Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Power Rangers used here; all are the property of Saban/Jetix/Disney (Who does own the rights anyway)
Feedback: Please do; I'd like to know I'm not wasting my time here
AN: For 'Dino Thunder', this is set shortly after 'Fighting Spirit'; for the Green Ranger, it's just after he was given control of the Dragonzord but before Rita's spell was broken, and for… nah, you'll find out when I get there
Dino Thunder: Generations
Smiling as he walked back into his house, Tommy stretched casually as he stared around his bedroom.
He had to admit, it was good to be out of his Ranger costume at long last. True, it had been good to get the chance to stay off work for a while- he couldn't even remember the last time he'd had a decent holiday since he recovered the Dino Gems and found employment at Reefside- but he still didn't regard it as a real holiday when he couldn't even eat normally…
He shuddered slightly at the memory. He'd never been that keen on needles- too many times finding himself at the wrong end of the claws of some monster or another, he assumed- and that intravenous drip he'd needed to use to eat had definitely not been fun.
And as for how he had been forced to go to the toilet…
He stopped himself before he went too far; he did not want to go there anymore.
Still, he thought to himself, as he reached over to a nearby drawer and took an old folder out of it, at least it gave me a chance to think on things.
Specifically, on the time when he had become Earth's first Green Ranger and nearly destroyed the others.
He hadn't told it to anyone else at the time, but, in some ways, Trent's presence had helped him to deal with his remaining feelings of guilt about that time of his life. After all, after all the time the team had spent convincing Trent that none of them blamed him for what he'd done while he'd been under the control of the white gem's evil, why should he keep blaming himself for what he'd done in a similar positon?
Removing the contents of the folder, he smiled slightly as he spread them out before him. It was all a mass of clippings from the Angel Grove Times from his days with the original Ranger teams, each one detailing the Power Ranger's battles with the monster of the day, with an extra article when a new Ranger or zord was introduced, and particularly long articles when the Rangers had gone from their original costumes to the Zeo Rangers, and then to the Turbo Rangers, followed by the articles written about the Space Rangers.
There were articles about the later Ranger teams as well, of course, but he mostly kept them in another folder, along with the contact numbers of the other Red Rangers following their mission to destroy Serpentera. He had maintained an interest in the Ranger teams ever since he left the role, of course, but ever since the Space Rangers retired, he'd felt less of a… connection to the teams, he guessed was the best way of putting it. After all he no longer really knew anyone in the teams; it was hard to feel connected to someone when you'd never met them, even if you had several things in common.
Staring at one of the first articles in the folder, detailing the Rangers' defeat of Goldar shortly after the destruction of the Sword of Darkness, Tommy smiled wistfully at the memory of how the article had come to be published.
It had been the first real interview the Power Rangers had ever given; previous news articles about them had just been written from an outsider's perspective, since the Rangers were reluctant to spend too much time associating with reporters in case they said something that may lead to someone working out who they really were. However, with Tommy now a member of the team, and with all the anti-Green Ranger sentiment that was flying around the city, the Rangers had decided that now was as good a time as any to break that rule and set the record straight.
After fighting off Goldar's latest attack with the Dragonzord in Battle Mode (His attack seemed to be a random one for no real purpose other than trying to get revenge on the team for depriving Rita of her greatest weapon), Jason and Tommy had contacted the offices of the Times and agreed to give an interview. The reporters had only been too eager to take the Red and Green Rangers up on the offer, and the interview had been a resounding success; the papers had sold more copies that day than ever before.
"Doctor O.?" a voice said from the door of the study.
"Mmm?" Tommy said, glancing back over his shoulder and smiling as Conner and Kira walked in, looking at the articles before him in surprise. Noting the ease with which they had entered so close to each other, Tommy chuckled slightly; for some reason, Conner's attitude towards Kira had been reminding him of himself back in his early Ranger days…
Specifically, the way he'd always acted around Kimberly before Zack had managed to knock some sense into him.
He still couldn't quite understand why some people still believed that Kira was interested in Trent. Sure, she'd been interested in him at first, but she seemed to have cooled off on him after his decision to run away so he couldn't endanger anyone rather than stick around and ask the Rangers for help. If he'd really wanted to cure himself, Kira reasoned, he should have come to them for help; the Rangers in general, and Hayley and Tommy in particular, knew more about the Dino Gems than anyone else alive.
But just running away like that… as though he didn't want to risk their rejecting him because of what he'd done under the gem's control, rather than take the chance and letting them help him…
It must have struck Kira as the mark of a coward. Even now, Trent hadn't bothered to fully explain or apologise for running off back then; he'd just joined the team and hadn't even mentioned anything about his time under the gem's control.
Even Trent's new membership of the team couldn't make up for his earlier behaviour, and Tommy couldn't exactly blame Kira. For all the similarities he saw between Trent and himself, Tommy had to admit that he preferred the idea of Conner getting the girl. The young man had come a long way from the arrogant, selfish boy he'd been when he'd first found himself with the role of the Red Ranger, and Tommy had the feeling that Conner would go on to make him proud, both as a Ranger and as a person. He and Kira would make a good couple, if only they'd admit that they had feelings for each other…
Shaking his head to bring himself back to the moment, Tommy noticed Conner studying the news articles relating to the Green Ranger as Kira read them over his shoulder.
"Whoa…" Conner said, as he glanced over at Tommy in surprise. "How come you never told us that you once grew to the size of a Megazord?"
Tommy sighed as he glanced over at his two fellow Rangers, a downcast expression on his face.
"It's not exactly the kind of thing I like to think about, Conner," he explained, as the Red and Yellow Rangers leant against a nearby wall as Tommy turned in his chair to look at them. "After all, I did nearly destroy the Dinozords; if Zordon hadn't come back when he did, the others would have been powerless against Rita's larger scale attacks. It's not the kind of memory I'm proud of, as you can guess."
"Yeah, we both know that, but still, wasn't it even slightly cool to be that size?" Kira asked, looking inquiringly at her science teacher. "I mean, even if you don't like remembering what you were doing at the time, that's not the kind of thing that happens every day, right?"
Tommy smiled thoughtfully as he looked at Kira.
He couldn't deny that she had a point; it had been rather interesting to be that size. True, he preferred to think of the second time he'd been grown to the size of a zord, when Trey had given him and the other Zeo Rangers the power to grow to giant size to battle King Mondo and the other members of the Royal House of Gadgetry for the final time, but there was something about that first time that still stayed in his memory…
On a distant island off the coast, the half-man half-dinosaur known to all as Mesogog smiled to himself as he watched the images unfold on his monitor.
"So, Oliver still has concerns about his time as the Green Power Ranger…" he mused to himself, tapping his nose thoughtfully with a claw. "This may prove useful to me…"
Standing up, he walked over to a nearby console, and began to tap on a few buttons as he studied the readouts. This particular machine was one of his earlier attempts to revert humanity to the age of the dinosaurs. Inspired by an old episode of that British science-fiction serial Doctor Who- the episode, known as Invasion of the Dinosaurs, had starred Jon Pertwee as the Doctor and been released in 1974, as Mesogog vaguely recalled-, he had attempted to use a time machine to pull some dinosaurs into the present. With the dinosaurs active nowadays, they could then go on the rampage and destroy the humans in the world, before settling down and breeding more dinosaurs to bring the world back to the peace and simplicity of those long-lost days.
Unfortunately, the machine had proven ineffective at achieving its intended purpose; tests had shown that it would only work in taking something from the past that still existed in the present, and even then Mesogog had required a DNA sample of the creature in question, even if just when searching for a random animal rather than a specific individual. Mesogog had hoped that the existence of the biozords may have allowed him to pull those dinosaurs into the present, given that the biozords were technically alive, but this hope had been dashed; it evidently didn't count if the creatures were now mainly mechanical.
But the Green Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger… the past self of Doctor Oliver himself; a man very much alive in this time and place, and whose DNA sample Mesogog held after he had captured Oliver while seeking to unlock the power of the Black Dino Gem…
Now that was a different manner.
And, if Mesogog recalled the history of the Power Rangers correctly, the Green Ranger's zord was still active in this time; the other five had been 'recycled' into the Thunderzords, which had then been destroyed, but the Dragonzord had simply stopped coming out for combat for reasons unknown. All he had to do was scan back along the timeline until the moment when the Green Ranger had been given the means to control the zord, but before the spell that had been cast by Rita Repulsa had been broken, and then…
Mesogog smiled.
He'd enjoy seeing how the Rangers coped with that little problem…
As he watched the image unfold on the screen before him, resembling a video being rewound while the image played back on a TV screen, Mesogog's finger hovered over the button to pause the scan, watching the blinking button that indicated the presence of Oliver's DNA in the time in question. There was a couple of brief moments where the machine seemed confused, but Mesogog dismissed them easily enough; he recalled records of a few instances where time around Angel Grove had been manipulated, and there had also been that incident where there had been some kind of clone of the Green Ranger active that had battled the White Ranger.
And if those are taking place, I must be getting close, Mesogog smiled to himself. The screen seemed to be getting there… he could just see four robots on the screen- a blue Triceratops, a black Mastodon, and a yellow Sabre-toothed Tiger running towards a large green Dragon-… the dragon was fighting a red Tyrannosaurus… the Green Ranger was standing on a building as he taunted the other five Rangers…
Instantly Mesogog halted the reverse scan, and smiled as he saw the Red Ranger raise one hand in a pleading gesture as he yelled up at the Green Ranger.
"Tommy, stop!" the Red Ranger yelled desperately. "You don't know what you're doing!"
The Green Ranger only seemed to stare scornfully at the other Rangers as he raised the Dragon Dagger and the Sword of Darkness. "I'm destroying you!" he yelled back at his foes. "And I'm doing it because my empress commands. Soon, she'll rule the world!"
The Green Ranger began to laugh evilly, and Mesogog seized his chance. He pressed the button that would activate the transfer…
And then, as though he had always been there, the Green Ranger was standing in the centre of the control room, his weapons in his hands, looking in Mesogog's direction, confusion and rage evident in his body language.
"Who are you?" he demanded, raising the Sword of Darkness to point it in Mesogog's direction. "And why have you summoned me here? I have not fulfilled the demands of my Empress-"
"And be assured, I shall send you back to attend to that," Mesogog said, attempting to smile at the Green Ranger in a reassuring manner. He may be regarded as evil, but he was not stupid; if he did not send the Green Ranger back in time, how could Tommy Oliver aid Anton Mercer in the experiments that would culminate in the explosion that created him? There were no guarantees when time travel was involved, but Mesogog had to be sure he affected his immediate past as little as possible; he would have to give Elsa orders to develop a means of erasing the Green Ranger's memory once he had defeated the Rangers, to avoid the Green Ranger acquiring foreknowledge that would affect the history Mesogog knew.
"I have called you here to provide me with aid in a little… problem… of my own," Mesogog explained, trying to avoid giving the Green Ranger too much information; the less he had to erase, the better. "I have been dealing with a team of Rangers- much like the ones that have posed so much trouble for the Empress Rita- for nearly a year now, and have, to date, been unable to defeat them. However, I have been monitoring the situation in Angel Grove, and have been favourably impressed by your skill in fighting the Rangers you are acquainted with. If you are willing, I would appreciate your assistance in vanquishing these Rangers for me; should you accept, I shall then return you to your battle with the other Rangers once my foes have fallen."
"And should I decline?" the Green Ranger asked, lowering the Sword of Darkness as he looked at Mesogog, although the Dragon Dagger remained ready in his other hand.
Mesogog shrugged; he may as well continue to play the flattery card for the moment. As much as he hated even pretending to bow down to another, he had to make the Green Ranger believe that Mesogog venerated Rita just as much as he did, otherwise this latest plan would be over before it had even started.
"Should you decline, I am, of course, in no position to force you," he assured the Green Ranger. "If you do not wish to help me, I shall merely send you back to fight the other Rangers and attempt to handle this myself."
The Green Ranger looked at Mesogog, his posture making it evident that he was thinking on the monster's proposition, before he nodded in agreement.
"Very well; I shall aid you," he said, after a moment's pause. "Any Power Rangers that exist will inevitably come to oppose my Empress; it is best that I should eliminate them now before they become aware of my presence."
He looked sharply at Mesogog. "Am I still capable of accessing the Dragonzord in this location?"
"Of course," Mesogog said, nodding at the Green Ranger. "However, I would recommend you not use it until you have engaged the Rangers; there is no point in alerting them to the full extent of your powers until you are ready."
The Green Ranger chuckled. "That sounds excellent," he said, nodding in approval. "I shall definitely enjoy this…"