Disclaimer: I do not own Power Rangers.

Chapter 4 summary: In which the Rangers realized that working as a team was harder than expected, and plans go out the window...

Chapter 4: Conflicts and Capture

"Again." Xadrin commanded, almost as soon as the red lights started flashing. Shawn was beginning to hate the red lights.

They had been in training since morning, when they started with individualized training programmes designed by VIKI. It was grueling, to say the least. VIKI did aim to push them past their limits. Lunch was a quiet affair until Xadrin joined them, looking fresher than she had been the day before. The afternoon was devoted to group training, and rehearsals of the plan by simulating the interior of Metigor's ship.

They had been at it for hours. And each time, when they fail – that is, meeting 'Metigor' mid-way through and failing to adapt in time – the red lights start flashing. It must have done it at least twenty times now.

As VIKI dissolved the walls for a minute for them to cross quickly back to the starting point, Shawn caught Aly's eyes as she walked over. She glared at him.

"What did I do?" he asked when she got near enough.

For a moment she continued glaring at him, looking as if she wanted to say something. Then, "Nothing."

It had been a long day. Shawn did not have time for this. "Look, just get on with it. I know you want to say something."

"Fine." She snapped, "This is supposed to be a rehearsal of the plan. Why do you keep going off the plan without warning? You need to give your team some heads-up-"

"Come on, it was a tactical decision. If you can see what I saw-"

"That's the thing, we can't! We are placed at different locations-"

"What's wrong?" Xadrin demanded as she hobbled over, just as Cody joined them as well. Shawn turned to snap at her for interrupting – only to bite back his words. Despite being the shortest among them and on crutches, Xadrin could look intimidating when she wanted to.

"He doesn't communicate with his team when he decides to change the plan-"

Shawn rolled his eyes. "We are supposed to be on radio-silence once we are on board-"

"That's not the only way to communicate!"

"Oh yeah, and you know so well about comm-"

"Enough." Xadrin snapped. "Listen to yourselves. You guys are like children. You need to learn to trust each other."

"Trust is about communication—"

"Oh don't you start." Shawn warned.

"Look, let's have a break, all right?" Cody literally stepped in between them. "We haven't had one since lunch, I know everyone's tired."

Cody turned to Xadrin for support. But Xadrin gave them all a cold look, turned around, and left. Cody looked slightly surprised, but turned back to them first. "Be back in half an hour."

As Cody went to follow Xadrin, Shawn exchanged another glare with Aly, and they both set of to different directions. She went to the rest area to grab a drink, and he went to the practice mats and summoned a punching bag.

He started hitting. Over, and over, and over. Their plan, which had seemed genius the day before, was becoming more and more laughable. Both Aly and Cody react to changes in ways he never expected, and what seemed obvious to him never occur to their minds. At least Cody could match him quickly.

He was becoming more and more convinced that they were going to be killed. Or the mission will be a complete failure. And they would fail everyone on Earth. They were just random people who happened to be at the park when the first attack occurred. They were not a team. Maybe they never will be.

"Hey!" Cody needed to almost jog to catch up with Xadrin. For someone on crutches, she was surprisingly fast.

And she was also ignoring him, it seemed.

"Xadrin!"

She stopped, just as he stopped beside her.

"What was that about?"

When she turned to face him, her face was tight with fury. "What do you mean?"

"Calling them children. Looking at us like we are worthless." He kept his tone and face carefully neutral. He did feel stung when she looked at them like that.

"They are behaving like children." She snapped, and started walking forward at a slower pace. Cody followed. "And I didn't look at you like you are worthless. I look at you and I…" she trailed off, looking away.

Cody had a feeling he know what she meant. "See dead people?"

She looked at him in mild shock.

He sighed. "I know what you must be thinking. I thought we were good when we came up with the plan. But now I think we must be crazy." he smiled weakly, rubbing the back of his head. "I can see why you think lowly of our chances."

Xadrin smiled reluctantly back. "You seem to be taking that well."

He shrugged. "It is true. There is no point in being angry at the truth. We just need to figure out a way around it."

She raised an eyebrow. "And your suggestion is…?"

"I still need to think about it." He said truthfully. "But I don't think snapping at them or calling them children will help."

"And there you were, saying there is no point in being angry at the truth." She retorted. "I was pointing out the truth."

Cody widened his eyes in mild surprise at having his own words thrown back at him. "That's not the truth. They have been trying very hard – they are just trying to understand each other."

"With all their arguing and not listening to each other?"

"Yes," Cody said firmly, feeling his own patience running thin. "Just because they are not doing it correctly doesn't mean that they're not trying. We need to help them sort it out."

"How do you propose we do that?" Xadrin challenged, "Hold their hands and ask them to play nice with each other? They need to sit down and sort it out themselves. We don't have time for all this."

"We don't have time to waste on them not working well together." He snapped, frustrated, "You need to think of them as people, not as some soldiers who follow whatever you say."

Something flashed across her face, as if he touched a nerve. "I've never thought of any of you as soldiers," she said, her voice dangerously quiet. "And I've never asked any of you to follow everything I say. I am trying to keep you alive."

Taken aback by her reaction, he was at a loss for words for a moment. Xadrin took that moment to walk away. He cursed, and turned to walk the opposite way.

Aly took a spoonful of ice cream and closed her eyes at the feeling of pure bliss. The buzz at the diner around her was foreign but rather soothing. She did not care what the other diners or the others on the team might think of her for coming back down to Earth for dinner alone, and she was extremely glad that she did.

It was the end of the second day of training. She had started the day with aches all over that reminded her of the previous day's training. And today's training was similarly relentless. It did not help that she barely spoke to Shawn, who still had a tendency to change plans without warning. They had just managed to bite their tongue and not each other's head off. Cody tried to get them talking, but whenever they did, it felt like they were seconds away from yelling at each other. And so he stopped trying. She did not see much of Xadrin at all, except for a few instances when she caught a glimpse of her watching their training, her expression unreadable.

She was exhausted. The thought of trying to be social during dinner conversation was just too much to bear. She wouldn't be surprised if she weren't the only one who took some time to be alone after all that.

She opened her eyes again and surveyed the activity in the diner. It was towards the tail end of the peak hour, and waiters were starting to clean some tables, or lingered at some tables for a few chats, and the screaming kids were being dragged back towards waiting cars outside. It was so normal that it was familiar and yet strangely foreign. She felt herself just soaking in this feeling as she finished her ice cream.

A conversation between two waiters at the counter next to her caught her interest.

"… he just disappeared! He always comes."

"Maybe he found a job somewhere. Somewhere to stay."

"He would have told me. I've fed – well, I gave him the leftovers for so long." Aly was surprised, they were talking about a homeless man? "And that's just not all! My friend in that Italian restaurant, she said a homeless woman she used to help was gone as well!"

"So what's your point?"

"Maybe someone has taken them off the streets."

"Why do you care? Nobody cares about those people."

Aly froze. Homeless people disappearing. Nobody cares about those people. Metigor's plan to build a human army. Could it – could it be that Metigor has been kidnapping these people? Now that he was aware that there were four Rangers guarding the planet, perhaps he did not feel confident enough about confronting them in the open yet. Maybe he felt the need to slowly build the army. Starting with people that no one would be missing.

Slowly, she put down the spoon. Her mind was racing. Was that thought too far-fetched? Should she notify the team? But what would they do? No, she told herself, it was way too soon. There was too little information to make any meaningful decision. She needed more information. She needed to investigate.

She could just look around the area and monitor the homeless who were still there. She could just wait for a few hours. Maybe nothing would happen at all.

But should she tell the team? It was still too premature. She would tell VIKI, maybe. Yes, just let VIKI know about her plan. She and the rest were only expected back on the Ace tomorrow morning anyway.

She lingered at the diner until it closed around 11pm, reading a book that she had brought from her dorm to the Ace. Then, she set out for a walk.

She opened a private line to the Ace as she walked, pretending to scratch her chin so that she did not look like an idiot talking to her watch.

"VIKI, I heard a few homeless people have disappeared over the last two days. I'm going to investigate a little tonight."

"Shall I inform the team?"

"No. It's too premature. It's just a little gossip I heard. It might not be anything at all." She suddenly realized that it seemed silly to inform VIKI if she kept denying the need to inform anyone else, and so added hastily, "This is just in case – erm, in case anyone asks."

"Understood. Please be careful, Aly."

"Sure. Thanks." As she cut off the line, she wondered if it was a good thing to request that VIKI drop the title 'Ranger' whenever she addressed her. The rest of the team had done it as well, of course, but it made VIKI sound even more human than she already did. It was unnerving, to say the least.

A few blocks down, she found a 24-hour convenience store that overlooked an alley. A homeless man was sitting by the corner of the alley, a pile of assorted cardboards and other materials just around the corner. It looked like he slept there. And so she went into the convenience store, bought a coffee, and settled down on one of the three seats by the window.

The coffee proved essential. It gave her mind the extra jolt she needed to reflect on the past few days, a luxury she did not have while on the ship. She thought about her choice to stay and help, and about how she just wanted to do what she could. Looking at the trainings they had so far, she wondered if that was just pure hubris – she was not cut out for this. She was a girl who loved math and reading. She was proud to be an engineering major. She was not cut out for covert missions or combat.

Stop whining, she told herself. It was something she would chide her younger brother for. And she needed to walk the talk. She needed to focus on getting the job done.

Grimly, she sipped her coffee.

Just before midnight, a flash of silver caught her eye. She sat up straight. There it was. Two figures in what seemed to be like light metallic armor. Two…?

She was out of the store in a flash. The two figures were holding up the struggling man, and seemed as if they were aiming what seemed like a handgun at him.

"Hey!" She shouted, just as the gun was about to fire. The two figures turned – and she rammed a kick into one, and punched the other. The homeless man pulled free, and tried to run towards the street. Aly fended off a few blows from the masked figures, and heard another shout behind her.

As she turned, the homeless man fell, something protruding on his shoulder. Two more masked figures stood behind him, one holding the gun. Shocked, she quickly reached her morpher –

- and felt a sharp pain on her left side. She cried out, and turned around to fend off metallic hands trying to grab her. She managed to kick them off, but felt her world suddenly spinning around her. The alley seemed to grow even darker. Something knocked her from behind, but she barely felt it as her world turned completely black.