Thank YoukoTaichou for possesive!Tommy and this entire 'shot.

Summary: In which - Tommy gets jealous, Kim knocks someone out, Billy gets a girl, Aisha gets a harem, Rocky gets none, and Adam knows a secret. Featuring ninjas, silent talking, possessiveness, and a pink orchid. Beware – mind f***ing, caffeine high, over use of parenthesis and no beta.

Thomas Oliver was not a man prone to jealousy...or hadn't been for the longest time. He was easy-going, fun to be around, and trusted the women (women, not girls, because most of the time, he'd dated older women) he was with to be faithful, or he just didn't go out with them. Then he moved to Angel Grove, got adopted (actually freaking adopted, rather than just stuck in a home, which was awsome).

Kim...Kim changed things. From the first moment he set eyes on her, from the first time he defended her against Skull (she hadn't needed it, not really, but he hadn't known she was a power ranger at the time he'd defended her honor...though knowing that probably wouldn't have changed anything), he'd felt a dark stirring in his gut. He'd seen Skull talking to a caramel-hair beauty, and he'd felt the urge to plow the other boy's face in just for standing so close...and this was all before he'd found out that Skull and Kim weren't dating, would never date.

Even when he and Kim were 'friends', even when they'd been new to each other, he'd felt a possessive urge to keep her away from the guys, who she liked to flirt which...a lot. Kim wasn't a whore; she didn't date or sleep with just anyone (didn't sleep with anyone, period). She did like to flirt, though...or more accurately, instinctively flirted. Trini would always make (had made) jokes about how Kim flirted with girls, even (yeah, Tommy didn't feel so jealous of that). It was just...Kim.

It was just hotheaded, teenage guy crushy-ness at first...then Rita happened and Tommy turned evil and cruel and started stalking Kim. He would never tell the other rangers (not even Kim, especially not Kim) this, but he'd come this close to just taking Skull out because the dumbass couldn't keep his hands to himself. He'd glared and threatened the boys that looked at her (a few ended up in the hospital, but Tommy doesn't like to think about that, and besides, it was more the Green Ranger than it was him).

The Sword of Darkness broke, though, and Tommy was freed from Rita's influence...except he wasn't, not really. The thing about being evil was that evil wasn't created. Rita hadn't just planted an evil seed in his soul, and the Rangers couldn't just rip it out by the roots. What Rita had done was break the chains on the evil that lay inside Tommy's soul; every person, he was starting to realize, had the capacity for great evil. It was just chained, pushed aside by conditioning and society and rules and regulations. Rita had taken the wall down, had magnified his need to reek havoc...and than the rangers had destroyed that magnifier, the sword, but it would be impossible to put that wall back up.

No, the 'evil green' wasn't gone, just controlled, ever so carefully, by young Tommy Oliver. Unfortunately, when it came to Kim, and when it came to other men near Kim, Tommy...well, even the great white ranger, the leader of the rangers, couldn't handle it. Little bits of darkness escaped, and soon he was beating the living crap out of them (always after Kim had left, though, because there was no knowing what He would do to Kim, if He would try to punish her for whatever imagined slight).

Kim, though...she might act like a valley girl, but she was far, far from it. She was smart, she was observant...and she knew her boyfriend inside and out. She saw his gaze go green (not actually green, not really, not anymore, except sometimes, she could swear his eyes did go green) when guys got too close, when they tried to touch and asked for her number.

One such time happened three months before the end of school...on prom. April – it was early for prom, but that was mostly because the school was cheap and May reservations for Angel Grove's Hilton were sky high. Thankfully, it wasn't too hot or too cold, and the area was beautifully decorated. Her dress was hot pink and strapless and it flared out in crushed material and the white sash at her waist made her look even tinier there and the gems at her bust line made her look bigger there.

Tommy wore a white tux and a hot pink tie and bought her a pink orchid and stared at her all night.

He got up halfway through the night (the first, and last, time), getting her a drink from the (not-so-childfriendly) punch bowl, and the guy who'd been eying her all night wasted no time asking her to dance.

If you asked Tommy that night, he'd tell you that the guy – a junior who was dating a very desperate senior, and handsome enough in the sleazy way – was a creep. He'd been staring at Kim all night, and stupidly ignoring the elbows and whispers that told him that Tommy? Yeah, he didn't take shit when it came to his woman. He was okay with the occasional reverent look (not the creepy lingering ones), but no touching, no flirting (except if she started it) and no – no – no – propositioning her.

If you asked Kim...he was pretty much harmless. He was a year and a half younger than her (Kim was friends with his senior date, a girl who'd jumped a grade and felt out of place with the seniors) and he liked to stare; a lot of guys did (well, used to – for some reason, the stares had started getting briefer and quicker, followed by stammered 'Please don't tell's). Then he approached her while she was alone (Adam and Rocky were 'double teaming' the ladies, though it was mostly Adam attracting and Rocky poaching, and Aisha was entertaining an entire group of guys, go her), which was odd, because most guys just didn't, not since Tommy came along.

Then he got handsy and she looked him in the eye and realized that he was (would bave been) a threat...if she wasn't a freaking power ranger. Yeah, uh, not so much a threat now, because he was only one handsy fifteen year old and she fought evil intergalactic warlords every afternoon. Oh, and still managed straight A's. Yeah, um, no, he wasn't that much a threat.

It didn't change the fact that she didn't want him touching her. He was getting a leering look and starting down her dress as if he were Superman (X-ray vision and all that). "Let me go." She pulled against his thumb and her wrist popped out...and his other hand shot out and grabbed her wrist again, tighter. It would bruise, of course, because even superheros bruised (they also healed faster, thank you, Power).

Normally, by now, someone would have noticed the small exchange because, despite the fact that the room was full of teenagers, these were teenagers who lived in a town attacked by freaking monsters on a daily basis. They were observant, unafraid teenagers who usually believe in justice and would step in to do the right thing. Unfortunately, the punch, combined with the 'smoke' and the fact that Kim and Co. had chosen a table in the back...Well, it was looking as if Kim would have to kick his ass, after all (which she could do, even in five inch spike heels, because she was just that freaking awesome).

Then Tommy's hand came out of nowhere and grabbed the guy's wrist...hard. Another hand swung up and grabbed the guy's neck, pushing him up and against the wall, his tiptoes barely hitting the ground, and only because Tommy wasn't using all his strength. (The rest of the rangers were basically human without their suits, except the healing and some extra; Tommy's suit, his Power, had been channeled incorrectly by Rita, and so maybe he was a bit stronger, a bit faster, a bit more agile when he lost control, though no one mentioned it.)

The guy gurgled, his face taking on a greenish tint (maybe too much alcohol combined with being thrust against a wall made him nauseous...or maybe it was the look on Tommy's face). Tommy's eyes were narrowed into a glare he usually reserved for the days Goldar pissed him off more than usual, or for the poor schmuck who woke him up early in the morning (with the exception of Kim, of course). He didn't even use it on the normal bad guys.

He didn't say a single word, just lifted his arm to punch the guy out. Kim stepped in before it could happen, sure that the damage he was about to do was more than purely human Tommy could manage with a single punch. Her slim hand wrapped around his wrist (the corsage glittered and shimmer; it hadn't been too small for Kim, but next to Tommy's wrist, it looked like it belonged on a doll).

"Tommy." Her voice was soft, knowing that very few things backed him down at this stage in the game (they'd skipped the rest of the steps, this time, though). "If you hurt him too badly, you'll get in trouble. A lot of trouble." And he'd feel bad later, she supposed (though, Tommy, in his own head, knew differently).

"He touched you." Tommy's voice was completely rational, which was what spurred Kim to move. (A normal person would be too scared to do it, but she was a power ranger because of her fearlessness, her courage, not the other way around.) She shimmied herself between Tommy and Moron, her back pressed against Tommy's, her head turned so she could lock eyes with him. While some might try and go face-to-face, to talk him down...yeah, that wasn't going to work tonight.

Instead, she pressed her nails in the pressure point in the wrist, between what she considered the two main bones of the appendage. Her other hand hit the point on the top of the hand, between two bones there. Separately, neither point would cause enough pain for out-of-control Tommy to stop. Together? Together, they worked. His hand unclenched, letting the throat go, and the guy slipped to the floor. (On an after thought, Kim's hands came down and slammed hard enough against the side of the guy's neck to made him go night-night, 'just in case'.)

"I can take care of myself, Tommy." She spoke calmly, soothingly, hoping to get through to the more rational side of him. (The scary thing was, this was the rational side of Tommy; it was that small fact that made him such a great leader, a great ranger, and later in life, a dumbass daredevil who would race cars and climb mountains and teach high school.)

"He still shouldn't have touched you. He knows you have a boyfriend. He still touched you." Tommy gritted out, staring down at the slumped form and wondering about which burial place he could use. (He'd been evil, for Christ's sake, not a freaking fluffy bunny with a daddy complex.)

Small hands came up to cup his face, fingers smoothing over his cheekbones and the blade of his nose. "No, he shouldn't have." She agreed, "But we don't kill people because they did something bad. We don't kill people at all."

Only because they hadn't had to, not yet. We're warriors, though, Tommy thought, still in that dangerously rational mindset. Warriors killed people eventually; it was made worse by the fact they were child warriors – they had sixty, seventy more years of assessing threats and danger and wondering if maybe, maybe, killing the threats wasn't such a bad idea. (Because, yeah, they wouldn't be wearing the suits forever, but you couldn't exactly turn off the part of you that made it possible to be a power ranger.)

"Tommy? Tommy, can you hear me?" Kim asked, brown eyes wide and innocent, still staring straight into his.

He looked her straight on, then narrowed her eyes. There was something more there, something not quite innocent and doe-like, in those eyes of her's. Something...dark, intense. Just a little, though, a little of the look she got before they...

It made him wonder if he could burn her up more.

He caught her hands in his, then dragged her to the side (not really dragging, though, because Kim might not be as badass as her boy, but she wasn't ever going to be a victim), and pushing her to the wall near the crumpled boy (who Tommy wasn't thinking about while staking his claim, really, he wasn't). Her wrists went to her sides, next to her gently flaring hips, held down by his hands as his weight pressed into the wooden paneling.

His lips lowered to her's, and after a second, she melted into his (embrace? No, that wasn't right, but he didn't know what it was, what to call it). He fought for control of the kiss and he got it, overpowering her, making sure she knew, knew, dammit, that she was his and any other made that touched her...

Well, tonight wasn't as bad as it could have been (should have been).

"Man, can't y'all wait until you get to the hotel to do that?" Rocky's whining reached them from where he'd slammed himself into his chair, tilting it back on two legs and rolling a water bottle in his hands. "I mean, I just got shut down twice, then I come here and find y'all making out and man, if that ain't a bummer, I don't know what is..."

He trailed off as Tommy turned his head slowly and glared at him; Kim just blinked as light invaded her senses again.

Adam's hand landed on Rocky's shoulder, strong, reassuring, quiet in his support of whatever Rocky had done to piss off their esteemed leader. (Kim and Tommy, Billy, too, they were all the older teammates; in reality, they were part of a different team, and Rocky, Adam and Aisha? Well, they...weren't. They could try, all of them could try, but in the end, there were just things that the new three would never get and the old three would never share.) "How come Ryan Crawlies is pass out in a heap on the ground?"

"He annoyed me." Tommy snapped, then turned back to Kim and kissed her again. "And Kim. She's the one to knock him out."

Adam didn't reply, and Rocky didn't question it. Adam wasn't Zach, who could get away with smart remarks and cheeky grins; and Rocky wasn't Jason, who was Tommy's bother, his confident, and who would understand all what had happened (who'd offered a hand in dealing with the guy – Ryan – for touching Kim). No, they weren't Tommy's old team, his best friends, and both Adam and Rocky knew they shouldn't push it – Tommy wasn't the kind of guy to push, for all his mullet-boy scout-harmless act (an act Rocky saw though, by the way – he'd known since day one that Tommy was secretly a ninja monster BAMF with super-freaky smart brains).

"O-kay." Aisha said from behind her two boys, "I think I'm gonna go back to the dance floor. Lot less bloodshed and action, all in all." And then she was gone, sweeping away from Kim (who could have, would have, been her best friend, except Trini was always a ghost between them, always there to remind Aisha that she just wasn't the same).

"And we're going to get a room." Kim said after a second, then stopped and looked at Tommy. "Uh...is that cool?" (Because Kim had no idea that Tommy wasn't a saint...not yet, anyway.)

He gave her a predatory smile, loving the way she shivered. Knowing his possessiveness was turning her on? Yeah, that turned him on, big time. "Sure. Hold on." Then he turned to Rocky, who was watching the proceedings in bemusement (Adam was behind him, hand on his shoulder, still, always the silent sentinel). "Rocko, can I borrow your hotel key?"

The tone and the smile said it was a favor; the eyes promised a truly brutal training tomorrow if the answer was 'no'. "Uh, yeah, sure." He reached in and pulled out the card, sliding it across to the couple. "Not like I need it, anyway. I could always use the truck..."

And he was talking to thin air. Tommy and Kim had turned and vanished before his very eyes (which supported his Tommy-is-a-secret-ninja theory and gave birth to his and-so-is-Kim-and-probably-the-entire-old-team theory; he'd have to test Billy, now, too).

Apparently, Rocky had said all of this out loud, too, causing Adam to snort and slide, more gracefully than the red ranger, despite his dino being a freaking mammoth, into the chair next to his best guy friend. "You know, this is why you don't get girls."

"Why – because I'm not graceful, I give away my card keys, or because I'm not freaky like Tommy is with Kim?" Rocky asked, taking a swig of his 'water' and sighing in relief. God, if only he were twenty-one and could hit the bars – oh, wait. He could. Thank you, Billy, and your lack of ability to stand up against alcohol and friends (combined, they were even more deadly to the poor genius).

Adam just shook his head and stole Rocky's not-actually-water. Then he shuddered, capped it up, and sent Rocky a look that basically said 'I can't believe you drink this vile stuff, it tastes like horse piss but worse, and it's the fact you talk about secret ninjas out loud and look, Billy is behind you.' (Adam was quiet, but only if you didn't know him well; then he got to be a chatty Cathy, except without words.)

Billy joined them at their seats a second later, taking the one across from Rock, his reaction surprisingly mild at the sight of Ryan Crawlies's stirring form. "Why is he on the ground?" Then Billy held up a hand, "Wait a moment. Is it because he denied the warnings of his fellow peers and decided to peruse Kiim?"

"Umm..." Rocky began, then looked at Adam (don't look at me, you fool, I ain't gonna translate; 'sides, despite all the evidence contrary, you are smart and don't need a translator and my god, Aisha just added three guys to her harem, please tell me we aren't going to have to pry her out). Then Rocky looked back and said, "Yeah, I guess, if that's what would cause Kim to knock a guy out to save him from Tommy, who just stole my card-key to go have possessive sex with his girl and hey, is that Long Island Tea?"

"Negative – it's sweet tea." Billy responded, brain obviously whirling to process all of Rocky's statement. "And yes, that type of scenario has caused Tommy to lose his considerable temper on previous occasions." Then he stood, having caught glances with someone behind the table. "If you two will excuse me, a very pleasant young woman has just signaled that she wishes to commence dancing."

Then the blue ranger stood, walking away, and Rocky, off impulse, picked up a bottle cap and threw it at the back of Billy's head...and Billy turned, fast as...something fast, catching it. Billy stared down at his open palm, back at Rocky, repeat, blink, repeat. Then, "Why did you throw Aisha's bottle cap at the back of my cranium, Rocky?"

"To prove that you're a secret ninja! And holy cow, I was so right!" Rocky fist pumped the air, then yelped as Adam slapped the back of his head and Billy (rolling his eyes, as well) threw the bottle cap back and went to see to his newest conquest.

Rocky turned to Adam, "Did you see that? He's totally a freaking ninja, man!"

Adam merely rolled his eyes, saying wordlessly, 'Of course he is, dumby. I knew they all were – Trini, Zach and Jason probably were too. And let's go save those guys from Aisha and take her home, okay? I promise some actual good Long Island Tea for you if you do, you sissy drinker – real men have beer."

"...Man, I hate you, sometimes."