Disclaimer: All canon-based characters, situations, and plotlines are copyright to their original owners, creators, and designers. I make no profit, nor want any.
Story Title: Pretty Poison
Chapter Title: Snatching From The Enemy
Romance: Tommi x Jason
Story Word Count: 23,451
Chapter Word Count: 3,480
Genre: Romance, Adventure
Rated: PG-13
Status: 7 of 10 chapters
Notes: This is going to be an alternate version of the Green Ranger arc, positing how things might have been different if Tommy Oliver had been born female, Tommi Oliver. Comments and criticism gratefully accepted.
Challenge: 10_switched: Set #5, random 2: prompt #4, celebration
Summary: What would the Green Ranger arc be like if Tommy Oliver were...Tommi Oliver? Just a little change.
There was no light in there to gleam off of the blade, but Jason could see it coming towards him regardless. Everything went through his mind in a matter of seconds. He couldn't move his arms enough to make a difference; Goldar had him pinned by the shoulders with one of those massive, and far too smelly, feet of his. But he could still move his own feet, and he thought he just might be able to do it enough.
With a fierce cry of battle, Jason bent, doing one of the best high kicks of his life from a prone position, and managing, just barely, to move enough under Goldar's weight to get the full power of his muscles behind the kick. He didn't aim for Goldar's wrist or body. No. What he wanted was the sword itself, and his foot scored a perfect hit, knocking it to the side. Instead of sheering through him, it scraped against his upper arm, and he knew blood had been drawn again.
At least it hadn't been his life's blood. He could put up with some injuries, as long as it wasn't that. He wasn't going to give Goldar the satisfaction of having killed him, no matter what.
"Goldar!" A clear, quite recognizable voice rang out a moment later, and the Green Ranger stood there. Tommi was fully morphed, but Jason had a feeling she was furious despite not being able to see her face. He wasn't going to let his guard down, though. She was just as dangerous as Goldar was, and not the least because he cared about her.
In fact, that probably made her even more dangerous to him. A lot more dangerous.
She took a few steps closer to Goldar, the heels of her boots clicking slightly against the floor. "What do you think you're doing? He is my prize."
"I've fought him for longer than you've even been one of us," Goldar retorted, shifting his weight to keep Jason pinned. Jason's move had saved his life, but he wasn't able to get up just yet. If he had to trade people torturing him, he much preferred Tommi. At least she bathed regularly.
"Queen Rita promised him to me. Get out of here." She shoved him away from Jason, bent down, and seized him by the arm. Almost as soon as she did, everything rippled around them, and they were back in the bedroom where Goldar had so unceremoniously removed him a short time earlier.
He was pushed back onto the bed, but not bound there this time. Jason eyed her, not quite wanting to say thank you, and not sure of what else to say either. She stared down at him, then in a wash of green light, she demorphed. She looked much as she had at school, dressed casually and almost relaxed. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see a slightly more calculating look in her eyes, and possibly a faint hint of green around them as well. It wasn't something that most people would see if they weren't looking for it, though.
"Why did you do that?" he settled for asking. "You're going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"
"I can always give you back to him if you're that interested in dying. But no, I don't want to kill you. I told you, I have other plans."
Jason eyed some of his injuries; they were bleeding, but not too much, and certainly not because Goldar hadn't been putting his all into it. Probably some combination of dumb luck and the Power, even if he didn't have his morpher. He still was a Power Ranger, after all.
"What kind of other plans?" Granted, having been tied down to what he presumed was her bed gave him a few ideas, and images of several interesting kinds surged around in the back of his thoughts where he tried not to pay too much attention to them. It wasn't all that easy to ignore, either.
"I think you can guess. I wasn't very interested by you at first, but Scorpina gave me a few ideas that I'm going to enjoy testing out." The look in her eyes was something more akin to someone wanting to test out an interesting theory than anything else. Jason was not sure at all of how to take that.
Saying he could guess didn't make it any better either. That just led the back of his mind to throw up images of her on top of him, of her kissing him, of trying to kiss her back… He swallowed a little, and wished he understood why those images were so enticing.
"Tommi," he said, wanting to get them both out of there. That was the only way he could really feel like he could answer both calls ringing in his heart. As much as he liked her, as much as he wanted to do so much more than sit here, he was the Red Ranger. He couldn't just let Rita and all of her crew, Green Ranger included, take over the world and not try to stop them. "Why are you working for Rita?"
"Because she is my Empress. She was the one who gave me the Green Power Coin." Tommi folded her arms over her chest and looked down at him. "Is there any other reason that you're working for Zordon, than the fact he gave you your powers?"
Jason shook his head at once. "We're doing it because it's the right thing to do. Someone has to stop Rita. What she's doing is wrong, evil, and I think a part of you knows it, you just can't hear that part right now. It's your conscience." He made a daring guess then. "That's why you're not killing me, why you think you want to do what Scorpina said to do instead." Even now, he couldn't quite bring himself to say 'seduce me'. "Because you know it's wrong. You want us to stop you."
All throughout his little speech, Tommi's hands been slowly clenching and unclenching. The emerald light in her eyes flickered briefly, until she finally whirled away, breathing hard. "No. You're wrong. It's just going to be more entertaining to entertain myself with you and then kill you, after I've killed all of your so-called friends." There was a sudden extra edge of malice in her tone. "Though, that's not quite true. I won't be killing all of them."
"What?" Jason started to get up, not liking the sound of that at all.
"I think I'll just be killing…what are their names again…oh, yes. Kimberly and Zack. And you, of course. Billy and Trini are Scorpina's prey."
Jason was no longer starting to get up; he was fully on his feet and furious no sooner than the words had left her mouth. "What did you say?"
She turned to face him, and the green in her eyes was stronger than ever, a wicked glow that infuriated him even as he began to wonder just how they could break Rita's spell. Or if they could break it at all.
"I said, I'm going to kill the Pink and Black Rangers. Scorpina is going to deal with the Yellow and Blue ones. She's already sent something to finish off the Yellow Ranger. It just is waiting to be activated, which I think she intends to be doing…" Tommi made a brief show of looking at her watch. "Any time now."
Jason spun, trying to find some way out of the room. Where the door had been was now a visible barrier of emerald energy, and he headed right over to it. He should've guessed from the way Tommi simply stood there and watched that what was going to happen was what did happen: he bounced completely off of it, trails of energy wrapping from it around him, sending echoes of pain up and down him, especially where Goldar's sword had sliced into him.
He lay on the floor, shaking some, and opened his eyes a little as Tommi came to stand over him. "You're not going to leave here until I permit you to," she said, seizing him roughly by one arm and tossing him towards the bed. Morphed or unmorphed, she was a lot stronger than he was right now. "You had better understand that." She eyed him a bit, a slight crease between her eyebrows, her attention going to the cuts. "You're going to need something for those. I doubt Goldar has cleaned that sword of his in ten thousand years."
She turned and walked through the door, without a speck of the trouble he'd had. He groaned, sagging back onto the bed. He couldn't just sit here doing nothing. There had to be a way out of here. If he could just find his communicator and morpher. They had to be somewhere. Not in here, that would just be stupid, and Tommi had shown many qualities he didn't like, but being an idiot wasn't one of them.
Trini was in danger, and there was no way that he could let her know. They were all in danger, and he couldn't do anything but sit up here and wait for the evil Green Ranger to come back with something to dress his injuries with. If anyone had told him this was going to be how he'd spend his day, he would've immediately decided they were crazy. Now he wondered if maybe he was, and he'd just never noticed until now.
Two sets of footsteps alerted him to someone coming, and he looked up to see not just Tommi, but a large-eared gray sort of person that he'd never seen before there. She gestured abruptly. "Finster, take care of those."
"Yes, Green Ranger," Finster said at once, hurrying over. Jason noticed belatedly that he was carrying a couple of bottles and some wet rags that were probably hot, from the steam rising from them. His unlikely nurse bent over and started to wipe at the injuries carefully. "There's an elixir on here that will keep any infections from setting in," he said, paying more attention to Jason's wounds than Jason himself. "And these potions will heal you more quickly as well."
As he spoke, Tommi moved to the far side of the room, staring out of a large window. Finster glanced towards her briefly, then back at Jason, meeting his eyes this time.
"Destroy the Sword of Darkness," he murmured softly, leaning closer to get to the wound on Jason's shoulder. "It will free her from Rita's spell." He moved a bit closer, then spoke a touch more loudly, though not quite loudly enough to cause a distraction. "That should take care of everything."
Jason blinked a few times; he hadn't really expected any sort of help, beyond maybe a bit of basic care for the injuries, and not how to break the spell on Tommi. He wanted to ask how, but Finster was already moving away. Then something else startled the Red Ranger: Finster laid one finger on his own wrinkled wrist, then looked firmly out of the room. He gestured the way he was looking, then made a quick hooking motion.
Down the hall and around the corner? My communicator? He mouthed that quickly, and Finster nodded even as he came closer to the door.
"I'll be going now. Do try to keep him in one piece. Red Rangers don't grow on trees."
Tommi snorted a little. "As if I wanted more than one in the first place." She gestured, and Finster hurried out through the door. Jason watched him go, still more than al little confused. It was nice to know where his communicator was, but if he couldn't get out of here, then it might as well have been…on Earth!
Jason glanced at the two bottles that had been left; there didn't seem to be any other kind of help coming from there. So getting out of here was still up to him. The communicator, and morpher if it was there as well, was going to be guarded. It would be nothing short of stupid for it to be otherwise. Probably Putties, which he was fairly sure he could get by, or some of Rita's other goons, which he was also certain he could get by.
If he could get out of here in the first place. He was probably going to need those potions too. It would be ridiculous not to take any kind of help that he could manage to get. Why Finster was helping him, he didn't know. But he'd ask Zordon, or even Finster, about it later.
Tommi's hand on his shoulder wasn't quite as heavy as Goldar's had been earlier, but it was more than enough to pull his attention from his inwardly turned thoughts and back to her. She stared down at him, the glow to her eyes somewhat less intense now. "You're tired." It was something less of a question and more of a statement, and he wasn't going to argue. After going those rounds with Goldar, he was tired, and the fight with Tommi beforehand hadn't exactly been a piece of cake either.
He nodded slightly, and she pushed him flat onto the bed. "Get some rest. I'll have plenty of time to deal with you later." Once he was down, she watched him for a moment or two, then headed for the door again. "Goldar won't bother you this time. He's busy right now, tearing apart some Putties."
Was that some other scrap of information he was going to need to get out of here? Or just a random comment? He'd have to figure it out later. If he didn't get some rest, then when the time came, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it, no matter what it was.
Given he was still somewhat injured, alone, without his morpher and communicator, no matter how tired he was, he was a little surprised to find that he did fall asleep shortly after she left.
"Any luck yet?" Trini asked, leaning over to see how much help Billy was going to need. It was a good thing it was the weekend; none of them had left the Command Center since they'd returned to it after the disastrous battle against the Green Ranger.
"I think I almost have it, but I don't think I can teleport him out of there. There's some kind of a force field. Multiple kinds if I'm reading this right." Billy stared at the readings, rubbing his eyes. Three or four hours had passed, and he wasn't nearly as close to figuring out how to get Jason out of there or them up there as he'd wanted to be.
His stomach rumbled fiercely before he could get back to his work, and he flushed a little. Maybe that was why he wasn't getting that much done. But to take a break, when he could be so close to finding out what they needed to know…
"I'll go get us something to eat," Trini decided, smiling a touch. "We could all use something, I think. What do you guys want?" She looked over to where Kim and Zack were helping get the last remnants of Tommi's attack here out of the way. Kim looked up, pushing some of her hair out of her eyes.
"Are you going to Ernie's?" she asked, and when Trini nodded, gave one of her usual orders. Zack did the same, and Trini teleported off, already knowing what Billy was going to both want and need. He wasn't going to need her help right now, and they'd all think better with some lunch in their stomachs.
As usual, she landed just out of sight, and headed around to the entrance. Before she got there, someone else stood in her way. Sabrina was there, a slightly smug look on her features. "That's a very pretty brooch you have there, Trini," she said. "Wherever did you get it?"
"This?" Trini blinked, distracted for a moment as she glanced down at the scorpion ornament. She'd put it on without even thinking about it that morning, just liking how it looked against her sweater. "My uncle sent it to me."
Sabrina laughed, a very chilly laugh indeed. "It almost looks as if it were alive." And the moment that she spoke that word, Trini's eyes widened, catching movement for a moment before something whipped forward, burying itself into her chest. Her eyes widened even more at the pain, and at the strange pain that spread outward from where she'd been struck. She stumbled, her vision blurring, and tried to grab onto Sabrina for some kind of support.
"You're going to need a whole lot of help. Too bad I don't feel like giving it." Sabrina stepped aside, avoiding her grasp, and Trini stumbled again, collapsing to her knees. She grasped a bit at the brooch, but her fingers couldn't get a good grip on it. She tried to get up, but all of the strength was fading out of her limbs.
"S..a.." She tried to call out to the other girl, but she wasn't certain if those syllables made it out of her throat or if she heard them only in her imagination. She slipped forward further, unable to support herself at all now. She thought she saw a flash of light, but she couldn't get a good enough look at anything to tell.
Her breath was coming shorter and shorter. Breathing was getting harder and harder. Was there actually noise sounding around her or was that her imagination now too?
Before she could make any sort of headway in finding out, darkness itself folded around her, and there was nothing more to do but succumb to it.
Back at the Command Center, the alarms began to beep suddenly, bringing Billy quickly out of his trance of work. "What is it now?" Now was just not a good time for an attack, not being one Ranger down.
"Ay-yi-yi!" Alpha pressed his hands against the side of his head and stared at the Viewing Globe. "It's Trini! She's been attacked!"
"Putties?" Kim asked, hurrying over to stare into the depths of the shimmering globe. Alpha shook his head quickly.
"I'm reading traces of Scorpina in the area, but I didn't see her." Even as they watched, they could see Bulk and Skull coming out of the Youth Center, where Trini had collapsed just outside of the door. The two bullies stared at each other for a few seconds, then stared down at her, then Bulk ran back inside, while Skull tried to loosen Trini's collar.
Kim could not help a small smile. "One of us should go down there." Bulk and Skull were doing their best, but if this involved Scorpina, the Power Rangers were going to have to deal with it too.
"Long distance scans reveal a great deal of Scorpina's venom in her," Alpha declared, having turned away to work at one of the consoles. "I can cure it, but I need a couple of ingredients I don't have here yet."
Zack stepped up, eyes narrowed. "Let me know what you need and I'll go get it."
"And I'll go talk to Bulk and Skull," Kim decided. Billy nodded and hurried back to his own work. He couldn't help Alpha with the cure, but he was going to at least do what he could do and help Jason.
In a flash of bright pink light, Kim teleported down to Earth, morphing as she went. When she arrived, Bulk, Skull, and Ernie were there, and Ernie was checking over Trini with a bit more professionalism than the two teenagers could have managed.
"Pink Ranger!" Skull stared at her once she appeared. "What…there's not monsters around here, are they?"
"No." She reassured him quickly. "But this young lady has been hurt by mistake by one of our enemies. Our support staff and the Black Ranger are working on getting the cure for what's affecting her. We'll take care of her from here."
She reached out to touch Trini's shoulder. She didn't like being a bit abrupt like this, but there was just too much of a chance that any sort of hospital could find out that Trini healed a little quicker and better than most people, and no one needed that kind of question being asked. "We'll have her back soon. Thanks for looking out for her."
Her smile couldn't be seen behind her helmet, but from the way Skull was blushing, you'd think that she was the one smiling at him, not the Pink Ranger. He's kind of cute. When he's not trying to be a pain. Then she had so much else to think about, as everything dissolved into pink light.
To Be Continued
