Disclaimer: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers belongs to Saban Brands and not to the author of this story, who is the sole proprietor of this story. If you reproduce it, please let me know where. This story is strictly non-profit.

Author's Note: No capybaras were harmed during the writing of this fanfic. I can't guarantee the same thing about Tommys.ƒ

And no, I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP ON MY OTHER STORIES! I'm just putting this out there…

Continuity: Takes place in the middle of "The Return of the Green Ranger part 3." Spins off a nice alternate universe from that point on.

The Perseverence of the Green Ranger
Prologue
by MegaSilver

The Power Suit protected a Ranger from the fatal injury of a high impact, but not from the pain. So, having been ejected from the Tigerzord and thrust into free fall down to the ground, Tommy felt as though every bone in his body had cracked in two. His head rattled inside his helmet.

The pain always subsided after a minute or two. But the headache did not.

Oh man. I'm losing my re-energizement.

"Tommy!" cried Saba, his faithful assistant. "The Wizard!"

The White Ranger didn't even have time to pull himself to his feet before the Wizard and the Green Ranger were upon him.

"So, White Ranger," snarled the Wizard of Deception, who had caused all the trouble, "are you ready to surrender?"

"Never!" the White Ranger spat at the contemptuous fire-breathed Wizard, glaring at the devious pair through a haze.

"Remember," warned Tommy's Green Ranger counterpart, "only one Tommy can survive!"

"Well, you've been a pitiful excuse for a Ranger!" taunted the Wizard.

Then, an idea hit Tommy. Nothing to lose. "Well, I… I might surrender… if you could send me to the same place as you sent my friends!"

The Green Ranger let out a wicked laugh. "So you can protect them with your own powers already activated? Think again!"

Okay… didn't work, Tommy realized. He's on to me. He knows me as well as I do. He knows what's on my mind.

But then… I should know what's on his! Tommy knew he had to find a way to use that against this foe.

Alas, he would never get the chance.

"You want to go somewhere?" sneered the Wizard. "I have just the place for you!" He thrust forth his wand and zapped the White Ranger.

Electrical charges shot through Tommy's body. "NOOOOOOO!" he cried. "Saba!" He lifted the Tiger Saber to try to cut through the beam, but it was no use. Saba just bounced right off. Tommy held on to the sword for dear life. "Alpha! Zordon! AAAAAAAH!"

The charge completely overwhelmed Tommy's body and the White Ranger disappeared—along with Saba.

"Ai-yi-yi!" cried Alpha as he stared into the Viewing Globe. "Zordon, they've got Tommy now, too!"

"Alpha, the situation is now dire," said Zordon. "The Earth is undefended and we are closer to finding the other five Rangers than we are to finding Tommy. We have to keep searching the time line. Only then will we be able to buy enough time to start narrowing down the search for Tommy."

"Oh! We're not even that close to finding the others!"

"Keep trying, Alpha."

The Green Ranger was appalled. "You… you killed him!" He clenched his fist and his arm began to shake. "I was supposed to kill him!"

"No, I did not kill him!" objected the Wizard. "I merely banished him to an unreachable dimension and sealed off the portal."

Even worse! "You fool!" fumed the Green Ranger. "You didn't even bother to finish him off! Only one Tommy can be alive at one time!"

"I am aware of that!" snapped the Wizard. "But I've not forgotten you: now the White Ranger is in another dimension—and that means the two of you are no longer in the same time line!"

The Green Ranger turned pensive for a moment. "Well… if you put it that way…" Perhaps it wasn't as satisfying as if he had been able to destroy the White Ranger himself, but on the other hand, it was practical. After all, Zordon had said of the White Ranger…

"This time, his powers were created in the light of goodness and can never be taken away by the forces of evil."

Had they killed the White Ranger, the other Rangers would undoubtedly have recovered his powers.

No fear of that now.

"Come now, my faithful Green Ranger!" bade the Wizard of Deception. "The Power Rangers are no more. The primitive fools of Earth and their pitiful military technology will be no match for our mighty extraterrestrial armies—but let us show them quickly!"

The Green Ranger and the Wizard of Deception stood midway down a mountain slope overlooking Angel Grove and the coast, watching as the Dragonzord fired its finger cannons into the last highway feeding into the city.

"There!" laughed the Wizard. "So much for defense and survival provisions! Now the people of Angel Grove will have no choice but to bow to me as lord and master.

"And you, Green Ranger, you will be my right hand in this conquest! Now, genuflect and pay homage to me, and then go and begin the task of terrorizing the populace into my service!"

"Bow to you?" Beneath his helmet, the replica's brow furrowed. His blood boiled. First the Wizard had taken the White Ranger—taken a part of him—, and now this? This was too much.

The Green Rangerhad done all the hard work. He'd put everything in place.

And he wasn't just some faceless monster of the day. He was a sentient being. A bloody Power Ranger!

How dare this pretentious Wizard of Deception treat him as just another lowly minion! He should have a more fitting favor for his services. Why should the Wizard get the glory for the Green Ranger's magnificent fighting prowess?

"Never!" the Green Ranger growled.

"What?" exclaimed the Wizard.

"I'll never bow to you. I lured the Rangers into your trap. I weakened the White Ranger. My Dragonzord conquered the city. Angel Grove is mine!"

With that, the Green Ranger brought his palms together. His hands swapped an eerie blue electrical charge back and forth until it took the form of a powerful lightning ball, which he hurled at his would-be master with deadlier precision than that with which a professional bowler would aim for his pins.

The Wizard lifted his wand just in time to catch the ball. The wand absorbed the charge, but the sheer force of motion nearly knocked the thing out of his hand. Nearly.

Now the Wizard was angry. "You remember, Green Ranger, 'Tommy,' that I gave you your powers… and I can take them away!" A red charge began to glow at the tip of the wand, and the Wizard thrust it forward, dispensing the charge directly into the Green Ranger's shield.

"Huh?" The Green Ranger braced himself, expecting momentarily to be hurled backwards. The force pushed into him, but only for a moment. Then he felt a new sensation, almost a sort of sucking sensation. He felt his Morphin' energy begin to fade.

Not my powers! Not again!

"NOOOOO!" howled the Green Ranger.

"Oh, yes! In just a matter of minutes all your powers will belong to me—and then you'll have no choice but to serve me forever!"

Breathing heavily and struggling to stay standing, the Green Ranger struggled to get to his holster and pulled out his Dragon Dagger. He managed to lift it up to his lips and play his auxiliary intonation:

So-Do-Ti-Do-Fa-So…

A power surge from the sides of the shield fed into the center, but was broken off by the Wizard's drain ray. I have to try again! The Green Ranger inhaled deeply and then blew once more: So-Do-Ti-Do-Fa-So…

Another surge fed in, and this one nearly caught. Just one more, maybe: So-Do-Ti-Do-Fa-So…

This one caught, deflecting the beam and zapping the Wizard. The sucking sensation stopped. All right!

"AAARG!" cried the Wizard as he tumbled to the ground.

So-Do-Ti-Do-Do-Re… So-Do-Ti-Do-Fa-So… Fa-Mi-Re-Do-So… So-Do-Ti-Do-Fa-So…

Repeating the intonation again and again to keep his shield activated, the Green Ranger approached his creator, who struggled to make it back to his feet. As he reached the Wizard, he saw his foe's arm reach out for the wand.

The Green Ranger whipped the Dragon Dagger down away from his mouth and stomped on the stunned Wizard's arm with his left foot. "Oh, no, you don't!" he taunted, kicking his foe with right foot. Then, quickly, he snatched up the wand.

"Say goodnight, fire breath!"

The Green Ranger zapped the Wizard continuously with the drain ray, cackling with glee as his creator faded along with his powers, becoming increasingly shrivelled and deformed until he was nothing but dust.

"All right! Man, I love doin' that twice a week!"

Then, a realization hit the Green Ranger: I really do love doing that twice a week.

I did. I… still do. I always have!

Then everything came back. He remembered everything. His childhood in Los Angeles. His first stint as the Green Ranger. The breaking of the spell. The countless monsters he'd helped destroy. The first loss of his powers. His first kiss with Kimberly. The multiple restorations of his powers. Watching three of his best friends off to Switzerland…

… then cleaving off from a part of himself, away from his White Ranger powers, re-infused with the Green Ranger powers and with evil energy all over again.

Yet this time, it had been a different sort of evil energy: not a strict mind control, but rather a sort of psychopathic obsession.

But now the obsession was gone. So was the psychopathy.

That Wizard. It must have been the Wizard of Deception.

Now the Wizard was gone.

I'm… Tommy Oliver, he realized. I'm a Power Ranger. I… I fought for good! I'm not with Rita! I'm not with Zedd!

He'd destroyed the Wizard. Angel Grove was his.

But if he had to destroy half the population to control it, why the hell should he care that Angel Grove were his?

"NNNOOOOO!" thundered Lord Zedd, smashing his fist on the observatory balcony.

"My own Ranger destroyed my beautiful Wizard of Darkness!" screamed Rita.

"You'd better have a Green Candle ready!" Zedd growled.

"Oh, I'd better, huh? Well, if you wanted a backup for everything, why didn't you go tramping around that armpit-scented bio-deposit in the Gamma-Tri system to fetch some fresh wax?"

Zedd turned bright red with fury. "You didn't even bother to make a Green Candle when you knew you'd be re-creating an evil Green Ranger from a human? You're worse than useless, you know that?!" Not waiting to see or hear his wife's reaction, Zedd turned to gaze upon the Earth. "Well, at least that pathetic green misfit is all alone without the other Rangers—not that they'd help the likes of him, I'm sure!" Zedd thrust his Z-Staff down towards the Earth. "Behold, the Capybarrel monster!"

The charge disseminating from the staff hit an ordinary, innocent Capybara down in Brazil and teleported it northwest to outskirts of Angel Grove, California where it grew into a hideous, gargantuan rodent dressed in a barrel.

"Hey there, Greenie!" the monster shouted in a squeaky voice.

The Green Ranger, still on the mountain, had scarcely come to terms with his newfound state—and not even been able to consider even cursorily what would happen to his friends or to his White Ranger counterpart—when he heard this unpleasantly shrill call. He whirled around to face the thing that had just addressed him.

"Whoa!" the Green Ranger mused in shock.

"You betray Lord Zedd, you'd better be ready to rollllllll!" squeaked the Capybarrel. He opened his mouth and spat a series of TNT-filled barrels at the top half of the mountain: some of them blew right away, some rolled down the mountains and began to blow as they reached the Green Ranger.

"WHOOOOOAA!" cried the Green Ranger as the explosions jerked him around while he struggled to roll out of the way of the barrels.

"Yeah, you'd better roll fast, Greenie!" squawked the Capybarrel.

Instinct kicked in, and without hesitation, the Green Ranger pulled the Dragon Dagger up to his lips once more.

He had to protect Angel Grove. It was what he did.

"I need Dragonzord power, now!"

La-Mi-So-La-Ti-La… Mi-So-La-Mi-So-La-Ti-La… La-Do-Re-La-Do-Re-Mi-Re… Do-Ti-La-Mi-So-La-Ti-La…

TO BE CONTINUED…