Disclaimer: I do not own the Power Rangers. I just like to write stories about these characters.

Ghostwriter: Thanks for the review and here is the next chapter.

Now, on with the story!

Trini's Thoughts

This is the beginning of my fourth day here, in Nicarni-Aso's lair, and I am beginning to wonder if they will ever show up to save me. I have always trusted them to come through for me, but I never thought someone would want to capture me.

It doesn't make sense, most people like Nicarni-Aso would have gone after someone like Tommy or Kim or even Jason, not me or any of the others, now that I think about it. I guess that goes to show you that she is a different brand of evil, if you can believe that one. I really miss all of them and I hope that they will get here soon. I don't know how much longer I can hold out without going crazy or without Nicarni-Aso doing something worse than torturing me.

"No!" Tommy yelled out in his sleep, which disrupted the silence of the resting rangers.

His dreams, since this mission had started, had become much more violent, often ending with someone being killed and that someone was usually Kim. It made him more uncomfortable about this mission, since they had done some research and the research did not seem too promising for any of them. Not much was known about this planet and the secrets it had protected within it and that information made him extremely uncomfortable.

"Tommy, wake up," Kim said, shaking his shoulder, with a sense of panic evident in her voice. She had never seen him yell out before while he was sleeping and was becoming worried, this had happened the last two nights and it scared her more every time that it happened. "Come on, wake up."

"You're alright," Tommy said, shaking himself out of his disturbing nightmare and looking at her. He then propped himself up on an elbow and put his hand on Kim's cheek, while revealing his bare chest. The relief Tommy was feeling shone through, as his face relaxed upon seeing Kim, perfectly fine.

"Yeah, I'm fine Tommy. It was only a dream," Kim said giving Tommy a hug and a kiss on the forehead, it had been a long time since she had seen him like this and it was not comforting. They were supposed to be leaving today and they all needed to be focused on what was ahead, not on the nightmares that were ruling their sleep.

"Yeah, you're right. What time is it?" Tommy asked sitting upright, not wanting to return to dreams that only made him scream out and wake up in a cold sweat.

"About five o'clock," Kim said, looking over at the digital clock and squinting at it in order to be able to focus on the numbers. She had been sleeping fine until he had yelled out, which scared her. She hated when things happened to make him like this. "I'm going to go ahead and start breakfast. We have a very long battle ahead of us today and possibly tomorrow if something goes wrong."

"I'll help," Tommy said, getting up to reveal he only had on boxers, which shocked Kim, to begin with.

"Why don't you install those extra weapons for Jason, you, and I?" Kim suggested, taking a glance at Tommy and then quickly looking away. He certainly had done a good job of keeping himself in shape, to say the least and she wasn't sure she could trust herself in a room with him, alone, for much longer.

"Alright," Tommy said walking over to where Billy had left the weapons, the night before. He had walked out about five minutes after they lost Trini's signal and had completely forgot about his last minute upgrades that he had planned on doing for Tommy, Kim, and Jason. "You trust me to do this?"

"Well, you do teach science, don't you?" Kim asked, with a smile and a wink, before she disappeared into the kitchen. "If you're that worried wake up Jason and he'll help you with it."

"That is not a wise thing to do at this hour of the morning, so I guess I can manage," Tommy said and went to work on the modifications. They worked in silence for the next hour and then the patrollers walked back downstairs, looking groggy, but ready for the day ahead.

"Good morning," Aisha said walking downstairs and taking a seat at the huge oval table. She would have usually helped, but did not feel up to it this morning, not after having spent the whole night walking around.

"Good morning, ya'll ready for breakfast?" Kim asked, moving a stack of pancakes onto the table.

"Of course," Rocky said sitting down at the table, happily. He may have been very tired, but he was as hungry as ever.

"Jase, you better get in here or you won't have any food to eat!" Kim yelled, into the next room, knowing that the red and green ranger both shared the hobby of eating.

"I'm coming," Jason said jogging into the kitchen, still in his pajama bottoms, with Tommy and Zack hot on his heels, as they did not want to be left out on this.

"You'd think this was a strip club the way you came running in here," Kim said with a laugh and Aisha joined in on that joke as well. The boys had been known to do some wild things and this little joke had been going for about seven years. Although, it had been a long time since Kim had started it.

"Of course they do, they have been deprived for the last three days," Aisha said as Kim and her continued to laugh. It was sure good to have the humor back, even if the times were not so good, but it seemed the times were never good when they saw each other anymore.

"Don't you remember how much I like to eat?" Jason asked, looking at the two women, who were obviously enjoying the looks on all of the males' faces and the old joke between the female rangers, a little too much. He desperately wanted to change the subject, so he asked Billy a question that would hopefully stop the giggling. "Did you finish those modifications last night , Billy?"

"No, I didn't," Billy said, quietly, as they were shocked about it. His mind had not been able to focus on anything lately, but he knew that he'd do the modifications now that he didn't have any other choice. He had planned on doing it last night, but then they lost Trini's signal and he could not concentrate at all after that. "I will after we eat."

"I already did it, Billy," Tommy said while several of his fellow rangers looked at him as if he had done a somersault on top of the table and had started tap dancing around. "What? You don't believe I can do this?"

"No, it's just a little bit of a surprise that you did something like that without there being an explosion to go off," Zack said, with wide eyes and the others nodded in agreement, except Kim.

"Yeah, it is," Billy said, barely able to believe the words that had come out of Tommy's mouth. He knew Tommy had majored in Paleontology, but he did not know if that qualified him for the modifications that needed to be made on the fighters' morphers.

"Go ahead and check my work Billy. I'd rather you have to change it than it backfire on any of us," Tommy said, with an exasperated sigh.

"Alright," Billy said and went back to eating his breakfast.

"Zack," Aisha said, softly.

"Yeah," Zack said, focusing his gaze on her, instead of his plate.

"I need to talk to you," Aisha said in a voice barely above a whisper, but he somehow managed to hear it.

"Okay," Zack said, with a look of confusion. She had never asked him to talk before now. "After breakfast?"

"Sounds good to me," Aisha said, with a sad smile. She was not looking forward to the conversation she had to have with him, even if it did go well.

"What would be our best strategy?" Kim asked, sitting down between Jason and Tommy. This question had been up in the air for the past three days and now they had to come up with some sort of crazy plan to try to get through it.

"I don't know," Jason said, in between mouthfuls of food. "Our blasters have more power, but…"

"I'm not as good at hand to hand combat as the two of you. The two of you have had years more experience," Kim finished for Jason.

She had already admitted that it had been years since she had done any martial arts and was very wary because there would be a lot of hand to hand combat involved in this. But Billy was confident, so she didn't question the decision to let her fight any more.

"How about we just fight until we have nothing left?" Tommy asked, as he could think of nothing else. "That's all that anyone can expect out of us, we are human after all."

"Okay, but remember we have to have each others back, because we are likely to be outnumbered by more than a thousand of those things and we have no back up," Kim said, finding Tommy's hand and taking hold of it, as she was truly nervous about all of this. "Come on."

"Okay," Tommy said, as Kim pulled him into the other room. "What's going on?"

"I need to talk to you," Kim said and then took a deep breath. She did not want to sound desperate, but she also knew that both of them could die today and everything needed to be on the table before either did anything careless, as they were likely to do. "If anything happens today, I want you to know that I still love you and I'm sorry that I ever hurt you, Tommy."

"Beautiful," Tommy said, tracing the outline of Kim's face with his index finger. He had been waiting to hear those words for so long and now that he had heard them, he knew everything would be fine, even if it did take them sometime for them to get back to like they used to be. "I forgive you for everything and I love you too. We have to get to work now, but remind me when we get home that there is something we need to talk about."

"Okay, handsome," Kim said with a smile as the others began to file out of the kitchen, which ruined the moment.

"Let's get to work," Jason said and they all began to pack survival kits, except for Zack and Aisha who sneaked back outside.

"What did you need to talk about?" Zack asked as they walked around the outer deck. The silence was almost deafening and he had the feeling that whatever she was going to say, he wouldn't like it in the least bit.

"Something Rocky made me realize," Aisha said, trying to keep herself from crying. 'Why did I have to fall so hard?' Aisha thought to herself, as she saw that she had caught Zack's full attention, by one simple statement. She knew he felt the same, but lately most would have thought that they were on the verge of breaking up.

"What did he make you realize?" Zack asked, becoming slightly concerned.

He knew that he had taken her for granted lately, but she had never confronted him about it before. Now that she had, he was scared he would lose her permanently if he didn't start showing how he felt, to her and the rest of the world.

"That there are some things in life that don't need to go unsaid," Aisha said, daring to look Zack in the eyes, and she saw confusion mixed with fear, "like the way I feel."

"Aisha, I didn't mean to…" Zack said and was abruptly cut off.

"I don't want this to end, really I don't but it is really hard to have a one sided relationship," Aisha said, no longer fighting the tears that had now over took her. "If you're not ready for a long term commitment, it may be best that we take a break. I love you, Zack, but I can't go on living like this. I know that this is a bad time, but I didn't want anything to happen to you and I never get a chance to tell you how I felt."

Zack was rendered speechless by Aisha's sudden confession. He had long suspected that she had felt this way, but hearing all of this got to him. He knew how he felt as well and had been quite surprised, as he had started to feel the same.

"I never meant to make you feel like this," Zack said, pulling Aisha into a well-deserved hug. He knew that he had his work cut out for him, but they would hopefully make it through this andhis job would start as soon as they got back to Earth. "I'm just not good at expressing how I feel, most of the time. I'm going to try to do better, I really care about you and I want this to work out, but there is a lot that is going on in both of our lives, at the moment. I hate to be the one to bring this up but, our duties have to be taken care of before we can try to make amends."

"But you want to try to make this work?" Aisha asked looking up at him, with pleading eyes and he nodded his head yes.

"Yes, now we better get back downstairs before they send out a search party. You know how they are," Zack said and smiled down at her before grabbing her hand and leading her downstairs.

"Now that everyone is here, I just have some last minute things to tell you. We will arrive at Asoriotan in approximately twenty minutes," Billy said, having gathered all of the rangers for a last minute briefing. He knew the others had done some limited research, but he also knew if anything went awry, Trini would be in an unknown amount of trouble. Tommy, Kim, and Jason also had the burden of breaking into all of this first and they knew that there was to be absolutely no back up, until the others had gotten Trini out of harms way. "Jason, Tommy, Kim, you know what your job is and my advice is do not morph until you have to, it will save your powers. You know their weaknesses, exploit them and keep them busy as long as you can."

"We will," Jason said in a serious tone. He was as determined as Billy to get Trini back, even if it meant that he had to die to do that and if he did die, his secret would die with him.

"Zack, Aisha, Rocky, Adam, we are going to try to find Trini while they take care of the asoriods and the amephors. I have plotted a course to get us to Nicarni-Aso's lair. We will probably have to do battle with the asoriods and amephors along the way, but it will not be to the same extent as those three," Billy said, nodding his head towards Jason, Tommy, and Kim. "At least one of us has to be willing to do anything necessary to save Trini and kill Nicarni-Aso. I know that the risks have definitely increased, but we still have a job to do. If Nicarni-Aso is not destroyed, the world as we know it will cease to exist."

"What if we need our Zords?" Adam asked, thinking back to all of the times Zords had been necessary to a mission and wondering if they would come this far away from home.

"They will come," Billy said, confidently, as he knew that they were well equipped to make it there quickly. "Everyone needs to be prepared to disembark as soon as we land. You need to all be prepared for anything to happen, we are on her turf and no matter how much research you do there is always something you forget to think about."

"Alright," Tommy said, picking up his, Jason's and Kim's modified morphers and handing each to its rightful owner. Billy had decided it would be necessary to make their actvation sequences much shorter, which might save them in the end. He knew that they had no choice and if things were as bad as they thought it would be then it was the best thing that they could do. "We should probably go first, so we can distract them from the rest of you."

"Yeah," Billy said and let the three of them quickly ascend the stairs and disappear onto the outer deck.

"So this is Nicarni-Aso's home planet," Jason said, catching the first glimpse of the planet. It looked as if the majority of the planet was composed of something similar to red clay with patches of a substance that looked similar to granite. Nicarni-Aso had never thought of protecting her 'home' because she never thought someone would try to invade her territory, it just didn't seem possible. "She couldn't have made her home more noticeable, could she?"

"Billy was right, she doesn't have the sense to move Trini or even try to conceal her home, but that still doesn't mean this will be easy," Tommy said, in utter disbelief. Lord Zedd and Rita may have been stupid, but this could top even their most hideous blunder. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just a little bit nervous," Kim said, biting on one of her pink-polished fingernails. The pressure would get to her soon if she hadn't had two of her best friends on each side of her.

"Well, it's time to go, those nerves will just have to wait," Jason said with a smile.

AN: That's it for this one! Next chapter will mostly be the battle, I hope you'll read it! Thanks for reading and feel free to review!