Apparently, Empress Rita had been unable to track him with her spells while he had been helping the rest of the Animorphs to Jara and Ket to escape from the Yeerks. And, while she clearly wanted to know everything that had been going on while he'd been out of contact, there were still too many secrets that weren't only his to tell for Tommy to say anything. At least, he couldn't say anything about what he'd really been doing.
So he told her what he could, while being careful to talk around what he couldn't speak about without revealing more than he could about what he was truly a part of.
Empress Rita sent him back to Earth, then, and Tommy checked to make sure that the Yeerks posing as his foster parents weren't present to try and stop him from finding that hidden Kandrona generator they had been using to keep themselves alive while they were away from the main Pool in Century City. Once he'd made sure that there was truly no one present to stop him, Tommy made his way back down into the garage to search through the boxes for it. Looking over all the labeled boxes, stacked neatly one on top of the other, he'd soon managed to find a box that wasn't labeled as belonging to any of the rooms in the house.
A brief moment of concentration saw him back in the form of the Green Ranger, and as he cut open the box with the Sword of Darkness that Empress Rita had given him, Tommy found himself smiling as he caught sight of the silvery form of what had to be the portable Kandrona generator. It was the only thing they'd been given to sustain themselves while they were so far away from the main Pool in Century City. It was the only thing giving them the time they needed to look into what he was doing.
That, however, was a simple problem to solve.
A single slash from the Sword of Darkness cleaved the generator in half, and Tommy brought his right heel down on the largest remaining part of the generator. Allowing his transformation to fade once he'd made it out of the garage, Tommy continued on his way up to his room so that he could get ready for his next day of school.
