Drawn by her sense that gold was near, Rita Repulsa walked into a jewelry store and slapped down a hand on the glass counter. In her other hand, she held her staff. “I’m interested in gold,” she said. Water trickled from her hand onto the countertop. “All of your gold.” Rita held up the staff. All of the charms and bracelets and teeth were worked into it. Soon, she would be able to use its full power.
The store worker bent behind the case and quickly pushed the panic button. She stood up and started putting trays of gold jewelry on the counter. Rita picked up a handful of the gold and placed it in her mouth. She smiled. She grabbed the rest and began molding it onto her staff. She pulled the terrified store worker to her, checking the woman’s teeth for gold. Noticing her gold necklace, Rita hissed, “Give it to me!”
Rita snapped off the necklace and pressed it into her staff.
The staff was almost finished. Rita drew out her coin, the precious coin that held her connection to the Morphin Grid. It would go in a circular hole near the head of the staff, and then her true powers would begin to show.
The front door chimed and someone shouted, “Police! Don’t move! Drop your . . . weapon and put your hands on your head! Do it now! Do what I say, lady!”
Rita turned to see a person in some kind of uniform pointing a weapon at her. “‘Lady‘ . . . I like the sound of ‘lady.’”
“Get on the ground and you won’t get hurt,” yelled the officer.
Instead, she brought her hands together to put the coin in the hole.
A loud boom sounded as he fired his shotgun at her. Rita felt a heavy punch right below her sternum. The impact knocked her sprawling backward over the glass counter.
The customers screamed as Rita sat up. “I have a headache,” she announced. She placed the coin in the hole at the head of her staff. It began to glow, and the entire store began to vibrate with new energy.
The man fired again, but the weapon had no effect on her. “It’s been so long,” she said. “Too long . . . since I’ve raised my beautiful creatures . . .” Glass shattered and metal bent as a putty began to emerge from the floor and the broken jewelry cases. Rita smiled at it. “Did you miss me?” she asked. Then she left as a fire began to spread inside the building. The putty was having its fun.
While the other four waited for Jason to come out of the cave, they debated what to do.
“Hey,” Zack said. “Listen, I was gonna stay up here tonight. Make a fire. I have some food if you guys want to stay.”
They all started setting down their gear near a high ledge. As the sun went down, they built a fire and dug into the bag of Zack’s food. “Look at all this junk,” Trini said. “What would Zordon say?”
Imitating Zordon, Zack cracked them all up. “If I wasn’t in this wall, I would eat that junk food!”
Billy seemed to know there was more to it than that. “What happened back there?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” After a pause, Jason asked them all a question. “What are you guys thinking about when we’re trying to morph?”
“I don’t know,” Billy replied.
They looked at Jason and realized what he was doing. Kimberly did her own Zordon imitation. “You must shed your masks to wear this armor.”
Billy was next. “Think only of each other and the Morphin Grid will open for you!”
“Maybe we don’t know each other,” Zack said more soberly. “And that’s why we can’t morph.” The rest looked at him, surprised he was being so candid. “I’m serious. You don’t know me.” He laughed and stood up. “Let’s do this for real. I’m Zack and I’m a Power Ranger.”
They all laughed. “Hi, Zack . . .”
“Truth,” he went on. “I live in the Melody Mobile Home Park. It’s just me and my mom. And my mom is the best. But my mom . . . she’s sick right now, so she can’t work. I do what I can, but I’m scared. Sometimes I’m too scared to stay there at night, because I’m afraid she’s not gonna make it. And if she goes, when she goes . . . I got no one else. I think being with you guys is good for me.” He sat back down.
“Let’s do that. Let’s tell our secrets,” Billy said. “It’ll help us. Okay, I got a secret.” They all waited. “I like country music. As a matter of fact, I love country music.” Over the laughter that followed, he kept talking. “And I don’t miss my dad. As much. Coming to the mine with him was all I had. But coming here with you guys is just as good.”
They all felt that, Jason thought. “Bigger secret is why were you in detention?” he prompted Billy.
“I blew up my lunch box. Accident. It was an accident! My lunchbox was in my locker. Boom goes the dynamite, into detention goes Billy!” Everyone laughed. Billy pointed across the fire. “Let’s not forget that Kimberly Hart was in detention, too!”
“That’s right,” Trini added.
They all looked at Kimberly. She looked down. “No,” she said. “Not tonight. Skip me.”
“What about you?” Billy asked Jason. “Want to tell us who you really are?”
“Everyone knows exactly who I am,” Jason said, trying to brush off the question.
“What about the crazy girl?” Zack asked, trying to get a rise out of Trini.
“I could tell you anything, and you’d never know if it was true or not,” Trini said with a laugh. Then she got serious. “Okay. I’m the new girl. Always. Three schools in three years. What’s crazy is that I like it that way. It’s just easier. Nobody ever has to get to know me, and my parents don’t have to worry about my relationships.”
“Boyfriend troubles?” asked Zack.
“Yeah,” Trini replied with a sneer. “Boyfriend troubles.”
Zack gave her a quizzical look.
“My family is so normal. Too normal,” she added. “They believe in labels. They’d like for me to dress differently, talk more, have the kind of friends they want me to have. I don’t know how to tell them what’s really going on with me.” She paused and looked at the rest of them, watching them watching her. “I’ve never said any of this out loud.”
“It’s cool. You’re with us now,” Billy said. He held out a fist but she left him hanging.
“Am I? What does that mean? When this is all over . . . are we Power Rangers or are we friends?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Trini decided to go home. After opening up to the rest of the Rangers, she needed some alone time. She climbed through her bedroom window and just let her mind wander. An hour later, she was sound asleep.
She woke up to the sensation of water dripping on her face. Rain? A leak? What could it—?
That woman was floating above her. Rita Repulsa. A soft green glow surrounded her and her staff. She was beautiful and evil and terrifying all at once. “Do you know who I am?” she asked quietly. Trini nodded. “I was once just like you. So pretty. Innocent. Say my name.”
“Rita . . . Repulsa,” Trini replied in a trembling voice.
Then Trini got angry. She grabbed Rita, but Rita spun her around and pinned her to the ceiling.
“Delightful,” she said. “Have you morphed yet?” She slammed Trini into the wall. Trini tried not to show her fear. “That was a trick question,” Rita said. She smelled like the bottom of the ocean, cold and salty and dead. “If you could morph, we’d be having a very different conversation. The Yellow Ranger. Should I kill you?” She leaned close and whispered in Trini’s ear. “Oh, you want your armor! I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Rita’s armor started to push out through her skin. It was charred and spiky, corrupted. But Trini could see that once it had been like a Green Ranger’s armor. Trini grabbed her again, trying to get her in a choke hold. Rita struggled. “Please no, you’re hurting me! You’re so strong!” Then she relaxed and smiled. “Just kidding.”
Rita broke Trini’s grip and pinned her against the wall. “You have
spunk, little Yellow,” she said, leaning close. “I see myself in you. And in your heart, you know it. Come with me. We can be friends.” She moved back enough for Trini to feel like she could breathe again. “All I need to know is . . . where is the Zeo Crystal?”
“I don’t know,” Trini said.
Rita studied her. “Sadly, I believe you. Tomorrow, I am going to destroy Angel Grove. But in exchange for your life . . . you will find out where the Crystal is and you will come to me. We can have a deal, Dede my friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jason snapped awake late that night and found Kimberly sitting on the side of his bed. “How did you get in here?”
“I’m a superhero,” she said. “And you left your window open.”
He sat up and quickly checked the hallway before shutting his door.
“I’m the reason we can’t morph. I haven’t been honest,” she said.
Jason started to say something, but Kimberly held up a hand. “Listen to me,” she said, “I punched Ty Fleming in the face because he told everyone I was the meanest person he’d ever met. And he was right.”
“That can’t be true.”
Kimberly scrolled through her phone’s pictures and held one up for him to see. Jason grimaced and looked away. “Whoa. You took that picture?”
“No,” Kimberly said. “Amanda took that picture of herself. But she shared it with me, privately. She trusted me.”
“You sent that pic to Ty?”
She nodded.
“And he sent it to . . . someone who sent it to someone . . . ,” Jason added.
“Until it got back to her,” Kimberly finished. “I didn’t realize how mean it was until I saw her face.”
“Kim, there’s literally thousands of photos going around school.”
“I don’t care about them. I care about this. I had to sit in Mr. Detmer’s office with Amanda’s father and watch as they showed him that photo of his daughter. He’s known me my whole life. Like, I literally grew up in his house. He looked at that picture, and for the first time, in his eyes, I could see who I’d become.” She was trying not to cry. “So I lied. I blamed everyone else for it. I wanted to die.”
“Okay, listen. Start over. Erase that picture, right now,” Jason said.
“Jason. It can’t be erased.”
“Then live with it. You did an awful thing. It doesn’t make you an awful person.”
“Okay. Any more wisdom for me?”
“Just . . . ” He paused. “Be the person you want to be.”
“Honestly,” she said, “I kind of want to be the girl who kisses you right now, Cheesy, right?”
This caught Jason off guard. “Well . . . yeah . . . so . . . um . . . I think you should be that girl. But it’s up to you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Just after four in the morning, Jason, Billy, Kimberly, and Zack arrived at the football field.
“We all got the same text,” Kimberly said. “So where is she?”
Had Trini joined Rita? Had she sent them the message to draw them out? They were sitting ducks out there in the middle of the field.
Then they heard Trini’s voice. “I’m here.” She joined the circle, obviously shaken and scared.
They all stood in silence before she finally spoke.
“Look, Rita came to my house tonight,” Trini said. Now they could all see the cuts and bruises on her face. “Yeah, she’s real. Insane. She nearly killed me.” Trini paused, looking at the cuts on her wrists. “She was trying to get me to join her. She said she’d spare my life if I could keep a secret.”
“What secret?” Zack asked.
“At dawn, this morning, the destruction of Angel Grove begins.”
“This is real,” Kimberly added. “This is the end.”
“No. It’s not,” Jason replied.
There was already a faint hint of light in the east. “Where is she?” he asked.
“She said to meet her where the dead ships live,” Trini said.
“Okay. That’s the salvage yard by the docks,” Jason said. “Let’s go.”
No one moved.
Jason was shocked. “Are you serious? No one?”
“Jason, we’re not even Power Rangers yet,” Trini said.
“I say we go back to Zordon,” Billy added.
It’s time for them to hear the truth, Jason thought. “Zordon thinks we’re a joke. He said it to my face.”
Visibly upset, Billy asked, “So this was all a lie?”
“Of course it was a lie, Billy!” He saw he was upsetting them and he didn’t care. “What, am I hurting your feelings? Grow up. We failed. Let’s stop being delusional about being a team of superheroes.”
“We are,” Billy said, emphasizing we. He pointed to everyone in the group but Jason. “We are a team!”
“We are?” Jason snapped. “We don’t even know each other.”
“No,” Billy fired back. “The only person in this circle we don’t know is you.”
Whoa, Jason thought. Billy Cranston draws blood. “You wanna know me? Fine. You think that’s gonna change anything?” He laughed, solely out of frustration. “You wanna know the deep, dark secret about Jason Scott? People expect me to do great things.” He adopted his father’s voice. “C’mon, Jay! Get it done. It’s on you now! It’s all you, you got this!” Then he was himself again. “I’m so tired of being what everyone else wants me to be! So I burned it all down. One crazy stunt after the next. When those cops were chasing me, I knew it was all over. I flipped that truck, crushed my knee. The pain was insane, but all I felt was relief.” He hadn’t meant to reveal so much, but now that he had, Jason saw he was speaking to friends. Then he added, “I’m tired, okay? I’m tired. And as much as I hate this scrubby town, I don’t want to just sit around and watch it die, okay? We are all screwups. But can we at least go and do the one thing that’s been asked of us and kill Rita?”
With a smile at Jason, Kimberly said, “You know this is a bad idea, right?”
“The worst,” he said. “Let’s vote. Show of hands.”
Five hands rose in the darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They got to the salvage yard while it was still dark, scaling and leaping over boats toward a large open building in the middle of the yard. A barrel fire burned inside, and a figure slumped in a chair near the barrel.
They went inside, looking past the barrel to the docks and the harbor beyond. There was music playing. When they got closer, they saw that the figure was a homeless man. He was bound and gagged. The music came from a boom box hung around his neck. He looked terrified. Trini got closer to him, seeing he was trying to tell her something with his eyes.
A drop of water landed on his cheek. Then another. Another landed on Trini’s palm, and she figured it out. “Oh no,” she said, and looked up.
There was a little more light in the sky when they came to their senses, but it wasn’t yet dawn. They hung over the side of a boat docked at the edge of the salvage yard, tangled in ropes and nets at Rita’s eye level.
“Five little Rangers, tied up like fish,” she hissed as she stepped in front of Jason. “The leader? Hello, Red.”
Jason slammed his head into Rita’s. She drew back slightly and gave him a sly look.
“You’re not entirely disappointing,” she said, her eyes fixed on his. “Oh, look at you, trying to figure out my plan. I’ll just tell you! Yellow has led you to your deaths, ‘cause I’m going to kill you one by one until you tell me—where’s my Crystal?”
“We don’t know,” Jason said.
“No, Red. You don’t know. But guess what? One of you does!” She walked along the line of Rangers. “Who could it be? Pink? I bet if I gave you one guess, you’d get it right. Eeny meeny miny . . .” She stopped in front of Billy, moved on . . . and then
came back. “Blue. So loyal. So pure of heart,” she said.
Billy tried to hide it, but he couldn’t. He’d seen the clues in the Morphin Grid and he’d figured it out. But he couldn’t tell her.
“Tell the class what you know! Just tell us, Blue. Where’s my Crystal?” Billy kept his mouth shut. “You can tell me now, Blue—or you can tell me after I kill all of your friends,” Rita said. “Let’s start with Black?”
She touched the tip of her staff to Zack’s throat. He started to choke. “He dies in three . . . two—”
“Okay! Don’t hurt my friends, all right?” Billy called out.
Rita moved her staff, and Zack heaved a huge breath.
Billy looked at Jason, who nodded. “It’s under . . . a dining establishment,” Billy said.
“Where? What does that mean?” Rita hissed. “What’s it called?”
“It’s a Krispy Kreme!”
“Krispy Kreme. This is a special place!”
“Very special,” Billy added.
“Must be,” she said to herself. “The source of life itself is buried there. Thank you, Blue,” Rita said. “For being so weak.” She paused, then made a decision. “Zordon would lose all respect for me if I didn’t kill you. At least one of you.”
She waved her staff and Billy, still trapped in the net, dropped into the water. The rope holding the net unspooled, then grew taut. It thrashed for a while . . . and then it was still.
“As a reward for your valor,” Rita said. “Now watch your town die.”
She swung her staff again, and the rest of the kids fell. As soon as they got themselves free, they started hauling Billy back up.
“He’s going to be okay, right?” Trini asked.
Jason tried to comfort her, but Kimberly interrupted. “He’s dead.”
They looked at each other, stunned and unsure what to do next.
Power Rangers - The Official Movie Novelization Page 6
