Fanfic / Power Rangers Take Flight

The Power Rangers... but not as you know them.

A 40-episode fanfic adaptation of Choujin Sentai Jetman. An Air Force soldier and four apartment tenants from Spring Valley, CA receive military hardware from Project: Jetman and become the Power Rangers, to fight against a vengeful space vampire and others who seek Earth's destruction.

It can be read in its entirety here

See also Power Rangers Wing Force, another fic that adapts the same source material.

The Rangers:

• Luke Branson (Red One): The Leader, an ex-Air Force pilot with partial amnesia and a tendency to run off without telling the others. Starts working at a museum, and eventually begins a relationship with Lisa.
• Wayne "Chris" Jacobs (Black Two): The Lancer, initially somewhat of a Sour Supporter. Works at a bike repair shop, later starts dating Casey.
• Pete Williams (Yellow Three): The Big Guy, a chef at an Italian restaurant. Detests packaged foods, long-time friend of Chris.
• Estelle "Casey" Reynolds (Pink Four): The Heart, loves animals. Eventually starts dating Chris after nursing a crush on him for a while.
• Margaret "Maggie" Lu (Blue Five): The Smart Guy, Chinese-American college student (intending to major in psychology). But due to her Ranger activities interfering with her classes, she steps down and passes her role to...
• Lisa Ward: Previously a shoplifter, after running into Luke she turns over a new leaf and eventually starts working with the Rangers; she takes over as the Blue Ranger when Maggie steps down, and remains in that role until the end of the series.

Their allies:

• Dr. Vanessa Bering: Creator of the Ranger technology with the aid of Zordon, she's captured and put into a cryogenic freeze in Trask's raid on the space station, and is kept around by Dillik as a sort of imaginary friend who he addresses as "frozen scientist". Eventually is released, and joins the Rangers as their technical advisor; she ends up having to sub as a Ranger briefly in the finale.
• Special Agent Jon Turnquist: Agent of the government and liason between the Rangers and Project: Phoenix (the successor to Project: Jetman). Tends to keep secrets and bring bad news at inopportune times.
• General Norman Taggart: Head of both Projects, and who tends to interfere in the Rangers' duties, but is ultimately a Reasonable Authority Figure.
• Steve and Lenore Patterson: Neighbors of the Rangers in their apartment building, they end up sucked into the action once.
• Barry West: Another neighbor, interested in Casey for a while. Kept a pet squirrel, owned a VCR repair shop, and was somewhat of a Conspiracy Theorist regarding the alien attacks on Spring Valley.
• Detective Ramon Morales: Police detective for the city of Spring Valley who keeps encountering the Rangers and investigates them, eventually learning their identities and assisting them on several occasions.
• Ancient Red Ranger: The ghost of a long-dead Ranger who assists the team late in the series.

Their enemies:

• Trask: A space vampire with a grudge against humanity, and the Big Bad for most of the series. Uses a gun to convert living beings into biomass, for both his own sustenance and for creating Nobodies and monsters.
• Dillik: An exobiology student who serves as a somewhat-unwilling Evil Genius; for a while, he serves as the Noble Top Enforcer via a telepresence robot dubbed Strife. Eventually realizes he's on the wrong side and joins the Rangers.
• Queen-Empress Magda: An immortal. Formerly queen of a galaxy-spanning empire, only to be deposed prior to the beginning of the series; comes to Earth to stop the Rangers (having defeated similar forces on her home planet of Illam). Gets sent to an alternate dimension, but takes over that dimension's Earth and after the Rangers battle her again, gets sent to the home dimension of the Jinnsects and left with a sword that can kill immortals.
• Princess Sasha: Daughter of Magda, and after her defeat an unwilling ally of Trask and Dillik. Uses the Star Handle, a light-based weapon with multiple modes. Can assume a giant monster form, only to be defeated by the Rangers on Illam. She develops an attraction to Strife before she finds out he's Dillik, but eventually gets melted into biomass by Trask. Dillik attempts to clone her, but it doesn't turn out so well.
• Mainframe: The Dragon in the later episodes, made from a leftover Jinnsect and a console from the space station. Has the power of technopathy and created the method to turn biomass into monsters. Eventually becomes the Big Bad after everyone else is either destroyed, captured or defected, and after using a Warzord of his own, hijacks the Rangers' Zords; he's destroyed when the Rangers remotely self-destruct their Zords, only to come back giant-sized and attempt to lay waste to Spring Valley.

Recurring Power Rangers tropes:

• All Your Powers Combined: How the Phoenix Cannon is fueled.
• BBC Quarry: Thanks to the source material being a big offender (as much as Hurricanger/Ninja Storm), it has a lot of quarry-based scenes; lampshaded when a Somebody remarks "Here we are again... the quarry. Not the most creative choice, but it'll do."
• By the Power of Grayskull!: "Sky (insert bird here)!"
• Calling Your Attacks: Often.
• Combination Attack: The pistol-based finishers, mainly the Sky Enforcers' gravity ball, fall under here.
• Color-Coded Characters: The codenames use a setup similar to Choudenshi Bioman: color followed by number.
• Cool Car: The Phoenix Cannon's alternate form of the Phoenix Rover (though it's never actually driven by the Rangers, because A: it was only driven in Jetman by the unmorphed Red Ranger and B: it's not really needed because the Rangers can glide and have jets at their disposal).
• Finishing Move: Multiple ones, the most prominent being the Phoenix Cannon blast.
• Home Base: The apartment the Rangers live in, Parkview, and later on a house by a cemetery after the apartment becomes a Monster of the Week. Also, the Project: Phoenix hangar, to a lesser extent — during the latter half of the series, it's where the Zords and Dr. Bering are based. The space station became this by the end of the first season and into the second season after the Phoenix base is destroyed by Mainframe in the hijacked Kestrel Megacruiser.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • A Mech by Any Other Name: The Sky Flyers.
  • Animal Mecha: The Flyers are borderline examples, since they're really just jets with cockpits shaped like the respective birds each one is based on. The Kestrel has more bird-like attributes, including talons for hands.
  • Combining Mecha: Sky Hawk + Condor + Owl + Swallow + Swan = Skyforce Megazord (robot mode) or Skyforce Cruiser (jet mode).
  • Transforming Mecha: The alien Kestrelzord, which transforms into a humanoid warrior mode.
  • Robot Buddy: The Blue Battlezord, a sentient support robot that could transform into the Quad Cannon, which could be used by either the Skyforce Megazord or the Kestrelzord.
  • Mecha Expansion Pack: The Kestrel could combine with the Skyforce in either of its two forms.
    • Skyforce Megazord + Kestrel Warrior Mode = Mega Kestrelzord
    • Skyforce Cruiser + Kestrelzord = Kestrel Megacruiser
• In the Name of the Moon: Almost entirely averted: the Rangers rarely pose, and when they do, it's fairly short.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Almost averted: no one member gets any exclusive weapon or powerup, and unlike the Sentai counterpart, the Phoenix Rover/Cannon isn't the Red Ranger's personal vehicle. But Luke, as an ex-Air Force pilot, is still the only one who has any sort of combat training and has to give the other Rangers crash courses in things like swordfighting and martial arts.
• Magical Security Cam: Justified; the Rangers each have their own small camera drones called Hoverbirds, which automatically seek trouble and display it in the Rangers' AviMorphers and helmet displays. Unfortunately, Dillik and Trask still have access to the camera feeds from the space station, which, among other problems, leads to the Rangers' apartment building being turned into a monster and getting destroyed by the Megazord. Dr. Bering fixes this issue by changing the Hoverbirds' frequencies.
• Make My Monster Grow: The Jinnsect fulfills this role until about midway through; if it can latch off the monster as it's destroyed, it can bring it back giant size. It can be destroyed, thus keeping the monster from coming back. This comes in handy when the Skyforce Megazord stops working for a while; when the monster gets destroyed in small-scale, the Rangers shoot the Jinnsect with their Sky Blasters or Enforcers. When the Jinnsects are used up and the monsters are instead made of biomass, they instead grow simply when destroyed, although the demons Trask found were exceptions to this (Infernis arrived giant-sized, Gog never grew; Zin and Drek grew on their own volition, as did their combined form Zindrek). Tendrilag, created by Magda, just grew at random (she was supposed to have been responsible, but this was cut out).
  • That being said, some of the biomass-based monsters didn't grow; this was attributed to the "fractal matrix" not functioning correctly.
• Minidress of Power: Worn by the female rangers.
• Monsters of the Week: Initially powered by the infestation of an object by an other-dimensional bug creature known as a Jinnsect; when the Jinnsects were used up, they switched to making monsters from biomass instead.
• Mooks: The Nobodies, as used by Trask and Dillik; Magda used Discards instead. Mainframe invented the Nobots late in the series, which carried over as the footsoldiers into season 2.
  • Elite Mooks: Somebodies, via a Deadly Upgrade.
• Psycho Rangers: The Shadow Ranger team in episode 27. The only one who didn't get his own Evil Counterpart was Chris, who was absent during the time the clones were made.
• Regular Caller: Nearly exposes the Rangers a couple of times, as the AviMorphers invoked didn't have either a functioning talk button or Ranger-specific talk filtering; Dr. Bering corrected these issues when she was released from her cryogenic suspension.
• Supervillain Lair: The Project: Jetman space station, initially; after the Rangers' raid in episode 32, Trask and Mainframe move into Magda's Bigger on the Inside lair, located in Siberia.
• Transformation Trinket: Perhaps one of the simplest: the AviMorpher, a digital watch which, in addition to morphing, can also control the Rangers' Hoverbirds.
  • The aborted Season 2 had the Power Amulets, which were simple round objects that became the Rangers' belt buckles. Coin on the one side, a glowing color on the other (the Rangers used them as sort of magnifying glasses to find the location of their Gaia Zords).
• Two Girls to a Team: Pink and Blue instead of the traditional Pink and Yellow (although Casey's suit mainly has white spandex; as a result, people keep calling her the White Ranger, much to her irritation).
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Their list of stuff includes:
  • Sword and Gun: The Talon Swords and Sky Blasters.
  • Power Fist: The Battlizers that the Rangers used, which could fire a "Battlizer Beam" and enter a "Striker Mode" for powered punches. They later got a Mid-Season Upgrade where they were now larger, and the back portion was now a remote-controlled drone dubbed a Battle Bird, which could also combine with their Sky Blasters to form Battle Enforcers.
  • BFG: The Phoenix Cannon. The "gravity ball" attacks used by the Sky Enforcers, Echo Enforcers and Battle Enforcers could also count, in a sense.
  • Bifurcated Weapon: Multiple variants, all based around the Sky Blaster:
    • Talon Sword + Sky Blaster = Sky Enforcer (which fires the "gravity ball"/"force bubble" finishing blast)
    • Echo Blaster + Sky Blaster = Echo Enforcer
    • Battle Bird + Sky Blaster = Battle Enforcer

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Other tropes in use include:

• A Birthday, Not a Break: Luke's birthday has the Rangers taking the Jetman space station back from the villains.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Trask is nowhere near as depraved as his Jetman counterpart, Count Radiguet, who is widely considered one of the evilest Super Sentai villains ever.
  • General Taggart is a Reasonable Authority Figure, a stark contrast to his Jetman counterpart, Commander Akira Ichijou, who was The Neidermeyer.
• Adaptational Nationality: Aside from the Rangers and all the other supporting characters being American instead of Japanese, the major villains are all natives to this universe, as opposed to the Vyram, who were all extradimensional invaders.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Chris, the Black Ranger, is much more of a team player than his Jetman counterpart, Gai Yuki, a constant gambler and womanizer.
• Adapted Out: Tran, the only Jetman villain with no Take Flight counterpart.
  • The red Jinnsect-like bugs used by the Vyram midway through Jetman to create monsters and make them grow were omitted, in favor of making the monsters with biomass (though Brimstone was implied to have been created by Magda).
  • The Skyforce Megazord had one weapon, the Aero Glaive, that never got used for various reasons.
  • Season 2 would've done this for all the main Liveman villains, as the author decided not to use any small-scale battle footage (excepting a brief fantasy sequence) due to an abundance of bad 1980s effects and visible Japanese actors. A new version of Strife (albeit with elements of Gash from Liveman), Tomato King, and Empire warlords Gant and Eris replaced Bias and his students; the Nobots (based on the Jimmers, just with differing colors) and the Stingers, as well as the monsters, were still used (though only in Zord-scale footage). The "Mindsphere" referred to by Strife would've been a backup copy of Mainframe's mind.

• Ambiguously Brown: Casey, who is simply described as being "of mixed ancestry." She is eventually revealed to be part Middle Eastern, but that's just one parent.
• Ascended Extra: Tomato King was originally a one-off villain seen in Pete's dream in episode 28. He appeared in the aborted season 2 as the comic relief villain, apparently a real demon accidentally released by the demon-eater.
  • In Jetman, the Earth Ship space station was destroyed in the first episode; here, while attacked a few times and damaged, the space station was not destroyed and survived into season 2.
  • The Kestrel Megacruiser was only used in two Jetman episodes, one of which was merely a cameo. Here, while those appearances are retained, it ends up playing a major role in the finale. Same thing happens with the Quad Cannon, which got more usage, including helping the Rangers retake the space station than it did in Jetman.
  • The Liveman's belt buckles were just that — belt buckles with no importance whatsoever. Here they serve as the Windvale Rangers' morphers (replacing the Liveman's Twin Brace).
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In addition to the standard monsters, a few demons show up, and in the finale Mainframe constructs a Warzord, the Gigazord and later comes back giant-sized himself.
• Big Damn Heroes: The Thadian Rangers and the Ancient Red Ranger's ghost in the finale.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Magda's final fate.
• Came Back Wrong: Dillik's attempt to clone Sasha doesn't go very well.
• Canon Foreigner: Aside from Dr. Bering (the equivalent of Commander Odagiri) and arguably General Taggart (Supreme Commander Ichijou, though unlike Ichijou he's a lot less jerkish), none of the supporting characters had equivalents in Jetman, which didn't have much in the way of a recurring cast.
  • On the villains' side, Mainframe and the Somebodies, as well as all the US-original monsters, have no Jetman counterparts.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Jinnsect used in episode 3 survives the episode. Trask later uses it to create Mainframe.
• Composite Character / Decomposite Character: Sasha. While based on Maria from Jetman, her monster forms were actually Radiguet's (whose normal form was turned into an armored form for Trask).
  • Meanwhile, Jetman's Grey is instead turned into Strife, a telepresence robot controlled by Dillik.
  • The Vanguards use footage of the Neo-Jetmen, but in role are more like the Dimensians (alien warriors who used the Kestrelzord), though unlike the Dimensians, they're long dead by the time the series begins.
• Compressed Adaptation: 40 episodes to Jetman's 51; this was by way of both spreading out and compressing one or more Jetman episodes into either single episodes or two-parters. The author also didn't adapt any of the episodes that focused upon Tranza or vampire-Maria.
• Continuity Nod: The continuity was intentionally kept tight, so many episodes are arc-based with multiple subplots, and many characters originally intended for one appearance, like reporter Stacy Keene, were reused for multiple appearances, instead of inventing new characters.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the actual Power Rangers shows made during The '90s, particularly with the introduction of biomass. However, the author does take care to edit Sentai footage the way it would be edited for Power Rangers (no smoking, drinking or impalement; all the blows to the crotch used by Gai and Tetra Boy in the source were cut as well).
  • Although some of the dialogue still probably wouldn't fly in Power Rangers, including some references to premarital sex and quite a few uses to the k-word.
• Dead Fic: While the first season, based on Jetman, is entirely complete and stands well on its own, the second season of the fic, which partially adapts Choujuu Sentai Liveman, stopped after the fourth episode and shows no indications of ever getting finished.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Zephyros. Like his Sentai counterpart, Dryer Jigen, Zephyros is an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who gets to live in peace at the end of his episode. Unlike his Sentai counterpart, Zephyros returns a few episodes later, gets provoked into growing and destroyed (re-purposing an Imagine Spot from his Sentai episode for this scene).
  • As stated below, the Neo-Jetmen become the Vanguards, who were killed by Magda and Brimstone prior to the show.
• Deconstructed Trope:
  • Humongous Mecha: The Megazord stops working after a while due to so many monster battles and nobody to fix it, at least until Project: Phoenix enters the scene.
  • I Have to Go Iron My Dog: It turns out that making unexcused absences will attract the attention of your boss, as well as make you run the risk of losing your job. Fortunately for Luke, his boss was smart enough to put two and two together, and is pretty okay with it.
  • Monster of the Week: The final battle really drives home how necessary the Rangers are in any Power Rangers series; the Final Boss is just an ordinary monster-of-the-week but without any Zords left to fight it, it really drives home how useless conventional weapons are against giant monsters, and that no matter how silly a Power Rangers villain might be, the Rangers are the only thing standing between them and world domination or destruction.
• Demoted to Extra: The Pattersons and Barry only make a few more appearances after Parkview is destroyed.
  • Also, the Echo Blasters are destroyed after only one battle; this was because all other Jetman episodes featuring them had been adapted prior to their introduction and hence, their scenes were cut; this meant that they didn't have a purpose anymore.
  • Since the author didn't feel the need to adapt the Neo-Jetmen plot (which had essentially been done in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue), he instead reinterpreted them as the Vanguards, a Ranger-esque force on the planet of Illam who were destroyed by Magda and Brimstone prior to the show.
  • Speaking of the Vanguards, their base was the Jetmen's Skycamp base in the sentai; the author decided to cut it in favor of the space station and the Phoenix hangar, resulting in all footage showing the Zords emerging from Skycamp not being used.
• Dragon Ascendant: Mainframe takes over as the final antagonist after Trask is arrested and Dillik joins the good guys.
• Fantastic Racism: Trask towards humans, due to how humans drove Vampirians/Vampires away from Earth.
• Fusion Dance: The demons Zin and Drek eventually merged into the singular Zindrek; while Trask fuses Gog and Will into Demi-Gog and leaves him aboard the space station as a trap for the Rangers.
• Gender Flip: Yellow Lion is male in Liveman, while the Yellow Lion Ranger in Take Flight's second season is female. Her name? Trini. (A different Trini, but still...)
• Greater-Scope Villain: The empire that Magda used to rule; though their forces are seen in a flashback, and the purpose of the Ranger technology (and that of the Vanguards) was to combat them, they never actually encounter the Rangers. This would've been subverted in season 2, as a pair of warlords from the Empire, Gant and Eris, arrived on Earth, but the season didn't progress beyond their arrival.
  • Lord Omos is seemingly this to Trask and Dillik, but he was in fact a ruse concocted by Trask to motivate Dillik. There was an Omos, however.
• Human Resources: Trask makes the Nobodies and, once he's run out of Jinnsects, monsters out of biomass — a bunch of melted organic material. He has also used it to sustain himself, mainly when experimenting with the sunlight's effects on him. He turns beings into biomass using a special gun.
• Instant Expert: Averted on multiple counts. When it comes to things like martial arts and sword usage, Luke gives the other Rangers crash courses. For the tech, info is displayed in their visors (much like Lightspeed Rescue). They even somehow had English instructions for the Sky Kestrel (apparently Zordon somehow managed to give the Illamites a way to upload the instructions).
• Justified Trope: The series does this to a few Power Rangers tropes, such as why the villains don't send more than one monster at once (they're highly territorial and attack each other on sight...though this still doesn't explain why they don't just send each to a different country) and why no one ever seems to die in the monster attacks (because the future Rangers knew when the attacks were coming and evacuated the buildings).
• Mythology Gag: The final scene has Luke encounter a mugger on the day of a wedding, just like Gai in the Jetman finale. Unlike Gai however, he survives it.
  • The project that initially spawned the Ranger tech was named "Project: Jetman", mainly because the Echo Blasters featured the name on the sides and he couldn't edit those out. Not only that, but thanks to a wormhole generator, Zordon of Eltar assisted Dr. Bering prior to the first episode.
  • The Blue Battlezord's name is an homage to the Red Battlezord.
  • Despite the Neo-Jetman plot not actually being adapted (see above), one episode had General Taggart attempt to replace the departing Maggie with one of his own airmen (with plans to replace the other civilian Rangers), much like how the Neo-Jetmen were brought in.
  • The pentathlon used to select the Ranger candidates in the aborted season 2 was named the Liveman Pentathlon.
• Noodle Incident: We don't exactly learn what caused Maggie to break up with her ex-boyfriend Sean, but Word of God says that infidelity is a likely reason, given how Sean tries to be more honest with Maggie in his attempts to win her back.
• Oddly Small Organization: At first played straight, then averted. Like in Jetman, it's just the five Rangers for the first half of the show, albeit without a commanding officer (Dr. Bering having been held aboard the space station). Then mid-season, the US government and Project: Phoenix enter the picture, which gives the Rangers a big support staff.
  • For the villains, it was just Trask and Dillik for the first few episodes, with Magda and Sasha arriving; the former doesn't last long, but the latter becomes a recurring villain for a while who works with Trask and Dillik out of having nowhere else to go. Mainframe joins the main crew around the midway point, and ultimately becomes a Dragon Ascendant after Trask is imprisoned and Dillik undergoes a Heel–Face Turn. This doesn't count a few other antagonists, like the demons (Trask-controlled but they originated elsewhere), the Thadian Rangers and some human villains.
• One-Winged Angel: As stated, Trask has an armored form (Jetman's Radiguet) that he enters when exposed to sunlight; Sasha can turn herself into a giant monster and assume another, small-scale monster form (also both Radiguet's), while her mother Magda could also assume a monster form, though not at giant scale.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Space vampires, in this case.
• The Quisling: Will, who was jealous of Luke and Dr. Bering's burgeoning relationship and invited Trask into the station to spare himself and kill everyone else.
• Retcon: A few, as detailed in the commentary, but one of the most notable ones is the explanation that the talk button on the AviMorphers doesn't work when unmorphed, thus explaining the lack of communication between the Rangers outside of battle.
• Script Fic: The story is written entirely in script format. Like an actual Power Rangers season, the storylines and scripts are even written with stock footage from the adapted Super Sentai season in mind, represented by images from Jetman being inserted between the text (with a black screen saying "U.S. placeholder" for any intended US-original footage).
• Secret-Keeper: Quite a few, actually. Likely to keep in with the fic's (slightly) more realistic tone; obviously someone will suspect something.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Chris. His Jetman counterpart, Gai Yuki, is killed by a mugger on the wedding day of his former love interest Kaori and romantic rival Ryu. Chris, meanwhile, has a much more successful relationship with Casey; the first season ends on their wedding day. The mugger scenario was given to Luke, who's saved by Lisa.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dilik asks Trask if he'd ever pull this on him. Trask delivers a heartwarming answer:
  But your usefulness to me is that you're my friend.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Averted nicely; the scripts and several other clues say that Spring Valley is this world's counterpart to Oakland, CA. Other towns were mentioned on occasion, all of which are stated in the scripts to be alternate locations to real-world towns, with the exception of Windvale.

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