Disclaimer: I don't own them. Saban does.
Man, sometimes being back here and part of the team again sucked. There were definite good things about being the gold Zeo ranger. For one, the energy boost was…amazing. Having the power had always been exhilarating but his old powers were nothing compared to this. He knew it wasn't just him forgetting what it had felt like. These powers were a huge step up from the Morphin ones. He could tell the others felt it too. Tommy was full of all sorts of extra power and energy and focus, way more than the times before. And Adam and Rocky were just as on point as he was. The girls, he didn't really know. Not yet. He'd kept up with ranger news so he'd seen Kat fighting before he came here on TV. The average person wouldn't have noticed the changeover but, used to Kim's style of fighting as he was, he noticed almost immediately. Long before the letter keeping the folks at the conference up to date arrived. Kat was interesting though. He could see her without the ninja bias now and could tell she hadn't grown up a fighter but she melded with the pink powers really well. Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Tanya was pretty interesting too. She had as little outside martial training as Kat but she seemed to pick things up incredibly fast, even for someone Power enhanced. Jason knew Adam had been spending extra time with her, showing her moves and giving her practice, and it showed very obviously. He was a bit curious to see what she could learn from him, should he teach her.
He was much more interested in Kat though. And, he admitted privately to himself, not entirely in a professional fighting sort of way. He didn't know how he had expected Kat to be when he first heard Kim had given up the Power to another girl. Kat definitely wasn't it. She was nothing like Kim. While Kim had been the vivacious popular girl for most of the time Jason had known her, Kat was much calmer and, in a lot of ways, more mature. She didn't demand attention everywhere she went and she was unfailingly nice to everybody. Jason had heard the story of how she and the rangers first met but had trouble imagining Kat being anything close to evil. He'd never even seen her be slightly mean to anyone.
And so he found himself in an interesting position. It was pretty obvious to him that he was crushing on Kat pretty hard. It was just as obvious to him that she was interested in his best friend. How exactly was it that Tommy got all the cool girls? Not that Jason had ever had any interest in Kim that way but it was a little startling back then how quickly the new kid had ended up involved with one of the most popular girls in school. Jason had always just put it up to one of those things. It was much more annoying this time around, especially since he wasn't sure Tommy even cared that Kat liked him. There was no way the guy didn't know. Kat was so obvious he was pretty sure the whole school knew. Tommy just didn't really think anything of it. Like he took it as his due. It kind of made Jason want to punch him.
Instead he was here at the beach club, flirting with Emily, trying not to notice how much she looked and sometimes acted like a certain pink ranger. Trying not to get angry at his best friend for being so damn oblivious to said pink ranger holding a torch for him. And trying not to think about how truly messed up this all was.