Title: Family Ties

Part Sixteen: Random Days

Author: Kryptonite

Disclaimer: I own Danni. Enough said about that topic.

Spoilers: Kinda hard not to have them since they aren't all my original characters.

Summary: Again with the bouncing. On an interesting side-note, Cam's name means 'bent nose'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

" Do you think this follows my brother's orders?" Danni asked Cam later that day after they had eaten some breakfast. They were currently sitting on the porch swing in the shade, ignoring the glaring sun and rising heat.

" It should." Cam mumbled back, falling asleep. Danni craned her neck around before smiling and settling herself into Cam's side more comfortably. The two fell asleep easily, content in the fact that the other was near.

~~~~~

" Uncle?" Kapri asked tentatively hours after she and Marah had let him out of the darkened command room.

" Yes?" Lothor asked, pouring over the now fixed panels.

" I was wondering if Marah and I might be allowed to go down to the surface?" Kapri questioned, trying her best not to sound afraid.

" Why would you want to go and do a thing like that?"

" To spy on the rangers of course." Kapri invented off the top of her head, giving an excuse her uncle would like.

" Go have your little picnic or whatever it is. Just leave me some Kelzacks on the ship."

" Thank you Uncle." Kapri smiled happily before ducking into place a kiss on her uncle's cheek.

" I'm too good to all of you." Lothor muttered as Kapri uncharacteristically skipped out of the room, leaving Lothor alone once more. " Ah, what's this?" He asked, glee in his voice at what came up on the viewer.

" Sir?" Zurgane asked, waiting in the doorway.

" Go watch my nieces and make sure they don't get into any trouble." Lothor commanded absently.

" Yes sir." Zurgane nodded, before placing his fist over his heart and bowing. He vanished to where the girls were eating their food on a secluded part of the beach.

" So my nephew has himself a little girlfriend." Lothor smiled, chuckling softly to himself.

~~~~~

" Where'd you spend the night Hunter?" Blake asked his brother as they stacked boxes in the backroom.

" I crashed at Dustin's." Hunter opted for the truth, while still knowing that he would edit out where *exactly* at Dustin's he had crashed.

" Dustin's?" Blake asked, avoiding looking at his brother. Blake knew about his brother's sexual preference but he had never been overly comfortable with the thought that Hunter had boyfriends instead of girlfriends.

" Yeah he asked if I wanted to watch a movie with him, Cam and Danni."

Blake nodded, straightening the box so it would fall from the shelf. " What about you and Tori? Wasn't she supposed to come over last night?" Blake felt himself reddening at his brother's words.

" Yeah she came over." He muttered, lifting another heavy box. Hunter grinned at his brother's reaction.

" She stayed the night didn't she?" Hunter questioned, grinning at his younger brother. Blake mumbled again, his tan skin flushing even more. " Way to go bro. Good thing I stayed over at Dustin's then, huh?" Blake nodded, not trusting his voice at the moment.

~~~~~

Shane had purposely stayed away from the areas his friends would be in: Storm Chargers, the beach and Ninja Ops, which left him the skate park and the woods to wander. Not feeling up for a long reflective walk in the woods, Shane had opted for riding his skateboard over to the skate-park.

Once there, however, he found he was less willing to try and pull tricks in hiss current mood than go for a walk among nature. Shane sat for a few moments on the park bench; idling moving his feet back and forth on the skateboard and watching the other skaters do their own tricks.

Standing up and sighing Shane was about to leave when a young female voice stopped him.

" Can you help me?" Shane turned to see a little girl, no more than nine or ten, looking ready to cry. Her hair was braided into two braids down her back, her jeans worn and tearing at the knees. Her shirt was smudged with dirt and the straps on the backpack on her back looked ready to snap at any moment.

" What's wrong?" He asked kneeling down but not reaching for the girl, which was his first instinct.

" I can't find my mommy." She answered sniffing. Her little hand went up to wipe at her running nose. He took his skateboard and put it on the back of his bag before he placed his helmet into the bag itself.

" What's your name?" Shane asked after looking around the park.

" Elizabeth Berkley." Shane smiled, standing up and offering his hand.

" Well Elizabeth, my name is Shane. Come on, let's go look for your mommy, okay?" Elizabeth nodded and took Shane's hand, leading him back to where she had last seen her mom.

The little girl led him back to a park bench, near the main road. " She told me to wait here." Elizabeth said. Shane looked around, hoping that some distraught woman would make herself seen so he could deposit Elizabeth with her.

" What's your mom look like?" He asked, squeezing the girls' hand gently to get her attention.

" She's got long brown hair and she's really tall, like you. My mommy's really pretty." Elizabeth answered. Shane smiled at the little kid answer.

" Do you know when your mother asked you to wait here?" Elizabeth nodded, her face suddenly turning serious. Shane sat down on his haunches to be eye-level with the girl. " When was that?"

" Two days ago."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Doyles-always- Yeah I know exactly how you feel. It's why I'm taking her character a different direction when it comes to 'family' interactions… here's something that's always bugged me. How is Lothor their Uncle? I mean, they're at least Cam's age (at least) so he would have had to have been found and adopted by some evil space family rather quickly.

CamFan- Well I'm glad you didn't sign in because then I would only have gotten one review from you instead of two, lol.

So I was randomly looking up the character's names when I started looking at this. Blake and Hunter's names can be used for girls as well. Bent nose, hehehe. That one is going to tickle my funny bone for a while.

I am really, honestly being mean to Shane. How many thought that the voice that stopped him was some drop-dead gorgeous girl that was going to ask him out and then they were going to fall in love and all this other crap? Come on, raise of hands, I had to have gotten at least one of you. As it is, it's much worse.

What should Shane do about Elizabeth? Why did Lothor chuckle? What's he planning now that his hired help decided to quit? How far did Blake and Tori really go last night? When will Hunter come out and simply say he's dating Dustin? Where were Tori and Dustin in this chapter? And where has Sensei been in this story? I love ending a chapter with questions. It's so much fun.

Bye all, have a good life.