Disclaimer: Power Rangers are still owned by Saban. I only own the plot and people you never saw on TV. There are two lines in this chapter that are direct quotes from the Turbo movie; Saban owns that, too.

A/N: Gonna keep this short this time. Thank you again to all reviewers/alerts/favorites and please forgive my extensive creative liberties with FBI and police procedure. This chapter is one that I've been excited to post for a while now. As far as why, let me just say this: shit's about to get REAL up in this bitch.


The Big Oak Tree/Crime Scene
Angel Grove Park
July 10, 2012
6:00 AM

"One of you wanna tell me what the fuck just happened?"

Jason stepped up beside Foster, watching as Tommy approached the body and took a knee in the grass. The victim was a Hispanic male who appeared to be in his early to mid-30's; he wore a tattered, tight-fitting white polo shirt that was apparently designed to show off his muscular body, and black cargo pants. He sat slumped against the tree, his knees bent slightly toward his chest. His dark eyes stared sightlessly out from his head, where a thin trickle of blood traced its way down his left cheek. Tommy rested one elbow on his thigh and began gesturing toward the corpse; Jason noticed Kim pull a notebook out of her pocket and chuckled to himself as she prepared to take notes. Tommy took a deep, shaky breath before speaking.

"The body was discovered sometime late last night. There aren't any witness statements to speak of – we got an anonymous tip – but the cause of death seems fairly obvious…" Tommy drew a circle in the air with his fingers around an area on the victim's chest where two holes about the size of golf balls were visible. The holes were perfectly round and absolutely bloodless. "Though that's only until you ask what the murder weapon is. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't accept lasers as an answer."

"You get an ID on the victim?" Kim asked Tommy without looking at him, her eyes trained on her notebook.

Tommy licked his lips and Jason suddenly realized how unnerved his old friend really was. "No. He had no identification on him – no wallet, no keys, not even a cell phone. Nothing in his pockets except about a hundred bucks in cash. We got fingerprints and sent them back to check, but somehow I doubt we'll get any matches on this guy."

"Dental records will probably get something," Foster muttered, though Jason didn't hear a lot of conviction in the words.

The four of them stood in silence for a moment, staring at the corpse lying at their feet. Jason glanced from Kim to Tommy and back again, noting the anxiety in both of their stances, Tommy shifting his weight back and forth, Kim fixing her attention on her scant notes and almost refusing to look at the body. Finally, Jason's eye was drawn back to the twin holes in the man's chest, through which the grass beneath the body was clearly visible.

"The wounds are completely cauterized, right?" Jason looked to Tommy for confirmation, receiving a quick nod from his old friend in return. Jason pursed his lips and nodded to himself, crossing his arms over his chest and running his eyes over the body. "Looks like exactly the same MO as the murders in LA and Phoenix–" Suddenly Jason stopped and frowned. "Except…" he crouched down and leaned in close to the man's head where the small trickle of blood from a tiny wound above the left temple was still drying on the paling skin.

"Scott?" Foster narrowed his eyes at Jason and nudged the younger man with his knee when he didn't respond. "Scott." Jason blinked, then turned and looked up at Foster, making eye contact. "You're our resident expert on this case. Care to share?"

"Right, yeah," Jason replied, shaking his head. He'd been working this case for almost seven months now, spending every other day in LA attempting to find something, anything that could point him in the right direction; Kim had only been brought in a few days ago, after he'd finally caught her between cases and requested a partner. The number of hours they'd spent poring over crime scene photos and pondering the utter lack of substantial witness statements was staggering, and yet after all this time…nothing. Then, now, out of nowhere, this anomaly in the pattern had just been dropped into their laps. Jason glanced at Kim as he snapped out of his reverie; for a moment he'd been unable to comprehend what he was seeing, the shock of finally getting a potential break catching him off guard.

Turning his gaze back to his boss, Jason pointed with an emphasis that bordered on excitement at the victim's forehead. "This wound here is the first time any victim has shown any other injury besides these," he said, gesturing to the circular chest wounds. Musing aloud, Jason resumed studying the wound and said, "Don't head wounds usually bleed more than this?" Turning to Tommy, Jason pointed at the head injury again and asked, "What did your guys make of it?"

Tommy shrugged. "Only that the minimal blood loss and tissue discoloration indicated the wound was post mortem. Not much else, really. Everyone was so fascinated by those chest wounds that we didn't talk much about anything else."

"Guess it's a good thing I'm so desensitized, then," Jason said, examining the head wound further. It was small, a cut across the left temple just above the hairline, running perpendicular to the forehead. "Kim, can I borrow your pen for a second?" Kim knelt next to her husband on the grass and leaned over the body.

"I got it," she said, reaching past Jason and prodding at the wound gently with the metal tip of her pen. Her eyes widened a little. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

Jason smiled grimly at her. "That it's still incredibly creepy when you do that?"

Kim swatted him playfully on the shoulder. "Just consider yourself lucky I only use my powers for good."

Foster cleared his throat, and the couple looked up sheepishly and rose to their feet, brushing grass off their pants. Foster glanced from Kim to Jason.

"If you two have had your fill of sexual tension, am I to gather that you've found something relevant?"

"Yes sir," Jason said immediately, his face reddening slightly. "Since the amount of blood loss is minimal, we can tell the wound is scooped, as though a chunk of flesh was removed. That, and if AGPD is right about the wound being post mortem, this is not a defensive wound or anything else – this was deliberate. I can only think of one explanation-"

"The killer dug something out of this guy's forehead?" Tommy interjected, staring at Jason in bewilderment.

"Somebody did. Did you find anything nearby?"

"We might have if anyone had bothered to look." Kim frowned at Tommy, her mouth opening slightly as though about to speak. Tommy quickly continued. "Hey, it's not every day someone finds a body in the park that looks like they were killed with a damn lightsaber. People were a little distracted, OK?" His tone shifted gradually from genuinely indignant to deliberately guarded, keying Jason in to the subtext. Tommy had been distracted too, but for a different reason – weird shit like this had once been an everyday occurrence for him. Jason gave Tommy a nearly imperceptible nod as Foster shook his head.

"Doesn't matter. If someone did dig something out of this poor bastard's head after he was dead, they probably took it with them. No way in hell anyone would be stupid enough to leave something like that behind." It was a perfectly logical argument – for all of about four seconds.

"Wait. What's that on the ground between his legs?" Kim pointed to the ground beneath the man's bent knees, just in front of where he sat in the grass.

"What are you talking about? I don't see –" As Jason stepped closer to Kim, however, he got a different angle on the body and saw the glare from the sun that shone off something lying in the grass near the dead man's crotch. Tommy leaned down with a pair of tweezers he seemed to have conjured from nowhere and gently plucked the object off the ground. "What is it?"

Tommy held the object close to his face. It was a tiny glass cylinder, still smeared with the dead man's blood; at various points on its surface, tiny wires were attached to it, their ends holding what appeared to be some kind of electrodes. "It looks like some kind of implant," Tommy said aloud. "I think this little glass thing has some kind of processor or something in it but the blood makes it hard to see."

"Let me have a look," Kim said, stepping over the corpse and leaning in next to Tommy, squinting at the tiny object. "This thing was embedded in this guy's skin," she mused to no one in particular, turning to glance down at the body for a moment. Turning her gaze back to the mysterious implant, she furrowed her brow and put her hands on her hips. "What the hell was it put there for? Did it do something or was he trying to hide it? And if whoever killed him cut it out afterwards, why would they leave it here?"

"I think before we can ask that question we have to answer another," Jason replied. "If we can figure out what this thing is or what it does, the question of what happened here and why will be halfway to answering itself."

Foster turned and regarded Jason for a moment. "Scott, you're sure you've never seen anything like this before?"

"Sir, I've seen every single other body that's been found in this case, and not one of them had an injury on them like this. I think we should redo our autopsies on all the other victims and see if anything turns up."

Foster nodded. "Good thinking, Scott. I knew you had a brain in there somewhere." Jason smirked. "Now," Foster continued, sipping his coffee. "I'm assuming you'll want a little additional help now that this new lead has opened up?" He looked at Tommy, a knowing gleam in his eye.

Jason glanced quickly at Kim, who'd already broken into a wide grin. She threw her arm around Tommy's shoulders and turned to face Foster, practically bouncing with joy. "Ohmygod that would be fantastic!" She squeezed Tommy's shoulder even tighter and giggled with anticipation. Tommy threw Jason an imploring look that quickly transformed into a glare at the sight of Jason's amused smile. Doing his best to put on a straight face, the man in red addressed Foster again.

"To put that a bit more rationally, sir, Tommy's already learned more about this case than we've allowed anyone else to know; besides, we can always use an extra hand. Plus, it'll make it a lot easier on Kim and me if we can base our investigation here instead of having to commute back and forth to LA every day. If Tommy can offer us the cooperation of AGPD on this…" he glanced at Tommy expectantly and received a nod in return. "Then we should have no problem picking things up from here and combining forces."

Foster just stared at Jason and arched his eyebrows.

Jason groaned and rolled his eyes. "And yes, it would be awesome to work this case with my best friend. Satisfied?"

Foster winked at Jason and grinned, taking another long sip from the Thermos. "All right, Scott, all right. You and Kim can bring Detective Oliver into the loop. I'm heading back to LA and I expect you two to keep me constantly updated. Understood?"

Kim beamed even wider and Jason threw Foster a two-finger salute as the other man turned and strode off, disappearing behind the trees. Jason just watched him go for a moment; as soon as he was out of sight, Jason let out an annoyed chuckle and smacked himself on the forehead. "He never gave me my Thermos back. And I thought Tommy had a bad memory."

"I'm standing right here, you know."

Jason turned around, the laughter he'd struggled to keep off his face shining in his eyes. He cocked his head. "Of course you are. How could I bust your balls if you weren't?"

"Oh, stop it, Jason," Kim scolded good-humoredly, disentangling herself from Tommy to lean into Jason and wrap an arm around his waist. "Is this really any way to treat your best friend?"

"Well if the last ten years have been any indication…"

"I swear to god if you finish that sentence…"

"What would you give me if I didn't?"

"What would you want?"

Jason leaned in close and spoke softly into her ear, just loudly enough that Tommy could hear him. "You know that thing you do with the whipped cream and the spatula?"

"OK, now that that image has been permanently burned into my brain, I should probably get out of here," Tommy said, starting to head back the way they'd come.

"Wait, bro!" Jason called after him through his laughter. "You need a ride back or something?"

Tommy regarded the two of them for a moment. Kim had leaned into Jason's body and nestled herself snugly into the crook of his left arm. Her head rested on his shoulder; Jason's other arm wrapped itself protectively around her waist, his fingers intertwining with those of her left hand. They were like two pieces of a puzzle, fitting together so well it was as if they were one entity. Tommy smiled and shook his head. "Could I ever say no to you two?"

"Probably not," Kim said with a wink, pulling away from Jason and tightening her grip on his hand as they walked over to Tommy. "We can stop and wait for you to arrange for the body to be picked up on the way back."

"Great. Let's go – I think I need another Mountain Dew."

"Tommy, it's not even 6:30 in the morning."

"So?"

Jason leaned in toward Kim again and spoke in the same stage whisper he'd used before. "It's amazing. Anything green is like crack to him."

With that, the three old friends began their trek back to the park entrance, laughing and joking like the carefree teenagers they'd once been.


As the three of them made their way down the winding asphalt trail that led back to the park entrance, Jason turned to them and asked, "Am I the only one who's noticed how profoundly weird it is that so many people from our old team do some kind of government or law-enforcement work?"

Kim and Tommy exchanged glances before Jason continued. "I mean, look at us. Kim and I are FBI, Tommy works Homicide for AGPD, Rocky, Adam and Aisha are firefighters, Trini's a UN ambassador, Billy can't even talk about what he does for a living… seriously, it's like none of us could let the whole Ranger thing go. Even people we never would've pegged as ending up in this line of work," he added, shooting a knowing glance at Kim. When neither of his companions responded, he pressed a little harder and asked with a laugh, "Come on. Is that not the weirdest thing you've ever heard or what?"

Kim chuckled a little and Tommy shook his head at Jason's excited hyperbole. Holding out his hands and moving them up and down as though to pantomime a scale, he replied, "Hmmm. Let's see. Eight people out of a closely knit group of eleven who spent their adolescence risking their lives to save the world having jobs that all involve helping people or being offered magical alien superpowers by a giant floating head in a glass tube. Yeah, Jase, that is definitely the weirdest thing I've ever heard."

Kim had dissolved into giggles at this point and struggled to say, "Though if you had told me eight years ago that this would be my life – or that Aisha would be a firefighter – I would probably have laughed in your face. I guess life experience really can change people."

"Heard that," Tommy agreed. "If someone had told teenage me that you and Jason would've ended up together, teenage me would've decked them. And only regretted it a little."

Jason grinned broadly at Tommy, about to break into laughter himself. "God it's great to talk to you again, bro," Jason said, clapping Tommy on the back with his free hand. "Kim's great and all, but she could never match your level of snark."

Kim gasped, clutching a hand to her chest in a mock display of hurt. "Well at least I don't suffer from a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease," she retorted, gesturing emphatically at Jason. "Seriously, sometimes I wonder if that filter between brain and mouth even exists for you!"

"You may have a point there," Jason said with a chuckle, leading his wife and best friend down the right fork of a T-junction in the path. "Put my mouth and my temper together and I'm even worse than Rocky."

"And that's on a good day," Tommy put in, jabbing a finger in Jason's face. "I seem to remember Zordon repeatedly banning you from the Command Center because you couldn't go five minutes without one of us having to censor you."

"I don't need you to fucking tell me how fucking bad my language was, goddamnit!" Jason retorted – a little too loudly. Tommy watched as his friend grinned and let out a laugh that didn't quite reach his eyes and knew what he had said had struck a nerve. Then he saw the way Kim's eyes had widened, the way her hand had clamped around Jason's bicep, and physically flinched at the realization of what he'd just said. Zordon's death a few years back had hit all of them hard, but Jason...it had nearly killed him. Tommy remembered the way his friend had looked the first time he'd seen him afterwards – dazed, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, slumped against the wall of Zack's living room and gazing blankly at the floor. And the look in his eyes – Tommy shuddered just thinking about it. Jason had looked so haunted, so…defeated, as though everything that had ever made him happy had been sucked out of him. Tommy didn't know for certain, and Jason had never said anything about it, but the number of empty vodka and whiskey bottles Tommy had seen in Jason's apartment spoke for themselves; the former Green Ranger had a disturbing suspicion that Jason had attempted suicide at least once in the six months after their mentor was destroyed.

Those months had been frighteningly touch-and-go; Jason, normally the calm, confident, outgoing guy they all saw as a big brother figure, became jumpy and withdrawn, refusing almost any human contact and only offering the occasional halfhearted grunt when forced into conversation. Pulling their friend and former leader back from the edge of the abyss had taken all ten of them the better part of a year, and even then their old mentor's name had become taboo in Jason's presence ever since. And Tommy had just referred to him twice in less than thirty seconds.

Brilliant, Oliver. Just damn brilliant.

Now, Tommy watched as Jason's expression became distant and detached, staring blankly across the park at nothing in particular as the first real rays of sunlight illuminated the contours of his old friend's face.

"Shit, Jase, I'm sorry," Tommy said, leaning in and gripping Jason's shoulder. "I shouldn't have said that, I know how painful it still is for you." Jason didn't respond, just let out a long breath and kept his gaze fixed on some imaginary point in the distance. Kim rubbed Jason's back with her free hand, the other still clasped in his. She and Tommy shared a concerned glance before she gave him a soft smile.

"Don't worry about it," she said gently. "We both know you wouldn't do anything like that on purpose."

"Is he gonna be OK?" Tommy asked, as Jason continued to follow the path as if on autopilot. "I haven't seen him this way since…"

"I'm fine," Jason interjected, and Tommy broke eye contact with Kim to find Jason looking right at him. "I didn't mean to scare you guys. I've just been a little on edge lately, what with all the bullshit I've been putting up with –" Jason stopped abruptly and glanced around frantically, as though hoping his words had gone unheard. Tommy almost pressed the issue, but Kim pulled Jason to one side and started talking to him in hushed tones. Tommy stayed put, afraid to intrude on their private conversation, but kept both his ears trained on them. Just because he was too polite to invade his friends' personal space didn't put him above a little harmless eavesdropping.

Besides, Kim and Jason had apparently become professional whisperers after growing up leading double lives. Whatever they were talking about, though, must have been a very sore subject for both of them; Tommy had performed enough interrogations to recognize the body language of tension when he saw it. Despite his best efforts, though, Tommy was unable to form anything coherent out of the bits and pieces he caught; only one thing he picked up made any sense, which was when Kim put both her hands on Jason's shoulders and said, louder than she probably intended, "Jase, you have to tell him! You have to tell someone."

Tommy had no idea what Kim meant by that, but it must have been the absolute wrong thing to say. Before Tommy could react, Jason had grabbed twin fistfuls of Kim's jacket and slammed her against the nearest tree, screaming, "I am not gonna fucking tell them!"

Tommy's leg froze as he moved to intervene. Jason's behavior was shocking enough already, but his voice… something was very wrong with his voice, something so disturbingly familiar that Tommy felt goosebumps cover his arms at the sound. Jason's already deep voice had dropped at least another octave, and he sounded like his throat had been filled with sandpaper, almost as if he were growling; he sounded like –

Oh shit.

"Come on, Ranger!" "NO! This one is mine!"

In that moment, Tommy was back there, back in that cave watching his best friend go on a rampage as a powerful evil forced him to act out some kind of anger-fueled fever dream revenge fantasy. The memory paralyzed him for a long moment, his breath catching in his throat as he watched his best friend hold his wife against a tree, her legs thrashing futilely beneath her as she struggled against his vice grip. For all the times they'd fought each other to a draw, Tommy knew as far as sheer strength and power were concerned, Jason easily had him beat, even after all these years. There wouldn't be a whole lot he could do if Jason was like this for much longer.

Tommy's reverie was finally snapped when he heard Kim scream, in a voice choked by fear and Jason's grip, "Tommy! Get the fuck over here and do something!"

That was all it took. Tommy sprang into action, charging across the grass and grabbing Jason's right arm with both hands; digging his heels into the ground, Tommy leaned back, trying to leverage as much of his weight against Jason's elbow as he possibly could. Jason just shrugged him off, throwing Tommy back with no apparent effort on his part, and shot him a deadly glare.

"Back off," Jason growled, and Tommy felt a fresh wave of panic sweep over him at what he saw on his friend's face. Jason didn't even look like Jason anymore, his usually happy, calm face distorted into a visage of pure homicidal fury.

But his eyes were the worst of it. They were blazing red, so bright that even in the gradually brightening morning sunlight Tommy reflexively threw a hand up to avoid being blinded. He had seen Jason's eyes flash red briefly before; all of them had grown rather used to what they'd seen as just another side-effect of the Muranthias incident. But Tommy knew with a certainty that chilled him to the bone that this was far different. The person standing in front of him wore Jason's face, spoke with his (grotesquely distorted) voice, and probably possessed all of his formidable combat skills, but the Jason he'd grown up with, his brother in all but blood, was not in the driver's seat right now.

Pushing himself off the ground, Tommy rose shakily to his feet and advanced more slowly this time, approaching Jason the way he would a cornered animal. "Jason?" he said softly, his hands splayed in front of him to demonstrate that he meant no harm. Jason ignored him and leaned more of his weight against Kim, crushing her against the tree. Tommy saw Kim's lips beginning to turn blue, her struggles weakening, and spoke more boldly this time. "Jase, I know you're in there, buddy. This isn't you, man. I don't know what's making you act like this, but whatever it is, you have to fight it. Kim is your wife; for fuck's sake, you've known her since you were five. The Jason I know would never hurt her like this. Now let her go."

Jason turned, and Tommy could've sworn that the red glow had already begun to fade. Jason's face, however, was still twisted into that mask of rage, and he suddenly moved with inhuman speed, letting go with both hands and bending his left arm at the elbow, catching Kim by the shoulders and pinning her back against the tree with his forearm. Kim's renewed gasp for air heartened Tommy for a moment; from this position, Jason wasn't able to strangle her as effectively.

Then Jason did something that Tommy was entirely unprepared for. His right hand moved smoothly to the butt of his gun, still hanging in the shoulder holster, and he spoke to Tommy as though through clenched teeth. "Back. The fuck. Off." Jason's hand closed around the gun, and he lifted it halfway out of its holster. "Before I put one in your eye."

Kim chose that moment to windmill her arms forward, knocking Jason's arm away and dropping to the ground. Before Jason could move, Kim threw her arms around his neck and slammed her lips against his in a desperate kiss, tears streaming down her cheeks. Tommy took the opportunity to move in, slapping Jason's gun into the grass and grabbing his right arm, wrenching his friend's wrist behind his back. Kim pulled away, checking quickly to make sure the red glow was fading – it was, rapidly, the deep brown of Jason's eyes already discernible – and gave Tommy a quick nod. The latter moved sideways, stuck a leg out, and threw Jason backwards over his knee, the man in red ending up flat on his back on the grass, Tommy's knee planted on his sternum. While Tommy held his thrashing friend in place, Kim darted over and put her face right next to her husband's, gripping his face in her hands and speaking softly into his ear. This time Tommy didn't even try to listen in; this seemed personal.

After a very long, very tense moment, Kim sat up, and Tommy finally saw the Jason he recognized looking back at him, his eyes brimming with guilt and unspoken apologies. Tommy fell back onto his ass and sat there panting, resting his arms on his knees. Glancing back and forth from Kim to Jason – who still lay prone on the grass, breathing hard, beads of sweat beginning to glisten on his forehead – he finally found his voice. "One of you wanna tell me what the fuck just happened?"

Jason sighed, his breath hitching in a way that made Tommy feel like a bit of a dick, even as the image of Kim gasping desperately for air flashed through his mind's eye. Staring at the sky, as though he couldn't bring himself to look Tommy in the eye, Jason finally answered, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm so sorry, Tommy. I should've told you about this a long time ago."

Tommy's only response was a confused look. Jason ran a hand over his face and muttered, "Son of a bitch," before rising to a seated position and supporting himself on his elbows, casting a sidelong glance Tommy's way. After a long silence he spoke again.

"When we get back, you should probably start getting in contact with the others. I've got a lot to fill you guys in on."