Well, this is it, folks. The last of the weekly updates. I started posting with six chapters ready, and now the update rate had caught up with my much-slower writing rate (blame grad school), and i'm afraid we're going to be down to a chapter every couple of weeks.

Totally unrelated to anything, but there are two Power Rangers Awards running right now - What A Character Awards and Season of Love Awards. (Links to both on my profile.) I very much believe in awards participation - the more people nominating and voting, the more fun for everyone.

Love and Gratitude to the Constellations Team: Camille and Mara (beta reading), Navot (battle scenes advisor, storytelling), Tami (characterisation, discussion pal) and Roie (who made this possible).

Enjoy, and please review!

11. Easier to Run

"It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone"
- Easier to Run, Linkin Park

It was, possibly, the fastest streaking he'd ever done. Hunter streaked to the safe spot he and Blake had established and then walked to their apartment as fast as he could, trying to not draw attention from passersby. He leaned against the wall once he was inside the building: his head was spinning so hard he could hardly stand. Once he was more-or-less stable on his feet again, he climbed the three flights of stairs to the apartment.

Blake opened the door as soon as Hunter reached the landing. Even against the backlighting, Hunter could see that Blake's forehead was creased with worry. "You look like you need to sleep," said Blake succinctly as he moved aside, letting Hunter in.

Hunter nodded and turned towards the mattresses. Passing out seemed like a good idea.

Blake caught his arm. "Not without eating something first, Bro."

Only turning his head, Hunter looked at his brother. Nausea and food mixed badly together.

"Don't even think about it," said Blake firmly, pulling Hunter towards the kitchen area. "You're going to put some calories in, even if they're just sweetened tea."

It took two cups of tea and some crackers before Blake chilled, and agreed that Hunter probably wouldn't go hypoglycemic in the next couple of hours. It was a good thing that Blake, too, thought that Hunter should rest, and that he was rather tired himself, and so he didn't bother Hunter about his silence.

He seriously contemplated not getting out of bed when his alarm clock went off. Getting out of bed meant going to school; going to school meant Tori and Dustin would see him and know he wasn't sick, and then he wouldn't be able to avoid practice after school; going to practice meant facing Hunter, and Shane felt he'd rather go hand-to-hand with Lothor while unmorphed.

Ditching school was very, very tempting. Unfortunately, he probably won't be able to get away with it. He had never managed to get a lie past Tori, for one thing; for another, Sensei and Cam firmly maintained that Rangers could not get sick. He couldn't avoid practice without raising attention, and he wanted that about as much as he wanted to face Hunter.

What would Hunter do? Shane wondered. What was he thinking? Would he look for ways to avoid Shane, or would he seek confrontation? Hunter struck him as the kind of guy who met things head on – but so was Shane, usually. Perhaps Hunter, too, would rather forget what happened outside the infirmary room.

Shane buried his face in his pillow. Just thinking about that was enough to make his body react again, and it confused him more than he felt he could handle. On the one hand, he'd never been attracted to a guy before; on the other, he'd never really been attracted to any girl, either. What happened outside the infirmary was everything he had thought a kiss would be like – until he had realized what he was doing.

He looked at the clock, and groaned. Four a.m.. Damn it. Can't morning at least come now?

In retrospect, she should've known something was up when Shane had been nearly late to class that morning. She had overlooked it, then, because it wasn't that unusual. Only later she realized that it hadn't happened since they had become Rangers. After lunch break she definitely knew that something was up, but couldn't quite put her finger on it. It bothered her through the afternoon school hours. She got her first real hint when it was time to go to practice, and Shane's expression turned apprehensive for a second. That gave her something to think of during the ride to Academy grounds. When the three of them finally joined with Blake and Hunter, things became apparent.

She really hadn't expected Shane and Hunter to get along. They were both too strong for that. Shane wasn't quite as overbearing as he'd been, but that didn't mean he wasn't possessive and domineering. He'd also hated Hunter since he first laid eyes on him. Hunter, for his part, was not exactly making himself likable, either. So Tori didn't expect them to play well together, and had actually anticipated a measure of rivalry.

She hadn't expected flat-out hostility. She hadn't expected them to not make eye contact, to not even speak to each other directly. Shane was going out of his way to ignore Hunter as much as possible, and Hunter was being as mean to Shane as he could without speaking to him, or even mentioning him in conversation. It drove her insane, and she wasn't the only one: Cam was growing more and more impatient by the minute, and Blake was frowning so hard that she had the irrational fear the expression would stick. Dustin was predictably oblivious, and Sensei had to be practicing his control very hard.

Blake and Hunter all but fled after practice – quite predictably, as Hunter probably wanted to get away and Blake looked like he was going to have a talk with his brother. Shane, too, was itching to leave – which was understandable as well, as Sensei was bound to corner him if he would've lingered. For once, Tori was glad that Dustin lived in a different neighbourhood than her and Shane: it meant she and Shane got some alone time after dropping off Dustin.

"So," she said conversationally once they got moving again, "You and Hunter had a fight?"

Shane started. "What?"

"Come on." She rolled her eyes. "You didn't so much as say hi to each other."

"Yeah, because we were such great friends all along."

"So okay, you disliked the guy at first sight." Shane shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat. "But you could at least stand to look at him, before." He had also seemed to warm up to Hunter during their misfortune on Toxipod's island, but she didn't bring that up. It could've been just Shane reacting to someone who seemed to need him.

"Didn't have to see him every day for practice, before."

"Shane, you two were still all right with each other last practice, the day before yesterday," she said, letting a touch of exasperation into her voice. "You've had a fight, sometime between then and this morning." It was a likely scenario: she knew Shane had hung back yesterday, and she knew Cam held Hunter for a while. It had to be the first time those two interacted unsupervised, and it was no surprise that it blew up.

"We didn't fight."

"Come on, Shane." It wasn't like she expected him to fess up immediately, but he usually gave after realizing she had figured everything out already.

"We didn't have a fight, okay?" he repeated, his tone clearly upset. "Nothing's wrong."

Tori blinked. 'Nothing wrong' was bull, all right, but the other part rang strange compared to that – as if Shane wasn't flat-out lying. She didn't really get it.

"So what happened?" she asked, just to keep the conversation going while she thought. If Shane and Hunter had had a fight, and Shane was angry with Hunter, then it was pretty weird that he had ignored Hunter during practice. Shane tended to express his anger. The silent treatment was totally not Shane's style.

"Nothing happened."

Unless Hunter had bruised Shane's pride really badly: that was one of the higher offences, in Shane's book. He was such a typical guy, sometimes.

"All right, so you didn't have a fight; but something did happen between the two last practice sessions." She gave it a second, and continued: "Look, Shane, what could've possibly happened that you can't tell me?"

Silence. She sneaked a look, and saw that Shane's look was cast down.

Moments passed. They had arrived at their neighbourhood and entered the street where Shane lived, and still he didn't answer her.

"Shane?" she asked tentatively.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I figured as much," she said. "Let me know if you change your mind."

"I will."

She stopped the car in front of his house. "See you tomorrow?"

"Sure. See ya."

Her frown followed him into the house.

Blake raised his eyes from the pot of cooking pasta. "Out for a jog?"

His hand on the door handle, Hunter nodded. So they'd had practice with the Winds earlier. So? They were used to training harder than this.

"Do some miles for me, too," said Blake, and that was it. Hunter headed out.

They lived a couple of miles away from the sea, but that wasn't a considerable distance, to Hunter: within twenty minutes he had sand under his shoes, rather than pavement. The wet, close-packed sand felt good to run on, and the sea breeze was pleasant. So long as he stayed away from the swimming beaches, there was nothing and no one to interrupt him: it was just him, the breeze and the sunlight scattering over the waves. He hadn't realized how much he'd needed that until the tension lifted off of him, his body finally finding its right rhythm. The track used to be his escape, but Blue Bay's track was busier than Stone Canyon's; practicing katas used to be his meditation, but he hadn't been able to school his mind in a while. Perhaps if he worked off some more energy he'd win his concentration again.

Breathe; one foot up, one foot down. It was a simple rhythm, one he could maintain. The seaside was good, even if the salty air was humid, heavy and hard to breath: that was why he waited for dusk to go out. It didn't hurt that here he was away from the near-tangible pressure of people looking at him, considering him. Of the Rangers and everyone involved with them, Dustin and Cam currently ranked the top of Hunter's list simply because they were the only ones not looking at Hunter as though trying to look inside his head.

Except for Shane, who wasn't looking at him at all.

Hunter gritted his teeth and kept his pace. He didn't want to think about that. He shouldn't have let it happen. Who knew being attracted to Shane would prove more of a problem when working with the guy, instead of against him?

He realized his attraction to Shane after the way the guy had distracted him the first time they met, that day at Storm Chargers. It wasn't exactly expected – few people got past Hunter's determination to ignore them – but it didn't come out of the blue, either: he'd been physically attracted to guys before. The first time it happened he had been confused, granted; he didn't understand it. He tried to work it out in his head for a while, until Maeve Omino's next visit. He had to be very careful about approaching the topic, not wanting to betray the reason for his interest. If Maeve understood his motive she said nothing of it, but her answer had given him what he needed. In the four years that passed since, Hunter had learned to quench his interest in other guys and culture the little interest he had in girls into something that maybe could be worked with.

He thought he could ignore Shane, too, as he had ignored the handful of other guys who had caught his attention in the past. It shouldn't have been a problem. He would've done it, too, if Shane hadn't…

Hunter slowed his step, stopped, and rested his forearms against his thighs, breathing hard and staring into the setting sun. What happened the day before had caught him unprepared. Thinking about it made him feel as he had in that moment: a mix of conflicting emotions he didn't understand and didn't want to experience again – except that he couldn't get it out of his head.

Shane just had to keep being unpredictable, too. Hunter didn't know what to make of his behaviour at practice. Shane totally ignoring him wasn't something he could just put up with, regardless of whether or not the previous day's events were acknowledged. His attempts to goad a reaction out of Shane failed completely.

He straightened his back and got running again. The purpose of the exercise was to work off steam, not to stand in place and catch a cold from the chilly autumn air.

Two days after the conflict between Shane and Hunter blew up, Hunter came to Sensei and asked permission to jog on Academy grounds outside of practice hours, by himself. Cam's dad had naturally agreed. When Hunter checked in at Ops each day before beginning his jog, Cam took it for common courtesy. When Hunter had taken to dropping by after his daily jogs, too, Cam started paying attention. Hunter was the team's black hole, answering when interacted with but hardly initiating any contact. Watching him interact with the others, Cam often thought that Hunter stood out like a bruise.

Once Cam realized that dropping in and out of Ninja Ops was Hunter's way of reaching out, he started thinking of ways to cultivate that spark. He made sure there would be a water bottle waiting for Hunter when checking in, and some fruits when he returned from his run; he downloaded a pulse-meter to Hunter's morpher, and showed him how to use it; he listened to Hunter a little more than he did to the others, and resigned to sometimes working with Hunter sitting or pacing in the background. It was worth it, if it gave Hunter a sense that there was someone he could turn to if he ever needed it.

Surprisingly, Hunter's presence wasn't a burden. Maybe it was because he didn't speak much, and just hung around. Maybe it was because hearing another human being's breathing was soothing, even for a withdrawn person like Cam who usually avoided other people if he only could. Either way, he found himself looking forward to Hunter's visits rather than resenting them.

He watched Hunter's interaction with the others, wary. Hunter didn't seem to change, but it was too soon to expect everything. So Cam kept up the small gestures and the open door, and hoped.

She was used to Shane and Dustin occasionally doing their homework in the TV alcove. It was more unusual to see Tori and her notebooks there, but still Kelly didn't really notice anything had changed until she spotted Tori doing her homework there two times in the same week. That gave Kelly a heads-up: Tori, unlike the boys, genuinely cared for her schoolwork. For her to do her homework at Storm Chargers, during what was – for her – hanging out time, meant that something was up.

Getting a solid idea of the kids' schedules was harder than Kelly thought it would be. While the kids didn't resent her extra attention, and actually seemed to welcome it, they were incredibly vague about what they were doing with their time. Still, Kelly managed to get the picture: between group martial arts practices and solitary practice time at whatever their chosen hobbies were, the time they spent at Storm Chargers – the boys working and Tori hanging out with them – and the hours they had to spend at school, Kelly was surprised that they weren't showing the stress more than they were.

Carefully, she approached Dustin and Shane about their work hours. Dustin, who spent hours each day fixing bikes in her shop, blew off her suggestion, saying she was blowing things out of proportion. Shane, though, seemed relieved – if guiltily so – to cut down the time he spent behind the counter. It seemed to do him good, and the rest of her sales staff filled up his time, no problem.

Being more involved with Dustin's friends highlighted those things she didn't know of the kids who sometimes seemed to practically live at her store. She knew, of course, how Blake and Hunter got involved with the other three, but she had no idea why or to where they had disappeared about two weeks back. She didn't know how they got involved with the martial arts madness that seemed to overtake the entire gang's time. Then there was the mystery of the rift between Shane and Hunter – but then again, it wasn't like anyone else knew what had happened there, either.

The conflict between Shane and Hunter – which they both refused to admit – was driving Tori nuts. It was annoying enough in the beginning, when Shane had flat-out ignored Hunter's existence, but since then Hunter's snide comments had driven Shane to adopt a similar behaviour. This, of course, escalated Hunter's behaviour, which in turn made Shane up the nastiness as well. It really irritated Tori, and not just her: Blake, too, had suffered from the rift. He also admitted to Tori that he had no idea what had happened, either. Cam seemed to ignore the entire situation, and Sensei kept trying – and failing – to get Hunter and Shane to play nice during practice. Dustin stubbornly refused to admit the fight, preferring to gloss over it, as if pretending that nothing was wrong would somehow fix things. Sooner or later, Tori knew, he would snap.

It finally happened one random day at Storm Chargers. Tori was in the alcove, alternatively doing her homework and watching a race with Blake; Hunter and Dustin were on the floor of the shop, Hunter fixing something on his bike and Dustin on a customer's; and Shane was alternatively working as cashier and helping customers. It was a pretty safe constellation, and Tori thought they'd be able to make it through the afternoon quietly, for a change. That was why she didn't follow the guys too closely, her attention shifting between her work and Blake's close presence.

Neither of them noticed anything was up until Shane started getting loud. Blake put down the remote, she put down her pen, and they walked over to where Dustin and Hunter had been working: apparently Shane went there to ask Dustin something, Hunter just had to goad him, and it spiraled out of control from there. It seemed strange to Tori that they remained a good few paces apart – she would've expected Shane and Hunter to draw closer and try to physically intimidate each other. Poor Dustin was stuck in the middle.

"All right, guys, really," he said, ruffling his hair in the gesture that said he was really stressed, "Knock it off."

"Stay out of it, Dustin," said Hunter.

"Not your fight," said Shane.

"Really," insisted Dustin. "Can't you just kiss and make up or something?"

The effect was dramatic: Hunter and Shane both stepped back, Shane looking as if he'd been burnt and Hunter's cool mask cracking for a second, revealing a whole jumble of emotions. The atmosphere, which was charged and heavy before, became even thicker, almost electric.

What just happened? Tori wondered.

"What did I say?" asked Dustin.

Hunter was first to move, eyes firmly downcast as he resumed working on his bike. Shane lingered for a few seconds, watching Hunter with a look that was strangely devoid of hostility, before returning to the store's main area, shoulders slumped. He didn't say a word as he brushed past Tori and Blake.

Blake frowned. Tori shrugged. He nodded, then touched her shoulder and jabbed his thumb towards where Shane had gone while indicating with his head towards the shop: you take care of yours and I of mine? his gesture seemed to say.

Tori nodded. Dustin liked Blake, and anyway Blake was the only one who knew Hunter at all. He could handle them. Shane was her problem to solve.

She found Shane at a short distance from Storm Chargers, sitting on the pavement and staring into the wall on the other side of the road. He had to hear her approach, but he didn't say anything until a good few seconds after she sat down next to him.

"So," he said, "Now you know."

She didn't actually, but she figured it would be wiser not to say that.

"And you're cool with it, which is what I should've expected, really," he continued. "I'm still – I don't get it, really. I really don't. Can't make it better if I don't know what 'better' is, right?"

None of it made sense to her, but she didn't say so aloud.

"What do you think?" Shane asked.

"Hard to tell you if I don't know exactly what happened, right?" she answered. It seemed safe enough – even if she had understood whatever it was he thought she did, it wouldn't give her the details.

He looked at her sideways. "You're not going to run off to Blake, right?"

"What? Shane, come on." Not that she didn't get where he was coming from.

"You two talk about everything, as far as I know."

"I promise not to tell Blake," she said.

She thought he didn't believe her, and was just about to reiterate what she'd just said, when finally Shane started talking.

"It was right after we kicked Choobo's ass," he said, "when we returned to Ninja Ops. Hunter looked like hell and Cam dragged him down to the infirmary. I stuck around because Hunter always does stupid stuff, and I figured someone had better be there to make sure he did as Cam said."

Pause.

"He tried to leave just about the second Cam took off, and I heard Cam telling him to stay put for at least half an hour, and something about the amount of energy he'd exerted to knock Choobo's box open. So I blocked him when he got out of the infirmary. I actually tried to talk to him, but there's no talking reason with this dude. So I blocked him, and he tried to tackle me, and then it happened."

"Then what happened?" she asked gently.

He shook his head.

She hesitated for a moment, then put her arm around his shoulders. "Come on, Shane. Just say it."

He shook his head again. She waited. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, almost beginning to speak. Finally, he blurted: "I kissed Hunter, okay?"

It was so the last thing she expected to hear that she had no idea what to say. After two seconds or so of shock she hugged him, simply because he looked like he needed it. All the time, her mind was racing furiously, putting the pieces together: small things about Shane that didn't make sense, throughout the years; the strong way he'd reacted to Hunter; Shane's insistence that they didn't fight, per se; and how Hunter seemed to search for Shane's attention, even if in a negative way.

She drew back, searching his face. "Oh my god, you had no idea, right?"

"Had no idea that what? That I'm gay?" he retorted. His expression was hard, angry. "No, I had no idea and I still don't get it."

"You may also be bi, you know."

Shane didn't seem too convinced, but didn't say anything. Instead, he sounded almost plaintive as he asked: "But Hunter?"

She shrugged. "You like challenges. Hunter's as tough as it gets."

He grumbled, but said nothing.

"You didn't notice anything?" she asked carefully. "Before – before what happened, that is?"

"No. Not really."

Pause.

"Now what?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said simply. "A day or two right after, I think he really just wanted to talk to you. Now?" she shrugged.

"You say it like you think I want something to happen."

"Don't you?"

Shane tightened his lips. "No. I don't."