I've been away from RPing for a while now, but I've had an idea bumping around in my head that I figured I'd share and see if there was any interest. It's sort of a mixture of the suit from the new Blue Beetle movie and Power Rangers, wherein a group of seniors at Angel Grove High bond with different colored Scarabs. Beyond the references to Angel Grove and the Scarabs, this would be a completely original continuity that we develop as we write. Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it to get an idea how the suits work:



To keep the story from getting as convoluted as in my past RPs, I want to keep the initial plot fairly simple: My character spent the Summer before Senior Year visiting his archeologist father in Egypt, who had recently uncovered a hidden chamber in a tomb and unwittingly awakened a small swarm of alien robot Scarabs who had been locked away millennia ago. They used their cloaking abilities to become invisible and stow away in my character's luggage when he leaves to return to Angel Grove, and upon getting home and opening his suitcase, the Red Scarab jumps out and bonds to him. It tries to take over his body and command him to find hosts for the other Scarabs, but he is able to overpower the AI and maintain control of himself.

After learning to navigate the alien software of the suit, he is able to hack into the other Scarabs to reprogram their AI systems as well, except for the Black Scarab, which manages to escape. It later finds a host that will become the first major villain and begins breeding organic-cybernetic hybrid monsters. Knowing he needs to find willing hosts for the other Scarabs to fight off the growing armies of monsters, he invites his friends (your characters) over to his mansion and reveals the truth to them. Just then, the Black Ranger and the monsters swarm the mansion, and your characters bond with the other Scarabs to fight them off.

Feel free to pick any colors you all want, except for Red (my character) and Black (the villain). The suits all look like the Blue Beetle one in the movie, just imagine your chosen color instead of blue. The powers are similar to the movie suit as well. I'll leave it there for now, we can flesh it out more if there is interest.

Interested!!

Dibs on a pink scarab. :P

As a fan of both Blue Beetle and Power Rangers, I'm interested in this.

Cool! So, we have Red, Black, and Pink claimed. What colors are the rest of you thinking?

Oh, and as for the initial gathering, I'm thinking it will be a couple weeks into the start of the school year, and the media is abuzz with footage of an armored person fighting small groups of monsters. Many thought it was just some marketing campaign for an upcoming movie or something until the FBI started crawling all over Angel Grove and the greater Los Angeles area. The media has labeled him the Power Ranger, and then when footage of the Black Scarab host also surfaced, they dubbed him the Dark Ranger. So when my character invites your characters over to his house, they already know about the existence of these supposed super-powered individuals, but are shocked to discover their friend is the Power Ranger. Once they begin fighting as a group, the media switches the name to plural and begins referring to the original as the Red Ranger and all the others by their colors as well.

So, of course, since the FBI is crawling around, we have a strong interest in protecting our identities. Perhaps towards the climax of the first story arc, we can form some kind of agreement with the Agent in charge of the investigation and work together to thwart the Dark Ranger.

Sounds awesome! I'll probably take the Blue Ranger(either gonna make a chill, guitarist nonbinary teen who's actually pretty smart about robotics/mechanics, but who hides it and pretends to be dumb for some reason, or a seemingly typical nerd who has an athletic family/older, more successful brother and kinda learned about how to fight/is more athletic than you'd expect him to be)!

Sounds awesome! I'll probably take the Blue Ranger(either gonna make a chill, guitarist nonbinary teen who's actually pretty smart about robotics/mechanics, but who hides it and pretends to be dumb for some reason, or a seemingly typical nerd who has an athletic family/older, more successful brother and kinda learned about how to fight/is more athletic than you'd expect him to be)!

Cool! Your char and my char could probably work together to eventually design them some extra gear and maybe a Command Center/Bat Cave thing underneath his mansion. It seems your char would be more geared towards the hardware/mechanical/engineering side, while my character leans more towards software/programming/hacking. Eventually they could also build a beetle airship thing like in the movie that can cloak itself and serve as a mobile base of operations.

As for aesthetic for their first Command Center, I'm thinking something similar to the updated one at CranstonTech in the new Power Rangers: Once & Always movie, but that's not really utility-friendly, so we'll see.

Alright! I'm honestly really excited about all this!!

Alright! I'm honestly really excited about all this!!

Me too! So, we've got at least four players on board, so four Rangers at least - Red, Pink, Blue, and whatever color Martian picks. And then the Black/Dark Ranger as the first villain. If we don't get any other players interested in the next day or so, we can just start with us four and then either play extra characters or maybe keep the extra Scarabs locked away until we find new hosts, which can come in at a later time if more players become interested down the line.

You had my interest at Power Rangers

You had my interest at Power Rangers

So potentially five rangers now XD. What color did you want?

<Snipped quote by Duthguy>

So potentially five rangers now XD. What color did you want?

Well I'm willing to give @Martian first choice since they posted first, but I'm currently thinking green, yellow or purple

Okay, cool! And to explain how the suits can create weapons and such, I'm thinking each Scarab has a pocket dimension within its power core where extra nano-mass is stored. This matter is then summoned when they suit-up and when they conjure weapons and accessories. The Dark Ranger has expelled some of his extra nano-mass to create the organic-cybernetic hybrid monsters with the goal of achieving full breeding capabilities to grow an endless supply of nano-mass. This falls in line with the original programming of the Scarabs, which is conquer planets and then dial home once all resistance has been destroyed.

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the theme they used for the Once & Always special:



And here's a fan-made version:



And here's their morphs:

Sorry about the delay in responding. As far as colors go I kind of really want to go with orange. However if we are sticking to traditional Ranger colors, then I guess green would be fine. For my character concept I wanted to go with an activist girl who writes for the school newspaper, maybe becoming editor in her senior year. It would be cool if she was one of the first to report on the mysterious Power Ranger and Dark Ranger.

My character comes from a wealthy and influential family in the city. He is a drag queen, social media influencer, and aspiring actor. He’s president of the schools drama department and does drag queen story hour for the kids at the local library. And he’s gay of course.

There may or may not be family drama with the whole drag queen thing, but I haven’t decided.

Sorry about the delay in responding. As far as colors go I kind of really want to go with orange. However if we are sticking to traditional Ranger colors, then I guess green would be fine. For my character concept I wanted to go with an activist girl who writes for the school newspaper, maybe becoming editor in her senior year. It would be cool if she was one of the first to report on the mysterious Power Ranger and Dark Ranger.

Okay, cool! You can be whichever color. I know Duthguy had mentioned Green, so if you go with your first choice, then we'd have Red, Blue, Pink, Green, and Orange for a core team of five Power Rangers, and then the Dark Ranger as the first villain.

My character comes from a wealthy and influential family in the city. He is a drag queen, social media influencer, and aspiring actor. He’s president of the schools drama department and does drag queen story hour for the kids at the local library. And he’s gay of course.

There may or may not be family drama with the whole drag queen thing, but I haven’t decided.

Sounds good!

Also, a cool idea I have for power ups down the line is the discovery of a second set of Metallic Scarabs that can bond with our colored ones to make us stronger, adding in lines and segments of gold and silver to our suits.

I should have the main thread with my character sheet up in the next day or two. Since we have five rangers, I think we're good to get started XD.

Hey if there's any open spots I would absolutely be interested in this!

Hey if there's any open spots I would absolutely be interested in this!

Sure! We could use a sixth ranger XD. What color were you thinking? Assuming everyone goes with what they were discussing, then Red, Black, Blue, Pink, Green, and Orange are taken.