Something warm and furry moved when her fingers twitched, and she stroked the cat reassuringly without really waking up. The cool breeze against her neck registered a moment later, and she shifted again. The comforter was up over her shoulders, but some accustomed warmth was gone.

Rolling over, Alyssa stretched one arm out over the pillow beside her. It was empty, and she let her eyes slide open at last. She could feel Ness' weight at the end of the bed. Tigger was curled beside her, trying to ignore her sudden restlessness. Her human bed partner, however, was conspicuously absent.

"Cole?" she murmured. Her eyes struggled to focus in the darkness. He was... changing?

"Taylor's in trouble." The words floated across the bed to her and she sat up abruptly. He kept his voice low as he added, "I don't know what's wrong or what she needs, but my growlphone went off a few minutes ago."

"I'll come with you," she said quickly, pushing the comforter away and burying Ness in the process. The golden didn't move, not even rolling her head to protest.

"No, don't." Cole's voice stopped her in mid motion, and she hesitated on the edge of the bed. "She told me to come to Silver Guardian Headquarters, and then she just hung up. I tried to call her back, but it wouldn't go through."

"Something must have happened. We'd better call Wes," she said, watching him brace one foot against the chair to lace up his workboots. "Was this her shift at the time hole? What time is it?"

"Half past midnight," Cole answered, tugging the laces tight and wrapping them around each other with a deftness he had only recently achieved. "It's her shift, and she had sixteen Silver Guardians with her. They've probably already called Wes."

Alyssa watched him switch feet worriedly. "But if you couldn't reach her growlphone..."

"I'll go find out what's wrong," he promised. "I'll call you as soon as I know anything. Sooner if I need help. Right now you'd better wake Merrick up, just in case."

He put his other foot back on the floor and leaned over to give her a kiss. "Love you."

"Love you too," she said automatically. He was already turning away, heading for the stairs. "Cole, be careful!"

"I will," he called over his shoulder. Ness was off the bed in a flash, bounding after him the moment he left the room. He stopped her at the top of the stairs.

"Ness, stay with Alyssa," he said, pointing back at the bedroom. Ness stopped, tail arcing over her back as she watched him hurry downstairs.

Alyssa heard his jacket rustle, then the creak of the front door and a slam as he pulled it shut behind him. She could hear footsteps through the open window, and then nothing. Only then did Ness turn, padding back into the room and looking up at Alyssa expectantly.

She got to her feet, dropping her head to Ness' head for just a moment. "He'll be okay," she told the dog. "It's just something he has to do. We'll never stop being a team."

She slipped her growlphone into the pocket of the sweatshirt she pulled on over her pajamas. It would do if she had to leave in a hurry. She felt her way out of the bedroom and across the landing, pausing at the top to see if Ness would go down first. The dog waited, following her slow progress down the stairs with patient dignity.

She left the hall light off and made her way across the living room to the porch door. It was lighter outside, and she saw Moon's gleaming eyes swivel toward her as soon as she put a hand on the door. Merrick was harder to locate.

Finally she spotted him, standing beside the deck in the shadow of the live oak that shaded their building. He was leaning back against the trunk, his light grey shirt glowing silver in the dappled moonlight. Princess Shayla was standing a few steps away, her urgent posture the antithesis of his relaxed mien.

Alyssa backed away from the door quietly. Merrick was already awake. There was no reason to interrupt just to tell him she didn't know anything. And there were several perfectly good reasons to let him confront the princess after all this time.

"Leave it, Ness," she chided the golden. Ness was staring through the porch door at Moon, tail halfway up and hackles raised. "Ness."

The dog dropped her tail and turned away, perking up again when Alyssa patted her in praise. "You don't have anything to prove," she told the dog. "You're our favorite no matter what."

Ness bounced after her as she headed for the kitchen. A soft meow greeted her as she turned on the light, and she smiled. Tigger was on the counter, turning in a tight circle as though he expected breakfast now. It was too bad Cole hadn't told the animals what was going on before he'd left, she thought.

"No, we're not eating now," she told them. "This is a middle-of-the-night emergency. We don't get breakfast until later."

Ness promptly sat down, looking to Alyssa as if to say, "See what I can do?" She, too, clearly expected to be fed. Tigger meowed again, and Alyssa sighed fondly.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asked, shaking her head at them. "You can have a treat, but no breakfast. That's it."

She pulled the bag by the refrigerator across the counter, and Ness' ears went up at the sound. Alyssa glanced at her, and she immediately put her ears down and wagged. Alyssa just smiled, opening the plastic bag and pulling out a piece of rawhide. "Stand up," she told the golden.

Ness stood obediently, still wagging.

"Good girl." Alyssa handed her the chew. Ness took it carefully, then waited, cocking her head just a little. "You can eat it in here," Alyssa told her. "Okay."

Ness settled down right where she was, placing one paw over the end of the chew and focusing all her attention on it. Alyssa put the bag away and warmed some milk for Tigger, patting the cat absently while he lapped at the designated "cat saucer". He was their third foster cat, and the only one so far who hadn't been allergic to milk. He had been given his own saucer the day he arrived.

Her growlphone rang. She had it open and pressed to her ear before it could ring again. "Cole?"

"I'm at SGH with Wes and Jen," he told her. "Taylor and Eric are missing."

"Eric was with her? Have they tried to reach his morpher?"

"The guardian in charge of the time hole rotation says that Eric came in to do some catch up work around eleven-thirty. He stopped by to check on the time hole, and Taylor issued a base-wide alert a few minutes after midnight saying that he was missing. She requested backup, and neither of them has been heard from since."

"The time hole?" she asked, her heart sinking. "Could they have gone through it?"

"That's what Wes is afraid of," Cole's voice answered. "The time hole disappeared before I got here, so there's no way to know when they ended up if they did go through."

"Do you want me to come down?"

There was a brief pause, and she could hear other voices in the background. "Why don't you wait until we've checked the base," Cole said at last. "If they're here, we'll find them, and if they're not, Jen says she may be able to track Eric's morpher. If there's anything the rest of the team can do I'll call you back."

"All right," she said, glancing at the stove clock. She knew he was trying to subtly point her in the direction of sleep. "I'll be here if you need me."

"Love you," he answered, and she smiled.

"Love you too," she told her growlphone.

Tigger bumped her hand as she put the device back in her pocket. She smiled, rubbing her fingers over his ears and stroking his back down to his tail. "Finished your milk?" she asked, picking up his saucer and putting it in the sink. She ran some water over it to rinse it off, then glanced back at Ness.

The golden was still happily absorbed in her rawhide chew, paying no attention to Alyssa and Tigger. "Cole says hello," Alyssa told her, just to see what would happen. Ness glanced up at her without moving her head, then back to her chew just as quickly.

The sound of a click, followed by the slide of the porch door, drew her attention away from Ness. Merrick was standing in the doorway, the moonlight as his back and the lamplight spilling out of the kitchen at his feet. "Coming?" he asked someone on the porch behind him.

There was no answer. He stepped through the door without further comment, pulling it shut behind him. She couldn't see past the reflected shine on the glass, but since she'd never heard him talk to the princess that way she assumed he was talking to Moon.

Once inside he stopped, regarding her with a stony expression she hadn't seen since Zen-Aku. "Thank you," he said at last, but the words were grudging. "For letting us talk."

"You saw me," she guessed. She didn't know why she was surprised.

One shoulder twitched in a half-shrug. "Moon did."

"You're welcome," she said tentatively, studying his face. He could have ignored her as easily as thanked her, and she wasn't sure exactly what had prompted him to seek out company now.

There was silence for a moment, and it only increased her confusion. Merrick had rarely, if ever, attempted to socialize with any of them. Yet he had just put himself in a situation where not making conversation would be awkward, to say the least--and he had done it on purpose.

"Did you know she was awake?" he asked abruptly.

She shook her head. Maybe that was all he wanted, then. To know that they hadn't all been keeping the same secret, one that might have changed his life had he been privy to it. Although she had told Cole that she understood the princess' reasoning, and intellectually she did, she was grateful that she didn't have to defend it.

The mask dissolved before her eyes and he looked away before she could see what was underneath it. Staring at the night-black window beside their computer, his words had an unexpectedly bitter tinge. "She's exactly the same."

Alyssa remembered the princess exchanging secretive looks with Jen, volunteering to study with Eric, and laughing with Taylor at the skate park. "Do you really think so?"

"Do you know what she said to me tonight?" Merrick was still staring at the window. "She told me that she hopes I'll be able to forgive her for the mistakes she's made in the past."

"That... sounds like the princess," Alyssa ventured.

"Doesn't it," Merrick agreed. He didn't sound like he thought that was a good thing. "Like the rest of us haven't made mistakes we'd like to be forgiven for. It doesn't work that way."

Tigger hopped down from the counter, stalking Merrick affectionately. He had changed so much since the distrustful cat he had been when he was first abandoned, she thought distantly. If only human faith was so easily restored.

"You're angry that she didn't tell you?" Alyssa suggested carefully.

"She doesn't think it matters," Merrick told the window. "She asks forgiveness and I'm just supposed to give it, as though the last two years don't matter. As though what they meant to me doesn't matter."

When he didn't continue, she prompted, "What did they mean to you?"

He glanced back at her, holding her gaze for a long moment. "I've seen more of the world in the last two years than I'd seen in my entire life," he said at last. "More of the world than I even knew existed. And it's all... different.

"Animaria is gone," he added, expression twisting with some remembered pain. "But I come back here, and it's all... she's the same. Nothing's changed, for her. I don't think she even realizes what the world is like now."

Alyssa frowned a little. Tigger, apparently bored with being ignored, was winding his way back toward her. Ness was trying to turn the remnants of her chew over in her mouth without dropping them, alternately grimacing and yawning. And then there was Merrick, welcome but aloof, a part of them but not, as he had always been.

"It takes more than the world to change a person," she said gently, studying him. "We feel... different, in different situations. But then when we come back to something that's familiar, sometimes we realize that all those changes were just... superficial."

Merrick didn't answer.

"I'm not saying you haven't changed," she offered at last. "It's just that I think it might not be her that's stayed the same. Maybe it's just your feelings for her."

"I don't even know how I feel about her!" He ran a hand through his hair, bangs falling in his face again as soon as he let them go. "I'm not sure I ever did! I thought I loved her, back in Animaria, but--I didn't know anything back then!"

"Yes, you did," she said, trying to keep her voice calm enough to soothe. "Just because times change, it doesn't mean people have to. Things that happen out there don't change what happens in here, in our hearts. Not all by themselves. Not without us."

She saw him take a breath to answer, but she insisted, "The world doesn't change us, Merrick. We change ourselves, because we stop believing--or because we start."

He stared at her for a moment, several expressions warring for dominance on his face. "You sound like her," he said finally, as though he couldn't decide how he felt about that.

Alyssa smiled, reaching down to separate Tigger from her ankles and scoop him up off the floor. "Thank you."

There was silence for a moment, save for the sound of the black cat purring in her ear. Then, as if it had just occurred to him, Merrick asked, "What are you doing up?"

"Talking to you," she said promptly, laughing a little when he shot her a look from under his bangs. "Taylor called Cole to come to SGH a little while ago. He's there, but she's disappeared and she isn't answering her growlphone."

Merrick frowned. "The time hole?"

"They think so," Alyssa agreed. "Jen and Wes are there with him, and the Silver Guardians are searching the base. Jen's going to try to track Eric's morpher if they don't find anything."

"I should go," Merrick said, glancing over his shoulder at the door. "I was supposed to take the next shift. They'll need someone to cover if Taylor's gone."

"There are plenty of people there now," she assured him. "Cole said he'd call if there was anything we could do."

He gave her an uninterpretable look. "You want to go back to sleep?"

His eyes held a combination of challenge and invitation. It was the same look she got from Cole whenever he wasn't trying to protect her, and despite the circumstances she felt an answering thrill of excitement. They were Rangers again.

"Let's go," she said, setting Tigger back on the counter without hesitation.