Work Text:
This is how it feels to be Tommy Oliver:
The morph around you is green. You wear the color like a second skin. The gemstones in your gloves, the glowing energy shield that moves your arms farther apart than you’ve had them in years; they are symbols, in an arcane alien cultural language, of who and what you are. Rita had the coin for thousands of years. You are not just the first Green Ranger. You are so much more.
For a second, you let the power flood your veins like—
No. Not fire. Like the void of space.
Raw and empty and vast, more powerful than any human can truly conceive. It is how you understand power, now, because you may not fully understand, but you have seen glimmers of it, Rita gesturing wildly as she declaimed to you on the nature of magic and how to use it. It was space you called on first, to channel the natural abilities of a human magic-worker.
And now you are on a spaceship, surrounded by aliens, and this time you have no spell forcing your allegiance.
You can defend your world.
Your head comes up. A smile is on your lips, a curl of rage and savage enjoyment. The Dragon Dagger is in your hand, and you twirl it, just a little. The assorted aliens hesitate.
Oh yes.
This will be wonderful.
* * *
A few hours earlier…
“Samurai, status report.”
“Strike team’s in place.” Cam told Tommy, half-muttering as the sound of typing came over the comlink. “Just double-checking the weaponry.”
“But we’re good to go.” Tommy confirmed.
“Knock yourself out.”
Tommy looked up at where Elizabeth and Anton were manipulating the invisiportal controls. “We’re good.”
“Okay, then.” Anton’s eyes were glazed with focus, the way he got when he hyperfocused on science. “Let’s try…there we go.” He booted up the invisiportal.
Tommy reached up and was sucked through.
The thing about infiltrating an enemy spaceship was that, in space, it is very easy to see a potential infiltrator coming. Most cultures had written off the idea of using one spaceship to infiltrate another a few years after discovering space-based warfare.
On the other hand, if you had a method of teleportation nearly untraceable by most scanners…
(Admittedly, that was mostly because nobody else was insane enough to use wormholes to teleport. Tommy and Anton had spent a good ten minutes cackling over that when they’d thought it up. In hindsight, that had probably been a warning sign, but whatever.)
Tommy fell through and landed on one knee, then rolled up and pulled out his gun. No one was around. He relaxed a little, starting to move.
There were aliens hanging out a few days’ journey from the Earth’s orbit. They were startlingly well-armed, and long-rage scanners indicated that more of them were coming. A lot more. ‘This is an entire army’ kind of more. So Tommy had gathered the Earth Ranger Corps, or what he could of them anyway, and started plotting.
This was the culmination of Phase I. He’d gotten onto the alien ship with no problems; he just needed to find a computer terminal so he could use the Blue-engineered virus to download all of their information to a special set-up back on Earth.
Simple and dangerous.
Tommy moved through empty corridors quickly. He didn’t actually have a particular destination in mind. From what the Blues had been able to get off the aliens, any computer should work. They’d been able to cross-reference the coding system with a known system used across the galaxy, and come up with and test working theories on how the computer system worked. Tommy had boiled that down to ‘find terminal, plug weird device in’.
It looked exactly like what the Blues had described. Tommy slipped over and inserted the device. It whirred, then sprang to life with a logo Tommy didn’t know and downloading information in flickers of light.
An alarm went off.
Tommy whirled, dropping into a defensive stance, his gun coming up. Right now, he had one job: Protect the terminal. The stream was the most important thing right now.
The first few aliens who came through got killed with headshots.
Tommy had to change out his clip after a second. It almost cost him, but he was fast enough to take out the nearest one. Blood, or something like it, sprayed everywhere. Tommy kept shooting.
They got the hint in a sudden flurry of movement, and dropped a metal door between him and them. Tommy lowered his gun, taking quick, deep breaths.
The download was still going.
Tommy found his hand drifting to his pocket. The only reason he’d transferred his Green Ranger powers to Jason had been because he’d needed to avoid Rita’s Green Candle, but her spell had been broken when Zordon died.
He had no idea what morphing would mean, but oh, he wanted it. Wanted it with the fierce desire that meant the Power was trying to choose him again, trying to demand he take up a morpher and defend the world. But he also had no idea what it would do. Would it call up a new team around him again? Reactivate all the first Rangers? Short out and kill him in an explosion?
He could hear them scrabbling on the other side of the door.
Tommy readied his gun.
The door whooshed open so quickly Tommy barely saw it, and then there was a gun, bigger than anything Tommy had ever seen, and there was no choice anymore, Tommy didn’t know what it would do but he was pulling out his morpher anyway—
“It’s morphin’ time!”
* * *
Then it was over.
The Green Ranger, the first Green Ranger, the symbol of transformation and redemption, stood amidst the bodies of his enemies with his blade covered in blood. The survivors had fled. The alarm was still blaring.
The device stopped downloading.
Tommy reached out and pulled it free. Then he lifted his hand. “Anton?”
“Did you morph?” Elizabeth demanded.
Tommy grinned. He should be worried, he knew that; he probably deserved the ass-kicking Elizabeth and Hayley were going to give him for morphing when he didn’t know what effect it would have.
But damn, he felt good.
“Yeah.” He started heading back to the invisiportal. “The Green Ranger’s back.”
Anton shot the invisiportal over his head, and the Green Ranger teleported away.