Though they were from different teams, the former titanium ranger and the former princess of evil/pink ranger were good friends. Possibly best friends, if they had been brought up to think such a thing existed. How they had met had truly been a fluke.
Having heard from Leo that Lightspeed's pink ranger had a brother who had been raised by demons, Andros jokingly told Karone to call him up.
"His name's Ryan," Andros told her, and then added humorously, "you guys should meet up and start a support group."
"So should you and Dana" she retorted.
Though her brother had pretty much put the whole 'Astronema' incident behind him and could now joke about it, it was still a sore spot for her. Since the day of her kidnapping, she had been trained to take on this whole new identity and she had been lead to believe it was who she wanted to be. However, when she had finally found out her true identity, Karone of KO35, she couldn't readily accept it. She had definitely tried, and very hard, but after being raised to be Astronema, she at times found it hard to readily put aside that personality and become the person that her brother and his friends expected her to be. She had tried faking it for a while, mimicking the actions of Cassie and Ashley, in the hopes that she could in time become truly good, but she couldn't hide her anger, her confusion, and the fact that although she felt guilty, she wasn't exactly sorry for what had happened.
Kimberly, pointed this out to her once, and if it wasn't for her, Karone might have just kept on fooling everyone, including herself. The former pink MMPR had moved back to Angel Grove to spend a semester at AGU and was coaching a middle school cheer team with Ashley. On the weekend they'd met, Karone had gone with Cassie to one of their practices to watch. The four girls went to lunch together afterward. At one point during their little outing, Cassie and Ashley went to the restroom, and Karone was left alone with Kimberly. To say Karone felt awkward was an understatement. There was something about Kimberly that didn't quite click, but she couldn't place it. This was confirmed when, not 30 seconds after Ashley and Cassie had gotten up and left the table, Kimberly looked Karone straight in the eye and said, "You can drop the act you know. I'm not here to judge."
"What do you mean?" Karone asked, completely floored.
Kimberly casually looked at her again. "I've been involved with someone like you before. I understand and it's fine with me. I know you know what I'm talking about and I'm telling you now because if you're still acting like this even now, then I guess they don't get it," she finished nonchalantly.
Karone was left speechless, not being able to understand how a complete stranger could know anything about her and even speak to her like that for that matter. All she could do was stare back at Kimberly, not knowing what to say. That didn't last long though because Cassie and Ashley came back to the table and Karone was forced to snap out of it.