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

BEHIND THE CLOUDS

By Etcetera Kit

Chapter Five: Good Intentions I

Auditions would go well – if people had followed instructions to begin with. Sky let out a long breath, dutifully writing down more names on the clipboard. The chaos was not due to a lack of organization on Paris' part – it had been spelled out clearly that people wishing to audition needed to leave their name and contact information in her box and she would, in turn, get them a copy of the audition material within twenty-four hours. If that were the case, they would already have a neat list of all the expected people.

However – some of the potential audition-seekers had gotten copies of the material from their friends and co-workers, meaning fifteen or twenty more people showed up than expected and he had to get their names and contact information down before anything could move forward. Paris was ready to kill someone and this first round was going to last all night – literally all night for Paris and he since they had to get a call-back list ready. At least most of these people had come early (or more, Paris had said auditions started at seven, but had no intention of actually starting until seven-thirty.)

He glanced at his watch – it was seven-twenty.

The auditorium doors opened and closed with a bang. He inwardly sighed, hoping that it was just late people and not more unexpected audition people. Glancing over his shoulder, he let out an inward sigh of relief. It was just Syd and Bridge. Paris must have told them they didn't really need to be here until seven-thirty.

"Hey, Sky," Syd greeted pressing a kiss to his cheek as the last of the unofficial people wandered off to the front rows where everyone was gathered.

"Hey," he responded. "You guys missed the chaos."

"We have connections," she replied with a sniff, before she grinned. "Where's Paris?"

"You mean Miss 'I'm in charge of the world, just give me my crown and scepter?'" He shrugged, then pointed to the front of the auditorium. "You might want to get with the others."

Syd just smiled and rolled her eyes. Bridge followed.

"Break a leg!" he called.

Bridge turned and gave him a 'thumbs-up.'

Sky watched idly as Paris climbed up on the stage. "Schuyler Collins, get up here now!" she yelled, being heard perfectly despite the lack of microphone. Rolling his eyes, he stood up with the clipboard that housed all the audition information and got up on stage. Paris looked a little intimidating in a black tank top and pants, a black cardigan tied around her waist, a black beret and the purple sunglasses. Either that or she just looked insane…

"Welcome to Chicago auditions," she greeted the people gathered in the first three rows. She was projecting well – it was almost a shame no one could cast her in this play. "I'm Paris Grayson, director and all that hoopla. This is Sky Collins." She indicated him. "He is the assistant director. Now, the procedure is going to be very simple – we'll start with the singing audition and move on to the dancing." She gave the clipboard Sky was holding a pointed look. "When your name is called, please come up on stage." She went on to detail how much of the song each person was supposed to sing.

Situated in the front row a few moments later, Sky was wondering what possessed half these people to try out. They had started with the women and it was alphabetical – or as alphabetical as he could get it in a short time. Some of them had passable voices and would probably work out in the chorus – that final decision would come with the dancing.

The women's singing passed without much variation – the bright spots were Syd, who he had known could sing, a brunette cadet with a good alto and a patrol officer who had a powerful voice he would describe as gospel.

The men's singing turned out to be a lot more bearable. Most of the men auditioning were much more confident with their voices than the women and it wasn't painful to listen to them sing. After two patrol officers and a cadet, it was Bridge's turn.

Sky felt his jaw drop the minute Bridge started. He had no idea that his roommate and best friend could sing that well – and he was able to convey emotion with the words, something that was going to have to be worked on with the others.

"Did you know he could sing?" Paris hissed.

"Sort of," he shot back.

"That's—wow." She tapped the clipboard with her pen. "He's the best we've seen all night. It's just—wow."

The dancing went much better than the singing since most people had years of physical training – dancing wasn't too big a stretch. Sky couldn't help but feel extremely happy when the last round of dancing went and Paris got back up on the stage to dismiss everyone.

"Thank you," she started. "We'll have the call-back sheet up tomorrow – and remember that call-backs do not mean anything since we might already know where we're placing you."

Paris sank down into the chair next to him as the crowd departed. She turned to him. "Well, we have our leads. It's the rest of the Cellblock Tango and the choruses that are making me nervous."

Sky didn't answer. Now that the daunting task of getting through auditions was over, they had the next monumental task of deciding which parts they could cast and who needed to be called back for further analysis – that also came with trying to decipher his handwriting. He handed Paris the notes on each audition, putting the blank cast sheet on top of the clipboard. Why – why had he let himself get blackmailed into this? His pen was nowhere to be found…

He inwardly swore. He glanced at Paris. She frowned. "What?"

"I lost my pen."

"You're a mess," she muttered and pulled another pen from her bag. "Here." She paused and gave him a look. "Are we on the same page for the leads?"

"Yes," he said shortly. "I think."

"All right – write this down."

"Am I your assistant or your secretary?"

"I don't know – which would you like to be?"

Sky fought the urge to growl and roll his eyes. "What am I writing?"

"Roxie Hart – Syd, Billy Flynn – Bridge…" She gave him a sharp jab in the ribs. "Are you paying attention? It's not like I want to do this any more than you do!"

"I know!" His temper was wearing thin. "And you want Violet as Velma Kelly, Kate as Mama Morton and Sharpton as Amos. I got that!"

"Do you need a hug?"

Sky stared at her. From the look on her face, she was completely serious. No wonder her own twin claimed not to know her most of the time. He was really regretting deciding to help at all – but he was afraid, afraid of what those pictures might have in them. Syd had already gotten upset that he hadn't come clean about the partying earlier… but… God, it shouldn't matter. It was all in the past and people were dredging it up!

A few hours later, his eyes were itching with tiredness, but they had narrowed down who was definite casting material and who they needed to look at again. Relatively few people were being regulated to stage crew since they needed almost everyone who auditioned to perform. They said their goodnights and went their separate ways.

It was official – this play was going to kill him.

The time was nearing midnight – Bridge knew that it was past light-outs. In fact, he should have been in his own room and not the lounge to set a good example. But, he felt better in the lounge with all the lights and officers on the night shifts coming in and out. He wasn't quite ready to be by himself in his room – it was hard to explain. Something wasn't right in his room and he didn't know what it was, didn't want to find out on his own. Austin had night shift, otherwise Bridge would have asked him – and the cadets on the floor were out of the question.

The girls were both asleep along with the rest of the A-Squad. That left one person – Sky – who had yet to reappear from the auditorium. Oh – he knew that Sky had to help Paris with the callback lists and whatnot, but it was late. Both of them were pretty decisive people and he was amazed that the process was taking so long. He shook his head. Before he got back to his room he had been curious about what the ultimate results of his audition would be, but now… with something in his room… he couldn't think about that.

"Bridge?" He looked up as Sky walked into the lounge and headed for the replicator, probably to get something to drink. Relief washed over him. All annoyance about trivial things vanished. "What are you still doing up? Don't we have training at seven tomorrow?"

"Yes," he replied, watching as Sky pushed some buttons on the food replicator and a bottle of water appeared. Bottled water was one of the few things that the replicator would produce without a fight. He picked up the bottle and turned to Bridge.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I answered one of them."

Sky rolled his eyes. Bridge could see the dark smudges under his eyes, clear marks of how exhausted he was – and now neither of them was going to get any sleep tonight or at least not enough sleep to run one of the obstacle courses in the morning. He felt guilty about it, but couldn't quite let the guilt about this overtake the uneasiness he felt.

"What's wrong?"

Bridge almost started at the question. While it wasn't unusual for Sky to make mental leaps from him doing something odd to something being wrong, he normally didn't sound this patient about it. He was – always had been – skeptical of Bridge's powers and his hypersensitivity to emotions. Most of the time, Sky figured he was picking up on someone else being paranoid or uneasy, so that the feeling was not genuinely his and there was nothing to be worried about.

How could he explain that he was sure this time – it was his feeling and he wasn't just picking up on someone else's projected emotions? He was so careful lately to block out all the projections and residual feelings that he could. It wasn't that hard to differentiate between when he had a bad feeling and when it was someone else's.

But he couldn't explain that to Sky. The Blue Ranger would have his own opinions on what was going on – Bridge just hoped that it was enough.

"There is something in our room," he said slowly.

"Something?" Sky sounded unbelieving. "Like what?"

"It's like a presence." Bridge paused and shook his head. "It's not good."

He could see that Sky was trying to refrain from rolling his eyes and lashing out. It was easy to see that Sky was forcibly reigning his emotions in so that he didn't say something he was bound to regret.

"All right," his roommate said slowly after the internal battle. "Let's go."

Sky led the way down the darkened hall. The lights on the cadets' floors were dimmed at lights-out – a clear sign that someone needed to get to his or her room quickly lest some authority figure catch random acts of deviance. He was glad that lights-out didn't apply to them anymore – just one of the perks of being an officer.

The door to their room opened with a 'swish.' The lights were still on – as Bridge had left them before deciding he didn't want to be alone in the room. Nothing appeared out of place, but it looked much more sterile and surreal at the late hour. Sky's side of the room looked as it had hours earlier before he had to take off for the auditions – his laundry basket in one corner still had his clean clothes in it and his uniform was over the back of his desk chair. Bridge's latest computer project cluttered his desk and spilled to the floor beside it.

"There's nothing here, Bridge."

That much was true. The uneasiness and presence he had felt so acutely earlier was no longer there. He shivered to himself – it didn't seem like it was gone forever, just temporarily. "The presence isn't here anymore," he whispered, knowing that Sky was going to be beyond annoyed and really was going to chalk it up to his imagination.

"Look," Sky said in a surprisingly sympathetic tone. "We're all tired and no one is thinking straight. We'll worry about it in the morning."

"I'm sorry," he whispered, wanting to cry.

Sky turned to him. "God – Bridge," he started. "You think after almost four years of knowing you I'm not used to this?" He shook his head. "I'm not saying I don't believe you, but whatever was here has moved on and there's no use in worrying about it now."

Bridge nodded slowly, moving towards his dresser to get his pajamas. He could feel Sky's gaze burning into his back. He still wasn't convinced that Sky wasn't mad about all the hype he had caused – although his admission that he might be right was nice.

"Did the auditions shake you up that much?"

The Green Ranger whirled around from his dresser. Sky had a lopsided grin on his face and his eyes shone with amusement through the exhaustion. "Huh?" All he could do was blink at Sky, because this was such an unexpected turn of events.

"Don't worry – you got a good part."

"I get to be Mary Sunshine?"

It was Sky's turn to blink. "After your amazing audition, you think anyone in their right mind would cast you as Mary Sunshine?" Sky shook his head. "Good joke."

They went about the routine of getting ready for bed in silence. Bridge almost swore that when Sky was brushing his teeth, he was humming one of the show songs through the mouthful of toothpaste. He got into bed, burrowing under the covers and pulling Z's baby blanket to his chest – she still had his dinosaur. Peanuts was still sitting on Sky's bed and Bridge knew that his old teddy bear and train blanket were in the bottom drawer of his dresser.

"Do you want the lights on or off?" Sky asked as he came out of the bathroom.

"You can't sleep with them on," Bridge pointed out.

Sky shrugged. "I can suffer for one night."

"Turn them off."

He flipped the switch for the lights and the room a plunged into darkness. Sky turned the lamp on his nightstand on – it was a compromise. Bridge was almost glad that he didn't buy the line about turning the lights off. He could hear Sky get into bed and shift around.

"Night, Sky," he said, glancing over at his best friend.

"Night," he replied. Sky was using Peanuts partially as a pillow, his left arm curled around the stuffed animal.

In a matter of minutes, Sky's rhythmic breathing let Bridge know he was asleep. He let out a long breath and tried to get comfortable, hoping that whatever presence he had felt had moved on for good.

He felt really warm and comfortable – the kind of feeling that comes from being exhausted and finally going to sleep. The only thing that could have made the feeling better was if he knew it had come from a passionate evening with Syd and that she was curled up against him. However, that wasn't the case and he was just really comfortable.

Not wanting to open his eyes, he should have heard familiar sounds – Bridge breathing evenly, the creaking of the walls, the lights and beeps from various monitors out in the hall, even running water. He should have heard all that. But that wasn't what he was hearing.

It sounded like someone was gasping for breath, crying softly in a battle. The same person was whispering no. Those sounds weren't right – not right at all.

Sky tore his eyes open. The room was still dark, which explained the deep-boned tiredness he felt. He couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours. It was still pitch black outside – not even the gray, dim light of early morning. The digital clock on his nightstand glared out 4:23 in bright red numbers under the pale yellow pool of light from his lamp. What in the world was going on? The light hadn't woken him up – what had?

The gasping and crying continued.

He bolted upright in bed, thinking for a minute that Bridge was having one of his old nightmares and all he had to do was wake him up. However, a casual observation showed that that wasn't the case. Bridge was wide-awake, his blue eyes open and fearful – no, not fearful, panicked. He was struggling against some unknown force, as if it were on top of him and trying to strangle him to death.

Sky leapt from his bed, flinging his blankets and Peanuts every which way. Bridge turned to him, that wild, frightened look on his face. He crossed the room in one step and did the only thing he could think of – he threw force field over Bridge, so that it was just grazing his top and it would force whatever was attacking Bridge back.

The blue sheen of the force field appeared and Bridge rolled off his bed and onto the floor, clutching his throat and coughing.

"What's going on?" he asked, reaching out to Bridge.

"No," his roommate said between gasps. "It's still here. Get—"

But the sentence was never to be finished. Bridge clutched his head, his fingers holding his hair and pulling. "No!" he howled, his face contorted with pain. Sky tried to reach out to him, as if touching him would stop all of this. He had never seen Bridge in such agony and it was nauseating – he wanted to stop it.

At the same time he reached out, something slapped his hand away. Sky felt himself thrown back. He narrowly missed cracking his head open on the corner of his bed. What was going on and what was attacking them? This was an emergency… he had to get to his morpher and hit the emergency page. It would bring the other rangers here. He wasn't sure how they could help, but there was safety in numbers.

He tried to haul himself to his feet, but was slapped down again. This time his head did connect with the edge of his bed. Tears blurred his vision as his head throbbed, waves of pain washing over him.

Bridge was on the losing side of the battle – Sky knew it. The Green Ranger couldn't hold up against what seemed so intent on attacking him. He vaguely remembered something about hypersensitive people being open to demon attacks and possession – Bridge qualified as hypersensitive, but he knew that he was being attacked and knew enough to come up with some kind of defense. Where had he heard that before?

The truth was – he didn't know what was attacking Bridge.

If the thing attacking Bridge was doing it because of his powers, then it was going to have to get through his powers first.

Sky tried to concentrate and draw his energy to himself. A tight force field would have to be created around Bridge's body. He had only succeeded in erecting one around himself before. The sheer energy that the task required was daunting. This required minute precision so that he didn't hurt Bridge – an improperly placed force field could result in broken bones and other internal injuries. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Bridge.

Bridge was crying and gasping now – time was running out.

He held out a hand, uncurling his fingers from a fist to activate his power. Blue energy crackled around him. Now or never… The presence went to slap his hand away again, but it was too late, he threw the force field around Bridge.

Vaguely, he registered that he had accomplished the task. Bridge was surrounded by a blue glow and he didn't appear to be in pain. He looked shocked and slightly puzzled as to why the attack suddenly stopped. The moment seemed to last forever as things happened in slow motion. In reality, only a few seconds passed.

What happened next was a blur. The thing connected to his stomach full force and the wind was knocked out of him. He had to keep concentrating to keep the force field around Bridge intact – but he could create and wield two separate force fields at a time. Holding his right hand out to steady the force field around Bridge, he used his left hand as a defensive, throwing smaller force fields to block the assault focused on him.

The presence knocked him to the floor. He missed his bed by millimeters, landing with a dull thud between the foot of his bed and his desk chair. His body was being crushed down, like someone was squeezing him. His head felt light – his one task was to keep the force field around Bridge going. He clung to that single thought and fed energy to that shield.

Suddenly, the weight lifted and he could have sworn that the presence dissipated for now. It was still around, but frustrated – had given up. His energy was quickly draining as he fed the force field. He could hear Bridge screaming something and pounding against the force field – and that was the last sound he heard before everything went black.

To Be Continued...