Disclaimer: I don't own the Power Rangers. So don't try to buy them from me. Please don't get all offended because I mocked your favorite Ranger. I try to mock them all. Besides, it's just for fun. I really do enjoy the show :). 'Hi" to all from AFPR…especially my fellow Psychos. Please let me know if I make any errors. I have no difficulty with receiving constructive criticism. Thanks to Joe Rovang and SirStack for their Writer's Guide to the Power Rangers Universe which I rely on a lot.
If you haven't done so, please read the first hundred stories in "When Rangers Meet" and "More of When Rangers Meet."
This is the first of the (hopefully) next fifty stories. It was requested by irine 18.
Extra points to anyone who knows where I'm getting my story titles from.
Trip and Bridge
by
Eileen (Psycho Tangerine)
"Oh, great," moaned Trip as he wandered the strange building. "This place is more confusing than Time Force." He winced at the people who passed him. "Why does everyone have to gawk at me just because I'm an alien with green hair and a jewel jabbed in my forehead?" he snarled, unaware that half of them were also non-human and that no one was paying him any mind.
Volunteering to test the time portal they had invented in Silver City didn't seem like such a good idea now. But, then again, he did want to avoid a furious Katie who had just found out that he had forgotten to get her a birthday present yet again. Last year, he had spent the whole day cowering under his bed. Darn these crazy human traditions, anyway. All his fellow Xybrians ever did on his birthday was tie him to a rock and throw guano at him. Funny how no one else one Xybria were made to follow this tradition as well.
Unfortunately, the hand-held portal had fizzled as soon as he had arrived. Well, it had a bit of help from some stupid tin dog that peed coolant all over it as soon as he had landed. Now, he had to find someplace where he could reprogram it. Somewhere private. After all, he couldn't allow anyone from the past to see such a futuristic device.
Trip paused at the sign on one of the doors. Sky Bridge, huh? Must be a door to the outside. Interesting concept these SPD people had. He shrugged his shoulders. Maybe the skybridge would be empty enough for him to work.. He opened the door and stepped in. "Hey! Where's the skybridge?" Trip asked in dismay.
"I'm right here!" called a voice from somewhere near the floor. "But, I'm usually called Bridge, not the bridge. I mean that indicates something you walk all over. Well, that does happen to me sometimes, but I still prefer my name without the 'the' at the beginning. And Sky's not here at all, he's on a self-forced twenty mile march. At least he said so. But I did glance at his datebook last night and it looked like he had plans to visit Naughty Nan's Nudie Bar. But, I'm not going to tell Cruger because I don't want to be a blabbermouth and get him in trouble. Anyway, you don't even sound familiar. Who are you?"
Trip, his head reeling from all that, looked across the room to where the voice was coming from...and saw a pair of feet with green bunny slippers on them. "Uh, no one, no one at all. Sorry to disturb you." He began to back out of the room.
"Wait!" called Bridge as he stood back on his feet. "I just came up with a great idea for my latest computer upgrade. Wanna see?" He was desperate for someone, anyone to observe his brilliant idea. Unfortunately, the other Rangers had spent the whole week avoiding him whenever he mentioned it. They were well aware of what the Green SPD Ranger considered to be an essential function for a computer and were tired of the piles of stale, moldy buttered toast that were crowding them out of the common room.
"Computer upgrade?" asked Trip. Just those words entranced him. Finally, someone who appreciated technology other than souped up car engines and automated weight machines. He'd be able compare programs that could improve the lives of mankind with someone else. He'd be able to show his rival in the Tech Department, William Cestria-Cranston the Thirty-First, that he was just as smart as him. He'd be able to...
"Hey!" exclaimed Bridge. "I don't want to disturb you, but if you get any of that drool on my computers then they might not work. And that would affect my toast making program." His eyes grew dark. "And no one messes with my toast!"
"Huh?" asked Trip. "Oh, sorry. But why do you need a toast-making program? Why not just use a toaster?"
"Oh, Commander Cruger banned them from SPD after he got his tail caught in one. He started wearing pants after that." Bridge grimaced at the memory of his Commander previous penchant for going 'au naturel.'
"Uh, ok," replied Trip slowly. "So, what kind of computer upgrade is this? Is it something to improve security? Or will it improve communications? Or will it provide new treatments for diseases? Or will it bring world peace?" Trip was getting more and more excited at all the potential possibilities.
Bridge gazed bemusedly at the green-haired man. "Are you kidding? I'm only a B-squad Cadet. I'm not even eighteen yet. I'm not even a genius like my heroes," he waved his hand in the direction of a set of posters he had printed up from the computer.
"Ranger Geniuses over the Years," read Trip. "Kendrix Morgan...Justin Stewart...Cam Watanabe..." his voice lowered into a growl as he read the last one, "...Billy Cranston." Great, just great. He just hoped his rival never learned of this or Trip would never hear an end to the boasting.
"What makes you think I can do stuff like that?" finished Bridge..
Trip's face fell. "Oh," he said disappointedly. "Then what kind of upgrade are you doing?"
Bridge grinned happily. "I'm adding a jelly spreader to my toast making machine!"
Trip rolled his eyes. "What a waste. You're obviously smart enough to make that junk. So why not use your skills to make something that would actually be beneficial to others rather than waste time on such idiotic things?"
Bridges eyes widened. "Idiotic! You're calling my toast making, toast buttering, and toast jelly machines idiotic!"
"Well, I just mean..."
Bridge had flipped back into his headstand. "Yeah well, talk to the feet. Do you know how many people actually benefit from a good breakfast every morning? Do you know that toast does not taste good without a lot of butter on it and that jelly can make it taste better? Why imagine if everyone in the world could have buttery toast. However can you think that this isn't important? Why this reminds me of the dream I had where I went to Buttery Toast island...or maybe I was dreaming of heaven. But then again seeing Jack and Sky doing the hula in grass skirts makes me think it was an island. But then again..." Bridge blathered on for the next twenty minutes.
In the meanwhile, Trip had grabbed some of the tools laying around the bedroom. He quickly repaired his hand-held time portal. "Well then," he interrupted just as Bridge was finishing a discourse on whether prunes should be used as a jelly flavor. "I really don't want to interrupt your snicker 'important' work, but I guess I'll just use this time-portal to get back home." He pressed a button and...nothing.
"Uh, you're still here," said Bridge, stating the obvious as he got back to his feet. Who was this nut-case anyway? He didn't like toast and now he was pretending his cell phone was a time-traveling device.
"Wonderful," groaned Trip as he flung the device onto the bed in frustration. "I can't even fix this thing, some Ranger genius I am." He clamped his mouth shut at this. Now he'd probably gone and messed up the timeline. Captain Logan wasn't going to be very happy when...if...he got back.
Bridge snickered at this. "Oh, I see, we get a lot of you wannabes pretending to be Rangers." Boom had only been the beginning. Every week Bridge and his teammates had to deal with losers in homemade costumes. He picked up the device and began to examine and fiddle with it.
"What are you doing?" asked Trip. "You'll only make it worse. You have no idea what you're..."
WHOOSH! Bridge disappeared into the future.
"...doing," finished Trip lamely. "Well, great, now I'll never get home. What am I supposed to do here?" Suddenly, there was a beeping from another device that had fallen when Bridge has time-jumped.
"Rangers!" came the voice over it. "Emporer Grumm is attacking the city again!" Trip blinked at this. Then he noticed the color of the communication device and remember the color of Bridge's pajamas. He smiled deviously. It wasn't as if anyone would actually notice the difference in the dark, now would they? "Time for Time Force!" he cried and then ran, morphed to where the battle was.
Three days later, he was still being interrogated by SPD security about the whereabouts of the Ranger he had 'kidnapped.'
