Disclaimer: MMPR and all associated characters belong to Saban. All hail the Supreme Overlord! The characters of Bretta, Grenwell, and Clarence, are the creations of myself, and feel free to use them, but please e-mail me first! I apologize in advance for any innaccurate characterizations of the Rangers, and of my characters given the circumstances that they have gone through. I have minimal knowledge of psychiatry and mental disorders, and most of my knowledge on the subjects comes from some of my fellow authors fiction, with characters going through various stressful situations, particularly Ellen Brand's "Personality Conflicts," and Hellfire's excellent series, any one of them. If I have made any blatent innaccuracies, please e-mail me, and I will try to correct them in future installments, or if it is so largely innaccurate that it warrents it, I will rewrite the part. Thanks again!
Grenwell walked into the Juice Bar, as always carefully avoiding the jocks, but as usual, to little success. One of them, dressed in a red muscle shirt, moved to intercept him, flanked by a pretty Asian girl in yellow, and by an African American wearing black, with his usually cheerful face holding a very serious expression. Grenwell started to backtrack, stumbling over the steps, but he noticed a Valley Girl decked all in pink blocking his retreat. Grenwell did the only thing he could do, rationally in his own mind. He curled up into a ball and began wailing. This attracted attention from most of the Juice Bar's patrons, until they noticed who it was, and went back to whatever they happened to be doing.
The girl in yellow moved to comfort him, but he swatted her away and his wailing increased in intensity. The boy in red started talking to him, trying to calm him down, saying that they were only trying to help him, but to no avail.
Jason and his friends, were initiating a plan that they had been working on with Billy for some time. They needed to talk to Grenwell, explain to him that the crowd he hung out with wasn't good for him, and show him how much of a bigger world that there was out there. Unfortunately, Jason never got a chance to start his dialogue.
A large, heavily muscled arm grabbed the back of Jason's shirt and lifted him off of the ground, and he dangled there helplessly. Quickly his friends moved off of the ground and transferred their attentions to the musclebound female now holding Jason several feet off of the Youth Center floor. It was a giant of a girl, who stood over six and a half feet tall, with muscles enough to beat up any bodybuilder. Her eyes flashed saphire green and she scowled, without any sort of warmth in her eyes, at her helpless victim. Her dark blond hair flashed in the Youth Centers bright lights, and it seemed to have a sparkle that could entrance any man in with its song, but like the Siren's, any that it could entrance went to a horrendous fate. Bretta had a thing for men. Or rather, a thing against them. No one knew why, but whenever a male approached her he was met with an immediate physical assault. And since she was so strong, the assault often turned deadly. She had been arrested several times for assault and battery, both in her old town and in Angel Grove, but in all cases the charges had been dropped due to lack of evidence or her age. When she had first arrived at Angel Grove High Zack had tried to approach her and ask her out. He had ended up with three broken ribs and a splintered jaw. She was one of the few people that Grenwell would let approach him, but no one knew why she let him approach her.
Bretta grinned ferally at Jason, and scowled, "Well, lookee, lookee, I've caught a cookie. I thought we made it clear the last time. You leave him alone, or else. And now I happily get to show you the 'or else' provision."
Jason bravely responded, as well as he was able due to the fact that her hand around his throat was beginning to cut off his airflow, "We're just trying to help him, which is more than I can say about you and your company."
Trini, now joined by Billy, Zack, and Kimberly, surrounded Bretta, and all together they quietly yet defiantly said, "Let him go."
Trini added, "He was only trying to help. What you've been doing to Grenwell, the company he keeps, hasn't been good for him. With you as his 'friends,' you've totally isolated him from the rest of society. He needs to be brought in to the world, and you're preventing him from doing that. Please, we don't want anything to happen, we just want what's best for him."
Bretta's eyes spat fire, and then she got a cunning look to her face, "You say I'm smothering him?" At the relieved looks on their faces she smiled evily and said, "Well then, why don't I give him back to you, right now!" With that she hurled Jason into Trini and Zack, who caught him and stopped the worst of his fall, but they all collapsed to the ground. Bretta was on top of them in an instant, ignoring Trini, and focusing all on Zack and Jason. Trini and Kimberly moved to try and pry her off of them.
Grenwell quickly got over his nervousness and leapt onto Trini, pinning her arms to her sides and wrapping his legs about her waist, screaming like a baby, "NONONONO GET OFF OF HER! STAY AWAY! JUST WANNA BE LEFT ALONE!" With this surprise entanglement, Trini fell to the ground and slammed her head against the pavement of the Youth Center floor, and darkness overcame her.
Kimberly shouted Trini's name, and rushed over to her side. Billy was left to attempt to pry Bretta off the men, but before he could do so he was intercepted by Clarence.
Clarence was a short, gangly youth, with wild, unkempt hair and clothing. His shirt held a drawing showing the atomic bomb going off with a caption that read, "Science At All Costs." He was extremely thin, and his face, as always, was covered with a mixture of soot and scars from exploding equipment. Clarence was what one would term a "Mad Scientist." He had been expelled from the school for stealing supplies from the school science lab, and Billy, his lab partner, had been the one who turned him in. Clarence hated Billy with a passion, and the two were now locked in an eternal struggle to see who was the better scientist, who could come up with the greater invention, who could make the greatest discoveries (and at the same time cause the most property damage, in Clarence's case). Clarence believed in science without any restraint or rules. Regulations were meant to be broken, and anything that advanced the cause of science, no matter how dangerous, how unethical, no matter how much stuff was blown up, or people hurt, was worth it.
He snuck up on Billy, and threw a cloud of dust into Billy's eyes. Unfortunately, Billy's coughing fit sent the dust into Clarence's eyes as well, and they were quickly both on the floor, clutching their faces and coughing madly, their eyes watering up. Billy started retching, and Clarence tried to laugh, but he then passed out.
Grenwell picked himself up from the floor, saw Trini lying there still, and started babbling. It was all that he ever did whenever he was freaked out, and that was a very common occurrence. Grenwell was quite possibily the most unfortunate student at Angel Grove High. He had extreme anxiety, stress, and to add to it he was horrified of people. He could hardly walk a few feet without tripping over something, and he was always knocking over things, or dropping them, which only caused him to curl into a little ball, or go pale and run away. What he truly wanted was friends, but he had so little self esteem that he couldn't believe that anyone would want to be friends with him. Several times he had thought that he made friends, but each time he thought he did that his supposed friends would humiliate him, or beat him up. The current group of kids he was with were the only ones that he felt safe with. He was terrified of jocks, popular people, and anyone with a bright outlook. He had had so many negative experiences that he could no longer go into anything without expecting the worst to happen.
Grenwell ran off into the janitors closet, his favorite hiding place in the Juice Bar. On his way in the school hallways, he ran into Bulk and Skull, who quickly picked up from his frenzied babbling that there was a fight going on, and they were missing out on one of their favorite pastimes, fighting with Jason's group.
Bulk and Skull were probably the most "normal" people of the group. They were a pair of punks that had somehow drawn together a group of the biggest outcasts in the school, and they stood up for each other. It didn't hurt to have Bretta backing them up in a fight, and with her on their side, they'd rule this school as soon as the pesky little problem of Jason's group of goody-goods acknowledged their superiority. Then Bulk and Skull could get any girl they wanted, and Skull was certain that once he proved what a loser Jason was to Kimberly, she would leave Jason and join him.
They rushed into the fight, and Bulk pulled a chair over his head, and tried to slamm it down over Zack's head, as he had seen so many people in the movies do. Zack noticed him very quickly, and dodged the blow, and he brought Bulk down with a snap kick to the groin. By this time Jason was free of Bretta, and it was taking all of his considerable karate skill to keep her off him. She barely felt any of his blows, and he was hard pressed to block or dodge hers, with all of her strength. If she hit him even once more, the fight would be over, and then she'd take down his bro's, and he couldn't let that happen. Billy lay facedown on the ground, his nose broken and streaming blood like a fountain.
Just as Skull was about to reach Kimberly's side, an earthquake shook the building. Bretta, Grenwell, Clarence, Bulk, and Skull picked themselves up off the ground, and they huddled together in a group as the Youth Center emptied.
At a remote location in the desert, a sudden storm was brewing. It was the middle of the dry season, and that meant that for about 11 1/2 months of a year it could be expected to never rain. A lightning bolt formed in the clouds and struck the castle like structure at the top of the mountain in the remote desert, just as a little robot was about to press a button to start a group of five young teenagers off on their destiny, but as a result of the lightning strike the computers blinked off for a second, and when they came back on, the main board shorted out, unbeknowst to either of the occupants of the Command Center, and when the button was pushed, destiny and fate changed, and the wrong group was selected for a mission fate had intended for another.
And now, a question must be answered. What will happen when the group is not worthy? END