"I can't believe that they're all going to meet up—with past rangers—and we're stuck here in a hotel!" Conner cried. He threw his hands into the air and dropped back onto the bed with a heavy sigh. He fell so fast that the bed springs bounced back, threatening to drop him to the floor. It'd be just his luck. "Why does life hate me so much? Why don't we get to do anything cool?"

"You could always do your homework," Ethan commented from the other side of the hotel room. He peered at Conner over his shoulder and added, "Dr. O was already getting on your about it on the way up. Don't you even want to try getting started?"

Conner turned and glared at him. "Does it look like I even want to think about homework right now?"

"You don't even seem to think about anything on a good day," Ethan shot back. He shook his head, turning his attention back to his own homework. "It makes me wonder how you managed to tie your shoes in the morning." He looked over at Conner then made a show of leaning back in his seat to look at Conner's shoes. "I mean, you do have laces, right? You're not wearing Velcro."

"There's nothing wrong with Velcro!" Conner shook his head. "Not that there's anything wrong with people wearing Velcro shoes, it's just not cool for someone like me to wear it." He sat up, pressing his hands into the mattress behind him as he did so. "Anyway, man, I can't believe we're in the home of where the first Power Rangers started, and you're just sitting there doing your homework!"

"We're going to meet them tomorrow, dude," Ethan reminded him. "It's just one more day. I think you can wait. You waited longer for Alien Slime Attack to come out in theaters." He shook his head. "And it wasn't even that good of a movie."

"Yeah, you got me there," Conner agreed. He took in a deep breath and continued to stare at the ceiling. For the next few minutes, he stared at the ceiling, counting as many of the little 'popcorn dots' that seemed to have been haphazardly placed. Why did anyone think that was a good idea, anyway? He asked himself. After a few more moments of silence, his mind quickly shuttled over to the rest of the ranger team.

Trent was probably sitting in his room. (That he was lucky to get by himself—Dr. O had quickly explained he was going to have his own room as a chaperone and Trent needed his privacy to handle with Lupus). And Kira had probably met up with Bailey by that point. If Bailey hadn't found a way to sneak to the bar and hang out with her former friends. Conner sighed. "What do you think the girls are doing right now?"

"Okay!" Ethan slapped his hands down onto his notebook. "Clearly you're not going to leave me alone! I'll just finish my homework later."

"You're such a computer geek, I'm surprised you didn't have it done before now," Conner pointed out.

"I would've if you hadn't been bugging me so much," Ethan mumbled under his breath.

Conner ignored his comment. Instead, he bounced up from his bed, glad that he'd been able to convert someone into wanting to hang out with him, rather than doing everything they were always told to do. He rubbed his hands together. "Alright, what are we going to do first?"

''First, I think we should get the girls and Trent," Ethan remarked. "Otherwise, I won't have as many people on my side when I try to tell Dr. O that none of this was my idea and that I was just an innocent bystander."

"Yeah, yeah." Conner waved his hand. He picked up the key to the hotel room and left along with Ethan. He walked to the girls' room and knocked on the door. "There's more than enough time for you to come up with an excuse as to why you're the one who shouldn't be blamed for everything that happened. Blah, blah, blah. You really have to learn how to live on the wild side."

"I think being a ranger already takes care of that part of my life, okay," Conner replied. "And you haven't lived until you've been a part of a LAN party."

"I'll take your word for it." Conner looked back at the door and knocked again. "What's taking the girls so long to answer the door?" He kept knocking until it opened but didn't stop in enough time—making him drum his knuckles on Kira's forehead.

"Ow!" Kira reached up and rubbed the middle of her forehead. "Watch it, Conner!"

"I think he was, mate," Bailey remarked, coming up behind her. "He just never knows when to stop." She chuckled to herself, watching the sheepish smile that spread across Conner's face. "So, it took you lot less time than I thought to come to our room."

"Yeah, to what do we owe this pleasure?" Kira grumbled. She removed her hand from her forehead, the spot in the middle of her eyebrows continuing to redden as the seconds passed. "I was in the middle of a good writing flow."

"Yeah, so, we were thinking of doing something more fun than that," Conner replied.

Kira looked at him skeptically, then leaned over to look at Ethan, over Conner's shoulder. "I promise it's nothing illegal or stupid. Or else I wouldn't be standing at your door like this." He folded his arms. "I wanted to be doing my homework."

"No offense, mate, but you need to sort out your priorities in life," Bailey commented with a half-smile. "Because the slippery slope that's pointing you into seclusion and more power than you can handle is coming up a bit faster than I'd like to see."

"Hey, if it worked for Billy Gates, it can work for me," Ethan replied with a laugh.

"Okay, okay, and where were you planning on going with this little field trip?" Kira asked. She folded her arms over her chest, looking back and forth between her friends and teammates. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're a bit too young for the night life out here."

"Nothing a fake ID couldn't handle," Conner replied. He looked around when he noticed all eyes turned his way. "What? It's not like we couldn't figure out how to get one!" He pointed over his shoulder with this thumb. "and there's the fact that we have the resident artist with us. I'm sure Trent would—"

"—Not," Kira interrupted. "Trent would not go for making fake IDs for us."

"Also, Angel Grove is too…'nice' for you to want to do that," Bailey agreed. She tilted her head to the side, eyes shifting back and forth behind her rarely used glasses. "It'll come back to haunt you later, trust me." She thought for a moment then said. "I think I know of a place where we can go to have a good time. It used to be the best place to hang out."

"Then that's where we should go!" Conner declared. "Anything is better than sitting around this place like we're a bunch of kids needing to be babysat." He turned on his heel and started off down the hallway. Only Kira's voice stopped him.

"Um, I think you're forgetting something," she called.

Connor stopped and turned back to look at her. "Um." He reached up and patted his hair, clothes, then checked his wrist. "Hair, clothes, morpher, I think that's everything I need."

"You're forgetting about Trent." Kira gave him a look and headed toward the opposite end of the hallway to knock on the hotel room.

Conner's face screwed up. "Right, I forgot to remember to bring your boyfriend along."

"He's not my boyfriend!" Kira hissed over her shoulder, stopping at his door. "Don't be such a jerk, Conner!" She said something else that Conner couldn't hear as she reached out and knocked loudly on Trent's door.

"I reckon it's not possible for him to not be a jerk, yeah?" Bailey teased. Ethan snickered while Conner glared at the two of them. He barely listened, watching Kira intently as she talked to Trent, while Ethan went on to ask, "So what's this place like that you're taking us?"

"You'll see, it's actually pretty cool. We used to hang out there all the time."

"Any place where The Jason Scott used to hang out is alright with me," Conner said, snapping his gaze away from Kira and Trent when the White Ranger stepped out of his room to join them.

"is it just me have or have you noticed that he's always put a 'The' in front of Jason's name?" Ethan asked Bailey.

She sighed. "Just another conversation of who's the best ranger of all time." She put a hand up by the side of her mouth and stage-whispered, "Don't tell Tommy, but I think it's Andros."

"Do non-human rangers count in that discussion?"

"No one ever said a ranger had to be a human to be a ranger. Not to mention the fact that there was a team of rangers before ours that I'm pretty sure were from other planets so…"

"Are you brainiacs done?" Conner asked impatiently.

He noticed the looks everyone was giving him once more but couldn't help it. No one but him seemed to understand how important the day was. It was a Power Rangers Day. They were going to be celebrated along with the rangers before them. Even if no one knew their identities. It was part of the secret, but it was nice to be celebrated for something.

And even nicer for them to have other people they could talk to about being a ranger when they had to keep it a secret from even their closest friends and family. (And it helped that they were able to be away from Cassidy and Devin and their schemes to unmask the rangers' identities for a while).

"Well, if everyone's ready, let's go!" Bailey declared. "It's not too far from here."

"So, where are we going?" Kira asked as they all fell in step with each other.

"We're going to Ernie's!"

It was like he was going back to the first day of school all over again. Where Billy felt that he was the person who was the least ready for it. He was ready academically, had even bypassed his peers in his education long before others could walk. But he was far behind in the social scene.

Before meeting Kimberly, Trini, Zack, and Jason, Billy stood in the corner of the classroom, chewing his lower lip while his mother and father encouraged him to go and make friends. Patting him on the shoulder and telling him that everything would be okay, while he watched all the kids around him seem to make best friends in seconds. Jason and Zack—who he didn't know until later that they didn't know each before that first day—were watching each other do haphazard spins and jumps around each other. (Of which he later was explained that they were teaching each other the 'tricks' they knew how to do).

Kimberly and Trini had bonded over their My Little Pony Lunchboxes, the only differences between the two being the colors—pink and yellow. And there he was, wondering if he was going to fit in.

So when he arrived at the bar that night, meticulously taking the directions that Google had given him, Billy hesitated before entering the premises, feeling as if his stomach was going to explode out of nerves. Not just because it was the first time he'd seen or spoken to them in about ten years, but because he was worried what it meant for the reaction he'd get to it.

Happiness.

Shock.

Anger.

Disappointment.

All things he deserved, if he were being honest.

But how would he react, in turn? Would he fall back into his introversion? Back to the safe space that was his 'techno-babble' and 'smart-speak' that was comfortable for him. Always be the smartest guy in the room. But what worth was it being the smartest guy when his emotional intelligence was the one thing he managed to run away from quicker than a monster that managed to overpower him and his friends.

But he took in a deep breath and walked through the bar to his friends, whom he recognized instantly. He looked down at his own clothes, chuckling when he noticed he was wearing blue himself. Billy mentally shuttled through his closet, quickly determining that not only had he struggled with moving away from blue and black, but that he tended to stick to the same comfortable style as well, while his friends had at least grown up a bit with their dress styles. Thankfully, and it as something that gave him a little bit of relief, they hadn't moved away from their colors either.

He saw Trini turn his way, saw her eyes light up with excitement. Then she turned back to speak to the rest of his former team, unsure of whether or not they'd noticed her change in demeanor.

"And, of course, I've now gotten to the age where my parents are really starting to get on my case about getting married," Trini was saying as he approached. "I can't even tell you how many people they'd arranged for me to meet while I was with my family. I'm not sure what the statistics are on arranged marriages but,"—she pointed with her chin— "I'm sure Billy could tell you."

All heads turned his way, with wildly different expressions attached to them. Happiness, shock, surprise, indifference. He had no choice but to react then, they saw him. Billy urged himself to keep moving forward as he smiled awkwardly and lifted a hand to wave at his former teammates.

His former friends.

Jason was the first one to greet Billy. He got to his feet and reached out his hand, slapping it into Billy's palm before pulling him forward to grasp him in a hug. Then Tommy did the same, and Zack. Kimberly squeezed Billy as if she were squeezing the life out of him, and Trini threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly. Only Avalon remained sitting, giving a half-hearted wave with her beer bottle.

He nodded in response, taking the empty seat left for him, briefly wondering how things with Tommy and Kim went. Probably marginally better as their breakup wasn't as…tumultuous. What was it they called it now? He heard something about the name "ghosting" or "stonewalling" being used, but he wasn't so up to date on the slang that the young kids used those days.

"Well, if it isn't the main brain," Zack cried as Billy sat down with them. "What's been going on, man? We haven't seen you in forever."

"A lot of travelling can do that," Billy replied. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Trini nodding emphatically, and felt a stab of guilt rock his gut. Trini had bene travelling as much as he had, but she'd kept in contact with everyone else. At least, it seemed so. "But I've been pretty busy with work as well. Papers, exams, research, field trips, and that's only for my classes. There's still a lot of that I have to do for myself just to get tenure."

"That's why I decided to go into teaching high school," Tommy remarked. "Less work."

"Sure, if you don't count having to act as a mentor and a social worker to all of the teens you see on a daily basis," Kimberly said sarcastically. "Where you have to be their teacher in life let alone their teacher in class where, their parents will then blame you for any shortcomings they have." She waved a hand when all eyes turned her way. "Try doing all that on top of having to work with gym moms."

"Are they all as bloodthirsty as we'd think?" Avalon asked.

"Even worse," Kimberly confirmed.

Avalon grinned. "I might have to make it to your job one of these days." She took a swig of her beer and motioned to Jason. "What about you, Rudolph? What have you been up to lately?"

Jason lifted an eyebrow at her mentioning of his old nickname. Or, Billy wondered with a slight frown, there was something else there. Jason didn't look nearly as annoyed as he did years before. And while that could be a sense of maturity coming from them all, he was sure there was something else there. Billy wasn't a jealous person; he was just pondering what was probably a fact.

"Well, I don't have to deal with parents and crazy stage moms, but the life of a paramedic can be pretty hectic," He remarked. "There's more than enough stories that came from one day let alone the past few years I've been working." He shook his head. "The crazy thing is, some of the patients I've seen are struggling with thigs that have come up since encounters with the monsters we've faced." He pushed his drink aside and rubbed at his brow before admitting, "There's one with lung cancer after having been caught in a collapsing building from a Goldar attack, another one who's been having complications with his legs since breaking it in an escape attempt from an attack of Rito, someone who experiences epileptic seizures after a bad fall and hitting their head from facing putties." He shook his head. "It's a lot."

"Yeah, you never really realize how much your actions affect others until much later," Trini agreed. "Whether you were doing good or not." At that, Billy noticed Avalon and Zack exchange a glance. That didn't worry him so much, all of them knew that Zack had given up his powers of being a ranger to help out Av, facing the Vipers morphed to give them a warning. "All those lives lost…was it worth it for the evacuation plans put in place to help the city now."

"Was that before or after Astronema?" Avalon asked sarcastically.

"With the consistent presence of rangers and monsters from when we first started it had to have been a factor into it," Tommy said wisely. "It's what I'd looked into while studying for my degree. There were, about, six or seven straight years of monster attacks that happened, but Astronema succeeded in destroying the city. Any residual effects now could probably be tied back to that, just like all the cancer cases from 9/11. Maybe some from even when Rita first attacked."

"Or maybe we stepped on someone while in the Megazord," Zack joked. He noticed the stares turned his way and held up his hands defensively. "Sorry, I guess my jokes could use a little more work. I was just trying to lighten the mood a little bit. It turned kind of heavy."

Desperate to change the subject to something lighter, Billy asked politely, "Well, what are you doing now, Zack?"

"Whatever job I can get," Zack replied. "Not many places want to hire you if you've been to prison."

Prison? Billy's eyebrows rose in surprise. He hadn't expected that. Zack was one of the people he saw going the furthest in life and that was from his personality and extroversion alone. Zack was always one of the guys who managed to defy any stereotypes that blew through Los Angeles in the 90s and did it all with a smile on his face.

"Ah, it wasn't that bad," Zack said quickly, noticing the disbelief in Billy's face. "It was actually a lot nicer than most people think. And, I'm able to say they protect prisoners well when there's a monster attack." He held up his finger. "But if anyone ever asks about an underground bunker, you didn't hear anything from me."

"We'll keep that in mind, Zack," Trini said with a laugh.

"But, to really answer your question Billy, I'm working with disadvantaged youth. Trying to keep people off the streets and make better choices."

"Where were you when I first got to Angel Grove?" Avalon asked.

"Probably keeping everyone away with your glare, Av," Tommy shot back. Avalon smirked over the lip of her beer bottle and pointed at him.

"I kind of expected you to say, 'don't call me Av' right there," Zack said, mimicking her in a high-pitched tone. He pointed toward Avalon as their friends laughed. "How many times did we hear you say that?"

"Oh, about, once a day," Kimberly teased, elbowing the former orange ranger.

Avalon smirked, lifting an eyebrow. "Do you want me to go into how many times I heard your yelling for Tommy?" Her smirk widened when she added, "And I'm not talking about when we were in battle?" The last of her words were drowned out by Jason, Trini, Zack, and Billy's laughter while Kimberly and Tommy pelted her with balled up napkins.

"Why did you hate us calling you 'Av' so much?" Jason asked once the laughter died down. "It's just a nickname."

Billy felt himself starting to smile, remembering all the times 'don't call me Av' would quickly come in response to anyone even shortening her name. He even remembered, when they first met, when Zack, jokingly, tried to give her a nickname to welcome her into their group.

"C'mon, we should get to class." The group then turned on their heel and started to walk down the hall to their class. Zack stopped when he noticed someone unfamiliar down the hallway at their locker. "Hey, have you guys ever seen her around before?"

The others turned to see where he was pointing and spotted a girl with dark brown hair at her locker. She was wearing a black leather jacket over a white cami that showed some of her stomach and burnt orange shorts as well as black boots. On her face was an expression that was a mixture of anxiety and irritation as she watched students walk back and forth through the hallway. She then turned back to her locker, appearing to be looking for something.

"I think she's new," Trini said as she studied her. "I don't think I've seen her around before."

"She's probably a transfer if she's here this late in the school year," Billy added.

"Well, being the new kid is never easy," Kimberly said.

She looked at Tommy for confirmation and he nodded in agreement. It wasn't that long ago that Tommy had first started at Angel Grove High School and now he was one of the most well-known guys in school. It helped that he was just as athletic and good at martial arts that Jason was.

Kimberly then beamed at her friends, a tell-tale sign that she was up to something. "Let's go introduce ourselves." She then walked over to the girl and stopped by her locker. "Hi, are you new here?"

"You haven't seen me around, so I guess so," the girl replied, briefly looking away from her locker to look at Kimberly. Her brown eyes briefly looked the pink ranger up and down before returning to her locker. Letting out a short sigh, she continued to search through the books that have been shoved inside.

"Well, I'm Kimberly," Kimberly placed a hand on her chest before turning and pointing behind her. "And these are my friends Trini, Billy, Jason, Zack, and Tommy." Each of them gave a smile and wave as their name had been called.

"Avalon." She closed her locker and picked up her backpack off of the ground. Using her right hand, she pushed her hair off of her shoulders, the light bouncing off of a silver pinky ring. "Nice to meet you, I guess."

"Oh, that's such a cool name," Trini said.

"But so long, do you have a nickname or something?" Zack asked. He put a finger to his chin as he started to think about it. "Avatar? Av? Avie? Lonnie?"

Avalon's eyes flashed. "No, it's just Avalon."

"Yeah, it was the nickname that was the problem," Avalon pointed out. Her smirk melted into a pensive expression. She shifted in her seat, bringing her foot up to rest on the edge of her seat, using her free hand to wrap around her knee. "It meant I was going to be around for a while."

Billy's eyebrows rose curiously. "What do you mean?"

"I only went by 'Avalon' when I got here because it would've been harder for people to find me," Avalon explained. "And, if anything went wrong with the Vipers, my name wouldn't be attached. Most people at home, called me Cadence. It's why my mom calls me that all the time. Back there, Bay was really the only person who called me Avalon. But the longer we were here, and the more people called me 'Avalon' or 'Av' it became obvious we weren't going to go home for a while. That Angel Grove was going to be our new home." She shrugged. "I reckon it wasn't something I wanted to think about, yeah? I really wanted to make enough money to get me and Bay home to our mum but…things didn't work out that way."

"I never knew that," Trini said.

"That's because I never told you," Avalon pointed out. She shrugged once more, picking up her beer bottle to take a sip. "It all worked out in the end, no worries. Angel Grove became our home…you guys became our home. After a while, we didn't want to leave."

She looked all her friends in the eye, keeping her gaze on Billy a moment longer, as if trying to make a point.

The message was well received.

"Awww." Kimberly reached out and threw her arm around Avalon's shoulders, pulling Avalon into Kimberly's side. "I knew you loved us. You could just never say it before."

"Yeah, because I was trying to avoid this," Avalon replied, prying Kimberly's hands from around her neck and shoulders. She jerked her thumb over to Tommy. "It's bad enough he's my brother, I don't need this, too."

"But it really is great to be here with you guys again," Trini said. She brushed her hair back from her face. "I thought about you all since I left Angel Grove. As great as it was to spend time with my family, you all are my family, too. So, it's good that Power Ranger Day could bring us all back together."

Billy nodded along with the others who murmured their agreed statements. But a healthy sense of skepticism wouldn't leave him alone. Would they have come back together like this if it wasn't for it being Power Ranger Day? And would they pretend everything was okay for the duration of the festivities or would the truth of everything come out?

Would Kimberly and Tommy finally talk about their breakup?

Would Kimberly explain the real reason why her demons ended up affecting her toward the end of her tenure of being a ranger?

Would Tommy explain what he had to do to move through his academic career as quickly as he had?

Would Zack face how his tenure of being a ranger ended?

Would Trini reveal more of her struggles with her family's expectations?

Would Jason finally speak about his guilt over everything that happened with the Green Ranger and the Green Candle?

Would he finally tell the other rangers the real reason why he decided to stop being a ranger and work as their technical advisor instead? How he couldn't give up his ranger past and had worked behind the scenes for years?

Would Avalon be more forthcoming about the Vipers? About her relationship with her father?

Would any of them admit that being a Power Ranger was as harmful to them as it was good?

"Okay, you know what will make this night even better," Kimberly said, grinning around the table, suddenly reminding Billy why he was considered the 'heart' of the team for every iteration of it she'd been on. "Ernie's ice cream!"

A/N: It took me a long time to get back to this, but I have a lot of PR fics I'm working on and future ones I'm planning so I tend to jump around a lot. Anyway, this one is the one that jumped out at me the most for what I wanted to update so here you go! I hope you enjoyed the chapter despite the wait for it. Hopefully I'll be able to update things a bit more often, I do plan on doing Headstrong and Strength In Numbers next, and maybe continue to update Taking A Chance despite it being a one-shot for now.

Then there's the Zeo story I plan on doing soon and, yeah, you get it. Lol.

Thanks again, you guys!

~Av