And now, the first part of the Green With Evil saga!
*PR*PR*PR*
Rita was many things, but 'stupid' was not one of them.
Sure, she could fake it fairly well, especially given the unfortunate birth defect of her voice. But she
was far from the weakest spell in the book, especially when it came to strategy. This was part of why Tommy Oliver had completely confounded her. How could anyone, even Zordon, have chosen someone so completely stupid?
She'd tested out quite a few theories. Tommy was faking it; Tommy was a plant; Tommy was brain-damaged. While the monster to scan his brain had been blown up during the unfortunate mess with the airplane, said unfortunate mess itself had made her realize something.
Who cared what Tommy Oliver was? He was the single biggest threat to the Power Rangers since she had been born. And given that he was practically gift-wrapped for her, it would just be downright rude not to use him.
So she sent down some Putties to kidnap him.
This...did not go well. Rita wasn't even sure how Tommy had plastic explosives on him, much less how he'd managed to create plastic explosives that blew up Putties. Her grand speech about 'choosing him' didn't seem quite as impressive now, so she just stared.
"You know, most kidnappers hand out candy." Tommy said, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, what kind of a kidnapper are you? You don't even have a white van. You suck."
Apparently this was going to be more difficult than she'd realized. "Tommy!" She crowed, attempting to sound triumphant. Impressive or not, she was going to do this right, damnit. "I have chosen you-"
"Pikachu!"
Rita teleported down to the street, now caught somewhere between flabbergasted and furious. "I am trying to make a speech here!" She screeched.
"Yeah, but if you're going to choose a Pokemon you have to choose Pikachu. Otherwise Misty gets mad because you're using the others too much and I think there's laws against abusing the Pokeanimals." Tommy said as if he were discussing the weather. "And if all you wanted to do was play Pokemon you didn't have to kidnap me. See?" He drew a deck of colorful cards from his back pocket. "I always have my deck."
This was not going according to plan.
"Do you have candy, though?" Tommy continued, oblivious to Rita's inability to figure out just what the hell to do now. "Jase took my stash away again. Says it'll make me 'hyper'." He rolled his eyes as he formed the air quotes. "It doesn't really, Mom says it kind of calms me down sometimes...wait, that's coffee. But I put a ton of sugar in my coffee anyway. Dad thinks I might have ADHD but Mom said my birth parents must've dropped me on my head as a baby because ADHD doesn't make you a complete and utter lunatic. I think she forgets I know what she's saying but it's kind of funny so I don't mind."
Rita decided it would be a far better option to just teleport him now and worry about whatever he was saying later.
"Oh, hey, Jason!" Tommy said suddenly, brightening at something behind her. He waved his cards. "Come play Pokemon with us!"
"The Red Ranger isn't there, White Ranger." Rita sneered, aiming her staff.
"Uh, actually, I am."
Damn.
Jason raised an eyebrow as Rita teleported away. "What the hell was that about?"
"Pokemon!" Tommy said cheerfully.
*PR*PR*PR*
Zack and Jason were having a Serious Discussion.
Tommy knew it was a Serious Discussion (capital letters) because they'd started staying up late whispering. It was fairly normal for them to stay over at each other's houses, but normally they went to sleep, especially if Jason was there to remind them about school the next morning.
Tommy was curious. He didn't really find Serious Discussions interesting, but sometimes they had fun parts, like when Jason had told him to not worry too much about being normal around Zordon. (He could be normal, or at least not ramble on for hours. Trini had taught him how. But it was hard to do for a long time, and it wasn't him, so he preferred being his usual self most of the time anyway.)
At the moment, though, Zack and Jason thought he was asleep. It was the best way to spy on them. But they kept their Serious Discussion low so they didn't 'wake' him, and Tommy could barely hear a thing.
Finally he was just bored.
He sighed and rolled over. He could probably sneak out without Zack or Jason noticing, but there wasn't much to do, especially since turning on the TV would interrupt their Serious Discussion, and Tommy was intelligent enough to know that interrupting those was borderline dangerous, even for him. (They were Power Rangers, after all. It came with the territory that if you didn't plan, things you liked got destroyed.)
He rolled onto the forgotten Pokemon deck he'd left in his sleeping bag. Of course! He could go play Pokemon with Rita!
He grinned to himself, scooped up his cards, and snuck outside. The night was fairly pleasant, so Tommy didn't even have to go get a jacket. He happily snickered to himself, pleased at his genius idea (it wouldn't even wake anyone up!), but then realized he didn't know how to find Rita. She lived on the moon, how would she know he wanted to play Pokemon now?
He headed for the alleyway where she'd first tried to play. Maybe she'd notice him there.
He sat shuffling his deck for a while, but it got a bit colder, and he was about to leave before Rita appeared in a flash of light, grinning like a lunatic. She must've been really bored. Then again, Tommy reflected, there probably weren't a lot of people to play Pokemon with on the moon.
"Tommy!" She greeted him.
"Hi, Rita! I brought my Pokemon deck. Oooh, do you have an alien Pokemon deck? That would be so cool. Do they even make those? In Area 51 maybe?" Tommy felt stars drifting over his eyes in excitement. He knew the Command Center wasn't Area 51 (although he still called it that to watch the others laugh), but the real Area 51 must be awesome.
"Er...no." Rita said.
Tommy pouted. "But have you ever seen Area 51? It must be totally awesome. I mean, I know Jase says I'm obsessed with conspiracy theories, but can you imagine-well, no, you've already seen it, haven't you?"
Rita regarded him with a look on her face for a moment (Tommy got that look a lot, he never knew what it meant), then nodded slowly. "I can take you to see Area 51 if you want."
This was the best. Day. Ever.
"Seriously?" Tommy gasped enthusiastically, dropping his Pokemon deck in his excitement. Rita grinned and nodded. "Yes! This is awesome!" He promptly did an impromptu happy dance, which was stopped by Rita pointing her staff at him.
They vanished in a flash of green flame.
When they reappeared, Rita was cackling. Tommy glanced around and frowned. Hey, this wasn't...he glanced outside. "Uh, I think your spell missed, this is the moon." Which was kind of dangerous, Rita might be cool but the monsters weren't. Goldar in particular tended to try to kill him in battle while screaming something about being Darwin's revenge.
"My spell didn't miss, you arrogant little human." Rita cackled. "You are in my moon palace, and I will make you my Green Ranger!" She started cackling again.
Tommy pouted. Apparently, she'd lied when she said she was going to take him to Area 51. Jason said some people did that, but it always surprised him. He reached in his pocket for more explosives, only to remember that he'd left them at home, because everyone said it was rude to bring explosives when you were going to hang out with people. (Though Jason let him when he hung out with the others. He really liked Jason. Jason was cool and let him play with things that went boom.)
Rita was going on about something to do with taking over the world. It sounded boring. Tommy stopped pouting and glanced around, now officially bored again. Ooh, wait, Rita was ranting at the balcony, but she'd left her staff leaning against a chest! Tommy grinned and walked over to it.
The screaming when he grabbed it was amazing, but Tommy just winced. Bleeeech, it was connected to Rita's magic. Oh, well, he could use it anyway. There was a lot of energy in this thing...he glanced at Earth. Maybe he could make pretty lightning with it! No, lightning scared Kim. Maybe he should just make lightning up here, instead.
ZZZZAAAAAP!
Goldar ran into the throne room as soon as he saw the lightning, but stopped short at the scene that was slowly appearing through scalded retinas. His Empress was kneeling on the ground muttering something about seeing the light side and cackling, Tommy Oliver was holding her staff, and the entire room carried lightning burns.
Scorpina gaped.
"Goldar!" Tommy grinned and pointed the staff at the general. Goldar had to fight back the sudden urge to murder the boy for the sake of the universal gene pool. "You have to marry me."
"...What."
"I have the staff, right?" Tommy asked, looking far too gleeful. "So you have to do anything I say. So I can make you do anything."
"...Put the staff down." Goldar would worry about the boy's insane logic later.
"Nope! I want you to wear a tutu!" A pause. Tommy glanced at the staff, frowning and shaking it. "Why aren't you..." He paused, his eyes glowing green.
Rita's eyes glowed as well.
This was dangerous, Goldar knew. For one magic-user (even an undiscovered one like Tommy) to grasp the tool of another magic-user linked their minds. But somehow their minds weren't linked; Rita was picking up Tommy's insanity (at least from what Goldar heard of her ramblings), and Tommy picked up nothing. Strange, but nothing around this boy was normal, so he was dwelling far more on the fact that the boy was putting his Empress in danger.
ZZAAAP!
Goldar blinked. Somehow he'd survived that. He glanced down to see that he was, in fact, wearing a frilly pink tutu.
He growled.
Tommy, who was apparently completely insane, started laughing and doing some odd series of jerking motions Goldar assumed was supposed to be a dance. Scorpina nearly collapsed in laughter, and Goldar had to refrain from killing the boy then and there. Instead he walked up to him and tried to bash him on the skull.
Tommy blocked automatically. Damn Rangers. "Hey! Quit trying to kill me!" He glared at Goldar, which probably should have been far more terrifying than it was. "You always do that!"
Goldar reached for the staff, deciding that his mind would probably be preferable to the Empress than Tommy's at this stage. The boy ducked away, rolling his eyes. "You are so annoying. Do you do this to Jason? Zack? Kim? Nooo, you just hate me for some reason." He paused and glanced at the staff. "Hey, does this thing make me fly?"
"No." Goldar said, attempting to gain some modicum of control. "You may not fly with that. Now put the staff down and-"
"Dooo eeeeeet." Goldar barely recognized the voice as Rita's. She had an insane smile plastered over her face, and looked eagerly at Tommy to do something, anything, with a staff that was part of her very soul.
Tommy grinned. "Okay!" He lifted up into the air, starting to make odd noises.
Scorpina sank to the ground, holding her stomach and still laughing.
Goldar didn't know how this happened, but he was reasonably sure of one thing. He was going to kill whoever was responsible.