Title: New In Town
Author: Dingo
Disclaimer: Yes, I own them. Of course. And Adam and Rocky made a cameo in every season. Kissing. And there was an in-depth look at Ranger relationships in Legacy of Power. And Carlos had had long hair in the Space/Lost Galaxy teamup.
"Okie-doke. Strip, froggy."
Adam blushed through a smile. He lifted one arm halfway up before wincing. "Um…I don't think I can."
Kim frowned, turning from her table of tools to the Black Ranger. "That can't be good."
She gently pulled the hem of his shirt up on one side. Adam thanked his lucky stars that one, his bright red face was now shielded by a layer of cloth, and two, that it was highly unlikely Tommy was about to walk in on his girlfriend removing the clothing of his (gay yeah, well he doesn't know that, does he, some small annoying voice insisted on pointing out) teammate.
However, Kim was all business. "Can you pull that one in?" she asked, tapping his forearm.
With a slight hiss of pain, Adam pulled his arm towards his chest. Kim pulled the shirt over his head, then gently over his more-injured arm.
"I'm guessing that one hurts more?" Kim asked rhetorically.
"Uh, yeah," Adam managed, suddenly acutely aware of how cold the Command Centre was when one lacked a shirt.
Kim busied herself with a few varying scanning machines (he didn't know the names; nursing was Kim and Billy's departments, not his – he barely knew the right end of a stethoscope) and he tested out his fingers.
"What's the prognosis, Doctor Kim?" he asked ten minutes later when she had used most of the machines Alpha had brought in earlier.
"You've got a deep muscle bruise on your upper left arm," she shrugged. "And you'll have a heck of a headache for a while. Other than that, everything's just peachy!"
Adam frowned.
Kim noticed.
"Or not?" she offered, sitting on the hospital-bed-replica alongside him. Adam didn't look up at her, so she patted his leg. "Come on. Tell Aunty Kimmy what the matter is. Are those little girls beating you up again?"
Adam managed to crack a smile.
"Do you want me to go sort them out?" Kim asked seriously, bending so she could look Adam in the eye.
"No, it's alright."
"You having a fight with Rocky?" she asked.
Adam blinked. "How did you know?"
"I'm not a complete airhead. You guys barely spoke this afternoon, and then you pushed him out of the Crimson Ranger's way."
"It's not really a fight. He just…"
"He just what?" Kim persisted.
"He got me to say something I didn't really want to admit to."
"You have a crush on Aisha?"
Adam recoiled. "No! She's like a sister to me!"
Kim smiled. "You have a crush on me?"
Adam almost laughed. "No! You're like a sister to me!"
"You have a crush on Rocky?"
Kim grinned again, waiting for the adamant refusal. Which she didn't get.
Adam's silence was incriminating enough.
"On Rocky?" she repeated.
Adam could only nod miserably. "I don't…have a crush. I love him," he managed.
"And you've told him this, right?" she asked.
"Not about him. The whole 'Adam is a poof' thing, yeah."
Kim exhaled. "You've got to tell him."
Adam swallowed, staring at his feet, which he now brought up to under his knees in a cross-legged position. "You're taking this well."
The Pink Ranger shrugged, copying Adam's movements so they sat facing each other on the hard metal table. "My brother's gay. And it all makes sense now. You look at him a little too much. And you show him your neck."
Adam blinked at that, his forehead creasing.
Kim noticed. "Never mind."
The Black Ranger slid off the table and started to push his shirt on, past his bad arm.
Kim sat for a moment longer. "You've got to tell him," she repeated.
Adam didn't answer for the few more moments it took for him to pull on his shirt. He fiddled with the hem. "I know," he whispered. Before Kim could reply, there was an electric buzz and Adam teleported away.
"You failed."
The words bit into the cold atmosphere of Zedd's throne room. The being sat calmly on his chair, his staff clasped loosely by his side as almost an afterthought as he stared at the man kneeling before him. The one who bowed at his feet against his will.
The remaining fragments of Hunter's pride were growling at the edge of his mind, snarling that it was beneath him to kneel, that one carefully-aimed shot of his Crimson Blaster could take Zedd out once and for all, that he could take Zedd out before he took Dustin out with the mind-link thing he claimed to have, that this could be over with a single shot. Then the rest of him whimpered. That was too big a risk to take. Nothing was worth Dustin's life.
Oh God don't do anything to Dustin, please, oh God…
Hunter bit his lip to stop his lip shaking. "Please…"
"Do you think that I won't do something just because you say 'please'?" Zedd sneered.
The grating tone of his voice made Hunter's fists clench. "No…master."
"Take him to his cell." Zedd settled back on his throne with all the ease of a man in complete control. "You know what punishment awaits you."
Hunter went numb as two minions grabbed his arms and dragged him away.
"What will you do to him, my lord?" Goldar questioned.
"Anything I please," Zedd snapped.
The large monkey gripped his sword tighter and bowed his head. "Of course, your Lordship."
Zedd tapped his staff on the ground. "Then again. He has taken the Green Ranger out of commission. And he injured the Black Ranger severely."
He settled deeper into his throne, as content as an evil, soulless being could be. "The anticipation of his companion being harmed is a punishment in and of itself. In the end he will punish himself nearly as much as I could."
Cam stretched out his back as he pulled down the roller-door at the back of Ernie's. He glanced around at the street behind him. Lit up with streetlights as far as the eye could see, he couldn't make out a single human form. It was nine – nearly nine o'clock, he corrected himself as he looked at his watch; he was early. After a long shift with no rest or time to pop an Advil or two or twenty for his aching head, he didn't feel like waiting around for a squad of presumably inquisitive Rangers, even if they were on the same side now. Even if they'd apparently saved his ass from a completely nutso Hunter (he'd seen the replay on TV). It really was amazing how much the media reports were able to catch on film. They'd reported Hunter's random attacks on park equipment almost a full minute before the Power Rangers arrived (by which time he'd been out of Ernie's like a shot from a cannon). Luckily enough they hadn't caught his demorph on film.
He fidgeted with the keys for a moment, finally locating the right one after a few false starts and locking the door. Cam sighed, brushing the hair from his face as he turned.
And started.
The young man behind him crossed his arms over his chest. Behind him, two girls and another three boys stood in vaguely threatening positions.
"Warn someone, please," Cam said wearily, the slight scare hastening his heart rate and therefore the throbbing in his head. He frowned. He should have sensed them coming, even with a monster headache and his preoccupation.
He frowned further as he realized he could identify a number of the people in front of him.
"You guys were in the Youth Centre," he stated slowly.
Billy nodded.
"Please forgive me for sounding slow, but you guys are the Power Rangers, aren't you?"
"We are," the petite girl standing at Tommy's shoulder agreed.
"What do you want from us?" Tommy asked directly. They closed rank, the Korean and African-American on one side, Billy, Rocky and the other girl on the other.
"I don't want anything from you," Cam replied hesitantly. "I just hope you'll stop attacking me on sight."
Tommy uncrossed his arms and placed them on his hips. This seemed to be a signal of sorts – they all relaxed slightly. The Korean rubbed his left arm as if in pain, and Cam made the connection between the colour he was wearing and the Ranger who had been thrown against a tree arm- and shoulder-first earlier.
Aisha – was her name Aisha? – nodded. "And…Hunter?" He shared a glance with Rocky. "The Crimson Ranger?" he verified.
Cam shrugged, though his movements were painted with an undercurrent of resignation. "Hunter…I don't know. He'll do what he has to be done to keep Dustin safe." His eyes sharpened. "Speaking of…why would he do this? By your very existence, I assume you have an evil mastermind lurking around…is it possible that he kidnapped Dustin? Would he do that?"
Tommy and Billy looked at each other. "If Zedd sensed an opportunity to get an evil Ranger, he'd leap at it," Billy agreed.
"Why would he kidnap a Ranger just to have one Ranger fighting?" the girl in pink asked. Cam, not for the first time, rolled his eyes at the sheer advertisement Rangers seemed to burden themselves with when it came to their colours. "Seems to me he's got two Rangers relatively under his control – why only use the Crimson Ranger?
"Dustin, I'm pretty sure, has a concussion. If he'd been hit in the head again, he wouldn't be much of a warrior on the battlefield." Cam thought for a moment. "Hunter'd be destroyed if Dustin was…" Cam swallowed visibly. "…killed, because of something he didn't do."
"Are you planning on an offensive movement?" Billy asked suddenly, drawing Cam's attention.
"My lack of information on your evil space ninja leaves me at a slight disadvantage," Cam commented mildly.
Billy blinked at the space ninja comment, but didn't miss a step. "Any assistance you may need, you only need to ask."
Cam considered the offer, turning it over in his mind. "I may take you up on that soon."
Dustin paused in those few moments just after waking, where dreams are still real and sleep softens everything. The limited light cast dark shadows over Hunter's face, showing only a tense jaw and shining eyes. With a few blinks Dustin fully woke up, the memories of being captured and imprisoned tumbling over themselves, forcing a groan from him.
Hunter looked over then, his eyes still intense and muscles still tense. It was the first time Dustin had woken up in this dimension without Hunter holding him as he woke up.
"You all right?" he asked.
"Yeah, dude." The brunette rubbed the back of his head. "No headache anymore."
"There's food in the corner." Hunter looked down to his lap, seemingly finished with the conversation.
'Ouch,' Dustin thought. The aloofness in Hunter's voice was evident. He crawled over to the rough tray in the lightest corner of the room. A minute's inspection of the food didn't result in identification. Dustin shrugged to himself, lifting the tray and sniffing its contents.
"It's not poisoned," Hunter commented.
"How do you know?"
When no response came, Dustin glanced over. Hunter looked down at his lap again, averting Dustin's gaze. "I ate it. I don't feel like I'm dying."
His stomach growled, making him realize he hadn't actually eaten since…he didn't know when. He hadn't drunk in almost as long, an aching throat scratching at him. Dustin tentatively poked at a few large grains that looked like thumbnail-sized rice, hesitantly placing them in his mouth and chewing. It tasted like nothing, really, but the fact that he was actually eating was good enough for his stomach. This mostly-dark cell gave neither of them any idea of time, and rather stupidly neither of them wore a watch due to the bulkiness of their morphers.
Dustin almost choked on his meal in his haste to check his wrist.
"My morpher's gone, Hunter," he noted almost calmly, swallowing his mouthful. The strange food had a vague taste of bread crust, but was distracting his stomach.
Hunter looked up quickly. "So's mine."
"And when did you notice this, man?" Dustin asked sharply. Or as sharply as he could, anyway, considering that he was a self-confessed bimbo who couldn't hold a grudge if his life depended on it.
"Just before you fell asleep," Hunter muttered.
Dustin's ears perked up. Picking up the food tray, he managed to find Hunter. He dropped down next to him, taking in the shine of overly-bright eyes and set jaw. "When's the last time you slept?"
Hunter shrugged.
"Have you slept at all since we've been in here?" Dustin persisted. He grabbed a few more pieces of food with his fingers and chewed, studying Hunter even as he did so.
"Maybe for a few minutes," Hunter hedged.
Pulling lightly at Hunter's arm, Dustin urged Hunter to lie down, head resting in Dustin's lap. "Go to sleep, Hunt," Dustin cajoled gently.
Hunter remained stiff and rigid even as Dustin threaded his fingers through Hunter's hair, the sudden coldness Hunter seemed to possess coloring his movements.
"Relax, babe," Dustin soothed, gently rubbing the back of Hunter's neck down to his shoulderblades. A shudder ran through Hunter's body as he ran a hand over his left shoulder.
"Let me stand guard over you for once."
Even after Hunter had drifted off to sleep, he remained tense.
The two of them had previously discussed theories of what exactly they were doing, or not doing as the case may be. Dustin was convinced some evil overlord had captured them for his own sadistic pleasure and was going to wear down their resistance with low-energy gruel. Hunter didn't share any of his theories, though when Dustin brought up the subject Hunter's expression betrayed enough of his thoughts.
No matter how mean Hunter could look at times, he still looked like a little boy when he was sleeping.