Though the Dragon Waits

by Starhawk

In the wake of A Squad's disappearance, Sky wonders who cares enough to look for the lost.

6. SWAT

Chapter 6: "S.W.A.T."

"Are you out of your mind?" Z demanded, storming into the lounge with all the outrage of yet another Friday night spent on base behind her.

They'd been on dispatch for C Squad's patrol all afternoon, and what should have been an easy support assignment had turned frantic when C Squad ended up needing actual backup. SPD Rangers, officers, and even New Tech PD had been called in to contain the mess when the single fugitive they'd basically stumbled over turned violent, coercive, and willing to involve a whole lot of hostages. B Squad had only gotten back to base an hour ago.

"Maybe," Jack said, turning the page of his Ranger Quest comic book and grinning at the team's ultimate triumph. He held it up and turned it around so she could see. "Check it out: Gamma Power wins again."

"Jack," she snapped. Hands on her hips, she glared down at him where he was sprawled out on the couch. "You put Sky in charge of our weekend training schedule."

He shrugged, flipping the comic book back so he could read the last panel. "He looked like he needed something to do."

"Yeah, well, the rest of us don't!" she exclaimed. "We've been pulling double shifts all week, and we haven't had a day off since before Zentor! Our easy afternoon was a bust, and the last thing we need is Sky making us live in the mud swamp for the next two days!"

"He won't," Jack said confidently. He liked Gamma Power. They were ridiculously strong and they got pizza after every mission. "The commander's sending us on a team-building retreat outside the city."

"Are you joking?" Z demanded. She kicked the leg he had draped over the end of the couch, and he sat up obediently, moving over to make room for her. "We just went on a team-building retreat!"

He tossed the sixty-seventh issue of Ranger Quest onto the table as she sat down beside him. "Technically, we went on pre-upgrade training," he said. "Teamwork wasn't the original goal; it just happened to be what Silverback thought we sucked at the most."

"A hermit gorilla living alone with a robot dog," Z said with a snort. "His thoughts on teamwork meant a lot to me."

Jack chuckled, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. "This is different," he promised. "Two days at some cabin on a lake, with our own transportation and no sergeants telling us what to do. Cruger says to think of it as a vacation."

"Uh-huh." Z wasn't buying it. "So what's Sky doing?"

"He's making up the team-building agenda Cruger asked us to submit before we leave tomorrow morning." Jack waited for her to be outraged, but she knew him too well for that.

"An agenda that will be carried out in the absence of any official SPD supervision?" Z guessed. She already sounded less dangerous.

"Honor system," Jack said solemnly. "After all, we are the highest ranked cadets on the base right now. The commander thinks we can handle this responsibility."

"Oh, definitely," Z agreed. "We're very responsible. We're responsibility personified."

"Jack!" Syd's voice echoed down the hall, and Jack and Z exchanged glances. "Jack Landors!"

"In here!" Jack yelled back, not bothering to get up. He was pretty sure he knew what she wanted.

"Have you mentioned this lack of supervision to Sky?" Z asked while they waited for Syd to find them. "He seemed pretty enthusiastic about that 'agenda' he's working on."

"Jack," Syd declared, gliding into the lounge in what might very well have been a kimono. "What is the meaning of this? I just saw Sky and he's making up a training schedule for the weekend!"

"We're going on a team-building retreat," Jack began, but Syd cut him off before he could go any further.

"No," she said, glaring at him. "No more team-building! This is where I draw the line! If we have to do one more team-building exercise, I quit! Turn in my badge, my blaster, and my ID, I'm done! D-O-N-E, done, do you understand?"

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "I got it."

Syd glared at him suspiciously, then at Z. She frowned a little. "You're very calm," she told her roommate. "You're too calm."

Look back at Jack, she asked, "Was this your idea, or the commander's?"

Jack grinned at her. "You mean, is there going to be alcohol involved?"

"I mean," Syd said, fluttering her kimono smoothly as she sat down in the chair opposite them, "on a scale of one to ten, one being airport runs and ten being Zentor, how much is this retreat like your idea of team-building and how much is it like the commander's?"

"Well, it was Commander Cruger's idea," Jack admitted. "He's sending us off to some cabin in the middle of nowhere to relax. In between weapons and tactics drills."

"Yeah, I saw those on Sky's list." Syd was scowling again. "Who's our taskmaster this time? A dinosaur with a stuffed chinchilla?"

"Jack," Z said before he could answer. He looked over at her, but she was just smirking. "Jack is our taskmaster."

"Really?" Syd brightened for a moment, but then she eyed him skeptically. "Does Sky know?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Guys, Sky isn't stupid. Get him away from the base and I promise he can act like a normal human being. For extended periods of time, even."

"His idea of normal and my idea of normal are totally different," Z pointed out.

"Let's just say that given the choice between teamwork drills and sleeping in," Jack told her, "I have it on good authority that he'll pick sleeping in."

Z scoffed, and Syd shook her head. "I don't know, Jack. He seemed pretty gung ho about teamwork on Zentor."

Jack waited for the punch line, but it didn't come. "Sorry?" he said at last. "I thought you just mentioned Sky and teamwork in the same sentence."

"Yes," Syd said impatiently. "Sky and teamwork and Zentor. Weren't you there?"

"Uh, when he was yelling at us or when he was ignoring us?" Jack asked, glancing at Z. She just held up her hands, claiming neutrality.

"When he was giving us the speech," Syd insisted. "About what he was thinking about while he was running, about friendship and wanting to be with us."

Jack couldn't help it. He snickered. Syd got that he was laughing at her instantly and lobbed a pillow at him, no questions asked. "Sorry!" he protested, trying for apologetic and mostly just coming up hilariously entertained. "Sorry, really, Syd. I'm sorry, okay?"

She looked only moderately appeased. "What's so funny?" she demanded.

"Look," Jack said, tossing the pillow back to her. "If Sky had any epiphanies while he was running, they were all about how to win Silverback's little game. That's what he does: he figures out the game and the rules. And then he wins. Simple as that."

Z was smirking at him now, and he did a double take when he noticed the expression. "What?" he wanted to know. "What's that look for?"

She shrugged. "I just think he took it a little far if he was only playing to win, that's all. And I don't think you thought he was faking it at the time, either."

"You hugged him!" Syd exclaimed. "And he let you!"

"That's 'cause he wants me," Jack joked. "He just hasn't admitted it yet."

Z poked him, hard. "He admits it every time you say something like that and he doesn't correct you," she informed him. "Do you think you could hurry it up and ask him out already? He might be nicer to us."

"Ah," Jack said, wagging a finger in her direction. "But if I push him before he's ready, he might be worse. He's tricky that way."

"Before he's ready?" Z repeated. "I've never met anyone more ready to be housebroken than Sky."

"Well..." Syd hesitated, and they both looked at her. She sighed all at once, shaking her head. "I think Dru hurt him, you know? Really bad. Maybe you're right; maybe he isn't ready yet."

Z raised her eyebrows, glancing from Syd to Jack, maybe to get his opinion on this. He shrugged. Sky was driven, no doubt about it. But what, exactly, was driving him... that was a question for much later at night.

"Hey, Jack?" Bridge's voice drifted in just ahead of him, eyeing them curiously as he wandered into the lounge. "I have a question about this weekend."

"You and everyone else, Bridge." Jack waved him over. "What's on your mind?"

"Well, I couldn't help but notice that Sky is working on the training schedule," Bridge began.

It finally occurred to Jack that for the entire squad to know what Sky was doing, something had to be going on. "Hey," he interrupted, frowning. "I gave him that job specifically to get him out of my hair, and now you're saying that you've all seen him in the, what, half an hour since dinner?"

"Jack." Sky strode in, paying no attention to the team gathered around him. "Rope swing or rowing?"

Jack blinked. "Um... rope swing?"

"Rowing it is," Sky said, writing something down on the electronic notepad he was carrying around. It looked like a lot more than a single word. He was probably writing a new manual in his spare time.

"Sky," Jack said, glaring at him as the pieces started to come together. "Have you been going around asking everyone really obnoxious questions about what kind of training they'd least like to do this weekend?"

Sky underlined something sharply on his notepad, glanced up long enough to catch Jack's eye, then went back to writing. "It's perfectly logical," he told the notepad. "The things we like to do least are naturally things we spend less time on. That's where we need the most practice."

Sky thrust the notepad at him abruptly, and Jack could feel the girls' accusing gazes on him as he took it. Sky was already turning away by the time he realized there was nothing about rowing on it. No list, no agenda, just the words Cruger is in Kat's lab, underlined twice and followed by: To get me out of your hair?

Jack looked up, but Sky was just unlocking the lounge doors and letting them slide closed. Tipping the notepad toward Z, he let her take it away from him and pass it to Syd while he called, "I guess it's a good thing we have you to keep us on task, Sky."

Sky snorted. "You have no idea," he informed them, coming back to join their little group in the far corner. "I could hear you in the hallway."

"I thought he couldn't hear us from the lab unless we yelled," Z said, her voice barely above an indignant whisper. "What's he doing there this late, anyway?"

"He only complains when we yell," Sky countered. He wasn't much louder, despite the fact that the doors were shut now. "Who knows how much he can hear."

"He's trying to get Kat to go home," Bridge offered. When they all looked at him he added, "That's what he's doing in the lab, I mean. Probably. She hasn't slept since I think Wednesday. Give or take a week or so."

Z groaned. "That stupid quantum enhancer," she muttered. "When I get my hands on Piggy..."

"It's a little late to tell her to go home now," Syd declared. "And I don't care if he does hear me, because he was awful to her all last week. The only reason she was looking for a new quantum enhancer in the first place is because he kept pressuring her to finish the upgrade."

"It's kind of ironic, when you think about it," Sky said thoughtfully. "That the commander sends us on team-building assignments when he's arguably the least team-oriented person on base."

There was a moment of absolute silence.

"Sky," Z said at last. "Did you just criticize Commander Cruger?"

Jack snickered at the entirely typical look of disdain that Sky sent her way. "Please," he said. "I'm the first to admit that my superiors can make mistakes."

"That's true," Jack put in. "Giving me the Red morpher, for one. Keeping Sky on B Squad, for another."

"Not giving him a new bike," Bridge said solemnly.

"Ooh," Syd said. "Putting him on nightwatch!"

"Refusing to help as Shadow Ranger," Sky countered. "Cutting us off from Kat. Not to mention that emergency button in her lab; what kind of power trip is that? You know it only signals one person. What if he's off base? What if he's in the bathroom? Six Rangers on this base and I could have killed her in her own lab before anyone knew what happened just because she doesn't have a general alarm."

Jack put one foot up on the corner of the couch nearest him. The couch Sky was sharing with Bridge. "That wasn't you," he said firmly.

"Doesn't change anything," Sky told him. "All I'm saying is that a little team-building wouldn't kill him."

"It makes sense, actually," Bridge remarked. "It's our own weaknesses that tend to aggravate us most in others. It's entirely possible that he's disproportionately sensitive to our constant show of disunity."

Jack eyed him. "Meaning?"

"He feels bad about himself because we argue a lot," Syd translated.

"Arguing is our preferred method of communication," Bridge pointed out.

"We don't get team-building assignments because we argue," Z said. "We get team-building assignments because Mr. Perfect here can't learn to take an order."

"Well, that's a possibility too," Bridge allowed.

Sky glared at him. "Would you stop agreeing with your girlfriend?"

Bridge gave him an odd look. "Why?"

Jack wasn't stupid, and getting between Z and Sky was not high on his list of fun things to do. So he lifted his chin in Syd's direction and asked, "Hey, where is home for Kat? I thought she lived on base."

"Yeah, she's always here," Z agreed. "Or off working on some project or other."

"Ah," Bridge said. "See how those two statements are mutually exclusive? They don't seem like they are, because they both imply the same thing: that she's always working. But she's not always working when she's here, and she's not always here when she's not working.

"Or here when she's working," he continued. "Or not working when she's here. Obviously. I mean, we've all seen her."

Sky sighed. "Kat always says she has a project when she leaves so people don't bother her at home."

"And by people," Syd added, "he means the commander."

"That's good," Jack said with a grin. "Because if by people he meant all of you, then I was gonna say, she needs to rethink her strategy."

"Bridge figured it out right away," Syd told him. "Because he and Boom spend so much time in the lab. He told me and Sky so we could help cover for her on her days off."

"The commander takes this 24/7 style of SPD a little too seriously," Z remarked.

"Oh, hey, that's what I wanted to ask you about," Bridge said suddenly. "Before I found out that we had training this weekend, and then found out that we don't really, but everyone thinks we do... maybe I shouldn't ask at all?"

"Maybe you should," Jack said. "And then we can all just think you didn't."

Bridge considered that. "Yeah," he decided. "That might work."

"What is it?" Sky reminded him, when he stopped there.

"The Dancing Dragons," Bridge said, very seriously. "They're having a jumpathon tomorrow, and I told Lynelle I might be able to be there, so I was wondering if I... might."

"Oh, your sister's jumprope team," Syd said, before Jack could ask what the hell he was talking about. "Are they doing a demonstration?"

"At ten o'clock," Bridge agreed. "They start with a demonstration, then the team leads the jumpathon for the rest of the day. They're raising money for kids with disabilities."

"I think jumping rope counts as training," Z said. "What do you think, Jack?"

"I think--" He frowned at Bridge. "Really? They jump rope all day?"

Bridge nodded. "They'll be teaching, too, sharing some of their secrets with the other participants. Extreme jumproping is becoming very popular--some of the local schools have even started to form their own teams, so they should have a good turnout."

"Extreme jumproping," Jack repeated. Bemused, yes, but this was Bridge, after all. "Well, hey. Anything that has extreme in the title should definitely count. Go for it."

"Hey, Jack?" Syd said, very sweetly. "Taking care of ourselves is part of what makes an effective team, right?"

He tried very hard not to smile, because he knew that tone. "What do you want, Syd."

"Well, there's this extreme spa and massage place," she began, and he couldn't help it. He was grinning before she even finished the sentence, and he waved his hand in acquiescence.

"Like I said," he agreed, slouching down on the couch and bracing his feet against the bottom of the table. "If it says 'extreme,' it counts as training, and god knows what this team needs is more training.

"We leave together," Jack added. "Everyone meet in the garage at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Sky will file our team-building agenda before we head out. I'll take the van to the cabin--and if I happen to be the only one who actually makes it there, well." He shrugged. "All you gotta tell me before I drop you at your designated team-building sites is when to pick you up."

"Ooh!" Syd brightened. "Can we stay out overnight?"

"What are you, five?" Jack demanded. "Of course you can stay out overnight. We have to be back here... Sky, when do we have to be back here?"

"Ten Sunday night," Sky told him. "Any later and the commander might think I'm being too hard on you."

Jack scoffed. "You? Why would he think that?"

"So, you could pick us up on your way back to base on Sunday?" Z asked. "What about you? You don't have to spend the whole weekend at some cabin."

"Nah, might as well," he said. "That way if anyone stops by to check on us I can tell them you're all out on a scavenger hunt or something. Besides, I haven't been out of New Tech in years.

"That weird Japan thing does not count," Jack added, when he saw Sky open his mouth. "Chasing suspects never counts.

"So I'm gonna go to this nice, quiet little cabin," he continued, "far away from SPD. I'm gonna sleep, read comic books, and be your chauffeur. Consider it my way of saying thanks for pulling it together on Zentor."

It really didn't sound that bad to him, all things considered. And that was even before he realized that Sky wasn't just being close-mouthed about his plans--by the next morning, he still hadn't made any. He was riding shotgun, though, pretending to work and studiously ignoring the rest of them, so everyone left him alone.

Jack dropped Bridge and Z off on Lynelle's sprawling university campus, Syd off at her giant luxury spa, and debated just driving around until Sky said something. Unfortunately, that would only be fun if Sky did say something, and all indications were that he could go the entire two days without opening his mouth once. So Jack gave in first.

"Got a destination in mind?" he asked, firing up the engine and pulling away from Syd's spa. They were waiting to turn out of the entrance before Sky finally looked up from whatever he was not working on.

"Actually, I'd like to go to the cabin," Sky said. "My mom and my uncle used to take me camping a lot, after my dad died. I miss it."

Jack blinked. "Really?"

Sky shrugged and mostly avoided answering. "I checked out the remote training facilities back on base, and I think 'cabin' is just SPD's way of saying 'no weapons'. It has everything else. Including kayaks. I like kayaking."

Really, Jack thought? He managed to keep himself from saying it out loud this time. "I've never been," he said instead. Like it was perfectly normal to be on his way to a cabin to spend two days alone with Sky. "Never been on the water at all, really."

"I could teach you," Sky offered. He was staring out the windshield, no expression on his face. "If you're interested."

Okay, this weekend had just become something totally different, but Jack hadn't gotten this far by failing to notice opportunity when it kicked down his door. "Yeah," he agreed. "You bet I'm interested."

Sky gave him a sideways look that Jack wouldn't have seen if he hadn't taken his eyes off of the road at exactly that moment to glance at Sky. "I heard you talking about Dru last night," Sky remarked.

Which pretty much confirmed that, yes, Sky had just asked him out. "I was talking about you," Jack corrected easily. "Syd was talking about Dru."

"If I asked you what you say about me when I'm not around," Sky said after a moment, "would you tell me the truth?"

Jack grinned out the windshield. "Sky, I tell the team exactly what I tell you," he declared. "Whether you're around or not. You've heard me say I want you. You've probably heard me say you want me.

"And if you haven't," he added as an aside, "you totally want me. So there."

He heard Sky snort. "Real mature, Jack."

"But you're not denying it," Jack pointed out. "The kissing, that's not just for the hell of it, you know? I'm not just trying to mess with your head."

"You're not just trying to mess with my head," Sky repeated. "You are, in part, trying to mess with my head."

Jack smirked as the van rolled to a stop at a traffic light. "Is it working?"

"No," Sky retorted.

They idled there in traffic for a while until Sky said abruptly, "Syd's right, you know."

Jack just nodded. "I figured your thing with Dru was pretty intense," he said.

"I can't help that you remind me of him," Sky told the car in front of them, as the light turned green and they started to roll again. "It creeps me out."

Jack stifled his laugh as best he could, because Sky was rarely anything less than brutally honest. And when he decided to do something, he did it. Whether it was a career or a conversation. Period.

"What," he said, when he could almost keep a straight face, "because I'm so great, or because he turned out so bad?"

Sky didn't answer, and he figured maybe that wasn't exactly the right thing to say.

"Sorry," Jack offered after a moment. "I'm not used to you talking about... you."

Now Sky was the one who sounded amused. "I don't know why," he said. "I do it all the time."

Jack chuckled. "Well, like Z would say: good thing you're the only one."

Several minutes passed before Sky remarked, "It's not that I think you'd sell out."

"Oh, thanks," Jack said, rolling his eyes. "I appreciate the confidence you have in me; it means a lot."

Sky ignored him. "It's just that I know you put yourself before SPD," he continued. "I've already been with someone who did that, and I don't want to do it again." He hesitated. "Why do I feel like I should apologize?"

"Cause you're being totally unfair," Jack told him. "We all put ourselves before SPD, Sky. Even you, with your 'I should be the Red Ranger' and your 'I only obey orders when I feel like it' crap.

"Not that I'm saying we don't all do that," he added, lifting a placating hand from the steering wheel when Sky shifted irritably. "In fact, that's exactly what I'm saying: we all do it. We do put ourselves first. Because without us, there's no SPD."

"SPD is my life," Sky snapped. "Everything I do, I do because I think it makes SPD better."

"Yeah, so, what about making yourself better?" Jack countered. "Doesn't that make SPD better too?"

He could practically hear Sky frowning. "Obviously."

"So why'd you kiss me?" Jack asked, staring out at the road. "When Mirloc captured us, and we had to have that whole D Squad argument? Why'd you kiss me? Was that to make you better, or to make SPD better?"

Sky didn't answer.

"Why'd you hug me on Zentor?" Jack insisted. "Why do you want to go kayaking this weekend? Is that good for SPD? Or is that good for you?"

Sky folded his arms, turning his head to look out the passenger window.

"It's okay to want things, you know," Jack said. "Just because. Because you want them, not because they make everything worth it. You can go after things that aren't, like, your lifelong goal without letting everyone down."

"Nice speech," Sky muttered to the window. "Got any lifelong goals, Jack?"

"Yeah," Jack told him. "As a matter of fact, I do. To make things better for people who don't know what better is."

This produced a very satisfying pause, until Sky startled him with a bitterness that usually only surfaced when he was talking about Dru. "What am I, then?" he wanted to know. "Just another project?"

"You know what better is," Jack said. "You're just too scared to go after something that hasn't been part of the plan since you were three years old."

Sky's voice was perfectly even when he asked, "What if you leave?"

Jack blinked, and it took him a moment to figure out what Sky was asking. "What if you get promoted?" he countered. "There aren't any guarantees. You gotta live with what you don't know."

Sky didn't say anything else for the better part of an hour. When the lines disappeared from the roads, though, Jack made him get out the directions and start navigating. Because what the hell did Jack know about finding places where the landmarks were giant live oak trees and wild azalea bushes?

They found the cabin, no problem. They also found the boathouse, the sauna, and the screened in gazebo. Jack was laughing by the time they made their way down to the lakeshore, because Cruger really hadn't lied. It could be a vacation. A resort vacation.

"Okay," Sky said, as they walked out onto the L-shaped dock to get a good look around the lake. "No way is the commander going to believe we were up here doing teamwork drills all weekend."

"Are you kidding?" Jack said with a grin. "You're here. He'll believe it."

Sky paused at the end of the dock, giving him a speculative look. "Hey," he said, deceptively casual. "Can you swim?"

"No," Jack said, holding up his hands and backing away. "So don't get any ideas."

"Don't you think you should learn?" Sky asked innocently.

"Push me in the water and you'll never get me out in a kayak," Jack warned. "I'm not kidding, Sky."

Sky relaxed slightly and something about his posture told Jack that the threat had been taken seriously. It was reassuring in more ways than one. His interactions with Sky before he was SPD had been brief, intense struggles for control that he was just as glad to leave behind. Sky wasn't a comfortable enemy.

It had made him wonder, though, how much of his current ability to deflect Sky's more forceful personality was a direct result of his rank. He didn't have any illusions about them being evenly matched: Sky was more experienced, stronger, the better fighter and frankly the better thinker. Jack wasn't convinced that he hadn't been made Red Ranger just to teach Sky a lesson.

Where that left them as friends--let alone anything more--he wasn't sure. They didn't have to respect each other to mess around together. But Jack didn't sleep with anyone he didn't trust, and he had plenty of evidence that anything Sky got into, he got into for the long haul.

So he let Sky teach him to kayak. He told Sky about how he'd met up with Z, and he listened to Sky's wholesome family stories about camping. They got lunch, and later dinner, from a very well-programmed synthesizer. And when Sky couldn't coax him back into a boat one more time, and they didn't feel like talking anymore, Jack brought his comic books down to the dock and pretended to read while he watched Sky swim.

It was a lazy, beautiful day, the kind he'd almost forgotten existed since he'd joined SPD. He didn't try to kiss Sky once, at first because he didn't want Sky to stop talking and then because he almost didn't need to. They'd never been closer than this, with the setting sun warm and golden on wet skin and no words necessary to enjoy the evening.

Still, he couldn't help a flash of disappointment when Sky hauled himself up on the dock, dripping water all over the place as he flopped down on his back and said, "We should call the others."

Jack stopped pretending to read and pushed his sunglasses up, leaning over the arm of his chair to stare down at Sky. "To interrupt their Saturday night out of pure malicious spite?" he guessed.

Sky smiled, which had finally stopped surprising Jack with its ease after maybe the twentieth time this afternoon. "Just to let them know what they're missing. We could still pick them up if they wanted to come for the day tomorrow."

"Not Z's idea of fun," Jack said with certainty. "Not Syd's either, I think. And Bridge hasn't seen his family in a while."

Sky let it go, arms over his head as he stretched for the other side of the dock. Being Sky, of course, he could reach, and he just laid there like that for a moment. "What about you?" he asked at last. "Is it your idea of fun?"

Jack braced his elbow against the arm of the chair, putting his chin on his fist, and grinned down at Sky. "The part where you kayak shirtless, or the part where you walk around in swim trunks dripping wet? 'Cause as far as I'm concerned, this day just keeps getting better."

Of course, Sky let go of the dock and sat up, but it had been worth it. Even when Sky said idly, "You know, you really do sound just like him."

Jack's smile faded, but he didn't move. "Just because a lot of guys are attracted to you," he said, "that doesn't mean we're all the same."

"No," Sky said. He looked up at Jack, still hanging on the arm of the chair, and their eyes met. "No, you're not."

They just sat there like that for a moment, and when Sky glanced out over the lake Jack followed his gaze. They didn't go back to the cabin until the bugs were enough to drive them in and the first stars were showing through the deep blue of the sky. The cabin loomed on the hill, a massive shadow in the fading light.

Once there, they settled in for the night. Contrary to his assurances back on base, Sky was now determined to get up early. To go fishing, of all things. Since he didn't make more than a token effort to get Jack to go with him, Jack didn't complain, and they ended up watching TV in the common room until they fell asleep.

It was the beeping sound that woke him up. Well, that and the way the body underneath him shifted, reaching for something and making him more awake than he wanted to be in the process. On the plus side, the beeping stopped.

On the even more plus side, he felt hands on his arms and a gentle brush against his head before Sky's voice said quietly, "Jack."

He mumbled something that wasn't supposed to be anything, happy to play it up if it got him a few more seconds of lying on top of Sky. This was the best team-building retreat ever. They should do these every weekend.

"Jack," Sky said again, still soft. Softer than Jack had ever heard him. "Wake up."

"You jus' kissed me," Jack slurred, making no effort to move. It seemed like a fairly intelligent observation, considering the hour.

"Yeah, well." He could hear Sky smiling. "You owed me one."

"Do it again," Jack demanded, not lifting his head.

"Maybe if you get up," Sky's voice suggested.

It sounded like a trick, but he couldn't quite work out why. He rolled over, struggling to push himself up, and he was only halfway there when he realized Sky was helping. Or holding him in place. Hands still on his arms, another mouth soft on his, he melted into the support and gave all of his attention to the kiss.

Breath, wet warmth, tongue... he moaned into the mouth he'd been dreaming about for months. Best morning breath ever. He wanted it, wanted the smell and the taste and especially the tongue, eager to learn it and never forget. He couldn't talk, could barely breathe and he didn't care, happy to share and happier to express his appreciation with gasps and unintelligible requests for more.

Then the pressure was gone, the heat disentangled from himself and he heard Sky whisper, "You fight dirty." There was a sound like someone trying to catch their breath, and his voice continued, "Guess I shouldn't be surprised."

Jack blinked blearily at him, slumped back against the couch again and wondering what he was talking about now. "Huh?"

"I'm going fishing," Sky said over his shoulder, already turning away. "Sorry I woke you up."

Oh, but Jack wasn't. Jack was only sorry that he was walking away. He closed his eyes, just for a minute, and the next thing he knew the smell of coffee wouldn't turn off and there was sunlight through the windows and someone was knocking at the door.

Someone knocking at the door. He pushed himself up quickly, reaching for his morpher and only then realizing he didn't have it. He'd clipped it to his civvies, taken it off when he sat down--

There it was. On the table next to the coffee. The coffee?

Jack rubbed his eyes, trying to remember exactly what was going on. Weekend retreat, TV, Sky, yeah, he'd got it. But coffee?

"Sky?" he called, just to make sure.

There was no answer except for another knock at the front door. Right. Someone wanted to come in. Or talk to him. Or something. And he was pretty sure Sky was out... fishing, or something.

"Coming!" he yelled, trying to stifle a yawn.

He got up, tugged his shirt into place, and reached for the coffee. Or his morpher. Yeah, he should probably have his morpher. He grabbed that first, clipping it to his jeans' pocket awkwardly, and took the coffee with him to the door. This had better not be anyone from SPD.

He managed one swallow of hot coffee--luxuries like warm coasters were SPD through and through--before he pulled the door open and found a woman in red on the other side. They stared at each other for a moment. He probably looked like shit, he realized belatedly. Although in his defense, he hadn't been expecting company.

"Red Ranger," she said, holding up her morpher like a badge. And it was a morpher, he knew that instinctively even though he'd never seen it before. "I'm looking for Jack Landors?"

His first thought was that this was Charlie, that they'd found A Squad. But Kat hadn't made him memorize that file for nothing: he was almost positive Charlie was a brunette. This woman was blonde. And she wasn't in uniform.

"Yeah," he said, clearing his throat a little. "That's me."

"Hi." She lowered her morpher and held out her other hand. "Hope, of RS-42. Ranger for the Kerova System. Nice to meet you."

He frowned. "Hope," he repeated, transferring the coffee to his other hand and reaching out to shake hers. "That's your name?"

"Yeah." She looked vaguely amused, which could be a good sign or a very bad one. "I'm sorry; did I wake you up?"

"Uh..." Kerovan Rangers. Currently searching for A Squad. "No," he said, beginning to understand who he was talking to. "Hey, why don't you come in. I didn't mean to keep you, uh, standing there on the doorstep. So to speak."

She smiled, accepting the invitation with the air of someone who definitely hadn't just woken up. "Thanks," she said, following him inside. "Sorry to intrude. I heard you and your teammates were up here on a team-building retreat."

"Team-building," he repeated, wondering why it didn't sound as ridiculous when she said it. "Yeah. Well." He frowned down at the mug in his hand. "I'm pretty sure Sky made me this coffee..."

The blonde woman from another planet gave him an odd look as he led her into the common room. "There is a reason for Commander Cruger to think you're on a team-building retreat, right?"

He shifted, waving awkwardly at the chairs by the couch. "Yeah, we might have told him something like that," he admitted.

"Ah." She smiled again, taking a seat . "As long as you're the ones lying, then. I have to admit I was a little suspicious when he said his entire team just happened to be gone the day we showed up to report on the search."

Jack hesitated by the chair opposite her. "We weren't totally lying," he felt compelled to point out. "The five of us live and work and fight together. Nothing builds team like a little time apart."

"Oh, so you're not all here?" she asked, glancing around.

He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was just digging himself deeper. "Sky's around somewhere," he muttered. "The others are, uh, taking some personal time."

"Team-building," she said. "I understand. Believe me, after living in each other's back pockets these last two weeks? My team's ready for some personal time too."

He finally sat down, studying her with a little more conscious awareness. She didn't look appalled. She didn't look upset. She actually looked kind of sympathetic, and that wasn't at all what he'd been expecting. As he took another sip of coffee, it occurred to him that he sucked as a host.

"Hey, can I get you anything?" he offered. "A drink or something? Something to eat?"

"That coffee smells pretty good," she admitted. "Who do I have to know to get some of that?"

"Just me," he promised, getting up again. "You want anything in it?"

"If you could fill half the mug with cream and sugar," she told him, "then add the coffee? That would be perfect."

He grinned, hoping he wasn't wrong to trust her casual ease. "You got it."

"So," she said, while he got her coffee. "Any particular reason a team-building retreat is more important than a briefing on the whereabouts of your teammates?"

Jack winced, careful not to turn away from the synthesizer until he had his expression under control. "Ah, see," he said, picking up her mug in his free hand, "we didn't make that choice, because we didn't actually know you were coming."

"That's what I mean." She leaned over to pull the single coaster to the edge of the table, closest to her. "Why didn't you know we were coming? Why would you be sent away the same day we were passing through the Sol system?"

He shrugged. "The commander probably didn't want to disrupt our schedule," he said, setting her mug down on the coaster. "He likes schedules. Routines. That kind of thing. Sorry you had to come all the way out here."

"I didn't." She was watching him sit down, and she caught his eye when he looked up curiously. "My team is reporting to your Shadow Ranger. They made some excuse for my absence so I could track you down, and here I am: on your doorstep, so to speak. Looking for the rest of the SPD Earth Rangers."

Okay, he hadn't seen that coming. "You snuck out of a briefing to find us?" he blurted out.

Hope of RS-42 smiled: a calm, polite smile that didn't reach her eyes. "That's one way of putting it," she agreed.

"Is there another?" he asked, studying her suspiciously.

"Honestly?" She picked up her coffee mug, but she didn't try to drink from it. "Shadow Ranger acts like he outranks you. And I have to tell you, one Red Ranger to another, that kind of annoys me."

"That's why you snuck out of the briefing?" He didn't know whether to be skeptical or amused.

"Sorry," she said, not like she meant it. She lifted the mug briefly in his direction. "They tell me I have problems with authority."

Amused, he decided. Definitely amused.

"Seems to go with the color," Jack said, raising his mug to her in return.

This time when she smiled, it looked bright and sincere. "Is that why you just happened to be out of town when we showed up?"

"Possibly," he admitted. "There's a reason we're not A Squad, you know?"

She seemed to understand this without him having to explain. "You're doing all the duties of a front line team," she told him. "As far as the League is concerned, you and your team are the face of Earth."

Jack tried not to smile. "Tell you the truth?" he said, since she seemed perfectly willing to do it for him. "I don't know whether that's comforting or kind of frightening."

"Believe me," she said. "I know exactly what you mean."

Their eyes met, and he got the feeling that maybe she wasn't at the top of her class either. It was just a thought, and maybe it was groundless, but she seemed to get him in a way that no one at SPD did. Easily, without trying, like sharing a color made up for coming from a totally different world.

He decided that if Charlie was anything like her, then Sky was going to be pissed when they finally met.

"My team will leave all the official search parameters back at base," Hope was saying. "And if we'd found them, obviously you'd know by now. But I wanted to come out here and make sure you know that, um... this may not end well."

He blinked. It was the first time she'd hesitated since she'd come in. "Did you just say 'this may not end well'?" he asked. "Grumm threatening to destroy the planet, our entire team lost in the Helix Nebula, and hey, it might not end well?"

"Half your team," she corrected. "And I'm not sure they're in the Helix Nebula anymore."

"What?" It wasn't the most clever thing he could have come up with, but it was all he could manage. Jack frowned down at his coffee, wondering how it could be mostly gone if he was still this far behind.

"Look," she said. "It's a big galaxy out there, but teams have been searching the nebula for months. We should have come up with something by now."

He had actually said the same thing a few weeks ago, but Sky had sneered at him until he backed off. He'd gotten a lecture on astronomy--solar, stellar, and galactic--that he'd tried to tune out, but he'd been left with one impression. Well, two. "Space is big," and "Sky knows way too much about how big space is."

Luckily, Hope seemed to take his silence as manly regret rather than utter confusion. "We'll keep looking," she promised. "We'll look until we find them. But there's something weird going on, and I'm getting worried about what exactly we'll find when we do."

"Something weird?" he repeated carefully. Was this one of those things the commander hadn't bothered to tell them about, or was it just a crazy alien hunch that she couldn't put in a report?

A thump from the back porch made them both look up, and Hope glanced at him when it became clear that someone was coming up the stairs. He just smiled, finishing off his coffee while he waited to see what kind of entrance Sky would make. There was a clatter from outside, something being dropped on the deck, and then more footsteps.

Finally the door slid open, and Sky definitely hadn't bothered to look through before he came in, because he got about three steps into the room before coming to an abrupt halt. Putting him right on the edge of the sunlight that spilled through the door as he stared at them in surprise. Barefoot, with mussed hair, and wearing only swim trunks, he made the light look damn good.

"Hey, Sky," Jack drawled, grinning at him. "This is Hope. Leader of the Kerovan Rangers. She snuck out of the A Squad briefing on base to make sure we got the full story."

Sky still looked kind of shell-shocked, so Jack added, "Hope, my Second, Sky Tate."

"Hi." Sky's brain seemed to kick into gear, and he came forward quickly. Jack stood up when Hope did, and Sky held out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

"You too," she said, shaking his hand smoothly. She was clearly just as impressed with his appearance as Jack, and he thought the glance at Sky's shorts was totally unnecessary even when she added, "Blue Ranger?"

"Yeah," Jack said, before Sky could answer. "Get in line."

Her face broke into a grin, and Sky tried to pretend that he hadn't heard. "I'm going to go get a shirt," he said, in exactly the same tone of voice that he might have said, My shift starts in ten minutes, or I have to go present a seminar.

"He's cute," Hope said, not two seconds after Sky had turned away. She was nominally talking to Jack, but Sky stopped anyway.

"Yeah," Jack repeated, smirking at Sky's back. "Tell me about it."

"You do realize I can hear you," Sky said calmly, not turning around.

"Nothing you haven't heard before," Jack teased. "You're cute, I want you, and hey, thanks for the coffee."

Sky walked out of the room without looking back.

"Wow," Hope remarked, glancing back at him. "I was kind of expecting a girl."

"I think his parents were too," Jack said with a grin. "Something about the way he talks."

"Yeah," she said, more thoughtfully than he'd expected. "You're right about that. His reaction time, too. It's funny."

He raised his eyebrows at her, because he'd been joking.

She gave him a speculative look in return. "He's not, is he?"

Jack just stared at her, and she laughed.

"Welcome to life as a Power Ranger," she said with an apologetic shrug. "Obviously when someone isn't quite what you expect, the most logical explanation is that they've been body-switched with someone else. Or magically altered. Or possessed."

His eyes widened. "You know?" he demanded, sinking into his chair in disbelief. "All of those things have actually happened to us."

Hope just lifted her coffee mug again, saluting him silently.

"Wow," he realized. "We really are Power Rangers, aren't we."

She grinned, sitting down across from him. "So many things about this life seem funnier in retrospect, don't they?"

He shook his head, at a total loss.

"So," she said after a moment. "Are you and he...?" She gestured in the direction Sky had gone with her mug, but she didn't finish the question.

"Unfortunately," Jack said ruefully, "no matter what you're asking, the answer is probably no."

"Really?" That was all she said, but her skeptical tone said the rest for her.

"Kind of a long story," he admitted. "Let's just say, when he finally figures out what he wants... if I don't get first refusal I'm gonna be really pissed."

"And by really," she began, eyeing him, "you mean, not at all."

"No," he said lightly. "By pissed, I mean heartbroken."

"Seriously," Sky's voice interrupted. "I can hear you."

Jack glanced over his shoulder, watching Sky stride across the common room toward them: still in his swim trunks, blue SPD t-shirt pulled on over top of them. "Seriously," he mimicked, rolling his eyes. "We don't care."

There were plenty of other chairs in the room, but for some reason Sky pushed the coaster out of the way on the coffee table and perched on the edge of it, looking at them expectantly. "So what's going on?"

Jack sighed, because what did he care if Sky wanted to be uncomfortable? "Haven't you seen Stargate?" he asked anyway, getting up to grab another chair before anyone could answer. "No good ever comes of sitting on tables."

"Jack, we have company," Sky reminded him. "Pretend to be normal, okay?"

Leaving the chair directly across from the table, Jack pointed at it. "Sit."

Sky held up his hands in a way that made it clear he was only humoring the crazy man, but he did get up and sit in the chair. Hope just looked on in amusement. Jack shook his head, deciding that in this particular case, the better part of victory was silence.

"Hope was just saying she's got a bad feeling about A Squad," he said instead.

Sky glanced at him, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah," Jack continued, unable to resist. "She says she thinks they should have found some sign of them by now." He kicked the leg of Sky's chair, just because. Space wasn't so big after all.

"Rangers can track each other," Hope told them. "If your teammates were in the Helix Nebula, even if they were dead, we should have been able to find their morphers by now. The fact that we haven't tells me something's wrong."

"Well, but it's not totally bad, right?" Jack asked. "I mean... they're not dead, then."

"Not in the Helix Nebula," Sky muttered.

"The two most likely options?" Hope offered. "They were captured by evil and taken somewhere else, or they escaped and got stranded outside the nebula somewhere. Either way, we're going to have a hell of a time finding them unless they can get a message out somehow."

"Or if we can get information from Grumm," Sky said grimly. "He has to know something."

"Well--" Hope hesitated again, and Jack focused on her. "I don't officially know this, okay? I don't even unofficially know this. And you should know that two of my teammates think it's crazy."

"What?" Jack leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. He recognized that tone already. "This is your weird thing, isn't it. Whatever it is that makes you think we're in trouble."

"Yeah," she said with a sigh. "This is the weird thing: attacks in the vicinity of the Helix Nebula have continued ever since Grumm left for Earth. Most of the sites have been obliterated... no survivors. No witnesses, biological or artificial."

Jack frowned. "Some of his forces get left behind?"

"Maybe," Hope agreed. But that was all she said.

"No one's seen anything?" Sky was searching her expression for... something. "No clue at all about who the attackers are?"

Just like that, Jack got it. Or at least, he got what Sky was implying. He didn't get why Sky would say it, why he would even think it. Who the hell suspected Power Rangers?

He'd opened his mouth to ask when all of a sudden he realized: Sky. Of course Sky suspected the unsuspectable. Damn it. Had he really lost all of his heroes with the breaking of a bracelet?

"Gamma 4 got a message out," Hope was saying. "They were the only ones to manage it: a distress call meant for SPD."

Her gaze flicked to Jack, then back to Sky. "Did you see it?"

They exchanged glances, and Jack shook his head.

"'They're not the Power Rangers,'" she said quietly. "That's the last anyone heard from Gamma 4."

"Meaning," Sky said, sounding grim, "that someone had reason to think they were the Power Rangers."

"That's crazy," Jack protested. "A Squad went out there to fight Grumm, not turn into him!"

Hope held his gaze. "Half my team agrees," she said. "They say it makes no sense, there's no evidence to support it, and they didn't even want me to mention it to you. But the other half thinks you need to be aware of the possibility. I happen to agree."

"So, what," Jack demanded, "you think they've all been... I don't know, brainwashed? All five of them? At the same time?"

Sky shifted. "Could they have just switched sides?" he asked.

Jack closed his mouth, but Hope didn't appear to give the question serious consideration. "No, of course not," she said. "If it's them, they've obviously been brainwashed. Or copied somehow, their power drained from one to the other.

"My parents were part of a team of five," she added as an aside, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a half-smile. "Two of them were brainwashed. Two of them were copied. It's not as uncommon as we wish it was."

Jack glanced at Sky and found him looking back. Before they could say anything, though, a quiet burble made Hope reach for her morpher. She gave it a brief look, then lifted it to say, "Yeah."

They could all hear the voice on the other end say, "We're out. You ready?"

"Five minutes," she told her morpher. "I'll meet you on the ship."

Very informal, Jack thought. Or just very... knowing. He and Z were like that too: they didn't need a lot of words to say what needed to be said. SPD regulations dictated stricter radio protocols, but it was nice to see that some things weren't constant.

"I have to go." Hope was already getting to her feet, draining the rest of her coffee in one gulp and setting it back on the table. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Sure." Jack got up when she did, but Sky just sat there, staring at the table. "Thanks for everything you've done for A Squad. And for us."

"Always," she promised. "If they aren't found, we'll be back. Until they come home, Jack. No matter how long it takes."

"Until they come home," he repeated, holding out his hand.

She shook it without hesitation, glancing down at Sky as she let go. "You've got another team of Border Rangers coming your way next," she said. "They'll probably expand the search from the Helix Nebula outward. Just so you know."

"Outward," Sky said, still staring at the table. "In the direction of the attacks?"

Hope didn't flinch. "Up to you."

Sky finally looked up, and when he caught her eye he stood too. "Thank you," he said, more subdued than usual.

"Same to you," she answered. "If you need anything, just call."

They saw her out. Jack didn't realize how ridiculous it was until they were standing outside and it dawned on him that she didn't have a car. Five minutes, she'd said. I'll meet you on the ship.

He shouldn't have been surprised when she pulled out her morpher again, but somehow he was. "It's Hope," she told it. "I'm ready to go." She lowered the little device without waiting for an acknowledgment, lifting her other hand to wave at them.

A shower of crimson sparkles washed over her figure and she was gone.

"Man." Jack folded his arms, studying the empty space where she'd been. "I've gotta get me one of those."

"Teleportation," Sky said, and of course he would know. "Very useful."

"You're telling me," Jack agreed. "So--from here to 'the ship'? Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Huh." Jack considered that until Sky spoke again.

"We should head back to base," he said.

Jack didn't even have to think about it. "No."

He head Sky sigh. "Jack."

"Sky," Jack countered.

"Now you're just being juvenile," Sky informed him.

"And you're being unrealistic," Jack said. "So what if we go back to base? What can we do there that we can't do here? We go back, we blow Hope's cover, not to mention our own, for what? So we can act worried and pissy and helpless there instead of here?"

Sky was giving him what could generously be described as the evil eye. "I don't act worried and helpless," he said.

"Well, I wasn't talking about me," Jack retorted. "And you forgot pissy."

Sky's expression didn't change. "Not true," he said evenly. "I do act pissy."

Jack blinked. "No one will ever believe me if I tell them you said that," he realized.

"That's my diabolical plan," Sky agreed, and this time his mouth quirked upward at the corners. "You want to know the secrets of Sky Tate? First I have to destroy your credibility."

Jack stared at him for a long moment. "The scary thing is that I think you might be telling the truth."

"No," Sky told him. "The scary thing is that you had to think about it."

Jack held up a hand, heading back inside before he lost this round any more completely than he already had. "I need something to eat. Actual food. And maybe some more coffee."

Sky waited until he had made a few concessions to the new day: shower, change of clothes, breakfast. Sky ate too. It wasn't until they were finishing up that he said, "We should at least tell the others."

It took him a few seconds, but Jack picked up the thread of conversation. Talking to Sky could be like trying to monitor multiple radio frequencies at the same time. "Yeah," he agreed. "When we pick them up tonight."

Just being able to keep up seemed to gain him a few points. Sky dropped it, anyway, and that was enough for Jack. Especially when he found out that Sky hadn't actually caught any fish that morning, and Sky as much as admitted that for him, "fishing" was just another excuse to go swimming.

"Now, I'm not an expert," Jack teased, "but doesn't jumping in the water kind of make the fish... I don't know. Swim away?"

"No," Sky told him. "You're not an expert, so shut up."

Not an expert on fishing, maybe. But enough of an expert on Sky to know that "shut up" meant "I've run out of things to say." So he took advantage of the moment, stole a kiss, and spent the rest of the day trying to train Sky that "shut up" meant "kiss me."

Sky was a fast learner. He was also, happily, somewhat short-sighted when it came to the consequences of this new association. Because as fun as it was to kiss Sky in private whenever he said "shut up," it was going be even more entertaining in public.

For the first time in weeks, Jack found himself looking forward to Monday morning.