He followed Cam across the mats without a word. He was mostly still stuck on training and wolves and how it felt to have Cam sitting on top of him and how weirdly like his apartment it had been. He hadn't thought there was anything that could make him feel the way he had around a siren who was really working for it, and it turned out that the only exception was anything Cam ever did.

Maybe he was lucky the guy hadn't looked at him twice before this whole wolf thing. Because he was starting to see how far denial wouldn't get him if it was tested in any way--and Cam's sudden interest wasn't a test, it was the fucking entrance exam to the school of gay lust. It was one thing to figure all girls were basically the same. It was something totally different to realize guys weren't.

A weird sound, gone before he could identify it, stopped Cam short of the door. He almost walked into him, putting his hands on Cam's shoulders to steady himself, but Cam didn't move. Hunter listened, but he couldn't hear anything.

Cam was acting like he could, so Hunter kept his voice quiet. "What was that?"

"Intruder alert," Cam muttered. "If it was an accident, we would have heard from CyberCam by now."

Not an accident. Deliberate, then--and probably just as deliberately cut off. No one who belonged here would fight over the intruder alert system.

"We should get to the control room," Hunter said grimly.

Cam still didn't move. "There are cameras in the halls. They're on independent power, and I can't turn them off from here. If our intruder is in the control room he'll see us coming before we even get close."

Hunter considered that. "I could disable them," he offered at last.

Cam didn't seem surprised. "Taking them out one by one isn't any better than waving at them as we go by."

"It's always better to be obvious and anonymous than obvious and identified," Hunter informed him. "But I can get them all at once if you want."

Okay, that surprised him. Cam turned, and only then did Hunter remember to let go of his shoulders. "You can take out every security camera in Ninja Ops from here? Simultaneously?"

Hunter shrugged. "No guarantees that you'll be able to get them running again afterward."

"Yes, I'd guessed that," Cam said dryly. He studied Hunter for another moment, then nodded. "Do it."

It actually wasn't that easy to trace something as ubiquitous as electricity in a place like Ninja Ops, but luckily Hunter had done this before. Or at least, he'd been prepared to do it before. He knew exactly how many security cameras there were, where they were, and how much power it would take to overload the entire network.

He didn't even have to step out into the hallway. He flung a bolt from the cover of the doorway, a power surge that would kill the nearest camera, jump the breaker that tripped automatically, and overwhelm the rest of the system. Five seconds, max. Even CyberCam wouldn't be fast enough to stop it.

"We're good to go," Hunter said, glancing back at Cam.

Cam looked impressed, and he wasn't going to forget that. For now, though, Hunter was okay with the silence as they ducked out into the hall and headed for the control room. Who knew what they'd find there, but between the two of them, he figured there wasn't much they couldn't handle.

"Hey." It was Blake's voice that hissed at them just before he appeared out of the shadows, and Hunter relaxed a little more. Yeah. Sweet. Now they were set.

"What's with the lights?" Blake demanded, still keeping his voice quiet.

"Doesn't anyone recognize the intruder alert?" Cam muttered back.

Hey. Hunter frowned at him. "Why would we?" he wanted to know. "It's not like it's ever gone off before."

"Is that what that was?" Blake was frowning too; Hunter could tell just from his tone. "Who's the intruder?"

"Presumably, the same person who cut the power," Cam said under his breath. "We're heading for the control room. What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," Blake retorted. "Or I was, until all the lights went out."

"Well, congratulations, you found us." Cam didn't sound particularly thrilled about it. "Can we go now?"

"Isn't the control room the first place our intruder is going to expect us to go?" Blake asked. "Shouldn't there be some kind of backup control room or something?"

"Ninja Ops is the backup." Cam's eyes were starting to glow. "And since I'd rather find this intruder before he does any more damage, I hope he's in the control room waiting for us. Are we done standing around in the hallway talking about this, or do you have more questions?"

"Oh!" Marah's voice came from somewhere up ahead, and Hunter tensed instinctively. "Oh, Cousin, I have a question!"

"Um, yeah." Kapri's voice was a mock-whisper to match all of theirs. "Me too!"

Hunter could see Blake mirroring his defensive stance on the other side of Cam. Cam just folded his arms, glaring into the shadows like he'd expected them. "Where did you get those uniforms?"

"Oh, please." They stepped into the light of the nearest emergency box like they were posing for a photo shoot, and Kapri continued, "We are ninjas, Cousin."

They were wearing Wind ninja training uniforms. Minus the academy and element badges, anyway, and their belts were a weird color in the dim light. It was a pretty good imitation, though.

Cam probably wouldn't think so.

"If you set off that alert," he was saying.

He didn't get any further before the girls' put-upon looks were obvious. "We didn't do it!" Marah exclaimed, sounding very hurt.

"Shyeah!" Kapri just sounded exasperated. "Obviously it was Uncle. And also, your zord bay is empty, just so you know, before you go storming in there and--" She waved her hand in a flamboyant but utterly useless gesture. "Blast him, or whatever it is you do."

"Lothor is the intruder?" Blake echoed, clearly horrified.

"How do you know it's Lothor?" Hunter demanded.

"What were you doing in the zord bay?" Cam wanted to know.

"Oh my gosh, he's totally after us!" Marah protested.

"Who else could it be?" Kapri agreed. "He probably thinks you've, like, kidnapped us or something. He's probably come to rescue us."

Marah seemed confused by this. "Really? You think he'd do that?"

"No," Hunter snapped. "It's not you he wants."

"It's Cam," Blake said darkly. "Lothor is after Cam. He must've traced you two to Ninja Ops somehow. I knew we shouldn't have let them in here," he added, with the frustration of someone who had once been used the same way.

"It's not their fault," Cam said with a sigh. "Look, we'll take care of Lothor. You just--stay out of the way. Don't give him a chance to make an example of you."

"We're not scared of him," Kapri declared defiantly.

"Uh-uh," Marah agreed. Then she glanced sideways at her sister. "Um... we're not?"

"We're going with you," Kapri continued. "We can defend ourselves," she added, holding up something vaguely green and definitely glowing. Hunter's eyes widened as he recognized it.

"Dude, is that--"

"A piece of the Gem of Souls." Cam finished Blake's sentence for him. "Yes. She and Marah fished them out of the ocean after I tried to sink them. It's just not as easy to throw things away as it used to be," he muttered.

Hunter shot a quick look at him, but Cam was still frowning at the girls. "I suppose you got yours out of the teleportation matrix?"

Marah beamed, holding up a second gem fragment. "All ready!"

"Their escape route in case Lothor started experimenting on them," Cam muttered as an aside. "They used them to get me off the ship after he kidnapped me."

"Yeah, too bad we couldn't find the other piece," Marah chirped. "Then you could have one too, and none of us would have to worry about Uncle coming after us!"

"If you'd managed to dredge up all three pieces from the bottom of the ocean, I'd be even more disturbed than I already am," Cam informed them. "As it is, I seriously need to work on my throwing ability."

"Wait," Blake said suspiciously. "Did you say three pieces?"

Hunter winced. Cam was the only one who hadn't been under the Mountain of Lost Ninjas with them when the gem shattered. He was also the one that Sensei had told Hunter to give the fragments to. So Hunter had handed over three fragments, and Cam hadn't asked any questions. Now it looked like he might be about to start.

"He's got the amulet," Kapri reminded her sister. Hunter saw Cam give Blake an odd look, but he didn't answer the question and with a little luck, Kapri and Marah would start something that distracted them all.

"Yeah, which Uncle totally wants to take from him," Marah said, rolling her eyes. "That's not protection, that's like a sign saying 'pick me!'"

"Hey," Hunter interrupted. No reason he couldn't help them out a little with the distraction thing. "You should give those things to Cam. They're not gonna do you any good on their own anyway."

"Huh," Kapri said with a sniff. "Shows how much you know."

"I do know," Hunter shot back. "Trust me."

Now Cam was looking at him oddly, and okay, maybe that hadn't been the smartest thing to say. But Blake jumped in with, "Look, Cam's the one Lothor's going to go for, not you. Anyone with half a brain would take the guy who knows more about Ninja Ops than the rest of us put together."

"Thank you," Cam said, sighing again, "but I think we can safely assume that letting Lothor capture any of us would be bad. So let's warn the others and get moving."

"Oh." Marah held up her hand but at least she didn't wait for Cam to call on her. "You can't call out. We tried."

Hunter glanced at Blake and found his bro looking back. He nodded, and Blake lifted his morpher. "Tori," he said. "Tor, can you hear me?"

There was no answer.

"Tried that," Kapri repeated, in a singsong voice. "The whole place is completely cut off. At least, from here to the zord bay. We haven't been any higher yet."

"We're going now," Cam said grimly.

They went. Hunter had expected that Cam would have to bust the door open for them, but to his surprise it opened at their approach. He and Blake stopped in their tracks. They weren't stupid, and anything the enemy wanted you to do was obviously something you should avoid doing.

Cam walked right in. Hunter gritted his teeth and followed, ignoring Blake's hiss of warning, because what was he supposed to do? He couldn't let Cam go without him. Impatient or not, they should have discussed this thing better beforehand.

"Nephew!" The man's greeting was more effusive than anything Hunter or Blake had ever heard from him. "So good to see you again! After our earlier conversation was so rudely interrupted--"

The girls weren't here, Hunter realized abruptly. Blake was right beside him, like always, but Marah and Kapri were nowhere to be seen. At least someone had had the sense to stay out of sight.

"What do you want," Cam said, folding his arms and giving Lothor his most bored expression. Sensei was trapped in his habitat cart on the other side of the room, a force bubble enclosing the entire structure. Cam didn't even look at him.

"I just want you to listen." Lothor looked about as sincere as an evil villain could look, especially while sitting in Cam's computer chair. He made it look more like a throne than a research post, and it had to be pissing Cam off. The screen behind him was dark, but he had known they were coming. The door had fucking opened for them.

What kind of game was Lothor playing this time?

"You and I, why, we're two of a kind," the man was saying. "Geniuses, lords of the land, underappreciated but highly capable when given a chance. And if we're not given one, we make the chance ourselves! I'm telling you, Nephew, the things we could do together are nothing short of astonishing."

"My name is Cam," Cam informed him. "And I'm nothing like you, Lothor."

"Blood calls to blood," Lothor said, spreading his arms wide. "We may have worked, temporarily, for opposing sides, but at the end of the day we're still family."

Cam snorted. "I've seen how you treat your family, Lothor. Given the choice, I'd decline."

"Ah, but you weren't given a choice, were you." Lothor looked deceptively sympathetic, and Hunter shot Cam a disgusted look. Cam wasn't paying any attention, but Blake caught the expression and threw it back at him. Lothor didn't really think Cam was buying this, did he?

"I assure you, I do know how hard it is to be caught in the middle of a conflict." Lothor stood, taking a single step forward. Without a word, Hunter and Blake moved closer to Cam, defending him from both directions. Cam didn't flinch. Lothor stopped where he was.

"As a token of my good will," Lothor said, "allow me to demonstrate my magnanimous nature on your behalf." He flung a hand toward Sensei's habitat cart and before anyone could stop him energy poured from his fingertips, pouring over the force bubble and rendering it opaque as it warped and expanded.

"Dad!" Cam lunged forward, and Hunter had his back. The energy vanished a heartbeat before he threw himself into it. The force bubble was gone, and in its place--

"You will not win any friends through trickery," Sensei said evenly. Or at least, it sounded like Sensei. It looked very... human. A dark-skinned man in a larger version of the guinea pig's simple robes, and yeah, he even had that same stick the guinea pig had carried... but come on. No way was this Cam's dad.

"Does it look like trickery?" Lothor wanted to know. Cam was still staring at the man standing in the guinea pig's place, and Hunter figured that was enough of an answer for him. If it really was his dad, wouldn't he, like, hug him or something?

"I can do the same for you," Lothor commented, offhand, as Cam turned slowly back toward him. Hunter divided his attention between the guy with Sensei's voice and Cam's crazy uncle. Either of them could strike at any second, as far as he was concerned.

"Your father and I were having a ninja showdown at the time of his transformation," Lothor explained. "I beat him, fair and square. I do regret, however, the unfortunate incident that led to your current... situation. Your condition is more complicated, of course, but if you come with me I give you my word that I'll do everything I can to reverse it."

Hunter gave Cam a quick look, but Cam's glowing gold eyes were fixed on Lothor and his words came out as a growl. "You so much as point a finger at me and I'll take it off."

It was the wolf talking now. Weirdly, Lothor seemed to get that, and the assessing look he gave Cam made Hunter bristle. "So, not completely in control after all," he said smoothly. "Still looking for a leader, then?"

Hunter frowned, glancing at Cam. What was that supposed to mean?

Cam positively sneered at Lothor. "I'm not like your scared little human experiments. I don't need anyone to tell me what to do."

Hunter didn't like the sound of this. He crowded up against Cam's shoulder, leaving Blake to watch the Sensei replacement while he glared at Lothor. "Back off, old man. You can't take all of us."

Lothor smiled. "Oh, I think you'll find I can." He threw a wave of power in Cam's direction and Hunter flung a hand out in front of them without conscious thought. The power hit the block he'd been practicing with Cam earlier and hung there, snapping and sizzling as it sought a way through.

Sensei--or the guy who'd taken Sensei's place--used that moment to attack. Hunter didn't wait to see what happened before he shoved Cam out of the way, block disintegrating and Blake's shield barely keeping the power from clipping his arm. Cam was gone and the wolf launched itself into the fray, catching a blast that might have been meant for his dad and getting thrown at the feet of two ninjas who hadn't been there a moment before.

"Hello, Uncle," Kapri said nervously, as Marah bent down to touch Cam's prone form. Hunter stiffened, but Cam snapped at her and started to struggle to his feet. Safe.

For the moment.

"Well, if it isn't the Troublesome Twins," Lothor drawled, and Hunter made a note never to call them stupid names again.

"Hi!" Marah waved as she straightened up. Lothor rolled his eyes, but she just clasped her hands in front of her and smiled back at him.

"I should turn you into guinea pigs for the trouble you've caused me." Lothor was giving them what could only be described as the evil eye. "I suppose you thought running off with my prize was clever, hm? What incompetent plan did you hatch that convinced you getting in my way would be a good idea?"

"Oh, well, there wasn't a plan, really," Marah babbled, trying to look cute and mostly just looking confused. "I mean, we thought--"

"Shut. Up," Kapri warned through gritted teeth, pretending to smile when Lothor looked at her.

"On the other hand," he said, as though it had just occurred to him. "You did lead me here, so I suppose you're not completely useless."

"Leave them alone," Cam growled. His wolf form had vanished and he was unfolding himself into an almost-guard position between the two girls. "They made their choice, Lothor. You've lost."

"Ah, but I haven't," Lothor replied. "Because you see, my dear nephew, I have no intention of leaving here alone. So who's it going to be: you, or them?"

Cam didn't hesitate. "Them."

"Wrong answer," Lothor snarled, power exploding across the room between them. Hunter flinched from the light, moving forward blindly, determined to get into this fight before anything else could go wrong--

The streaks and spots on his eyes were transparent enough that he could make out shapes behind them. Marah and Kapri, still standing in the control room, arms outstretched. Cam, behind them--still human, still here. An empty space where Lothor had been.

"What just happened?" Blake demanded.

"I believe Lothor has underestimated us," Sensei's voice replied.

"Okay, who are you?" Hunter wanted to know, casting a quick glance over his shoulder even as he headed for Cam. Blake was still keeping a wary eye on the man, so they were fine there. He reached for Cam's hand, which might have been weird except that Cam was already reaching out for him, and their handclasp turned into a brief hug.

"It's Dad," Cam said, as he let him go. "Minus the fur and whiskers."

"Sensei Watanabe?" Blake repeated incredulously. "No way."

"Uh-uh," Hunter agreed. "No offense, Cam, but I've seen pictures of your dad. That's not him."

"If you refer to this picture," the man in Sensei's robes said, picking up the family portrait from the counter behind the habitat cart, "then yes, you are correct. My appearance has changed somewhat since then."

"Oh my gosh, is that you!" Marah exclaimed, edging around Hunter to peek at the picture from where she stood. "Is that what Uncle used to look like too?"

He leaned away from her reflexively, bumping Cam's shoulder as he did so. "Hey, watch what you're doing with that thing." Marah still held the gem fragment in her hand.

"Oh, they can't do anything on their own," Kapri said blithely. "They just react to stuff around them. Hit them with something strong enough and kaboom!"

"They neutralize energy fields, mobile or stationary," Marah chirped. "The shield on Uncle's ship, the cloak around your secret lair... you know, that kind of thing. Oh, or that teleport Uncle just threw at us! The gem deflected the power back at him, see!"

Hunter just stared at her, but Cam was already heading for his computer. "They neutralize the academy cloak?"

"Oh, only when they're right next to a power source," Kapri said quickly. "Like the shield generator or something."

"Or the teleportation matrix," Marah added.

"Hey," Hunter interrupted, frowning at them. "When did you get smart?"

"We're smart!" Kapri complained indignantly.

"Yeah, we're totally smart!" Marah chimed in. "Right, Cousin?"

"It actually does make sense," Cam said over his shoulder. The screen was up and running in front of him, but it looked like he was just going through and inputting a bunch of codes. Passwords, maybe, to get back into the system after Lothor had tried to break in?

"You used it the same way at the Mountain of Lost Ninjas," Cam was saying. "The gem protected you by reflecting whatever Lothor did back at him."

"You don't know that," Blake pointed out. "Lothor just vanished. We don't know what the gem did to him. And it's not like Hunter knew what he was doing."

"Hey." Hunter glared at him.

Blake just shrugged. "It's the truth, bro."

"I'm sure Hunter did what he had to," Cam muttered, not as though he was paying much attention to either of them at the moment. "Right now, we need to keep Lothor from being able to just walk back in here any time he feels like it."

"Did you say that those gem fragments could also neutralize the shield around Lothor's ship?" Sensei wondered aloud, and Cam stopped what he was doing.

"Yeah, well, of course," Marah said with a laugh.

"Duh," Kapri added.

"It wouldn't be much of an escape plan if we couldn't get past an outgoing teleport lockdown, now, would it?" Marah continued, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Thought you said there wasn't a plan." Blake was staring at them, arms folded, looking about the way Hunter felt: do they fake being dumb, or do they fake being smart?

"Because we would totally tell Uncle if there was," Kapri said, rolling her eyes.

Hunter checked to see what Cam though of all this, but Cam was having some sort of silent conference with his dad. He seemed to sense Hunter's eyes on him, though, and he glanced over. Out loud, he said, "If we can get past the shield, we can get to the ninjas trapped on that ship."

Cam's screen flashed some kind of warning, and Hunter recognized the symbols that aligned in the lower right-hand corner. Zords were coming back: lion, hawk, and dolphin. Stats started scrolling in the box just above them, enlarging when Cam turned around and started to scan them.

"They've been fighting," he said, sounding surprised.

"Tori," Blake said urgently. He was talking to a morpher again, but this time he got an answer. "You all right?"

"Blake!" Her voice sounded weirdly normal over the morpher circuit. "Are you? We haven't been able to contact anyone else, not even CyberCam at Ninja Ops!"

"Yo," CyberCam said, popping into view beside the mainframe. "What's happening, peeps?"

"We had a little visit from Lothor," Blake told his morpher. "We're all at Ops now. Where are you?"

"On our way," Tori's voice promised. "We're bringing a friend. She helped us take on Vexacus while you were on vacation."

"Vexacus?" Blake repeated. "Where did he come from?"

"He arrived a little while ago," Cam muttered. "Lothor must have sent him the Scroll of Empowerment just before he crashed our party here. The zords are in bad shape, but at least they're all still under their own power.

"Which they'd better be," he added, "since the emergency power can't handle zord repair."

"Oh, right, the generators." CyberCam hopped off the console next to Cam and tossed off a goofy-looking salute. "Say no more, bro. I'm on it."

"Thanks," Cam said distractedly. "And thanks for the warning, by the way."

"No problemo, dude!" CyberCam sounded as cheerful as ever. "Least I could do. Figured you'd get it even if the big guy turned it off. Which he did. He's fast, man."

Cam snorted. "Tell me about it."

"You figured he'd get it?" Blake repeated. He'd lowered his morpher, but Hunter hadn't heard him sign off. Open circuit? "What if Cam hadn't been here? You couldn't have helped out a little more?"

"Sorry, dude," CyberCam said with a shrug. "I'm programmed to lay low in the face of overwhelming odds."

"The generators?" Cam reminded him.

"Right!" CyberCam shoved his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and turned into a sort of staticky hologram before disappearing altogether.

"He was just doing his job," Cam said absently. He looked like he was talking to the computer, and he didn't seem to notice when Blake started to protest. "I don't know what Lothor did, but he walked right past the security and as far as I can tell, there's no reason he can't do it again. I'm going to have to lock out everyone without a morpher until we can fix this."

"Wait--" Marah stopped like she wasn't sure what she meant, but Kapri didn't.

"What about us?" she demanded. "I mean, we don't have morphers, but we're totally good, fine to be here, I mean... right?"

"Yeah, because we so saved you from Lothor just now," Marah put in, sounding more confident now. "That's why you told him to take us, right? So we could use the gem fragments to stop him?"

"Yeah," Cam said, hitting "execute" on his keyboard. "That's exactly why."

Marah beamed, but Kapri frowned, and Hunter knew she'd picked up on Cam's tone. Devoid of any expression, the words could have been taken either way. He was pretty sure Cam was actually telling the truth. Kapri obviously wasn't.

"Morpher lockout's gonna be a problem," Shane's voice remarked, and Hunter glanced over his shoulder. He froze at the same moment Shane did.

Shane had a girl with him. Pretty, curly dark hair and gorgeous eyes, the kind of exotic features that looked totally out of place in jeans and a t-shirt but yeah, that was what she was wearing. And she was looking around Ninja Ops with mild appreciation, but nothing like the awe he would have expected from some chick off the street.

"Sensei!" Tori's shout made him remember that they weren't the only ones with a stranger in their midst. Or, okay, a relative stranger. Maybe not so much to the Winds, actually.

"Dude!" Dustin exclaimed. Tori had already run over to hug him, and Dustin looked like he was thinking about it. "You're all, like, tall! And not furry!"

"You recognize him?" Hunter blurted out.

"It's Sensei!" Shane crowed. "Wow! Man, how did this happen?"

Cam had turned away from the computer and was watching with a small smile as the Wind Rangers gathered around his father. His gaze flicked to Hunter for a moment, then past him as the smile faded. "And you are?" he inquired politely.

Yeah, Hunter wanted to know that too.

"Call me Skyla," the girl said, stepping forward. She offered her hand to Cam, who took it with a bemused but game expression. "I'm a friend of Shane's."

Hunter frowned. He knew that name.

"Wait, the one who gave him the Battlizer?" Blake demanded. "Aren't you supposed to be--" His usually suave little bro must have realized at the last minute that he was on the wrong track, but it was too late. "Uh, dead?" he finished awkwardly.

"She's a time traveler," Shane said, coming over to clap Blake on the shoulder. "This is her before I met her the last time."

"Yes," Skyla admitted, smiling at Cam before turning a rueful look on the rest of the room. "I'm afraid I miscalculated. Or I will, anyway. I came to tell you that I'll be passing the power on to you soon, but I guess you already know that. I shouldn't have arrived before I told you I was coming. I'm sorry."

This last sounded like it was meant for Shane. He obviously thought so too. "Hey," Shane said, shrugging carelessly. "If what you say is true, you haven't even done it yet, so. Nothing to be sorry for."

She smiled, and Hunter studied her more carefully. She had a nice smile. And Shane was acting less like a poser than usual, which could be because Sensei looked more intimidating as a human than as a guinea pig--or it could be because Skyla was flashing that smile at everyone who spoke to her.

"Okay, that--" Dustin was pointing in a vaguely Skyla-oriented direction. "Is really, really confusing."

"Yeah, I hear that," Shane agreed, but the look he gave Skyla wasn't confused. Or annoyed. It was a look that made Hunter think maybe her smile really was having some kind of effect on Shane's attitude.

"So let me get this straight," Cam interrupted. "Your future is Shane's past, and his present is your past. Right?"

"Well, we're both in our own present together," Skyla said, looking more amused than anything. "But you're right about the way the rest of our lives relate to each other. You must have some experience with time travel."

Cam's mouth quirked up at the corner. "You could say that. So you're here to... what?"

"I'm just here to help," she told him. "I thought Vexacus was after me, but he must have come for Shane. And now I see why," she added, glancing in Shane's direction. "He wasn't expecting two of us."

"Was?" Cam repeated.

"Wait, two of you?" Dustin said at the same time.

"We took care of him," Shane said, catching Cam's eye.

"Two of us with Karmanian powers," Skyla added. "I obviously didn't have time to tell Shane much about them the last time I was here--or I won't, the next time--so I'll do my best to fill him in now."

That only half made sense to Hunter, but Cam just looked at Shane and the Red Ranger nodded once. "Okay," Cam said with a shrug. "Thanks for your help, then."

"Sure." Skyla was smiling again.

"Can we talk about Sensei now?" Tori wanted to know. "I mean, look at you!" She waved both hands at him, still bursting with excitement. "We can! And you look--normal! What happened?"

"Yeah, this is totally sick," Blake put in. He'd obviously decided to go with majority opinion on this one. "I can't believe we've known you all this time without even knowing what you looked like."

"And I have known you all this time without knowing our relative height," Sensei said gravely. "As it turns out, you're shorter than I previously believed."

Hunter couldn't help grinning at his little bro's expression. "Yeah, well, I guess anyone looks tall to a guinea pig," he remarked.

"I assure you, Hunter, you are tall no matter my perspective," Sensei informed him.

Hunter eyed him, only barely suppressing a scoff. "No offense, but look who's talking, Sensei."

"Nah, dude, I think you're a little taller." Dustin was looking back and forth between them, squinting like he was trying to put them side by side in his mind.

"No way," Shane put in. "Come on. They're exactly the same height."

"Why are we discussing this?" Cam wanted to know.

"You were telling us how Sensei lost his tiny alter ego," Tori prompted.

Sensei answered before Cam could without even seeming to interrupt. "I believe Lothor was attempting to change Cameron's opinion of him by reversing the spell that held me captive."

"Lothor wanted me to join him," Cam said with a sigh. "I think he figured that by changing Dad back, he could get me to agree to anything to get him to do it for me. Like I trust anything he says," he added, rolling his eyes.

Like you really want to be human again, Hunter thought to himself. He'd heard something totally different in Cam's growled warning to his psychotic uncle. It hadn't sounded like "yeah, right" to him. It had sounded more like "mind your own business, creepy alien dude who doesn't know anything about me."

"Wow, so, like, how'd you get rid of him?" Dustin asked, looking around like maybe Lothor was still there and he just hadn't noticed him. "You did get rid of him, right?"

"Oh, me!" Kapri exclaimed.

"Ooh, that was us!" Marah declared, right on top of her.

They'd just been waiting for their chance to hijack the conversation, Hunter decided. He watched with some amusement as they explained how amazingly heroic they had been in standing up to their uncle and saving Cam--again, as Kapri didn't hesitate to point out--and Cam just rolled his eyes and let them babble away. He was more tolerant of them than Hunter had expected.

Of course, they had to show off their gem fragments, and it was almost funny to see the crowd of people in the room gravitate from Sensei toward Cam's cousins. Almost, because Hunter kept wondering when the girls would casually mention "three" gem pieces again. How they knew Cam had only had three, he had no idea, but maybe they had been watching him throw them into the ocean? It would at least explain how they had known where to look.

Somehow, the number of pieces didn't come up again, but the look Blake gave him said that his bro hadn't forgotten. He was going to hear about that later. He might have even brought it up himself, now, just to avoid the inevitable revelation, but he still wasn't totally sure whose side Marah and Kapri were on. He'd rather not give them anything to use against him later.

Well, anything else to use against him later.

That did come up. Unfortunately. He could have gladly gone forever without hearing anyone tell the story of How Marah And Kapri Found Hunter And Cam Making Out In Ninja Ops, but it turned out it wasn't up to him.

Shane being Shane, he had to remark on how lucky it was that half the team was in Ninja Ops with Cam when Lothor came looking for him. That led to Dustin's typically tactless remark about people needing to get out more, to which Blake protested that he had only been looking for Hunter and Cam. Cam made a credibly offhanded remark about sparring, which after all he and Hunter hadn't been allowed to do all week, so it wasn't really that strange, and that should have been the end of it.

Except that Marah laughed, and Kapri opened her big mouth, and that was so far from the end of it that Hunter couldn't even see the end from where he was standing. The end had to be in another state. Or maybe in another country, assuming he could get that far away and still commute to work every day.

He couldn't decide whether the fact that everyone now knew he was dating Cam or the fact that no one actually believed he was dating Cam annoyed him more.

"Seriously," Dustin exclaimed, burying his fingers in his hair. "Cam?"

Shane clapped Cam on the shoulder. "Hunter," he said, shaking his head. "Really?"

Blake just stood there, arms folded, shooting Hunter a weird look when Shane asked if he'd known. All he said was, "Tori told me," which effectively got them off his back while they complained to Tori that she hadn't told them, but didn't fool Hunter in the slightest. He was gonna be hearing about that, too.

By the time the regular lights flooded the control room, emergencies clicking off as the generators came back, Hunter was thoroughly sick of the whole conversation. He wasn't the only one, either. He could practically hear Cam grinding his teeth from where he stood, and he thought it was maybe the first time Cam had ever been happy to see his virtual replicant.

Cam was out of his chair the moment CyberCam appeared beside him, issuing instructions that his expression practically dared the others to call him on. "Set up a password system for anyone without a morpher," he said. "Make sure the Wind zords' self-repair systems kicked in, and try not to let any more bad guys get past our defenses for a few hours. I'm going to get something to eat."

Shit, right. His food thing. Hunter opened his mouth, but he didn't actually get a word out before Cam glanced at him and added, "Coming?"

"Yeah," he said, trying not to catch anyone else's eye. Like the fact that Cam had asked wasn't incentive enough, he'd do pretty much anything to get out of the control room right now. It was a party and a half in here, and he was over it.

"Bro." Blake kept his voice low, but there was no mistaking the serious tone. "We need to talk."

"Yeah," Hunter repeated, glancing at Cam again. He and Blake weren't the only ones. "I'll see you back at the apartment."

"You want us to pick up anything for you, Dad?" Cam was asking. "Groceries or anything?"

Sensei took one look at Cam's tired and impatient expression and shook his head. "Thank you, but I believe I will enjoy the novelty of shopping for my own food once again."

"Watch your back, bro." Blake might be pissed, but he'd never forgotten what mattered. "There's a lot of weird stuff out there tonight."

"Yeah." Hunter rapped his knuckles against Blake's automatically. More than Lothor and his minions, more than wolves--human or otherwise--sometimes it was the most normal stuff that seemed the weirdest. "And we're only half of it."