Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #33 is the thirty-fourth actual issue of the Boom! Studios comic book series, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers which begins its numbering with Issue 0. It continues to feature the new team of Rangers in the events of Beyond the Grid, which involves the aftermath of the Shattered Grid comic event.
Andros sets out on a quest to find his long-lost sister, Karone. But in order to do so, Andros and his new team of Rangers will have to combat the complication of diminishing powers.[1]
Plot[]
On the A-99 Scout Ship, Ellarien asks why she was spared, believing she is now a prisoner despite agreeing to accompany the Rangers. They are unaware that the Crimson Raiders placed an alien substance to track the ship. Andros and the team try to explain again they still have no intent of harming Ellarien or Remi. Ari responds to this by stating that despite their rescue of her she does not trust them and thinks an interrogation is going to happen followed by torture. Tanya tries to calm her down by de-morphing her helmet off and introducing herself. Mike tries to voice against it as he thinks Ari is ready to tear them apart if they make any sudden movements. Remi however is more open to Tanya's welcoming and friendly gestures and introduces herself and Ari to Tanya. Remi asks if Tanya is the team's healer, to which Mike says she is something like that, but Tanya jokes she is more of a "lion tamer"- a person who tries to resolve matters more peacefully through diplomacy. Kim is less than thrilled that Ari is on the ship since she is the thief who "slurped up" Promethea's power supply, but Heckyl says she deserves a second chance. Kim thinks his talk is alluding to their own troubled backgrounds as former agents of evil to get his point across.
Remi thinks that Ari should join the Power Rangers as they have the same armor and abilities as Ari does in her form and they fight in the same side against the Preator who wants to harvest vortex energy from people like them. Ari still feels she is better off alone, though she reassures Remi that she is the exception as she does care about her. Andros, having a better understanding of Ari's position of wanting to keep people away from her, tries to relate to her by talking about Karone and how he would do anything to protect her. He then asks her who the Preator is. Ari explains that the Preator is a conqueror who propagates to the races across space that the universe is dying and only he can save them by following his cause and attaining the power to travel to another world. She always assumed he meant entering the afterlife, but the appearance of the Promethea Rangers proves that other realities exist and Remi thinks that means there is hope for them, convincing her to tell her story.
Ari explains that the golden shard she carries is called the Solarix, an artifact of great power. For several thousands of years, the universe she lived in has been slowly decaying into nothing. Due to this entropy, no new stars, planets or cosmic bodies of any sort have been formed. Planets explode after a certain level of decay or by the Preator's forces attacking them. Worlds that have life are slowly dying as well, but as a child, Ari saw the process accelerate and it will be only a few years before the universe is completely dead. Since some of the children such as her had no families or they were slain by the Preator's forces, they had to steal to survive and take what little food there was. During the Festival of the Broken Moon, a holy man from off world visited Ari's planet to give charitable donations of food in a crate to the needy. Ari and her young friends saw him and young Ari tried to sneak away with some food. The priest caught her in the act and she saw him partially change into a Ranger, which startled her. She accidentally stumbled and broke the wooden railing, almost falling off the ledge, but the priest caught her and tried to pull Ari up. However, the railing his body was leaning against breaks and the Priest falls several feet and crashes through a market stand. Ari races to the priest upon climbing back up and tries to get to him from the rubble, the priest grabs her hand and asks her to take the Solarix. Ari, scared and upset, says she's sorry for hurting him and she doesn't want it. The priest insists and asks she keep away from the Preator and his forces, the Solarix will "seek its own kind" and is "the key to everything". As he hands it to her, the artifact's power surged into Ari and her eyes glowed as the priest dies from his injuries. Knowing that her friends were desperate enough to sell her and the artifact for food, she hid it and didn't tell anyone as they proceeded to rob the donation box.
Kim sympathizes with Ari, saying it wasn't her fault the priest died, it was an accident and she was just a child trying to survive. She tells Ari her backstory as an unwilling pawn of Lord Drakkon, she knows how it feels to be all alone. Ari tells Kim that maybe the Solarix sensed that and confesses she can't control her powers fully and it even hurts to use sometimes. When she has a clear mind, the powers work well when she forges connections with others. She believes that is why the Preator hurts those close to her, as breaking those connections will weaken her enough to be captured. The power of the Solarix is so raw that her negative emotions can disrupt its flow and "glitch" her morph. Kim asks Ari if she has ever morphed "properly", to which she says she has not. Kim thinks it is because she is always alone. Ari continues her story, stating that in her early teens she didn't know why the Solarix "chose" her. It did odd things too like make constructs of "critters" to keep her company and she felt it change her in some way. Her friends gave up her location to the Crimson Raiders and paid the price with their lives as a monstrosity sent to kill Ari ate them instead while they were holding a Nāga-like alien hostage to draw her out. Ari somehow knew upon trying to protect the alien that she was chosen to be a hero and have the means to fight against the Preator's evil and keeping the Solarix safe was her mission. However, she feels unworthy of the power given to her but accepts that no one else can bear it.
Ari says that no other forces have stood up to the Preator and she has little she knows about the Solarix. She also explains that she didn't mean to take all of the power from the Promethea, but the Solarix pined for its "vortex energy" as it was drawn to it. She believes that her Ranger form is a means of protecting the Solarix from danger. Cam examines the golden shard and whispers to himself it may have morphing energy in it as it would be impossible for her to morph otherwise. Remi asks about the Morphin Grid and the Rangers say that on their world the Grid gives them the power to defend their universe. Andros is amazed a "tiny fragile sun" of the Morphin Grid exists within Ari in a world where the Grid has gone dark. Heckyl, upon hearing Ari's story, tells Kim they should help the child after learning she has been fighting in a war she didn't want to be in all by herself. On their way back to Promethea, Cam asks dozens of questions on how the Solarix works to Ari. She simply tells him she doesn't morph much as it would attract the Preator's forces as they can lock on to that energy signature just like how they found her.
Andros contacts Karone on Promethea, who reports the base went adrift as its engines could barely steer and hit an asteroid belt. Multiple sections of the base were badly damaged and Grace had to go outside to reclaim the parts of the vessel that went adrift in space and weld them back together. Andros reports that they got the thief and they are bringing her as a guest, not a prisoner. Andros then tells Grace that there IS life in this universe and they now have a job to do: stop the Preator and protect Ari. The Crimson Horde arrive out of warp and ambush the Rangers before they can rendezvous with Promethea. The Preator appears as a massive projection, demanding they surrender Ari to him and he will spare their lives in exchange. Remi tells them not to do it as the Preator is a genocidal lunatic who has killed billions. Despite the bad odds with no Zord, morphs or Grid, Andros refuses the Preators offer. Ari offers to share her power and bestow energy from the Solarix to their morphers to recharge them. The Rangers accept the offer, holding out their morphers to charge up for battle.
"It's Morphin' Time!"
To Be Continued...
The New Adventures of Blue Senturion and Ninjor[]
Having defeated the Mutant Rangers, Ninjor and the Blue Senturion commandeer the Zeo Battlezord. Ninjor tries to get his bearings for the controls, but an impatient Blue Senturion shouts that he should hurry up and get the Zord started. They use the navigation system data left behind by the Mutant Rangers to head to Venus, though they overdo it on the thrusters and crash land on the planet after going at near lightspeed velocity. They approach Monsieur Muster's lair and see his vast "Perp Stash" of stolen Power Rangers items, unaware that Monsiuer Muster is behind them. He introduces himself to the intruding do-gooders and deploys a "memento" of meeting them in the form of a large collection of Krybots!
This article is about a/an comic book issue in the Power Rangers comic sub-franchise by Boom! Studios.
