"Where are we going?" Ashley asked, sighing inwardly. They'd been walking for longer than she could guess, and she'd tried very hard not to ask that question. This wasn't her territory, it didn't follow her rules, and if she didn't trust the people she was with then she might as well not have come.

But she was bored. Andros would just love that as an excuse, she thought wryly. A blown cover, a failed op, and another dead Ranger, all because she was bored. She knew as well as he would, though, that just because she played by the rules didn't mean any or all of those things wouldn't happen. So she might as well invent her own rules for a while and see if she could get some answers.

"Safehouse on the edge of town," Gabe answered, surprising her with his straightforward reply. "We're almost there."

"We've got a guy out there." Blake must have been just as bored, because he hadn't volunteered a single word since they'd gone underground. "He knows we're coming."

He glanced over his shoulder, and Ashley followed his gaze instinctively. The only thing behind them was Hunter, blast rifle still slung casually over his shoulder as he strolled along. The beam from his flashlight flickered toward them and away as Blake asked, "You want my jacket, bro?"

The only response was a snort that made Blake grin.

"Your funeral," the shorter boy said lightly.

Ashley shot a covert look back at Hunter. She had no idea what had prompted Blake to ask that: she was overheating in her own clothes, and Hunter certainly didn't look cold. She smiled to herself as she dragged her eyes back where they belonged. Quite the opposite, in fact.

She didn't even notice the ladder until Gabe had stopped beside it, flicking his flashlight off and stuffing it into a coat pocket. Blake shone his light into Gabe's path to compensate, and it didn't surprise Ashley that Gabe kept his blaster in his hand as he climbed. Light, no. Weapon, yes. They had their priorities.

He paused at the top, doing something she couldn't discern to the trapdoor above before heaving it open. Light flooded down into the darkness as Gabe slithered through the opening and his shadow disappeared. Blake was next, and Ashley finally remembered to turn off her flashlight when it was her turn to ascend. Blake took the light from her when she pulled herself out--

Into the middle of a perfectly normal looking hallway. It was a far cry from the secrecy and subterfuge surrounding the entrance at the other end, she thought. Then she heard Hunter closing the trapdoor behind him, offering a terse, "Gonna do a perimeter check," before he slunk off down the hall and disappeared.

"You can run," Blake muttered under his breath.

Ashley gave him an odd look when he didn't continue that sentence, but he just returned it with a disarming grin. "Hungry?" he asked innocently.

She was, but Gabe interrupted. "We need to check in with Cam first. He was still working on the portals when I left, but you know he'll want to hear what Ash has to say along with the rest of us."

"Can I at least ditch the sweatshirt now?" Ashley asked, only half-joking.

"Sure, yeah," Gabe said absently, leading the way down the hall in the opposite direction Hunter had gone. "We should be okay here. If Cam can't keep a little place like this secure, we're more screwed than we know."

She was happy to be free of the bulky hoodie. In concession to the temperature she pulled off her field jacket too, draping them both over one arm while she followed Gabe through an open doorway. "Who's Cam?" she wanted to know.

The room they had just entered wasn't empty, and the moment she realized that was the moment she guessed the answer to her own question. The person turning away from the clearly jury-rigged computer was Cam. He must be a contact person of some kind, maybe even one of their own if they trusted him to hold this place.

"This is Cam," Gabe said easily, confirming her suspicion. "He's in charge of the tech. Cam, Ashley. The Yellow Ranger."

"Former," Ashley corrected. Her bare wrist was obvious now, and she didn't want any of them getting the wrong impression. She represented the Rangers. She wasn't one of them, not anymore. Not when her morpher could do more good defending the Free Systems than it could out here on some crazy mission behind enemy lines.

Another crazy mission behind enemy lines. She had to stop making such a habit of this.

"Nice to meet you, Ashley." Cam rose from his chair to give her hand a perfunctory shake.

"You too," she said with a warm smile. "Does 'tech' mean what I think it means?"

"Probably." His answering smile was more reserved--just being polite, she thought. She got the feeling that she didn't really matter to him. Or maybe she mattered for what she represented, just not for who she was. She could have been anyone with the right qualifications and he would have reacted exactly the same way. The detachment was disconcerting after the close personal relations of the Free Systems' teams.

"Aren't you missing someone?" Cam was asking, gaze flicking across each of them in turn.

"Outside," Blake said briefly.

"Cam, we're gonna need to get Ashley a visual of the tech situation." Gabe swung a second chair around backwards and dropped into it, giving Cam a steady look. "She's here to help."

Cam returned the look for a long moment, then turned his appraising gaze back on her. "There's no problem with the tech," he said evenly. "The problem is launching it without it being traced, which is imperative if there's going to be more than a single strike."

"Which there has to be," Ashley agreed. "Your strength here is the territory and your ability to vanish into it quickly, right?"

Cam's expression didn't flicker, which she suspected was a good sign. He nodded once, and that encouraged her to continue. She'd read more into less, after all.

"So the best way to capitalize on that must be to increase the consequences of the battles you're already fighting." She glanced over at Gabe, quickly, but he was just watching their interaction. No matter what system they were using, Cam clearly outranked Gabe.

"You'll get the attention of the occupation pretty quick," Ashley continued. "You'll have to be able to move fast when they clamp down, and the only way that's going to happen is if every piece of tech you started with is still mobile. How are you hiding it now?"

Cam folded his arms across his chest, but he answered easily enough. "There are holographic portals on-site at about half the old academies. They're invisible before and after launch, but when they're in use there's no way to hide them or the energy they draw."

"Two options, then. Distract prying eyes or disguise whatever they're looking for," Ashley said slowly. It was abstract enough to be obvious, but she saw Cam nod again anyway. "Is there anything else that kind of energy surge could be?"

She thought she heard a grudging respect in his tone when he spoke again. "I've been working on that, actually. It's a short-term coverup... eventually someone will make the connection, no matter how innocuous the explanation."

"Eventually," Ashley repeated, eyeing him. "We both know there won't be any 'eventually' in this kind of rebellion."

"I like to cover every contingency." Cam's gaze flicked past her for a moment and his eyebrows lifted slightly. She turned her eyes toward the door and blinked, surprised to see Hunter leaning casually against the frame.

His gaze was as intent as Cam's, if focused in the opposite direction. Something wordless passed between them. She glanced around covertly, but all she saw was Blake smirking and Gabe ignoring them in favor of something on the computer.

"Fuck, Hunter," Cam said at last, breaking the momentary silence. The words startled her, but his tone was just as calm as it had been before. "Why do you bother putting on the shirt at all?"

A slow grin spread across Hunter's face. "'Cause I know you like the color," he drawled. He didn't move from what she now thought might be a deliberately provocative pose in the doorway. The stance was doubly effective in clothes that were meant to reveal more than they hid--and it was clearly for the benefit of one person in particular.

Whatever else he might be, Ashley realized, Hunter was definitely off the market.

"Time for a field trip," Gabe announced suddenly. When she glanced over at him, though, she realized he was studying the specs she wanted on Cam's monitor. She drifted closer to look over his shoulder.

"Can we actually see them?" Ashley asked, although that did seem to be what he was implying. Somehow the physical presence of the giant robotic assault vehicles was very important--to her, and to all of them too, she had no doubt.

Cam had conditions anyway. She had expected that, but she hadn't expected them to be so flippant. "Only if Hunter wears a jacket," he remarked, turning in his chair to look at the displays Gabe was scrolling through. He was so nonchalant that he might have been commenting on something else entirely.

"Why?" Hunter's voice, on the other hand, was not the slightest bit casual. "Afraid you might be distracted?"

"Afraid I might accidentally kill anyone who tried to take you up on your cover," Cam told the computer. His composure was as calm and offhanded as before, but Ashley didn't hear good-natured ribbing in his words. There was an understated seriousness there that made her glad she hadn't flirted with Hunter in Cam's presence.

"Now you know why Cam doesn't come with us on raids," Blake offered, and his tone at least was teasing. "Can keep his hands to himself--as long as everyone else does, too."

"Can we get going?" Gabe demanded. "There's a little more at stake here than whether or not Hunter gets lucky tonight."

"Tonight?" Hunter smirked at him. "Who said anything about waiting till tonight?"

Blake took one look at Gabe's irritated expression and grabbed Hunter's arm. "Time for a tactical retreat, bro," he advised. "Let's go let 'em know we're coming."

In a voice just loud enough to be heard on the other side of the room, Cam muttered, "Change your clothes before I do it for you."

Irrepressible, Hunter called back, "Promises, promises!"

"Dammit, Andros!" Zhane glared at him over the insulated mug he had just slammed down onto the table. If it hadn't had a cover, the liquid inside would be everywhere by now. "This is the worst time to consider changing the patrol rotation!"

"It's the best time," Andros countered, reaching for the mug automatically. "We have two people who need to learn to fight, and two teammates who need someone to watch their backs while they do it!"

"Teammates who aren't used to fighting with a full team anymore and don't need their experience compromised now, of all times, just so you can babysit them!" Zhane shot back.

"Backup and babysitting are not the same thing," Andros informed him.

"Yeah?" Zhane challenged. "What does TJ think about it?"

Andros opened his mouth, but before he could speak Zhane yelled over to the former Red Turbo Ranger. "TJ!" He leaned back in his chair and waved to direct attention to himself across the intervening tables. When it became clear he had interrupted a conversation, Zhane pushed himself out of his chair and started in their direction.

With a sigh, Andros shook his head and returned to his breakfast. He probably should have asked TJ himself. He wasn't used to this kind of Ranger politicking. Where he came from, the Red Ranger decided and that was the end of it. Around here, every fifth person he met was or had been a Red Ranger themselves, and he couldn't discount that kind of informed experience.

By the time Zhane came back, Andros had all but decided to abide by Zhane's wishes. If TJ didn't want their established patrol rotation disrupted, then it wouldn't be. TJ and Cassandra could handle the training of their two newest teammates, and he and Zhane would continue pulling the split shift alone.

"He agrees with you," Zhane announced, dropping into the chair he had vacated before. "Thinks it's for the best if all six of us fly out together."

Andros blinked. Glancing over in the direction Zhane had come from, he caught TJ's eye and received a thumbs up from the leader of the Earth Rangers. His mouth quirked in an ironic smile, and he got a quick nod in return. He and TJ didn't think so differently after all.

"Thanks for checking with him," Andros said, turning back to Zhane before the smile faded. "I should have thought of that."

Zhane just shrugged, the same smile flickering across his face. "That's what I'm here for."

Andros saw Zhane wince at the sound of TJ's locker slamming in the quiet prep room. Andros just continued stowing his gear, accepting that this was TJ's role when it came to the pilots for whom he was responsible. He and TJ had been supervising their own shifts for months now, and that wasn't going to change just because they were flying the same patrol again.

"There's a difference between an attack formation and convoy defense," TJ declared, his gaze locked with that of the new Black Ranger. "You were trained for both and you shouldn't have any trouble distinguishing between the two."

"Look, no offense," the man replied, in a tone that implied exactly the opposite, "but it's not the procedure I'm having trouble with. It's why you'd want to use it in the first place."

"Hey," Cassandra snapped. "Maybe you should settle in for a few days before you start rewriting the rules, okay?"

"We do what we do because it works," TJ added. "And you don't know what works until you've been out there and come back. We have, and I'd appreciate it if you'd try it our way first."

The man held up his hands in surrender--or a warding gesture, it was hard to tell. "Fine, hey, I'm not trying to start trouble. You say you know what you're doing, I believe you. I'm just telling you I'll react quicker if I anticipate you, and I can't do that until I know why you're doing what you do."

Andros saw TJ's shoulder relax a little. "Yeah," the Blue Ranger said easily. "Tell you what, join us for lunch. I'll try and go over some of the weirder stuff with you then."

"That'd be great." The man turned away, closing his own locker with some difficulty, and Andros caught Zhane's eye.

"Ready?" Andros asked. When Zhane nodded, he raised his voice to address the rest of the team. "Good job, guys. That was a tough first patrol."

"It only gets harder from here," Zhane quipped, and Andros rolled his eyes.

Zhane slapped the comm with a quick, fluid motion that belied the feel of utter relaxation beneath Andros' hands. His shoulder muscles worked quickly, guiding his arm, his hand, his fingers to the source of that annoying sound and forcing it to cease. Then his arm fell back to his side and he was all boneless calm again.

Andros had to chuckle, kneading his own fingers into either side of Zhane's spine. "JT's going to pull a visual override if you keep hanging up on him like that," he said quietly. He didn't want the interruption any more than Zhane did, but their younger friend's persistence wasn't something to be underestimated.

"JT can go to--" Zhane's mumble was cut off by a sharply indrawn breath as Andros hit a tight spot in his back. The Silver Ranger was so frustratingly graceful that the tension he carried always came as a surprise.

"Sorry," Andros murmured, gentling his touch. "You all right?"

"Mmm hmm." Zhane didn't even bother to nod. "Can't think of a better way to spend my lunch break."

"I can think of a few," Andros remarked, careful to keep a straight face.

He heard Zhane's half-hearted snicker anyway, and he knew that right now at least, Zhane hadn't said what he did lightly. He really did prefer this warm comfort to anything else, and Andros didn't blame him. Sex was easier to come by than comfort these days. He pressed his hands harder against Zhane's back, the warmth of those pliant muscles seeping into his fingers.

Andros' morpher chimed.

Andros sighed, but he gave Zhane a reproving tap on the back of the head. "See what you've done?" he chided. "Now JT's going to be mad at me."

A soft breath of laughter escaped from Zhane, who hadn't even lifted his head at the interruption of the rebuke. "It's hard to be you," he muttered mockingly.

Andros touched his morpher and lifted his left wrist. "This is Andros."

"JT," the voice replied. "Quarantine. Ranger briefing as soon as you can get here."

He was so matter-of-fact that it took a moment for the words to register. He knew he wouldn't get anything more out of the former Turbo Ranger, though, so he just asked, "Where's here?"

"Co-Op," JT answered. "War room, second level briefing. Bring Zhane."

The reader clattered to the table just before Andros' palm struck the surface beside it. "This has to be weeks old. What good does it do us to quarantine anyone now?"

"You'd rather not?" Zhane asked quietly. Pointedly.

"Where does this come from?" Jenkarta wanted to know. "How do we know that what they've heard is even close to--"

"She knows the symptoms," Saryn interrupted. Then, seeming to realize that he had violated the first principle of the UC operatives, he amended, "The person who sent this. They know what to look for."

"How many people do we have coming and going?" Zhane asked. "The border's a war zone; it's not like there are civilian transports going back and forth."

"Enough." How Saryn had time to keep up with every report that went through Co-Op Andros would never know. "The quarantine will not be sufficient to stop the spread of this epidemic."

"It'll slow it down," JT said firmly. "And maybe it will contain it some, however far it's gotten."

Saryn didn't answer, and Andros exchanged glances with Zhane. They knew they were lucky that Ashley and Carlos had gotten out the day before... they'd just better hope the two Earth Rangers didn't run into any trouble. With Eltare under lockdown, no one would be coming back to this planet for any reason.

"They haven't been able to track patient zero," JT was saying, although Andros had missed the question that prompted his response. "We may never know where it started, with the way it is out on the border right now."

"Slave traders." Saryn made the words sound like the epithet they should be. "They are notorious for allowing contagion to spread unchecked."

"It doesn't do us any good to worry about how it started," Jenkarta said with a sigh. "We're going to have to take care of our UCs." He glanced over at Andros then, adding, "Yours included. They can't come back here."

Andros just nodded. "How widespread is the quarantine? People inbound from the border must be holing up somewhere."

"Yeah, sure," JT said with a twist of his lips. "The ones who register are being diverted."

"And the ones who do not," Saryn said grimly, "are the ones who make quarantine a futile exercise."

"You're as bad as Andros," Zhane muttered. "Get over it, guys."

Saryn gave him a sharp look, but for once Zhane's criticism provoked no reply.

Andros looked up in surprise as Zhane kicked the wall behind the head of the bed. He was lying where he had fallen, stretched out on his back with his arms over his head and his feet hitting the wall when he swung them up off the floor. It was an overly dramatic sprawl, but Andros couldn't tell if he kicked the wall deliberately or by accident.

"You okay?" he asked carefully. Normally the one of the calmest people he knew, Zhane did have a destructive tendency when pushed past his limits. Being Zhane, it was usually self-destructive, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd literally beaten himself up over something.

"Hell of a day," Zhane said with a sigh.

"Yeah," Andros agreed, coming over to stand by the bed so he could stare down into his lover's eyes. "You okay?" he repeated.

At that, Zhane's lips twitched and his blue eyes met Andros' steadily. "Yeah," he echoed. "Just... a hell of a day."

"Aren't they all," Andros said, dropping down onto the bed beside him. In some ways, he almost envied Ashley and Carlos their impossible missions to a distant galaxy--at least it was some kind of break in the relentless routine. "It's not an easy life."

Zhane sighed again. "It used to be."

Andros glanced at him, reaching out instinctively to touch, to reassure himself that Zhane wasn't going anywhere. He stroked his fingers through the unkempt blonde hair, shorter now than it used to be with Ashley to cut it for him, and he wondered, not for the first time, whether Zhane regretted any of the decisions between then and now. "Do you miss it?" he asked softly.

Zhane lifted his gaze without moving his head. "Every day," he admitted. "Damn, Andros, we didn't know how good we had it back then."

"We?" Andros repeated, relieved that Zhane hadn't gone quite as far back as he'd thought.

Zhane seemed to know what he was thinking. "Don't miss the days before you," he said. "The days before the war, sure. The beach, the freedom... you in something other than a uniform," he added, lifting one hand to pick affectionately at Andros' sleeve. "Nothing else."

"We'll have that again," Andros said softly. They both knew it was a dream, that those days were gone forever--but it was an awfully good dream for all that.

"Yeah." Zhane was smiling up at him, no regret or disbelief in his expression. "That's what I'm fighting for."

Blinding light made him throw up one arm in defense, but the blaster in his other hand remained steady as it targeted the light instinctively. Anything could be behind that brilliant glow. There were no guarantees that shooting at it would help, but he was ready to take that chance.

The sound of a voice might have been more soothing if he'd recognized the language it was speaking. Carlos was pretty sure it wasn't any of the standard UAE dialects, but the voice didn't continue long enough for him to narrow it down further. "Who's there?" he called, still squinting into the harsh light.

There was a brief pause. Then an oddly accented voice spoke in his own language--a woman's voice, he thought. "Identify yourself."

"You first," Carlos retorted, squinting hard as he let his hand fall. It wasn't doing any good anyway. His blaster remained locked on to the source of the light.

"We are the Rangers of Aquitar," the voice replied. Definitely a woman's voice.

We? He wondered what exactly that meant. More than one? Less than all of them? With a sigh, he realized that it didn't really matter. They had found him, and he probably ought to thank them for it, since wandering around the totaled command center wasn't getting him anywhere.

"Well," Carlos said, pointing his blaster toward the ceiling as he thumbed the safety back on, "I guess you're who I'm looking for, then." He made himself lower his own weapon, no matter that it made his skin crawl to do so when he still couldn't see the person or people he was speaking to.

"And you are?" a new voice demanded. This one was female too... and this one he knew. He grimaced, well aware that his reaction was probably obvious to whoever was standing on the other side of that damn light.

"Carlos," he informed her. As she knew very well. "Carlos Vargas, of Earth, formerly the Black Astro Ranger for the Free Systems."

"You do not wear a morpher," she remarked. The deliberate skepticism rankled.

"What part of 'former' did you not get?" he snapped.

"Enough." The first voice spoke before she could reply, and suddenly the light was shifting. The overwhelming brilliance pooled on the ground at his feet and he could see. Really see, and it took him a moment to realize that there was light on the ceiling too. Even the walls... the walls were glowing. It was like the light had soaked into them, charging them like some kind of freaky glow-in-the-dark room while it was blinding him.

"Carlos Vargas." There were five people in front of him, and it was the woman in the middle who spoke. "You are welcome here. I am Cetaci, White Ranger of Aquitar. These are my teammates: Aura, Cestria, Delphinius, and Billy."

She indicated each with her eyes as she introduced them. He tried very hard to match name to color, since they all looked pretty much the same to him. Except for... "Billy?" Carlos repeated.

Their leader glanced sideways at the Ranger he had named, and he gave a small smile. "Billy Cranston," he said. He stepped forward to offer his hand in greeting, and Carlos shook it automatically. None of the others made any movement.

"What are you doing--" Carlos suddenly thought better of his assumption. "Are you from Earth?" he asked carefully.

"I used to be." Billy didn't look annoyed by his interest. "I came out here five and a half years ago. This has been my home ever since."

Great, Carlos thought with an inward sigh. First his double from the other dimension, and now this dimension's Billy Cranston. What was it about this planet, anyway?

"What are you doing here?" the Red Ranger demanded. She had obviously understood the question he had decided not to ask Billy, and she threw it back at him with no small amount of hostility.

"I told you," he retorted, narrowing his eyes at her. "Looking for you." His gaze flicked to the leader, and he added, "I'd like to talk to you about the war."

The White Ranger... Cetaci? Normally the Power made memorizing names a simple task, but he was feeling its lack today. Cetaci, he was pretty sure, held up her hand when her teammate tried to respond. "Aura," she snapped, when the gesture wasn't enough.

Aura subsided, but not without fixing a dark look on him that he would have loved to return. The feeling's mutual, lady, he thought. You just stay on your side of the room and I'll stay on mine, and we'll all be happier.

"We're aware that you've come to ask something of us in this war," Cetaci was saying. "Our participation, most likely, and I will tell you one thing right now. The chances that the people of this planet will choose to return to war are remote."

She studied him for a moment, and no matter how much he wanted to argue he had a feeling she wasn't finished. So he just watched her, the way she was watching him, and finally she nodded almost imperceptibly. "However, the Rangers--" and he didn't miss the slight emphasis she put on the word, "will listen to what you have to say."

Had she just made a distinction between the Rangers and the rest of the people of Aquitar, Carlos wondered? And if she had, what did that mean? He raked his gaze over the rest of her team briefly, but there was no help there. Only Aura's expression was even readable, and what he read there certainly wasn't helpful.

"Let us proceed to the surface," Cetaci suggested. "You will be more comfortable there, I think."

He raised an eyebrow, but decided it would be impolite to refuse the courtesy. And if it meant getting out of this spooky command center, he was all for it. If nothing else, though, he was curious about their apparent nonchalance at his presence. Weren't they the least bit worried that a total stranger had teleported onto their supposedly hidden planet?

"So," Carlos began, following behind Cetaci and her Black Ranger while he took note of the other three falling into position behind him. "You don't seem very surprised to see me."

"We expected that someone from Eltare would come." Cetaci's voice drifted back to him, echoing oddly in the empty corridors. With only one light in front of him and another having appeared behind, he was glad the halls seemed to glow so easily. "We did not know that it would be you, but it was not... improbable."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked suspiciously.

"The Ranger who visited us before," Cetaci replied. "Your counterpart from another dimension, or so he told us." Before Carlos could agree, she continued, "He did us a great service--and created a debt that has yet to be paid. In your place, I would seek restitution for such a debt."

Carlos frowned at her back, uncomfortable with her emotionless recital of the facts. Uncomfortable, maybe, that she had seen through him so easily. "I was talking about how I got here," he muttered. "Not why."

"You enlisted the assistance of our counterparts in the other dimension, did you not?" Again, Cetaci didn't really seem to expect a reply. "It is what I would have done, faced with a similar scenario."

Charming. So she was a mindreader now, too? Partly to contradict her, and partly for the benefit of the Red Ranger behind him, Carlos declared, "If it was up to me, I wouldn't be here at all."

"No," Cetaci agreed, surprising him with the subtle amusement he heard in her voice. "That would have been your team leader's decision. Does Andros of KO-35 still lead the Astro Rangers?"

He gaped at her. She just continued walking, and he almost forgot to follow as she turned the corner ahead of him. "How do you know that?" Carlos demanded. His stride faltered again as he came around the corner, and finally he gave in to the temptation to just stop and stare.

They were inside an underwater dome. He hadn't been completely convinced until this moment, when he was confronted by the edge of that dome and everything that lay beyond it. Clusters of other domes, some of them lit, most of them not, rose out of the shadowed depths around them in every direction. He had no way of knowing whether what he was seeing was normal or not, but Cetaci's expression when he glanced over at her wasn't proud.

She, too, was gazing through the transparent wall at the city beyond. "What I don't know almost enslaved this planet," Cetaci said quietly. "I will not make that mistake again."

He saw one of the other Rangers shift, frowning in her direction. The Black Ranger. Maybe it was his silent reaction, maybe something else, but something prompted Carlos to reply. "You did a better job than we did," he muttered. It sounded more bitter than he had meant it to.

There was silence for a moment.

"We would not have succeeded," Cetaci said at last. "We made our stand where you did not and it was not enough." He could feel her watching him. "In the end, we ran too."

That was a disturbing thought, and not just because he didn't like to think of it as "running." Instead of protesting, though, he pointed out the only difference that mattered. "You took your people with you when you did it."

"Yes," Cetaci agreed calmly. "We took them with us. Because you made it possible."

Carlos gave her a startled look before he realized that she must be talking about his counterpart from the other dimension. "You mean the other me," he blurted. "From Justin's dimension."

He saw the Red Ranger walk away, stepping up to the side of the dome and putting an appreciable distance between herself and her teammates. Between herself and him. He ignored her as much as he could.

"We are the same people in different circumstances," Cetaci said calmly. "You are correct, however. I refer to a Ranger Carlos who visited us from a dimension already on the victorious side of this war."

"He helped make your planet invisible to the rest of the universe," Carlos guessed, studying her intently. They hadn't been able to draw a lot of conclusions about what had happened to Aquitar, but most of the ones they had reached involved his counterpart in some way.

Cetaci returned his stare with one of her own, but it was an even gaze that didn't flinch from his curiosity or his confusion. "He saved my life."

Carlos blinked. "I... didn't know that."

"Aquitar isn't invisible," Cetaci said abruptly. "It is simply shifted in a way that makes it more difficult to detect with traditional scanners. Cestria made this possible." She glanced at one of her teammates, and there must have been something in that silent communication that asked the Yellow Ranger to continue.

"As Keeper of the Falls, I thought I could protect the planet in this way by myself." The Ranger who spoke had a quiet voice, young and almost delicate. Strange choice for a fighter, Carlos thought.

"I did not have all the information," the girl added. "Cetaci retrieved the records we needed and was almost captured for her effort."

"They weren't trying to capture me," Cetaci interrupted. "I would have been dead had the other Carlos not arrived when he did. He saved my life," she repeated, "and with it, the information I carried. This is what allowed our planet to remove itself from occupied territory."

Carlos waited to see if there was more, but neither of them seemed inclined to keep speaking. "Sounds like he did you a pretty big favor," he offered cautiously.

Cetaci's expression didn't change. She nodded once, and her gaze shifted to the edge of the transparent dome in front of them. "Our entire world owes a Ranger of Earth," she agreed. "There may be nothing we can do for him. But..." She looked at him again. "If there is something we can do for his planet, the Rangers of Aquitar will not dismiss our debt so lightly."

"You see the problem."

Cam's face filled the screen to her left, although he wasn't looking at her. He seemed to have an aversion to actually meeting anyone's gaze for more than a few seconds at a time--except when it came to Hunter. She glanced at the gunner behind her, lounging casually against the bulkhead at the back of the cockpit. He looked unconcerned to the point of boredom, but she was perfectly aware of what was happening.

She was in one of the robotic assault vehicles, and Cam was in another. They were talking via comm, no doubt because Cam was too important a person to be left alone with a relative stranger. Instead, Hunter was the one squeezed into the tiny space with her. Not because he had any knowledge of the systems or their deployment, but because he had a weapon that he hadn't put down since she'd met him.

Ashley was under guard and she knew it. She didn't hold it against them, either. She didn't have a morpher, after all, and it was only her word and Gabe's memory that she was who she said she was. And the more she realized the extent of Cam's familiarity with these systems, the more she understood their desire to protect him. His relationship with Hunter wasn't the only reason he didn't go on raids.

"Yeah," she said aloud, responding to the statement that had taken her comprehension for granted. "I see it." Gabe might have called them "robotic assault vehicles," but these were more than just enhanced military weaponry. These were zords.

"These were designed to work with morphers," Ashley said aloud, just for the sake of confirming her suspicion.

"Not just morphers," Cam's voice replied. "Ninja morphers. The pilots are going to have to have some sort of elemental affinity, or these systems will fight every command they give."

That was a bigger problem than she'd expected. "Where are those morphers?" Ashley asked carefully.

"Some of them were never constructed," Cam answered, still not looking up. She couldn't imagine what he was doing to the controls that could take that much of his attention. "Some of them were lost in the invasion."

Cam's hands stilled on the console in front of him and he lifted his gaze to the screen at last. "I have three of them," he told her, after a long moment. "Leanne has three more. That's all that's left."

Ashley heard Hunter shift behind her. Somehow she knew Cam wasn't supposed to tell her that... or at least that Hunter hadn't expected him to. Interesting. Maybe he trusted her more than she'd thought. Or maybe he was that confident in their ability to stop her from leaking information they wanted to keep to themselves.

"You're not here to free Earth, are you," Cam remarked, so conversationally that she almost missed the significance of his words. As it was, she could only stare at him in surprise.

"There's no reason for you to come now," he continued. "No reason that I can see, at least, and since you're not talking about bringing in a fleet of reinforcements I assume you're counting on us to do most of the liberating ourselves. So why try to rally us now? Why bother trying to rush what would have happened eventually, with or without you?"

"There's no eventually in this war," Ashley reminded him, stung by his lack of faith in a team of Rangers that hadn't wanted to turn tail and run. They had always meant to come back. "There's more going on in the universe than you know, and believe me, you have a better chance with us than without us."

"I know we do." He looked disturbingly bitter about it. "I know we have no real choice but to accept your help and probably your leadership. But I also know we're not your real goal here, and if I'm going to be used as a pawn in someone else's game then I'd at least like to know what game it is."

Ashley didn't have to look over her shoulder to know that Hunter was staring at her just as hard as Cam was. "That's fair," she said evenly, well aware that any other answer would get her nowhere. And it was fair, after all. If they were going to fight on her say-so, they deserved to know why.

How best to summarize the situation? "The Free Systems are trying to form an alliance with a mutinous faction within Dark Spectre's army," she said at last. "To make ourselves less vulnerable, we need a distraction. Earth is it."

Cam leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, still staring at the screen. Why had she ever thought he didn't like to look people in the eye? "Does it matter to you whether we succeed?" he asked bluntly.

"Of course it matters," Ashley snapped. "This is our home too!"

"This is your home," Cam corrected. "I have no way of knowing who's calling the shots back in the Free Systems, or wherever you came from."

She opened her mouth, then stopped. He hadn't thrown their leaving in her face again, and that was something. And if it came down to technicalities, he was right. This was her idea, but it had been Andros' support that got it an audience. Her team leader wasn't even from this galaxy, and she probably would have questioned Andros' motivation too if her place and Cam's had been reversed.

"Yes," she said after a moment. She owed them the most impartial answer she could give. "It matters to the Free Systems. The more successful the rebellion, the worse off Dark Spectre is and the better our position becomes. A short, brutal struggle won't have much of an effect. It's in the Free Systems' best interests to make the resistance as effective as possible when it takes on the bad guys."

"You say that," Cam observed, "as though it's just a matter of how long. Like you take the outcome for granted."

Ashley almost smiled. She did take the outcome for granted--but it probably wasn't the outcome he was thinking of. Andros was contagious. "I didn't come here to fight," Ashley said fiercely. "I came here to win."

Cam's stare didn't abate, and from over her shoulder she heard Hunter drawl, "You gonna be piloting one of these zords, then?"

She kept her gaze on the screen displaying Cam's cockpit. "If you'll let me," she agreed.

Cam nodded once. Apparently she had passed some sort of test, because his next question was marginally friendlier. "Anything else you want to see from the inside?" he asked, sitting forward in his chair.

Ashley glanced around the cockpit, recognizing a dismissal when she heard one. "I'd really like to see them in action," she admitted. "They must be amazing. But I guess that'll have to wait."

She heard Hunter snort at her observation of the obvious, but Cam actually looked sort of... proud? Of course, she realized belatedly. He was in charge of these vehicles. Any compliments to them were, indirectly, compliments to him. She'd better remember that it probably worked the other way, too.

"You'll see them," Cam promised. "I think you'll find the ninja resistance can be a pretty impressive distraction."

"No doubt," Ashley said with a small smile.

Cam was getting up, doing things around the interior of the cockpit that temporarily blocked the screen she was watching. Shutdown procedures, she guessed, when the light behind him dimmed slightly. "I'll meet you outside," he told the screen. It went dark a moment later.

He wasn't one for long explanations, she noted with amusement. And he certainly didn't go in for much in the way of social courtesy. He asked what he wanted to know without reservation, and he told her what he thought of her answers. He reminded her a little bit of Jenkarta.

Future Red Ranger, she thought, smirking to herself.

"You ready?" Hunter asked gruffly.

"Yeah." Cam had shut down her zord the same way he had powered it up--remotely--so Ashley pushed herself up out of her chair and turned to follow Hunter up and out of the cockpit. How he climbed without that rifle getting in the way was a mystery to her, but she suspected he wouldn't appreciate her asking.

Cam was waiting for them on the floor outside. Instead of ushering her back the way they'd come, he gave her a considering look. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," she said immediately, and his eyes flicked to her wrist. The device Gabe had given her was still there. She assumed it allowed her to teleport with them, and its presence seemed to satisfy Cam.

"We'll head back to town," he said, his gaze sliding over her to Hunter. "Is Leanne going to be at the club tonight?"

"Blake's contacted her by now," Hunter answered. "She'll be there."

"Then so will we." Cam's gaze lingered on him for a moment, and finally he said, "You can't go in there looking like that."

She glanced back at Hunter automatically, but he was smirking at Cam. "You're awfully determined to get me out of these clothes. You think anything I'm gonna wear to the club will be better?"

Cam didn't deign to answer. Instead he just gestured to Ashley, almost politely she thought, to precede them toward the same door they'd entered through. He fell into step beside her, Hunter shadowing them out into the labyrinthine tunnels. They reached the surface with a minimum of conversation, and the teleport was a little bit less disconcerting this time.

Hunter wasn't with them when they arrived at the safehouse. Ashley looked around, a little surprised, as Cam bent over the nearest keyboard. "What did I do to convince you I'm trustworthy enough to lose the guard?" she wanted to know.

Cam didn't so much as glance in her direction, giving his full attention to the monitor in front of him. "You told me the truth."

Well, that was fair. She waited while he did whatever he did, acutely aware that she was dependent on him and the rest of the resistance for... well, everything. This might be her planet, but it wasn't the same world she'd left behind three years ago. On her own, she'd get nowhere--if she was lucky. More likely she'd get herself captured, enslaved, or killed faster than she could figure out what was happening.

She realized suddenly that Cam was watching her. He must have seen some of what she was thinking in her face. "Come on," he said, gesturing for her to follow him out of the room. "We have stuff you can wear, and as soon as you change we'll get something to eat. Hunter'll make sure Gabe knows where we're going."

If he didn't sound exactly sympathetic, at least he sounded less curt. She didn't question the clothes, their destination, or the wrist device that he told her to lose if she got separated from the rest of them. "I'll get you something more subtle tonight," he told her. "In the meantime, there's a symbol on the back of that that'll get you into trouble if the wrong people see it."

By the time they arrived at "the club," Ashley was more than ready to see a familiar face. She almost didn't recognize Gabe, buried in the shadows at the back of the same bar they'd taken refuge in earlier that day. He and Blake were huddled together over a table big enough for more, but she didn't imagine they were having any trouble keeping it. Even dressed in more respectable clothes and without a weapon in sight, the two of them made a dangerous looking combination.

Cam slid into the booth next to Blake without waiting for either of them to acknowledge him. Ashley followed his example, taking the spot next to Gabe. "Hey," he greeted her, and she saw Blake nod across the table.

"Nice place," she said noncommittally.

"One of the safest public places there is," Blake answered, keeping his voice low but offering her a smile. "Sorry we didn't get a chance to be properly introduced before. I'm Blake Bradley." He held his hand out over the table, and she took it with something like relief. It wasn't the Dark Fortress all over again; these were real people, here. Her people.

"Ashley Hammond," she replied, smiling back at him. "It's been a while since I was here. I wish it hadn't changed so much."

"I hear that," Blake agreed. "No worries, though. You wouldn't be here if you thought it was hopeless; am I right?"

He had an unforced charm that put her as much at ease as she could be in a foreign environment surrounded by near-strangers. "You're right," she confirmed, keeping an eye on the rest of the table for signs of doubt.

"This is Cam," Gabe put in, nudging her shoulder and pointing at the guy across from her. "He's only quiet because he doesn't have Hunter here to egg him on."

Cam gave Carlos' brother a dirty look for that, but he extended his hand to her as Blake had done an introduced himself. "Cameron Watanabe," he elaborated. "Contrary to what they would have you believe, I do care about things other than Hunter Bradley."

"Sure you do." Hunter's voice penetrated the surrounding noise, and he seemed to appear out of thin air beside their table. "Just not as much. Beer?"

Ashley's eyes widened as she took in Hunter's appearance. He had made good on his threat to find clothes that concealed no more than his shredded outfit had, albeit without the holes, and she might easily have taken him for part of the entertainment if she didn't know better. Cam took the bottle Hunter offered without batting an eye, sliding over to make room as the blonde squeezed into the booth beside him.

"Nice to meet you," Ashley told Cam, her gaze darting back to Hunter as he deposited the rest of the bottles in the middle of the table and started pushing them around. One for each of them, plus an extra that she could only assume was for the as yet unseen Leanne. "Underage drinking is a thing of the past, huh?"

"Yeah," Hunter replied, "in the sense that no one is underage anymore. You're old enough to work, you're old enough to drink. I'm Hunter Bradley, by the way. If you didn't get that from Cam's introduction."

This time, the last name clicked, and she shot Blake a sideways look.

"Yeah, we're brothers," Blake said, wrapping his fingers around the bottle in front of him but making no move to drink. More for appearances than for consumption, she wondered?

"Lots of us have relatives in the resistance," Gabe put in. "Being a ninja tends to run in the family."

"Speaking of," Hunter added, tipping the top of his bottle slightly to point. He wasn't drinking either, Ashley noticed.

A woman with shockingly red hair and clothes as dangerous as Hunter's appeared out of the crowd, though Ashley wasn't sure she was aiming for them until the moment she slid into the booth with them. Tilting her head so that her hair curtained her face to the outside world, the woman smiled around the table at each of them, her eyes resting on Ashley a fraction longer than the rest of them. Ashley couldn't imagine that a woman like this could ever avoid drawing attention to herself.

"Good evening," the woman said calmly, reaching for a beer before tossing her hair back over her shoulder and scanning the club as thoroughly as she had assessed them. "Have you ordered yet?"

"We were waiting for you," Blake informed her. "And it's good to see you too, sis."

She heard the emphasis just as Ashley did, turning back to give him an odd look before shifting her gaze to Ashley. "They've been telling you stories, haven't they," she said, another smile softening her stare. A slight accent made her words sound all the more polished. "Never judge a person by the words of their younger brothers."

"They haven't told me a thing," Ashley promised, amused by the suspicious look the other woman gave first to Blake and then to Hunter. "Just that you were coming--you're Leanne, right? I'm Ashley."

"Leanne Omino," the woman confirmed, taking the hand Ashley offered in greeting. "Nice to meet you, Ashley. I won't lie and say it's not reassuring to have someone from the old guard back in town."

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved to find a new guard," Ashley answered, trusting her to understand. "I hope we'll be able to work together."

Leanne just nodded in reply. Everything they didn't know about each other was in her wariness. And every hope they had was in her smile--still ready, even for a stranger, after all this time.