David Lopez is an Ordinary High-School Student, at a high school that is anything but ordinary! He lives in Michael's Landing, a town that's been continually under attack by supernatural monsters for his entire life. A place where the curriculum includes training in karate and magical theory, and everyone knows which parts of town to avoid on Thursdays because that's when the monsters typically attack. A frequent target of the local bullies, his fondest ambition is to survive high school and get out, to go off to college somewhere sane and safe.
Then a monster attack happens near him, and when the Solar Defenders show up to fight it, three of them fall in battle, leaving behind nothing but glowing crystals, which he and two of his friends pick up. They find themselves suddenly transformed into Solar Defenders themselves, and discover to their shock that their teammates are not, as they had been led to believe, an elite squadron of special forces sponsored by the US military, but rather kids like themselves, their own classmates, psychologically ill-suited to fighting on the front lines of the war they've suddenly found themselves thrust into.
Yeah. It's basically Power Rangers, with emphasis on psychological drama reminiscent of Sailor Nothing. It can be found free online
at Royal Road.
The story features examples of:
- Alien Invasion: As expected of a Power Rangers pastiche.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: Averted. Sensei tells the kids that one of the original team went off to college, became a therapist, and moved back to Michael's Landing with the explicit intent of offering her services to her successors, so they can have someone to talk to openly about the stresses of being a Defender.
- Amazonian Beauty: Kawena Kapule, a "gorgeous Hawaiian babe" who is second-ranked in karate in the school, is described as tall, well-built, and (according to David at least) the hottest girl in school. He has a massive crush on her but considers her utterly out of his league. She's also Defender Venus.
- Ancient Grome: The Defenders' names and colors come (mostly) from planets in the Solar System, which are named after Roman gods. David mistakenly calls them figures of Greek mythology.
- Applied Phlebotinum: What Aderan calls "kirila" and regular civilians call "monstronium." It's a rare substance found in the bodies of monsters that's extremely valuable for at least two reasons: it can strengthen steel to reinforce buildings against monster attacks, and it has magical properties that makes it a physics-defying source of clean energy.
- Ascended Fanboy: Josh is a huge Solar Defenders fanboy. When he becomes Defender Mars, Venus tells him it's not all it's cracked up to be.
- Atrocious Alias: The magical metal at the core of alien technology is known to the public as "monstronium" because it forms the core of the evil monsters. Aderan considers the name quite unfortunate and says it's properly known as "kirila."
- Jenny likes to tease David over his crush on Kawena by calling him "Montague," as in Romeo Montague, because of his affection for a certain "Kauple-ette." He finds the name quite groanworthy, and would really prefer she not compare him to someone who famously ended up getting both himself and his beloved killed.
- Big Bad: The evil aliens who unleash the monsters on Michael's Landing are known only as "The Masters."
- Big Brother Instinct: When David's little sister stumbles across a Fundament crystal, he vehemently vetoes any possible thought of her putting herself in danger as a member of the team, and insists that Aderan remove her powers.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Jenny claims that she dyes her hair blonde to complete the trio with her best friends David (black hair) and Josh (redhead.)
- Broken Bird: Kawena. The most senior member of the team, she's been fighting as Defender Venus for over two years now, and is bone-deep weary and jaded from it. She took over after the previous Venus was killed in front of her, who it's strongly implied was her own sister!
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Weekly monster attacks are so common in Michael's Landing that they've become an ordinary, routine part of life there.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: "Powers come upon me, Defender [name]!"
- Celeb Crush: Josh has a thing for Christine Stanton, an actress who plays Neptune on the TV show. When she shows up at the school as a motivational speaker for a school assembly, he derails the whole thing by walking out on-stage as Defender Mars and flirting with her.
- City of Adventure: Michael's Landing.
- Color-Coded Secret Identity: Averted hard. Venus calls out the way the TV show does this and states that it would be a good way to get themselves identified, and subsequently killed.
- Combat Pragmatist: There's an armored monster who's too tough to damage easily. There's a lake nearby. Mars comes up with the easy answer: pick it up, carry it to the lake, and hold it under until it drowns.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: It was a big mistake for the monsters to attack a school where literally every student is trained in self-defense!
- Dead Man Writing: Not confirmed yet, but David is writing out his story because he's afraid his entire team may be wiped out, and if so he wants someone to find it and learn the truth.
- Driven to Suicide: One of the original Defenders, after seeing three of her teammates (including her boyfriend) killed in front of her.
- Everytown, America: Michael's Landing is this, but with monster battles.
- Failure Knight: Sensei Billingsley. After several of the early Defenders got killed because they didn't know how to fight, he took it upon himself to train the students in karate. Every last one of them, just to be sure.
- Giant Mecha: Not actually robots, but the Defenders can summon up magical constructs known as Eidolons that fill the Zord role.
- God Test: Rachael, the psychiatrist, asks David to meet her in her office on the second floor, without coming in through the lobby.
- Government Agency of Fiction: After the monster situation gets worse, The Men in Black show up, claiming to be from the Department of Magical Investigation. They demonstrate advanced knowledge of magic, but are surprised to learn that the Defenders are high school students.
- No Such Agency: "Don't bother looking us up; the agency's very existence is highly classified."
- Heroic RRoD / Dented Iron: David worries that Kawena may be close to the breaking point. As the only experienced veteran on the team, this would likely lead to a Total Party Kill.
- Hero Insurance: Discussed. Venus tells the new team members to be careful to avoid collateral damage in their fights whenever possible.
- Hope Spot: In chapter 5, Aderan tells the Defenders that, given what information he has, the Masters must be coming close to running out of kirila, and they probably have less than two years' supply left until they're no longer able to make more monsters.
- I Know Mortal Kombat / Taught by Television: Josh becomes adept with his powers surprisingly quickly because he's a fan of the TV show and has analyzed the Defenders' moves in-depth.
- Inadequate Inheritor: David sees himself as this. He struggles to learn his powers, constantly feels like he has no business being Jupiter, and is trying to figure out some way to find the previous Defenders to pick their brains.
- Instant Armor: Morphing into Defender Form causes armor to grow out of their skin.
- Instant Expert: The magical crystals enhance their users' minds as well as their bodies, helping them be more effective and skilled fighters. The fact that they're already trained in martial arts as civilians doesn't hurt either.
- It Can Think: After the battle in Chicago, Jenny points out that the monster displayed signs of intelligence. Kawena responds that that doesn't make it any more sympathetic: It was killing people and causing heavy property damage, and if it's something more than a mindless beast simply following instinct, then it was being evil by choice.
- It's All My Fault: Sensei Billingsley lost his son, one of the original Defenders, to a monster attack. He blames himself for not having trained them well enough.
- Justified Trope:
- Why are the new recruits on the local team of
most-definitely-not-Power-Rangers all skilled martial artists from day 1? Because karate is a mandatory part of the curriculum at their high school, because a man who was an expert martial artist lost his son to a monster attack and has obsessively dedicated himself ever since to making sure the rest of the kids will know how to defend themselves. - Why do the bad guys follow a ridiculous Monster of the Week formula where they keep losing over and over for years and years? Because they're trying to wear down their opponents, and they follow an ideology claiming that attrition is the correct way to conquer.
- Why do people continue to live in the city that's been under attack by monsters for years rather than abandoning it? Because they discovered that monsters are made from a rare, valuable material, and recovering and selling it has provided a major economic boom to Michael's Landing, attracting people from all over the world who were willing to accept the risks.
- Why are the new recruits on the local team of
- Loves My Alter Ego: Not exactly love, but Christine Stanton ended up noticeably flustered (and admitted as much) after the surprise visit from Mars. Josh realizes that it won't ever amount to anything, though, because he can't reveal his secret identity. (Eden adds that even if she did know who he was, she's a grown woman and he's a teenaged high school student.)
- Make My Monster Grow: The kirila that the monsters are made from is unstable. If they take too much damage without being killed, they'll suddenly expand massively, then explode when defeated.
- The Masquerade: It's an explicit rule of the Defenders to protect their identity, so that the enemy doesn't go after their loved ones.
- MegaCorp: Underwood Consolidated, which seems to be at the center of the worldwide monstronium/kirila industry.
- The Mentor: An alien sorcerer known as Aderan, who teaches the kids what it means to be a Defender.
- Chapter 4 reveals that Sensei Billingsley knows all about The Masquerade, due to his son having been one of the original Defenders, and he wants to do everything possible to help the subsequent kids survive.
- Monster of the Week: Monster attacks typically happen every Thursday in Michael's Landing.
- My Greatest Failure: It's strongly implied that Kawena wasn't careful enough with secrets, which ended up somehow getting her sister killed, and that's why she cares so intensely about the rules now.
- Mythology Gag: "We've all seen the footage from the early days, with skyscrapers getting torn apart like they're made of cardboard."
- Never Found the Body: The lack of any indication that any students are dead or missing leads David to believe that the three fallen Defenders survived, though he has no idea who they were.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Subverted in chapter 4. David gets notified that he has detention because he ran away from the fight at the school, but it was Sensei's way of getting some time alone with the new recruits to explain to them what he knows and why he's helping them.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Aderan notes that the Masters changing their tactics is extremely troubling.
- When the monsters stop attacking the same city over and over and expand their range to elsewhere in the country, the President takes notice.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Having done this is Sensei Billingsley's motivation for helping out.
- Parents Know Their Children: Sensei Billingsley recognized that something had changed for his son after he became a Defender. He can also recognize his students, individually, by the quirks in the way they fight, which is how he identifies new Defenders.
- Post Modern Magick: Need a way for the heroes to communicate with each other? Use a chat app on everyone's phones. Find a magical metal that can be made to heat up immensely under specific conditions? Turn it into fuel for a power plant.
- Properly Paranoid: The school made karate a mandatory part of the curriculum. Then monsters attacked the school. David compares this to attacking a military base; the well-trained students, with the help of the Defenders, make short work of even a small army of bad guys.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: David sees the students at Abe Lincoln High, himself included, as this. High social status comes from proficiency in karate, and the worst way a girl can have "a bad reputation" is not by being a slut, but by being a coward.
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Venus claims that the Fundament crystals select teens because they are "still young enough and mentally flexible enough" for them to bond with.
- The Reveal: In chapter 10, David (and the audience) learns that Kawena's sister was never actually a Defender. It's strongly implied that her death around the time that Kawena became Venus is related to the reason why she cares so much about following the rules and protecting their identities.
- Rookie Red Ranger: Not actually red in this case, but David lands unwittingly in the role of Defender Jupiter, leader of the team, simply because he's the one who picked up the orange crystal.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! / Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Scott and Blake are considered above any consequences for their cruel actions because their dad "owns half the town."
- Secret Chaser: Apparently the school bullies are trying to find out who the Defenders are for some reason. Meanwhile, David is trying to figure out who the old Defenders were.
- Sentai: The Solar Defenders are essentially a Power Rangers team whose theme is planets of the solar system, and/or the Roman gods they're named after.
- Serial Numbers Filed Off: Valiant Invincible Solar Defenders, an in-universe kids' show based on cutting together footage of fights between monsters and the Defenders with actors extremely cheesily playing the heroes and villains. Sound familiar?
- Shipper on Deck: Jenny tries to encourage David to ask Kawena out. He resists because he thinks she's out of his league.
- Sixth Ranger: Chapter 5 hints that there should be one, the most powerful of all, but the Fundament for it has been lost. Clearly it'll be found soon.
- Take That!: Venus has a rant about how many stupid things the TV show does that would make their secret identities obvious, such as calling each other by name in battle, always wearing clothes that match their armor colors, and conspicuously being a group of friends who always hang out together despite being from different social circles. She warns the newcomers that doing such things is a good way to draw attention that will get them (or those close to them) killed.
- Teleport Spam: Mercury's preferred fighting style.
- Title Drop: Defender Venus sets the tone for the series:"You know how on that TV show, they call the Defenders 'the shield of mankind?' Well, they got that much right at least. We're the first and really the only defense against the Masters." She lowered her voice and looked him straight in the eyes. "Do you know what the role of a shield is? To get hit. To take the blows so the person being shielded won't have to, again and again and again until it finally..." she waved her hand vaguely. "...breaks. And then you replace it with another one."
- Two Girls to a Team: Inverted. There are three girls and two boys on the Solar Defenders.
- War for Fun and Profit: The Monstronium Hunters may not be actively encouraging the conflict, but Venus holds them in contempt for the way they get rich off the results of the Defenders' battles.
- World of Action Girls: All the female Defenders. It's a Sentai team.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: When Venus explains the roles of the other teammates, David points out that Venus was the goddess of love and beauty, and asks how that fits the theme of a team of warriors. She deflects the question, stating that all that really matters is she's the experienced veteran who knows how stuff works.
- Wrestler in All of Us: One civilian helps Jupiter out when he's getting overwhelmed by golems, by beating one of them with a folding chair.
- You Do Not Want To Know: Venus tells David that it's against the rules for her to tell him the identities of her fallen teammates, that the rules are there for his protection as well as theirs, and that he wouldn't want to know anyway. He does want to know anyway, reasoning that they might be able to help out given that they know how being a Defender works, and he's trying to figure out who they were.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Eden claims she saw another person in red Defender armor during the battle in Chicago. There's no evidence that another Mars exists. The team believes her, though they do point out that just because she saw it doesn't necessarily mean it's really there; between magic and technology there are plenty of ways to create a convincing illusion.
- Zero-Approval Gambit: Kawena's freaking out and hiding every time there's a monster attack is all an act, a part of The Masquerade, providing a convenient excuse to get away somewhere and transform in private.
