HAPPY FIRST ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

That's right, you people have been forced to endure my rambles and fluff and chaos for a year now. I feel sorry for you- but not sorry enough! And here is the beginning of my anniversary fic. It's going to be epic! And now I have published a score of fanfics. Dude.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Power Rangers or anything related to Power Rangers. Wait, not true. A have a PRMM movie DVD, a Red Ranger finger puppet, a Pink Ranger glove, a PRMM sticker sheet, and a small group of Power Ranger action figures. And tons of PR-related plot bunnies. But that's all.

I don't own the Brady Bunch either. That wasn't random. There are also 3 OCs in here.

Chapter One: Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger

Three people were in the control room of the rebuilt Dino Lair which stretched out underground between the house of Dr. Thomas Oliver and the business owned by Hayley Ziktor in the city of Reefside. Two of the aforementioned trio were those two people. Dr. Thomas Oliver was a man with short, gelled dark brown hair, fair skin, and dark brown eyes framed by glasses. He wore a green T-shirt and black pants. Hayley Ziktor was a pretty redheaded woman with pale skin and intelligent eyes wearing dangly amethyst earrings to go with her royal purple dress and shoes. They were sitting in swivel chairs at a computer consul, studying video images, charts of energy flows, and there was an unfinished game of solitaire in the corner of Thomas Oliver's screen.

"So? What's the verdict?" asked the third person. He had cropped black hair, pale skin, almond eyes, and looked to be about the same age of the other two- late twenties to early thirties. He wore a black T-shirt under a green V-neck sweater and black jeans. He looked back and forth between the pair. "Should we call in the others? Tommy? Hayley?"

"Hard to say," admitted Hayley. "Ivan Ooze, after his escape from that construction site last week, hasn't done much of anything we can tell once he got to the moon fortress."

"Yeah, but look at all that dark energy radiation exuding from the moon fortress," argued Thomas, or Tommy. "He's clearly getting ready to do something- something big."

"Should we can in some others then? And if we do- who?"

"Whom, Adam," Hayley absently corrected him, reading some reports. "Great. I think you're right, Tommy. These dark power readings… they're off the charts."

"This is serious," Tommy frowned, fiddling with his wire frame glasses which he didn't need but wore anyway to look more 'scholarly'. "That chart can take up to some serious evil… it's never been off the charts before that I can remember."

"That's not saying much though," Adam observed. Tommy just threw a nearby book at the other man, who easily caught it. "Huh. Computers for Beginners- not yours, I take it, Hayley?"

"Nope."

Tommy just sighed and tried to change the subject. "I think we need Jason's input. He was chosen to be the first Red Power Ranger for a reason, after all."

"Yeah," nodded Adam just as two sets of footsteps could be heard on the stairs. All three turned their heads to greet the pair of newcomers. One was a stocky, short, and shiny robot in primary colors and gold plating. The other had the appearance of a very young man despite the slight goatee he had. He had floppy brown hair with two streaks of almost white hair framing his quiet face with its serious dark eyes. There was a fresh red scratch on one cheek, marring his moon-pale skin. He wore a dirty white T-shirt and khaki pants. Tommy greeted him first.

"How are you holding up, Merrick?"

He shrugged uneasily as he leaned against the wall, crossing his arms across his chest. "Not bad. Any news on Ivan?"

"No news isn't good news in this case," Hayley informed him.

"Ai ai ai!" exclaimed the robot. Adam hurried to assure him, "It'll work out in the end, Alpha, like it always does."

"I hope so, Adam," the robot responded worriedly, its hands to its disc-like head. "Should we contact some of the other Rangers once we get news?"

Tommy rubbed the back of his neck. "I think we should call Jason now. We need him."

Merrick shifted slightly.

"We do," Adam told Merrick. "He has seniority over all of us here. Besides, Jason always has had a head for strategy."

"I'll send him an e-mail," Hayley told the guys. "Today at six sound good?"

The three men nodded, so Hayley quickly typed and sent the e-mail before leaning back in her chair.

"Why do I have the feeling we're getting in over our heads?"

No one answered her.

At five minutes until six Tommy heard a van pull into the driveway. Stepping out onto the front porch of his two-story beige house he watched the red minivan come to a halt. A sturdy man with black hair and fair skin got out of the driver's seat. He wore a red long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. Sliding open the secondary door a trio of children came out. The oldest looked to be eight and was the only boy, with his father's dark hair but with bright blue eyes. He wore a brown shirt and jeans. The younger two, both girls, looked to be about six and four. The six-year-old had blond hair but her father's brown eyes, and wore a red T-shirt and a pair of overalls. The four-year-old wore a lavender poufy dress-up dress and had the same hair and eyes as her father.

Tommy waved at the quartet. "Jason! Glad you could make it. Hey, Micah, Ruby, and Aurora! How are my favorite godchildren?"

"We're your only godchildren," giggled little Aurora, waving her pretend wand capped by a gold tin-foil star at him. "Poof! Now you're a friendly dragon, Uncle Tommy."

"Am I? Well, then I'll kidnap the princess," he laughed, scooping up the approaching girl. Jason watched on with amusement as Tommy spun around the laughing young girl. Ruby shook her head at the pair.

"I wasn't that silly when I was her age."

"That was just two years ago. Besides, you're both girls," Micah snorted. Ruby just tackled him. Jason hurriedly worked to separate the fighting pair. Watching on, Tommy and Aurora just exchanged sober headshakes.

"Cut it out! Micah, stop teasing your sister. Ruby, stop beating up your brother."

"He called me a girl!"

"You are a girl!"

Jason sighed at his best friend of seventeen years. "See why Emily made me take them with me?"

Tommy just grinned lopsidedly. "Come on, everyone else is inside. I ordered pizza for dinner."

"YAY!" yelled all three kids. Loyally Ruby added, "But it won't be as good as JKP's."

"It's still pizza," Micah rolled his eyes. Jason sighed, "Behave!"

Tommy hugged little Aurora to him. "Am I still a dragon?"

She lightly tapped him on the head with her wand. "Now you're not."

"Let's go inside then."

Sitting around the kitchen table with the pizza boxes almost empty Hayley commented, "We wanted to talk to you after dinner, Jason."

"I know."

Adam and Merrick exchanged slightly anxious looks at his flat tone. Jason gently tousled his son's hair as Micah finished his third piece of pizza. "You three can play in the living room while we talk."

"I'm eight! I'm old enough to stay."

"If he can stay I can stay!"

"Could we have a tea party?"

Merrick stood up, empty plate in hand. "I'll play with you guys if you want."

Micah and Ruby looked at one another. Deciding that if an adult got to come with them it didn't count as being excluded they chorused, "Okay."

"Tea party!" proclaimed Aurora, bouncing up and down. Merrick looked over at the other two. "Shouldn't you check that your siblings want a tea party?"

Ruby waved a hand dismissively. "We have tea parties with her all the time."

Micah nodded as the quartet left the kitchen. "Yeah, and sometimes we have soda parties instead."

Jason smiled after his kids. Turning to face Tommy, Adam, and Hayley he stated, "I thought we agreed: no more unneeded Ranger activity. You three are bachelors-"

"Ahem."

"And a bachelorette," he amended. "I have a family, guys. I can't go off and play at saving the world like you guys still do."

"It's not playing- ow!"

Tommy had kicked Adam under the table.

"I get that, Jason. But we think this time it's for real. About a week ago Adam got some bad vibes coming from a construction site in Angel Grove. Remember? It had been started but stopped fast some time late in the Mighty Morphin era… about the time Adam, the others, and I got the Ninjetti powers. Recently it had been refunded and resumed."

"All right. And?"

"When I got there, there was a giant egg, opened up. It was empty only because what had been contained in it had already escaped," Adam informed the other man, both subconsciously rubbing at the communicators on their left wrists. "A villain named Ivan Ooze. He said something about being unhappy because he had missed the Spanish Inquisition and the Brady Brunch reunion before blowing out a wad of snot."

"Snot?"

"That then turned into a group of Tenga Warriors," Tommy explained, starting to finger his own communicator. "Adam had to activate his morpher to beat them, and then engaged in battle with Ivan Ooze."

Adam sighed at the memory. "He beat me in the end. I was on the ground, demorphed, with him about to land the final blow when Merrick roared up on his motorcycle."

Clearly both had survived the encounter but Jason was still anxious. "And?"

"It was close, especially since Merrick can't turn into the Lunar Wolf Ranger still. But he held him off long enough for Adam to regroup and remorph into the Black Power Ranger," Hayley reported. "Together they managed to fend off Ivan Ooze, but he literally slipped away. When I found him via my computer systems, he had managed to get to the ruins of the moon fortress."

"What is he doing there?" a surprised Jason asked. The other three looked at one another nervously. Finally Tommy admitted, "We don't really know, Jason. But we're getting nervous. From what we've found, Zordon and another group of teenagers who used some power source other than the Power Coins managed to seal him away in that egg roughly seven thousand years ago because he tried to add Earth to his intergalactic empire."

Jason looked at the other three's troubled faces. "How powerful is he?"
"Powerful enough that after just an hour or so of freedom he can nearly beat me and Merrick," Adam noted. Hayley looked away. "I think he might be a sorcerer of some sort as well… that could lead to him reanimating some old 'friends' of ours and the other teams'."

Tommy whistled. "So that's what you think Ivan is doing up there."

"It makes sense; with each new villain the power levels would spike; and even Ivan alone probably has high power levels," Hayley pointed out. "He most likely wants revenge on Earth and Zordon- failing that, which he will since Zordon died, Zordon's students."

Jason looked over his shoulder towards the living room. More than when he was a 'real' Ranger he knew the stakes. He looked back at his friends. Truth be told, he was jealous of Tommy, Adam, and Merrick; getting to go out and find monsters to battle and ensure the world was in extra good hands. He nodded once.

"I'm in. Once a Ranger, always a Ranger I suppose."

The other three smiled in relief. Jason couldn't help but smile back.