I rushed to get this chapter out, too, because it was killing me to have a chapter all about Tommy and Kat getting married. I'm getting to the good stuff, I promise!!
Chapter 2
"Kat, please, call me back. I know this is like the thirty-seventh message I've left, but I really need to talk to you. Please call. Soon."
Tommy flipped his phone closed and slumped despondently in the front pew. He had removed his jacket and loosened his tie, and he looked far more disheveled than he had a mere hour ago. He rubbed his temples and took in the silence of the now-empty church.
He jumped at the sound of a door slamming closed, and he tried to force a smile as Jason and Adam approached.
"All the guests are gone. We made sure they all got home safely," Adam reassured.
"My parents?" Tommy inquired.
"David took them home," Jason replied.
Tommy sighed, then asked hesitantly, "Kat's parents?"
Adam and Jason exchanged glances before Adam spoke. "Tanya and Aisha offered to take them home, but they left without the girls. Her mom was a wreck. I don't think either one of them saw this coming."
"Do either of them know where she is?" Tommy accepted their silence as a negative answer. He pushed himself back into a near-recline. "What just happened?" he muttered in disbelief.
Adam sighed and took a seat beside Tommy. "We have no idea. I got the other two girls, they came down the aisle… I went back to get Kat for her dad and the room was empty."
"She didn't leave anything behind?"
"She left everything behind. All of her clothes from earlier, all of her make up… It was all still there."
Jason shook his head. "That's too weird, man. Why would she run out like that?"
Adam started to reply, then realized that speculation may be too difficult for Tommy to deal with right now. So he shrugged meekly and kept quiet.
The door swung open again and all three men swiveled towards the door. Rocky, Aisha and Tanya, still dressed in their formalwear, entered. Tommy immediately looked to the two girls for answers; his pleading glances were answered with silent hugs.
The group's silent solace was again broken by the sound of the swinging door, and in walked Billy Cranston and Zack Taylor. Tommy stood to greet the young men. He had spotted both of them in the pews right before the ceremony, but with all the chaos he hadn't had a chance to greet either one of his old friends. He reached to shake Zack's hand, but Zack pulled him into a firm embrace instead.
"Hey, man, we're so sorry," Zack said softly, looking to Jason for additional support.
"You seem to be holding yourself together quite well," Billy said, patting Tommy on the back.
Tommy sighed. "I don't think anything's really set in yet. I mean, I was just ditched at the altar…" Tommy trailed off as he backed away from his friends slowly.
"And you know we're all here for you right now, Tommy," Aisha said softly.
The group stood quietly, allowing each other's presence to calm and comfort them. Several moments passed before Tommy spoke up. "Why don't we head back to my place for a while? We'll talk, have a few drinks… Whatever. I just don't want to go home alone."
Aisha squeezed his arm. She knew that Kat was planning on moving into Tommy's house in Santa Cruz once they were married, and that much of her stuff was already there. It would be a painful place for Tommy to go. However, the comfort of home would probably be beneficial to him as well, so she reluctantly agreed, along with the others, to accompany him home.
The group began to make their way out of the church, Tommy leading the pack. The bright afternoon had turned into a gray, drizzly evening, and the night sky seemed to reflect the collective mood of the close group of friends.
As they approached the parking lot, Billy hung back a bit and cast one last glance towards the church. Something wasn't sitting quite right with him, and he felt hesitant about leaving. He turned back to the group and pulled Aisha and Tanya aside.
"Do you really think Kat would run out on Tommy?" Billy asked in a hushed tone.
The girls exchanged glances before looking back to Billy. "Billy, honestly…" Tanya started, looking back to Aisha for support, "I never would have expected her to get cold feet. I mean, she's been looking forward to this for months! Years, even! But today, right before the wedding…" she trailed off, hoping Aisha would jump in.
"What? What happened?" Billy asked, being uncharacteristically impatient.
"She seemed nervous. Unsure. Kept saying something was wrong," Aisha supplied.
"We tried to cheer her up, and I really didn't think it was cold feet!" Tanya said defensively.
"I totally agree. I just didn't realize she was that upset," Aisha added.
Billy shook his head. "It's just not like Kat. Have either of you tried calling her?"
The girls nodded in tandem. "No answer," Tanya murmured, her voice cracking slightly.
"I'm going to stay here. I want to look into some things. Tell everyone else I'll meet them back at Tommy's," Billy said firmly.
"Do you want us to stay?" Aisha asked, glancing at the rest of her friends who were starting to climb into cars.
"No, I'll call if I need some help."
"Okay," Tanya said uneasily as she gave her friend a quick hug. "Let's go," she said, motioning to Aisha. The two women headed for the parking lot, while Billy returned to the church.
Zack dropped a handful of beer bottles into the recycling bin, then reached into the fridge to pull out several more. Jason followed him into the kitchen.
"I think I might stay here tonight," Jason said. He felt the need to clear the plan with Zack because the two of them were planning on splitting a room at a local hotel. "I don't think Tommy should stay by himself. I'm sure you're welcome to stay too."
Zack nodded and motioned with one of the beer bottles towards Jason. "That's probably a good idea. I've probably had one too many of these to drive anyway."
"I think everyone else will probably head back to the hotel, eventually." Jason knew that Tommy was holding himself together fairly well now, but once everyone started leaving, he would definitely need their support.
"Sounds like a plan," Zack confirmed with a nod as he moved past Jason and back to the living room where the rest of the group was. He rejoined Adam, Rocky, Aisha, Tanya and Tommy in the living room, with Jason close behind. Tommy appeared significantly more relaxed than he had a few hours ago, and no one had mentioned the events of that afternoon in quite a while. Zack didn't know if Tommy was truly coming to terms with the loss of his fiancée, or if the five beers he'd downed had pushed him into denial.
Several moments later there was a frantic knock on the door. Tommy rose to answer, while the rest of the group looked around uneasily.
Tommy swung the door open to find Billy.
"Hey, Billy, come on in!" Tommy greeted, but Billy was two steps ahead of him as he made his way past Tommy and into the living room.
"Billy, where'ya been?" Zack asked.
"I stayed behind at the church to do some tests." When he was met with confused looks, he elaborated. "I thought there might be more to Kat's disappearance than just a runaway bride."
Jason waited for Tommy to react, but when he didn't, Jason pushed onward. "Did you find anything?"
Billy took a deep breath. "Yes, I did. I picked up some very strange readings. It looks like there were some evil forces involved."
A hush fell over the room filled with people whose lives had been interrupted and affected by evil forces numerously over the course of their lives.
"So where is she, Billy?" Tommy demanded, finally finding his voice.
Billy slowly turned to face Tommy. "I don't know," he responded quietly.
"You don't know? What do you mean you don't know?" Tommy's voice was edged with rage, and he was clearly struggling with his own self-restraint. Jason stood up and intervened.
"Tommy, calm down. Billy, what do you know?"
"I know she's okay – for now. I picked up on her bioenergy, and she's not showing any signs of being hurt. I also know she's in a dimension that runs parallel to ours. That's what I know."
Silence hung in the air before Adam posed the inevitable question. "So what do we do?"
Billy sighed before continuing. "We have a couple of options. The one that seems to be the most practical would be to contact the current ranger team and enlist their help."
"Does anyone even know the current ranger team? Or where they're based? Because there have been so many different teams in the last decade that I wouldn't even know where to start," Rocky posed to the group.
Tommy shook his head and tried to control the quiver in his voice. "Rocky's right. I don't even know the current team. And this isn't a rescue mission that I'd trust just anyone with."
"Yes, but if they're rangers, we should be able to trust them, right?" Tanya countered.
Jason sided with Tommy. "The newer teams have different mentors and different priorities. If it were a team being led by Zordon, no problem. But I don't know about all the ranger rookies running around."
"Which brings me to option 2," Billy continued. The group looked at him expectantly. "If we only trust Zordon's rangers, who better to do the job than us, right?"
The friends and former rangers exchanged confused glances, until Adam spoke up. "Billy, how is that possible? We don't have powers anymore."
"Affirmative, Adam. We don't have ranger powers, which makes this quite a bit more dangerous than trusting it to current power rangers. But if that option is off the table, this is our best alternative. You see, we can still access some of the peripheral powers of the morphin grid – specifically, teleportation, communication, and most importantly, the zords to some degree."
Aisha rose to her feet. "Since when?" she challenged. "We've never been able to do any of that stuff before."
"Well, you see…" Billy stammered. Zack laughed quietly to himself at Billy's obvious attempt to explain his ideas in layman's terms. "You see, these powers are… well… it's like they're locked in a vault inside the grid. But we're all permanently connected to the grid, so we can all get to the vault."
"Yes, but how do we open the vault?" Aisha asked patiently.
"Before I get to that, I have to make sure we all understand… Even if we gain access to these powers, we will not have the powers of power rangers. No protective armor, no weapons… only our own strength. All we'll have are a few tricks up our non-spandex sleeves. I want to make sure everyone understands the peril we're facing here."
"We can manage, Billy. I know we can. Just tell us how to get into the 'vault'," Tommy said, his patience clearly wearing thin. "Kat's life is at stake here."
"That's the second catch, Tommy. Only the original ranger team can gain initial access to the powers. Once we have them, all rangers who are connected to the morphin grid can use them. But the original team, the original owners of the power coins must take them first."
"That's no problem, Billy. You, Zack and I were all original rangers," Jason added hopefully.
Billy glanced back and forth between Tommy and Jason, who were now standing side-by-side in eerily similar stances. He knew he was about to open a giant can of worms. With a sigh, he continued. "We need the whole team. All of the original rangers."
The room once again fell silent as Jason turned to look at Tommy. "What do you think, bro?"
Tommy thought for a moment, then nodded. "We don't have a choice."
Jason nodded in agreement, then looked back at Billy. "Looks like we have some phone calls to make." He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and motioned for Zack to follow him out on to the deck.
Tommy watched them go with a blank stare, but his heart was beating wildly in his chest. Jason and Zack were on their way to call the last two members of the original Mighty Morphin Power Ranger team - Kimberly Hart and Trini Kwan. Tommy and Kimberly had enjoyed several of their high school years blissfully in love, and his time with her still stood out in his mind as one of the deepest emotional connections he'd ever formed with anyone. Everything was great, until Kimberly left to train in Florida for the Pan Global Games. Soon after that she'd sent Tommy a letter explaining that she'd found someone else, and subsequently his roller coaster relationship with Katherine had begun.
He understood why Billy had been reluctant to propose this option; however, Tommy had no trepidation about seeing Kimberly again. The two had seen each other a handful of times over the last few years, most recently at Trini's college graduation, and they were always amicable. They hadn't discussed Kimberly's letter to him or really anything of any significance. Usually they just uttered a few words of small talk and went on their merry way. He had no qualms about having her join their makeshift team.
As he watched Jason and Zack disappear, though, he realized why the mere thought of having Kim around was causing a knot to form in the pit of his stomach.
Kimberly was the only person on the planet that could make him doubt his decision to marry Katherine.
