Jordan hit the ground, but rolled immediately back to his feet. Troy couldn't help but be impressed. While his style certainly wasn't as flamboyant as many he had seen, it did seem to hold some merit. He could see from the way he moved that he had trained long enough to have instincts that rivalled some of the people he had trained with and competed against over the years. He pretty much never remained on his back, or on the ground at all for any length of time, unless it was to defend against an attempt at a submission.

He had already identified Shotokan Karate as one of the influences of his style, and he seemed to take a certain element from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but other than that, it was so blurred it was difficult to pinpoint. All he knew was that his balance was excellent, and his instinctual focus on his opponent was like a laser-guided missile. He ran forward, and launched into a flying side-kick, which Jordan side-stepped. It was only as he heard a cry that he turned and saw Jake staggering away with yet another foot-print on his hoodie.

"Dude, seriously?" Jake demanded, rounding on Jordan. "Do you have something against me or something?"

Jordan just looked around at the team. All of them had some measure of dust or dirt on their clothing, and they were nursing a few bruises from the circle exercise. Troy had a way of misdirecting him and catching him off his game that meant he was able to exploit the other rules of the contest. He was not to allow Troy to leave the circle, or attack any of the other Rangers. It was something Jordan had never really been taught. His tutors had always taught him a brutal, and focused method of fighting, namely that the best way to keep himself safe from an attacker was to focus on them, only on them, and take them down as quickly as humanly possible regardless of what he had to do to accomplish that. He punched the ground in frustration.

"Come ON! Seriously?" He demanded. "How the hell was I meant to stop that?"

"You need to find a way." Troy told him. "The fact is, we don't have the luxury of fighting in a dojo where the only people around are people who know the risks. There will be people around, people who are frightened, people who may not always act in the most sensible way. Some will be frozen by fear, and it may not occur to them to run away. Some will run, but be so blinded by panic that they might run in exactly the wrong direction at the wrong time. You have to be ready for all of that."

"Well, what if I take down the guy in a minute flat?" Jordan asked him. "What if I take him down before...?"

"Can you guarantee you're always going to be better than your opponent?" Troy asked him. Jordan just sighed and shook his head. While his technique was aggressive, his tutors also taught him that any fight carried an inherent risk. He was always taught that as good as he was, as strong or as fast as he could be, he couldn't guarantee the outcome of any battle. It was possible that his opponent knew more than he did. It was possible they would be a little faster, or a little stronger. Hell, all it took was for him to be unlucky, for his opponent to surprise him and the fight could be over, especially if the guy was armed. "Besides, so far this exercise has been pretty tame. I've simplified it for your first outing."

"Wait, this is easy?" Jordan asked him. Troy just nodded.

"Same rules, only with one difference." He stated, snapping his fingers. At that, Noah, Jake and Emma all started running around and through the circle. Jordan just groaned, realising that things would not be standing still, where he could keep an eye on them.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding." Jordan grumbled as Emma and Noah started screaming to add realism to the exercise. Troy just shook his head.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Troy asked. "Begin!"

Jordan ran to intercept him as Troy lunged for Noah, grabbing him and shoving him away, before adopting a guard.

In another part of town, Gia wandered through the town mindlessly. There were a lot of kids milling around as a result of the school being out for the foreseeable future, but she couldn't take any mind. She didn't even take any notice when some of the kids saw her and started throwing nasty remarks her way. While other things had taken some of the heat off her, and the news of her outing was old to some, more than a few people still felt the need to keep going on about it. She had at one time been "the Queen of Harwood", and the fact that she had been brought down from that to a more mortal level in the eyes of others meant that some who had been in her shadow, and even some who had very vocal objections to homosexuality still wouldn't let it go.

She didn't notice today though. After the e-mail she received from Cat, she didn't know where she was, or what she was going to do. She liked Cat; well...she liked her as a person. She was kind of ditzy, more than a little quirky; sometimes she had to wonder if her mind was firing on all cylinders. She was spacey, and she seemed to bounce around with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old with no real appreciation for the fact that most of the school thought she was a complete basket case.

That said, she had spent some time around her, and knew there was more to Cat than the red hair and the constant babble of nonsense. She had a sharp and really unique mind. She was artistic, creative, and if someone had the patience to listen to her for any length of time without tuning out, eventually some of the seemingly random crap that came out of her mouth actually started to make sense. It was a different, slightly skewed logic, but there was underneath it a level of insight that sometimes made Gia really think about what she was saying.

Gia had already figured out that Cat liked her, and more importantly, that she liked her more than just as a friend. When she had first made the connection between the comics and Cat through her username on the Harwood Flagship, the comic made a lot more sense. Cat had chosen Gia as the Red Ranger, purely through coincidence through a form of hero-worship. She had idolised her and held her on a pedestal as something she wished she could be.

Heading into the Brainfreeze, she heard someone calling out, and saw Mr Goodall sitting in some jeans and a sweatshirt. It was a little bit of a surprise, she was used to seeing him in a suit. Still, she went over and took a seat.

"I guess I'm not the only one enjoying a day off." He commented. As Gia stared at him blankly, he gestured to the side of his face which was still stitched up and heavily bruised. "After this, Emma insisted I'm not going to work at all until I recover."

"Really?" Gia asked, acting not in the least bit surprised. When Emma thought that her dad might be the Robo Knight, she was only hours away from needing to be sedated. Eric was Emma's only family. It horrified her to imagine the risk of losing him so much that she had treated the news it wasn't him with such elation that anyone would have thought she had had every one of her Christmases, every birthday, and won the lottery all at once.

"She even called my business partners and ordered them to ban me from the office." He chuckled. "I guess I can't blame her."

"She's not one to argue with when she gets a bee in her bonnet." Gia agreed, sitting with him. She looked to Ernie. "One cappuccino please?"

"Weren't you...?"

"Something came up." Gia told him. "Thanks Ernie."

"He's something special isn't he?" Mr Goodall asked.

"He really is." Gia said with a smile. "He took me in when no one else wanted to know."

"I have to admit, I didn't really come down here before." He continued. "It seemed kind of like a teenager place, but after the field trip, Ernie and I got talking, and...There's a lot more to him than meets the eye."

"He is really special." Gia agreed. Mr Goodall watched her for a second, before leaning forward.

"You know, you've never really been much of a coffee person." He commented. "In fact, if I remember, you only really drink it when you're thinking about something serious. It's your dad isn't it?"

Gia just shook her head. Her dad was now in police custody, and at present, he had been refused bail on the grounds of being a flight risk. None of the bail bond agencies had been in touch with an offer he could realistically afford given his current financial situation. So far, he was being held in the county jail while he awaited his court date.

"They've not even set a date yet." Gia informed him. Despite his insistence on supporting Gia, he respected her privacy enough that he would never open any mail addressed to her. The only way he'd know if the case began would be if Gia told him, or it appeared in the local media.

"So, what is it then?" He asked her. "Are the kids giving you a hard time at school?" Gia again just shook her head.

"It's...it's kind of connected to that." Gia admitted. She looked around to make sure no one was listening. "I kind of...got asked out."

"Oh." He answered, realising what she meant. He was alright with the fact Gia was gay. He had taken her in because she was so close to Emma that he considered her family. This did give him some difficulty however. He always knew that there were some things missing from his family since his wife had passed away. One of the reasons he thought so much of Gia was because she was a good, strong female influence on Emma. His wife had died when Emma was only 11, meaning that Emma had to grow up with certain questions he wasn't qualified to answer. It seemed that Gia was able to help her with those. However, the issue of dating was a difficult one. His own daughter had never really dated, and if he was honest, the whole same gender thing was something he really had no experience of. "Um...alright, well...how do you feel about it?"

"I don't know. Flattered I guess." Gia began. "I mean, so many people have been throwing so much shit my way, I guess...I guess it's nice to hear that someone thinks of me like that."

"That doesn't really tell me how you feel." Eric replied. Gia just breathed a sigh and looked to him. She didn't know how to really approach the subject. She owed Mr Goodall so much; the last thing she wanted was to turn him against her by admitting that she had been in love with his daughter for years.

"It's...complicated." Gia told him. "The thing is, I've kind of been hung up on someone else for a long time."

"You mean Emma." Eric replied. Gia just looked up, alarmed. "She does talk to me. She made sure I knew the score before she asked if you could move in."

He then just gestured to the side of his head.

"And even with your dad trying to cave in my skull with a brick, I can figure some stuff out for myself." He told her. "I figured it out when I heard about you."

"And you let me move in?" Gia asked. He just smiled.

"You and Emma mean the world to me." He told her flatly. "I remember having crushes on people that would never return those feelings. I was never worried. I know that you care about Emma too much to do anything she wasn't comfortable with."

"You don't know how much that means to me." Gia admitted, taking his hand.

"So...this other girl." Eric asked with a deep breath. "Who is she?"

"That's another thing that's complicated." Gia told him. "I'm the only one at school that knows...well...you know."

"She isn't ready to be out yet." He surmised. Gia just nodded.

"I figured it out, how...I really can't go into. I promised I'd not say anything until she was ready." Gia started to explain. "I haven't even told Emma about her."

"That has to be a first." Eric said semi-sarcastically. The only thing Gia had kept from Emma in all the time she had known her was her sexuality, and the changing feelings she had for her. In general, she told Emma everything. The fact she was willing to keep this from Emma was an indication of how serious it was.

"She made it pretty clear she's into me, that she wants more than friendship from me." Gia told him. "I'm...I'm just really confused. I don't know what to do."

"Well, I guess the first question is, do you feel the same way about her?" Eric asked. Gia just shrugged.

"She's different, she's a bit strange, but she's fun to be around." Gia began. "She does make me think about stuff I never really noticed."

"I didn't ask for what you think, I asked how you feel." He reiterated. Gia just looked at him regretfully.

"I'm not sure I'm ready." She admitted. "I'm not sure she's ready either."

"Well, you did say she isn't out yet." Eric reminded her. "What kind of relationship can you really have if she isn't ready to share the truth with the world?"

Gia just nodded in agreement. That was something that she was kind of wondering herself. Even if anything did happen between them, what could they really have if they had to keep everything secret? If Cat wasn't yet confident enough to admit what she was publically, then what kind of relationship could they have?

"I think you know what you have to do." He told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. Gia just sighed.

"I know." She muttered. "It doesn't mean it doesn't suck. God, I wish this was easier."

"You think being straight is easier?" He chuckled. "Trust me, it doesn't matter. Straight or gay, if something's worth having, it's never easy. I met Emma's mother at a protest."

"Emma told me." Gia said with a weak laugh. "She said you escorted her off the protest sight."

"More accurately a police officer did, in handcuffs." He told her. "It was kind of a necessity after she...well...let's just say there's a reason it was a while before Emma came along."

"OK, too much information!" Gia said as Eric took a sip of his coffee. He just smiled.

"If you find someone special, then trust me, the embarrassing stories are the ones that mean the most." He told her. "When you don't mind admitting the person you pledged to spend your life with sent you to a hospital the first time you met, you know you've got the right one."

"Thanks Mr Goodall." Gia said gratefully.

"Any time." He said softly.

Back in the woods, Jordan hit the ground again, and pounded the ground in frustration. He was failing at every turn in this exercise. Just when he thought he had Troy on the ropes, he broke off and managed to put someone else in danger. Eventually, Troy called a halt to the exercise. Emma was rubbing her left arm, which had taken a hard kick, while Noah was getting to his feet, and Jake was shaking off his hoodie.

"I'm sorry, I can...I..."

"I think we should take a break from this for now." Troy stated. "For the others' sake if nothing else."

"Come on, it's not an easy exercise." Jordan protested.

"You think a Ranger battle is easy?" Jake asked. "You think everyone is going to conveniently clear the battlefield so you have an empty space to destroy?"

"I didn't say..."

"Hell, even property damage is unavoidable." Noah reminded him. "That station wagon you wrote off? That was Principal Andrews' car."

"Really?" Jordan asked. "Well, now I don't feel quite so badly about it."

"Whatever, clearly we need to take a break from that. We'll try something else." Troy told him. He pulled out his morpher, slamming in a card, calling up his blaster. "Noah, set up some targets."

Noah ran around, setting up some targets. Jordan just willed it, and his right arm was encased in armour, from which his blaster appeared in his hand, before the armour was recalled. Troy stood beside him, facing the targets. Noah cleared the range as he finished up.

"Now, as an extension of what we were talking about, you have to be mindful of your surroundings. A big part of that is accuracy." Troy told him, levelling his blaster. "If you miss your target, a stray shot could be disastrous."

Troy fired a shot, taking out a target. He proceeded to fire five more at timed intervals, taking out each of the targets in turn, before pointing it up in the air. He turned to Jordan.

"All you need to do is take your time..."

"Noah, have you finished setting them up yet?" Jordan asked, interrupting Troy.

"Yeah."

"Then clear the range." Jordan stated, preparing to begin. As Noah ran clear, Jordan levelled his blaster. In a volley that lasted less than a second, he had taken down all six targets in six quick blasts.

"Wow!" Noah commented.

"Throw a couple." Jordan told him. He looked to Troy who just shrugged. Noah threw a couple of targets into the air, which he took down with a couple of quick blasts. Even when Jake tried to throw him off by throwing some at difficult angles and rolling one across the ground, Jordan still took them down with ease, sprinting across the forest floor, and throwing himself through the air, before rolling to his feet. He held his blaster to the forest floor, slipping his finger out of the trigger guard. Emma noticed this as something her dad did at the firing range.

"Wow, that was just...amazing!" Jake commented.

"It's easy when you're trained isn't it?" Emma asked him. The others looked at her, confused.

"He's seventeen, he isn't..."

"My dad was an armourer for the military for twenty years." Jordan informed them. "I was in the military cadets from my tenth birthday until I was 15. I left, but...I still keep up the training."

"Um...OK, so...shall we take a break?" Troy asked, realising that Jordan had shown them something that gave them a little more hope in his potential. His training, his knowledge was a lot more than some of the others had come into the war with. In fact, a critic might say he could teach them some things. All they needed to do was take what he knew and shape it into something they could work with.