Disclaimer: Very few of the characters within belong to me. You'll know which is which. I'm not making anything on any of them anyway, so nobody should get excited.

A/N: For the purposes of this story, Rocky went to the moon with the Red Rangers. Jason didn't.

As always, my gratitude to Rach, beta queen. And to Kev for letting me borrow him.

Angel with Two Faces

Chapter 3

"Who is it? Who's there?"

The elderly man's voice was thin, querulous. Silhouetted in the window, seated helplessly in the heavy, wheeled chair, he beat one bony, age-spotted fist against the padded vinyl arm. "Say who you are! You must know I cannot see…"

"A visitor." Raspy, hoarse… decades of disuse would do that, the creature supposed. He nudged the lolling, bloodied head of the old man's attendant out of his way as he approached. His black lips drew tautly across his teeth in a feral parody of a smile. "A… friend."

"Friend!" The old man was indignant now, his sightless eyes searching the room. "I have no friends. Tell the truth! Who are you?"

The creature considered. "You would not know even if I told you my name. And I do not think I shall."

A long pause, then, while the frail old man considered; and then he slumped back in the wheelchair. "It is you, then. Am I to be the next to die?"

The creature smiled again, hungrily. "Yes."

The old man nodded. "I have been expecting you."

The creature stopped, surprised. "Did you hope for death so much?"

That roused the old man. "Look at me! Look upon what I have become! All that I was, to come to this? I have no wish to endure." He paused, his head tilted, as though listening for the creature's location. "Would you not also look for death?"

The creature shrugged. "I have seen death. She holds no mystery for me now. But this… this life…" He shrugged again. "This mystery I shall unravel, and in unraveling, rule it."

The old man seemed to telescope in on himself. "You remind me of myself, in the days of my ambitious youth. Before my trust was betrayed by my faithless daughter and her fool of a consort. Before this cursed humanity, this frail, pitiful form was thrust upon me by Zordon and his wretched sacrifice."

The creature stopped his approach now. Surely the old man could feel his breath, could sense that the life he so despised was over, all but the snuffing. And yet… a question burned. "How did you not become like them, those vacuous vessels for good? How did you escape the Armageddon of righteousness? You should have been turned, as they were, or dust, as was I. How, then, do you sit here and lament?"

The old man drew himself up in the chair, and some of what he had been showed on his wrinkled, sagging countenance. "Because I did not play at evil. I was Evil. I was Master."

The creature nodded. "So you were. As, now, am I." He thought again. "And would you serve evil again?"

A dark light seemed to suffuse the old man's countenance from within. "Would I have again all I had, be again all I was? Give me the word and I will say it!"

The creature nodded, reaching out a hand, not to destroy, but to create. "So be it." His blackened fingernails touched the old man's bald, liver-spotted scalp, and the frail being cried out, a reedy wail of pain, as his body began to shake, shiver, and remold itself at the creature's whim. "I give you life, then. Life as my lieutenant, as my dogsbody, as my slave. You will answer to none but me, and when I say die, die you shall."

"Yes…" the old man's voice was but a mere whisper. "Give back to me that which Zordon stole!"

"So I shall, but you must swear allegiance to me."

The man, for he was no longer physically old, writhed and fell from the chair to the floor, his eyes rolled back in his head as he choked and gasped. "I shall… say what you… wish…"

"You have but three words to say."

Fingernails scrabbled on the hard floor as the man struggled to his knees. "Tell… me…"

"My." The creature snarled as the man rose. "Lord." He placed his foot on the man's shoulder and pushed him down prostrate before him. "Goldar."

~*~

Billy frowned at the holopad Tommy had handed him. "When did you say this information came in?"

"We got it collated just about as you were touching down," Tommy said. "You see the pattern, then."

Billy shrugged. "I see something. I don't know what it is. Ideas, Trini?"

The Yellow division Commander shrugged. "I can come up with a couple of theories, but I frankly don't like any of them." She looked from one old friend to the other. "Good timing, huh?"

Tommy snorted, shaking his head. He looked at Billy. "I've mobilized Red auxiliary."

Billy nodded. "I figured as much when I saw Rocky. Kat on her way?"

"Mmm, just as soon as she dropped the twins off at my folks. TJ is on his way in as well, and I expect to hear from Cole and Wes and the others any time now."

Billy nodded again, his attention on the holopad. "So no sign of Master Vile?"

Tommy shrugged. "Nope. Max security, and every head cracked like an egg." Trini winced. "Sorry. No sign of the old man."

"But the other ex-metahumans were killed outright." Billy stroked his beard. "Rita, Zedd, Diva and Scorpina had all changed their ways, but Vile…" He sighed. "His body went human like the others, but what was in him was so ingrained, even Zordon couldn't get through."

"So we assume he found a way to return to his old tricks?"

Tommy shook his head at Trini's question. "I don't see how that's possible. The sacrifice really took it out of him. The guy couldn't even walk."

Trini uttered a pungent epithet. "Well, that leaves us with a nameless grudge. Great. Did Rocko have anything to offer?"

"He got to about where you just did. We're all racking our brains and coming up with nothing."

Billy stood. "Red auxiliary ETA?"

"About two hours."

"Okay." He stretched. "Meantime, we've come to do a job." Tommy got to his feet slowly; Billy eyed him closely. "You okay with this, Tom?" His old friend just looked at him, and Billy sat down again. "Want to talk about it?"

"Ah, hell, Bill. I don't even know what to say. It's just…" Tommy wiped a hand over his face. "God, I'm old. When did I get old?"

Trini snorted. "You're not even fifty yet, unless you've been lying."

"Okay, I feel old. What the hell is he going to think of me, of us now?" Tommy shook his head. "He's the same age as my kids, Bill."

Bill sighed. "I know. Believe me, if I could have figured this out sooner…"

"No, no, that's not it. I know you did the best you could."

Blue eyes met hazel and held steady. "Should I have let him die?"

"Hell no!" Tommy all but shouted, then took a deep breath, steadying himself. "No."

Trini covered his hand with her slim one. "It'll be hard for all of us, Tom, Jason especially. We'll have to watch him live a youth we wish we could have back, and he'll have a whole new world to adjust to. We'll just have to get through this the same way we get through everything. Together."

Tommy shook his head and drew his hand away. "Like we got over losing Kim?"

Trini hissed in a breath and leaned away. "Ouch."

"Twenty-three years is a long time between visits, Trini." Tommy shook his head. "Annual Christmas cards and the occasional work-related email doesn't cut it for friendship." His voice was sad. Not accusatory, just sad. "When we were Rangers together, we thought nothing could pull us apart. Now we don't even know each other any more. So you tell me, what would Jason make of that? I don't even know what happened, and I was here the whole time."

Billy watched as Trini shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Everything Tom had said was true, he reflected sorrowfully. When Jason had gone into stasis, they'd still been the solid phalanx of friends and teammates, in close touch and involved in each other's lives. Zordon's death had begun the slow spiral of unraveling; it had been Kim that had held them together, sending group emails, scheduling reunions. And then she had died. And the unraveling was complete.

There had been a long period of silence between them all, broken by Kat after about six months. But nothing could rebuild what they'd had.

Trini opened her mouth, and Billy knew with an almost psychic certainty that she was steeling herself to tell Tom about Kailey, when Tommy himself interrupted her. "I'm sorry, Tri. You didn't deserve that." He shook his head, clearly disgusted with himself. "I'm being an idiot. You're here, that's what counts. And if there is a new danger to face, well, there's nobody I trust more than you guys."

Trini closed her mouth again.

~*~

Rocky pulled out Miri's seat in the mess hall with a debonair flourish. "It's not every day I get to lunch with a pretty girl."

Miri chuckled, fanning the cup of hot chocolate he set down in front of her. "Ooh, is this real chocolate? We don't have the real thing on the Station."

Rocky took the seat opposite. "Tell me about the Station. Your dad's invited me to come out there and have a look, but somehow I've never gotten around to it."

"Mmm." Miri savored the chocolate for a moment before speaking. "You should. She sits on the edge of the most beautiful nebula, and the facilities are very comfortable."

"Now did you grow up on the Station?"

"No, though there are plenty of families there." Miri smiled in fond recollection. "I spent most of my early years on Aquitar with my parents. Dad and I only moved to the Station full time after Mom passed away."

Rocky gave her a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry, Miri. I met your mom once. She was a great lady, and very beautiful. You…" but there he trailed off, and Miri knew what he was thinking.

"She was beautiful, wasn't she? And a wonderful mother, even though I wasn't her biological child."

Rocky heaved a sigh of relief. "I wasn't sure if you knew."

Miri met his gaze openly. "What, that I'm a clone of my dad? Sure. Though we're not perfectly identical, obviously. This treatment for your friend Jason is based largely on the cloning technology. Even if Dad hadn't been perfectly frank about it, it would have been sort of hard to miss, given how much we look alike. That and I don't have gills." She chuckled.

Rocky considered that with a smile. "There it is."

"There what is?"

"The Kim in you. I was looking for it. It's in your sense of humor. And in the love of chocolate, of course." Miri chuckled again, and Rocky changed the subject. "So tell me about the IRF."

"Sure. What do you want to know?

"Well, for one thing, what happened to Pink?"

Miri laughed aloud. "Kim did."

He gave her a mock frown. "'Splain, Lucy."

"Well, you know that Dad got the idea years ago after all you Red Rangers went haring off into space after something or another."

"Serpentera, yeah. So?"

"He thought that perhaps in creating a large peacekeeping force, the color designations could be used to denote divisions devoted to different areas of defense. So Yellow became technology and tactical, Blue became science, Black became covert, and Red command and military. Still with me?" Rocky nodded; Miri grinned and went on. "Green is a division of covert with an emphasis on special weapons."

"Yeah, I got that earlier today. So Pink?"

Miri giggled. "At the inception of the IRF, you friend Kim made what was apparently an impassioned speech, the gist of which was that the designation of Pink was clearly an antiquated and sexist way to get a miniskirt on a spandex clad woman."

With a loud snort Rocky spit his cocoa onto the table between them, laughing fit to split his sides. "Oh my God," he finally managed. "That so sounds like her."

Miri shrugged. "So Pink, and White, became part of Red division. Which is why Katherine Oliver would be part of Red auxiliary, like you."

Rocky was busy mopping up the cocoa. "You're a young one to know so much."

She shrugged again, her blue eyes challenging. "It's not nepotism. I graduated the Academy on Eltar at thirteen, got my first doctorate at fourteen. I've been active in the IRF for years, unlike a lot of cadets my age."

"Yep." Rocky tossed the soggy paper towels into a nearby trash receptacle. "You're definitely Billy's daughter."

~*~

Scott walked around to the rear of the ship, following the sound of voices. Commander Myers had seconded Scott's father, agreeing that Scott should help out the Admiral's crew wherever possible. Commander Myers himself was going to accompany SC Earhardt-Myers to the officer's mess and thence to his quarters, where he would, as he put it, "restore family harmony". Scott snorted. SC Earhardt-Myers was a knockout, for an older woman. And Commander Myers had been grinning like a wolf.

"Have you got it, Ba'altesch?"

The voice he heard was sweet and musical. Scott quickened his steps. New cadets at the ACC were always of interest, and this one sounded… He rounded the back end of the ship in time to see a very shapely rear end wiggling its way toward him. It took Scott a second for his brain to focus. It was a girl, small and slim, but very nicely packaged, wrestling with something large and unwieldy, trying to pull it out of the ship.

A tenor grunt from the bowels of the ship startled him, and the girl in front of him glanced into the ship sharply. "What do you mean you haven't – " followed by a low rumble. Whatever the girl had been bent over, had decided to come loose. Before he'd thought twice about it Scott had leapt forward and caught the girl, bracing the object with an arm on either side of her.

Some sort of machine or other, he realized, and then the weight eased as a large blue face bobbed up on the far side of the thing. "Sorry," the blue – er – person fluted, a deeper blue flush on his cheeks. "Lost my grip."

Scott let his arms drop, and the girl turned around to face him, smiling up at him. "Thank you for not losing yours."

Looking down at her, Scott briefly considered debating the point. She was pretty. Really, really pretty. Not conventionally, but with a warmth and sweet generosity in her expression that – that was now looking at him as though he'd grown another head. Belatedly he realized he'd forgotten to say anything.

"No problem," he managed. It probably would have sounded smoother if he hadn't had to clear his throat and repeat himself.

"I'm Kailey," she said. "Kailey Kwan."

"Scott Oliver," he replied, relieved that he'd remembered his name. Then it clicked. "Oh, you must be related to Commander Kwan."

The girl smiled again, and Scott suspected his expression had gone all goofy, but he tried to ignore it.

She laughed, waving a hand in front of his face. "Hello?"

"What?"

"I said, Commander Kwan is my mom, but it didn't look like you'd heard me."

Oh. "Oh. Um, sorry. I'm a little distracted."

A flicker of concern crossed her smooth brow. "Are you okay?"

Scott smiled. "Yeah. I'm fine. Kailey." He tried out her name, discovering he liked saying it. "Kailey. That's an interesting name."

She grinned at him. "Short for Kimberly. Kay at the beginning and lee at the end."

Scott shook his head. "Kailey suits you better."

That got another laugh. "That's what my mom says."

The big blue person approached them. "I've got everything unloaded, Kailey. Dr. Cranston and I will need your help setting it up tomorrow, but for now you're free, if you like." He smiled at Scott. "Perhaps this young Ranger would be kind enough to introduce you around a little."

"Oh," Kailey looked up at him again. Her eyes were just the color of caramel, Scott mused. "Would you mind?"

Scott decided the blue guy was his new best friend for suggesting it. "Sure. I'd be glad to," he said, pleased. "Are you hungry?"

She laughed again. "I'm always hungry. Ba'altesch," she added to the alien, "want to come?"

Ba'altesch looked from Kailey to Scott and grinned. "No, honey, I don't think so. I'll see you in the morning."

Scott grinned too. Definitely his new best friend. "Come on, Kailey, I'll introduce you to the gang."