Pretty Poison by cynthia_harrell [Power Rangers, call]
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters presented here and am not making any profit off of this whatsoever.
Title: Pretty Poison
Words: 3,116 (total so far: 9,629)
Theme: call
Fandom: Power Rangers
Warnings: Power Ranger level of violence.
Tommi put the last of her books away. Queen Rita had commanded that she do her homework and sleep, and she intended to do just that. It was all part of the necessary cover that she had to live with until her mistress chose to let her attack the Power Rangers again. She could hardly wait for that moment. To see all of them fleeing from her, but most of all, to have her hands close around the neck of the Red Ranger…
His face flashed before her eyes, and her fingers tightened as if she could throttle him right now. If only she could!
What he’d been like when they’d met earlier, it made her furious still. He’d been waving her to the side as if she were helpless! She, who had already defeated ten or fifteen Putties on her own even before she’d been given the Green Power Coin. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know. It was his assumption that she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself that sent hate spurting along her veins.
Queen Rita had some kind of a plan that would involve the Red Ranger’s demise. Tommi was very certain of that. And she would be intimately involved, as her queen’s greatest warrior. Her lip curled at the mere thought of Goldar. She might have to educate him about underestimating her sooner or later. The way that he had looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking needed to be dealt with.
She glanced briefly at the clock; it was getting late. She’d already worked out, even before the meeting with the Red Ranger, and she’d eaten before getting to her homework. But she couldn’t say that she was actually all that tired right now. On the contrary, she felt incredibly energized, wanting to do something.
As long as she was ready when her mistress called, she didn’t have to stay around here, she decided. And she always would be. Perhaps going out would help her burn off enough energy so she could sleep in the first place. She tossed a light jacket on and headed out, not bothering to leave a note for her mother. The older woman would be sound asleep until morning at any rate. Her new job was taking a lot out of her.
For a moment, Tommi’s eyes softened as she glanced towards her mother’s room. The divorce and the move had been somewhat difficult, and she knew that if her mother knew what was going on with her now, she’d be more than a little worried. You don’t expect your kid to participate in taking over the planet.
Then Tommi shook her head. It wasn’t something her mother needed to be involved with, and when the time came, she would do what she could to protect her from harm anyway. Until then, Mom could just sleep.
She slipped out of the house, closing the door quietly behind herself, and headed down the street, towards an area that she’d overheard some kids talking about as a not very good area of town. That was fine with her. If someone tried to give her trouble, then they’d be getting trouble themselves. She quite looked forward to it.
Queen Rita had granted her a few extra powers, to be able to conceal herself more effectively from the Command Center’s sensors, should they get repaired, as well as from the Rangers themselves if they happened to come across her training against Putties or something of that nature. It wasn’t much, mainly a little illusion and misdirection, but she managed. Now, she would use it so no one who saw her now would recognize her as Tommi Oliver, if they knew her. You could never be too sure.
She had walked around for nearly ten minutes before she actually came across anyone. A small group, no more than four or five, standing underneath a streetlight and smoking. They’ve probably watched every movie they could get their hands on about rebels without a cause. Or a clue.
“Hey, there, good-looking!” One of them who looked to be the leader called to her. Tommi took another few steps, as if she hadn’t heard them in the first place. A sort of dark thrill shot through her, and she looked forward to them trying something. Anything. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”
She glanced over, only the slightest hint of curiosity rippling across her features. “I heard you.”
“Then come on over! Let’s be friends!” He laughed, and it was echoed by all of his friends, with a sort of nasty edge that would have sent most girls walking on, if they’d even been there in the first place. Tommi had a different reaction.
“I don’t need friends like you.” In truth, she didn’t need friends at all. All she needed was her Empress and to fight the Power Rangers. She took another few steps, and just as she’d known they would, the boys started to come closer.
“You shouldn’t be so rude, little miss,” the first one said. “We just want to have fun.”
Tommi decided that this was quickly becoming boring. Nothing they said or did was anything she couldn’t have predicted before leaving the house. It wasn’t quite enough to deal with all of the energy surging through her, but what she had in mind would finish that, she thought. Or at least put enough of it to rest so that she could get some rest.
“You do? What a coincidence. I want to have some fun, too.” She smiled a bit, and one of the others paused, putting a hand on the shoulder of his leader.
“Um, maybe we should think about this. She looks kinda weird.” He glanced towards her again, and Tommi only smiled a bit more widely. In the depths of her brown eyes, green light flickered, rising up and sparking, visible even to normal humans. “Really weird!”
The first shook his hand off and kept coming closer. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care. “So she’s got special contacts.” Or he was just an idiot. “Come on, babe, let’s have some fun!”
“As you wish.” Even as she spoke the words, he reached out to grab her by the arm. Tommi moved deftly out of the way, then seized his arm and bent it casually behind him. “I’m having fun, are you?”
“Huh? What?” He struggled as hard as he could, but her strength, even unmorphed, had been augmented by Rita, and there was nothing that he could do to get out of her grip. “Hey! What are you doing?”
Tommi smiled, and it was neither a sane smile nor one that anyone really wanted to see up close. “I told you already. I’m having fun.” She tightened her grip harshly. “If any of you come any closer, I’ll break his right arm.” Oh, she hoped they didn’t. She so hoped that they didn’t.
“She’ll do it!” The ‘leader’ squawked rather childishly, and she tightened her grip even more. “Hey! Stop that!”
“Shut up. I didn’t say that you could talk.” She turned to look at the others again. “Well? What is it?”
All of them stopped and stared, though only a moment earlier they’d looked about ready to jump her. They probably thought she couldn’t stand up to all of them. How little they knew.
Once they’d stood there for nearly a minute, she shifted suddenly, now with his other arm in her grip. “Good. As a reward, I won’t break that arm.” She tightened her hold even farther. “I think I’ll break this one instead.”
He flailed, as much as he could which wasn’t much at all, trying to look at her. “What? What for? Are you nuts?”
“There’s only one reason I’m doing this.” She leaned over and brushed her lips closer to his ear. “Because I can.” And her hands tightened even more on him, until she heard a very satisfying crack.
The wanna-be rebel squealed like a pig as she dropped him, holding his arm close to himself and staring at her as if she were as hideous as Goldar. “You’re crazy!”
Tommi smiled again, and the emerald flames in her eyes burst into full life, darting out at the group of them. “Yes. I am.” All of them waited only a moment or two before they helped their erstwhile leader up and got out of there.
She watched mildly as they fled, then kept on walking. She didn’t quite know this area as well as she would have liked, but if necessary, she had just enough magic from Rita’s gifting to be able to teleport back to her house. The Power Rangers weren’t going to be in any condition to track her at the moment.
They’re still too busy trying to get Zordon back. She sneered; he’d never contact them again if she had anything to say about it. If that meant going back in and undoing what they’d repaired, she would do that. And perhaps break quite a bit more while she was there. If their repair crew happened to be there, she’d break them as well.
That brought her mind back around to the Red Ranger. She wanted to break him, into as many pieces as she could possibly manage, if not even more. The thought of keeping him around to extend the torture briefly occurred to her, and she denied it at once. Only an idiot would not dispose of a target the first chance that they had.
She just wanted to make it very, very painful first.
Returning home didn’t take very long, and she discovered a shortcut that she thought might prove useful in the future. She got back inside, and was just about to enter her room when her mother’s door opened and the older woman stood there, bleary-eyed. “Tommi? Did you go out?”
“I just went to the store, that’s all.” Tommi hoped that her mom wouldn’t ask about why she didn’t have anything on her. “How are you feeling?”
“All right. I think I just need one of my pills.” The woman started to close the door, seemed to think better of it, then looked back at Tommi. “Have you made any new friends yet?”
Tommi smiled briefly, thinking of that pleasant sound of bone cracking, and the fear the Power Rangers had felt when she’d been unleashed. “I’m getting to know people.”
Rita watched her Green Ranger go on to bed, a satisfied smirk on her lips. Finster was already at work gathering the ingredients for her love potion, but she needed something else. The Rangers were not likely to figure out what was going on once she had the Red Ranger as much under her thumb as the Green Ranger was. But they were still repairing the Command Center. That had to be stopped. Zordon could still show back up and ruin everything.
That meant that Billy and Trini needed to be gotten rid of. Or at least Billy. He was the one who really knew what he was doing, Trini was a glorified helper, if that much.
What to do, what to do. She needed someone else who would be able to distract him long enough for her Green Ranger to wreck the Command Center to make certain it was never repaired, even if Billy got back to it. She could always make a Putty look like a human, but it would still be a Putty underneath it all, and have brains made from clay. She needed someone tough, strong, smart, and able to act without needing her to tell them what to do all of the time.
Wait! She knew! Perfect! She raised her wand, concentrating with all of her might. If nothing had changed, then she knew exactly who she had to call. The seeking spell gathered at the tip of her wand, and then shot outward into the universe, seeking the person that she wanted most of all at the moment.
“Scorpina!” she declared, her voice reverberating in power. “Scorpina, your Empress summons you!”
There was no answer right away, then another voice echoed about, female and strong. “Mistress Rita! You’re free!”
“Of course I am, you ninny. Get to Earth’s moon, now! I have a mission for you!” Scorpina had been sent into a sleep a century or so before Rita herself had been trapped in the dumpster. Rita hadn’t been able to work out how to get it undone in time before her own imprisonment, but with ten thousand years to work with, you could get a lot done.
Golden light coalesced into an armored human form just a few feet away, and there Scorpina was. She looked mostly human, except for that armor, and vaguely Asian in a way. She was actually a native of a distant galaxy, though she’d never spoken to Rita about her family beyond a few vague mentions of an older sister and a father. Rita wasn’t all that fond of her family so that wasn’t a subject that she brought up too often herself.
“What kept you?” she grumped before getting down to business. “I’ve created a Green Ranger, one I intend to use to get the Red Ranger out of the way. But there’s someone I need you to keep busy for a while too.”
Scorpina assimilated all of that, then nodded slightly. “Just tell me which one you want, and how long you want him out of the way.” Good, that was exactly the attitude that Rita liked in her servants.
“The Blue Ranger.” She gestured briefly, and an image of Billy, sound asleep in his own home at the moment, appeared. “You can do anything you want with him, just keep him away from their headquarters once I give you the word.”
That got a brief nod. “As you wish, it shall be done.” Scorpina saluted, then smirked. “Is Goldar still around?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Don’t get too busy, though. I’ll be needing you soon.” Rita dismissed her; it was getting late as well for her, and she had much that needed to be set into place the next day. And none of it would get done if she didn’t get her own sleep. Whoever said there was no rest for the wicked had never met Rita Repulsa.
Zordon struggled to make some kind of contact with either the Command Center or Alpha. Alpha did have some minor ability to communicate with the dimension that he was trapped in, though the Command Center’s equipment made it so much easier. For now, if he could connect, it would do.
He had scarcely expected that the Green Ranger would suddenly appear in their headquarters. The defenses had been designed to keep out those who did not have a Power Coin. He knew he should have redesigned them, just in case that Rita had chosen to give the Green Coin at last to someone. But there had been no indications that she had intended to do so.
It was imperative that he re-establish contact with the Power Rangers. They needed to know what was going on with Tommi Oliver as quickly as possible, to have any chance of saving her. He had known who she was the moment that she had arrived in there, of course. Even being trapped in a prison dimension the way he has hadn’t dulled his senses that much.
He didn’t know what else Rita might have planned, other than destroying the Rangers utterly, but it had to be stopped, and Tommi had to be freed. No true Power Ranger could ever be evil for long; the Power would not permit it. If the spell wasn’t broken, then there was a very good chance the Power itself would backlash against the one misusing it. It had been known to happen before. That was why there were only six Power Rangers, instead of the seven that there had once been.
Billy and Trini had to be trusted to repair everything, but would it be in time? How much did they know about what had happened? Zordon had no way of knowing any of that, and finding out was beyond him at the moment. His power could not reach that far. To know the identity behind a mask of the Power, yes. But to know what had happened in another dimension that he could not reach…no.
There were a few things that his powers could tell him, though not in the detail he wanted. A surge of evil flared through; someone new had arrived in the palace of the moon. Had Rita recruited another new warrior? It wasn’t strong enough to be someone like Lord Zedd or Master Vile. If it was someone like Scorpina, the Rangers would need help even more. Her poison was quite nearly as deadly as her battle skills.
Despite that all the Rangers could see of him when the equipment was working properly, Zordon had an entire body in this dimension, and now he slammed his fists down on the console before him, swearing violently in his native language of Eltarian. Eltarian was not a very satisfying language for profanity, so he resorted to a few other languages before he began to try again. They would be working on repairing Alpha and the monitors. This nightmare would end.
Billy slumped down in his desk’s chair, yawning. He and Trini had been up for a good portion of the previous night, trying to get what they could done on fixing everything. He thought that they had made progress, but it was hard to tell. Alpha was more or less back online, but not in a condition for them to ask him questions. It would take some recharging and a system and memory check to be certain everything was working right.
“Class.” He looked up a little as the teacher called for their attention. “This is a bit unusual, I know, but we have another new student. I’d like all of you to meet Sabrina Dubois.”
She was tall. She was pretty, with a sweep of long black hair, and Billy suddenly realized he was blushing as she looked right at him. She spoke with the faintest hint of an exotic accent. “I’m so very pleased to meet all of you.”
Billy swallowed a bit and reminded himself that he didn’t have time to be attracted to a face, no matter how nice it was. He had work to do after school, that involved saving the world.
But when she smiled at him, and wound up sitting beside him, it was a little hard to remember it.
To Be Continued
Title: Pretty Poison
Words: 3,116 (total so far: 9,629)
Theme: call
Fandom: Power Rangers
Warnings: Power Ranger level of violence.
Tommi put the last of her books away. Queen Rita had commanded that she do her homework and sleep, and she intended to do just that. It was all part of the necessary cover that she had to live with until her mistress chose to let her attack the Power Rangers again. She could hardly wait for that moment. To see all of them fleeing from her, but most of all, to have her hands close around the neck of the Red Ranger…
His face flashed before her eyes, and her fingers tightened as if she could throttle him right now. If only she could!
What he’d been like when they’d met earlier, it made her furious still. He’d been waving her to the side as if she were helpless! She, who had already defeated ten or fifteen Putties on her own even before she’d been given the Green Power Coin. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know. It was his assumption that she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself that sent hate spurting along her veins.
Queen Rita had some kind of a plan that would involve the Red Ranger’s demise. Tommi was very certain of that. And she would be intimately involved, as her queen’s greatest warrior. Her lip curled at the mere thought of Goldar. She might have to educate him about underestimating her sooner or later. The way that he had looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking needed to be dealt with.
She glanced briefly at the clock; it was getting late. She’d already worked out, even before the meeting with the Red Ranger, and she’d eaten before getting to her homework. But she couldn’t say that she was actually all that tired right now. On the contrary, she felt incredibly energized, wanting to do something.
As long as she was ready when her mistress called, she didn’t have to stay around here, she decided. And she always would be. Perhaps going out would help her burn off enough energy so she could sleep in the first place. She tossed a light jacket on and headed out, not bothering to leave a note for her mother. The older woman would be sound asleep until morning at any rate. Her new job was taking a lot out of her.
For a moment, Tommi’s eyes softened as she glanced towards her mother’s room. The divorce and the move had been somewhat difficult, and she knew that if her mother knew what was going on with her now, she’d be more than a little worried. You don’t expect your kid to participate in taking over the planet.
Then Tommi shook her head. It wasn’t something her mother needed to be involved with, and when the time came, she would do what she could to protect her from harm anyway. Until then, Mom could just sleep.
She slipped out of the house, closing the door quietly behind herself, and headed down the street, towards an area that she’d overheard some kids talking about as a not very good area of town. That was fine with her. If someone tried to give her trouble, then they’d be getting trouble themselves. She quite looked forward to it.
Queen Rita had granted her a few extra powers, to be able to conceal herself more effectively from the Command Center’s sensors, should they get repaired, as well as from the Rangers themselves if they happened to come across her training against Putties or something of that nature. It wasn’t much, mainly a little illusion and misdirection, but she managed. Now, she would use it so no one who saw her now would recognize her as Tommi Oliver, if they knew her. You could never be too sure.
She had walked around for nearly ten minutes before she actually came across anyone. A small group, no more than four or five, standing underneath a streetlight and smoking. They’ve probably watched every movie they could get their hands on about rebels without a cause. Or a clue.
“Hey, there, good-looking!” One of them who looked to be the leader called to her. Tommi took another few steps, as if she hadn’t heard them in the first place. A sort of dark thrill shot through her, and she looked forward to them trying something. Anything. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”
She glanced over, only the slightest hint of curiosity rippling across her features. “I heard you.”
“Then come on over! Let’s be friends!” He laughed, and it was echoed by all of his friends, with a sort of nasty edge that would have sent most girls walking on, if they’d even been there in the first place. Tommi had a different reaction.
“I don’t need friends like you.” In truth, she didn’t need friends at all. All she needed was her Empress and to fight the Power Rangers. She took another few steps, and just as she’d known they would, the boys started to come closer.
“You shouldn’t be so rude, little miss,” the first one said. “We just want to have fun.”
Tommi decided that this was quickly becoming boring. Nothing they said or did was anything she couldn’t have predicted before leaving the house. It wasn’t quite enough to deal with all of the energy surging through her, but what she had in mind would finish that, she thought. Or at least put enough of it to rest so that she could get some rest.
“You do? What a coincidence. I want to have some fun, too.” She smiled a bit, and one of the others paused, putting a hand on the shoulder of his leader.
“Um, maybe we should think about this. She looks kinda weird.” He glanced towards her again, and Tommi only smiled a bit more widely. In the depths of her brown eyes, green light flickered, rising up and sparking, visible even to normal humans. “Really weird!”
The first shook his hand off and kept coming closer. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care. “So she’s got special contacts.” Or he was just an idiot. “Come on, babe, let’s have some fun!”
“As you wish.” Even as she spoke the words, he reached out to grab her by the arm. Tommi moved deftly out of the way, then seized his arm and bent it casually behind him. “I’m having fun, are you?”
“Huh? What?” He struggled as hard as he could, but her strength, even unmorphed, had been augmented by Rita, and there was nothing that he could do to get out of her grip. “Hey! What are you doing?”
Tommi smiled, and it was neither a sane smile nor one that anyone really wanted to see up close. “I told you already. I’m having fun.” She tightened her grip harshly. “If any of you come any closer, I’ll break his right arm.” Oh, she hoped they didn’t. She so hoped that they didn’t.
“She’ll do it!” The ‘leader’ squawked rather childishly, and she tightened her grip even more. “Hey! Stop that!”
“Shut up. I didn’t say that you could talk.” She turned to look at the others again. “Well? What is it?”
All of them stopped and stared, though only a moment earlier they’d looked about ready to jump her. They probably thought she couldn’t stand up to all of them. How little they knew.
Once they’d stood there for nearly a minute, she shifted suddenly, now with his other arm in her grip. “Good. As a reward, I won’t break that arm.” She tightened her hold even farther. “I think I’ll break this one instead.”
He flailed, as much as he could which wasn’t much at all, trying to look at her. “What? What for? Are you nuts?”
“There’s only one reason I’m doing this.” She leaned over and brushed her lips closer to his ear. “Because I can.” And her hands tightened even more on him, until she heard a very satisfying crack.
The wanna-be rebel squealed like a pig as she dropped him, holding his arm close to himself and staring at her as if she were as hideous as Goldar. “You’re crazy!”
Tommi smiled again, and the emerald flames in her eyes burst into full life, darting out at the group of them. “Yes. I am.” All of them waited only a moment or two before they helped their erstwhile leader up and got out of there.
She watched mildly as they fled, then kept on walking. She didn’t quite know this area as well as she would have liked, but if necessary, she had just enough magic from Rita’s gifting to be able to teleport back to her house. The Power Rangers weren’t going to be in any condition to track her at the moment.
They’re still too busy trying to get Zordon back. She sneered; he’d never contact them again if she had anything to say about it. If that meant going back in and undoing what they’d repaired, she would do that. And perhaps break quite a bit more while she was there. If their repair crew happened to be there, she’d break them as well.
That brought her mind back around to the Red Ranger. She wanted to break him, into as many pieces as she could possibly manage, if not even more. The thought of keeping him around to extend the torture briefly occurred to her, and she denied it at once. Only an idiot would not dispose of a target the first chance that they had.
She just wanted to make it very, very painful first.
Returning home didn’t take very long, and she discovered a shortcut that she thought might prove useful in the future. She got back inside, and was just about to enter her room when her mother’s door opened and the older woman stood there, bleary-eyed. “Tommi? Did you go out?”
“I just went to the store, that’s all.” Tommi hoped that her mom wouldn’t ask about why she didn’t have anything on her. “How are you feeling?”
“All right. I think I just need one of my pills.” The woman started to close the door, seemed to think better of it, then looked back at Tommi. “Have you made any new friends yet?”
Tommi smiled briefly, thinking of that pleasant sound of bone cracking, and the fear the Power Rangers had felt when she’d been unleashed. “I’m getting to know people.”
Rita watched her Green Ranger go on to bed, a satisfied smirk on her lips. Finster was already at work gathering the ingredients for her love potion, but she needed something else. The Rangers were not likely to figure out what was going on once she had the Red Ranger as much under her thumb as the Green Ranger was. But they were still repairing the Command Center. That had to be stopped. Zordon could still show back up and ruin everything.
That meant that Billy and Trini needed to be gotten rid of. Or at least Billy. He was the one who really knew what he was doing, Trini was a glorified helper, if that much.
What to do, what to do. She needed someone else who would be able to distract him long enough for her Green Ranger to wreck the Command Center to make certain it was never repaired, even if Billy got back to it. She could always make a Putty look like a human, but it would still be a Putty underneath it all, and have brains made from clay. She needed someone tough, strong, smart, and able to act without needing her to tell them what to do all of the time.
Wait! She knew! Perfect! She raised her wand, concentrating with all of her might. If nothing had changed, then she knew exactly who she had to call. The seeking spell gathered at the tip of her wand, and then shot outward into the universe, seeking the person that she wanted most of all at the moment.
“Scorpina!” she declared, her voice reverberating in power. “Scorpina, your Empress summons you!”
There was no answer right away, then another voice echoed about, female and strong. “Mistress Rita! You’re free!”
“Of course I am, you ninny. Get to Earth’s moon, now! I have a mission for you!” Scorpina had been sent into a sleep a century or so before Rita herself had been trapped in the dumpster. Rita hadn’t been able to work out how to get it undone in time before her own imprisonment, but with ten thousand years to work with, you could get a lot done.
Golden light coalesced into an armored human form just a few feet away, and there Scorpina was. She looked mostly human, except for that armor, and vaguely Asian in a way. She was actually a native of a distant galaxy, though she’d never spoken to Rita about her family beyond a few vague mentions of an older sister and a father. Rita wasn’t all that fond of her family so that wasn’t a subject that she brought up too often herself.
“What kept you?” she grumped before getting down to business. “I’ve created a Green Ranger, one I intend to use to get the Red Ranger out of the way. But there’s someone I need you to keep busy for a while too.”
Scorpina assimilated all of that, then nodded slightly. “Just tell me which one you want, and how long you want him out of the way.” Good, that was exactly the attitude that Rita liked in her servants.
“The Blue Ranger.” She gestured briefly, and an image of Billy, sound asleep in his own home at the moment, appeared. “You can do anything you want with him, just keep him away from their headquarters once I give you the word.”
That got a brief nod. “As you wish, it shall be done.” Scorpina saluted, then smirked. “Is Goldar still around?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Don’t get too busy, though. I’ll be needing you soon.” Rita dismissed her; it was getting late as well for her, and she had much that needed to be set into place the next day. And none of it would get done if she didn’t get her own sleep. Whoever said there was no rest for the wicked had never met Rita Repulsa.
Zordon struggled to make some kind of contact with either the Command Center or Alpha. Alpha did have some minor ability to communicate with the dimension that he was trapped in, though the Command Center’s equipment made it so much easier. For now, if he could connect, it would do.
He had scarcely expected that the Green Ranger would suddenly appear in their headquarters. The defenses had been designed to keep out those who did not have a Power Coin. He knew he should have redesigned them, just in case that Rita had chosen to give the Green Coin at last to someone. But there had been no indications that she had intended to do so.
It was imperative that he re-establish contact with the Power Rangers. They needed to know what was going on with Tommi Oliver as quickly as possible, to have any chance of saving her. He had known who she was the moment that she had arrived in there, of course. Even being trapped in a prison dimension the way he has hadn’t dulled his senses that much.
He didn’t know what else Rita might have planned, other than destroying the Rangers utterly, but it had to be stopped, and Tommi had to be freed. No true Power Ranger could ever be evil for long; the Power would not permit it. If the spell wasn’t broken, then there was a very good chance the Power itself would backlash against the one misusing it. It had been known to happen before. That was why there were only six Power Rangers, instead of the seven that there had once been.
Billy and Trini had to be trusted to repair everything, but would it be in time? How much did they know about what had happened? Zordon had no way of knowing any of that, and finding out was beyond him at the moment. His power could not reach that far. To know the identity behind a mask of the Power, yes. But to know what had happened in another dimension that he could not reach…no.
There were a few things that his powers could tell him, though not in the detail he wanted. A surge of evil flared through; someone new had arrived in the palace of the moon. Had Rita recruited another new warrior? It wasn’t strong enough to be someone like Lord Zedd or Master Vile. If it was someone like Scorpina, the Rangers would need help even more. Her poison was quite nearly as deadly as her battle skills.
Despite that all the Rangers could see of him when the equipment was working properly, Zordon had an entire body in this dimension, and now he slammed his fists down on the console before him, swearing violently in his native language of Eltarian. Eltarian was not a very satisfying language for profanity, so he resorted to a few other languages before he began to try again. They would be working on repairing Alpha and the monitors. This nightmare would end.
Billy slumped down in his desk’s chair, yawning. He and Trini had been up for a good portion of the previous night, trying to get what they could done on fixing everything. He thought that they had made progress, but it was hard to tell. Alpha was more or less back online, but not in a condition for them to ask him questions. It would take some recharging and a system and memory check to be certain everything was working right.
“Class.” He looked up a little as the teacher called for their attention. “This is a bit unusual, I know, but we have another new student. I’d like all of you to meet Sabrina Dubois.”
She was tall. She was pretty, with a sweep of long black hair, and Billy suddenly realized he was blushing as she looked right at him. She spoke with the faintest hint of an exotic accent. “I’m so very pleased to meet all of you.”
Billy swallowed a bit and reminded himself that he didn’t have time to be attracted to a face, no matter how nice it was. He had work to do after school, that involved saving the world.
But when she smiled at him, and wound up sitting beside him, it was a little hard to remember it.
To Be Continued