Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.
Notes: Some of you may notice my tendency to miss out on the connective tissue that would make this a proper fic, rather than scattershot scenes. It's a flaw, and one I acknowledge. I also want to make it clear that, people have seen the episodes. For the most part, it should be assumed that the monsters were the same and the interactions were roughly the same in most ways. If more details are wanted, you're going to have to PM me or leave a review asking.
Not for the first time, Billy cursed his lack of physical prowess and his lack of interest in the martial arts, boxing or any other physical pastime with the express intent of learning the most efficient ways to injure other persons. But this was the first time someone wasn't running away from Rita's putties. Instead, Tom was placing himself between Billy and the putties, determined to protect him. Him. The Blue Power Ranger.
Logically, Billy knew that Tom could not know that Billy didn't need the protection, further, the whole reason he wasn't morphing was in order to keep that a secret from everyone, Tom included, but it galled nonetheless.
It was also terrifying.
They'd been caught in an alley and hemmed in. Tom had had several chances to escape, but he hadn't taken them because Billy hadn't run. And suddenly there had been no way out for either of them. Unless Billy were to morph, which he wasn't supposed to do in front of civilians, but surely Zordon would understand . . .
Tom suddenly lunged toward the rusty fire escape, somehow wrenching loose a length of steel from the stairway (a clear violation of fire safety regulations some small portion of Billy's distracted mind noted) and began to use it as a weapon, laying into the putties. It was something Billy had neither seen nor imagined.
When he and the others had first faced the putties, they'd all been outmatched, even Jason. They had learned that putties weren't human and didn't react the way humans did. They'd learned a new way to fight that was brutal and assumed the thing you were hitting didn't feel pain the way a person did. But Tom, it seemed, had already figured out that lesson. But it was more than that. There was something fierce and protective in the way he moved, something that the part of Billy that was Blue and Triceratops saw as protection and friend.
It wasn't the clean purity of Jason's karate, but it was smooth and easy, as though Tom were built for this, built for violence. Not in a way that was to harm, but to protect. In those movements he could see an instinctive distillation of those principles of movement Jason tried to teach, the ones you saw in a Bruce Lee movie or the martial arts display at the youth centre the previous week. It was the same determination that made the Power Rangers get back up again when they were flattened by a monster, and Tom was knocked down, again and again, but never backed down, never let up until every last putty was shattered and beaten.
He turned to Billy, looking a little stunned, a little amazed and a little elated, saying, "Man. That was weird. What do you suppose they wanted?"
"I have no hypotheses," Billy lied. Then Tom staggered, slamming into the alley wall. "Tom!" Billy stifled the urge once more to call for a teleport out and looped Tom's arm around his shoulders, helping him to the youth centre.
As they entered the central meeting area of the centre, Zack was next to them at once. "What happened?" he asked, then didn't wait for a reply as he shouted to Ernie, "Ernie! The first aid kit! And I think some ice!"
He took Tom's other side. Billy found himself beginning to shake in reaction. "He fought off an entire putty patrol," he told Zack.
"Seriously, man?" Zack sounded impressed. They got Tom onto a chair in the centre and Zack started to apply ice and bandages to Tom's various abrasions and injuries.
"You're the best friend I've ever had, Billy," Tom said. "You're not much of a fighter, I wasn't going to let them hurt you." he sounded a bit dazed as he spoke. "First real friend I've ever had," he added. Then he blinked hard a few times. "I've got a headache," he said plaintively.
"I think he's got a concussion," Zack said wisely. "We'd better call his parents."
Billy called the Lewis household and soon enough the kind Mrs. Lewis was there, collecting Tom and taking him off to the emergency room. When Tom was finally out of the way, Billy found himself shaking in an unpopulated corner of the youth centre. "Billy? You okay?" Kimberly's voice cut through his brown study and he looked up to see his friends, his fellow Power Rangers, gazing at him in concern. "Zack told us what happened."
"Yeah, Tom nearly got the both of you killed trying to show off," Jason said.
There was an odd ripple Billy felt. Seeing the others shudder, he was pretty sure they all felt it, a flash of something that felt like Green and fear, then something a little slimy and corrupting. "We'd better talk to Zordon," Jason said.
Zordon couldn't explain what they'd felt, save that something had changed in the Morphing Grid, and Billy was unable to confront Jason about his mischaracterisation of Tom's motivations.
The next day he was unable to do so, as something new and terrifying struck from Rita's moon base. It was a Power Ranger, but this one worked for the Empress of Evil. He was Green to their respective colours, and he tore through them like a laser through tissue. Savage and brutal, it was the initial fight with the putties all over again. All Trini and Jason's skill availed them nothing, Zack's deliberately unconventional movements and Kimberly's agility could do nothing to stand in his way.
It only got worse when Billy arrived at Tom's, wanting to see how he was, and was firmly rebuffed. Tom's actions seemed to belie his concussed statement of friendship for Billy, who was left confused and hurt by the green-clad youth's actions.
Tom had become a very close friend in the short time they'd known each other and Billy often wondered what had caused his new friend to think so poorly of his intellect. With a sincere interest in paleontological study, Tom was an excellent and interesting conversationalist on topics of the Order Dinosauria, on anatomy and animal behaviour and even on the history of scientific discovery itself. If he was a little more focussed on the one area than was Billy's wont, there was nothing wrong with a considered specialisation, and Tom seemed like an individual who would succeed in his university studies with his interest and dedication to his chosen area of concentration.
Furthermore, outside his interest in paleontology Tom was interested in the martial arts. It was a clearly deep and abiding interest, one supplemented by a sort of instinctive understanding of the forms and appreciation for the art and history of them, as well as the destructive and injurious nature of them. Many times he had found Tom watching news footage of the Power Rangers, deconstructing their fighting techniques and tactics in ways Billy found helpful when he was facing down monsters. In fact, upon seeing Billy's frequent victimisation at the hands of school bullies, Tom had insisted on taking Billy aside and teaching him some incredibly vicious fighting techniques that did not come to him with the flashier movements of the power-coin-generated skills, but from Tom's skills at pugilism.
But that was where things became odd. Because Tom was utterly convinced of his own, for lack of a better term, stupidity. He had somehow truly come to believe that he was of lesser intellect than most, consequently believing that schoolwork or other achievements of similar types were not worth the time spent on them because he would supposedly never succeed.
Tom continued to brush him off at school, and Billy decided that, as soon as the crisis with the Green ranger was resolved, once Zordon was safely returned to contact with them, he would take the time to determine what had gone wrong between himself and Tom. When he spotted Tom calmly ignoring a situation that would have previously sent him into a protective rage, he altered his assessment to something gone terribly awry with Tom alone.
Everything changed when the Green Ranger attacked the city again. They were faced with his terrifying and deadly skills for another time, and Billy, desperate, reached for those lessons he'd had from Tom.
"When in doubt, reach for something to even the score. Find a weapon. If they're beating you ten to one, then it's not a fair fight and you need to make it that way."
Tom's hands adjusted Billy's around the branch he was using to demonstrate, shifting them into a position that felt wrong at first, but that soon proved to offer an excellent angle of grasp for use both offensively and defensively. Every movement Tom showed him was explained as he went.
"People tend to try to hit for the head first, most of the time from the side, coming up this way," Tom explained, his right arm moving slowly to suit. Billy moved to block in the way that Jason had demonstrated in karate class, but Tom stopped him and took his arm in his hands to move his arm differently. "That's a good block for a straight punch like so," he snapped out a blow in perfect form that never connected with Billy, but did come within a few inches of striking him. "The problem is, most people don't do karate. If you were better at it you'd have the training to see and block, but you don't. And in terms of being able to defend now," Tom told him earnestly, "You need to anticipate what those people will do."
The lessons had been as careful as Jason's. But where Billy couldn't quite seem to translate those lessons to practicality normally, morphed was another story. They were leaping in, one at a time, each one trying and failing to get a grasp on the Green Ranger's style. But as they went in a second time, Billy shifted his grip on his Power Lance. This time, he tried Tom's tactics, tried the duck and twist Tom had shown him before, the upswing of his polearm, done to imitate what he'd been trying with a tree branch.
He hit the Green Ranger hard, sending him back a few paces. "Blue's looking to play, huh?" The smirk behind the helmet was almost audible. The blows they exchanged bore no resemblance to the fancy technical artistry Green had been trading with Jason. These were mean and sharp and . . . familiar?
"If you get hit, try moving with the attack, don't try to take it head on. Roll and it minimises the damage, and it gives you a little more time to regroup."
"Tom?" Billy gasped as the suddenly familiar movements crystallised.
A low, painfully familiar chuckle emerged from their opponent. "Took you long enough," he said.
"But . . ." There was only one logical explanation, Billy thought. "Tom, Rita has you under an enchantment," he said. "This is not . . . this isn't you!" Brevity was, perhaps, more important than accuracy in detailing the failures of the new personality in relation to the old.
A chilling laugh emerged from behind the helmet. It was nothing like the laugh Billy had heard when Tom was truly amused. "Why would you say that? I'm sure your little friends wouldn't."
"They have notç had sufficient interactions with you to make a valid determination of your general behavioural tendencies as I have," Billy sallied. "I know you-"
A snort. "You mean when I play nice with your little geek friends, pretend to be another geek and be a walking bully defense," Tom retorted. "That's the 'real' me, huh?"
"More based in reality than this!" Billy said. He knew he sounded pleading, knew his friends were regrouping and was terrified that they would take Tom at his word, that they'd find a way to ambush and destroy the first person since Trini to really listen to what Billy said and try to understand. They thought he was violent and hateful and Billy might be the only one who could stop them from doing something irreparable. "You defend people. You protect our fellow students from bullies, prevent them from being victims of assault. You stand in between attackers and victims, Tom."
"Maybe I'm just sick of protecting people who won't get up and help themselves," Tom replied. There was a snarl in his voice, and then the conversation was over. The fight was on again, and this time Green didn't hold back as he tried to destroy the Rangers. He left when they were all beaten to the ground, laughing as Rita's teleportation picked him up, snatching him away, making it clear she was just toying with them.
Back at the commend centre, Billy ignored the others in favour of diverting some of the sensory resources to arranging to track Tom. Then he couldn't ignore them anymore.
"Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai! Billy, what are you looking for?" Alpha asked.
"So, your new best friend's working for Rita," Jason said.
"It's not his fault," Billy ground out in response. "Whatever enchantment she has him under is creating a highly negative variant on the natural state of his personal predilections."
Trini cut in before anyone could even think to ask. "The spell's making him act differently, he's not himself, and in a bad way." She looked at Billy doubtfully. "Are you sure? Because all those people he beat up-"
Zack. Wonderful, loyal, unprejudiced Zack, spoke. "I saw him after he protected Billy from those putties," he said. "If Billy thinks this is a spell, I believe him." He shot Jason and Trini a Look. "You guys should too. How often is Billy wrong?"
Turning to Alpha, Billy explained, "Acting as Rita's evil Green Ranger is out of character for Tom. I am searching for indicators of dark energy around Tom. I believe he must be under some sort of negative influence from Rita in order to convince him to act in such a way."
"And if he's not acting under Rita's influence?" Jason demanded.
Billy felt his jaw set mulishly. "He is." He still could have offered highly vocal applause as the computer of the Command Centre beeped and printed out the results. Thrusting the information at Jason, Billy felt a sense of vindication as he repeated. "He is."
"Then we have to break the spell," Zack said. Jason, Trini and Kimberly were all silent. "Look, I know he doesn't seem like the nicest guy-"
A noise erupted out of Billy's throat before he could stop himself. Wordless, protesting and strange, it halted the others a moment. "Go on, Zack," Billy choked out as he thought of the young man who was so concerned about hurting the feelings of others that he'd gone on a date with a girl just because he didn't know how to tell her he wasn't interested in her that way and had to be rescued from a date at the Butterfly Garden by her friends because he was too nice to say he didn't think butterflies were interesting.
"The point is," Zack finished, "He's willing to stand in between people and danger, he's a good friend of Billy's and that alone should mean we wouldn't leave him with Rita."
"How did you know it was him?" Kimberly asked. "I mean, you started fighting him, and all of a sudden you knew. How?"
Taking a deep breath, Billy said, "Tom was worried about me and he tried to give me instruction on an informal fighting technique that he thought would be beneficial in terms of defense against opponents with less formal technical martial skill."
"What?" Trini asked, sounding appalled. "He thinks he's better than Jason?"
"No," Billy corrected tiredly. "He thought that most people who commit assaults are not trained in a formal technique like karate, and given that those who are less well-trained do not have the skill to anticipate the movements of such persons and it would behoove me to understand better how to deal with such attackers given my unfortunate lack of talent in martial skills."
"So he does think he's better than Jason," Trini said.
Billy turned to her, hurt. "You are not listening," he accused her.
"Stop!" Jason interposed himself between them. "Look. I don't want to hurt anyone and having another ranger on our side can only be a good thing. If Billy's right it's better that we break the spell. We can figure out if Tom is good or bad or whatever he may be later. Let's focus on what we need to do."
It didn't escape Billy's notice that Jason didn't seem to think Tom was any good either.
Pacing around his room, Tom snarled to himself. How dare Billy stand there trying to tell him who he was? What did the Blue Ranger know about Tom's life? How could he make any judgments about who Tom was or wasn't? He'd just been running around, forcing Tom into some geeky mould.
You liked it. A small voice spoke in the back of his head. You liked friends and the lack of fear and the way that people didn't look at you like a freak or a failure.
He shook his head, trying to make that voice go away. It was weakness. It was pathetic. He didn't need friends and kindness. He needed respect and to make people fear him.
Billy respects you.
Incensed, he ignored what Rita had told him about keeping a low profile. He needed to do something. Needed to get out there, feel that power that could only come from seeing someone cowering at his feet. Maybe he'd kill Bulk and Skull. The two seemed not only incapable of not bullying others, they were really irritating. Playing with them might be fun.
Morphed and grinning behind his helmet, Tom laughingly began to toy with the pair, batting them down every time they tried to run, making them feel helpless and beleaguered.
"What are you doing?" demanded Goldar. "The Empress said you were to wait until you were called!"
"Playing," Tom answered. "It's just a little fun, monkey man, lighten up."
They were interrupted. "Well, we're here to put a stop to that kind of fun," said Jason from behind his Red façade.
A snarl stretched over Tom's lips as he launched himself at Red. He wanted to get that smug, self-righteous look off the other boy's face. He wanted to stop the little quips that stung so much about how Jason just 'knew' Tom was using what he'd learnt in class to hurt other people, that Tom was the bully, that Tom didn't deserve to be there and it was only Jason's 'fairness' that let him be in the class at all. That Jason was lowering his own standards to teach Tom karate. The little corrections that didn't seem so bad until they added up and just kept picking and picking and picking.
Because Jason knew karate, but Tom knew how to fight. Knew what you did to take an opponent down and keep him that way. Knew how to be brutal and fast and forget about the hurricane kicks when a length of lead pipe could do all that and more.
Every hit that cut through Jason's defense felt like a small victory and every hit he took just goaded Tom on more to win this fight and see Red lying broken at his feet.
He was aware of the others taking on Goldar, but his world had narrowed to the focus of his red haze of anger. He was jarred from his concentration by the blue between him and Red. Billy.
Billy was there, all that flashy flippy stuff gone in favour of Tom's own style. Something that came from a more visceral place than all that artistry Jason practiced. As Blue matched him blow for blow, Tom felt a flash of pride in the teen for picking up the style, even just as a ranger. A thought of how cool it would be to get Billy in on one of the cage matches Tom had won by the skin of his teeth while fleeing cross-country from the New York state foster system crossed his mind.
A particularly brutal hit drove Billy back and gave Tom the chance to shake his head, trying to jar those images loose. Get his focus back.
Goldar had contemptuously taken on the others, a flock of putties now in the mix. When had they arrived? He didn't know. The others were now distracted, keeping the grey foot soldiers from hurting civilians. One putty lunged for a small child, crossing Tom's path back to his fight with Billy. He kicked it away, sending it to shatter against a nearby wall, telling himself it was just because it was in his way as the fight picked up again.
"Break the spell, Tom," Billy pleaded as they locked weapons again. "You're better than this. You protect people. Like that little boy, like you tried with Kimberly when you first got to school."
"The pretty princess doesn't need any protection," Tom sneered. "I'm sure she's got a dozen football players happy to dance to her tune."
"Then what about Laurie?" Billy gasped out, the Dragon Dagger scraping along his suit, no doubt leaving pain in its wake. "You didn't need to agree to go to her cousin's wedding. You're just doing it so that her parents won't keep trying to convince her that her sexual orientation is not what it is."
An internal wince at the nice girl whose parents' continued harassment on the topic of her girlfriend was driving her to distraction gave him a delightfully nasty thought. "Maybe I'll swing by their home," he mused. "Could be a nice present."
"You can't help yourself," Billy told him. "Can you? You're still protecting people."
He wasn't. He wasn't, he couldn't, he was evil, he was a ne'er-do-well that would chase and taunt and hurt others because it gave him a laugh. Because . . .
Tom turned to a whirlwind of fury as he slammed fists and feet and dagger into the Blue Ranger to take out of his hide the anger her felt over the implications he was a good person. He wasn't.
"Billy! No!" shouted Yellow behind him. Blue was on the ground, clawing at the dirt in pain, clinging to consciousness and his morph.
And Tom couldn't do it. Because it was Billy. It was the first person who ever thought Tom was worth anything since his dimly remembered parents had died eight years before. Who'd gotten Tom's grades up and reduced his rates of suspensions and . . .
"Good work, Green Ranger," said Goldar. The golden monkey's sword was raised high, set to come down on the Blue Ranger's head. Set to kill him.
The spell shattered. Tom's morph was broken by the shock, but Billy was more important. The blue polearm on the ground, the Blue Power Lance, came to his hand and Tom drove it at Goldar, striking the monkey hard. The weapon vanished, evaporating as its bearer was just barely awake and had not given permission to pass the weapon to another.
It was enough to get the gold-plated monster away from Billy, buying time for the rangers to rally around their fallen comrade. "I knew recruiting a human was a mistake!" Goldar snarled.
Tom reached for the morpher, already raising the power to change back when Rita's prize minion fled with the putties.
A wave of sick self-hatred filled him. What had he done? He really was no better than anyone had said. He'd failed Billy, failed to manage even his self-appointed task of protecting people, becoming exactly what he'd always tried to beat into submission.
He turned to the Power Rangers. It wasn't adequate, but it was all he had. "I'm sorry," he told them. Tossing Jason the Green morpher, he turned and walked away. They took Billy with them and Tom went back to the Lewises, thanked his lucky stars they weren't home and threw up what felt like everything he'd ever eaten.
At school he did his best to avoid everyone he'd been horrible to, figuring that if he let hurt feelings ease he could get through however long it took him to get expelled again with minimal trouble. It was actually a lot of work to avoid Billy, though. Even though they pretty much only had homeroom together, Billy being in all AP classes and Tom . . . well . . . not, the Blue Ranger seemed to be everywhere. It got so bad that Tom skipped school one Wednesday, hiding out at the mall.
Turning a corner as he bypassed crowds by ducking out into the parking lot to circle around outside, Tom was momentarily alone, then suddenly found himself hurtling through space in a teleportation beam, landing in the unfortunately familiar setting of the Power Rangers' command centre.
"Welcome, Tom Oliver," came the deep, sonorous voice of the Rangers' mentor, Zordon.
Taking a deep breath, Tom turned to look at the Eltarian. "I'm sorry," he told Zordon. "I know it doesn't make up for it, but I'm sorry that I . . ." he trailed off, gesturing at the computers and panels he'd wrecked on Rita's orders, at Alpha 5 whose programming he'd messed with and at the alien man whose very existence in their dimension had been threatened by his actions.
"You are not at fault for the actions you committed while under Rita's sway," Zordon said. "You are now, however, the master of your own actions. Because of this I must ask you, why have you turned away from the Power?"
"Turned away?" Tom asked. "I wasn't supposed to be a Power Ranger to begin with. I'm not brave or smart or a team player or anything that would make a good Power Ranger."
"I would debate the matter of your courage," Zordon told him, "but I would add that you are a strong and resourceful fighter. The Rangers have need of such."
Tom snorted. "So I can break heads. You can find anyone around who can break heads."
"None have been accepted by the Power," Zordon said.
That was sheer foolishness. "Accepted? Please. I don't know anything about magic and even I can tell that Rita did something to me. She made me into an acceptable vessel. I should never have been a ranger-"
Zordon interrupted him. "You should not have been the Green Ranger, Tom," he said gravely. "Each ranger colour goes to a particular person. Red is the leader, you know this. The rest of the team exists in a balance of the personalities that go with the colours of that team. Yellow is calm and logic in the face of crisis while Blue is intelligence, whether scientific as Billy is or tactical as others have been. Black, Green, Pink, White, these other colours vary as to the people who are needed to balance the Red, Yellow and Blue that are the core of the team."
"Which has what to do with me?" Tom asked.
"You are not Green, Tom," Zordon said, as though it were an explanation. "Your colour, I would not wish to prejudice you at this time, but this is not your colour, and it does you a disservice to use a power coin that is not such, just as much as it would do a disservice to put Zack in Blue or Jason in Yellow."
That was a very nice explanation, but, "What does that have to do with me?" Tom asked. "I can't make up for what I did and I see no reason to pretend that I can. I'm not the Green Ranger and I don't intend to be."
"You are being a coward," Zordon said. If he'd meant to goad Tom, it failed.
"Tell me something about myself I don't know," Tom told him.
Zordon looked at him silently a moment, then said, "Perhaps I am too used to those who have come to the Power honestly," he admitted. "But allow me to give you a different perspective than the one you are looking from. Observe the viewing Globe."
Obediently, because really, listening to the man was the least he could do after the crap he'd pulled, Tom looked at the Globe. As he watched, horrible monsters appeared on the surface. Ones that were terrible and made the things the Rangers had so far fought look like kittens. "What?" he asked, not sure what he was even asking.
"Rita has not exerted herself to destroy the Rangers as she might have," Zordon told him. "And with each attack she brings to bear greater and newer powers." New images began to flicker through the globe, this time of power rangers. As Tom watched, he had a strange sensation that there was something . . . off about some. "A Power Ranger team is comprised of five. As I have already said, Red, Yellow and Blue form the core, with two other colours that complement them."
"And by colours, you mean personalities," Tom said slowly. "But where does the Green Ranger fit into all this?"
"The fifth colour could have been Green and not Black, or Pink," Zordon explained. "But there is another coin, because it is rare there is not a Sixth Ranger." That sounded like it meant something. Like Sixth was some sort of official designation. Zordon continued. "A Sixth Ranger exists outside the team. He or she is there to strengthen the team. To assist. The mission of such a Ranger is rarely the same as the others', although it may meld well with the mission of the main team." He looked soberly at Tom. "They are not part of the team, being separate, but they assist when the others are overcome."
"You want me to take this coin that shouldn't even be mine and play backup," Tom said slowly. "You'd only call me in when they needed help."
Zordon nodded. "I ask because I have watched you. You would not wish to allow Billy to be hurt," he went on. "You would regret the choice to give up the coin should it happen."
Something needed to be clarified, however. "Jason wouldn't be in charge of me, though?" Tom asked. "It's just . . . he doesn't like me, Kimberly and Trini don't either. We wouldn't be a team and we wouldn't work as one, not really."
"I could wish it were so," Zordon said. "But I fear it is true. Therefore I ask you, Tom Oliver, will you take up the Green Power Coin?"
It was the thought of Billy that decided him. He didn't think he could ever be able to deal with Jason, his own resentment at being judged before the other teenager even had a chance to know him preventing any sort of real trust, but to protect Billy, to protect Billy's friends that meant so much to the Blue Ranger? "I'll do it."
As he swore the threefold rules of secrecy, nonescalation and never misusing his powers for gain, Tom felt that slightly off-kilter power wash over him again the way it had when Rita had handed him the coin, and promised himself he'd do better this time.