The phone rang twice before it was picked up. "Casey?" Lily asked.

"Hey there," Casey said, leaning back against the motel headboard, letting his muscles relax.

"Hey yourself. Good to hear from you. Lemme find RJ and Theo." Background noise died down as she jogged upstairs. "So...?"

"So what?" he asked, all innocence.

"So tell me about the baby Rangers, dummy!" In the background, RJ's voice could be heard.

Casey chuckled. "Put me on speaker so I don't have to tell it three times."

"Done."

"Hey, guys. The Megaforce Rangers are, well, they're adorable. Sometimes I find it hard to believe I was this young and naïve."

"Believe it," RJ said.

"Funny. Seriously, though, they have no idea I know they're Rangers. They think they're so incredibly subtle every time their morphers beep and they run off."

"We thought that too," Lily pointed out.

"Hmm. I guess so. Anyway, they're all very earnest. I had to tweak the ones that came to find me a bit, just to see what would happen."

RJ chuckled. "You made them come into the tiger enclosure, didn't you?"

"I have no idea why you would think such a thing."

"Casey!" Lily said. "That's mean."

Ignoring the banter, Theo asked, "Are they well-trained?"

Casey snorted. "No. They're lucky they've lasted this long. Who the heck is their mentor anyway? Since they don't know who I am yet, I can't ask."

"His name is Gosei," RJ said. "I've asked around but nobody seems to know much about him, except that he's supposed to be a protégé of Zordon's."

"From the little I can get from Emma and Jake, all their training comes from Troy, their Red. He's pretty damn good for a kid, luckily for them, but that's it. I've been rewatching the footage you sent of their battles and it looks like this Gosei just keeps throwing more Ranger powers at them and hoping they stick."

Theo groaned. "That's terrible."

"You're telling me! I wish I could train the other three as well, but I just don't think I can pull it off. I'm just going to have to hope that teaching these two is enough for them to teach the others."

"Other than being young, what are the two you're training like?" Lily asked.

"Emma's sweet. You'd like her. She reminds me of you a bit, in that people underestimate her and think she's too nice to beat the crap out of them. But I wouldn't cross her for anything."

Everyone laughed and Casey spent a moment wanting very much to be in the loft with them before he focused on his task. "Jake...underestimates himself. I think once he sees what he can do with his snake spirit, he'll be in much better shape to fill his role."

"Sounds familiar," RJ said. "It seems as if I used to know a cub who didn't know what he could do..."

"Okay, Jake does remind me a bit of me." Casey stared at the generic landscape painting on the opposite wall without really seeing it. "He's strong under the uncertainty and he's developing the mental control. He's going to be okay."

"They'd all better be okay or we're in trouble," Theo reminded him. "The Order of the Claw still isn't back up to full strength and we're not Rangers any longer."

Casey grinned, remembering Emma and Jake sparring that morning. The focus, the energy, the power they didn't even realize they had... "They'll be fine. I'm sure of it." -end-