Disclaimer: Saban owns all the PR stuff, except for my original characters, and devices.

Casefiles of a Green Ranger
by Chris Jones

Tommy Oliver shivered again and looked at the man in front of him. The normal sunshine of Angel Grove was transformed into an ugly storm. Tommy had a light wind-breaker on and the warmth provided left much to be desired.

The other man, he noticed, was prepared. His hands were in the deep pockets of his black trenchcoat. He reached out and pulled his black fedora down more over his face. "Let's get inside so we can talk, Tommy."

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me just who you are." The man in black looked up and Tommy's jaw dropped, "But how?"

"Come inside."

PROLOGUE

The man in the trenchcoat led Tommy to a table in the corner of the "Surf Spot" and sat him down. He took off his coat and hat and sat down looking accross at him. "Let's see, the last time I was here, it was still the "Youth Center" how things have changed.

Tommy didn't comment. "Well, Tommy, aren't you going to say "Hello" or just sit there looking like an idiot?"

Tommy snapped out of it. "How can you still be alive?"

"Well it doesn't look like I'm going to get a good conversation out of you, so I might as well start from the beginning."

It was late fall when it happened. Life was hard on the only colony settled on the west. The British ship that had transported the colonists here was beyond repair, so they had to make the best of it.

The clone of Thomas Oliver turned the Green Power Coin over and over in the palm of his hand. Something wasn't right. He was looking over the small city the colonists had named "Angel Grove" and the sense of loneliness grew. It wasn't just because he didn't belong in this time, it was because he was ninety years old, and still looked seventeen.

Over time the clone began to call himself "Sam" after his, no Tommy's, foster-Father. Making himself different from Tommy was the only thing keeping him sane anymore.

He leaped off the rocks, morphing into the Green Ranger in the air. He landed softly and used his enhanced strength to sprint back towards the Command Center.

"Wait! How come you were still alive? People didn't live as long back then, and how did you possibly still look seventeen?"

"Hold on I'm getting to it, alright? It has something to do with the Green Powers, okay?"

"But I thought the Coin was powerless!"

"Will you just let me tell the story?"

Tommy slumped his shoulders in surrender.

Sam walked into the Command Center, ending his transformation as he did so.

"You didn't aanswer my questions!"

"Fine. Fine. Let's go back to when I was eighteen."

~*~

Sam woke up in a cold sweat, not the first time since a year ago. He slipped out of bed, and stepped over his dog, who stirred a little.

He pulled on his grey long-coat and combed his hair back. How he wished he could go to a competent barber. He stuffed some things into his pockets and stepped into his boots. Then he walked over to night-table and took the lantern and lit it.

He walked, for how long he did not know. When he was well outside of the town his light burnt out. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the shimmering coin. He murmured something and the Coin began to glow with Green light. He held his hand up and used the light to guide him up the mountain path.

About an hour later his communicator's time-indicator told him he was about another hour from the Command Center.

He kept on walking until he felt something pass through him. He looked to the valley walls on either side of him. Runes reached up and down.

He walked over holding his coin over them to see what they were for. He identified them as Glamour and Scanning Magic amplifiers.

A throbbing in his hand told him that today's power ration had run out. He cursed Rita Repulsa's name. He thought back to her cold words to Lord Zedd.

"You see, I linked the clone to the Coin's life span, when the Coin runs out of life, so does he. That way, if we must, our ranger could live forever. We just have to re-energize him every so often."

Teleportation brought him back to reality. He looked up when the rush had ended to see Zordon frowning at him. The two columns on either side of his tube flickered to life. "Who are you? How did you get Rita Repulsa's coin?"

"Zordon we do not report Rita's life-vibration out of her dumpster", Alpha called as he appraoched Sam.

Zordon looked at the coated colonist, "You'd better start talking."

Sam told the story, as much as he could without polluting the time-line. At first they seemed skeptical, but after they analized the Coin, they believed him, for the most part.

It was spring twenty-seven years later when Sam made a discovery that saved his life. Zordon and Alpha had educated him, and explained their technology. For twetny-five years Sam progessed from a mediocre chemist to a technological genus, or so Sam liked to think.

Back to the discovery, Sam had finally re-established the link between his Coin and the Morphing Grid. It had been well past midnight. Sam was in the lab located beneath the Command Center, where the White Powers would eventually be created.

His theory was somewhat simple. His Power Coin did not age, which is why he did not age, like all Power Coins, his existed outside of time. That was the answer, Rita had broken the link of the Green Coin to the Morphing Grid, allowing the Energy it drew from the Grid to leak out and eventually return to the Morphing Grid.

Since the Coin did not "heal" as Zordon had put it, he just had to find away to tie the pieces back together.

Sam adjusted his Laser Telescope, just one of the artifacts in the Command Center, and looked into the Aura of the Green Coin. Since Sam's life force was in essence the Green Power he was able to link with it.

Without alerting Zordon, he sent his spirit though the coin and re-linked the Coin to the Grid. Granted this was no easy task.

When Alpha finally woke him up, he was a physical vegetable for another week.

~*~

"Satisfied?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Now can I get along with my original story now?"

"Please."

Sam muttered to himself.

~*~

Sam had finished lunch and was back to work repairing old consoles, updating the oldest ones, and running checks on the DinoZords.

He stepped out of the Command Center for some air, and that's when he heard it. The sound of a flute was around him. He recognized the melody he had used to activate several of the Green Powers.

What startled him was that the Dragon Flute was still in the future. Somewhere in the mountain range, someone was playing the song that could possibly lead to the premature destruction of Angel Grove.

Sam put a hand in his subspace pocket and took his Gold Morpher out. "DragonZord!" The Green Ranger vaulted into the sky and into the next valley. Sometimes enhanced Ranger abilities can come in handy.

He activated the sensors inside his helmet and started to scan the range. Nothing. The readouts of Wave-lengths popped up on his screen as the melody started again.

Still nothing. He grunted in frustration and started back the Command Center, at a superhuman pace.

After a couple of incredible leaps, he was back on the man-made plateau that Zordon had built for his Command Center.

The doors parted and he walked in, taking off his helmet. "Alpha, use the Commander Center's satelite equipment to scan the area. Something strange is happening.

The five satelites in orbit of Earth connected with a white beam of light and the center one projected a column down to the Command Center. It spread and within ten minutes the beam dissapeared and the results popped up on one of the consoles.

Alpha walked over and began to study them. "Only low spiritual energies, it could easily be generated by the use of your powers."

Sam shook his head, there's something were not looking at. . ." He shook his head and went down to his lab.

He spent the rest of the hour enetering the commands that his flute produced. Then he linked his helmet-computer with the main computer. He cross-referenced the data and the computer went to work.

The computer announced it was finished with a series of beeps. Then a message scrolled on the screen - a translation of the melody from earliar.

It read:

To Sam:
If you're reading this, that means my expirement worked. My mentor has instructed me to deliver a message. It's vital to the survival of the time-line. You must leave Angel Grove until what you know of the future has played out. Staying would endanger reality as we know it. Please heed my warning.
A Friend

"Well for the next one hundred years plus I stayed away from California all together. I isolated myself on an island determined not to pollute the time-line."

"Whoa, that must have been trying. . ."

"You have no idea. Well I planned to come back after the Power Rangers had restored the TimeStream. That was when I noticed the Zeo Crystal's presence on Earth. I decided to stay away, because the powers of the Zeo cause certain magic to. . . break down, including Cloning Magic.

Then when I found out the Crystal was no longer in active use I decided to come back to the United States."

"But that was eight months ago, why did you wait so long?"

"Actually I wasn't finished my work on the island. You see after I isolated myself, I began a complete study of the Morphing Grid, and I learned to wield it's powers without having to Morph. Nothing big, just teleportation and some disguise abilities."

Tommy sat in quiet contemplation. "So, why call me, I know I'm your closest tie to the Rangers, but I'm not a Ranger anymore."

"What?!"

"Yeah, the Power Chamber, the new Command Center, was destroyed after Zordon and Alpha left for Eltar. Now the new Rangers are up in orbit, on some kind of Spaceship."

"New Rangers?"

Tommy told him of the Turbo Powers, everyone going off to college and how he had given his power to the new Red Ranger.

"I got the word from the Black Ranger, Carlos, a month ago. Some time ago another one of the galaxy's never ending supply of criminals by the name of Dark Spectre, had overthrown the Elatarian defences. If anyone can explain this to you, it's the Astro Rangers."

Sam soaked in what he had just heard and stood up. He offered his hand to Tommy, "Thank you, my friend, you have been a great help to me today."

Tommy stood and took his hand, grasping it firmly. "Anytime, Sam, by the way, we have a brother."

"We?"

"Well you're my clone, but you're alot more, almost like you grew into another person, more like my brother."

"Brothers? I can handle that. So we have a brother?"

"His name's David, he stays at the Reservation, just outside of Stone Canyon."

"Thank you, perhaps one day when I am ready, I'll look him up." Sam pulled on his coat and hat and left the Surf Spot. He walked the streets for awhile and decided something. The Astro Rangers could take care of the city without an obsolete Ranger, maybe somewhere he could find a place where he was needed.

He knew Zordon would have like it this way, no matter what planet he was on.

Sam climbed into his Shelby Cobra. It was blue with two white racing stripes over the hood, reaching to the back of the car. Unlike the other Rangers, he wasn't drawn to get everything in his color, perhaps a product of his extreme old age, even if he didn't look it.

The car roared to life, and he steered it East.