Disclaimer: the relevant line at the end of the first scene is quoted from "Ninja Quest, part II." All rights belong to Saban Brands.

Continuity: takes place during what would have been "Ninja Quest, part II."

The Perseverence of the Green Ranger
Part II: Another Part of Me
by MegaSilver

In the Command Center, amidst a mass of burnt-out computer equipment, Kimberly gently caressed the burnt-out emblem of the Pterodactyl on her damaged Power Morpher. She knew it was inane, but she had come to anthropomorphize the ancient lizard as a sort of… friend, a sort of part of her.

Now it was gone. Her old Zord, and her new one. Along with her powers. Along with those of all the Rangers—except for one.

Her Rangers.

Had her boyfriend been there, Kimberly might have shed a tear. But scarcely two months ago she had lost her boyfriend and cherished team-leader to an interdimensional continuum vortex, and then stepped up to take his place. Now the leader of the Power Rangers, she was on the verge of shedding not a tear of frustration, but a river of regret.

Ever the mindful of her position, though, she held it all back, if only just barely.

"I've failed you guys," she murmured. "I've failed as a Ranger and as team leader."

"Kimberly," began Zordon, "you know very well this is not the first time in the fight a Ranger has lost his powers. The risks of the battle are considerable, and elsewhere in the universe many a warrior has suffered much graver losses than that of simply his powers."

Somehow, the powered-down Pink Ranger didn't find that titbit particularly reassuring.

"Well, what do we do now, though?" Kimberly puffed. "I mean, Rita and Zedd have got to be planning some sort of massive invasion! The Green Ranger and the Dragonzord can't hold them off alone forever!"

"Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi! That's not the half of it!" exclaimed Alpha.

"Oh, no!" winced Kimberly. She looked over sympathetically at the clone of her boyfriend, her last powered teammate, who seemed to be feeling the same dread she felt.

"Another… Green Candle?" the Green Ranger dared to ask.

"Not quite, but… almost! Oh, no!" Alpha whimpered. "When the computer tried to hypercharge the Rangers' Zords, it failed to establish a link with the Dragonzord and the Green Ranger coin. The computer analysis shows that the coin has a direct link to the Morphing Grid and cannot be charged through the Command Center—but that link has now been damaged! Ai-yi-yi!"

"Damaged?" gasped the Green Ranger. "What do you mean?" Then he remembered. "The power drain! That Wizard of Deception tried to drain my powers right before I took him down!"

"Perhaps so! Whatever happened, it permanently damaged your link to the Morphing Grid and your coin's ability to rejuvinate! Based on the analysis of the power that you used during the last battle and the rate at which it partially recharged, I'm afraid that from this moment you have only twenty-one hours and forty-three minutes of Morphing time left before the Green Ranger powers are gone again!"

"Great!" exclaimed Kimberly. "Zordon, you can't repair them? Recharge ours?"

"I'm afraid not, Kimberly. The Green Ranger's links are less compromised than your own but still beyond the reach of our repair. And in its present state, the Command Center is in no shape to conduct even a temporary rejuvination."

Kimberly shut her eyes, pressed two fingers against her forehead and breathed deeply. Then she turned to her teammates Rocky, Adam, Billy and Aisha. "Come on, you guys," she said, as calmly as she could. "Let's think." She had no idea what to think, or how, but she knew she had to inspire.

To her surprise, however, it wasn't Billy who spoke up first, but Adam.

"Where did our powers come from in the first place?"

So this is it.

Aboard his Dragonzord, the Green Ranger clenched every muscle in his body as he tried to manoeuvre his way out of the evil clutches of a gigantic Rito Revolto's sword.

Looks like I won't get a chance to see the end of my powers, after all.

He felt a twinge of regret and then, after a brief moment, remembered where he was and what he had become. Suddenly he felt a sort of relief.

Maybe after all, there's no room, anywhere in reality, for more than one Tommy.

But where would he go?

Since Tommy's childhood, through his regular Sunday attendance at a Methodist church, the question had often been put to him—not directly, but to the congregation as a whole: "Where will you go when you die?" Yet never had he fully come to face with his own mortality, with the reality of one day meeting that final destination, that last choice. The relief departed from his nerves as he began to wonder what lay beyond…

As things happened, however, he would not face that destination today. For just at that moment, a powerful laser dagger cut Rito's sword in two.

"Huh?" exclaimed the Green Ranger. He stared over just beside where Rito had been standing and saw a gigantic anthropomorphic robot with a sort of crane-like head, wielding two flashy daggers. Out of the new Zord's cockpit stepped a female figure dressed in white.

"Everyone here? We need Shogun Megazord power, NOW!" cried the girl.

"Kimberly!"

TO BE CONTINUED…