Scorched Earth

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, just the right to put them through hell for my own amusement. Saban owns everything Power Rangers related. Anything you don't recognize is mine.

Plot Summary: When a nameless evil invades Earth, killing everything in its path, the first eleven Power Rangers must face an enemy beyond anything they've ever encountered; and this time, they'll be pushed farther than some of them are willing to go.

Timeline: Very AU from the moment Zeo started; slightly AU from the moment Jason, Zack and Trini left. Takes place midway through Zeo, only Zeo didn't happen. Jason, Trini and Zack are still attending the Peace Conference in Geneva, Kim is still in Florida training for the Pan Globals, and Aisha is still in Africa. When they left, however, their powers weren't transferred – they still have them, and five new powers were created for their replacements. Also, that whole letter thing didn't happen, either. The current team, led by Tommy, is Billy, Rocky, Adam, Kat and Tanya.

Pairings: Jason/Trini, Tommy/Kim, Rocky/Aisha; others may come later.

A/N: This story assumes that the Rangers were juniors in high school when they got their original powers, meaning they are currently in their second year of college, putting their ages at approximately 20-21.

Warning: Rated M for graphic violence, language, crude humor and disturbing content, including major character death. (Nothing too explicit as far as sexual content, I'll keep that PG-13.) Essentially, this is what I imagine an R-rated Power Rangers movie would've looked like. If only, right?

Chapter 14: "This Is Letting Go"

"…you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of their absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. They are dead. You are alive. So live."
-Neil Gaiman

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."
-Havelock Ellis

Command Center
Main Chamber
11:30 PM PDT

The sound of the door leading to the corridor out of the Main Chamber swinging shut behind Billy echoed through the cavernous room; Jason found himself shivering slightly, the room's emptiness and his own grief sending a chill up his spine. He balled his fists gently and scuffed a shoe against the floor, his toe bouncing off the inside of the forcefield that held him with a mild shock.

"Alpha." Zordon's voice rumbled through the room, the sound not unlike the distant rolling of thunder. Jason squeezed his eyes shut at his tone, a velvet glove wrapped over a set of brass knuckles. He forced his knees to remain steady, tried to focus on his breathing so he wouldn't hyperventilate. "Please disable the forcefield and leave Jason and me alone for a moment."

"Of course, Zordon," Alpha said quietly, clanking his way as softly as he was able to another console and flipping a switch. The forcefield immediately dissipated, and Jason had to fight back the violent urge to turn on his heel and sprint for the door.

It's probably locked anyway, he told himself, somehow growing hot with anger even at the words in his own head. Alpha moved toward the door to the Zord hangar; Jason kept his eyes shut and his head angled to the floor until he heard the door open and close behind him and then the series of metallic clicks that indicated the door had been locked.

The moment the room fell quiet again, his hands curled reflexively over his chest, fingers digging into his biceps. He took a long, shaky breath and blew it out through his nose as steadily as he could, trying to empty his lungs in as close to eight seconds as possible.

"Jason."

Zordon's voice had taken on a level of sadness that he wasn't sure he'd ever detected before, not even when he'd found out Zack had died. He slowly opened his gradually moistening eyes, blinking away the tears that threatened to pour out. He was still facing toward the floor, intently examining the pattern of scuff marks and fading bloodstains in the smooth concrete.

"Jason, look at me." The voice was still soft, kind, almost fatherly, but he heard some of that familiar commanding firmness slide in behind it. He braced himself on the balls of his feet, hugged his arms tighter against himself and lifted his head, which suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, to make eye contact with Zordon.

At the look he got from the floating, shimmering visage, it was all he could do not to break down crying all over again. His mentor wore a small, sad smile, his features displaying none of the anger, disappointment or contempt that Jason had been expecting. It took him so by surprise that he felt his heart knot behind his ribs, a flare of heat rising up into his neck.

"Zordon, I…" he started to say something, but his voice wavered and his breath hitched and he cut himself off before he could dig the hole any deeper, running a hand over his face and clearing his throat loudly to steady himself. Zordon didn't say anything, just let him flounder for a moment. It suddenly struck him as darkly funny, and he laughed bitterly as he let his arm fall back to his side. When he spoke again, it was through a sad smile of his own. "I fucked up pretty bad here, didn't I?"

Zordon didn't snap at him, didn't even chide him gently for his language like he'd always done when Jason had been around full time. He wondered if maybe having Rocky and Aisha traipsing around the Command Center nearly every day had made such warnings feel downright Sisyphean; or maybe Zordon had actually begun to unclench a little. If he was honest, Jason hoped it was the latter.

The Red Ranger reached down to the small of his back, his fingers curling protectively around the comforting shape of his morpher. "I'd prefer if you didn't ask me to hand this over, but…" he shrugged and licked his lips. "I'm prepared to do it, if it comes to that."

It was Zordon's turn to let out a low laugh, something else Jason hadn't seen him do nearly often enough. It sounded more like something vibrating deep down in whatever organ or machine or alien spell Zordon used to speak through; Jason thought he could feel the floor vibrating under his feet. "That will not be necessary, Jason," Zordon said softly, and goddamn if the way he looked at him when he said it, the amount of love and grief and sorrow in that flickering hologram of a face, didn't curl another knot of guilt around Jason's heart. Zordon looked like there was more he wanted to add to that, but instead he just said, "If you would please sit down with your back against the console there and face me." He waited expectantly.

Jason let go of his morpher, deflating a little with relief, and flexed his fingers. "No problem, Zordon," he croaked, moving to sit as he was asked. He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his hands on them, one forearm on top of the other. His heels rested on the floor in front of him; he leaned his shoulders back gently against the cool metal of the console behind him, the same one Billy had been using just a few minutes ago.

Zordon seemed to examine his face for a moment; Jason wasn't sure what exactly he was looking for, but he pulled his back straighter and met his gaze with as much calm determination as he could muster. Finally, Zordon made a sound that reminded him vaguely of a human sighing.

"I would like to try something, Jason, that I've never tried with any of you before," Zordon said, seeming to choose his words very deliberately. "But I will not do so without your verbal consent." He let the silence hang in the air for a moment. Jason's heart rate started to accelerate despite himself. Then the old Eltarian asked him something he would never have expected to hear in a billion years.

"Do you trust me?"

Jason didn't hesitate.

"Of course I do, Zordon. With my life. You know that."

Zordon's visage distorted briefly, angling away from him in a way that almost looked like nodding, and he gave him that heart-wrenching look of love and sorrow again. "I know, son. I know." This part was said so softly that he wasn't sure he caught the words right; he'd never heard Zordon address him or any of the others by anything other than their given names or color designations. The use of a term of endearment like that was enough to make his breath catch in his throat again, a lump starting to grow in his chest and tears blurring his vision. He was so focused on trying to stay calm that he almost missed Zordon say, "I'd like you to lean your head back and find a spot on the wall around my energy tube to focus on."

Jason shifted a little, resting his weight on his tailbone, and let his head rest against the console behind him. He found a panel of small, blinking LED lights on a piece of the wall to Zordon's right, at approximately the floating head's eye level, and nodded. "OK," he said, barely managing anything more than a whisper. Zordon hummed his acknowledgement.

"Keep your eyes on that spot and just listen to my voice," Zordon said quietly, his voice a low rumble through the room that reminded him of the feeling of riding in the backseat of his dad's car down a long, smooth road on a clear night. "I'd like you to pay attention to your breathing. Each time you inhale, fill your lungs as much as you possibly can; each time you exhale, let them empty until not a single air molecule is left inside." Jason took a long, slow, deep breath in through his nose, pulling air in until he was certain he had no more room left to pull, and then let it out as slowly as he could, emptying his chest until there was nothing else to force out. Zordon made a sound of approval. "Good. Now, each time you exhale, I want you to let your eyes close; and each time you inhale, let them open again."

Jason recognized these first few instructions from some of the guided meditations he, Tommy, Adam and Rocky would sometimes do before and after intense sparring sessions, so this part was easy to follow along with. As he expected, Zordon eventually had him allow his eyes to stay closed, and then walked him through gradually relaxing every muscle in his body, from the soles of his feet up through his legs, hips, stomach, chest, back, shoulders, arms, hands, neck and finally his head. He then asked Jason to try and let his mind clear of any conscious thought, to let himself drift and relax, like Jason had done a thousand times on his own, but this time something kept nagging at him – Zordon had said this was something he had never tried before, and he couldn't escape his own curiosity about where this would diverge from his past experience.

Zordon didn't make him wait for long. His voice seemed to form a cocoon around him, gently vibrating against his muscles like a cat's purr, like the way Trini would sometimes hum with contentment as they slept curled against each other. "I'd like for you to imagine that you're standing at the top of a small staircase. At the bottom, you can see your Power Coin, floating in the air. Nothing else is around you, nothing else is important right now."

Jason brought the image before his mind's eye as clearly as he could, feeling a small sensation of warmth at the small of his back as an enlarged version of his Tyrannosaurus Power Coin shimmered into view at the bottom of a flight of stairs covered in white carpet. There was a dull ache in his chest when he realized that these were the stairs from his home in Angel Grove, but his concentration and Zordon's soothing voice acted as a buffer for the most painful parts of it.

"Once you can see your coin," Zordon continued, "Say the word 'yes' out loud."

"Yes," Jason said immediately, his voice low and husky. Zordon made that small sound of approval again, and Jason felt his entire chest flood with such intense pride he almost teared up again.

"Good, Jason," Zordon said affectionately, and he felt like the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes. "Now, I would like you to do me a favor and take this nice and slow. You aren't in any hurry, your friends will all be all right while you're here; please do your best to take your time."

Jason smiled a little, and with a sense of detached amusement saw a few witty comebacks pass hazily by him in the distance, like he was seeing them through a piece of wax paper. If Zordon noticed, he didn't say so, just kept talking in that low, calming tone that was both brand new and agonizingly familiar all at once.

"Now, one at a time, you're going to take those stairs down toward your coin. I want you to take another deep, calming breath in and out with each step, and count them out loud as you move down, going backwards from ten. With each number you say out loud, concentrate on deepening the relaxation in your mind and body. You'll find as your body and mind relax deeper, the connection between you and the coin will grow stronger and stronger, until you can reach out in your mind and touch it. Do you understand?"

Jason managed to move enough to nod, moaning a little as he did so. There was a moment of serene silence before Zordon said, "Very well. Begin."

He breathed in, deeper than he thought possible, and out again, straining his diaphragm to the absolute limit. In his mind, his foot moved down one step.

"Ten." The coin seemed to glisten from some unknown light source, as though a spotlight was shining on it from somewhere over his shoulder.

One more breath, one more step.

"Nine." His hands suddenly felt uncomfortably heavy; he let his arms slip down off his knees to settle in his lap, and the weight seemed to just fall away.

On eight, the glow around the coin began to turn a shade of deep, fiery red, flaring out from its edges like the corona from a solar eclipse.

"Seven. Six."

By five, the red glow had increased in intensity until it was nearly blinding; the coin now looked like it was actually on fire, the red glow lapping at the soft, fuzzy darkness around the coin. On four, a filter seemed to sweep across his vision, and suddenly the glow from the coin was perfectly tolerable and yet still somehow just as bright all at once.

On three, he started feeling heat emanating from the coin, or possibly from the red energy pulsating from the edges of it; Jason couldn't quite decide which.

On two, he reached out for the coin. It seemed so close that he thought his hand would go through it, but he came up centimeters short, the heat he felt on his face and arm here now echoed by the warmth from his morpher on the small of his back.

Finally, on one, he stepped to the bottom and reached out for the coin again. This time, beyond the notice of his conscious mind, his right hand lifted into the air in the Main Chamber and stretched out in front of him toward some invisible object. Inside his mind, though, his fingers found the coin, and he felt the cool metal, ran his palm over the raised image of the dinosaur he'd become so attached to, so in tune with, over the last four years. The coin was reassuring, welcoming; the coin was strength, purpose, the shield with which he would guard the world.

The coin was home.

Jason leaned into the coin a little harder, a little more needing. Then the coin swung open like a massive door, his entire field of vision was engulfed in a brilliant white light, and he stumbled forward, squeezing his eyes shut against the intense brightness.

Only seconds later, the glow faded. When he opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.

Command Center
Trini Kwan's Private Quarters
11:45 PM PDT

Trini adjusted the weight of the huge book in her arms, hefting it with her thigh to maintain her grip as Mr. Scott worked the door to her room open. He leaned a shoulder against the door to hold it open for her as she slid past behind him and carried the thing into her room, depositing it on the island in the middle of her small kitchen, the only place besides the floor with room to hold it.

"OK, let's see what we've got here," she said breathlessly. Rick swung the door shut and strode across the room toward her, his face etched with concern.

"So the floating head guy in there – what was his name again?"

"Zordon," she supplied, running a hand absently over the rough, scaly leather that bound the book.

"Right, Zordon," he repeated, his mouth working around the name in a way that looked to her like he'd just tasted something bitter. "What does this Zordon guy usually do when one of you gets in trouble?"

She glanced up at him, raising an amused eyebrow. "He's not gonna turn your son into a frog or anything, if that's what you're worried about."

He folded his arms and sighed, clearly frustrated. "Trini, I'm serious. My world has gotten a lot bigger in the last few hours and I need to make sure my son isn't in any danger in there." She pushed away from the book and stood up straighter.

"Papa Scott, listen, I know some of this seems completely ridiculous, but I promise you, Zordon has never had anything but our best interests at heart. Jason's as safe in there with him as anywhere he could possibly be right now." She paused and smirked. "Besides, we all know Jason's his favorite."

He just stared at her. "I realize that's supposed to be comforting but honestly it's mostly just creepy," he said. "And if that guy had all of your best interests at heart he wouldn't have forced all of this on you kids in the first place."

"That part you'll have to take up with him," Trini said, her features flashing a dark expression the same way Jason's had earlier. "But the fact is we would all probably be dead right now if it wasn't for him. If you don't trust him, I don't blame you, neither did I at first, but you know me. I love Jason almost as much as you do. If I thought he was in any danger from Zordon there isn't a door in the world heavy enough to keep me out."

He finally cracked a small smile. "I believe it," he said softly. He took a long, deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck, looking so much like Jason it made her heart hurt a little. "All right then, I guess there isn't much I can do about that part anyway. What do we do with this?" He gestured to the book, throwing his game face on just as abruptly as Jason could.

She smiled. "My god, Jason is so much like you it verges on frightening." She thought she saw him redden a little around the ears and quickly turned back to the book before things got awkward. "Anyway, let's get this thing scanned in." Trini swung the book open and spoke louder into the room. "Computer, initiate scan." She stepped back as a scanner emerged from a panel in her ceiling and a series of lights played over the surface of the open book. After a moment, an image of the page she'd just scanned appeared on the large screen that took up the opposite wall.

"Wow," Rick said, arching his eyebrows. "We sure could've used one of those at the precinct." He stared at the image, trying to wrap his head around the strange writing that looked like nothing he'd ever seen before. "Though I doubt any of our techs would have a clue what to do about this."

Trini glanced from the book to the image on the screen. "Honestly, I'm not sure what to do about it either. I've never seen writing like this." She leaned back against the counter and tried something. "Computer, cross-check this writing with every known language in the Command Center database."

"Analyzing," the computerized voice replied; a small progress bar appeared the bottom of the screen as the search ran.

Rick stepped a little closer and reached out to touch the book's cover, gingerly, as though afraid it might burn his hand. When it didn't, he rubbed the thick material together between his fingers. "This feels like some kind of leather; I'm guessing from the skin of some animal from another planet." He looked up at Trini. "If we took a sample of this, do you have anything here that could see where it comes from? That might give you a place to start."

She nodded. "That's a good idea." She reached into a drawer for a knife and cut away a small piece from the corner of the cover before turning her attention to the page itself. "I'll take a sample of the paper, too. Just in case."

He watched as she cut away a small piece of the first page without any writing on it and was suddenly struck with inspiration. "It might be worth trying to test what the ink is made out of," he suggested. "We've cracked a couple of cold cases based on the ink used on old letters."

She hesitated. "It'll be harder to decode this if we start cutting pieces out of it."

"Well you already have this page scanned into the computer and it looks like it's blank on the other side," he said, flipping the page over to verify. The other side appeared to function as a cover page, with no writing on it where it would lay against the binding. Trini moved in with the knife again, cutting away a piece with what looked like a single word written on it.

"All right," she said, gathering the pieces into her hands. "Once the computer is done identifying the language we can take these to the lab."

"Anything we can do in the meantime?" He asked, shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to the other. She looked back down at the book.

"Well, I never really got to take a very good look at what all is in here," she said, almost to herself. She glanced up at the screen; the progress bar had only reached 12 percent.

He seemed to see what she had in mind. "Well, looks like we have a minute. Wanna see if this thing has any pictures?"

She chuckled. "I'm gonna be really pissed if this just ends up being instructions for some alien IKEA furniture or some shit." He grinned, moving closer to get a better look at the pages. Trini started slowly combing through them, examining each one for anything that looked familiar or resembled some sort of pattern.

"Hmm," Rick grunted after ten or twelve pages. "You recognize anything?"

She shook her head, frustrated. "No. I've learned how to decipher a couple of alien languages before, but…this is brand new. I have no frame of reference for this; anything we might think of to look for – numbers, names, syntax – none of that is gonna be any more recognizable. This might not even be a species that communicates verbally. Unless they put in a map or some pictures of something, we're gonna have to wait for the computer to tell us what the language is."

Rick sighed. "You know, I kinda hoped I was gonna be more useful than this." She looked up at him, smiling sheepishly. "You all were just humoring me, weren't you?"

"Kinda, yeah," she said with the faintest hint of a wince. "Sorry; I just figured if you were anything like Jason you'd go nuts if we asked you to just sit around. Looks like I was more right about that than I thought." Trini nodded toward his head wound. He rubbed at it absently.

"I'm fine, really," he said. "I've had worse raising three boys, trust me."

She laughed quietly, continuing to flip through the pages, being met with nothing but more and more of the bizarre alien writing. Eventually, they reached the last page, which was just filled with the same indecipherable writing as the others.

"Damn it," she muttered, swinging the thing back shut. She tapped the front cover of the book with a finger. "Well, worse comes to worst, if the language search doesn't get us anything we can at least run a search on this symbol." She frowned at it, turning the book every direction she could think of to see if anything struck her as familiar.

"You think the symbol is significant?" He asked, scratching at his hip as though unsure what to do with his hands. She shrugged.

"It's the exact same symbol that they dug into the surface of the moon," she said. "Has to be something significant."

He turned back to the screen; the progress bar was only just now reaching 30 percent. "This thing usually take this long?"

"I mean it's basically looking through every language in the known universe, so…might take a while."

"All right, well…" he trailed off, struggling to finish his thought. "Is there something else we can do while we wait? Or do we have to be here while it searches?"

"No, hang on." Trini leaned forward onto the book and spoke out loud again. "Computer, send notification of completed search to communicator Yellow 3."

"Confirmed," the robotic voice came back. Trini turned to Rick.

"It'll let me know when it's done. You have something in particular in mind?"

His hand went to his waistband near his right hip and grabbed at the empty space, as though he expected to find something there. He sighed and ran his other hand over his face. "Do you kids have access to any weapons that don't run on space magic? I feel kinda naked without a gun on my hip."

"If I say yes, are you gonna grumble at me some more about how we're all too young for this?"

"No, I'll just think it to myself," he said dryly. Trini rolled her eyes.

"I'll take it, I guess. Come on, I'll show you the armory." She didn't give him a chance to reply, making a beeline for the door and swinging it open. He followed her after a moment, glancing back at the screen one more time before he exited the room, and Trini led him down the hallway, winding her way through corridors with practiced efficiency.

"We'll have to go the back way," she said casually. "Usually we'd cut through the Main Chamber but your son…" she said the word with exaggerated annoyance, "has monopolized it for the moment. Shouldn't be too much further."

They reached the armory without running into anyone else. She motioned him inside and he stopped in the doorway, whistling appreciatively at what he saw.

"Damn, you little shits have everything," he muttered good-naturedly. She smiled and nudged his back, pushing him over the threshold. Once inside, though, he moved with an almost fluid precision, clearly knowing exactly what he was looking for. He strapped on a layer of body armor over his shirt, fastened a holster onto his belt, and then a smaller one over his thigh. He scanned a wall of firearms for a moment before selecting a sturdy black handgun, loading it, and shoving it into the holster at his side; he tugged down two spare magazines and slid them into his front pocket. Then he stepped back to a small table and picked up a six-inch knife, which he slid into the thigh strap.

"That's better," he said, his voice flushed with relief, as though he'd just had a severed limb reattached. "Now I don't feel quite so…exposed."

She nodded, breaking into a grin again from where she leaned against the doorway. "Good. I haven't heard back from the computer yet, so we may as well go see how Billy's doing in the lab."

He nodded, seemed to suddenly realize something and paled a little. "He still have the body in there?"

"Yeah," she said somberly, lowering her gaze to the floor. "He says it's as prepped for burial as he could make it, he, uh…" she swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly going dry. When she lifted her head again, her eyes had begun to well up again. "Zack was in really bad shape, from what they told me. Billy was actually worried his parents wouldn't recognize him. I was unconscious when he died so I didn't…I couldn't…" she drew in a slow, shaky breath. "Fuck."

Rick closed the space between them in two steps and squatted slightly to bring himself to eye level with her. "Trini," he said softly, cupping the side of her neck with the same paternal protectiveness she'd seen him display for Jason. "Look at me, darlin'."

She vaguely remembered something about him having grown up in Texas, and how, every once in a great while, a small piece of a forgotten drawl would creep back into his voice again. Trini lifted her head to meet his gaze, blinking away tears and fighting to keep her breathing even.

"Now you listen, and listen good," he said, his voice soft and raw and deep. "I've been in the Corps and I've been on the force, and I've lost people in both." He paused, lowering himself onto one knee for the sake of his quads. "I've been where you are right now, and I know how guilty and useless and futile it makes a person feel, like there's a hole opening up inside you to suck everything out until the pain is all that's left." She sniffled, the pain on her face so familiar that his heart broke for her all over again. "And to some extent, that doesn't ever go away. But you kids are some of the strongest people I've ever met, and you're doing an extraordinary thing here." The pride had begun to seep into his voice, drawing a small smile out of her. "I don't know all the details about what happened but I know this much: if Zack was one of you, he was a hero. All of you are." His hand slid down from her neck to squeeze her shoulder. "Now I don't know how helpful this is right now but I want you to know that it meant something. Remember that, OK? Because as much as I wish it was going to get easier for you all from here, I know that's most likely not the case." She nodded, smiling sadly. "Atta girl. The others out there may not admit it, but I've known you your whole life and I can see it: they need you. My son needs you. So as much as I hate to do it, I have to ask you to be strong for them. Can you do that?"

She stared at him for a moment before laughing and wiping her face with one hand. "Now I see where Jason gets it from," she said, throwing her arms around him. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it, sweetheart," he said, wrapping an arm around her. Trini pulled away after a moment and blew a breath into her hands.

"We should get to the lab before Billy saves the world without us." He just nodded and let her lead him out of the armory and back down the hallway, their footsteps echoing off the steel and concrete walls.

Command Center
Main Laboratory
11:55 PM PDT

Billy and Tanya barely looked up when they stepped into the lab, pausing in confusion at Billy's rearrangement of the equipment. The two of them were in the process of wheeling a gurney out into the cleared out space in the middle of the lab; the gurney held the alien corpse Tanya had teleported back from the moon. As he busied himself with sliding into scrubs, a heavy white apron and a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves, Billy spoke to Trini without looking at her.

"You didn't take long, Tri. Wasn't expecting you for at least another few minutes. Couldn't find anything in the book?"

"We won't know until the computer can tell us what language it is, Billy," Trini replied, edging toward the gurney herself. Rick took a position by the door, standing loosely at ease, shoulders bouncing him back and forth off the wall behind him, scanning the unfamiliar room for anything that might zap him if he reached for it. "I've got it running a sample through the database but that's basically every language in the known universe to compare it to so it might take a hot second."

Billy offered her a quick, sardonic smile before reaching a hand out to Tanya. "Scalpel?" Tanya grabbed a tool off the small tray they'd set up between them and handed it to Billy; as he took it, she turned and addressed Trini over her shoulder.

"You wanna do this instead? I can step aside, if you want," she offered awkwardly, gesturing at the body on the table. Trini waved her off.

"No no, you're plenty capable of assisting on this yourself, Tan," she said in a tone she hoped was reassuring. Tanya nodded, gave her a look that might have been grateful and turned back to the body. The blue skin stood out sharply against the bright white of the sheet covering the table, the wound left by the blaster bolt Tanya had killed it with oozing the thick, syrupy blood over the edge of the table and onto the floor.

"Now Billy," Rick said from the door. "I'm told by a few of the young ladies here that you're…" he motioned vaguely to bring a word to his head. "…fairly comfortable with this sort of work, but…" he pointed to the steady trickle of blood. "I think we all know cause of death. Something tells me you didn't bring this thing back here just for an autopsy."

"You're correct, Mr. Scott," Billy said through his surgical mask. "I'm much more interested in identifying this species. None of us have ever seen anything like this before." He finished making a deep, Y-shaped incision in the alien's torso and handed the scalpel back to Tanya. "Mask up, please," he said softly, and Tanya pulled her own surgical mask up over her nose and mouth. Louder, to the room, he said, "Also, I would love to be able to refer to them by something other than the assorted four-letter words with 'blue' tacked onto them that Rocky keeps using."

Billy curled his fingers around the skin of the alien's chest and began peeling it back, exposing the ribcage underneath; Tanya helped him pull open the stomach cavity, their gloves growing sticky from the viscosity of the blood. As he peeled his fingers off the inside of the flesh, Billy surveyed the inside of the alien's body and frowned. "Hmm. That's interesting."

"What is?" Rick asked from the door. Tanya turned to face him.

"You can come over and look for yourself, Papa Scott," she offered, motioning to the body. "You're not in the way."

"Too many cooks already," he said, nodding to where Trini was pulling on her own set of scrubs. "I already promised I wasn't going to step on anyone's toes; I just want to be kept in the loop." Billy leaned forward on the table and looked up at him.

"Certainly," he said, a little too calmly. Rick arched his eyebrows but didn't say anything. "Upon initial examination, it appears that this alien has identical internal organs, in roughly an identical layout, to a human, except for the change in color and consistency of the blood." He used an eyedropper to take a sample of the blood and swabbed the inside of the proboscis that seemed to act as the creature's mouth. "I was under the impression that Zordon had compiled an exhaustive database of every sentient species within range of our galactic sensors but this creature doesn't correspond to any of them."

Rick narrowed his eyes at him. "You've checked that already? I thought the computer searches took a while."

Billy shook his head and then pointed at his temple. "I memorized it last year," he said casually, moving back to his tests. Rick laughed.

"Sure. OK. Of course you did." He hadn't meant for it to come out so loud; he winced as his voice echoed around the room.

Billy didn't seem to notice. He stepped across the room and slid the blood and cheek samples into a silver machine braced against the back wall. He slid them into a small drawer, closed it, and pulled off one glove. Rick watched, fascinated, as his fingers darted nimbly across the screen on the front. "That your DNA machine?" He asked. Billy turned and nodded in response. "We used to send evidence off to our crime lab for that sort of test; it usually took between 48 and 96 hours. I kinda hate to ask, but how long does this one take to get a result?"

"Depends on sample size and quality," Billy said as though it was the most normal thing in the world to be talking about. "With the original source right here and samples this big…" he bit the inside of his cheek and his eyes rolled up toward the ceiling, like he was in deep thought. "I wanna say…five minutes, give or take?"

Rick blew an angry puff of air out through his nose. "Christ alive, you fucking kids got all the good stuff," he muttered. Billy bit back a laugh. "Don't you laugh at me, Cranston," he said, his voice low and warning.

"Wouldn't think of it," Billy said immediately, eyes glinting. "That's the Morphin' Grid for you. Some of the things we've been able to do with that energy has been very, very exciting."

"I'll say," Trini said, slowly circling the table, scouring every inch of the corpse with her almond-shaped eyes. She picked up one of the alien's humanoid hands and turned it over in her grip. "It even got you out of those big-ass glasses, Billy."

"I was under the impression you found those glasses… I believe the word you used was 'distinguished.'"

"Distinguished is just another word for 'old,' Billy," Tanya said, eyes sparkling from the smile hidden under her mask. "Besides, what did the count eventually get up to for how many times they got broken in battle?"

"I think we'd just hit 40 when I left for Switzerland," Trini said, meeting her eye and grinning. Billy sighed.

"He got at least another ten between the time I got here and finally realizing he didn't need the things anymore," Tanya said, running her fingers over the bony spike that protruded from the alien's tentacle arm.

Rick cleared his throat and Trini met his eye. He held up his right hand, fingers splayed, and tapped his index fingertip with his other hand. Trini frowned, confused. He put his other hand out flat and rolled the tip of his finger over it like he was pressing down on something. That was when Trini seemed to understand. She stepped away from the table.

"Billy, where'd you put the fingerprint scanner?"

Without even looking up, Billy pointed across the room. "Should be on the pegboard over where the electron microscope usually is."

Trini seemed to know exactly what that meant; she strode quickly across the lab and grabbed a tool off the wall that vaguely resembled a graphing calculator with a bigger screen. She brought it over to the alien and laid its index finger on the screen.

"Hey Tri," Tanya said skeptically. "Not for nothing, but what are we hoping to learn from this? It's not like this thing is gonna show up in a missing persons report."

Trini was pressing the fingertip against the screen, rolling it smoothly from side to side; the screen lit up with a sharp green light that reminded Rick of the text on an old computer. "I'm just looking at every possibility, Tan," she said. "This thing has arms that look like a human's, and it looks like they have fingerprints, too. If that pulls up anything at all in our database, it'll at least be more than what we have right now."

There was a soft ding from the other side of the room, and Rick's head pivoted to see Billy step back up to the machine, fingers flying across the small screen once more. He paused, hand ready at one side of the screen like he meant to swipe it over to another screen, and suddenly froze, a small sound of bewilderment escaping his mouth

"What-" was all he said before his voice abruptly cut out. Billy dug the heel of his hand into his eyes, shook his head slightly, and leaned in closer to the screen, running a finger over the surface as though to guide his reading. "This can't possibly be –" he stepped back, eyes darting over every corner of the machine. He stepped around it and examined the back, hands fumbling over every surface and panel and switch and input port, letting each cable fall back into place with gradually more forceful grunts of confusion and frustration. He slid open the port he'd put the samples into, pulled them out and held each one up to the harsh fluorescent lights that hummed in the ceiling, turning each one every possible direction and squinting fixedly into each container as though hoping desperately to find something.

"Something wrong, Billy?" Rick asked, voice as calm as ever despite his quickening heart rate. The blue-clad boy suddenly seemed to realize he wasn't alone in the room, casting nervous glances at each of them before turning back to the samples and huffing bitterly.

"There has to be some kind of mistake," he said, almost to himself. He spun around and stared at the body as though he could see through it. "Tanya, you saw me take these samples, right?" She nodded, brow furrowing. "Did I touch anything with the swab? Did something get dropped into the blood? We were both wearing gloves and everything, right?"

She frowned at him, bewildered. "You did everything right, just like always, Billy. Why? What did the test say?"

Billy didn't answer her, turning instead to Trini as though his brain had already moved on to something else. "Tri, in the entire time we've been…" his face was frantic, thoughts moving with such a frenzy that his mouth could barely keep up, and so he just wordlessly flailed an arm at the room around them and Trini nodded with a look of growing unease. "Has this machine ever been wrong? Have we ever once had it come back with a bad result?" He spoke so fast that there was barely time for inflection on the words, but his eyes were pleading for her to answer a certain way and Rick couldn't tell what he wanted her to say and the thought was horrifying –

("Billy built more than half the tools in that lab himself and he's probably the smartest human left alive.")

– and once again, as seemed to have happened a thousand times in just the last few hours, he's reminded that these are fucking children, children he knew, people he'd watched grow up and find themselves and lie to the entire world about the most important thing any group of humans had ever done; and Billy was supposed to be the one who had all the answers and he looked fucking lost in a way that filled his mouth with cotton. And in the moment between Billy's question and Trini's tentative answer, his hands tightened around each other where they rested against his back and steel poured into his spine and he vowed to himself that these kids would not be alone in this anymore, that he would do, say or give anything he thought they needed until their job here was done, and then he'd pull that floating face out of that stupid goddamn tube and put a steel-toed boot into his balls.

The thought actually came close to making him chuckle; he had to swallow it down like too big a bite of food, so painful and jagged he was sure he made a face at it, but none of them saw it; they were too busy doing a job that none of them should've been asked to do.

"Billy, that machine has never been wrong about anything before," Trini said, speaking slower than usual on purpose, probably to try and slow him down. "If we didn't contaminate the samples I see no reason why you shouldn't trust your results. Why? What'd it say?"

Billy actually started to answer her this time before Trini got a ding of her own. She glanced down at the device she was holding and got the same confused look on her face that Billy just had and Rick's stomach knotted with anxiety again.

"What the fuck-" she started, cutting herself off abruptly and looking back up to meet Billy's eye again, her face now the one that moved through a hundred questions in under a second before settling on something. "Speaking of weird results."

Billy waited for a second, but she didn't continue so he spoke up. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Trini glanced darkly between him and Tanya, as though unsure if he was serious. Finally she swiped across the screen in her hand in a rough, almost angry motion, and a screen that took up most of the wall behind Billy lit up with some kind of readout from her display and something about it was so familiar to him, why did it look –

Oh, Christ.

The readout on the screen was an AFIS entry for a man named Patrick Villanueva, aged 35, height 5'11", weight 190 pounds, arrested and charged with aggravated assault, April 22, 2009, Angel Grove, California. There was even a picture, a smiling Hispanic man with a jet-black goatee and a massive silver cross hanging from a thick chain around his neck. Trini tossed the scanner onto a nearby table and pointed at the screen.

"This thing's fingerprints were an exact match for this guy from Angel Grove," she said, eyes darting back and forth from the screen to the alien and back again. "Which means it would have to have found some way to replicate human fingerprints or something, right? But that's ridiculous, what the hell purpose would that serve?"

"I mean, it sounds crazy," Tanya said softly, "but the only other thing I can think of is even crazier." Billy nodded grimly and ran a hand over his face.

"Maybe not as crazy as you think, Tan." He swept his hand across the screen on his machine and the readout on the wall changed. This was one Rick was entirely unfamiliar with, but Trini seemed to understand it well enough; she actually took a step back from it, her face draining of blood. Billy stepped forward and pointed at the creature on the table. "Look at the organs. Heart, lungs, liver, stomach, kidneys, intestines, all in the right places, all the right size. Maybe not functional anymore, since it can walk around in space, but they're all still there. It has human arms and hands, human fingerprints, hell, some of the ones we saw in Angel Grove were wearing clothes, for fuck's sake."

He pointed at the screen behind him. "And this seals it. Trini, you were right before. I don't ever remember this machine being wrong one time in four years. I tested this thing's blood and cheek cells for DNA and everything else the machine would let me do, and there are a lot of weird distortions and anomalies I've never seen before but they all show me the same thing." He shot another series of nervous looks around the room, breathing a little harder now, finally seeming to remember that Rick was still there. His gaze finally settled on the corpse on the table.

"Guys…" he swallowed, blinked several times, leaned both hands against the table. "This thing is human."

Unknown Location
11:50 PM PDT

When Jason opened his eyes again, all he could see was white. Endless, formless, featureless white stretching out around him in every direction, as though he was submerged in an ocean comprised entirely of this blazing white light. He looked down at his feet and had to fight off a swell of vertigo; he felt like he was standing on solid ground, but it sure looked as though there was nothing but an endless white abyss beneath his feet, a gaping, invisible maw that opened up into nowhere.

He jerked his eyes back up to face forward, frantically scanning his surroundings for anything to break through the dizzying monotony of the light.

For a long second, there was nothing. It was an immeasurably weird feeling; he couldn't hear any sound, couldn't feel any moving air or temperature, couldn't smell anything. He wondered if this was what a session in a sensory deprivation tank would be like.

Shakily, tentatively, he took a step forward, expecting at any second for his foot to tumble forward into nothing and send him falling into that infinite whiteness. It didn't, though; it caught solid ground with an abruptness that almost made him gasp. He laughed nervously.

"OK, so not falling into a bottomless pit. Good start." He glanced around himself in every direction and licked his lips. "Hello? Is anybody there?" He called out into the void, hearing his words echo back to him off of…something.

"Hello, Jason."

The new voice came booming out at him from the whiteness, rumbling through his ribcage like the bass drum at a rock concert. Jason flinched at the sudden sound, nearly losing his balance as he staggered forward and whipped his head around at the same time.

A man had appeared behind him, about his height, wearing a long, sweeping, green and white cloak with a high collar; he had on a loose-fitting white shirt on underneath, fastened all the way up to his neck with leather straps of some kind, and brown pants tucked into shiny black boots that came halfway up to his knees. His face was pale, paler than any human skin Jason had ever seen, and creased with deep wrinkles around the mouth, eyes and forehead. Something about that face was intensely familiar, but in his state of disorientation, he couldn't quite place it. The man stepped toward him and reached out a hand, as if offering a handshake.

"It is a pleasure to finally meet you in person."

And just like that, everything clicked. The voice, the face, that presence…Jason's mouth went dry at the realization and he gaped at the man, eyes widening in shock.

"Zordon?" He could barely get the word out, his voice choked with disbelief. He cleared his throat and swallowed, but never took his eyes off the man's face.

Zordon – for that was who stood before him now, Jason realized with mounting amazement – smiled, his face crinkling even further, and offered him a small nod.

"I believe the expression is, 'in the flesh?'" Even in spite of his shock, Jason had to bite back a laugh.

"I'm sorry, did you just make a joke?" He finally broke free of his reverie enough to step forward and take Zordon's hand in his. His skin was surprisingly warm, smooth except for where he could feel wrinkles in it; his grip was firm but not hard, and he seemed content to just grasp his hand rather than actually shake it up and down.

Zordon raised an eyebrow and smiled at him again. "Perhaps I am picking up more human behaviors from you and Tommy than I was aware. If this disturbs you I can try to stop."

Jason released his hand and let it fall back to his side. "Believe me, that is the least disturbing thing that's happened to me today." He let his eyes wander up and down Zordon's physical form. "Is this…are we inside your time warp or whatever? How are you here? How do you look like this? Where…?" He trailed off, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings, his train of thought running out of steam as questions threatened to burst from his throat like a waterfall.

Zordon didn't seem to mind. "We are not inside my time warp, no. I would not subject you to that." His voice was calm but undercut with a level of sadness that made Jason's heart ache. "This is what I call a pocket dimension, a place created by our connections to the Morphin' Grid; we can access it through our minds, which is why I can appear this way." He gestured to himself. Jason motioned at Zordon's body and clothing.

"So this is what you looked like…" he struggled for a word. "Before…?"

Zordon seemed to grasp his meaning. "Ah, yes. Before Rita trapped me in that time warp, this was my conception of what I looked like. I believe the term is 'residual self-image.'"

Jason nodded, chuckling. "OK, Morpheus, I'll take the red pill, please." Zordon frowned and he rolled his eyes. "Right. Know your audience." He looked around again. "So why does it look like this?"

"I am not sure," Zordon said. "I wasn't even sure we would be able to access this place; I have never tried this with any of you before."

"Why? Is it dangerous?"

"No, nothing like that," Zordon said soothingly, holding out a placating hand. "It just requires a very deep connection to the Grid, and I was unsure whether any of you had been Rangers for long enough to have forged a bond that strong." He smiled proudly. "I am very impressed that you've come this far in such a short time."

Jason laughed nervously. "Oh, uh…thanks," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. There was a moment of companionable silence before he spoke again. "So why am I here?" He asked, wrapping his arms around himself again. "Not gonna lie but I was expecting the Full Metal Jacket treatment." Again, Zordon frowned in bewilderment and Jason grunted in frustration. "How the fuck have you been around this long and not even peeked at pop culture?"

He didn't realize what he'd said until he'd said it, but again, the usual chiding for his language never came. Instead, Zordon just sighed sadly and crossed his arms, fixing Jason with a gaze that sent goosebumps down his arms and a chill into his stomach.

"Jason," he said softly, and Jesus Christ if his voice didn't sound exactly the way his father's had when he'd pointed to the spot where his brothers' remains were buried. Jason took a shaky breath and rubbed one arm with his other hand.

"OK, look, if this is the part where you tell me you're not mad, you're just disappointed, can we just skip ahead a few tracks? I get that plenty from my dad."

Zordon was silent again, just kept staring at him with that look of worry and sorrow and pity on his face and Jason was suddenly so uncomfortable that he couldn't keep himself from talking, just desperately trying to fill the silence with the sound of his own voice.

"And hey, while I'm asking, is it necessary for us to be doing this here? I keep getting distracted looking for an old wizard and a deformed fetus under a bench." Now his feet started pulling him one direction after another, a flare of heat slowly rising in his chest, slowly intensifying until he was amazed he wasn't sweating. "And I wish you'd told me about the…" he motioned vaguely at Zordon. "…dress code." He glanced down at himself, his jersey now replaced with a red muscle shirt and cargo shorts. "I can't help but feel a little underdressed."

"Jason," Zordon said again, a little louder this time, but still not moving from where he stood. The heat in Jason's chest had risen into the back of his neck now, and he glared at Zordon and took two forceful steps back toward him, jabbing a finger at him aggressively.

"And stop looking at me like that, you condescending asshole. I don't need your concern and I definitely don't need your pity. I told you I knew I fucked up back there, and I feel bad enough about it already, so if you don't want me to turn in my morpher then stop yanking my chain and fucking tell me what we're doing here!"

"Jason." This time he didn't just hear Zordon's voice, he felt it, the words echoing inside his head so strongly it actually made him physically flinch. He blinked at Zordon a couple of times, trying to make his tongue move, but before he could gather himself, Zordon stepped forward and put both of his hands on Jason's shoulders. "Take a breath, son."

There was that word again, and where the first time he'd heard it had brought with it an intense rush of pride, this time it just made him nauseous, the edges of his vision beginning to cloud with red. He shrugged Zordon's hands off his shoulders and practically threw himself backwards, leveling his finger at him again. "Only two people get to call me that," he growled, his other hand curling into a fist, his blood pounding in his ears. "One of them is dead and I almost just killed the other. Say it again and fucking see what happens."

His mouth seemed to operate independently from his brain at this point, words tumbling out of it faster than he could think to control them. The flare of heat had moved into his cheeks now, the red cloud encroaching further into his field of vision. Jason could feel the physical sensation of his control over his own body slipping away, like some other presence from the back of his mind was forcing its way in to take over; a jolt of fear went through him as Zordon stepped toward him again, face unchanged, hands still held out like he was still holding his shoulders. He demanded his body to be still, ordered his mouth to stop, and yet nothing seemed to work, something had come disconnected and he couldn't put it back and holy fucking Christ it's happening again.

His fists came up in front of him unbidden, his body taking a defensive stance all of its own volition, that damned red cloud moving in further. "Don't take another step, old man," his mouth said, his voice raw and deep, the words bitter on his tongue. "Or I swear to god I'll fucking…"

"Red Ranger." Zordon's voice was in his head again, only this time he couldn't see his mouth move. His confusion at this was enough to slam his body to a stop, his muscles loosening ever so slightly. The voice seemed to travel through every nerve ending in his body, slowly peeling back at the red cloud over his vision. "Look at me." It wasn't even words this time; Zordon seemed to reach in and send impulses through Jason's own nervous system, wrenching his eyes up to lock onto Zordon's. "Easy, Jason," he said; again his mouth didn't move, again he seemed to seep his words through Jason's nervous system; this time he felt a soothing wave of cooling energy, like his blood was replaced with cold water. Jason let out a breath of relief and forced his fists to lower, dragging his hands down to his sides and holding them there, muscles contracting painfully as he fought just to keep his arms still.

"Good," Zordon said this time. Tears sprung to Jason's eyes, the sneer falling off his face; he forced his way through another barrier and spoke of his own accord.

"Help," was all he managed. It came out choked, strained, his voice ragged from being yanked free of his throat by force. Zordon's face softened immediately. He moved forward quickly and cupped Jason's face with both hands, leaning in until they were mere inches apart.

"It's all right," he said, and the words came from his mouth this time, his voice soothing but normal now, no longer booming into his brain but still just as comforting. "It's all right, Jason. Just breathe through it. Focus on me and take your control back."

They stood there like that for what felt like forever, not moving, not speaking. It was all Jason could do just to keep his breathing under control. He squeezed his eyes shut, putting all his concentration into uncurling his fists; then relaxing the muscles in his arms; and then reaching out to try to retake control of his feet, one toe at a time.

Finally, the tension in his body subsided, and he sagged with exhaustion and let Zordon catch him with a hand to his chest. He had to grab at his wrist to keep from falling to his knees, gripping it so hard his knuckles turned white. He blinked the tears out of his eyes, shaking his head to clear the last vestiges of the red cloud from his vision, and finally forced himself to look Zordon in the eye again.

The old mage just smiled kindly at him, still gripping his shoulder with his other hand. "Are you with me, Jason?"

All he could do was nod. Zordon released his hold on his shoulder and stepped back slightly, his other hand still planted on Jason's chest.

"Well done," he said, smile widening. Jason still didn't trust himself to talk, so he just smiled weakly instead. "Now to answer your question," Zordon said, "I brought you here so that we could get you through that," and Jason heard the knowing wink in his voice, "without anybody else getting hurt." He searched Jason's face for a second and he felt his throat constrict, the tears forming in his eyes again.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice breaking in a way that disgusted him with how small it made him feel. "That hasn't happened that bad since…"

"Since about ten minutes ago?" There was no malice in the question but Jason felt the hot dagger of guilt in his gut all the same. He finally released his grip on Zordon's wrist and let that arm fall loosely back to his side.

"God, this is all my fault." His voice was so low it was almost a whisper. "Zack, my dad, my family, everything." His breath hitched in his throat and he took a shaky step back from Zordon, suddenly needing desperately to break the physical contact. "Fuck, they would still be here if I had just…"

"Jason, stop," Zordon said, his voice soft but firm again. "You just demonstrated that you are perfectly capable of taking back control." Jason met his gaze again, not bothering to stop the moisture filling up his eyes this time. "Now it is true that your anger can be dangerous. That much is clear, and a connection to the Grid as powerful and deep as yours is will only amplify that. But what's even more powerful is your stubbornness. You've been showing me that for the last four years; we just need for you to see it for yourself."

Jason sniffed and ran a hand through his hair. "This has been happening my entire life, Zordon," he said. "It's always kind of been a part of me; don't think I don't see how scared some of the others look when I really get mad. After all this time, though, I…I thought I'd figured out how to deal with it but clearly I haven't. If you're right and the power will only amplify it, me being on this team is a liability, especially now." He wiped at his eyes with the back of his arm. "I'm sorry. I should've known better. I should've been better. More prepared, less impulsive, stronger, faster, fucking something. You chose me for this team, you chose me to lead this team, because you trusted me and I let you down. I let everybody down."

"You're wrong, Jason," Zordon said, stepping toward him again. "On two counts. First of all, I didn't choose you." Jason narrowed his eyes at him, confused. "I didn't choose any of you. The coins have always chosen their wielders, for as long as there have been Rangers. The coin chose you, the Grid chose you, just as the red coin chose me all those long years ago." Jason reached back instinctively and ran his fingers over the morpher and coin at the small of his back. "And two, you haven't let anybody down. Sometimes even the most powerful of us have things happen to us that we simply cannot control; no matter how strong we are or how much we prepare, sometimes bad things just happen. It isn't because of anybody failing, there isn't anyone to blame. It just happens, and there's nothing to be done."

Jason grunted bitterly. "I think Zack might disagree with you on that part."

"I think I'll decide what I think, if it's all the same to you," came a new voice from behind him. Jason whipped around, his fists coming up again on reflex. It took a moment, but his eyes widened as he saw who stood before him.

He faintly heard Zordon say, "And the other reason I brought you here is so that the two of you could talk," but he barely registered the words in his shock at the person who stood before him, whole and strong and alive, grinning that obnoxious grin that he'd already started to ache for. Jason dropped his fists and laughed with disbelief.

"Zack?"

Command Center
Zord Hangar
11:40 PM PDT

"Rocky."

Rocky jerked his head around and blinked rapidly at Aisha. She was standing at one of the control panels in the Zord hangar, fingers poised over the switches, glaring at him over one shoulder. "You're doing it again."

He frowned at her. "Doing what again?"

She snorted. "You're whistling that fucking Katy Perry song again. Seriously, I hope you don't do that around your brothers or they'd never let you hear the end of it."

"It'd probably just get lost under the rest of their bullshit," he muttered, resting his chin on one hand. He had dragged a couch into the Zord Hangar and was lounging in front of the surveillance terminal, to which he'd rerouted the feed from the Viewing Globe. He had been flipping nervously between different angles from their recon drones of their families in the prison camp that had encompassed much of what was left of Angel Grove. Apparently, his nerves had gotten the better of him.

He heard Aisha groan softly from behind him. "If you're gonna be in here, can you at least try to be quiet for five goddamn minutes?" She paused, and even without looking he could hear the way she cocked her head to one side and held up a finger, as though she was about to say something capital-I Important. "Or, better yet, you could help me instead of just sitting on your ass all night like you were in high school again." She paused. "Or college." Another pause. "Or any other night of your life, really. Huh. You know, that actually explains a lot."

He smirked, not even bothering to turn and face her. "Sorry, Sha. This is an extremely volatile situation and anything could potentially go wrong at any time. I have to keep vigilant here as long as Zordon is preoccupied so we know if anything changes down there."

"See, I know your lips are moving, and words are coming out, but all I hear is Jason, for some reason," she said, sighing angrily. "Speaking of Zordon being fucking preoccupied."

"You know, I wonder if you'd feel the same way about me if my whole family died and then I lost my cool for ten seconds," Rocky said casually, drumming his fingers on the arm of the couch. This time, he didn't turn all the way around, but glanced sideways at the couch so he could see if she moved into his peripheral vision.

"You and I both know that's exactly what we signed up for here, Rock. Jason's been a Ranger longer than either of us, not to mention the leader, he's supposed to be…" she trailed off, but he knew where she was going well enough to finally turn around and talk to the back of her head.

"Sha, I love you but I swear to god if you say 'better than that' I'm gonna come over there and fucking Hadouken you across the room. That's bullshit and you know it. Besides, if I know my Ranger history worth the price of my Command Center food budget, Tommy put the originals through a hell of a lot worse before we ever got here, and I don't see Jason or any of the rest of them holding that over his head."

She still didn't turn to look at him, but her fingers stopped moving over the console and she let her head fall back slightly onto her shoulders, like she was staring up at the ceiling. "That's different."

"How?" Rocky asked incredulously. "Because we weren't here? Because it didn't directly involve you?"

"You know damn well that's not what I meant, you asshole," she retorted, finally turning to glare at him again. "You forget, I taught you that Ranger history. It's different because Tommy didn't have any control over what he was doing. Jason pushed and pushed and pushed to be allowed onto this mission, he was constantly forcing the issue, and he swore up and down that he was fine right up until he almost turned four of us and half the moon into sparkly little bits of space dust. That was his call. That was on him."

"And maybe if it had any chance of actually happening, I'd agree with you," he said. "But Jason and Tommy put in override procedures for a reason, and Jason wasn't even officially a part of that mission anyway, that's why he wasn't up there with us." He shifted around so he was on his knees on the couch, leaning forward onto his forearms on the back cushion. "And you forget, I was up there, too. I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, and after all the time I've known you, I would've thought you would be, too. So what's different this time?"

She leaned back, resting her butt against the control panel. "You were inside the structure at the time, Rock, so you didn't hear what was happening over that comm channel. Tommy and Adam and I all told him how crazy he was being, and how dangerous that would be, and that four of our lives would be at risk, and he didn't care. He just waved all that off like it didn't even matter, like both of us, and a girl so new to this that she's still jumping through hoops to please everybody, and even his own girlfriend, weren't as important as his own fucking revenge fantasy. I've been going back and forth about that ever since we got back, like…was that just a symptom of grief? Of him being so upset still over his mom and brothers that he just went a few steps too far? Or is it like…" she stopped and stared at a spot over his head for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth in thought like she was reading from invisible cue cards. "My grandpa used to say that a drunk man's truths are a sober man's lies. What if this is like that? What if this is what he's always been underneath and the combination of Zack and his mom and his brothers and everything else brought his guard down just enough that we finally got to see it? What guarantee do we have that he's not some kind of ticking time bomb and all we've done is set back the clock?"

"Zordon, for one," Rocky replied immediately, holding out a hand when she started to interrupt him. "Look, I know I don't usually have complete faith in the guy, but Jason does. I think all the originals do. And I've been here long enough to know that at the very least the ten of us represent a really valuable investment on Zordon's part. Even if he's worse than we think he is, he's not gonna risk losing the most powerful weapons he's got. Besides, he's probably in there ripping Jason a new asshole right this very second; if nothing else, it'll get his head back on straight." He rocked back onto his haunches and slid his feet down to stand on the floor in front of the couch. "And us, for another. Tommy, Kim and Trini all still seem to have their brains attached. There's a reason there isn't just one field leader on this team, and even more reasons why Kim and Trini have override power. For situations exactly like this." He walked around the couch as he spoke, leaning against the back of it and folding his arms over his chest. "And on the very, very off chance that all of that crashes and burns, you and Adam and I have had each other's backs since before we could eat solid food. There's always that to fall back on."

Aisha was quiet for a long minute, just looking at him, letting what he said sink in. When she finally spoke, her voice was much quieter, no longer echoing off the metallic walls like she had before. "You know, it's funny. A couple of hours ago I said something about Jason to Kim and she snapped at me that I barely knew him. At the time I just wrote it off as her being angry and not liking that I used him against her, but after this…I think she was right. I don't think I really know him at all. And I don't know if I can trust him anymore." She met his eye again. "Do you?"

It was Rocky's turn to let the silence linger in the room for a second before he spoke. "I think you know him better than you think you do. Just because someone does something that surprises you doesn't mean they're a different person than you thought they were. It's just a new facet of that person that you're seeing. We've only ever seen Jason as the OG, the guy in charge, Mr. Ultimate Warrior. Seeing him that shaken by anything would've been a shock to me, too, if I'd actually heard it happening. But I don't think that's enough for us not to trust him." He pushed himself away from the couch and stepped toward her. "Look, all I know is, every single person on this team would've been dead at some point or another if it wasn't for him. He's put his ass on the line for us more times than I can count. And when we first got here, when I was effectively taking his place – I mean, shit, Sha, my Ranger color is just the darker and edgier reboot of his – he never showed me any resentment or jealousy or anything like that. Hell, he took me under his wing, showed me the ropes, sparred with me…I don't mean to go all chick flick on you but in a lot of ways he's like the big brother I never had. I've never once thought he had anything other than my best interests at heart." He stopped, not moving within arm's reach of her so she didn't feel pinned. "And I know he's been the same to you. You may not have interacted with him as much, but I've seen you two talk to each other. I think he sees some of himself in you. You may not know him like you know Kim or Adam or Kat or Billy, but you know me. And I think I know him."

She studied his face for a moment. "You still didn't answer my question."

He sighed. "Look, I'm not asking you to just forget about it. If he hurt you that badly then you should absolutely take that up with him. But I am asking you to give him the benefit of the doubt. One bad day after four-and-some years of doing the hardest job on the planet shouldn't rewrite someone's entire story. So yes, I trust him. He's a good guy and a great friend. Don't give up on him, OK?"

Aisha looked at the floor for a second; he could see the war being waged on her face. Finally she looked back up at him and said, "Yeah, OK. Benefit of the doubt. I can do that." He smiled and she quickly added, "I'm still gonna sock him in the jaw next time I see him."

He laughed. "Shit, I think you've earned that much." She smiled back just as a loud, grating, metallic sound reverberated through the room, so loud that both of them flinched.

"They're here!" He shouted over the noise. "You ready for the Hart/Oliver Drama Express?"

"Always!" She yelled back, grinning. They moved to step behind the door so as not to be boiled alive by the heat of the Zord thrusters; once there was quiet again, she nudged him with her elbow. "And don't think I missed that you told me you loved me."

He gaped at her, mouth flailing at words he couldn't make form, as she leaned casually against the door, arching her eyebrows at him smugly. He stood there sputtering at her until the sounds of the Zord thrusters quieted and she pushed the door open, slipping back into the hangar and leaving him there, panting, red-faced and staring at the spot where she'd just been standing.

Command Center
Zord Hangar
11:55 PM PDT

Tommy and Kim were already mid-argument as they climbed out of their Zords, both of them angrily shoving their cockpit doors open and yanking their helmets off.

"We have a chain of command for a fucking reason, Kim!" Tommy threw his helmet aside and let it bounce across the floor, foregoing the small ladder that hung from the side of the cockpit and hopping down to the ground. Kim rolled her eyes and slid down the side of her own Zord with a practiced, deliberate calm.

"And if your fucking chain of command had had its way, we wouldn't have any information about the inside of those ships!" She tossed her helmet casually straight up into the air and demorphed before it hit the ground, letting it disappear into the empty space above her head. "If you're angry about me outsmarting you don't take it out on me."

"Yeah, you were really smart, charging eyes-closed-headfirst into danger and coming this close to getting yourself killed."

"Hey there, pot. My name's kettle. You're black."

He rolled his eyes and canceled his own morph. "Answer me something. Just out of curiosity. If the order to stay out had come from Jason or Zordon, would you have followed it?"

As Rocky and Aisha stood watching this, Adam and Kat walked quietly over to stand next to them, watching the two older Rangers go at it. Rocky leaned over to Adam.

"So how long has this argument been happening?"

"Which time?" Adam asked sardonically. "They've been going around in circles for the last twenty minutes. I had thought about setting my watch to it."

Kat sighed and dropped her morph, glancing over at Aisha. "Sha, you all have been here longer than I have. Should we be doing something about this?"

"Why?" Aisha said, snorting with laughter. "Half the stuff on TV isn't this entertaining." She saw the look on Kat's face and added quickly, "Besides, they'll wear themselves out eventually. You'll get used to this, trust me."

Kat looked back at Tommy and Kim, still shouting at each other, moving steadily closer until their chests were almost touching. "Any of you ever feel like we're just running on a giant hamster wheel?"

"Yes," all three of them said at once. Kat chuckled despite herself and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Oh my god, we're all gonna die," she muttered. The other three burst out laughing, and Kim and Tommy finally seemed to realize they had an audience. Both of their faces reddened and they stormed toward them, moving for the door.

With the look of a man stepping in front of a bus, Rocky reached out and grabbed Tommy's shoulder as he walked by.

"Hey, big man," he said happily, as though Tommy wasn't practically growling at him. "We got a plan for next steps here?"

Tommy looked at the hand Rocky had on his shoulder and then back to his face, his glare intensifying. "Step one, you take your fucking hand off my shoulder before I break your wrist." Rocky slowly removed his hand, grin widening. "Step two, the four of you fuck off and let me take a shower while Jason has his Come To Jesus meeting with Zordon. Step three, I start punching people. Jason, Kim…" he looked Rocky up and down. "You." He raised his eyebrows expectantly. "How's that for fucking next steps?"

Rocky didn't respond to that; instead, he peered over Tommy's shoulder at where Kim had stopped at the door, not hiding the fact that she was listening. "Hey Kim, translate that for me. How long is the hate sex gonna last this time? I just wanna be prepared, you know, cause last time we ran out of snacks."

The look on Kim's face became positively feral. Before she could bull rush Rocky, Adam stepped up next to him and put a hand on his chest.

"Sorry about him, guys, he has a slight issue with his brain being missing," Adam said. "But before you both rip out his heart and eat it, I should remind you that we just got home from Day 1 of the apocalypse, so anytime you wanna figure out your shit would be great."

"Oh, I've figured out plenty, Adam," Kim growled, jerking her head at Tommy. "He's the one with his head still stuck up his ass."

Tommy wheeled on her, fists balling. "That's a great way to talk to someone who's trying to keep you alive, you fucking idiot."

"I never asked for your fucking help!" Kim practically screamed, jabbing a finger at him. "And in case you haven't noticed, there are eight other people here and several billion out there who you could be helping instead. You don't get to appoint yourself my fucking savior just because you suddenly decided I couldn't take care of myself."

"And yet you keep insisting on proving me right!" He retorted, laughing bitterly. "I wouldn't have to treat you like a child if you didn't keep sticking forks in electrical outlets and trying to drink the blue stuff under the sink."

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

"You're welcome."

"Oh fuck off," she groaned loudly. "I've been a Ranger even longer than you have. I am the last person here who you should worry about taking care of themselves."

"And when the hell did we rewrite the rules here so I couldn't just fucking care about someone?"

Tommy froze and blinked a couple times, as though he hadn't expected to say that out loud. Kim stared back at him, mouth slightly agape, half in and half out of the door to the hangar. Aisha gently pushed Kat in front of her and strode by Adam and Rocky, tugging gently on their shirt collars as she passed.

"Come on, kids, let's get out of here so Mommy and Daddy can talk," she muttered softly. Adam and Rocky couldn't entirely hide their disappointment as they followed Aisha, the four of them pushing gently past Kim and filing out the door. They practically tiptoed down the hallway, not daring to say anything until they heard the hangar door close behind them.

"'Mommy and Daddy?'" Rocky said, clearly fighting hard not to laugh. "Where the hell did that come from?"

"I don't know, shut up," Aisha grumbled. "And where the hell did 'big man' come from? You've got Tommy by an inch and ten pounds, easily." He snorted and she rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I was more focused on reaching minimum safe distance before that fucking atom bomb went off in there."

"OK, well, we're out of blast range, Dr. Manhattan," Adam said, smirking. "Was there an endgame to this whole thing?"

Aisha punched Adam halfheartedly on the arm. "Billy and Tanya might still be in the lab. We might as well see what they've got while Zordon's busy."

"Any ideas on the timetable on that?" Kat asked. "I don't think I've ever seen Zordon close off the Main Chamber for a private talk with someone before."

"Neither have we," Adam said. "This is new to us, too."

"Hey, look at us, setting precedents," Rocky said with exaggerated cheerfulness. They had reached the door to the lab at this point and as Adam went to open it, Rocky spoke again. "By the way, Aisha reminded me I missed Mt. Jason erupting. Where on the Jason scale are we talking here? Did we achieve full Statham?"

"Dude, I think we blew right past Statham and straight into full-on Voorhees." The words were out of Adam's mouth before he realized that Trini and Mr. Scott were in the lab as well, all four occupants staring up at them as they walked in. Rocky, though, was still talking.

"Wait, we had a Category Voorhees and I missed it? Damn it, I haven't been this disappointed since Terminator: Salvation." He stopped abruptly when Aisha elbowed him in the ribs. "Ow! What – oh, shit."

"Hey, kids," Rick said, face unreadable, raising a hand in a small wave. "Everything go all right on your way back?"

"If you don't count Tommy and Kim spitting acid at each other like that thing from Jurassic Park, then sure," Adam said with a shrug. "What about here?"

Billy and Trini shared a look, but before they could answer, Aisha pointed to the screen behind them which still displayed the fingerprint record. "Who's that? Why is his picture on that monitor?"

Billy glanced between the screen and the blue alien on the table. "That guy," he pointed back over his shoulder at the screen. "Is this guy." He motioned to the alien. Aisha frowned, bewildered.

"Wait, what? What are you talking about, Billy?"

"It's true," Trini said. "We found fingerprints on the hands that look like human hands and they came back to this guy who was arrested a few years back in Angel Grove. And the DNA test confirmed it – we tested blood, mouth scrapings or the closest thing to, and anything else we could think of, and they all came back the same." She tapped a button and the screen changed to show the DNA test results. "Look. Barring a couple of weird anomalies and distortions, this thing is human."

"OK, so…" Kat said slowly, her already fair cheeks growing even paler. "If this thing is human, how did it get from looking like that…" she pointed to the picture. "To looking like this?" Billy shrugged, sighing in frustration.

"We haven't figured that out yet. We were still discussing what our next course of action here should be when you all walked in."

"Oh, Tri," Rocky exclaimed, suddenly remembering. "What was in that book we found? Was there anything useful there?"

"I don't know," Trini answered. "We ran a scan of one of the pages through the Command Center database and it isn't any language that we have on record as existing in the known universe. We took samples of the actual paper, the ink and the cover, but those haven't ben tested yet." She looked over at Billy. "I can get that going if you want."

"Excellent," he replied, nodding. "While you're doing that, there's something else I wanted to look into." He turned and strode purposefully across the lab to the table where the two weapons were still lying, untouched. He carefully hefted one and turned to face the others. "Based on what I've been told by the people who brought these back here, I've hypothesized that they operate on the same kind of energy that the big ships' weapons use. If we can figure out how these work, we may be able to disable those weapon systems as well." He turned the weapon over in his hand, careful not to trigger anything. "Problem is I don't see any place on here where I could take it apart, it looks like it's all made from one solid piece."

"Careful with that thing, Billy," Rick said warily, inching his way toward where the other weapon lay on the table. "I don't see any kind of safety or trigger guard or anything on that weapon, you touch it wrong and you could lose a hand."

Billy looked up at him as if to thank him and froze. "Mr. Scott, would it be inappropriate of me to assume that in your profession you've had experience with different sorts of firearms?" Rick chuckled a little, cocking his head at Billy in confusion.

"No, that isn't inappropriate at all, Billy," he answered, "although the fact that you talk like someone three times your age is gonna take a little getting used to again."

"Yes, um…sorry," Billy replied, laughing sheepishly. "Anyway, would you be so kind as to test fire this weapon for me? I would love to see how it works first hand."

Rick hesitated, eyeing the alien weapon suspiciously, as though he expected it to shapeshift into something else. "Not in here, right?" He asked, gesturing around the lab.

Billy motioned behind him with his head. "I have a firing range in the back that can handle just about anything." Rick swallowed and nodded.

"Sure, OK," he finally said. He turned and addressed the other gathered Rangers in the room. "One of you want to test the other one? Who here is the best shot?"

Everyone in the room except Billy immediately raised their hand. Rick bit back a laugh, shaking his head with amusement. "I had to ask."

Aisha snorted, grinning. "Good to see that having these powers hasn't gone to our heads."

"I don't suppose we have time to settle this March Madness style?" Rocky glanced back and forth, getting only a few eyerolls in reply. "I'll take that as a no."

Adam smiled. "Someone wanna pick a number between 1 and 100?"

"Well somebody better do something, cause if we're all still standing here like idiots in thirty seconds I'm pulling rank," Trini grumbled, tapping her foot impatiently but not putting her hand down.

"Uh, Tri?" Billy said tentatively; her glare swung toward him and he gripped the side of the table to keep from backing away. "Shouldn't you be here for when the tests on the paper and ink finish? I won't be here and you're better than any of them at interpreting those."

"What the hell, Billy?" Adam protested playfully, unable to hide the amused twinkle in his eyes.

"No, he's right, Adam, the five of us share like three brain cells and nobody ever has all of them at once," Rocky said, voice already shaking with restrained laughter. Trini glowered at Billy but lowered her hand.

"This proves nothing," she muttered. "I could shoot the coin out of any of your morphers from 800 yards and you all know it."

"All right, this has gone on long enough," Aisha said, smile still lingering on her face. "I know how to settle this. Who brought the weapons back here, Billy?"

"Trini brought one, Tanya brought the other," Billy said, nodding to the girl in silver.

Aisha lowered her hand and made eye contact with Tanya. "Then she should do it. Seems only fair." Tanya stared at her for a second as Rocky, Kat and Adam slowly lowered their hands, grumbling to themselves.

"That's OK, Sha," she said, hand still raised like a kid in class. "It doesn't need to be me, one of you should…"

"No, she's right," Adam said. "You actually managed to get one of those. The rest of us were just lucky enough to not get shot with one. It should totally be you."

Tanya smiled widely at him, letting her hand finally fall to her side. "OK, awesome. Thanks, you guys."

"OK, let's get back there," Billy said. He handed one of the alien weapons to Rick and the other to Tanya and started to lead them toward the small door in the back corner of the lab that had been blocked by a few bits of furniture. As they all worked to move it out of the way, Kat glanced up at the screen again.

"Oh, hey," she said, pointing. "It's midnight."

They all paused and looked at each other for a second. "Holy shit," Rocky said. "We did all this in one day? The Youth Center feels like a week ago."

"Weird, isn't it?" Rick asked, scanning their faces. "I've had the same thing happen. The things happening right in front of you feel like they're moving so fast and then the world off in the background feels like it's going in slow motion at the same time. It's a little disorienting." He leaned over and pulled the last piece of equipment out of the way of the door. "It might take a while, but you get used to it. Promise."

He smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring as he and Tanya followed Billy through the door and let it swing shut behind them.

Command Center
Ballistic Testing Chamber
August 29, 2012
12:05 AM PDT

Billy's experimental firing range looked a lot like many of the other firing ranges Rick had seen in his time; it had the typical demarcated shooting lanes, with targets mounted at various distances, was surrounded by the same nondescript concrete walls, even had the same buzzing fluorescent lights blaring down from the ceiling. He and Tanya stepped up to a pair of stalls at the center, resting their bizarre weapons on the waist-high, bar-like counter in front of them. Billy stepped off to one side and leaned a hip against the counter, eyes sharp, observant and a tiny bit eager. Rick bent over and checked beneath the counter.

"You got any ear protection here, Billy?" He asked, groping around a little in the dark beneath the counter.

It was Tanya who answered. "I don't think we'll need it, Papa Scott," she said, already readying the weapon in her hands. "I saw those guys fire these in the field and they don't make any noise."

"OK," he said slowly, pulling himself back upright. "What about eye protection? Just in case?" He half expected the two younger adults to forego that, too, but Billy nodded, leaned over and pulled three pairs of safety glasses from under his part of the counter. He tossed one pair each to Rick and Tanya and pulled on the third himself.

"Ready?" Billy asked, and Rick could see from here that the kid was practically vibrating, whether from excitement or nerves, he couldn't quite tell.

"Sure," Rick said tentatively, turning the weapon over in his hands to try and figure out how it worked. Tanya must've seen him doing it.

"There's not a trigger like a normal gun," she said, holding hers out to him. "I think it's all made from one solid piece of…whatever the hell this is." She motioned to a single small indentation on the back, where the hammer would be on a normal pistol. "This is where you fire it from. It's like those guns they give you when you play laser tag." Tanya lifted the weapon up in front of her, aiming downrange, and tapped her thumb over the indentation twice in quick succession.

She had been right on one count – there was no sound at all. The light, though…Rick practically tripped over his own feet at the sudden flash of green, as two grapefruit-size balls of shimmering green energy materialized from the end of the barrel as though pulled through a wormhole. They zipped down toward the end of the range, passing straight through everything in their way until they disappeared into the far wall.

Tanya didn't seem at all surprised to see that, though, just lowered the weapon and turned to Billy. "Look familiar, Billy?" She asked, pushing the thing gently away. Billy nodded, one hand scratching absently at his lip while the other played with the hem of his shirt.

Rick looked at the weapon in his own hands. Well, shit, he thought, shrugging. Suppose I might as well get in on this. He lifted his own weapon up to shoulder height in a smooth, practiced motion, astonished at how a piece of what looked like solid metal could be that light, and aimed down the barrel toward the furthest target from him. He noticed the back of the weapon was an almost completely smooth surface – no sights, no slide, no anything, save for the small indentation Tanya had showed him, where he brought his right thumb up and tapped twice, just like she had.

Nothing. He had squinted a little in preparation for a flash that never came, and when none did, he opened both eyes wider and tried again. Two more quick taps on that indentation…and again, nothing. He lowered the gun in front of him, staring at it in confusion.

"Think this one's broken," he muttered, not quite achieving the humorous tone he was trying for. He looked at the thing in every direction he could think of, short of staring straight down the barrel. There weren't any other buttons or switches or triggers, no moving parts at all, and no indication that the thing had been damaged, just that infuriatingly smooth metal from one end to the other.

"That's weird," Billy said, furrowing his brow in confusion. "Trini told me she'd fired that thing herself a couple times, and nothing's happened to it, it's just been sitting in the lab this whole time."

Rick turned back to Tanya. "Can you hold up yours again, Tanya?" He asked. She held hers out to him, barrel still aimed downrange; he looked it over, glancing back and forth at his own, and confirmed that they were identical, no indication of moving parts besides the single indentation. "Huh," he said, almost to himself. "I don't see any difference between this one and yours. If it fired before I can't imagine why it would suddenly not be firing now."

"Could I take a look?" Billy asked, approaching carefully from behind him. Rick turned and handed the weapon to him, stepping away from the counter and folding his arms. Billy examined the thing the same way he just had, and after a minute he made a noise of confusion and swung it downrange, tapping his own thumb over the indentation.

Once again, there was no sound, just a blinding flash of light, a deep, bloody red this time, and another ball of energy explode out of the weapon. Billy had aimed it slightly down, and Rick had expected the ball of light to go right through the floor like Tanya's had. But instead, it bounced of the concrete floor, leaving a crater nearly eight inches across; it ricocheted off the back wall and the ceiling, leaving identical craters in each, before finally hitting the ground again, less than a yard in front of them, and exploded, leaving a crater almost twice as big as the others.

"Jesus fuckin' wept!" Rick exclaimed, that trace of his long-abandoned accent slipping in again. Billy had jumped back a foot after the first bounce; now he carefully lowered the weapon and turned to Tanya.

"I need to try one more thing. Switch with me." They traded and then both fired again. This time, it was Billy firing green energy that disappeared into the wall, and Tanya creating the world's most lethal bouncy ball. Billy turned back to Rick again, holding Tanya's gun out to him. "Here, try this one. Just to be thorough."

Far more wary this time, Rick took the weapon and stepped up to the counter. His motions were automatic at this point, even given how frayed every nerve ending had become. Muscle memory just seemed to take over, and he brought the weapon up, aimed, braced himself, and tapped twice.

Once again, nothing happened. He blew a frustrated breath out through his nose and tossed the thing back to Billy, who juggled it a few times before he got his grip. Tanya set hers down and stood with her hands on her hips, glancing back and forth from the gun Billy was now holding to her own. "I don't understand," she said, safety glasses sliding the slightest bit down her nose. "They both work for us just fine. Why don't they work for you?"

"I think I might know," Billy said, gently laying the weapon he'd just caught on another part of the counter. "Think about it, Tan. What's the one very significant thing you and I have in common that Mr. Scott doesn't?"

"I mean, obviously that we're Rangers, Billy, but…" she trailed off, sputtering a little in bewilderment. "Those blue aliens out there were using these just fine. How would they be able to…oh."

Rick saw on her face the second the idea had registered; it was only an instant after he'd landed there himself. The thought was like a splash of icy water, painfully cold and intensely sharp. He turned to Billy, who was running a hand through his hair and fighting to look up from the floor.

"It would appear that these weapons are only usable by individuals who have some degree of connection to the Morphin' Grid," he said slowly, as though hoping if he drew it out long enough he could find a loophole in it to slip through. "Which means I believe we now know where this energy they're using comes from." He walked over and picked up both the weapons, shoving one into each pocket. "These things are drawing their power from the same source as we do. And if they're able to summon energy from the Grid in such a concentrated form, it seems a logical next step to conclude that their exposure to it has been either prolonged or extremely intense." He finally managed to meet Rick's eye. "We know the one in there used to be a normal human before it looked like that. I believe I now also have some idea as to how it came to look that way."

Rick folded his arms and lowered his head, whispering a prayer as he tried to fight off the wave of dizziness that threatened to knock him off his feet. This was all a little too much, too fast, even for him. He looked up again to find both of the kids staring at him, concern and curiosity on their faces in equal measure.

"Sorry," he said, "This is a lot all at once. You two should fill your friends in on the rest of this. I need to go see my son."

Tanya grabbed him by the arm as he moved to walk past her. "Papa Scott, I don't think Zordon is going to let you in there…"

He yanked his arm away, a bit more harshly than he'd meant, and hated himself for the look of shock and hurt on her face. "He's clearly never had any kids of his own if he thinks he can keep me out."

He didn't give either of them a chance to respond, his walk quickly accelerating to a jog as he pushed back through the door, through the lab, and out into the hallway.

Unknown Location
12:10 AM PDT

"Hey, Jase. Hell of a day, huh?"

Jason thought maybe his brain had stopped working entirely. All he was able to do at the moment was stand frozen in place, staring dumbstruck at the figure who stood before him. His tongue was like a piece of sandpaper in his mouth, jaw working its way around words he couldn't move enough air to say out loud. He blinked rapidly, shaking his head a little as though what he was seeing was some sort of hallucination that he could banish from sight if he just tried hard enough. Then again, though, he was standing here with a thousand-year-old wizard from another planet in a pocket dimension created by his connection to a nebulous power source that might or might not have had a mind of its own, so he wasn't sure he had room to question what he saw here.

And still, it didn't make sense; even as powerful as this power source was, it couldn't wake the dead. It couldn't turn back time. And as far as he knew, it couldn't create new life where none had been before.

Right?

Finally, Jason swallowed hard, licked his lips with a still sluggish tongue, and found a fraction of his voice. "Zack?" He asked again, feeling his knees go wobbly at the sound of the name. The figure before him, which was indeed the spitting image of Zack, in the same clothes Jason had last seen him wearing way back in Geneva, in another world, earlier that day and yet a lifetime ago, smiled broadly and wiggled his fingers in a little wave.

"Yeah, dude, it's me." He cocked his head to one side. "Don't tell me you've forgotten what I looked like already." Jason smiled despite himself, letting out a wheeze that was almost a laugh.

"Are you…?" Jason stepped shakily forward and clapped a hand onto Zack's shoulder, where it caught, solid and warm and real, so real it almost felt like an electric shock went through his arm. He squeezed, hard, as though afraid if he didn't hold on tight Zack would slip away again. "Holy fuck," he croaked, and scanned Zack's face as though looking for a tell that it wasn't actually him. "I thought I was never gonna see you again."

"Well that isn't something I would wish on anybody," Zack said softly, smiling again. Jason finally made himself return it and threw his arms around Zack's neck, pounding him on the back like they always did.

"I don't understand," Jason said as he pulled back, hands resting on Zack's shoulders again, voice shaking, eyes beginning to well up. "The others, they…they watched you die. I saw your body. How are you…" he trailed off and glanced around them at the infinite white background they stood in. "How are you here right now?" A thought suddenly struck him, and he craned his head up to search frantically over the top of Zack's head. "Wait. Are my mom and brothers here, too? Have you seen them since you've been here?"

Zack didn't speak for a second; then he heard Zordon from behind him. "I'm afraid they're not here, Jason. When Zachary passed on, his consciousness left behind a residual imprint of energy on the Morphin' Grid. He was able to make himself appear here, but it won't last forever. At some point, even this energy imprint will fade."

Jason turned back to face Zordon, not relinquishing his hold on his oldest friend. "And after that?"

Zordon smiled sadly and shook his head, but it was Zack who spoke up.

"No spoilers, Big Z," he said, leveling a finger at Zordon. "I'd rather be surprised." Jason turned back to look him in the eye again and he added, "I'm finally gonna get to see which one of us is right."

"Honestly, at this point, I really hope it's you," Jason said. "I wish like hell I could believe it myself."

Zack reached up and wrapped a hand around Jason's arm. "Tell you what. If it turns out I am right, I'll be sure to put in a good word for you."

Jason grinned, letting go with one hand to wipe his eyes. "Thanks." He returned his hand to Zack's shoulder. "You'd think after everything else I wouldn't have been so surprised to see you here."

"I would've at least thought you'd've recognized me a little faster. Who were you expecting? Morpheus?"

"Actually, I was expecting Dumbledore, which you would've heard if you'd popped yourself in here a few minutes earlier. What the hell took you so long?" Zack laughed.

"Hey, cut me some slack, man, I'm dead." They both laughed at that one, Jason finally letting his hands fall away from Zack's shoulders so he could lean forward onto his knees.

Once the laughter had ebbed, Jason looked back up at him. "So do you have any idea how long you have here? How long before this energy imprint runs out?"

Zack thought for a second. "Not really. I can kind of feel how strong my connection is with this place, and I can feel it kind of gradually fading, but I don't know how long that's gonna take." Jason sighed and straightened, trying to process all this.

"So what, are you gonna, like, start turning see-through like the end of Back to the Future?" He'd hoped that would make Zack laugh, but instead he seemed to seriously ponder it.

"Hmm. Maybe. I guess we'll find out."

"You don't seem the least bit worried about it."

"I mean, once you've gotten through dying, nothing else really seems quite so worth worrying about."

Jason had been about to say something, but the reality of what Zack had just said began to sink in, and he swallowed the words back down. Finally, he found his voice again. "Listen, man, I, uh…I don't really know how to say this, but…" he stopped to gather himself and ran a hand over his face. "God, Zack, I'm so sorry, I couldn't…"

Zack jabbed a finger into his chest to cut him off. His face darkened. "Jase, if you finish that sentence I'm gonna seriously reconsider putting a good word in for you."

"But-"

"But nothing, you big adorable idiot," Zack interrupted again, giving his shoulder a shake to punctuate it. "Did you invade Earth? Did you drop a fuckload of radioactive rainbow balls onto our campus in Geneva? Are you a collapsing eight-story building?" Jason furrowed his brow in confusion. "No? Then you are not responsible for what happened to me." He motioned past Jason with his head. "I wasn't here for all of it, but I caught the last bit of what Zordon was saying, and he's right. Sometimes bad things just fucking happen, and even demigods like you can't do anything about it."

Jason shook his head, his hands curling into fists again. "I got Trini out. I could've at least tried not to leave you behind. There had to have been something I could've done, something, besides just running away like a fucking useless waste of…" he trailed off, his body shaking too badly to keep his voice steady. Zack grabbed Jason by the jaw and wrenched his head up to glare at him dead in the eye.

"Jase, listen to me, OK? I was there. I lived it. There. Was. Nothing. You. Could. Do. If I have to repeat that on a loop until I pop on out of here to make you believe it I'm gonna goddamn do it."

He let go of Jason's jaw and let his hand fall to his side. Jason looked at him skeptically. "That's a weird thing to say for someone who thinks there's an all-encompassing plan for the universe."

Zack frowned. "Why?"

Jason set his jaw. "Because if there was a plan, and that plan was for you and I to go through everything we lived together just for you to die in some shitty dorm building before the most important thing we ever did had even really begun, then that plan is fucking shit, and whatever made it can go fuck itself. If you get over there and you are right, tell whoever's in charge there I said they're a heartless bastard. You believed in that your entire life and you fucking deserved better." He couldn't stop the sob from bursting loose this time, and he squeezed Zack's shoulder and cried silently for a moment, biting down on his fist to keep himself from bawling.

Zack smiled sadly, gently pulling Jason's hand away from his shoulder. "You know, as much as I love the thought of cussing out God for you, you don't have to be angry about that on my account." He waited for Jason's breathing to even out before continuing. "I saw that you and Trini got out, and since I'm the only one here, I'm guessing everyone else is OK, right?"

"Mostly," Jason said, laughing softly through the lump rising in his throat. "How much have you been able to see from here?"

"Not much," Zack said, eyes downturned as though in deep thought. "Feelings, mostly; impressions. Some good, some really, really not." He looked back up. "It didn't really hit me before when you asked about your mom and brothers, but are they.." All Jason could do was nod. Zack winced. "Christ, Jase, I'm sorry. What about your dad, is he…?"

"Yeah, he's OK, we've had him back at the Command Center with us for the last few hours," Jason said. "In fact he's kind of why I'm here right now." Zack arched his eyebrows, a question on his face. "It's a long story."

"Well," Zack said carefully, seeming to ponder something for a moment. "I don't feel like my link to this place is getting that much weaker just yet. Why don't we find a place to sit down and you can fill me in."

There weren't any walls or furniture in whatever this place was, and after only a minute or two of first looking for it and then trying to will it into existence, they decided to just sit cross-legged on what passed for the ground and just talk, like they'd done so many thousands of times over two decades' worth of friendship. Jason filled Zack in as best he could with everything that had happened since they'd last been together – the attacks, the drama, the things Billy had discovered and the things Jason himself had done and not done that he wished he could change. Zack was as sharply observant as Jason had ever seen him, talking him through everything he laid out in front of him and putting everything into brand new perspective for him.

Eventually, their upright, cross-legged positions transitioned into the two of them laying flat on their backs, heads next to each other, feet extending out in opposite directions, like they'd done on so many nights before when the sun had set over the ocean and they had a bonfire going or the headlights of someone's car or just the stars in the Angel Grove sky to see by, and their friends had been clustered around them and they had laughed and joked and teased each other as though nothing in life would ever change and all of them were invincible.

God, but things had been so perfect then, Jason realized as he laughed at another one of Zack's jokes, trying to ignore the fact that he couldn't actually feel his friend's breath on his face because it wasn't there. They really had all thought they were unstoppable, that there was nothing in the wide, infinite stretch of their universe – expanding so much further everyday, showing them things no other human in history had had the power to see – that would ever beat them, that the power they'd been chosen for and the power of their relationships would be enough to fight off anything that was thrown at them.

He wanted that feeling back more than anything in the world, felt a part of his brain reaching out for it as though if he just stretched far enough back into his own past he could grasp it again and everything would be OK.

But his dad had always told him that it wasn't healthy to focus on how things could've been or how they used to be, because more often than not that was only a distraction from the way things actually were. Jason had to force down the clawing, yearning nostalgia that had begun to build in his stomach and the base of his throat, a physical reminder of a part of his life that had been cut short far too quickly and that he would never get back. He told himself he had to be stronger than that, that his friends and every other surviving human was counting on him to be steady, to be the rock that they could hold onto as they were dragged forward into an uncertain future. It was a lot for a 21-year-old kid, but as Zordon had said, the Grid had chosen them because for whatever reason it had thought they were the best people for the job.

The only people for the job.

He'd be damned if he was the one to prove it wrong.

There was a lull in the conversation after a while, and the two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence for a time, just relishing in the fact that they had gotten to see each other again one more time. At some point Jason realized Zordon had disappeared; he wasn't sure when or where he'd gone but it didn't seem to matter very much right that second.

"This isn't fair," he finally said softly. Zack didn't respond, but he could see in his peripheral vision that his friend had turned his head to look at him. "I'm not the only one here who would've wanted to talk to you. The others should all get a chance to be here."

"In a perfect world, they all would have," Zack said wistfully. "But you and I both know that the world ain't perfect, Jase."

Jason grunted in agreement. "Used to think that was part of the charm," he said thoughtfully. "Now I just think it sucks."

Zack smiled next to him. "I knew on some level that when I got here it wouldn't be for very long. If I only had time to talk to one of you, I'm glad it was you." Jason opened his mouth to ask why, but Zack seemed to read his mind. "Because you and I have been friends the longest and besides, let's face it, you needed this the most. None of the others were in danger of guilting themselves to death over me like you were." He waited a beat. "And don't deny it, dude, I can feel the denial about to come out of you, just fuckin' don't."

Jason chuckled. "OK, OK, guilty as charged." He tilted his head toward Zack's and smirked. "But come on, you know you love me for it." Zack just rolled his eyes and snorted, covering his eyes with one hand. Jason let his head roll back so he was staring straight up again, already almost used to the endless white that surrounded them.

"You're right, though," he said, fingers playing absently with the fabric of his shorts. "I really did need this. I don't know what I would've done if I had to go my whole life thinking I'd never gotten to say goodbye."

"Hold up, don't you get all sappy on me now," Zack said, his tone playful but with an unmistakable undercurrent of warning behind it. Zack started to say more, but the words caught in his throat and he sat bolt upright. "Whoa, that was weird – uh-oh." Jason sat up behind him.

"What?"

Zack met his eye solemnly. "I think it's almost time, bro."

Jason's eyes widened. "Wait, hang on, it's not enough, we barely had time to do anything –"

"Jase," Zack said softly. "I don't think we really have a say in this part."

Jason stared at him for a second, panting, and then clenched his jaw and grabbed a fistful of Zack's shirt. "I don't fucking accept that," he said, dark and low, his voice turning venomous. He turned and screamed out into the surrounding white void. "You hear me, you motherfucker? You can't fucking have him! He's not fucking done here yet!" He let out a bitter laugh and spat on the ground in front of him. "Goddammit, what the fuck am I doing? You're not even real, anyway. You spineless fucking asshole. He's done nothing but what he thought you wanted since the day he was born and this is how you fucking reward him for it? Fuck you! Let him stay. Please, if he's right and you really are out there, just…let him stay. He doesn't deserve this."

As Jason's voice grew increasingly raw, Zack gently pulled his fingers away from his shirt and stepped back. "It's too late for that, Jase. We both know I was already gone before I got here. That part was already decided. Besides, you saw my body. I know what happened to me. I know you don't really want to shove me back into that." He quirked a little half smile at his friend. "Flattered, though. Really."

Jason sighed and smiled grimly back. "I'm not even sure what I thought I would accomplish. As far as I know, I'm just yelling at nothing." He shrugged. "Felt good, though."

Zack smiled, broadly, genuinely this time. "I'm sure it did, you absolute lunatic." Jason saw him jerk a little and he blinked rapidly several times, the smile vanishing from his face.

"Jase, listen," he said, running his tongue over his lips. "I don't know how much longer I've got so I need to make sure I say this."

"Zack –"

"Hang on, just shut the fuck up for a second and let me say this," Zack cut him off with a grimace and ran a hand over his face, letting out a long sigh even though Jason knew there was no real air in there. "I want you to promise me that you're not gonna feel guilty about me anymore. The others need you in there to lead them, and you can't do it if you're stuck beating yourself up over me. Agreed?"

He felt his throat constrict, his heart rate accelerating. Zack stepped toward him and jabbed a finger at him. "Agreed?"

Jason swallowed and forced himself to speak. "Yeah, man. Agreed."

Zack eyed him warily for a moment, as though unsure whether to believe him or not. "I want you to be prepared for the possibility of losing more people. We both saw what these things can do, and if everything you told me is true then the odds of all of you getting out of this alive are basically jack shit. You need to be ready for it, you need to make them ready for it, and when it happens – and I hope it doesn't, but I think it will – you need to be the one that gets them through it. They cannot keep walking on eggshells around you, they're gonna need you to be steady so they can lean on you. It's shitty and unfair and it sucks like nothing else on earth but that's your job and I still believe you're better equipped to do it than anyone else in the world."

Jason just nodded, fighting back another wave of tears. Zack had paused for a beat, but Jason saw him flinch again, clap a hand to the side of his abdomen, and wince, as though he'd been punched. Before he could voice his concern, Zack plowed ahead.

"Tell the others that I love 'em and I'm pulling for you guys, all right?" Jason started to answer but he continued quickly, before he lost his nerve. "Tell Tommy and Kim that if they don't figure their shit out and start making some babies I'm gonna haunt them both until the day they die." Jason smirked at that. "Tell Billy he's the most brilliant son of a bitch I've ever met and if anybody can figure out how to save the world, it's him. Tell Rocky I'm happy for him cause he can finally be the designated dirty joke guy." Jason actually chuckled a little that time. "Tell Adam that I'm glad someone's still around down there to argue with you about the nature of the universe and tell Aisha she just inherited my job of kicking all of your asses when the bullshit gets too deep." Zack let out a shuddering breath. "Tell Kat I really wish I could've visited Australia, cause if everyone from there is as great as she is, we would've had a really good time. Tell Tanya that I wish I could've gotten to know her better, but from what I saw she's gonna be great at this." There was a pause and Zack cocked another lazy, almost obnoxious grin. "And tell Trini that I would absolutely have officiated your wedding if we all lived that long, and that you two are the two greatest people I've ever met. You get all that?"

"Yeah, bro," Jason said wetly. He tapped the side of his head with one finger. "Right here. Head like a steel trap, remember?"

"A rusty steel trap, maybe," Zack muttered, and the two of them shared one more laugh, standing there together at the edges of what either of them had thought was possible.

"Steel doesn't rust, dumbass, that's the point," Jason said playfully, still shaking with laughter and other emotions he didn't dare put labels to. Zack just shrugged, his eyes darting back and forth over his body as though waiting for another episode of whatever made him flinch before.

"Do you guys still have my body?" He made a face as he asked the question, like it tasted weird on his tongue, and Jason didn't blame him.

"Yeah, Billy put it on ice in the lab until we can have a proper funeral for you."

Zack nodded thoughtfully and flinched again, harder, this one pulling his body halfway around before he steadied himself.

"Nothing fancy, OK? No tears, no black suits, none of that bullshit. Get everyone drunk, have Rocky or Aisha conjure up some weed from somewhere, and find my 90's hip-hop Spotify playlist and crank that shit until the sun comes up. I want you so far gone you rap along to Fuck the Police while your dad is right there." Another shared smile, another nod from Jason, as though he'd deny Zack anything at all at this point.

"And tell my…" Jason saw Zack's breath hitch in his throat for the first time as he struggled to finish the sentence. It was weird every time, with him knowing there was no air in his throat to start with. "Tell my family…" He stopped again, running a hand over his face, searching the infinite whiteness as though the words would appear hanging in the air. He suddenly whipped back to Jason, eyes widening as inspiration struck.

"Tell my family it…didn't hurt, OK? Tell 'em what happened to me happened after I was already gone. I don't want them to remember me like that." Another flinch, another grimace. "Tell 'em I was a hero, even if it's not true."

"You are a hero, Zack," Jason practically shouted, needing to get this out while he still had a chance. "You saved my life more times than I can count; I wouldn't be able to do this job now if it wasn't for you. You're a warrior, you're a fucking legend. They're gonna name streets and elementary schools and federal buildings after you when this is all over, trust me, I'll make 'em. I'll tell them that because it's true."

"Thanks, Jase," he said softly, smiling ever so slightly, and Jason felt a sharp, white-hot bolt of grief spear its way into his chest. He saw his friend jerk again, even harder than before, and wipe the sweat off his forehead. "Don't have a lot more time," he said through clenched teeth. "It's gonna happen any second now."

"We're gonna do this, Zack," Jason said as firmly as he could manage. "I swear on everything either of us believes in, we're gonna kill every single one of these things and we're gonna carve your name into their fucking skulls when we do it." He sighed deeply to stop his shoulders from shaking and wiped at his eyes with one hand.

"Jase, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand goddamn times," Zack said with an exasperated snort. "Relax, dude. You'll –"

His voice cut off and Jason whipped his head up to find himself alone again, standing there in the silence and emptiness and nothing that he'd been in when he first got here.

"Live longer," he finished, muttering into the void, letting his words be swallowed up by the infinite space that surrounded him. "I'll do my best, Zack-man. See you later, bro."

He stood there for another long moment, his eyes dry this time, staring at the spot where Zack had been and just saying a silent goodbye to another part of his childhood that he would never get back.

Command Center
Main Chamber
12:15 AM PDT

Rick had been surprised to find the door to the Main Chamber unlocked this time. He swung it open as quietly as he could and stepped across the threshold, gently letting the door swing shut behind him. The lights had been dimmed but flickered back to full brightness when he moved inside.

The first thing he noticed once his eyes had adjusted was Jason, sitting calmly on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, head tilted back against the console he was sitting in front of. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and even, as though he were asleep, and his face looked more peaceful than Rick had seen him look all day.

"Jase?" He said softly, tenderly, suddenly feeling a surge of paternal instinct he hadn't felt since the day Jason was born. He took a careful step closer, torn between wanting to wake his son up and see if he was OK and letting him rest for a minute.

"Mr. Scott." The voice, low, rumbling but still soft and quiet, caught him about halfway across the room and he turned to see that the face in the tube was back. He glanced back to his son and spoke with his back to the tube.

"Where is he right now?" He asked, without malice or suspicion, only fatherly concern. Zordon waited for a moment to answer.

"He has entered a very deep state of relaxation; I believe it is not unlike the meditation he performs in his martial arts training." Rick nodded; he'd taught him some of that meditation himself. "He and I have combined that with his connection to the power grid so that he can…talk some things out. I've been keeping an eye on him since you all left."

Rick couldn't take this anymore; he turned and spoke directly to the tube. "You know these are children, right?" He asked, gesturing at his son as he spoke. "They're not soldiers, they're not trained fighters, most of them weren't even old enough to drive when you brought them here." He let his arm fall back to his side. "They're traumatized by this, you know. I've spoken with almost all of them and every single one has some kind of indication that they're gonna have permanent psychological scarring from this. And that's to say nothing of the physical injuries." He moved closer to the tube, on a roll that he was unable to stop. "For god's sake, one of them is dead." He jabbed a finger at the tube. "Where the hell do you get off, putting that on them?"

To his surprise, Zordon answered immediately, seeming to take no offense at his words or tone. "I didn't choose them for this, Mr. Scott. They may believe that, but as I told your son just a moment ago, I didn't choose any of them. The power coins they wield will only activate for very particular people, people the Morphin' Grid itself deems the best option to possess that power. I had nothing to do with it. They wield these powers because they are the only people who could."

Rick took a second to ponder that, running a hand over his face. Finally he turned to look at his son again, the only thing he had left in the world. "Can I sit with him?"

"Of course." He could hear the smile in the rumbling voice. Rick moved quickly to Jason's side, sitting down as smoothly as he could and wrapping an arm around his son's shoulders, letting his head rest on his own shoulder.

"Do we know how much longer he'll be asleep?" He asked, not taking his eyes off his son.

"It is hard to say," Zordon said. "But time moves differently where he is right now. It could happen at any moment."

As if on cue, Jason stirred and blinked a few times, lifting his head off his father's shoulder.

"Dad?" He asked, voice still slurred with sleep. He cleared his throat and shook some of the sleep from his head. "What are you doing here? Are you OK?"

Rick smiled. "I'm fine, pal. Nothing to worry about, see?" He pointed at the wound in his head, which even through the bandage had clearly stopped bleeding. "Takes a lot more than that to put your old man down."

"Clearly," Jason said with a laugh. "Sorry about that either way."

"It's fine, son, really," Rick insisted, wrapping his arm around his son's shoulders a little tighter. "What about you? How are you feeling?"

"You know, to be honest, I don't think I've felt this good all day," Jason said, and to Rick's astonishment, his son seemed to mean it. "I guess I had some things I had to work through and I got some really great help." He turned to look up at Zordon. "From a couple of really great friends."

Rick glanced at the tube as well and he could've sworn he saw it smile. He turned back to Jason and said, "Well all right then. You feelin' up to getting back out there and kicking some ass?"

Jason made direct eye contact with him this time and nodded once, firmly. "Yes, sir," he said, his voice so clear and strong and determined that Rick decided this was the most proud he had ever been of his firstborn son. He beamed at him, hoping his pride showed on his face.

"Atta boy," he said, shaking his shoulders affectionately. "Now come on, your friends are in the lab with Billy and they've got some stuff you should probably get caught up on."

"Well then what the fuck are we still sitting here for?" Jason hopped to his feet and gave his father a hand up, and then the two of them strode out of the Main Chamber together, not bothering to close the door behind them, and practically ran down the hallway toward Billy's lab.

They had a war to finish.

Holy shit, this got long, didn't it? This is definitely the longest chapter of this thing yet. Fun fact, I would've had this ready a week and a half ago, but one day out of nowhere I had this mental image of Zack saying "Hey, cut me some slack, man, I'm dead," and I loved that line so much I completely rewrote all of Jason's scenes in this chapter to work that in. I think it was worth it, hopefully you all will too.