"Could you hold this?"

TJ took the instrument automatically, returning the Pink Ranger's smile with what he suspected was a slightly bewildered look of his own. It didn't help that just as he was getting used to being around his *own* planet's Rangers, an entirely new team had been teleported into the Medical bay with no word of explanation or introduction.

"Thanks, TJ," Laura said, her smile turning sympathetic as she glanced away. He doubted she was oblivious to his confusion, but that didn't change the fact that she knew what was going on and he didn't. The best he could do was to try and stay out of the way.

"Would you hold still?" Ashley's irritated tone caught his attention, and he looked over at the second patient bed. Andros was fidgeting, clearly not in the mood to let anyone treat his injuries, let alone a girl that he didn't seem particularly comfortable around at the moment.

"How's Zhane?" he asked Laura instead, and Ashley rolled her eyes as he tried to lean around her and see.

Reaching out, she took his face in her hands and turned him back toward her. "Don't *move*," she said firmly. "Honestly, Andros, I've never met someone so impossible to take care of!"

"I have," one of the other Rangers put in. The boy tending to Kerone's wound exchanged wry glances with Ashley, and Andros' sister shifted impatiently.

"Zhane's going to be okay," Laura put in at last, holding out her hand to TJ again. This time it was empty, and he guessed that she wanted whatever she had given him a moment before. He put it in her hand and she shot him quick smile before turning back to Zhane. "Although I daresay he won't feel like it for a day or two."

Zhane groaned in agreement from the patient bed. "Got that right," he muttered hoarsely. "Thanks anyway."

"You're welcome," Laura answered, inspecting the instrument TJ had just given her. "Rill? How's your teammate?"

One of the Kerovan Rangers looked up from the other side of the room. "Which one?" she asked dryly, glancing around the Medical bay.

Laura laughed, and the cheerful sound made TJ realize how solemn the atmosphere had been. "I've already decided that the other three are going to survive, so how's Leigh?"

TJ couldn't help wishing that he remembered names as easily as Laura seemed to. Maybe it was a trick of the Power. Or maybe Rangers were required to memorize each other's team rosters, he didn't know. Either way, it was a handy thing to be able to do among near-strangers.

"I'll make it," the girl on the patient bed put in. She pushed herself up on her elbows and turned to catch Laura's eye. "Thanks mostly to your regen equipment, I think. Thank you."

"Our facilities are yours," Laura replied. "What's left of them, anyway," she added, and her tone was humorous rather than bitter.

The other girl smiled too. "You're in better shape than the Megaship, at least."

TJ wondered that they took the destruction around them so lightly. No matter what he had told Carlos, "a little freaked out" didn't begin to cover his reaction to the fighting, and he had been appalled at the damage to the Power Chamber alone. The thought that they might have seen worse wasn't exactly comforting.

"Hey, Matt," Laura said suddenly. She had lifted her wrist to speak to her communicator. The Rangers' informality continued to surprise TJ. "I think we're all stable down here. What about you?"

"No change," the Red Ranger's voice replied. "Justin's trying to get the generator back online right now. I went up to check out the solar array, but it's shot to hell. We're going to be in the dark a while longer."

TJ glanced covertly around the well-lit Medical bay, remembering Carlos saying something about independent power. The words "solar array" jogged something else in his memory, and he glanced down at his watch. *4:52... in the *morning*?* The sun was already up--it was tomorrow. And his parents were probably worried sick.

"Need any help?" Laura was asking.

There was the briefest hesitation. "I think we've got control covered, but the zord bay is a mess. We could use as many extra hands as you've got out there."

Laura smiled, apparently to herself. "I've got a few people who are just itching for something to do. Ashley and I will take some flashlights and anyone who wants to come with us."

"I don't want anyone working who shouldn't be," Matt's voice warned.

"Neither do I," Laura said calmly. "Some of them are hard enough to deal with as it is." TJ saw Andros shoot an irritated look in her direction, but she pretended not to notice.

"NASADA," Ashley reminded her quietly.

"Right--Matt, when the comm's back, can you contact NASADA for us? If they could get some people on the Megaship until we can go back for it, that would be great."

"Saryn mentioned that," Matt agreed. "If we don't get generator power back by six, he's going to let us use the Delta Sun's comm system."

"Good; thanks," Laura said, catching Ashley's eye. "We'll go see what we can do with the zord bay."

***

It wasn't the blackness of oblivion, as he had first thought. He had assumed that as the darkness obscured his vision he was losing consciousness. Yet it didn't take long to realize that he was still aware, and the longer he concentrated on the fact the more he realized that the darkness wasn't complete.

*Flashlights?* he thought, a little dazedly. That was just--funny.

"Carlos?" That was definitely a voice he should know, and he squinted up into the dimness, trying to get his eyes to help him identify... Matt?

"Yeah," Matt answered, and he realized he'd spoken aloud. "Are you all right, man? What happened?"

He was lying on the floor. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, exercising his recently rediscovered vision. The Power Chamber was dark, but not as dark as he'd left it. Flashlights had been strategically located, and a sliver of natural lighting cast dim shadows on the other side of the time warp. The improvement only seemed dim by comparison to the desert's brightness.

"Whoa," he muttered, seeing the Aquitian Rangers stir. *Aquitian...* He sat up abruptly, looking for Aura without conscious thought. She was alien again... and yet, somehow less so than before. She looked oddly familiar, especially when she lifted her head and her light eyes caught his. Those grey eyes--almost silver, really--were exactly the same.

"Carlos?" Matt asked again.

He stared at her a moment longer, until one of her teammates offered her a hand up and she looked away. "Yeah," he said at last. He stood up himself, watching Aura's team huddle instinctively, brushing themselves off and trying to figure out what had happened. "I'm cool," he said, turning to Matt. "But don't ask me what happened, because I don't have the faintest idea."

"You've been unconscious for hours," Matt told him. "TJ says Cestria demorphed before she passed out. That's the sum total of what we know at this point."

Carlos hesitated. "That's almost as much as I know," he admitted. "Delphinius, Aura, and Billy demorphed unintentionally. I pulled out my key to see if *I* could morph, and somehow I dropped it. The next thing I knew we were in the morphin grid, and I guess we were there until we woke up here a few minutes ago."

"The morphin grid?" Matt repeated. To his credit, there was no skepticism in his tone, only an invitation to supply more information.

"That's what Aura and Delphinius told me." He glanced over at the Aquitians again. Delphinius' left hand was raised, pressed against his leader's right, and both their eyes were closed. The others seemed to be watching, waiting for... something. Carlos wasn't going to ask.

"I guess it's a source of Power," he told Matt, trying to ignore the other team. As his eyes adjusted to the room's lighting, he saw Justin listening avidly from the same place Billy had been working earlier. Timmin was with the Blue Turbo Ranger, and Carlos thought he could account for most of the other Elisians in the dim command center as well. "I don't really understand it," he added, "but it was like--it was like being here, only things happened when you... thought about them."

"The grid responds to need," Justin put in, and Carlos tried not to start at the echo of Aura's words. "I read that somewhere. I've heard about people who've been inside it, but none of them can agree on how to describe it. It's like everyone sees something different."

"Everyone does," Carlos said, glancing over at the Aquitians again. "At least, I think they do. I thought we were in the desert, but Delphinius sounded like he thought we were on Aquitar. And everything kept changing--one minute it looked like one thing, and the next something totally new would appear out of nowhere."

"And you have no idea why you were there?" Matt was frowning, as though he took the uncertainty as a personal affront. Being Matt, it was possible that he did.

"I don't even know why we're *back*, let alone why we were there." Carlos couldn't help staring at the flicker of sunlight on the opposite wall. "Hours, huh? What time is it?"

"After five," Matt answered, following his gaze.

Carlos felt the day trying to shift on him, and he gave Matt a quick look. "In the morning... right?"

Matt grinned suddenly, sympathy chasing the frown off of his face. "Yeah. In the morning. We tracked down the Megaship about an hour ago," he added. "She's not spaceworthy, but no one suffered any permanent injuries. Ashley's working out in the zord bay right now, if you want to see for yourself."

Carlos shifted uncomfortably, disturbed that he hadn't thought to ask that first. "I'm sure she doesn't need me getting in her way," he muttered at last. He tried to ignore Matt's surprised look. "Thanks for letting me know."

"Matt!" The voice was as unfamiliar as it was exasperated, and it took Carlos a moment to identify its source.

A blonde-haired girl slid out from underneath what had been the comm console, and Carlos' mind obediently supplied the name "Jenna". "Has it occurred to you that updating this archaic system you're running might solve at least half your comm problems?" she asked, pushing her flyaway hair impatiently out of her face. "I don't mean to offend you, but Elisia gets hand-me-down equipment and even we're more modern than this!"

Carlos tried not to bristle, but Matt didn't even acknowledge it as an insult. "Sorry," he said wryly. "We use what's available."

"Modern comm equipment is just as vulnerable to attack," Saryn pointed out mildly. Across the room, he and one of his teammates were doing work that Carlos couldn't quite distinguish.

Jenna frowned over at him. "At least it's easier to repair!"

"You might as well go help her, Saryn." The girl Saryn was working with looked around him to grin at Jenna. "You know she's sabotaging the repairs on purpose so that we won't be able to contact Eltare."

"Shut up, Kris," Jenna retorted, a smile threatening to break through her irritation. "There's no way we're going to make those trade talks and you know it."

"And I can see you holding back tears of sadness."

"You look pretty upset yourself," Jenna told her. "Saryn, make us all happy and tell us the Eltarans will have to wait this year."

"Our delay is justified," Saryn agreed, looking up from the console as though he had been paying only the smallest amount of attention. "I will advise Tobin of the situation."

"No, stay," Cassie said, as he went to abandon his work. "I'll do it. Me and Lyris are just holding flashlights anyway." She passed her flashlight to the Blue Elisian Ranger, and Saryn favored her with a smile.

Carlos watched her vanish into the white glow of teleportation, and he couldn't help asking, "Does she have that kind of authority?" It probably wasn't the most politic thing he could have said, and he saw Matt glance his way as soon as he said it. But she wasn't even a Ranger, and Dimitria had always been pretty strict about who was and was not allowed to use Ranger equipment.

Even more interesting, though, was the response. Saryn said "yes" just as Jenna said "no", and Carlos didn't miss the annoyed look that Jenna's leader gave her for that. "Technically, no," Jenna insisted, looking more amused than anything.

"She's bonded to the leader of the Elisian Rangers," Lyris put in dryly. Carlos got the feeling that the Blue Ranger could say anything he wanted to, and he knew it. "That gives her all the authority she needs."

He could only assume that bonding was the Elisian equivalent of marriage. Curiosity piqued, he asked, "Is it always like that?"

"No!" Timmin's exclamation was immediate, and he gave Saryn a mock-frown. Only when Kris stuck her tongue out at him in return did Carlos realize that his remark had been directed at her instead of Saryn.

"Saryn makes it like that," Lyris told him with a conspiratorial grin. "If you want to keep the peace, you listen to Cassie the way you'd listen to Saryn."

"Would that it were that simple on our team," Aura murmured from somewhere nearby. Her eyes danced as he turned to look at her in surprise, and he was almost sure he heard Billy laugh aloud.

Not absolutely sure, though, because suddenly he was struck with the same sense of familiarity that he'd felt on seeing her a few minutes ago. Only this time he recognized it--recognized *her*, as the honest-to-goodness same person he'd met in the grid. How could he not have seen it before? Her voice, her confidence, her unashamed wry humor... somehow, the human Aura and the Aquitian Aura melded into one in that brief moment.

That was when he knew he was in trouble.

She must have seen something in his gaze--how could she not, with the way he was staring at her? She tilted her head as if to ask what he was thinking, and the fact that he knew that was what she meant only made him more uncertain. In the unsteady illumination of the Power Chamber, she was suddenly every bit as beautiful as she had been under the harsh desert sun... and he had no idea what to think.

He took a step back, vaguely aware that the conversation had continued around him. He thought Aura's comment might have provoked a response from Cetaci, and Saryn too seemed less than comfortable with his team's teasing. But all he could think about right now was the need to get away before some even more disastrous realization struck, and he heard himself mutter something about going to check on Ashley after all.

The emerald curtain fell across his vision before anyone could question him, and he clenched his fists as the teleportation stream released him just inside the zord bay. Something soft dug into his palm and he glanced down, feeling reality twist around him once more.

Aura's bandanna was still wrapped tightly around his right hand. How could he not have noticed it before? How could it be there at all? *The grid wasn't real!* "It doesn't mean anything!" Aura had insisted.

*But it means something to me,* he repeated silently, staring down at his hand. Flexing his fingers again, he watched the red fabric wrinkle and stretch. "Do I fight this?" he whispered to himself. With a sigh, he answered his own question. "How can I?"

And yet... he lifted his gaze to the top of the cavernous zord bay, not really expecting to find answers there. All he had were more questions. "How can I *not*?" he asked the ruined bay helplessly.