Chapter Description: Katherine and Tanya are now giants, and thanks to the power of the Dark Suggestion they're on a bit of a power trip. Can the other Rangers reach them before it's too late?
"What are we planning to do when the guys show up?" Tanya asked.
The two female Power Rangers were unmorphed, in their normal casual attire (a pink dress with a floral pattern for Kat and a yellow-and-black dress for Tanya), and standing at the same roughly 250-foot-tall height as all the giant monsters and Zeo Megazords. Thanks to the influence of Finster's Dark Suggestion, becoming gigantic had suddenly turned into their newfound obsession, and once they grew huge they were already showing signs of it seriously messing with their minds. Both girls could barely even think straight in their current power tripping haze, but Tanya had at least briefly managed to put her finger on what she realized could be a real problem for them.
"Huh? The guys?" a blissful, zoned-out Kat replied. Unlike Tanya, she was very much NOT having a moment of clarity. "What guys?"
"The other Rangers, you airhead! Remember them? Rocky, and Adam, and YOUR BOYFRIEND?"
"Oh yeah." the giant Kat smiled. "Those guys. What will we do? I dunno, say hi?"
"Uh, Kat…..can you focus here for a second?" an increasingly exasperated Tanya said. "They're gonna be mad at us don't you think?"
"For what?" Kat boomed dismissively. "All we've done is taken a couple steps!"
"Kat, you almost crushed that guy just now."
"So what?" Kat exclaimed. "I wasn't TRYING to!"
"Oh yeah great argument, I can't wait to hear their reaction to that one." said Tanya, shaking her head.
"Look, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And think of how quick it would take us to cross a bridge now." Kat joked.
"If we don't crush it." the giant Tanya snorted.
"Even better." Kat smiled. "Hey, I don't know about you, but I'm taking another super fun giant step now."
Tanya's concerns hadn't exactly been alleviated by her best friend's dismissive words, but talk of more giant footfalls quickly brought her mind back to her newfound obsession.
"Let's do it." Tanya grinned. "Look out below little people!"
"Or don't." said Kat under her breath.
Meanwhile at the Power Chamber, the three other remaining members had been enjoying another uneventful afternoon. The team was back down to five after Jason had to return his Gold Ranger powers to the alien Trey of Triforia, who had already returned to his home planet.
"Hey guys." Adam said as he walked into the room, joining Tommy & Rocky. "Another quiet day huh?"
"Yeah, not much going on." Tommy confirmed. "Zedd & Rita really did us a favor when they blew up the Machine Empire's royal family, Zordon doesn't think they'll be back for quite a while."
"They need time to rebuild I guess." Adam snorted.
"Right." agreed Rocky. "And Zedd & Rita haven't been up to anything. Maybe they went on vacation or something."
"Hey, where are the girls?" Adam said, just noticing that they weren't there.
"I don't know, I haven't seen them." Tommy said. "Kat was really cagey with me when I asked her what she was doing today."
"Trouble in paradise?" Adam asked with an impish little grin.
"I don't know." Tommy admitted. "She's seemed really distracted all week, pretty much since we had that last fight with Mondo. I can't really tell what she's thinking lately."
"Women." Adam said with a smile. "Anyway, let's find them, it's boring here with just us guys."
Suddenly, the Power Chamber alarms went off. Rocky was the first to turn his eyes toward the monitor and they immediately went as wide as saucers.
"Uh, guys? I think I just found the girls." he stammered in disbelief.
Tommy and Adam joined their friend to look at the monitors and couldn't believe what they saw either. It was a gigantic Katherine and Tanya! They watched in stunned disbelief as their two giant friends took their slow first steps, with Kat's second step in particular nearly crushing a poor old man.
"What the hell?!" Adam finally exclaimed. "The girls! They're huge!"
"And Kat just almost crushed a guy!" Rocky added.
"Does she even know she did that?" Adam wondered.
"Dude, she was looking straight down! How could she not have noticed?"
"I don't know man, we were just giants last week too. It's kind of hard to see everything going on down there when you're that big, right?"
Rocky gave a look like he still wasn't quite convinced, but meanwhile Tommy still hadn't said anything or even moved a muscle. He wasn't really listening to Adam & Rocky's conversation due to the state of shock he was in at seeing his girlfriend- not to mention Tanya too- stomp through downtown Angel Grove as giants. Finally, he turned around to face Zordon.
"Zordon, how could this have happened?!" Tommy said. "Is this some kind of leftover magic from when Trey made us all grow?"
"No Tommy." Zordon replied. "I'm afraid the magic I'm sensing around them is definitely evil magic."
"Aiyiyiyi, it must be the work of Rita and Zedd!" Alpha finally added.
"So much for their vacation." Adam muttered.
"So they're under a mind control spell right?" Tommy asked. "Just like Kat and I both were before. How can we break it?"
"I do not sense evil magic controlling their minds." Zordon quickly clarified. "I just sense the evil magic that made them grow."
"Whoa whoa whoa, why the heck would Zedd and Rita make them grow but not also turn them evil?!" Rocky exclaimed.
"Yeah, I don't get it." Adam said. "Also if they're not under any kind of evil mind control spell, why do they look so…weird." he added, just as he watched them both look like they were practically having a wet dream after each taking their third giant step in the city. "And look, this time they BOTH almost crushed someone!"
"Something isn't right." Tommy agreed. "I know Katherine better than anyone, this isn't like her at all."
"Power changes people." Rocky said tentatively. He knew how Tommy felt about Kat, so it wasn't a topic he really wanted to broach, but if they really weren't under a mind control spell then he felt like someone had to say it. "I mean, we all felt it last week right? How incredible it feels to be that big?"
"But Kat still wouldn't hurt anyone!" Tommy insisted.
"Look man I don't know what to tell you, look at her! She's power tripping! They both are!" Rocky fired back.
"That's not the Kat you knew anymore." Adam agreed. "Or the same Tanya either."
"There has to be another explanation….." Tommy trailed off.
"Rangers, Alpha and I will continue scanning them both." said Zordon. "We'll let you know what we find. In the meantime, the three of you need to get down there and try to mitigate the damage."
"Alright." Tommy nodded. "It's morphin' time!"
Back in the city, Kat and Tanya each took their third step as giants (as the Rangers had just seen from the Power Chamber). It was getting harder to avoid stepping on the tiny people the deeper they went into the city, and this time both of them just narrowly missed crushing an innocent bystander- another old man in Tanya's case and a young woman in Kat's. Both people had almost been crushed by the two huge teens' massive feet, and even in their pleasure-induced hazes the girls noticed it.
"Wow, I almost stepped on someone too that time!" Tanya exclaimed in a mix of shock and regret at putting someone's life in danger like that. Unlike Kat moments earlier with the old man, she hadn't noticed the tiny person there until it was already too late to change her giant foot's descent, and she had thought trying to move at the last possible second could have resulted in her just crushing some other poor soul (or souls!) instead.
Kat noticed the hint of regret in her fellow giant's voice. She on the other hand had seen the little person in the path of her foot the entire time again, and realized (with a bit of shock) that she actually felt a little disappointed that the tiny woman had narrowly dodged her massive foot. She thought to herself that she seemed to be transforming into a power-mad titan faster than her equally huge friend, but she just couldn't help feeling like she wanted to know what it felt like to actually crush one of these tiny people beneath her. It brought chills down her spine, both because she knew it was wrong but also was absolutely certain that she would, eventually, not be able to stop herself.
I'm becoming evil again. Kat thought, with a strange sense of calmness. Not in a way like I want to conquer the Earth for those morons Rita & Zedd…but like I can't even pretend to care about these pathetic little things scurrying around beneath me. I'm above them all now, literally! I'm massive. I'm powerful. I can do whatever I want now, and there's nobody who can stop me. And unfortunately for them, what I want to do is crush their litt-
"Hey Kat? Earth to Kat?" the giant Tanya boomed as she stared at her very much lost-in-thought friend, finally snapping Kat out of her increasingly dark thoughts. Tanya had been so distracted by the fact that she had almost crushed someone that she hadn't even noticed Kat had almost done the same thing a second time, or else she probably would have realized that her best friend was being even more reckless with her giant steps than she was. But even in a haze from all the strange pleasure she felt from shaking the very earth with her huge foot again, she was still able to notice just how strange the Pink Ranger now seemed. She looks so cold. Tanya thought. Something is different about her….I mean, besides the obvious today.
Kat looked over at her friend and was about to respond, when both of them spotted three distinct colored flashes of light heading down to the roof of a building right next to them.
"There they are!" Tanya exclaimed. "I tried to tell you they'd show up before long! What do we do now?"
Kat didn't respond at first, raising a giant finger to her face as if to imply she was thinking.
"Exactly what I said before." she finally replied. "We go say hi."
The Rangers teleported in and ran up to the edge of the building. The building was quite a bit smaller than their giant friends, so they were about even with their stomachs, and had to crane their heads up to look at their huge faces.
"Alpha couldn't have picked a taller building to teleport us to?" Adam muttered.
Tommy ignored him as he called up to the two giants.
"Kat! Tanya! What happened to you?!"
Both girls spun around to face them- even this slight movement caused one of Kat's huge feet to obliterate a mailbox as she readjusted it, her giant toes crushing it into nothing. The look of pleasure on her face at the world below failing to stand up to her might didn't go unnoticed by Tanya as she looked over at Kat, then back at the Rangers, unsure of what to say. It really threw her how tiny they looked, though. Seeing her friends as nothing more than tiny tri-colored dolls was a real trip, in more ways than one. A power trip. Tanya noted to herself. We're just so much bigger than them. It's like we're a different species now….
"Isn't it obvious?" Kat wondered aloud, suddenly finding her boyfriend's question to be quite stupid. "We grew. Again."
The three much smaller male Rangers were more than a little thrown by her very matter-of-fact answer, which she said almost like there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.
"Well…..we can see that." said Rocky finally after an awkward pause. "But how? Why?"
"We don't know." Tanya lied, causing Kat to look over at her with an odd expression. "We just walked out of the Youth Center and then suddenly Zedd & Rita's lightning hit us, and made us like this."
Kat found herself more than a little annoyed that Tanya had chosen to lie about the circumstances of their growth. She thought about this more for a second, trying to unpack why she was having this reaction. On one hand, Kat theorized, it made sense for Tanya to say that. Of course she wouldn't want to admit to them that they had made a completely willing deal with two of their all time greatest enemies- that had been wrong for them to do by any objective measure. On the other hand, Kat wondered, why bother lying to the other Rangers now? They may be their friends, but they were just such….little things. Kat felt like the two of them were young girls lying to their own tiny dolls. Who cared what the little doll Rangers thought of them at the end of the day? Who was afraid of the judgment of very tiny action figures? She wasn't, she decided, and knew instantly she wanted to tell them the truth. And if the new Katherine was about anything, it was doing what she wanted.
"Actually, that's not quite true." the giant Kat boomed as Tanya quickly looked at her in shock. "Zedd and Rita communicated with us telepathically in the juice bar. They told us if we walked outside right then and there, they'd turn us into giants. As you can clearly see, we decided to take them up on their offer."
"What?!" Adam yelled up at them in shock.
"How could you do that?" Rocky added, a mixture of surprise and anger in his voice.
Tanya also still just looked absolutely stunned that Kat would just come out and tell the other Rangers about their deal with the enemy, and Tommy just couldn't even process what he was hearing his enormous girlfriend say enough to give a response. It didn't make sense. They did this to themselves WILLINGLY? Tommy thought to himself, feeling like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. How is that even possible?!
Kat on the other hand couldn't stop herself from smiling rather evilly, even though she hadn't really wanted to. She had been trying to hold it back and maintain a more stoic expression, but hearing their little panicked reactions and watching them flail around on top of that tiny building was just so incredibly amusing to her. Maybe even….arousing. Katherine thought to herself naughtily.
"You must have felt it last week too!" Tanya desperately tried to explain to them. Unlike Kat, she absolutely still seemed to care about what the other Rangers thought of her. "Being this big is incredible! It's like a drug, we couldn't…..we couldn't say no…."
"How could you?" Tommy finally called up at them. "Kat, Tanya, how could you?"
"We haven't hurt anyone." said Tanya, as softly as someone her size could.
"YET. You haven't hurt anyone YET!" Rocky fired back.
"We all watched you both almost crush people from back in the Power Chamber!" Adam added angrily.
"You're putting the citizens of Angel Grove in danger, the same citizens we've all sworn to protect as Power Rangers!" said Tommy with passion in his voice. "I don't understand how or why you made the decision you did, but you have to stop now before you really DO hurt someone!"
Tanya looked deeply conflicted- the words of her tiny friends stung her, even as another part of her mind was still screaming at her to ignore them and keep enjoying her massive size and power. But Kat's smirk had been replaced by an increasingly annoyed expression. Who the hell do you little guys think you are?! Kat thought to herself as she got increasingly angry. Are you really not understanding the situation here? My days of being your little doormat are LONG over. It had been highly amusing watching them panic, but getting yelled at by these tiny things- like she was supposed to LISTEN to them!- had quickly pissed her off.
"I've had just about enough of being lectured by Power Rangers the size of little dolls!" the giant finally boomed. Suddenly, she raised her massive right fist upward!
The three tiny Rangers began panicking, not at all expecting this. Tanya meanwhile yelled "Kat, no!" and reached out for her massive arm. "Think about what you're doing! They might be tiny but they're still our friends!"
Kat looked over at Tanya, then back at the tiny Rangers who had reacted in shock at first but were now taking fighting stances. Her brief wave of anger faded as quickly as it had come on, and she nodded at Tanya before slowly lowering her arm.
What just came over me? Kat thought. Almost stepping on some random little people is one thing, but attacking my friends? TOMMY?
The other three Rangers sighed in relief as they saw that Tanya had managed to talk some sense into Katherine, at least briefly. Kat remained lost in thought, really considering just how close she had come to attacking her own friends. She realized she was losing control of herself- the sheer power of being a giant was having an effect on her mind.
It's so different from when I was under Rita's stupid spell- back then my body just did things I couldn't understand. I'd scream at it to stop but it would be no use. she thought. But now I'm fully here. This is me, not some alternate evil personality! And yet I still feel myself changing. I was ready to crush innocent people to death, on purpose! And then I just almost attacked our friends! What am I becoming? She realized she was starting to scare herself…..but that feeling of absolute power, of being quite literally above everyone and everything, was still there. No matter what, she just couldn't turn it off. They're all just so tiny….I'm so big…..
With Kat seemingly lost in her own mind again and Tanya still in shock, the three Rangers took the opportunity to call Zordon.
"Zordon, has your scanning of our…..big problem turned up anything?" Tommy called into his communicator hopefully.
"Rangers, after Alpha and I scanned them further, I can now sense some type of interference with their minds." Zordon replied.
"Then they ARE under a mind control spell!" Adam said, almost relieved to hear this news. At least that would finally explain their insane behavior. he thought to himself.
"Not exactly." Zordon quickly corrected him. "It seems to be much more complicated than that. Alpha & I are still trying to figure out exactly what's happening to them. In the meantime, try to get them to agree to go back to the Zord bay with you. It should be big enough to hold them, which will buy us some more time."
"Got it." Tommy replied. He turned back to look up at the two conflicted giants.
"Listen, Zordon wants us to take you back to the Zord bay!" he yelled up at them. "That way you won't be a danger to anyone in Angel Grove while we try to figure out what happened, and how we can get you back to normal!
Tanya looked down at him with the same conflicted expression, while Kat looked more openly annoyed at the suggestion but didn't yet respond. Both knew immediately they had no interest in getting "back to normal", but weren't sure what to say.
"Come on, it's for the best!" Rocky added, sensing their hesitancy. "You know it's true!"
"You don't really want to hurt anyone!" Adam said. "Stop before it's too late!"
Meanwhile, back on the Moon, Zedd & Rita were watching everything unfold and were getting increasingly annoyed themselves.
"Those meddlesome male Rangers are going to ruin everything!" Rita whined. "Just when the girls were starting to give in to their power trip too!"
"Especially young Katherine." Zedd noted.
"Yeah, I wonder why that goody two shoes has been falling from grace so much faster than the other goody two shoes?" wondered Rita aloud. She had always taken a great interest in her formerly evil Kat and was quite fascinated by her actions so far.
"Perhaps there was more of her former evil self buried than we realized, and the Dark Suggestion has brought it to the forefront." Finster suggested.
"Or maybe she's just tired of that pathetic Tommy!" Lord Zedd laughed to himself, thinking of his longtime rival. "Who can blame her!"
"Either way, she probably just needs a bit more time to fully embrace her power." Finster clarified. "Tanya shouldn't be that far behind either. The Dark Suggestion has made them absolutely obsessed with their size, and no one obsessed with that kind of power can stop themselves from becoming a bully."
"Well they probably won't be embracing anything from their Zord bay!" Rita complained. "Do something Zeddy, before they actually go!"
"We'll send down the Tengas to distract the other Rangers before they can finish convincing our giants to leave the city!" Zedd declared. "Tengas! Get going!"
Back in Angel Grove, the Tenga warriors suddenly flew down from the sky and right into the three Rangers on top of the building! Sparks flew as all three Rangers were knocked off the rooftop and into the street below…..right in front of the gigantic, well-pedicured toes of Kat & Tanya.
"Oh man, horrible timing, bird brains." Rocky muttered.
"Come on guys, let's take them down!" Tommy yelled.
The three Zeo Rangers began fighting with the Tengas as the massive Kat and Tanya looked on from above. Suddenly, Tanya raised one of her huge black feet up off the pavement below.
"What are you doing?" Kat wondered.
"Isn't it obvious?" Tanya said with a hint of annoyance. "I'm gonna help our friends!"
Kat quietly wondered to herself if Tanya's motivations were really so pure- after all, three morphed Power Rangers should really not have much trouble with a bunch of Tengas. You just want to feel what it's like to crush someone as much as I do, don't you. Kat thought to herself with a slight smirk. This is a convenient opportunity…..
As Adam was fighting one of the Tengas, he suddenly noticed out of the corner of his eye that Tanya's enormous foot was coming down right for them.
"Whoa!" Adam yelled. "TANYA, DON'T!"
To be continued….
