[Ellen Brand]

..On the reservation close by the city of Angel Grove, a young man named David Trueheart sat on a flat rock, watching an eagle soar overhead. Suddenly he was alerted by the unmistakable skzrchh! of teletransport behind him. He whirled and leaped to his feet, ready for anything, and relaxed as he recognized the red glow that signaled the arrival of his brother Tommy.

.........."Hey, Tommy, what's up?" David's greeting died on his lips as he got a better look at his brother. Tommy's skin was pale, and he had dark circles under his eyes that only came from too many nights without sleep. Even his movements were jerky and uncoordinated, rather than the smooth motions so natural to him. "Man, you look like hell," David remarked, moving forward to grasp his brother's shoulders. "Sit down before you fall down."

..........Tommy did as he was ordered, and David sank down next to him. "Y'know, that's what I like about you, Dave. You really have a way of lifting my spirits," Tommy grinned. David snorted.

.........."What's wrong with you, Tommy?"

.........."I haven't been sleeping very well." Quickly, Tommy outlined the events of the past week, finishing up with Zordon's advice to him. "So we need a new Red Ranger, at least for a while."

..........David's mouth fell open. "ME?" he shouted, jumping up. "I wouldn't even know what to do!"

..........Tommy rose to his feet as well. It was the only way to avoid a crick in the neck. "It's not hard, Dave. You're already a martial artist, and the powers teach you everything you need to know about handling them. Just follow Adam's orders and you'll do fine."

..........David raised an eyebrow. "Adam's your second-in-command?"

.........."Yeah, why?"

.........."No reason. I just always thought it was Rocky."

.........."Nah, Rocky's a great guy, but he's not a leader and everybody knows it. Adam, on the other hand, is a natural leader, although he'd blush if you said so. C'mon, Dave, what do you say?"

.........."All right, Tommy, I'm in." With that, the two boys teleported back to the Power Chamber in two flashes of light, one red and one white.



..........Taking a deep breath, Tommy entered the waiting room of Dr. Kino's office. Serena, the pretty blonde secretary, smiled at him. "Go on in, Tommy. The doctor is waiting for you."

..........Pushing open the door to Dr. Kino's office, Tommy saw her sitting at the desk. When he entered, she looked up and smiled at him. "Hey, Tommy. Since you called and asked for an emergency appointment today, I'll assume you're not here for another fruitless session of noncooperation."

..........Tommy smiled lopsidedly at her. Jeez, he thought to himself, was I THAT bad? Aloud, he replied, "No, Dr. Kino, I've decided to cooperate. I do need your help after all."

.........."All right!" She pumped one fist in the air. "Sit down and let's get cracking."

.........."Um, actually, I need to show you something first. Would you come with me?"

..........She regarded him for a second, then shrugged. "All right, just let me tell Serena to hold my calls," she told him, rising from her chair.

.........."Actually, you won't have to do that. She won't even know that you're gone." He extended his left hand to her. After looking at it for a moment, she sighed and took it. Quickly, Tommy hit the teleport button on it, transporting them both instantly to the Power Chamber.

.........."Tommy, what was that? I have never --," Her voice broke off as she absorbed her surroundings. "Tommy, where are we?" she asked in a small voice.

.........."This is the Power Chamber, center of operations for the Power Rangers. Welcome, Dr. Kino," Zordon boomed.

.........."The Power- Who are you? Why am I here?" She whirled on Tommy. "Okay, Oliver, spill your guts. I want some answers," she growled.

.........."Whoa, whoa!" Tommy raised his hands defensively. "That's Zordon. He's sort of our mentor."

.........."Our?" Dr. Kino inquired, raising one eyebrow.

..........Ignoring her question, Tommy turned towards the shadows, calling, "Guys, could you come out here, please?" Out of the shadows stepped five teenagers, two girls and three boys.

.........."I'm Katherine Hilliard, Zeo Ranger I, Pink," the blonde girl said.

..........Next to speak was the black girl in the yellow T-shirt. "Tanya Sloan, Zeo Ranger II, Yellow."

.........."Rocky De Santos, Zeo Ranger III, Blue," smiled the young Hispanic boy next to Tanya.

..........The next to introduce himself was a young Korean boy in a green sweatshirt. "Adam Park, Zeo Ranger IV, Green."

..........The last to step out of the shadows was a tall boy who, Dr. Kino noticed, bore an astounding resemblance to Tommy. "David Trueheart. I'm Tommy's brother and Zeo Ranger V, Red- but only temporarily."

.........."And I'm Jason Scott, formerly the Gold Ranger," declared a voice behind her. Out of the darkness stepped a tall, well-built seventeen-year-old with dark hair, dark eyes, and skin the color of cream. To Dr. Kino's trained eye, he appeared to be recovering from the effects of exhaustion.

..........Ignoring Jason's condition for the time being, she turned back to Tommy. "How do you know the Power Rangers? Why did you bring me here?"

.........."You see, I used to be a Power Ranger, up until Saturday, in fact. The reason I brought you here is because my problems are tied into my having been a Ranger, and I didn't think that I could explain them to you without revealing that fact," Tommy told her seriously. "No one can know that we're the Power Rangers, not even our parents. Of course, we aren't always able to keep it secret," he grimaced. "My brother and sister figured it out for themselves a couple days ago. Still, we'd like to keep the number of people who know our identities down."

..........Dr. Kino nodded. "I understand. So what problems are you having?"

.........."That's a very long story, Dr. Kino, and it's tightly interwoven with the history of the Power Rangers. I might as well tell you the whole story. It started about two and a half years ago...."

..........The other Rangers listened raptly to Tommy's story, for a number of different reasons. Tanya, of course, knew almost none of the history of the Power Rangers. None of the others had ever thought to sit her down and tell her everything that had happened between the beginning and the present. They had only told her what she needed to know for the situation at hand.

..........Kat listened because she had once been evil herself. Tommy had shared bits of his experience with her, but this was the first chance she had had to hear the whole thing all in his own words. So much of what she knew about Tommy was gleaned from her conversations with Kim, and she was eager to learn more about him.

..........Rocky and Adam listened to the story and tried to connect the Green Ranger that Tommy was describing with the noble, kind leader that they knew. Their image of the Green Ranger was of the heroic, tragic figure who gave up his powers to save his friends. The only experience that they had had with the evil Green Ranger had been too brief for them to learn anything about him.

..........Jason listened for a very different reason. He knew the story like the back of his hand, having lived parts of it, and had gone over Tommy's side of it thousands of times when his friend was in the grip of a guilt trip. None of the elements were new to him; rather, it was the way Tommy told it that held his attention. He can't create a story, Jason thought to himself, but he can tell one with the best of 'em. His kids and grandkids will be lucky someday. Suddenly, Jason was jolted by an unpleasant realization. The chances were fairly good that none of them would live to have any children at all.

.........."So that's everything," Tommy said, drawing the story to a close. "Do you think I'm going crazy?"

..........Dr. Kino shook her head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You've just been under a lot of stress lately. You lost the powers that Zordon assured you could never be taken away, one of your friends wound up powerless, your longtime girlfriend broke up with you, you found and nearly lost a brother that you never knew you had, you had to learn to control a new Zord, a villain turned you against your friends again, another of your friends began losing his powers, and your friend Billy left to live on another planet. I'd say that this is just a classic case of the mind dragging up bad memories in times of stress. To make sure, I'd like to take you back to my office and put you under hypnosis."

..........Tommy shrugged. "That sounds okay to me, Dr. Kino." He took her hand and teleported them back to her office. Once there, she sat him down in a chair and told him to relax.

.........."Okay, Tommy, just close your eyes. I want you to imagine that you're getting lighter and lighter, all your tension is floating away. Now, picture yourself walking down a flight of stairs. With each step you tell yourself, 'I am going deeper and deeper into a trance.' Good." She stopped. Tommy appeared to be deeply asleep. As she had surmised from his description of Rita's spell, Tommy was a deep trance subject. In fact, he went deeper and faster into a trance than any patient she had ever hypnotized.

.........."Tommy, can you hear me?"

.........."Yes," he replied, slurring his words slightly.

.........."Good. I want you to picture a clock, the clock on the wall at school. Can you see it?"

.........."Yes."

.........."All right, now I want you to see the hands of that clock running backwards, and as they run, time itself is running backwards. It's getting earlier and earlier as those hands run."

..........A small smile crossed the blankness of Tommy's face. "Seen that before. When Zedd 'n' Master Vile turned us into kids, clocks did the same thing."

..........Dr. Kino smiled. "Well, we're not going to take you that far back. I just want you to go back to the last time you woke up from a black-out. Where are you?"

.........."I'm at the Youth Center. I don't remember why I came or how I got here."

.........."Okay, now I want you to go back two minutes. Where are you?"

Tommy's face changed, the blankness replaced by a chilling cold. When he spoke, his voice held an icy, sneering quality. "I'm right outside."

..........Dr. Kino sat up, frowning. This was not the same person she had been talking to. A nasty little suspicion entered her mind as she asked, "Who are you?"

.........."I have no name."

.........."What do people call you?"

.........."They call me Tommy because they can't see behind the face."

.........."If people knew you, what would they call you?"

..........Again the icy smile. "The Green Ranger."

..........She continued to question him, marveling at the patterns of his words, which were completely different from Tommy's. She didn't blame the kid for considering the Green Ranger a separate entity. She wouldn't want to claim him either.

..........As she asked him more, she began to build a very frightening picture of the Green Ranger. He was cold and ruthless, totally without emotion. Only one thing seemed to draw any warmth from him- Kimberly. Finally, she gave the Green Ranger a suggestion to stay hidden for a while and brought Tommy out of the trance.

.........."Did it work?" he asked innocently.

..........Ignoring him, she wobbled to the door and opened it. "Serena," she asked shakily, "do I have any more appointments today?"

.........."Just Mrs. Breckinridge," Serena answered, her distaste obvious. A rich, overweight woman who loved no one and nothing but her Chihuahua, Mrs. Elisandra Breckinridge's snobbish attitude annoyed Serena immensely.

.........."Call her up and cancel it. Tell her to take her case to Schuster. Say I have the Panamanian Flying Chicken Pox or something. Make it sound like Latin and she'll be impressed."

.........."Yes ma'am," Serena grinned. She began the phone call even as Dr. Kino shut the door.

.........."Dr. Kino, are you all right?" Tommy asked.

..........Still ignoring him, she crossed to the bust of Freud that sat on a large oaken pedestal. She twisted Freud's nose and the pedestal popped open, revealing itself as a large wood-pattern fridge. Pulling out a can of Jolt, she popped the top and took a long swallow, all in one smooth motion. Sighing, she sank into her chair. "Yes, Tommy, I'm all right, but you may not be once you hear my diagnosis. Could you call your friends here, please? I'd like to only have to explain this once."

..........Tapping his communicator, Tommy called in the rest of the Rangers. The six teens teleported in and found themselves seats. When everyone was comfortable, Dr. Kino began to speak. "Do any of you know anything about Multiple Personality Disorder?"

..........Tommy and Adam nodded. "It's a dissociative disorder where a person creates a second personality to deal with some sort of trauma. They can't handle it with their conscious mind, so a new consciousness is formed," Adam said.

.........."The personalities are usually radically different. Often, the primary personality is unaware of the secondary, but not the other way around," Tommy added. The other Rangers regarded him in astonishment. "Hey, I read a lot about psychology after my stint as the Green Ranger, especially aberrant psychology. I wanted to know what I was in for."

.........."Multiple personality cases are pretty rare," Dr. Kino informed them. "There have only been a few hundred cases reported worldwide. It looks like we've run across another one."

.........."Tommy?" Kat gasped.

..........Dr. Kino nodded. "Yes. When I brought him back here, I put him under hypnosis to substantiate my diagnosis. I regressed him to the point where he was in one of his lost-time periods, and I discovered a second personality that calls itself the Green Ranger.

.........."Here's what I think happened. When Rita put Tommy under the spell, he was too stubborn to let the spell take him over all the way. As a result, the spell had to create a personality to run the body, since it couldn't use Tommy's. It copied large parts of Tommy's personality, making changes where it had to, and created the Green Ranger. This new personality had Tommy's intelligence, his fighter's instincts, and his love for Kimberly." She noticed Kat wince at this point, but ignored it.

.........."Because this personality was created from Tommy, he naturally felt a great deal of guilt over it's actions. He walled himself off from it, ceasing to struggle with it for dominance. This probably saved his sanity, but allowed the Green Ranger to entrench himself in Tommy's mind. Only when the Green Ranger tried to destroy Jason did Tommy come forward. No matter what, Tommy could not allow an innocent person to be hurt. He attempted to take control of the body, causing the Green Ranger to hesitate just long enough for Billy to transport Jason out.

.........."When the Rangers broke the spell, the Green Ranger was no longer able to maintain his dominant position in Tommy's mind. Tommy's will was simply too strong. However, since he was created from parts of Tommy's personality, he didn't just dissipate the way an overlaid personality would have- and did, in your case, Kat. Tommy's guilt and instinctive need to have someone to blame his actions on kept him from dissolving into his component parts. Instead, he simply faded to the back of Tommy's mind, becoming dormant, merely coloring Tommy's thoughts."

.........."That's why I was always so depressed!" Tommy exclaimed.

..........Dr. Kino nodded. "Yes. Because the Green Ranger had not completely dissolved, you had no sense of closure, no feeling that part of your life was over. The Green Powers kept him in the back of your mind because to use them, you needed to accept that part of yourself, at least to some extent.

.........."Tommy's power loss, his first one, made the situation worse. Since he was no longer a Ranger, he no longer had the opportunity to make up for what he'd done, worsening his depression. Also, since he didn't need the Green Power anymore, he didn't need to accept what he was, and began to dissociate from the Green Ranger in earnest.

.........."The call back to action halted that process, but also set the stage for more serious problems down the road. With his powers running out, Tommy had, in effect, a time bomb hanging over his head. Since the powers failed at the most inopportune times, he began to regard them as almost a liability. With Zedd's concentration on turning him evil again, that idea was reinforced many times.

.........."Finally the Green Powers left Tommy for good. This would have been the ideal time for him to deal with the lingering guilt he felt, but he didn't have the know-how or the time. Zordon called him to be the White Ranger.

.........."In a way, Tommy's stint as the White Ranger was the most psychologically damaging event since the casting of the actual spell. The White Ranger was the embodiment of goodness, the perfect Ranger. Tommy had that to live up to, while still carrying around his guilt and the gnawing fear that he wasn't good enough for that position. I would surmise that during that period, Tommy went out of his way to be the perfect leader and Ranger, right?" She looked at Rocky and Adam.

..........Rocky nodded. "She's right, man. At first, we thought you were a bit of a glory hog, but then Billy took us aside and explained that you were so paranoid about being an albatross around our necks that you always wanted to shoulder more than your share of the responsibility. He told us about when you were losing your powers, how you felt helpless and were determined not to go through that again."

..........Tommy blushed. Dr. Kino looked at Rocky in some surprise. "I'm sorry that I never met Billy. He sounds like excellent psychologist material."

.........."The constant erosion of the team was almost as bad for Tommy. As each Ranger left, he relived his own experiences, undergoing constant reminders of the things he had been through. The Power Rangers had been the one constant in Tommy's life, and slowly but surely, they were being changed to something unrecognizable. Tommy, I'll bet that you felt very uncomfortable when you first saw the new Zeo costumes, right?" Tommy nodded, surprised. "The costumes were the last link with the Rangers you joined. The team is all different people now, especially since Jason spends little to no time with you when you're Rangers. At least Billy was there in the Power Chamber, but with him gone, the Rangers you knew are officially finished.

.........."The current stresses were simply the last straw. Gasket's brainwashing and the numerous power losses experienced by members of the team were especially bad, considering how they were charged with negative connotations for Tommy. With everything he understood falling apart around him, it's no wonder that the Green Ranger began to become dominant. This was exactly the opportunity he'd been waiting for."

..........The group was silent for a while, considering the implications of what Dr. Kino had told them. Finally, Jason spoke. "So what do we do?"

..........She sighed. "First, you guys should start calling me Lita. We're going to be seeing a lot of each other, and having you call me Dr. Kino makes me feel old. As to treatment, I would normally schedule a series of appointments and have the patient go about his daily life, but since Tommy's other personality is homicidal and a very efficient killer, that's not an option. Luckily, you kids caught me at a slow period. I've just discharged two patients, have one follow-up session each with two more, and just got rid of Mrs. Breckenridge. I can easily take some time off to do some intense work with Tommy. If I were in this situation with anyone else, I'd take him to a sanitarium, but the nature of Tommy's problem precludes that. Is there anywhere I can take him where no one will disturb us for an extended period of time?"

.........."My parents built a cabin up in the Birch Hills National Forest.," Rocky volunteered. "My mom hasn't been up there since my dad died, but my older brother Pedro and I keep it clean. We could go up there. It's isolated, and hard for the Cogs to get into."

.........."Thanks, Rocky," Lita said gratefully. "Tommy, does that sound good to you?"

..........Tommy frowned. "My main worry is being alone up there. It may be well-defended from outside attack, but what about inside attack? If we're alone, and the Green Ranger takes over...."

.........."I'll come with you. I can easily tell my mom that I'm spending a few weeks up at the cabin with friends. She won't mind," Rocky told him.

.........."Rocko, I can't ask you to do that. It's too dangerous. The Green Ranger is a stone-cold killer."

.........."Like danger scares me? Mondo's goons aren't exactly creampuffs, you know."

.........."We'll both go," Jason broke in flatly. He was using his "leader voice," the one that nobody argued with. Even now Tommy obeyed instantly when he heard it.

.........."I know how the Green Ranger thinks," Jason continued. "I know him better than anyone except Tommy. I may not have any Powers, but with Rocky to back me up, I shouldn't need them."

.........."Tommy?" Lita asked.

.........."All right," Tommy sighed. "I'll go home and run it by my parents, but they shouldn't give me any trouble. They'll be too overjoyed that I'm getting help. Lita, I'll call you tonight with their answer."

.........."Okay," she said. "Barring parental objections, we should be ready to go three days from now."