A\N: There is mention of emotional abuse from here on forward, and in later chapters the aftermath is dealt with.
There.
A girl with dirty-blonde hair, in yellow and black clothes.
There.
A boy in blue, messing around on a laptop.
There—almost? What? Gone, but THERE!
The empty seat the students said belonged to Conner McKnight.
It was like being buffered by a strong gust of wind at every flare of instinct. Tommy almost faltered as he spoke, too distracted to think clearly, only endless practice at delivering a lecture keeping him afloat. He kept seeing the three students throughout the day, too. Moving between classes, at lunchtime…
THERE!
By the time Tommy saw them in detention, he was torn between disappointed and wanting to dance with joy at getting to figure out why, exactly, they were so…
Three. One in red, one in yellow, one in blue.
The word Tommy thought belonged entirely to an alien language Rita had taught him, and it was not a nice word.
If these were his new Rangers, he needed to earn their trust. A trip to the museum would do nicely. Something simple, and relatively interesting—they would like seeing the behind-the-scenes things he was looking at. He could establish himself as friendly, trustworthy.
He was assigned to watch them for detention. Perfect.
The drive out was a little awkward at first. Tommy finally asked about soccer, which resulted in uncovering a long-standing school passion arising from, apparently, a misunderstanding about allocation of funds that should have built a football stadium and instead built a soccer field. They also had a long-standing rivalry with Blue Bay Harbor's soccer team. By the time Ethan, Conner, and even Kira were singing the school's soccer team anthem, they'd arrived at the museum.
Which was closed.
Well, it was going well already. Tommy made a quick, risky decision, and told them that if they brought back anything prehistoric, he would cancel detention for the week. They would be more likely to seek him out on their own if he wasn't punishing them. They headed happily into the woods, presumably to find some rocks and dirt.
Tommy ended up staring at the name on the sign in horror.
Anton Mercer.
Anton, who had talked him into revealing his dragon-self. Who wanted to use scales, talon clippings, anything he could get his hands on to learn about what Tommy was. Because it was just about science, about the passion of education, the military applications were just to keep the grants flowing, and that's science, Tommy, you have to give the government a reason to back you but the real work, you know what that is, don't you…
Tommy felt the taste of fire at the back of his throat, and tore himself away from the sign with a growl that heralded a dragon about to go to war. And he had no idea why he felt either one. Anton was alive. It hurt and he wanted to find Anton and wrap him in a hug and why, why hadn't Anton contacted him? Why had he just…vanished, let Tommy think he was dead?
He looked up and saw that the dinosaur statue was missing.
In fairness to Tommy, he'd been working with the shapeshifting spell for so long that it was second nature to transform. On the other hand, he realized as he was suddenly in his true form and staring down a T-Rex, Hayley was probably going to kill him for doing this around a bunch of security cameras.
Whatever. Fight time. Tommy grinned, opened his jaws, and bit down on the T-Rex's head. Sparks flew, and the taste of metal filled Tommy's mouth. He spat it out. Urgh, that was not fun—wait, what the hell, that was a robot that had something very much resembling a non-organic brain and only two people on Earth had ever developed them, let alone put them in dinosaur-themed things, and one of them was a dragon at the moment while the other—
Tommy let out a bellowing roar of anger and pain.
Mercer. Mercer had done this.
Mercer had betrayed him!
…And there were three kids wandering around in the woods with Mercer's toys running around!
Tommy took a second to shapeshift down to human. The teens only knew Dr. Oliver the Science Teacher; introducing Tommy the Dragon might shatter the trust he'd built with them, and he needed it. If they were going to be Rangers, they needed to trust Tommy, or they would end up alone and manipulated by the bad guy. Trust built effective teams. Trust, and ignoring the agony like fire in his veins, the way his brain wanted nothing more than to know why.
When he reached the teens, there was absolutely nothing of Mercer's around, but there was a definite glow of magic in their pockets.
Tommy took a closer look.
He thought another word Rita had taught him. It was worse than the first one.
By the time Tommy had hashed out the basic details with them, Tommy pretty much assumed their parents were going to form a mob and hunt him down. That was fine. They needed to hear this.
The teens looked at each other, then Conner asked, "Dude…you're a dragon?"
Tommy grinned, stepped back, and transformed.
Suddenly the feeling was…there. That feeling he only felt with Hayley, of a living hoard, that he jokingly referred to as Hayley being his princess. They were his princes and princess too; his living hoard, his new, precious treasures. The Dino Gems had only been half of the equation. The other half had been them.
Tommy came close to the teens, as close as they would let him, and they walked right up to him—or at least Kira did—fascinated by him. Tommy almost purred, settling down and sweeping his wings over them. Mine. Mine. Mine.
"You're really warm, Dr. O!" Ethan said.
"Yeah, and you look like Ethan." Conner joked. Tommy blinked at that. Ethan? Was he—no. Ethan wasn't a dragon kit. Just scaly, from the Dino Gems. It was a little disappointing.
"Can you fly?" Kira asked.
Yes. Tommy told her. I could take one of you up at a time, but I think your parents are about to kill me for keeping you out so late.
A chorus of groans went up. "But Dr. O!" Ethan protested. "This is so cool!"
Yes. I love you too. My hoard, my living hoard. Tommy chuckled 'aloud'. I'll still be here tomorrow. We can fly then, if you want. And you need to train. The Power enhances your bodies, but if you work a little you'll get even better results. And he wasn't sending them into battle without every possible advantage they could get.
"Cool." Kira said. There was a bit of awe in her tone.
Tommy—reluctantly—assumed human form again. He resisted the urge to pull the teens into hugs. In human form, it was a little creepy. "Come on. We'd better get you guys home."
"Hey, Dr. O?" Ethan chirped up. "Do you hoard things?"
Tommy shrugged. "Information. Things that can teach us new things. I like fossils a lot." Fossils were touchstones to an ancient past, filled with all sorts of power over time. They were probably the most fun things Tommy had ever played with, magically speaking, and he was a magic-user.
And them. The precious people.
But Tommy didn't really know how to say that, so he let it go.
There were Zords roaming Little Tokyo.
Zords that had been turned, were threatening people, and suddenly Tommy had no choice. Either he gave the teens the morphers, or people died. And Tommy felt the pain of Mercer's betrayal turn into rage as white-hot as a furnace, because these were his students, his hoard, that were going into battle—
He was sending children into war. And he had no choice, because Mesegog had gotten hold of their experiments. And there was, really, only one way that could have happened.
Mercer had betrayed the world, and as Tommy watched the children hold their morphers, awed and childlike and young, too young, he felt the wrath of a dragon wronged.
Tommy could not enter battle. It was forbidden. The Treaty of Power had definite rules: Either a planet's natural defenses would abstain from battles of the Power, or the societies of Earth were held to the standards of the Power. Until Tommy could make all people equal under the law, it was either stay out of battle or lose Earth the Power's protection. So he waited by the car, watched and waited and occasionally took out a few Tyrannodrones, because hey, if one or twenty of them attacked him, he was allowed to fight back.
They won. They won and Tommy was torn between roaring with victory and screaming in rage. Instead he reached out his mind to the eager, puppy-like child-minds of the Rangers and sent praise and congratulations.
They jumped down and demorphed, almost dancing around him in the now-blue sky, and Tommy smiled and shepherded them away from the battlefield. He couldn't give them much, but secret identities, technology, guidance—he could give them that.
And what he could do for them, he would.