"Tommy, what's going on?" Susan asked as Tommy landed in their living room and she looked over at him in concern. She was not sure if she would ever get used to him dropping in like this, it just was not a normal thing to have happen.
"We need you to take care of Jenny for a little while," Tommy said as Susan gave him a concerned look and he then let out a long sigh. He didn't want to have to explain anything to anyone, but it seemed that his mother was going to make him do just that. "We have some business that we have to take care of as soon as possible and we can't leave her with Andros, considering what he is going to be doing with the rangers. Can you please do this for us?"
"You're just going to leave your child without even telling her what is going on? Tommy, how bad is this?" Susan asked as he let out another long sigh. He did not want to admit the truth to his mother, but he might as well, considering everything else that he was asking her to do right now.
"We're going to be gone for a couple of weeks, at the bare minimum, to another galaxy so that we can try to retrieve powers that will let us go back to having a normal life," Tommy said as Susan just stared at him in shock. She had never thought that she would hear those words coming out of Tommy's mouth ever again.
"Are you really sure that you should do this?" Susan asked as Tommy just shook his head.
"I'm not really sure about anything right now Mom, but I do know that if Kim and I don't do this while we are still young enough too, we never will and we'll be stuck, just like we are right now and I don't want to know that I could have done something and I didn't," Tommy said as Susan just shook her head.
"What about your job Tommy?" Susan asked as Tommy just shrugged his shoulders.
"I've already called and told them that I am taking a couple of weeks off because I need to sort out some personal issues, so I think that if we leave tonight, we should be able to get everything done before my boss starts bitching," Tommy said as Susan just shook her head.
"Tommy, you have to be careful," Susan said as Tommy nodded as Mack and Jenny came back inside, both carrying a bag of groceries, although Jenny's covered all but her eyes.
"Daddy!" Jenny exclaimed as she dropped her bag and ran over to him.
"Hey, munchkin," Tommy said as he picked her up and she just smiled at him. "What do you think about staying with Papa Mack and Grannie Susan for a little while?"
"Where are you and Mama going?" Jenny asked, as Susan gave Tommy as smug look as she saw the wheels turning in his head so that he could try to get himself out of this sticky situation. "You're leaving?"
"Just for a little while," Tommy said as Jenny lower lip started to shake and Tommy had to close his eyes to try to pull himself back together. This was exactly why Kim couldn't come say good-bye and he knew that. He just didn't know why he had been stupid enough to let her talk him into going alone. "We'll be back as soon as we can."
"That's what Mama said the last time," Jenny said as the tears streamed down her face and Tommy let out a heavy breath and wrapped her in a bear hug.
"We'll be back in a couple of weeks, honey, I promise," Tommy said as Jenny pulled back and looked at him and she just shook her head.
"Why does it have to be you and Mama?" Jenny asked, miserably, as Tommy just buried his face in her hair and held her tight.
"It just does and I'm so sorry about that," Tommy whispered as she passed her over to his own father and then teleported away.
"Daddy!" Jenny wailed as Mack held her tight and watched the streak fade that was his son and let out a long sigh. He could tell by Tommy's face what this was doing to him as well. He had just met his child and now he was being pulled in another direction.
"Shh…it's going to be all right," Mack whispered as Jenny just clung to him.
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"Tommy?" Kim asked as he walked in, but merely walked passed her and into the bathroom, where he promptly threw up. "What's wrong?"
"Jenny was there," Tommy muttered as Kim wrapped her arms around him and held onto him tightly. "God, Kim, how can we do this to her? She doesn't deserve this to happen."
"I know, but Tommy, if we don't do this now we'll have more children and just have to hurt them as well. We have our window of opportunity and we have to use it," Kim said as Tommy barely nodded. "I called the others, they should be here soon."
"What others?" Tommy asked as Kim looked back at him.
"The others that went to Phaedos, we need to go over everything that they remember about the experience, because there are some chunks that I don't exactly have a full memory of Tommy," Kim said as they heard someone knocking at the door and Kim went to go get it.
"Kim, it's good to see you," Aisha said as she threw her arms around Kimberly and she smiled back. "How are you doing? The last I heard you were still living across the country, what made you move back here?"
"Just a couple of things," Kim whispered as Tommy stepped into Aisha's view and Aisha stared at her. "I take it that Jason didn't tell you what happened."
"No…something happened between the two of you?" Aisha asked as Kim looked away and Tommy covered his mouth.
"Where's Rocky?" Tommy asked as Aisha took a step towards him and he wrapped her up in hug.
"He's getting little one out of the car," Aisha said with a smile as Kim looked at her in shock. "I thought that Jason told you..."
"No…it looks like I'm going to have to talk to him," Kim said as Rocky walked in with a car seat in tow and he smiled over at Kim.
"Never thought that I would get that call," Rocky said as Adam walked in behind him with Billy.
"It certainly was a nice surprise," Billy said as Kim smiled over at him. "You look good Kim, a lot better than the last time that I saw you."
"The last time you saw me I was in labor with Jenny," Kim said as Aisha's head swung around and Kim grimaced as she saw the look on her face. "I guess Jason didn't mention that either?"
"You'd be right to guess that," Aisha said as Kim just shook her head. She could not believe that the only one that knew was Billy. "But that's not why you asked us to come here, we all know that."
"We're going back to Phaedos," Tommy muttered as they looked over at him and saw the worry in his eyes.
"How can you? You have a kid, Kim, you can't just leave her," Adam said as they looked over at Tommy, expecting him to agree with them.
"No, we have a child and we are the only ones that can do this, but we need your help. We have to remember what happened on Phaedos, because our own memory is fairly splotchy, at the very best," Tommy said as all of their mouths dropped open.
"Why didn't we know that the two of you…" Aisha said as Kim smiled.
"The same reason that you didn't know that I even had a child in the first place, it was something that we never thought would be brought up or ever asked about after our break up," Kim said as Tommy sadly nodded his head in agreement.
"Well now that it has been brought up, what are you going to do?" Adam asked as he looked between the two of them and realized that they didn't want to talk about this, they couldn't right now. "Don't worry about it."
"Thanks," Kim muttered as Adam gave her a hug and then looked around the house. "What?"
"Let me guess, this is Tommy's place, right?" Adam asked as Kim nodded her head yes, surprised that they had not been up here. Had Tommy completely abandoned all of their friends when he had graduated high school. "It's definitely a step up from your apartment."
"Anything is a step up from my apartment," Tommy said as Adam and Rocky nodded their heads in agreement. "Do you want anything to eat?"
"Pizza is on the way, Tommy," Kim said as he looked down at her and just nodded that that sounded like a good idea. He had thought that he was going to have to go dig through his fridge, but he was grateful that Kim had the sense to figure that he had no food. That was yet another thing that he was going to have to figure out once he and Kimberly had finished this mess.
"You must not have been here very long," Rocky said as Kim barely nodded her head in agreement and the others watched as Tommy smiled. "So, Phaedos it is?"
"Yeah, Phaedos," Kim said as Tommy looked over at her and then reached for her hand.
"Well, how did the two of you get stuck in this situation?" Adam asked as they looked at each other and Tommy then walked over to the couch and sat down.
"I've been stuck since I was the Ninjetti Crane," Kim said as they looked over at her. "The powers never fully transferred to Katherine and when she gave them up, they had to find an owner."
"An owner?" Aisha asked, carefully as Kim nodded. "Well, why didn't any of our other powers react this way?"
"They all did, to a point, but none were as severe as Kimberly's and Tommy's, although Tommy never knew about it," Billy said as Tommy looked over at him. "Your Ninjetti powers were just as obsessive with you as Kimberly's were with her. The only difference is that you had a constant flow of other powers that made those seem like they were not needed. It was not until you decided to take a set of powers that did not equal the Ninjetti powers that they came back."
"So the Dino powers aren't up to par?" Tommy asked as Billy nodded his head yes. "That really does not comfort me any."
"They are not up to par for you, considering every other power you have had has been an equal to the Ninjetti powers, there has never been a reason that they would come back," Billy explained as Kim nodded her head in agreement. She completely agreed with everything that Billy was saying, mainly because of the fact that she had lived all of it.
"I've done all of this Tommy, I'm sure that's what it is," Kim said as Tommy barely nodded and then looked around at the others.
"Then why didn't any of you have the same thing happen?" Tommy asked as Kim looked over at Billy and Billy then looked down at the floor.
"Because their powers had other people to go to, ours decided that they were never going to have another person to inhabit them," Kim said as Tommy looked over at her. "I kinda forced Zordon to explain it to me."
"So I was the only one who didn't know that this would happen?" Tommy asked as several of the others shook their heads no.
"It was just Kim and I. The only reason that I knew about it was because I was the person that tried to break the powers from her and utter failed at the task," Billy said as he looked at the ground.
"I don't blame you Billy, you did everything that you could," Kim said as Billy looked over at her. He still hated that he had not been able to break the powers from her body and give her a chance to have a normal life. "Hopefully we really will be able to get rid of these powers, but we have to go to Phaedos to do that."
"I doubt that Dulcea will be any more accommodating than she was the last time that we showed up," Aisha said as Kim nodded her head in agreement. She knew that Dulcea was not going to be happy to see them, but it was something that had to be done and the sooner the better.
"That's what we thought, so we need to remember how to get where we are going…without tipping Dulcea off if we can help it," Tommy said as they looked over at them.
"She's the keeper of the powers, I honestly doubt that she won't pick the two of you up," Adam said as they both let out long sighs.
"Well, we can always hope," Kim said as they nodded. Dulcea had only allowed them through last time because of Zordon, none of them were sure that she would even allow the two of them through this time, with their purpose being so unclear.
"I don't think deceiving Dulcea is the way to go about this," Billy said, clearly, as they looked over at him. "I think that you should just go into this the same way that we did before. This time, instead of trying to save Zordon, you're trying to save yourselves, you need to just tell her the truth."
"Tell her the truth? Billy, I'm sure that she'll love to hear that I am no longer the pink ranger, but have become the red ranger. These powers were never meant to adapt like this and we were never meant to adapt to be a ranger permanently. We are going back there…we don't really know why, but we know that it's the only place that will solve this for us," Kim said as Tommy nodded his head in agreement.
"Well, if that is your approach, then I think that we need to go over what actually happened on Phaedos," Billy said as Kim and Tommy nodded their heads in agreement.
"Phaedos wasn't that difficult," Adam said as they looked over at him in shook. "Except for having to get the powers, it wasn't that bad. A couple of dinosaur bones that wanted to kill us and some stone men with weapons was about it. It shouldn't be that hard for the two of you to get through."
"Yeah, but there are only two of us. Do you remember how much it took out of us when there were six of us?" Tommy asked as Adam's face contorted and he nodded.
"But Adam does have a point, considering everything that we should have gone through, that was not much. I'm sure that the two of you could make this trip in only a couple of days," Billy said as Kim looked over at him and he then produced two coins from his pocket. "I thought these might be useful."
"The original coins," Tommy muttered as they each took their own and they glowed with an odd ferocity. "I thought that these were lost."
"They were only lost because we were no longer there to take them," Kim said as Tommy gave her a weak smile. "I don't know how we are going to do this."
"The same way that the two of you have done everything else in your lives; you are going to go in fighting and come out the same way and if we don't see you on the other side, we'll all know that it isn't because you didn't try, it's because you tried too hard," Billy said as the two of them looked at him and he let out a sigh. "Zordon always said that it would come down to what the two of you were capable of and now is the time to show that to the world. You've got to go be the rangers you're meant to be and we'll take care of the rest."
"Billy…none of you should…" Kim began as Aisha just held up her hand.
"We all should, we all have had the same burden that you bear, only it was for a much shorter time. Let us do this for you…let us take care of your rangers, so that you can take care of us," Aisha said as Kim and Tommy both barely nodded their heads and the others smiled.
"You better be going before you change your minds," Rocky said as Kim and Tommy both stood up and the others pushed them towards the ray of light that had appeared in their kitchen.
"Make sure you pay the pizza man," Kim said as Tommy and she disappeared and the others looked at each other.
"The two of them are going to try to get back a normal life and she worries about us paying for pizza?" Rocky asked as the others laughed and he just shook his head. "I guess that they would tell us to lock up too, so what are we going to do?"
"Who knows, but we've got orders. Pay for the pizza and I'm guessing after that they want us to eat it and then lock up and leave," Billy said as they all shook their heads.
"Well, I guess that that's what we'll do, we'll just have to figure out how we're going to do that, none of us have keys," Aisha said as Adam walked over to the kitchen table and he held up his hand with keys now dangling around his fingers.
"I think that they thought of everything," Adam said with a smile as the doorbell rang and Rocky went to answer it and Aisha took the baby out of the car seat.
"I guess we might as well get comfortable. It's time to play ranger again," Aisha muttered to the two remaining rangers and they nodded. They had never thought that this was going to happen, but there was nothing that they could do about it. They were now back in the ranger world, even if it was in a very strange way and in a very strange capacity. They were just help, while the real rangers were off saving the world.