base..." Cassidy paused as her face became tight with anger. "But that's when General MacKnight came, took my Quantum Commander and arrested me. Apparently his people had been observing me take out Mavericks outside of Silver Hills. They wanted my secrets and knowledge. I refused. I couldn't let them have it."

"So... what did MacKnight do?"

Cassidy said nothing except for getting up and taking off her jacket. She then took off her shirt, leaving her only with her sports bra covering her chest, but that was more than enough for Matt to see the slashes and various other scars all over Cassidy's torso. "...they tortured you?"

"Eight men worked me over for nearly thirty hours before Ryan broke me out. Once the truth went out to the head of Lightspeed, MacKnight got some just desserts. In exchange for keeping this from the public, the head of Lightspeed has given me free agent status, which is not to be revoked by anyone and I've got full access to all of their resources. It's come in handy quite a bit."

"I'll imagine... but what about Lilith? Is she still alive?" Matt asked.

Cassidy bent down to pick up her shirt and put it back on before talking again, "At the ceremony where Bansheera was supposed to come to back into our world, Lilith decided to play out her Emperor's real wish, to open the gate way that would connect our world and his."

"What?"

"Apparently, the Dark Empire exists too far way for them to come by ship. They need to open a gate that will allow them to move almost instantaneously from their world into ours. When Lilith opened the gate..." Cassidy paused for a moment, shivering as she remembered that moment. "Me, Kendrix and the other Rangers couldn't believe what we saw. The size of that army..."

"How bad?" Matt asked, needing to know. "Just how bad is it?"

"Triple the number of all of the Alliance of Evil's forces that they used in the Millennium War... and you'd barely reach even a quarter of the number we saw," Cassidy said with absolute seriousness. "Fortunately, thanks to Cipher and Angela working together, we were able to use my powers to boost up the core Lightspeed powers. The six of us worked together and we over came Lilith, destroying the gate in the process... the gate that she was creating in any event." Cassidy stopped, then looked into Matt's eyes. They both knew the truth. "Just because they failed once, doesn't mean they aren't going to try again."

"I know. Evil like that doesn't go away that easily."

"After Lilith was taken care of, I left Mariner Bay, refocusing on the Maverick Hunt, but my thoughts always kept coming back to the Dark Empire every once and a while... and now with the Mavericks all eliminated, the Empire is all that I can worry about. It's coming, and I don't know if there's anything we can do to prevent that from happening."

Far across the oceans from Silver Hills, another tomb was disturbed. This one, however, unlike that of Raksha, was not made to seal within the occupant. Instead, it was like a shrine, one with markings that told of great and heroic deeds. On the entrance to the crypt was the image of a grand dragon, but that, even with the cloud cover skies, burst forth with light.

Within the tomb, a spirit was stirring, awakened by the release of Raksha. The stone coffin exploded open from the top, and a blazing sword with dragonic design flew up to hover. It flared with light, then shot off, streaking into the night to reach someone before it was too late.

3000.245

"Events are being again changed from the plan."

Logan narrowed his eyes, then stepped from the main command room to arrive in a private chamber. The doors closing behind him, he keyed off the lights to reveal a faint red glow from his own eyes. "Why is time refusing our hold this cycle? We have never had such problems before."

"The past refuses us for some reason," came the heavy voice. "We suspect that Matthew Corbett is the key to these anomalies, that he is the reason the stream has changed." A pause. "However, Wesley Collins also seems to have a key role in the changing of what we have made."

For a moment, Logan made no sound or motion. Part of that fact was his own fault, for having allowed Wes to continue on his own choices. However, an outside influence had still had a factor in those changes, saving the life of Jeremy Collins when he was supposed to have died.

"Hopefully, Raksha can fix those errors."

Logan looked up. "Are you sure though that it's wise to let her loose after what she did in her time?" he asked with worried concern. "She's from a time before human history even records the slightest trace of."

The owner of the disembodied voice said nothing, but movement in the shadows still made itself noticed. "Raksha can be held under control. Our suspicions are that the TimeShadow has some involvement in this changing of the timestream in regards to Collins. Should he make himself known, he must be removed as a factor in these course of events."

Logan nodded, then tapped the doors open to leave. He paused, then looked back into the shadows. "What of the Time Rangers? What if they ever find out the truth?"

"Then they shall be dealt with accordingly."

To Be Continued...