Disclaimer: Animorphs belongs to Scholastic books, Power Rangers (yes, really) belongs to Saban Brands and Hasbro. The PR comic belongs to Boom! Studios. This is going to be less of a story than my other works, and more an interconnected series of one-shots; some longer than others, of course.
Animorphs: The Addition
Tommy didn't really know what had compelled him, that first night, to tag after the five younger kids as they made their way toward that abandoned construction site. Maybe it'd just been because of the sense of kinship he felt with that kid Tobias, since both of them hadn't seemed to be able to make friends easily, or else just because not one of those kids making their way into that maze of broken concrete and old, rusting construction equipment seemed to be even the same age as he was.
It just hadn't felt right, letting a bunch of kids – all of them clearly younger than he was – go into a place that dangerous on their own.
And so Tommy had hurried, quickly catching up to the five of them with his longer stride.
"Hey," he called, falling into step at the trailing edge of their group, next to the smaller boy whose hair looked almost like his; really, it was the same basic length and everything. "What's a bunch of kids your age doing out in a place like this?"
He'd thought it was kind of uncanny, the resemblance between him and that other kid, back before Elfangor's ship had crash-landed in front of them all, redefining everything he thought he knew about the world.
"Who are you calling a bunch of kids?" demanded the girl near the front of the group; the one who was nearly as tall as he was, which had been a pretty funny thought, given how young she looked.
"I have three years on any of you," he informed her, knowing that it was probably only true in the broadest sense, but wanting to make his point all the same. "I'm allowed to call you kids, you kids."
The laughter of the short kid walking next to him does a lot to defuse the tension that Tommy can almost see building between him and the blonde girl at the forefront of the group, and that kind of thing seems to be the catalyst for a round of introductions. Things go about as usual for this kind of situation, up to the point when it came time for Tommy to introduce himself.
"What?" he asked, in response to Jake's laugh; the one that sounded like it'd taken nearly everything the younger boy had to suppress and then some.
"Sorry," the younger boy said, regaining his composure about as fast as Tommy remembered himself doing. "It's just, my older brother's name is Tom."
Tommy found himself laughing, returning Jake's grin with one of his own. "You're right, that is pretty funny."
He never did find out just why the five of them had gone into the construction site that night, but as he ran from the Yeerk-enslaved humans and aliens hunting him down, furious tears streaking his face and Elfangor's agonized cries echoing in his mind, Tommy had already resolved himself on what he was going to do. No matter what any of those younger kids chose to do for themselves, he was going to make sure that no one else suffered as a slave to those evil aliens. No matter what happened to him.