Disclaimer: The usual. Don't own anything you recognize.
KINGS AND VAGABONDS
By Etcetera Kit
Chapter Eighteen: Unbelieving IV
Syd watched as Paris pulled her bag over her shoulder. She let out a long breath and curled up in the corner of the couch in her older sister's apartment. It had been a week since the cabin and none of them had time to spend together apart from their duties. Paris was dressed in civilian clothes with her longish blonde hair unbound. She was heading for her normal haunt on the SPD Academy grounds - the archives.
"Are you sure you don't need help?" she asked as a last ditch attempt to get her sister to take pity on her and allow her to come along.
Paris just shook her head, none of the normal sarcasm or scathing in her blue-gray eyes. "No," she repeated firmly, glancing at one of her perfectly manicured hands. "You and Sky need to sit down and have a talk and now is an opportune time."
The Pink Ranger frowned at the unspoken words there. In another week, their individual off-weekends would start. Sky was first and he was just going home - which happened to be in Newtech City. Of course, Paris would remember that both of them were off-duty and could talk in a surrounding other than the academy.
They had been awkward around each other since the weekend. Sky had left their room close to midnight, claiming he was going for a walk. When he got back, something about both of their resolves to remain virgins shattered. Mind-blowing as the initial experience had been and as caring and gentle as Sky had been the first and subsequent times that night, the wake-up call to their blaring morphers had left no time for them to deal with the aftermath.
And there had been no time the following week as monsters and robots continued to attack and their individual training schedules kept them apart. Now, she felt like a coward for running to her sister the moment they got off today, but she needed some time to breathe before confronting Sky. God, she loved him, but what was he going to say? What was he even thinking right now? She knew full well that avoiding the situation was the worst idea yet, but she couldn't help herself.
"Get up off my couch and go talk to Sky," Paris said, her hands on her hips. "I have work to get done."
"Like what?"
"Don't change the subject."
"You are only a year older than me and you're not my boss!"
Paris just shrugged. "You're right - I'm not your boss, but I hope that you listen to me and what I'm telling you. If you only listen to me this once, it'll be enough." She adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I do have things to do that do not involve being a shoulder to cry on."
Syd just stared as her sister stalked out of the apartment. Paris believed strongly in people helping themselves - she relied on no one and wanted no one to rely on her. She was right, as much as Syd hated to admit it. If anyone would know about broken relationships, shattered hearts and fallen dreams, it was Paris. She took a deep breath. It was time to find her boyfriend and stop being cowardly.
And it wouldn't be hard to find him.
She went down the familiar halls to the room that Sky shared with Bridge. The door was open and Bridge was zooming around, picking up things and reorganizing the chaos that was his side of the room. Sky was ignoring him, sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading a book.
"Hey, Syd!" Bridge greeted her cheerfully without actually looking at her.
Sky looked startled for a moment, before he carefully put the book down and met her gaze. He looked just as afraid as she felt. "Hi Syd," he said softly.
"Hey," she whispered. "Can we talk?"
Sky glanced to Bridge, who was being oblivious to them. "Bridge, can you finish reorganizing some other time?"
The Green Ranger gave Sky a curious look, before comprehension dawned on him. "Sure," he said slowly. "I'll just go see if Z… yeah… bye guys!" He hurried out of the room in his normal fashion - being ridiculous and spastic.
"I know what this is about," Sky said quietly, rubbing his temple. "And it's not that I don't care about you, it's just that we haven't had much time and neither of us were planning on taking that step over the weekend."
Syd felt her stomach clench. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"What is what supposed to mean?"
"What was that to you? Just a one night stand?"
"What?"
Now that she was done feeling sorry for herself and skittish around Sky, she felt the anger bubbling up the surface. "So you just use me for one night and then move on with you life? Is that how it works with you, Tate?"
Sky stood up. "If you hadn't noticed, that was my first time too! And I'm sorry if you've been getting the wrong impression, but-"
"But what?" She wanted a fight.
"I love you."
Syd froze at those words. She had been expecting a lot of things to come out of Sky's mouth, but that hadn't been it. He swore under his breath and turned towards the window, raking a hand through his hair. He turned back to her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "That was supposed to be in a much more romantic setting."
"When were you planning on telling me?"
"Tonight," he replied, moving towards her and placing one hand on her waist. "I was going to ask you if you wanted to go for a walk with me." He paused. "But Bridge was taking forever to get ready since he lost his favorite shirt in the mess," he gestured towards Bridge's side of the room. "And I couldn't leave before him without a thousand questions." He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.
All the questions and doubts vanished with that simple kiss. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I had thought that-"
Sky gently laid a finger on her lips. "It doesn't matter." He paused, his blue eyes scrutinizing her face. "Let's just go for the walk. I'll meet you in the lounge in ten minutes?"
She nodded in agreement and started to the door. Once there, she paused and turned back to him. "Sky?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you, too."
Conner pulled his reading glasses off and rubbed his eyes. The weekends never seemed to be long enough or allot enough extra time for him to get caught up on his work. Most of the B-Squad research was divided up and his always seemed to be the last finished since he had to direct the others and check their work. Most of the time, he left Sky to his own devices, since he accomplished more. Bridge needed constant reminding of deadlines. Z did pretty well, but still got mixed up about databases and sources. Syd was just a flat-out mess when it came to paperwork and tedious things.
He had hated research papers as a high school and college student, but realized it more acutely now. He didn't have a girlfriend or Ethan in the background to check his work. He was on his own. Conner sighed, realizing he had been home a total of two hours tonight - enough time to feed the girls dinner and get them to bed. He hadn't spoken to Kira since the disastrous dinner on Saturday night.
The doors slid open. Conner glanced up, watching Cruger enter the room. It wasn't unusual for their commander to check up on them from time to time, albeit he didn't normally come this late at night. He made to stand up and salute.
"Lieutenant McKnight, at ease," Cruger said quickly, holding up a hand. "I wanted to talk with you about some of the happenings within your squad."
He sank down onto the stool. "Sir, I'm not aware of anything non-handbook going on."
"No," Cruger said. "Nothing has happened yet, but I want you to be prepared if a situation should come up." The big, blue dog paused. "You are aware that cadets of the opposite gender are allowed to visit one another's quarters until lights-out. After that time, a cadet must be in his or her own room or the room of someone of the same gender."
Conner shrugged. "Normal procedures." The place was a school, so he would expect nothing less of the guidelines established.
"Make sure it stays enforced. I realize that your squad might be more mature than most and that they are Power Rangers, but they are still cadets and must follow the cadet guidelines spelled out in the handbook."
He nodded. "I'll do my best, but there's not much I can do after I'm back in my apartment for the night."
Cruger nodded. "Just keep it in mind at your next squad meeting." With that, the commander left the room. As the doors slid open to grant him an exit, they revealed a startled Bridge about to enter the room.
"Uh - hi," Bridge faltered, as Cruger gave him a stern look and walked past him. The Green Ranger looked after him for a split second before turning towards Conner and coming into the room. He gave him an uneasy smile before sitting down on a stool opposite him. "Hey," he said softly.
"It's late," Conner replied, trying not to yawn. "You should be in bed."
Bridge shrugged. "Sky is busy with Syd, so I can't go back to our room yet and Z is in pain and wants to be left alone."
"Z is in pain?"
"Girl problems… or something like that…" Bridge trailed off, before glancing at his research interestedly. "So, what are you working on?"
Conner suddenly understood Cruger's warning about academy regulations being enforced within the B-Squad. It was after lights-out, meaning that if Syd was caught in the guys' room, she and Sky were busted. "Devastation," he replied.
Bridge nodded. "Cool."
It wasn't cool and both of them knew it. The monster had nearly taken them and their Mega-Zord out in the last battle. They hadn't seen him for some time, but that meant absolutely nothing where Gruumm was concerned.
"What do you want?" Sitting around and chatting wasn't getting his work done and he did want to sleep tonight.
"What's wrong?" It was blurted out, like Bridge had been going to build up to it, but accidentally cut to the chase early.
"With who? Me?"
"Well - yeah - I mean you're the only person who I don't know what is wrong with because I know with everyone else. Well, Z was pretty easy to figure out and then there was Sky and Syd and that was easy too, so it just leaves you."
Conner stared at Bridge, before shaking his head. "I'm fine - just a little tired and overworked."
"Are you sure?"
"Look, Bridge, I appreciate the concern, but there isn't anything you can do about it."
"Sometimes it helps to just talk."
The Green Ranger would be one for just talking, wouldn't he? Conner gave him an appraising look. Their training sessions involving Bridge tended to end with him having a migraine, owing to what his power was. Sky got nosebleeds - Bridge got headaches. Z had passed out on a few occasions from being unable to control the number of replicates she had made. Conner glanced down to his bandaged ankle - another souvenir from a training session. He didn't mind himself being injured as much as he did the rest of the team.
"Bridge-"
"Did you get hurt today?"
Conner started at the abrupt change of subject. He glanced down once more at the bandaged ankle. He was wearing the clothes he normally worked out in - loose gray pants and a red SPD T-shirt, although, because of the ankle, he had chosen to wear sandals rather than tennis shoes.
"I screwed up my ankle a couple years ago," he replied slowly. "It still acts up from time to time." That much was true. He had hurt himself playing soccer towards the end of his career, but ended up having surgery and being back on his feet in time for the end of the season. It hadn't started hurting again until recently - he had taken to wrapping it again rather than going to the infirmary.
Bridge nodded, but Conner could tell that he wasn't satisfied by the explanation - of course, Bridge knew more than he let on, but he didn't really feel like going into the details of how he and Syd were being affected by the training just like the other three.
"You need to get to bed," he reiterated. "Throw Syd out of your room before all of us get in trouble."
Kat glanced down at the armful of books she was taking from the library to help with her latest project. This time seemed like the calm before the storm. She paused at the door to the library, glancing into the archives room. Paris was entering a search, but she was too far away for Kat to see what she was searching for. The girl was getting closer. She already knew that she needed to start searching the archives from Mirinoi and not keep searching Earth. The links and connections were too vague on Earth.
But on Mirinoi…
There was only one child on Mirinoi with a birth certificate that had the same birth date that Paris was looking for - and that child had been Bridge. Miss Drew wasn't stupid enough to throw it aside. The first and middle names would be the same. It made her wonder why Doggie had insisted upon the last name change, but not the change of the rest of the name. Bridge had been born during a period on Mirinoi when not many colonist children were being born due to faulty communications and constant malfunctions in the City Dome.
No, Paris would find the birth certificate listing Bridge Corbett as a citizen of Mirinoi and it would list his parents, one of which was Mirinite. Once she had his parents, she would search the database and find out about the abduction. There might not have been publicity about it on Earth, but the publicity had come on Mirinoi.
And she had grouped all of those files together. The computer would bring them all up at once, rather than in ones and twos, as would normally happen. Paris would find it and put two and two together. It may take her a day or two to contact the Corbetts, but she would and those two would be able to tell her the rest of what she needed to know. Kat couldn't be sure if the middle Drew child would keep the information to herself until she had all the answers or if she would tell the others as she found out - the cat was betting on the former.
Whatever the case, all of them would find out.
The masquerade had been going on too long. The rangers would defeat the Troovians, with or without the knowledge of their backgrounds. It was time - past time for them to realize what had happened to them at the hands of SPD.
"Dr. Manx!"
She started at the familiar voice before turning to Commander Cruger. "Yes, sir?" she asked, keeping her voice neutral.
"I'd like to talk to you about the progress of the SWAT mode for the ranger powers."
Kat could suddenly breathe easier. This wasn't about enforcing academy regulations or blocking more of the files so that Paris wouldn't find anything. It was about normal, ordinary business. She nodded. "Sure. Does tomorrow morning work?"
"That's fine," the dog replied. "Have Boom give me a quick briefing before then?"
"Of course."
She stepped back as Cruger continued down the hall. She closed her eyes, trying to steady herself before going back to her work. Almost against her will, her gaze fell upon Paris once more. She thought about those blue-gray eyes and the accusing look in them every time she looked at her. The girl had ridiculous adopted parents. Kat thought to Paris' real parents - a firefighter and a pediatrician. She would have gotten along with them - neither one of them were frivolous people.
Manx sighed and continued down the hall to her lab.
Paris glanced up at the screen - the search engine was still trying to retrieve the information from Mirinoi that she requested. Since it wasn't high priority, it was taking forever. She let out a long breath at the screen, blowing a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. Giving the screen a scowl, she pulled out a data pad - might as well send her big brother some snail mail while she was sitting around doing nothing. Technically, Austin was older since he was a whole two minutes ahead of her. However, most of their childhood she felt like she was the oldest, since Austin spent so much time keeping the peace. She had been the one to fight and pave the way for them.
Austin, she started typing on the data pad. How's life in a galaxy in the middle of nowhere? We're doing about the same here - I did get to stay in the Command Center more than five seconds last weekend because the entire B-Squad managed to get the same weekend off. I applaud them for that. But I'm back to boring, old patrol work now.
Who was she kidding? She hadn't seen Austin in close to three years and there was no reason for Cruger to bring him back now. Oh, she knew that he got all his mail because he responded to her and Syd's letters and sometimes managed to send them things he found in the other galaxy, but none of them were given any hope for a reunion.
I promised to keep you updated on the progress of my project, especially since all the other B-Squad rangers have gotten involved as well. I'm trying to track down some leads from Mirinoi - especially since I'm convinced one of the B-Squad rangers is at least half Mirinite. However, the search engine is being slow, so I'm writing to you.
"Results," the computer said in its mechanical, pleasant voice.
Paris put the data pad down on the counter in front of the computer. She started to scroll through the files - there were a lot of people on Mirinoi that had Bridge or Carson as a first name or last name. Time to refine the search.
"Computer," she said, switching to voice commands. "Narrow the results to people born in the year 2003."
The huge number of files suddenly went down to three. Paris glanced at them. The first person on the remaining list had the first name Carson, but had been born a good six months ahead of Bridge. The next had the same first name, but a different birth date. One left… she clicked on the remaining file.
Bridge Corbett… had the same birth date as Bridge Carson. Paris grinned to herself - it had to be the same person. The birth announcement even listed the same off-the-wall middle name that Bridge had - Jara. The announcement claimed that he had been born in the medical center of the City Dome, all which remained of the space colony, Terra Venture. The announcement even went on to list the parents - Michael and Maya Corbett, the mother being a native of Mirinoi and the father being an officer on Terra Venture.
"Yes!" Paris cried, punching a fist in the air. All she had to do was corroborate this information with other information in the Mirinoi archives, none of which appeared to be under lock and key like the Earth archives.
Soon enough, she had news articles from Terra Venture littering the desktop of the computer. The headlines were enough to tell her what she wanted - Officer's Son Kidnapped by Elitist Police, Court Case on Earth Lost, Children Abducted… She glanced through the information on the latest article. It listed other children that had been taken from their parents at the same time as Bridge Corbett - twins and a daughter from a couple with the last name Grayson, a daughter from the Evans' and it even mentioned the son of a billionaire that had been missing for three years.
These had to be the people she was looking for - all of them were interconnected and one call would tell her all she needed. In the morning she would put the call through to Mirinoi, since the intergalactic operators wouldn't be around at this hour.
But she couldn't tell the others until she was sure…
And she would be sure very soon…To Be Continued...
Author's Note: Updating soon... Thanks to Kaidence Ledger for beta fishing and to all my readers and reviewers! If you guys are in the same boat I'm in, then going back to school is smacking you between the eyes. I won't be able to update until Saturday at the earliest (more like Sunday or Monday), because I have to go back to the Pit of Doom... I mean college and get my internet set up. So, cheers and keep on reviewing! It means a bunch to me!