A/N: Quick update, huh? This part wasn't supposed to come until a couple chapters later, but I already had half of it written so I finished it this weekend and decided to post it now. Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing, I appreciate it a lot! Constructive criticism is always welcome, too.

Setting: During MMPR:TM

Chapter 6

What a whirlwind of a week this turned out to be.

First, a giant egg appears out of nowhere and hatches, revealing this gross slimy guy named Ivan Ooze. Then we travel to a distant planet to find a great power, where we see even crazier things than we do on Earth and where my best friend decides to scare the crap out of me when she refuses to get out of the way of this possessed dinosaur skeleton, and the damn thing starts attacking her. Then we finally get the power, get back home to find Angel Grove in chaos, defeat Ivan Ooze, find Zordon dead, and bring him back to life. After all that, we get this huge celebration at the Youth Center and have to listen to Bulk and Skull try to convince everyone that they were the ones who had beaten Ivan. Then I finally tell the girl I love how I feel about her, she doesn't seem to happy about it, and then she kisses me.

I don't think I'd ever had so many ups and downs in a matter of a few days as I did during all that.

Phaedos actually turned out to be pretty cool...if you don't take into consideration that we were attacked by Tengas, I got my hand bruised by this warrior princess named Dulcea (all I was trying to do was say a simple thank you, and the chick tries to break my hand with a stick that made my eardrums shatter when she spun it around), Aisha almost got eaten alive, I was thrown against a rock, and then I almost fell off a cliff.

But the Tengas, Dulcea saved us from them. My hand, it's already starting to heal. The rock, I blacked out for a moment but didn't really feel any pain. Me falling off a cliff, well, Adam was there to save me from that, too.

But the fact that I almost lost my best friend in the graveyard...I admit, I was terrified. I was so afraid she'd be gone and I would never see her again. I yelled at her to get away from the dinosaur, but she didn't move until it started chasing her. She got cornered and had no weapon or anything to defend herself.

And at that moment, I wasn't thinking about anything else in the world except protecting the girl I loved more than anything else in the world.

I hadn't always been in love with Aisha. I had always thought she was cute, but I never had feelings for her before. I don't know when that changed, though. It might have been before we moved from Stone Canyon, it might not have been until after we transferred to Angel Grove. But I remembered how I started calling her just to hear her voice, or how I'd purposely do something silly just to hear her laugh and see her smile. I began to really take advantage of every opportunity I had to spend time with her. But something was stopping me from telling her how I felt about her. I'd never even attempted to tell her before.

Anyway, back to the graveyard on Phaedos. I found a bone on the ground and clubbed the thing in the head. Its head snapped back and hit me hard in the stomach, and I went flying through the air. As I fell against a slope, I vaguely remembered hearing Kim scream my name before I blacked out for a few seconds. I ended up being okay, but I couldn't shake the sight of Aisha almost being eaten by a skeleton out of my head.

As if that wasn't enough, she had to go get cornered again by a gatekeeper. I tried to get the boulder guy to talk to me about his problems, but he wasn't very compromising. Luckily, Kim, Tommy, and Billy had come up with a plan to crush him, it worked, and we got the new power.

Back in Angel Grove, with our new Zords, we tricked Ivan into flying to space, where he was blown up by a giant comet.

The celebration at Ernie's outdoor restaurant the next night wasn't bad, either, considering the fact that Bulk and Skull were taking credit for everything. I was busy contemplating whether or not I should talk to Aisha about how I felt about everything that had happened on Phaedos when Tommy's martial arts student, Fred, came over by us. We talked to him for a few minutes and then a fireworks show started. We were all standing by the guardrail of the patio, cheering. I saw Tommy and Kim hugging each other, and then I watched Aisha laughing with Billy for a few moments. With butterflies in my stomach, I pulled her away from the other four, making it seem like I just wanted to talk to her casually in private.

"You know, you really scared me in the graveyard," I told her with a smile.

Aisha blushed. "Sorry," she apologized sheepishly. "I just froze. I couldn't think of anything to do to get away from that thing." She looked up at me real fast before looking down at the ground. "Thanks for jumping in to save me. Both times."

I shrugged. "It was nothing."

"Rocky, you almost got killed!"

"Yeah, but so did you," I shot back.

"Well, I'm just happy to know you care about me that much to risk your life for mine."

I leaned on the railing of the patio. "Aish, we've been best friends for ten years. I care about you a lot. Probably even more than you could know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Aisha didn't know it, but this time she was the one doing the cornering. I almost didn't say anything, but she was looking at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. She knew me too well, and I knew I wouldn't be able to cover up what I really wanted to say...not without her telling me she knew I was lying, anyway.

So I started blabbering on and on about how she meant the world to me and that I didn't know what I would have done if something had happened to her on Phaedos and that I wanted to be more than just her best friend. When she didn't say anything back, I started to walk away, but she grabbed my arm and turned me back around to face her. Before I knew what was happening, she reached up, wrapped her hands around my neck, and kissed me.

When she pulled away, I stared into her deep brown eyes for a moment. "I take it that means you feel the same way?" I asked with a huge grin on my face.

Aisha just giggled and hugged me tightly.

That had just added another up to my emotional roller coaster ride.

As we stood by the railing watching the fireworks display come to an end, ignoring the laughs and teasing remarks of our friends, I remembered reading something in a book that Jason had left with Kimberly before he left for Switzerland with Trini and Zack. It was an inspirational book, and I had found it on Kim's bed once when I was at Aisha's house. There was a list in it, called "Fifteen Things To Think About." But there was one thing in that list that summed up everything perfectly.

"If not for you, someone might not be living."