The loud rumble of the engine reverberated through the cargo area of the plane as I strapped my parachute to my back. Jason was sitting on a bench and looking like he was ready to vomit.

"You okay, man?" I asked him.

"Dude, I'm kinda nervous," Jason muttered quietly as I finished strapping the parachute to my back and then locked my feet into the snowboard he had provided.

I laughed a little when I saw from the look on his face that he was being dead serious. His eyes were glazed over and his cheeks were flushed, so I did what I always do, lead the way.

The pilot came over the intercom three minutes later telling us we were approaching the drop zone in ninety seconds and to get ready. I strapped on my helmet and pulled my goggles over my eyes before slowly opening the door, revealing nothing but clear blue sky that only made Jason more nervous. I tossed him his parachute and told him to strap it on because we were getting close.

"It'll be fine, bro. You wanted to do this, remember?" I asked "This is it buddy, it's now or never. I better see you right behind me or I'm taking the Denali when I land and leaving you to find a way home."

Jason only nodded his head as a smile crept across my face. I turned my body around so my back was facing out, gave him a quick wave and flipped backwards, falling through the sky and yelling loudly in excitement. I was nothing but a white blur, flying effortlessly through the sky when I saw Jason come tumbling out of the plane in a heap with his fingers plugging his nose.

I was flipping non-stop, thoroughly enjoying the descent and trying to avoid Jason's girlish and high pitched screams. He was flipping as well but they weren't controlled motions and he was flailing all over.

I wanted to yell to him that that wasn't going to do anything but the words would have never reached him so I yanked the rip cord on my parachute and felt my speed instantly decrease. Jason saw what I was doing and pulled his own cord, allowing the chute to slow him down, leaving nothing but an easy float to the ground below.

When he landed a few seconds after me, his snowboard was skidding across the grass and I could tell he was losing his balance. It was only a matter of time before he toppled over and the camera on his helmet was going to tell the story for years to come. I laughed out loud as he fell over and rolled on his side until he settled and the red parachute fell completely over him.

Of course, the "safety crew" had to ruin my fun and get the parachute off of him but the images of Jason toppling over and being enveloped by a big red piece of cloth would be engrained in my mind forever. By the time he got to his feet and detached from the backpack, he was shaking so I went over to see how he was doing.

"How you feelin' bro?" I asked, trying to conceal my smile.

"Terrible. Don't ever let me do that again," he answered with a look of fear on his face.

"Don't worry man," I replied and then poked the camera on his helmet "With this little baby right here I won't ever have to leave my house again to laugh at you."

"Haha, very funny, dick. Let's just go. I need a beer or two or twelve," he muttered as we hopped in the golf cart that was going to take us to the hangar so we could reclaim our belongings.

Eventually we made it back to the hangar and got our stuff, which was really just sunglasses, wallets and keys before heading for Jason's SUV. We drove for what seemed like forever, catching up the whole way, until we arrived at a little pool hall/bar & grill so far outside of Angel Grove that I didn't even know what town we were in.

However, one thing I learned in all my years as a Power Ranger was that questions always seemed to answer themselves and asking them rarely did anything to help so I played along. The pool hall/restaurant was packed but Jason, being who he was, had "dated" the forty-year old owner a few times and had apparently made a strong enough impression on her because we got a table almost right away.

"See, that's why you never turn down a cougar. They always seem to have something good to offer," Jason lectured with a laugh.

Our waitress came over and got our drink orders, the biggest Heineken they could find for Jason and a Sierra Nevada for myself, before smiling at us and disappearing towards the bar to get our drinks. She came back a few minutes later and I couldn't help but laugh at Jason's incessant flirting that resulted in a phone number scrawled out on a cocktail napkin only minutes after we had been seated.

"I see you finally learned how to play the game 'cause you definitely didn't have that same kind of pull when we were kids, my friend," I muttered with a half-hearted chuckle.

"And I see you still haven't dated a single person since you left the Turbo Rangers like ten years ago," he shot back, a reply which stung, even though it wasn't entirely truthful.

I had dated a lot of girls, more than most men, they just never blossomed into serious relationships. Mostly due to the fact that I held every woman I dated to what my friends had dubbed "Kim Standards" meaning I compared every woman to Kim.

It was also due in large part to the fact that I was living a second life and had been for years and it was a life that I could never let allow an outsider in on. There had been one exception and Haley had been that exception, mostly because she had been there for me through everything I went through during college and in creating the Dino Thunder Rangers. She was really one of the only people I could truly trust with anything.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flashback

Me and Haley were like two peas in a pod, destined to be friends and we knew it on that fateful night in my apartment when Haley had tossed an almost full bottle of Jack Daniels to me and I was far too inebriated to handle the toss. We had already gone through one bottle and we watched in slow motion as the bottle fell to the floor, We both cringed at the expectation that it would shatter and we would lose the only alcohol we had left.

When the bottle finally landed, it didn't shatter. In fact it stood vertically, ready to be grabbed and consumed which I did without a second thought. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. How did Tommy Oliver end up in an empty apartment building with a beautiful woman like Haley and a bottle of hard alcohol.

The answer is simple and the truth of the matter is that I was lonely. Kim had broken up with me only a few months earlier and I still hadn't gotten over it. Haley had also just gotten out of a fairly serious relationship, well as serious as a high school relationship could be, and we instantly bonded on the first day of school when I showed up fifteen minutes late to my science class and had to take the only available seat in the classroom.

It was at the front of the room in between the someone who resembled the Sloth from The Goonies and one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen. Being late had turned out to be a blessing and a curse at the same time. Sloth had tried to get me to be his or her study partner that day but Haley had magically swooped in and rescued me from my inability to be mean to someone, explaining that we had already agreed to be study partners.

When class ended I followed Haley outside and made sure to personally thank her for saving my ass from a semester with the Loch Ness Monster. She was trying her hardest not to laugh at my mean joke but she couldn't. No one had ever been able to resist Tommy Oliver no matter how hard they tried.

So that leads us back to the Jack Daniels incident. We actually did become study partners and it was a planned "study night" that led to the incident. Ironically, the study date would have been my anniversary with Kim so I was feeling a little down in the dumps about it which Haley quickly picked up on when she came over to study.

She convinced me to drink for the first time in my life that night and after more than a bottle and a half of alcohol, mostly Haley's doing, and all of her encouragement, I was pouring my heart out to her in a drunken stupor, detailing my whole relationship history with Kim and how it had ended so tragically for me. She sat up all night with me and listened as I unleashed it all on her. Not once did she seem mad or annoyed with me, she just re-assured me that everything was going to be okay and that it was probably for the best. After that night, Haley became my confidant, one of my best friends and the only outsider I knew I could trust with the burden that was my past.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I've dated plenty of girls, bro," I replied "I just don't go throwing myself at every female that wants an autograph."

"Oh, so now you're jealous because people want my autograph, huh?" he asked with a big grin on his face.

The waitress came over and took our orders a few minutes later and we both decided that the 1.5 pound "Deadman's Burger" was going to be our next challenge for the evening. We played catch-up a little and I explained as much of the Dino Thunder stuff to him without drawing attention to the fact we were talking openly and knowledgably about the Power Rangers.

By the time our overly massive hamburgers had arrived, Jason and I had each gone through five really good sized beers and we were slowly beginning to nurse number six. And I'm not talking about 12 oz. glasses of watered down St. Louis beer here either.

These were easily thirty-five or forty ounce glasses and I had never been much of a drinker to begin with so the five over-the-top-huge beers had me feeling pretty buzzed. So buzzed in fact, that I thought it would be downright hilarious to take the bun off the top of my burger and throw the open faced sandwich that was dripping with juice at a large biker sitting at the bar who just so happened to have had a bulls-eye tattooed on the back of his bald head. I would later justify my actions by saying that any man with a bald head and a bulls-eye is simply asking to have things thrown at him.

Jason tried to catch my arm but it was too late and the burger was flying at the man's head. It was like how all the high school food fights began, in slow motion and someone yelling "NO!" The burger connected with the back of the man's head and I laughed as it slowly slipped down and fell to the floor, leaving a trail of mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle dribbling down the back of his head.

He, however, didn't seem to find it nearly as amusing as Jason and I did so when he turned around and headed towards me, the fire burning in his eyes, I did the sensible thing and ran as fast as I could away from him. The only problem was that I ran into the pool hall which happened to be about as far away from an exit as you could be.

The biker had me cornered and I saw my life was flashing before my eyes as he made a move towards me and I instinctively dove out of the way as his head crashed against the wall and he slumped to the ground. Unfortunately, the man had friends and apparently a lot of them because within seconds of him going down I was surrounded by more bikers with Jason running towards me, valiantly yelling "Hold on! I'm coming buddy!"

Jason came cutting through the crowd, shoving some of the would-be assailants out of the way and grabbing two pool cues off the racks, one of which he tossed to me. As soon as I caught the stick the bikers took it as their cue to attack and Jason and myself were deflecting blows with the sticks and counter-attacking with some very well placed punches and kicks.

It probably took us a good ten or fifteen minutes but in the end we had managed to take down close to fifteen huge bikers, wreck two big screen TV's, break three pool tables, shatter every bottle of alcohol they had in the bar and snap at least 20 pool cues over the heads of our attackers. I took a second to myself observe our handiwork before I allowed my eyes to meet Jason's and we both erupted into fits of laughter.

We were so caught up in what had just happened that we didn't even notice the owner, Jason's "cougar" friend, walk in to the room and clear her throat loudly.

"Ahem. You boys have made quite a mess. You know you'll have to pay for-" she began before realizing she was talking to Jason "Oh, it's you Jason. I'm sorry sweetie, you know you don't have to worry about silly things like this. I'll take care of it. You and your friend just go have a good night, okay?"

Jason walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek, causing her to blush. He whispered something in her ear and then turned around, walking towards me and wrapping an invisible rope around his finger signifying that he, indeed, had the woman wrapped around his finger.

I chuckled a little bit as he threw his arm around my shoulder and led me outside, walking through the dirt parking lot towards where the Denali was. Suddenly, he stopped and spun me around to look at him with a serious look covering his face.

"Tommy. I swear to God man. If you ever do anything like that again, I'll…I'll…I'll probably laugh just as hard as I did tonight," he muttered, playfully pushing me into a white Dodge Ram.

I pushed myself off the truck and back into a standing position before turning around and pointing my finger at Jason, drunkenly.

"I'll kill you, you son of a bitch," I muttered just loud enough for him to hear me before I ripped my shirt off and then dove at him, taking him to the ground.

We jockeyed back and forth for another ten minutes or so on the dirt floor until I had pinned Jason down and he admitted defeat. Satisfied with my victory, I extended him a hand and he graciously took it as I helped him to his feet.

By this time a small group of middle-aged women had made their way outside to see us, specifically me because I was shirtless, wrestling in the parking lot. When my head turned towards Jason I found him smiling and looking right at me. He slapped me lightly on the chest and then backed away a little.

"Come on man. Let's give 'em a show," he whispered as he pulled off his shirt, tossed it aside and then entered a fighting stance.

I smiled at the idea, the alcohol giving me courage, so I stepped back a few feet and let my arms land at my side. I tried to conceal my smile as I slowly bowed to Jason, an action which received plenty of "oohs" and aahs" from the ladies, and then entered my own fighting stance.

We sparred for quite awhile, exchanging jabs, hooks, sidekicks, roundhouses and leg sweeps until we couldn't stand anymore. Our little exhibition ended abruptly when Jason backed me in between two trucks and then tried to execute a tornado kick which ended up connecting with the passenger side mirror on one of the vehicles, sending it flying through the window of another.

"Hey, jackass!" one of the women yelled "That mirror came from my truck."

"And that window came from mine!" another shouted "Come on girls, let's get 'em!"

Jason and I looked back at each other in a mixture of shock and panic so we did the mature and responsible thing and made a break for his SUV, making sure to grab our shirts on the way. As we ran to his car we passed the same Dodge Ram from earlier. It had tinted windows that were so dark that I couldn't even see the driver in the truck staring back at us and the mess we had caused, smiling brightly. We climbed in to his car and drove off as fast as we could but it wasn't fast enough because just as we were pulling away I heard Jason's back window shatter as a rock connected with it.

I looked at him and he looked at me, both with concerned expressions and then we turned our eyes back on the road. Out of my peripherals I could see that he was looking at me again so I looked back and we both exploded into huge fits of laughter.

"Dude, you were all 'hi-ya!' with your tornado kick and then 'boom!' Mirror go bye-bye," I said as I tried to reenact his movements from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle and pull my shirt on all while trying to make my words sound as coherent as possible through my laughter.

"I know, bro. Did you see how freakin' pissed those two chicks were? With a reaction like that you would think I had kicked a mirror through one of their windshields or something like that," he muttered in a serious tone which only caused us to laugh harder.

Soon enough we both had tears in our eyes and I was holding onto my side as I curled up into a twisted fetal position in my seat. It was close to a thirty-mile drive back to Jason's from the pool hall and I laughed for twenty-eight of them, only stopping for two because a police cruiser was behind us and we both got a little paranoid about getting pulled over.

By this point my body was running on nothing but pure adrenaline and I didn't even see the white Dodge Ram from the bar that was following us, staying just far enough behind us to not arouse my suspicions. I also didn't notice that Jason was throwing nervous glances into the rearview mirror which wouldn't have made sense anyway because it was dark out and the only thing he could hope to see were headlights.

"Dude, we need to get some tunes going in here," Jason muttered, pulling a CD from his visor and handing it to me "Throw this on, bro."

I took the CD and laughed at the burned disc marked "Jason's Red Ranger Jams: Do Not Listen If You Aren't A Power Ranger."

"Way to be real inconspicuous, bro," I replied, holding up the disc and trying not to smile.

Normally I would have been angry that Jason had something like that laying around his car but I was on too much of an alcohol influenced buzz and a natural high from all the excitement that night to really pay much attention to it. Instead I put the CD into the player and began to laugh as "The Sign" by Ace of Base came on.

"Dude, you gotta be kidding me. We used to all love this song when we were kids," I laughed and then hung my head out the window "I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign. Yeah, baby. Woo-hoo!"

Eventually after twenty seconds or so of screaming I lowered myself back into the car and hit the "skip" button on the player. When I heard the beat kick in I just looked at Jason and smiled as he nodded his head back at me.

"Oh yeah, Tommy. You know how it goes. Sing it with me, bro!" he shouted and I joined in with him.

I love it when you call me Big Pop-pa
Throw your hands in the air, if yous a true playa
I love it when you call me Big Pop-pa
To the honies getting' money playin dudes like dummies
I love it when you call me Big Pop-pa
If you got a gun up in your waist please don't shoot up the place
Cause I see some ladies tonight who should be havin' my baby
Bay-bee

"Aww, man. I sure miss the old days, bro," I muttered as we pulled up to his house "Sometimes I wish things had turned out differently you know? Or that I could go back and change some things, do some things differently."

"What do you mean?" Jason asked as my expression changed. He knew what I was talking about and when he heard the words it was like he had won some huge battle.

As I climbed out of the SUV, Jason put his arm around me shoulders and led me down the driveway towards the street. When we were about twenty feet from the sidewalk we stopped and he looked at me.

"Well, what if I told you that you can't relive your past but that you can definitely make your life what you hoped it would be, starting today?" he asked.

"What do you mean, 'change my future?'" I replied.

"What would you say, Tommy? We're not going any further until you answer me," he answered "What would you say if I told you you could have your life the way you want it?"

I pondered the question in silently for a few moments until I came up with a reply that I thought would be fairly reasonable.

"I guess I'd ask you where I signed up and what the catch was," I replied.

"Well, you sign up here and the catch is that it's going to take a lot of effort on your part," he muttered back "Tommy, you're gonna hate me when I show you this but you'll thank me in a few months."

"Jason Scott, what the hell did you do?" I asked angrily as he led me to the sidewalk.

I looked to my right and saw nothing out of the ordinary but then I looked to my left and saw the familiar white truck from the bar. I stared at Jason with a shocked and nervous look on my face as he made a motion with his hand, apparently signaling someone in the car.

The door clicked open and I watched as a pair of small feet in cowboy boots landed on the pavement. As the door closed I got my first look at the driver of the car but I couldn't see her face because of the darkness.

As she walked towards me the street light illuminated her face and I nearly fell on my back which was only prevented because Jason had come over and prevented me from falling down.

I tried to put on my best happy face for her as the petite woman got closer and when I saw that she was just as nervous as I was and she saw that I was just as nervous as her, we both calmed down and relaxed a little bit.

She wrapped her arms around my waist tightly as I bent down to warmly return the embrace. Jason caught my eye and even though I wanted to be furious with him, I couldn't. He would have to explain to me how he pulled all this off in only a few days time and why he did it but for now I was content with simply pulling the small woman close to me and whispering the words "Hey there, Beautiful" into her ear.