" COUNTDOWN TO FOREVER "
03. CHAPTER THREE
Sydney had quickly become overrun with Quantrons, forcing the Pink and Red Rangers to retreat for the time being. They hid within the back room of the coffee shop where Katherine and her aunt had been earlier, before all this chaos started. Once the door was shut and secured, the two had powered down to conserve their powers - as they were unsure of how long they would last - and sat in an awkward silence for a long while.
Tommy and Katherine hadn't exactly parted on good terms when they'd left Angel Grove. Over the years, they'd formed some sort of relationship, one that had never really gotten the chance to get fully off the ground. After graduation and the passing on of their powers to TJ and Cassie, that relationship had just sort of fallen apart. She went to England to study ballet, and had assumed that Tommy left to pursue a career as a race car driver.
"You said something before about field work?" Katherine asked, breaking the silence.
He nodded. "Yeah, for school."
"I thought you were looking to be a famous race car driver."
Tommy sighed and gave a shrug of his shoulders, moving from where he had been standing at the door to sit across from her at the only table in the room. "So did I, but then I thought about everyone who went off to college and all the great experiences they always say you have there...and I thought I'd give it a shot. Looked around and soon found myself at the University of Wisconsin."
Katherine's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Wisconsin? Why there? That's awful far from Angel Grove."
"That's why."
"I don't understand."
He held out his arms, a zeonizer around each wrist. "I'd been a Power Ranger since I was a freshman in high school, Kat. I could've gone to football games, parties, and concerts during those four years, but instead of that, I was saving the world. For four years, my life revolved around Angel Grove and the evil forces that threatened it. I needed to get away and see if I could be something other than a Ranger."
She understood, perhaps a bit better than anyone else could, for she knew what he wasn't speaking. Like herself, he'd been placed under Rita's spell and forced to fight the Rangers. Tommy had been both good and evil. He wanted to know what it was like to be someone who didn't have to claim a side, someone who could simply just be.
Tommy pulled his arms back to him, folding them atop the table. "I guess I sort of blew my Ranger-free streak."
"Perhaps, but if you hadn't, that Quantron would've done more beyond simply knocking me unconscious."
He looked up. She smiled.
"Thank you for that, by the way. If you hadn't--"
"Don't mention it," he said with a smile and a nod. "It's what we Rangers do, right?"
Katherine's smile faltered slightly. "Yeah, I suppose it is..."
Tommy tapped his fingers on the table, changing the subject by asking if she'd moved back to Australia.
"No," she answered. "Only visiting. I'm still living in London and going to dance school." Raising a hand into the air, she gracefully and slowly brought it down, fingers held in a manor that added to the fluidic affect of the simple movement.
"Prima ballerina," he remarked.
She gave a small chuckle. "Not quite. So, mister college student, what are you going to school for, hm?"
"Paleontology."
His answer took her a bit by surprise.
"Yeah, shocked me, too," Tommy said, taking note of her reaction. "I like dinosaurs, who knew?"
"I always thought you more of a mythical type."
He titled his head slightly, confused. "Mythical...?"
Katherine had thought she was being clever, but he'd missed her small joke. "It was the others who had zords based on dinosaurs. Your's was a dragon."
"Oh," he remarked in realization. It was then that Tommy looked to Katherine as if she had just proclaimed to him that he'd won the lottery.
"What?" She asked, not sure what to make of that look.
"Kat, you're a genius!"
Clearly, she was missing something. "...I am?"
"Yes!" He shouted, standing abruptly in his chair. "Dragonzord! It's still in Angel Grove Bay!"
Katherine bit her lip, not wanting to burst Tommy's bubble. "Tommy...are you sure that's going to work? This is Australia, California's on the other side of the Pacific. Granted the Dragonzord still has enough power to even awaken."
Tommy sighed defeated and sank back down into his chair. Katherine felt bad for mentioning something that had gotten his hopes up and was about to apologize, when a grin spread over his features and he glanced over at her with a look that said, I've got it!
"It's risky..."
She leaned forward. "What's risky? What are you planning Tommy Oliver?"
"I'm about to break the Ranger Code of Honor."
"You want me to break into your dorm room?"
Hayley Viktor held her cell phone to her ear, listening to her lab partner ramble on about desperately needing her to break and enter into his dorm room and dig through his things to find some sort of coin. She knew Tommy was studying abroad in Australia - she'd been offered the same opportunity, but hated flying, thus had opted to remain in Wisconsin.
"I don't know what you expect me to do with this coin once I find it, Tommy," she told him over the phone. "Campus is on complete lock down due to these attacks, I doubt I'll be able to get to a post office to mail it to you."
Why he need a coin so badly was a mystery to her, but--
She leaned forward in her computer chair, gripping the phone. "Did you just say that you want me to hack into the coin? How am I supposed to that!?"
"You're a computer whiz, Hayley," said the voice on the other end of the phone. "If anyone can do it, you can."
The redhead shook her head in disbelief at such foolishness, laughing and leaning back in the chair. "Tommy, this isn't a microchip or a harddrive. It's a coin. I don't care who you are, you can't hack into a coin. It doesn't carry data."
Reluctantly, she stood and moved out of her room and towards the elevator, pushing the button for the floor Tommy's room was located once inside. If it would get him to quit prattling about things that only existed in science fiction novels, she'd go look for that blasted coin. He was lucky she was experienced in picking locks from the days when her older sister used to lock her out of the bedroom they'd shared.
The room wasn't hard to get into and thankfully, there hadn't been anyone around to witness the crime. Of course it wasn't really a crime, since she had the resident's permission to enter. She just didn't have a key.
"Okay," she told him. "I'm inside. Where do you keep it?"
Following Tommy's instructions, Hayley moved to his closet, grimacing and making a noise of disgust at the pile of dirty laundry guarding the door she needed to get open. Kicking what she could aside, she pulled the door open, pulling out the white gymbag from the closet shelf.
"Your room is going to rot away before you get back," she told him.
Tossing the bag onto the dishevelled bed, Hayley unzipped it and dug around for the coin in question. Her fingers came into contact with something smooth, yet rough, and she withdrew it holding it up for her to see better.
It was a coin, alright. A battered, beaten up coin that looked as if it'd been through the wash cycle one too many times. Or an explosion of some sorts.
"Have this thing on you during a chem. lab that went astray?"
His answer to her attempt at humor almost made her drop the phone.
"Girlfriend?" Katherine asked as Tommy put his cell phone back into his pocket.
"Hayley?"
She nodded.
Tommy shook his head. "Nah, she's just a friend. Someone I met in the computer science course I took my during my first year in Wisconsin."
Katherine felt a bit relieved to hear that this Hayley wasn't his girlfriend, but did not voice anything of the sort. Whatever their had been between her and Tommy was long over, and this was not the time nor place to be discussing - or even contemplating - such things. They had a duty as Rangers to defend their world.
"So," she said, leaning on an arm she had propped up on the table, "you think Hayley will be able to use your power coin to gain access to the Morphing Grid?"
He nodded. "She rivals Billy when it comes to this sort of stuff, Kat. And being that Billy's on Aquitar, she's the closest thing we've got to someone who knows anything - or can make something of Ranger technology."
"And once she's got access to the Grid..."
"She'll first have a look around and see if there's anyway she can tap into the Dragonzord's systems and reactivate it. Along with working on...boosting the Grid a bit."
"Boosting?"
He nodded. "I caught wind of these attacks from a newscast I saw on a television set up in a diner a few streets from where I found you. We aren't the only ones morphing, Kat. Adam, Aisha, Tanya, Kimberly, Justin...they've all tapped back into the Grid and are fighting, just as we are."
Katherine knew where this was leading. "You think that the Grid is going to fall under the weight of having to sustain the morphs of powers that are long gone."
"Exactly."
She sat up. "And just how is Hayley going to boost the Morphing Grid?"
Tommy grimaced. "...it's best not to ask."
TO BE CONTINUED...
"Power Rangers" is © Saban, Toei, MMPR Productions, Disney, etc.
06.15.2007