Brave New World
Author's Note: In PR-verse, this starts right after "Forever Red", and covers both miniseries and tv material from Dinotopia. Character-wise, I'm using Karl and David from the movie, and everyone else from the tv series.
Chapter One
When his cell phone rang about thirty seconds after he'd hung up with Tommy, his first thought was that his former teammate had forgotten to tell him some detail about the mission against the remains of the Machine Empire. But the voice, although familiar, wasn't Tommy's, and when he finally placed the voice, it was all he could do not to hang up on the spot.
"Frank," he greeted, coolly, hearing his father's sigh on the other end of the line.
"Can't you ever just call me Dad?" the older man asked, and Jason could almost picture him rubbing at the bridge of his nose like he did when he was frustrated.
Jason wanted to snap back that, after Frank had walked out on him and his mother when he was seven, he didn't deserve to be called Dad. That the honor of that title was reserved for his stepfather, a man who'd stepped up when his own father had failed.
But, he just bit his tongue and shook his head, even though he knew that the other man couldn't see him. He wasn't going to waste time digging up old wounds.
"What do you want, Frank?" he asked, instead.
"Your brothers and I are going island hopping," Frank told him, "and there's room in the plane for one more."
"I'm not in New York, any more," Jason replied, discarding nearly a dozen different responses for the one that wouldn't spark an argument between the two men.
"Oh," came the belated reply, and Jason wondered if he was imagining the hurt he heard in his father's voice.
A few seconds later, he decided that he had imagined the whole thing. His father wasn't going to be hurt by anything he said or did. He wasn't around enough for that.
"So," Frank continued, awkwardly, after an uncomfortable silence filled the air between them, "when do you think you'll be coming back to New York?"
He didn't ask Jason where he was, or why he'd left, and Jason didn't offer an explanation.
"Probably won't be coming back for a while," he said, instead.
There was another long, uncomfortable pause, and then his father sighed, heavily.
"I'll tell the boys you said hi," he said, at last.
"You do that," Jason said, quietly.
"I'll see you later," Frank tried one last time. "Bye, Jason."
"Yeah," Jason replied, clicking off his phone before his father could say anything else.
He was practically fuming as he grabbed his helmet off he seat of his bike and jammed it on his head. He couldn't believe that gall of that man, trying to make amends after so long. Like a father-son bonding trip was going to make up for being absent for nearly twenty years, with sporadic phone calls and a card on his birthday as their only real contact.
No, Frank Scott had been too busy with his new families – his new sons – to pay much attention to his oldest child.
Realistically, Jason knew that it wasn't Karl or David's fault that their father was such a failure in the parenting department. Frank had walked out on them, just like he'd left Jason, and none of them had ever really been close to the man.
But, he couldn't help resenting them for getting to spend more time with their father than he ever had.
With a start, he realized that he'd been lost in thought the entire time he'd been driving. He'd managed to get himself to the NASADA base completely on autopilot, and he remembered very little of the actual trip.
"Snap out of it," he told himself, firmly.
Being distracted while driving was dangerous enough; if he lost focus on the moon, he could get himself or one of the other Rangers killed.
Pushing any thoughts of his family to the back of his mind, he kicked his bike back into gear and drove the rest of the way into the complex. The rest of the group was making their way across the tarmac to one of the hangars, and he revved the bike's engine to get their attention.
"Jason," Tommy said, a smile spreading across the other man's face when he saw him.
"You weren't thinking of starting without me, were you?" he asked, with a grin of his own.
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Two days later, they returned to Earth, exhausted but jubilant. They'd defeated the Machine Empire and saved the planet, again, which never ceased to amaze him, no matter how often it happened.
Tommy had taken off pretty much as soon as the Megaship had touched down, uttering something about abandoned research project, which amused Jason to no end. How his formerly flaky friend had managed to earn his doctorate degree in less than half the normal time was still a mystery, but, then again, Tommy had never been one to brag about his academic achievements.
The other Red Rangers, upon hearing about Cole's admiration for Tommy, had launched into a friendly competition bragging about their own various accomplishments. He smirked when he heard Andros's claim of saving two planets – and the immediate rebuttals by the Time Force Rangers that followed, as they upped the ante with their claim at changing history.
When his cell phone rang, he moved away from the rest of the group, looking down at the number displayed on the screen. He didn't recognize the number, but it had the same area code as his apartment in New York.
"Hello?" he asked, wondering who was trying to get a hold of him.
"Jason, thank God!"
The speaker was a woman, and it took him a few seconds to place the voice.
"Joann?" he hazarded a guess.
He hadn't spoken to David's mother in years, and he couldn't imagine why she was trying to reach him, now.
"Jason, I've been trying to call you for two days," Joann said, and he felt a cold knot of fear settle in her stomach at her frantic tone.
"Why?" he asked, warily. "Is something wrong? Did something happen to David?"
"Frank's plane never came back," she told him.
"What do you mean?" Jason demanded. "How could they not come back?"
"Frank's plane dropped off the radar a couple of hours after they took off," Joann said, quietly. "They never reached their first destination, and the Coast Guard doesn't even know where they could have gone down."
"What are you saying?" Jason asked, just as quietly, the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach growing worse by the second.
Joann was silent for sever along seconds, and then Jason heard her let out a choked sob.
"Frank and the boys are missing," she said, at last. "And there's not much hope that they could have survived."