The Day Z Met Tonks
Elizabeth Delgado wasn’t always the ass-kicking Yellow Power Ranger kids know her as today. A decade ago, she was living on the street, making sure other trans and queer kids didn’t get beat up like she did when she first found her way to the street. If she didn’t believe she could protect more people – more queers – as a Power Ranger, she’d still be there today.
She tried to do both – be a Power Ranger and work at the homeless shelter for LGBTQ kids that saved her life and then led her to her mission. She has the ability to duplicate herself, after all. She can literally make copies of herself, make herself into a whole army, if she wanted. But just because she can doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
For a few years, that’s what she did. She worked at the shelter during the night after saving the city and sometimes the world with her fellow Rangers. She didn’t always duplicate herself – sometimes she just worked a double shift – but she started to do this more and more as she became more and more exhausted. It wasn’t until she met Nymphadora Tonks that she thought about doing anything different. But Tonks was the one person who seemed to have even more passion than she did.
“Don’t call me Nymphadora,” Tonks growled at her the first time they met. And they were right. Tonks never went by their first name. And didn’t identify as a woman. Elizabeth Delgado could understand that – she went by Z most of the time and liked it because it was free of a gender assumption – but Elizabeth also fought hard to be viewed as a woman and still sometimes fell into the binary trap.
“Fuck all that academic shit,” Tonks would also say. “Call me Tonks or I’ll kick your ass. Or turn you into a toad.”
Tonks was also a witch. Maybe it was the magic that gave Tonks so much more energy? They weren’t much younger than Elizabeth was.
It was a Tuesday in London at The Outside Project, and Elizabeth was just opening up for the day, when they first met Tonks. It seemed to her that Tonks appeared out of thin air, which later Tonks would say was because they did. Apparently that’s one of the things they could do with magic. Appear and disappear out of thin air. It’s fucking creepy, Elizabeth concluded.
“Can I help you?” Elizabeth asked, startled.
“Do you know where Luna Lovegood is?”
“Who? What? That’s a crazy name.”
“Do you know where she is?” Tonks had purple hair that day, Elizabeth recalls, but it was always changing. Apparently that too had something to do with their magic. Elizabeth had plenty of powers of her own but it was different…magic seemed to her so mysterious. It didn’t make sense, like her powers, which seemed like science.
“No,” Elizabeth shook her head. “She didn’t check in last night. Was she supposed to? No one called about her…”
“No, he wouldn’t call,” Tonks shook their head. “I’m Tonks. They them pronouns.”
“Elizabeth. Some call me Z. She/her pronouns.”
“Her father doesn’t even know she’s queer,” Tonks continued. “But I know. We know.” They gave Elizabeth a knowing look. A look that said, we know. We queers. We know who’s queer before others do. Does that mean they know I’m trans? Elizabeth thought. Or do they think I’m a lesbian?
It was moments like this that Elizabeth felt so old. So, so old. Tonks couldn’t be more than ten years younger, but Elizabeth felt a million years older.
“It’s not that her father is a bad guy. A little strange, but basically a good guy,” Tonks continued.
“So why would this Luna be seeking out a shelter?”
“There’s a war going on,” Tonks said darkly. “Haven’t you noticed? All the strange things that keep happening? Bridges collapsing, things like that?”
“Haven’t heard of no bridges,” Elizabeth shrugs. “But there’s always been a war going on. No one seems to care.”
Tonks cocks their head at Elizabeth. “What do you mean?”
“You know what this place is, right? You said Luna was queer?”
“Yeah…” Tonks said. “Oh! You mean that these kids are at war with their parents? Or their schools?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” Elizabeth nods.
“That’s terrible,” Tonks said. “When I told me mum and dad I was genderqueer, they were weirded out at first. Confused, maybe. But as soon as they also saw I had magical powers, they were OK. At least my mom was. She knew I’d be able to defend myself from anyone who gave me a hard time, because she was a witch, too.”
This was actually the first time Tonks had mentioned being a witch, and they must have noticed the confused silence that fell over Elizabeth’s face right away, and they started to look worried. Like maybe they weren’t supposed to tell people that.
“It’s OK,” Elizabeth said in response. ”I have powers too.”
“You’re a witch too?” Tonks became excited.
“Not exactly,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, I’ve never called it that.”
“So what are you?”
“Have you heard of the Power Rangers? I’m the Yellow Ranger,” Elizabeth said. She’d never told anyone this before. She wasn’t supposed to either. Somehow she knew Tonks wasn’t supposed to, so that made it OK.
“Isn’t that a kids show?” Tonks asked.
“The show is fictionalized. We’re real,” Elizabeth’s jaw stiffened. She hated seeing the kid show depiction of the work they did.
“Sorry,” Tonks said. “So, Luna. She might come by here. She thinks she’s putting her dad in danger, but he’s already in danger, he’s the only one telling the truth about You Know Who. If she comes here, tell she might as well go home. And tell her she’s safe at Hogwarts.”
“You Know Who?” Elizabeth stared at Tonks blankly.
“I can’t say his name,” Tonks said. “It’s taboo. Doesn’t matter.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said. “But if Luna Love Whatever comes by, I’ll tell her she can go home. She doesn’t need to be here.”
“Thank you,” Tonks said. “I can give you a picture of her.”
“OK.” Elizabeth looked down at the picture Tonks handed her and did a double take. “It’s moving!”
“You can see that? Only witches and wizards can usually see that.”
“Huh,” Elizabeth shrugged.
“Guess you’re magic after all,” Tonks grinned. They turn around and start to walk away.
“Hey,” Elizabeth calls out. Tonks stops and turns around.
“You want a job?” Elizabeth asks. “I could use some more folks to work some shifts. I’m exhausted.”
“Me too,” Tonks said. They pause for a few long seconds. “But I’m glad this place is here. Even in the wizarding world, we have assholes. My parents were good people, but my aunts – they were real shits. They used to make fun of me, and I never even bothered to tell them I was genderqueer.”
“You’d be great with our kids here…” Elizabeth said. “Think about it.”
“I will,” Tonks said, solemnly. They even offered their hand in some sort of formal agreement sort of way. “Can I bring other people?”
“As long as they’re queer friendly,” Elizabeth said.
Tonks gave her a withering look, shook out their purple hair, and shook their head. “Well duh” was all they said. Elizabeth felt mortified.
“We could use you to fight our war,” Tonks added. “You Know Who is a really bad guy. One of my aunts is one of his biggest supportors.”
“You can call the Power Rangers anytime,” Elizabeth said, without missing a beat.
“But if you’re not magic, can you?…ugh, I don’t know how that works,” Tonks said. “Stupid rules. This is why I’d never want to work in the Mininstry. I mean, technically I work FOR the Ministry, but not IN the Ministry. Stupid bunch of wankers in there…”
Elizabeth stared at her. She wasn’t sure what she was talking about but Elizabeth felt like she had felt that way before. Guess the magical world had as much annoying bureaucracy as the Rangers and the human world.
It took another six months, but Tonks was hooked. They started coming by once a week, usually when they were patrolling as part of their wizarding work, and then it became two, then three, then four days. Apparently witches have ways of duplicating themselves, too, or so it seemed.
Luna did eventually show up at The Outside Project once. Not to stay, though. She wandered in while Elizabeth was making new posters to post downtown, telling kids about the place. She said something about sensing there were a lot of wrackspurts. Elizabeth told her she didn’t need to be there, that it was safe to go to Hogwash (as she remembered the name Tonks had said) and Luna smiled knowingly, and wandered back out. When Elizabeth told Tonks this, she laughed and laughed and laughed. But she never said what wrackspurts were.
Six months later, Elizabeth Delgado said goodbye to The Outside Project, and became a full time Power Ranger. Trying to maintain two lives, two jobs, was draining her life force. So she gave up the shelter, reluctantly, knowing it was in the very capable hands of Tonks.
But sometimes, when she was tired Elizabeth would slip into other timelines, places she had duplicated herself in the past, and she would have a glimpse of darker futures. A world where Tonks had died in battle and could no longer show up to work at Outside Project, and Elizabeth was back there again, exhausting herself in her double life.
Luna came back to the shelter. She had decided to volunteer her time making the strangest sandwiches the shelter had ever had. But the kids all at them up. Elizabeth liked to stop by every few months and check on the shelter, even though none of the people working there recognized her or remembered her, just to make sure it was still going.
“Have you seen Tonks?” Elizabeth asked Luna. It was such an unusual name, so Elizabeth felt sure that this would let Luna know she knew – about their world, about Tonks, about the war. She watched Luna spread potato chips on top of the peanut butter slathered bread she’d prepared.
Luna cocked her head to one said. “Tonks?” she asked. “Tonks hasn’t been around since the war. Some say they died, but some of us believe they’re just hiding. I feel bad for little Teddy though, growing up thinking his parents are dead.”
“Is the war…over?” Elizabeth asked.
“War…is it ever over? If it was, why would the Ministry still be building a secret army? We all know about the Rotfang Conspiracy.”
This confused Elizabeth so much she couldn’t come up with anything more to say. But it left her feeling deeply unsettled.
Fortunately, as long as she stayed well rested and well hydrated, on most days she continued to sense that Tonks was still showing up to work at the shelter, and Elizabeth could attend to Ranger business.