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Chapter 5

Andros stumbled down the hall, stomach churning. He felt sick, but knew that he had to keep walking. He hadn't hidden his reaction as well as he could have, and her footsteps were following him down the hall, so quietly that he nearly didn't hear her. Somehow, he kept moving forward without glancing back over his shoulder to see how close she was now.

"Andros?" Zhane's voice rang in his ears, drowning out the soft tap of Lyra's boots against the metal decks. "Karone's fine, for now and so's Carlos, but Ashley isn't Ashley and--"

"And Lyra's impersonating her," he finished, wondering why Karone couldn't have filled Zhane in just a minute or two more quickly. "I know. I'm on Megadeck Three; get over here now."

"On it," Zhane replied almost cheerfully. "Hang on."

Andros let out a deep breath when Zhane's presence in his mind retreated, his sense of the other dimming considerably but not vanishing completely. It was impossible now to distance himself from Zhane or Karone entirely; the best that he would do was push them to the very edge of his awareness and hope that they understood that he didn't want to be disturbed.

She'd gained on him, he realized with a grimace. The soft tap of her feet against the deck was louder now, and the sounds were coming closer together. Andros slowed his pace and braced himself, using the sound of her footsteps to judge when he would have to turn and face her.

"Andros, get down!"

Someone tackled him, sending both of them to the ground as another pair of boots rushed past him and the air whistled overhead. Andros glanced up to see TJ grappling with Lyra and her staff while Cassie scrambled to her feet and offered him a hand up.

"You okay?"

He nodded and let her pull him to his feet. "Come on," he shouted, rushing forward to help TJ with her right beside him.

A shout from down the hall signaled Zhane's arrival, the silver ranger already morphed with weapon in hand. The four of them formed a circle around Lyra, slowly advancing on her.

"Where are our friends?" Zhane demanded.

Lyra arched one eyebrow at him in disdain. "Where else would they be?"

"Don't think you're going anywhere until they're back here," Zhane growled, and caught her arm. "And that doesn't belong to you anymore."

Andros started when Zhane tossed Ashley's morpher to him, and slipped it into his pocket sheepishly. He'd completely forgotten to wonder how Lyra had ended up on the Megaship.

"This one was never yours," Zhane continued, pulling Karone's morpher off of her other arm. Lyra didn't so much as blink at him, and Andros felt his heart sink.

"What are you here for?" he demanded, pushing past Cassie and Zhane until he was eye to eye with her. He could guess well enough, but just in case he was wrong...

"If you really care to know, the plan was to capture your teammates and then kill them in front of you if you didn't meet our demands," she explained calmly. A smirk played across her face as she continued, "But we do have the black, yellow, and violet rangers, and I consider that a good enough start, don't you?"

"If you've hurt them," he began, cut off by a roll of her eyes.

"You're in no position to be making threats," she said coolly. "If I wanted them to be, your friends would be dead within a minute."

Andros opened his mouth to retort and then realized the truth of that statement. Lyra caught his eye and smiled, her twisted expression utterly unnerving when it was Ashley's face that he saw.

---

"Aren't you done yet?" Carlos muttered to Karone, and hoped that he'd kept his voice low enough. "It won't be long before someone thinks to check up on us."

"Almost," she murmured back, her tone far more patient than he felt. "But telekinesis is hard enough when I can see what I'm trying to move."

"Right," he sighed. "Sorry."

Karone didn't reply, presumably returning her attention to working his morpher out of his pocket and into his hands. Carlos let his head fall back against the wall, but not before he'd caught Ashley's eye. She shot him a quick, empty smile of encouragement, and he sighed, giving the chains above his head a short, useless tug.

Yet another reward of being a Power Ranger, he thought wryly. He sighed. That wasn't entirely fair; there were plenty of benefits to being a ranger. They were just harder to remember when he was chained to the wall of a dungeon cell on an enemy ship, and rangers of Earth didn't have the same perks as the rest of the universe anyway.

Thoughts of what his life could have been if Earth was the pre-war KO-35 Zhane and Karone had spoken of amused him for the next few minutes. He could almost picture all the fame and glory and adoring public... It was a nice fantasy, he decided ruefully, but as appealing as that lifestyle sounded at the moment, he knew that privacy would sound far better once he was safely back on the Megaship.

Karone let out a sigh, and the sound snapped him out of his daydream. Carlos fully expected her to give up for a moment to rest her head, but then he saw Ashley's smile widen and felt something brush against his fingertips. She eased his morpher carefully into the palm of her hand and he grabbed onto it the best that he could.

"Got it?" she muttered, and he nodded. "Then hurry," she hissed. "We've got to get out of here before Lyra gets someone else."

Slowly, not wanting to drop the morpher and force them to start all over again, Carlos felt around for the catch. He knew the placement of the numbers by heart now, and once he'd flipped the top open, it was almost as easy as it had always been.

"Let's rocket!"

No sooner had the cry left his mouth than he felt his Astroblaster snap into Karone's hands. Carlos ducked his head down, praying that she was as good a shot with her arms like that than she was normally. Fortunately for them all, she was, and he sidestepped out of the way as the chains clattered to the ground.

Someone had to have heard that. Karone dropped the blaster back into his hands and he wasted no time in freeing her. She grabbed the Astroblaster out of his hands another time when footsteps sounded outside the door, heading for Ashley and jerking her head towards the door.

"Lunar lance," he muttered under his breath, falling into a defensive stance as the cell door grated open.

"Ecliptor," Cosmos sighed, "get them."

"As you wish."

"I don't think so," Ashley shot back, and Carlos ducked instinctively as something exploded just behind his left ear. "You about ready to get out of here?"

"Hey, watch where you're shooting that thing!" He flipped open his morpher and glanced to the side. "Karone?"

"Go!" she shouted back. "What are you waiting for?"

That was a very good question, Carlos decided as Ecliptor's sword nearly took off Ashley's head. Watching her kick him away out of the corner of his eye, he raised his morpher to his mouth and shouted for Deca to bring them back.

---

"What do you want, then?" TJ demanded.

Lyra cocked her head at him and gave her hair a quick shake. It wasn't a very effective move; Ashley had curled her hair that day and it bounced back an instant later. "If you really are this clueless," she said finally, "then I pity the people of Earth."

Andros clenched his hands into fists, desperately struggling to think up something that he could do, anything that would give them something to work with. He didn't dare say a word that would risk the lives of the three that she'd already captured, but standing around and doing absolutely nothing wasn't helping them at all and was going to drive him crazy if it went on much longer.

"Ashley, Karone, and Carlos have returned to the ship," Deca spoke up, and his head snapped up.

"Are they okay?" He tried to keep his voice calm, but his stomach was twisting around anxiously, to the point where he was a moment away from becoming violently ill.

"They seem to be," Deca assured him, and he let out a deep breath.

Annoyance flickered across Lyra's face at the news. It was gone as quickly as it had come, her haughty smirk back in place an instant later. "Time to go," she laughed, and dissolved into golden sparkles before any of them could act.

Andros frowned. Yellow was Ashley's color now and to see it on anyone else was unsettling, but seeing that Lyra still retained that much from her years as a ranger only added to his irritation.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He sighed and glanced to the side, almost drawing back into a fighting stance when he found himself face to face with Ashley. But this really was Ashley, he realized a moment later. The necklace he'd given her that morning was tucked beneath her shirt now, but the chain still hung around her neck, and he smiled to see it there. His eyes flicked back up to hers to find her smiling at him and that was all that it took to convince him that this really was Ashley he was looking at.

"Are you okay?" he asked. He heard the anxiety creep into his voice and hoped that she wouldn't; it wasn't that he didn't want her to know that he'd been worried, but he knew that she could take care of herself and he suddenly felt as if he should have known that she would be perfectly all right.

"I'm fine," she said, and he smiled at her, his arms pulling her close without thinking. The scent of vanilla wafted up into his nose

"I--"

"The Body Switcher is attacking Angel Grove," Deca reported, and Andros sighed.

"Let's go," he sighed, and stepped back. "Ready?"

"I believe this is yours," Zhane startled him by saying, and he glanced over his shoulder just in time to see Karone accept her morpher back.

"And this is yours, Ash," he remembered, and reached into his pocket to pull out her morpher. She took it from him with a grateful smile and slid it back onto her wrist, fastening the strap tight.

"Ready," she said, and he nodded, his eyes taking in the rest of them.

"Let's rocket!" he shouted, and saw them mimic his arm movements. The moment the words had left his mouth, he tensed, the night before playing itself out in his mind. It had worked then, but barely, and if he couldn't help them now, he didn't know what he would have done.

The same feeling of fire running through his body swept over him once again, and he almost couldn't keep from crying out. The pain was gone in an instant, though, and to his immense relief, the Power reacted to him much more quickly than it had the night before. The suit took only a moment longer to appear around him than it did to any of the others, and Andros decided that was a step in the right direction.

"Let's go," he ordered. With that, he turned and headed for the jump tubes with them only a step behind as a faint smile fought its way across his face. He was back with a team, back right where he belonged.