Disclaimer: The usual. Don't own anything you recognize.

KINGS AND VAGABONDS

By Etcetera Kit

When the last eagle flies over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars at the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest, though she may be old and worn
They will stare unbelieving at the last unicorn

Chapter Fifteen: Unbelieving I

"So, is it just me or have we had no free time lately?"

Bridge looked up as Z walked into the lounge. It was late - late enough that they were the only ones in the room and they had just gotten in from their shift. Syd was over by the food replicator, picking out something to eat. Sky was leaning forward over the sink near the café tables, holding tissues to his nose, trying to stop his most recent nosebleed. He didn't understand why Sky had such visible symptoms from being overworked, but none of the rest of them did.

"We haven't had any free time," Bridge agreed, picking up the comic book that had just come in the mail for him.

Sky said something, but it was muffled due to the tissues.

"You should go to the infirmary," Syd told him, picking up her food from the replicator. She was facing Sky and looking worried. "They can stop nosebleeds in a second."

The Blue Ranger didn't reply, just leveled his best glare at her. Syd gave him a cheeky smile and sank down into one of the couches. Z sat down next to Bridge, leaning her head on his shoulder, shifting so she was comfortable. None of them had any free time recently, due to the extra work load. Gruumm had started pulling out his old generals from the invasion and destruction of Sirius. Aside from putting Cruger in a bad mood, it was creating a larger workload for them and they didn't have time for anything, including each other.

The strain was showing. Sky got nosebleeds more and more frequently, while he had begun to project anxiety in his sleep - something he hadn't previously done. Conner was on edge and got immediately defensive when anyone asked after his family - he hadn't had much free time to spend with his daughters or his girlfriend. All of them were tired and the new relationships they had established were at a stalemate, since there was no time to advance them or help them grow.

Of course, Syd was using Sky's nosebleeds as an indirect way to coddle him. It was amusing to watch her take care of him. She had set her food down and gotten up, going to Sky. Currently, she had one hand holding a cold cloth in place on the back of his neck and the other hand pinching the bridge of his nose. Bridge wrapped an arm around Z. It was entirely too much that they were expected to take on.

"Could we take a few leave days?" Z murmured.

"We could try," Syd responded. "But I don't think it will have much effect."

"We just have to be sneaky," Bridge added.

"One of my aunts has a cabin up in the woods," Syd said in a musing tone of voice, as Sky straightened up, grabbing a handful of fresh tissues. "I bet if we had the cabin all lined up for a weekend and agreed to have our morphers so we could be contacted in an emergency, Cruger would let us go." She paused. "And Kat does have the teleportation system up and running, so she could teleport us if it was really important."

Sky whirled around to stare at her. There was surprise and pride in his eyes as he gazed at his girlfriend. He muttered something.

"I'll go call my aunt," Syd said. It was obvious that Sky's nosebleed as subsided enough for both of them to realize it was fading. Syd handed Sky the damp cloth and left the lounge and her food.

"Who'd have thought?" Z muttered.

Sky sank down onto one of the couches. He shrugged. Bridge gave him a scrutinizing stare. He really did need to go to the infirmary for the nosebleeds. If they had a record of it, Cruger would be forced to lay off by the medical staff. Perhaps… Bridge let out a long breath, the beginnings of a headache straining his temples.

"The question is - can we pull it off?"

Bridge turned to Sky. Something was happening and he wasn't sure what it was. The same warning in Sky and Z's auras was still there, but something else was happening. He couldn't see into the future, but he could sense the building tension and emotions - from Cruger and Kat and Paris. They were the triangle that needed to be looked out for. Cruger was hiding something huge. Kat was trying to keep the peace. Paris was digging into places that someone didn't want her to go.

But what did it mean?

He sighed. If they managed to pull off the weekend away thing, he was not going to worry about this and just concentrate on renewing energy in a place away from SPD.

"What is this?"

Doggie came into the room and threw a form on her desk. Kat looked up from her computer, glancing at the form, knowing what it was. She had been there when Conner had turned it in and requested that Cruger contact him if he had any questions.

"A request for some leave days," she replied mildly.

"Four of the five B-Squad rangers have requested the same weekend off."

Kat would dearly have loved to ask, 'so?', but kept her comments to herself. Unofficially, she was the second-in-command at SPD. It was more for the fact that Doggie didn't quite trust her and wanted her placated than anything else. Fear was what ruled all of them - her, the parents… Doggie kept them all afraid of what he might do to those six children.

"This is unacceptable," Doggie continued. "I cannot have the entire squad going off."

"I don't know why you're telling me," Kat said in an even tone. "You authorize all time off. McKnight also put a request on there to contact him if you had questions."

Doggie shook his head and left the lab. Kat let out a long breath. Something was about to crack - Paris was close to finding what she needed. She had already figured out that Bridge was at least partially Mirinite without anyone's help. Time… it was the one thing she desperately needed that was running out. How long could this charade hold up before something gave away?

Not long enough.

The door chimes in the apartment sounded. Conner paused from what he had been doing in the kitchen and went to the door. The sauce that was heating would be all right for a few moments. He knew that most of the food here was done by a food replicator, but he still found pleasure in cooking his own food. It gave him something to do and something to give the girls that wasn't completely synthetic. He wished… no - now was not the time to think about that. Madeline was sitting at the table doing her homework. Christina was running ahead of him to answer the door.

"I'll get it!" she cried, pressing the button that allowed the door to slide open.

Conner stopped short. Sky was out there. The rest of the B-Squad hardly visited him outside of their duties. They left him alone. He couldn't remember if they had ever come to his apartment to see him. It was part of the gap he felt between himself and them - their lifestyles and expectations were so different. They were young and had dreams of grandeur. He just wanted to survive and support his daughters.

"Hi, Sky!" Christina said enthusiastically.

Sky smiled at her. "Hi. Is your dad home?"

"Right here." Conner placed a hand on Christina's shoulder and steered her back towards the kitchen. "Go set the table," he told her.

"But I want to-"

"Now."

Christina stuck out her lower lip. "All right," she grumbled, moving back towards the kitchen. Conner watched her for a moment as she pulled a chair from the kitchen table and dragged it to the cupboards so she could reach the plates.

"What's up?" he asked Sky, stepping back to allow the Blue Ranger to enter the apartment.

"Just thought I'd let you know that our leave request got approved."

Conner nodded. "I'd heard that." He had also had to argue with Cruger in order for it to happen. As the Red Ranger, he had enough influence to convince Cruger that he would be all right for a weekend - and had methods for getting the others back in a hurry - that the dog had eventually agreed. He also suspected that Kat had something to do with it, but he wasn't going to dwell on that.

"Paris is supposed to be reassigned for the weekend to help you out."

"Lucky me." He had seen Paris around and had heard more about her reputation than he would ordinarily have liked to, but hadn't had the pleasure of meeting her. This weekend was going to be interesting if nothing else. Normally, the B-Squad formally had the weekend off, but were on call in case something happened. He was going to endeavor to spend the weekend with his daughters - but he had to make a few phone calls first.

Now this begged the question of why Sky was standing here.

"Did you need something else?"

Sky took a breath. "Thanks," he said softly.

Conner frowned. "For what?"

"For sticking up for us and making sure that Cruger cleared the request - you didn't have to do that."

It was something I wouldn't have done.

The Red Ranger could hear the unspoken comment about Sky and the way he would have run the squad, had he been made the Red Ranger. It was a mark of how far Sky had come, that he could admit to himself what his shortcomings were. For him, ranger colors were not relevant. He hadn't gotten to choose his original color - and he hadn't been the leader despite the tradition associated with that color. It made him wonder if Sky would have felt differently if the power source had chosen them - hadn't been man-made and assigned by a dog.

He shrugged. "You're my team and you guys need a break." He paused and gave Sky a scrutinizing stare. There were dark circles under the Blue Ranger's eyes and his skin was pale. "Besides, you need a break." He let out a long breath. "I'll have to see what I can do about altering our training schedule to something less ridiculous."

Sky smiled wryly. "Overthrow Cruger and that might change."

Facetious insubordination coming from the previous stickler for the rules. Conner grinned. "I might be able to arrange that." He shook his head. "Just have fun this weekend and I'll make sure that no one here contacts you unless it's the end of the world. However, irritating relations, I can do nothing about."

Sky chuckled. "My dad doesn't call me unless it's important - and nothing that important ever happens."

Conner shook his head again as Sky said his good-byes and disappeared down the hall. He wondered about Sky sometimes - what possessed Eric Myers, who was still single and had been single his entire life, to adopt a child. Sky had said Eric had been his guardian since he was three and he didn't remember his real parents. It didn't make sense and he wanted to ask questions, but it didn't seem right, marching up to Eric's front door, introducing himself and then demanding explanations. Eric had to have his reasons and that should be more than enough. Why, then, did it make him uneasy?

Something was going on at this place, something that somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to cover up and keep quiet. Conner wasn't sure what it was, but he had a feeling that it involved the B-Squad and their backgrounds. If he and Paris had to go into action this weekend, he could ask her what she knew.

"The table is set!"

He turned and raised an eyebrow at Christina, who had set the table around Madeline. His daughters did not have the kind of superpowers that he did. The gem had given him the powers superficially and done nothing to the genes that he passed on to his girls. In a way, he was glad that they didn't have powers. He thought back to Sam - the little boy who also had superpowers. Cruger hadn't explained why that kid had powers, only that he was the last one on Earth that needed to come to SPD. The kid was ten - and already in training to become an officer and hone his power. He did not want that kind of fate to happen to his daughters - making him eternally grateful that both of them were normal.

"This is awesome!"

Bridge was bouncing around in the back-seat of Sky's car. Sky glanced at him in the rearview mirror, raising an eyebrow at him. Syd was sitting in the front seat, owing to the fact that one of the rules in his car was the person with the most seniority got to sit up front. He was the only B-Squad member, besides Conner, with a car, so he became the default transportation for the weekend. He just hoped that Syd knew where she was going.

Z was looking through the mini-discs he had in his car. He didn't really care which one she picked, since he could stand the ones in his car. Now something else - that was unacceptable. The other rule in his car was that the driver picks the music - and since he was always the driver, it worked out well.

"This one." Z handed the disc to Syd who slipped it into the player.

"I can't believe we pulled this off," Syd muttered.

"I think we owe all credit to Conner," Z responded. "He was the one that justified the request for leave time."

"And Paris ought to be happy that she gets to spend the weekend in the command center and not doing her rounds."

"I get the feeling McKnight is going to kill her or love having her around," Sky commented, more to himself than any of the others.

Syd giggled. "Cruger told her once that he would give her a D-minus for efficiency, but an A for dramatic timing."

"So she did teach you something."

The Pink Ranger punched him lightly in the upper arm. He didn't reply, just smiled to himself as he steered the car onto the freeway. The thing about efficiency and dramatic timing seemed to describe Syd well. She would come to them at the worst times and remember something pertinent about a case, but it would always be a moment when the drama was at its peak. Something seemed to run in the Drew family. And that was something that Cruger would say to someone, especially a repeat offender like Paris.

In fact, Cruger had told Bridge something similar at one point in time. He got a F for memory, but an A for memory retrieval at just the right moment. When Cruger wasn't on edge about something, he could be rather amusing to work with. Of course, most people said his anxiety was due to the fact that his home planet had been destroyed and the SPD there had been unable to stop it.

"Take I-5 north," Syd said to Sky.

"Check this out," Bridge said, looking at a page in his most recent computer magazine. Z leaned over and looked at the page as he explained something about it. It was just as well - Sky was lost most of the time when Bridge started on something beyond the basics in computer.

He glanced over at Syd. She grinned at him. "What?"

"This cabin better be worth the hype," he replied in a neutral tone.

"It is." She paused. "Of course, I don't see what the rest of you could find lacking about it." There was a teasing note in her voice.

"Just because the rest of us aren't billionaires, doesn't mean that we don't appreciate elevated living when it presents itself."

Syd rolled her eyes. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"True - I don't."

"Hey, Sky," Bridge called from behind him. "I could upgrade your computer to a-"

"Whatever, Bridge," he interrupted.

"No appreciation for technology," the Green Ranger muttered.

"I appreciate technology - when it works."

"Let it go, Bridge," Syd interjected, twisting around in her seat to face the Green Ranger. "You can't get him to change his mind about anything."

Sky didn't reply, thinking back to that hideous poem he had composed. Between writing really bad poetry, people with bad feelings, Gruumm and all the meddling that Paris seemed to be known for, he was more than ready for a weekend off.

He shouldn't be worried.

But he was.

"This is nice - I would have stayed on the ranger track if I had known I would get to hang out in here most of the time."

Conner rolled his eyes and took a seat at the main computer console in the command center. Paris was sitting at the terminal next to him, dragging up the files on the cases that the B-Squad was currently working on. She also had a shoulder bag with a fistful of glamour magazines and nail polish - something about testing nail polish colors in their free time.

Hopefully, this would be the last time over the weekend he had to sit in here with Paris. It was Friday afternoon - the others had taken off, but his shift technically had not ended, so he was stuck in the command center with Paris until dinnertime. Then, he would be able to move forward with his weekend plans to spend time with his family.

"Didn't you get thrown off the ranger track?" he asked.

"Technicality," she replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. "It was my fault I got thrown off. If I had behaved, I wouldn't have been moved."

Isn't that the truth? Conner thought.

Paris was leaning over the console, pushing the buttons to bring up the files and examine them. Her blonde hair was unbound and fell over her face. There was no mistaking that she and Syd were sisters - but where Syd looked like any normal beauty queen, Paris reminded him strongly of someone. Who? It wasn't someone he had met, but someone he remembered seeing in a picture. Who?

He could ask Kira - she might know. Kira… he wanted the relationship that he had with her, but was afraid. Too much had happened to him and too much was tumbling around his mind. His squad would need him soon, but he wasn't sure what for. He hated having a bad feeling about something and not being able to identify it. When he had been a ranger the first time and the Shield of Triumph called to him, Doctor O had said that only a person in harmony with his powers could have summoned it. The underlying message had been that he had been the person in tune with his powers like that.

"They actually assign you bank robbers?"

Paris interrupted his thoughts. He glanced at the file she was perusing. "Intergalactic bank robbers," he replied.

She shook her head. "We're all trained to deal with aliens. Why didn't they send the picture out on the officer links? We could have found him already."

In other words, something like that was too trivial for the rangers. At least that was what Paris seemed to think. Then again, she was an officer - a police officer specializing in bringing in alien forces. It gave a new meaning to the term 'illegal aliens.'

"I don't know," Conner replied and it was true. He didn't know.

She shrugged. "Cruger prides himself on his precious rangers and he overestimates the danger presented with certain cases. Things that the rangers never should be bothered with are kept away from the officers." She paused. "Something has to be done about the communication problem here."

"I thought you didn't want to be here."

Paris shrugged again. "I don't have much choice - and I'm trying to be nice so that my pay isn't docked anymore."

Technically, he and Paris were the same rank, but he was slightly ahead of her because he was a ranger. He had heard Sky and Bridge talking about the theories surrounding their parents. All their parents had been involved in experiments here in 2001. All of them had been given up for adoption in 2006. But the facts didn't line up for Sky.

Paris shut down the files and pulled out a magazine. "What do you think?" she asked, showing him a page in the magazine. "Passion Pink or Fire Engine Red?"

It was going to be a long weekend.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note: My apologies for taking so long with this update - the end of my summer job was nuts and then I had to get myself organized here and get this section out to my beta readers. Thanks to Kaidence Ledger for beta fishing... er... reading this chapter. And thanks to all my reviewers for hanging in there - the support has been amazing and I really appreciate it. :) Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this piece so far!