A/N: Hey guys. I'm back with a new chapter. I hope that you guys are all doing well. I've been typing up this chapter over the past week. Thanks again to my beta Alana for having the patience to wait for me and my slow process of creative writing. It is thanks to her that you can read this and not cringe due to grammar and spelling errors. Now enough of this rambling. Enjoy the next chapter :)

Chapter 14: Beginning of the End

~~~~Friday -9:00 pm~~~~

Things remained calm for a few days and returned to normal, well as normal as it could get for the rangers anyway. It helped that Kimberly kicked Zedd's ass so hard that apparently he was still in too much pain to send any monsters since Sunday. Kimberly had been training with Zordon in the evenings the entire week in order to gain better control of her powers. She had acquired quite a few of them as a result of becoming Zordon's daughter and the heir to the Eltarian throne. Telepathy, which came fairly natural to her, was the easiest to control. The more she used this particular power, the more tricks she learned to tweak it here and there.

Kim was currently laying down in bed trying to take in everything that had happened this week. Since she had gotten the hang of her telepathic powers early on, Zordon decided to being training her in the use of her other main powers: levitation and healing. The first day of training was spent going over some basics of the powers she had obtained.

"For now, we'll only go into details of a few of your acquired powers. As they are still new to you, not all of them will manifest themselves right now. The powers will come to you as they are needed and as your control over them grows.". Kimberly nodded in understanding. "We will begin with healing and levitation. These two, along with telepathy, are essential in your training. By mastering these, you'll be able to control the other powers with more ease."

"Before we begin, could you explain a little more about these powers?"

"Certainly. As I said before, telepathy, invisibility, telekinesis, and levitation are the foundation on which all Eltarians begin their training. I'm also going to add healing to this list, even though most Eltarians don't learn this power until much later in their lives. I've noticed you seem to have a knack for telepathy and invisibility. You seem to have an excellent innate understanding of these power and have already begun mastering some of the more advanced uses. As for levitating, once you learn to control this power properly, you will be able to sustain yourself and others in the air for long periods of time. Eventually, if you get far enough in training, you might be presented with the opportunity to master flight. Levitation takes great concentration of the body and mind together. Training your mind will be very difficult and probably the most rigorous part of your training. But, once you get the basics, the rest should be easier to understand."

"Flight? As in flying in the sky? Without any wings or plane or anything?" Kim was shocked She couldn't believe there was such a thing. Then again, a lot of what she'd seen over the years are pretty incredible to learn.

"Yes. To be honest, we don't know how Eltarians are chosen. Only a select few have been known to actually successfully fly. Unfortunately for you, I am not one of those. I do not even know if those who did know are still alive. Like I said, you must first master levitation and dedicate yourself to your training in order to even be presented with the opportunity." Kim just looked at him in awe. She knew that the possibility of this actually happening were slim, but still, the idea of being able to fly really intrigued her. After a moment she nodded her head vigorously.

"I'm going to try really hard master all my powers. This way I can make you proud and be given the chance to learn all this amazing stuff."

"Telekinesis, much like the last two powers have to do with the mind. You will have to train really hard in order to master this. Because of the mental strength required, your telekinetic abilities will develop on par with your invisibility and levitation. I believe that you will be able to learn this skill rather quickly and learn a lot in a short amount of time."

"Okay." Kim said sounding a bit nervous.

"I have complete faith in you Kimberly. Now, for the last power – healing. While the other two powers have to do with your body and mine, this power has more to do with knowledge gained from books. This is perhaps the more complex part of your training, which will consist of three parts. Unlike the other two, you will constantly be learning to improve your abilities and techniques. We will begin with self healing, following with herbal healing and ending with magical healing. Self-healing is the simplest of the three because it only requires you to concentrate on healing yourself, unlike magical healing."

"But isn't healing myself done because of magic?" Kimberly asked, confused

"Yes it is. When you heal yourself, you use your own life essence. What you heal is part of you and since you wield magic, it makes it easier for you to replenish your life essence. But when you heal someone else, you do not use your life essence most the time. Instead, you are synching your essence with that person's essence an controlling it to heal what you want to heal. However, before being able to synch with that person, you much ask permission of the person's spirit to manipulate their life essence. In order to communicate with people's spirits, you will be taught a magical language, which will work with most living organisms."

"Couldn't I just use my essence to heal another person?"

"Yes, but you must be very careful when using that type of healing. By using your life force on another person, you are draining yourself of your energy. As I said before, when you are healing yourself, you are manipulating your own life force. It stays within you and so your essence stays intact. But when you heal someone else, it is not just your life force you're dealing with. If you want to use your life force, you have to follow certain magical protocol to get the other person's life essence to accept yours. If it does, then it slowly takes yours, draining you of your life force. If you do not learn to properly heal another person using your life essence, both of you could die."

Kimberly paled at hearing the last portion. She knew this was serious, but now she realized how much. Everything seemed to get harder and harder to do, but she just had to keep pushing forward.

"Magical healing is essentially the same thing, only you have to use certain spells to allow your surroundings to lend you energy for you to heal. You see, everything which is alive has energy. Life self-healing, magical healing requires careful managing. You have to know the limit of what you can take. If you take too much, you will drain whatever source you are using. I cannot stress how careful you have to be when using this type of magic." Kim nodded once more, taking mental notes of everything that Zordon was saying. "As for herbal healing, you will be taught how to heal using herbs and other types of plants. This is perhaps the easiest to do because it does not use up any life force. Herbal healing will be taught to you through out the rest of your training. You will learn about plants both here on Earth as well as other planets and incorporate them into your healing style accordingly."

Kim understood what was going to be required from her during this training. She also knew that this was going to take up a lot of her time, so she knew that being a power ranger was going to be hard to balance, along with school and her new training. She had brought it up with Zordon and they came up with ideas to deal with this situation. Kim didn't want to let the others know about her, so she knew she had to make a choice. Making a decision of this magnitude was incredibly difficult because she couldn't choose between her ranger duties and her new responsibility.

Kim had thought about it for a long time before making her choice. After much deliberation and internal debate over the last few days, she had made her decision. As much as it pained her, she would pass on her powers to another and devote herself to her training. This was perhaps the hardest thing for her to do, but she knew it had to be done.

It seemed as if fate agreed with her. Earlier in the week, a famous coach from Florida came to Angel Grove to recruit gymnasts for the Pan Globals. He had seen Kim practicing at the Youth Center and offered her a position on the team. Kim knew this was the perfect opportunity for her to solve her current situation, but she didn't answer the coach right away. She wanted to discuss all of this with Zordon. While preparing for one of their training session, Kimberly decided to broach the topic.

"Dad, I think it's time for me to pass on my powers." Zordon looked shocked at Kimberly's suggestion.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I've been thinking. After everything you told me that I should expect from my training, I've had to rearrange my priorities. You know that I love being a ranger more than anything. Well, almost everything. But in order for me to learn everything, I need to devote myself completely to my training. There's no way I can do that and be a ranger at the same time. Right now, we've started training during nights, but I'm starting to get worn out with little sleep and having to wake up and go to school in the morning and fight Zed and his goons in the afternoon. We both know that if these keeps going on, I won't make enough progress. But, if I were to focus solely on this training, I could learn so much better. I got an offer from a gymnastics coach to train with him in Florida. I think this is the perfect excuse to stage my departure. The others can think that I left for Florida to train and I can focus on what's important. This way, I can finish the rest of my schooling through correspondence and the others won't begin asking questions as to why I'm too tired to hang out or why I choose not to go when they ask."

"I see. I understand. Are you sure you are ready for this then? I know how painful this will be for you. If you need more time, I won't have a problem with it."

"I appreciate that, but I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. I know this is going to be extremely hard, but I know it's the right thing to do."

During their last training session, Zordon had told Kim that she would need more training with Dulcea and Ninjor in order to fully control both her new inherited powers as well as her Ninjetti ones. Kim understood and was truly looking forward to it. The only problem she saw was how the training would take place. Would Ninjor and Dulcea be coming here or would she be going to them? And how long would these session last? She asked Zordon all of this, to which he answered he was unsure. He thought it best if she were to go to them. He did not know how long she would be gone for though. Kim knew that because of this uncertainty, she would not be able to commit herself to Earth's defense or anything that tied her to Earth for a long time.

"Do you have a candidate in mind for your replacement?"

"Yes, actually, I do." Zordon once again looked a bit surprised.

"Who?"

"I believe Kat will make an excellent ranger."

"I agree." Zordon smiled at his daughter's choice.

"I will let the others know of my plans to go to Florida tomorrow."

"Very well. Dulcea has said that she wants to begin your training as soon as possible. We want to prepare you as best we can so you can be ready for when the prophecy occurs."

"How much time before she wants me on Phaedos?"

"Nine days."

"Alright." Kim looked a bit sad at the prospect of leaving so soon. "That gives me just a little over a week to settle everything here."

Their training session began shortly after, having cleared up any remaining questions. Kim sparred with holograms that, unfortunately for her, gave her real bruises. Kim was good enough to defend herself, but has some trouble going on the offensive. She ended up with a few cuts and bruises, which she successfully healed at the end of their session with her self-healing. She also started learning the basics of the types of healing, which she thought would come in handy after sparring from now on.

By the end of the session, they had also come up with a plan on how Kim would "leave" to Florida. Knowing full well that the others would take her to the airport, she would play along and go through the boarding gate. As soon as the rangers left, she would head back to the command center. From there she would resume her role as Kimana for a day or two before heading off to Phaedos.

Before any of this could happen though, Kim had to let the others know of her Pan Globals plans. This was the thing she dreaded the most and was the reason why she was still awake right now. She knew she had to tell Tommy before everyone else. Looking at the clock and realizing that it was almost midnight, she decided that for now, she would get some sleep and try to settle things in the morning.

~~~ Saturday Morning – 10:30 am ~~~~

It was a beautiful morning when Kim woke up. She was finishing putting some food inside a picnic basket on the table. Tommy had called earlier and asked if she wanted to go out on a picnic by the lake. Seeing this as an opportunity to talk, Kim agreed and began packing some food for them. Tommy arrived an hour later and was waiting for Kim outside. She grabbed her stuff, said good-bye to Aisha and her mom before getting in the car. They drove to Angel Grove Park and walked down to the lake with their hands intertwined. On their walk towards the lake Tommy noticed Kim seemed to be distracted.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

"Well, I have some really amazing news, but it also has a really big downside."

"What do you mean?" Tommy looked at her with a worried glance.

"You see, I was...um....I was offered a position on the team for the Pan Globals." Kim said quickly, hoping to get it over with.

"Kim, that's great!!" Tommy said taking the basket from her hands and putting it on the floor with the blanket before embracing her in a hug. "So what's the problem?"

"You see...the thing is that they aren't staying in Angel Grove to train. They are going to the main gym in Florida." Upon saying this, she looked at Tommy, trying to gauge his reaction.

"Oh." Tommy said, not sure of what else to say. "Did you accept?"

"I told Coach Schmidt that I had to ask my family what they thought about this and if they were okay with it."

"Oh."

"He told me I had to let him know by Monday."

"Well, do you want to go?" Tommy asked, not really wanting to know the answer he knew she would say. Kim sighed and looked out to the lake.

"Part of me does. I mean, this is something I've always dreamed of doing. All I've ever wanted in life was to be a gymnast, to compete in the Olympics. And now I've been given a chance to do it."

"I see." Tommy said in a sad tone, knowing that this was always something she wanted.

"But...the other part of me wants to stay here. I mean, I have a life here. My friends are here. Then there is the whole ranger business. I don't think I can leave the team. We've gone through so much together, the level of our bond is so deep. My leaving might strain that bond severely, if not sever it completely." Tommy nodded in understanding, still looking sad.

"And then, there's also...you. I can't just up and leave us. I care too much about you and I don't want to lose what we have." Kim smiled a bit, trying to lighten the mood. "Besides, I wouldn't want anyone to snatch you."

This comment seemed to do the trick, as Tommy smiled too and made a come back.

"Well, what about you? Guys are easily turned on by a girl in pink spandex. That's what hooked me." Both began to laugh. After a moment of silence, Kim spoke up again.

"Now that you know everything, what do you think I should do?"

"Kim, I love you. It's because I love you that I trust in what you choose to do. I will support you, whatever you decide to do."

"Thank you." Kim said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

"You're welcome." he said, returning the hug.

"Now all I have to do is make a choice."

"Just trust yourself. Listen to your heart."

"But, my heart is telling me to go." Kim looked unsure of whether or not she should have said that aloud. Tommy smiled, holding her close.

"Then...I guess you're going to Florida."

"Really?" Kim's eyes lit up. She couldn't believe he was encouraging her.

"Yeah." Kim squealed in delight. She jumped into his arms, giving him another hug. Tommy was caught by surprise, not expecting her to jump on him, and so they both fell to the ground. After a moment, they both sat up and set up their picnic, enjoying each other's company for the next few hours.

AN: I know, lame ending, but oh well. Great news for all of you though. I'm getting really close to wrapping up the flash-back portion of the story. I know, most of you will ask yourself "What flashback?". If you feel like it, then go ahead and reread the story. I warn you though, there are a bunch of errors because I didn't always have a wonderful beta. Mid-terms have finished, so I think I'm going to type up the last few remaining paper chapters this week, so that I can just start typing the rest of the story. I'm hoping to update again by the end of the month due to midterms starting up again in about 2 weeks. Don't forget to read and review!!

- Nightlancer6000