The team were in the Dino Lab, resting up after spending a long day cleaning up the restaurant, following the repairs. While the crew had done the repairs themselves, Kendall had insisted that the team do the cleaning since it was basically going to be on them if the health department stopped by for an inspection.

Ivan and Riley were fencing, as usual, while Leanne watched them from a distance. Allison came over, taking a seat next to her.

"I thought you said you were over all that knights and swordplay stuff living in Briarwood." Allison commented. Leanne just shrugged.

"I don't seem to mind so much when it's Riley that does it." She answered with a little smile, taking a sip of a red drink. Allison just pointed to it.

"Um...that isn't...um..."

"It's a cherry smoothie!" Leanne teased her, shoving her gently. "I don't deal with my 'alternative' dietary needs in public if I can help it. I learned long ago it can make people a little uncomfortable."

"I can't possibly imagine why." Allison answered, stirring some coffee as she watched the team. Alessandra was over by Koda, who was working on one of his paintings. He didn't usually get much time to do his cave-art any longer, usually filling his days between training for his matches, his Ranger duties and his work in the museum, but Alessandra's birthday was coming up, and she had asked that he make something for her. Shelby and Kendall were off working on something on the computers, while Chase was talking to Phillipe, who had stopped by to check up on the work his contractors had done on the restaurant.

"So, you like watching fencing when Riley's doing it?" Allison asked. Leanne just nodded.

"Oh, it's completely different then." She said enthusiastically. "He's got this way of..."

She looked to Allison, who seemed completely unconvinced by her answer.

"Alright, I just like watching Riley." She admitted. "Does that come across as desperate?"

"Only if you don't act on it." Allison told her. "Come on Leanne, it's been kind of obvious for a while. What's stopping you?"

"Oh, absolutely nothing, guys are normally lining up around the block to date vampires." She stated sarcastically. "I know that there's all that fiction out here that people go all gaga over the idea of dating vampires, but in reality, people get a little funny about the thought of it when...you know...they worry you're going to eat them if they get a paper cut."

"I thought you said you had that under control." Allison commented. Leanne just shook her head.

"As 'under control' as any of us do." She answered. "Besides, it's like a phobia. You try telling someone with arachnophobia that the tiny spider in their bathtub couldn't possibly hurt them. I'd understand more if they lived in Briarwood where we have spiders the size of a Buick, but that kind of fear doesn't really need much in the way of logic."

"Are you sure it's his fear you're worried about or your own?" Allison asked her.

"Are you really lecturing ME about a fear of difficult talks?" Leanne asked her. "I seem to remember a certain someone doing mental gymnastics over her relationship when a certain someone else was in New Zealand for a couple of months."

Allison fell quiet at that. Leanne suddenly felt badly, in trying to deflect from her situation, he had attacked Allison's doubts over the future with Chase.

"I'm sorry, that was...that was really below the belt." Leanne said as she tried to back-pedal for all she was worth. "I shouldn't have said anything!"

Before she could answer though, there was a loud whoop of excitement, and Tyler and James slid down the slide into the Dino Lab. Although they had both been up pretty much the whole night, and most of the day, they were still riding a high from all of their day's activities.

"Hey guys!" Tyler greeted them cheerfully, way more cheerfully than they had ever seen him. While Tyler always was a pretty upbeat guy, there always was an element of sadness around him, one that had finally lifted.

"Welcome back Tyler! Dr Navarro!" Koda greeted them, looking up from his painting and waving. "Want see my cave painting?"

James went over to Koda's painting, and saw the work on it. He had seen many people re-create cave art over the years, many had even learned to use natural materials and paint with their fingers like Koda was doing, but Koda's work was something else entirely. He had seen some people's work that would easily pass a cursory inspection enough to actually be sold as genuine cave art, but this was unreal.

"This is beautiful, you...you mix all the dyes from plant life yourself?" He asked. Koda nodded.

"No get mammoth poop, but goat work well too." He answered. James laughed, not appreciating the fact that Koda was, in fact, completely serious.

"Well, I imagine mammoth faeces would be hard to come by today...you know...other than in fossilised chunks that would be pretty difficult to work with." He answered sarcastically, inspecting the painting. "This is incredible! Your work is amazing! You must have studied at the university to get to this level!"

"At the Uni...wha?" Koda asked, looking more than a little confused. Alessandra struggled not to laugh. Koda was as far from a university graduate as anyone could get. He hadn't even attended school! Everything he knew was what he had learned from Kendall and his friends. Tyler put his arm around his dad and started to lead him away. They had spent all their time since James had revealed himself together; James hadn't learned anything about the team.

"Dad, there's something I need to tell you about Koda..."

"You...that sword!" James announced, approaching Ivan. Although his chief area of study was palaeontology, he did have an interest in human history as well, and often studied archaeology. Ivan bowed respectfully and offered his sword to James to inspect. His mouth was open in awe as he inspected it. "If I'm not mistaken, this is Zandarian in design! A Zandarian Longsword...well balanced, traditional smithing...these hand bindings...deer hide?"

"Only the finest." Ivan said proudly. James inspected the inscription on the blade.

"These etchings are amazing." He commented. "And this crest, Prince George the Warrior Poet if I'm not mistaken."

He handed turned it, offering the handle back to Ivan.

"This is a truly magnificent replica." He stated. Ivan's expression slipped, and he suddenly became very indignant.

"REPLICA?" He snapped, snatching the sword back. "I'll have you know Prince George himself presented me with this when I defeated the Laughing Knight in single battle at the Bridge of Ren!"

"Prince George?" James laughed. "I think you're looking a little young for an 820 year old!"

"Kind of like how you look a little young for a 42 year old hmmmm?" Ivan asked. James was taken aback by this, he didn't mean to offend Ivan, but the idea that he was trying to pass himself off as having been personally presented with a sword by a man who was known to die in the Great Plague of Zandar in 1221 was a little out there. Kendall intervened between them, putting herself between Ivan and James before things became any more heated.

"Ivan, be so kind as to put the very sharp, very real sword away would you?" Kendall asked him. Ivan picked up his scabbard and snapped the sword back into it. "I'm sure Tyler just hasn't gotten around to explaining to James about us."

"Explain what? That this guy believes he's some kind of knight?" James asked her, turning around and seeing Phillipe. "Next you'll be telling me that this guy is the Prince of Zandar!"

"Hereditary Prince Phillipe III of Zandar, at your service." Phillipe responded, offering a handshake. "May I say it's an honour to finally meet you? I would have tried to get you to appraise some of our finds on Zandar, but...you know...I doubt someone as renowned as you would have accepted the invitation of a 10 year old, even if it was the future Prince."

"It's true, he IS the Hereditary Prince, and currently the UN Ambassador to Zandar." Kendall assured him. "And Koda here, is a cave man. He discovered the Blue Energem 100,000 years ago! Ivan really was a Knight of Zandar, and Prince George's personal standard bearer."

James wanted to deny any of this, but he had seen so many bizarre things in the time since he had discovered his Energem that he couldn't outright think of anything as impossible.

"When they bonded to their Energems, they stopped aging. We all did." Shelby explained, opening one of his books, showing him the picture from inside the dust jacket. "And so did you."

James pulled out his Aqua Energem and just stared at it. He didn't even know what it was called until Tyler had told him, but the main things he knew about it were that it held incredible power, and that it was somehow linked to him on a level he couldn't understand.

"I...I knew this thing made me age slowly but...not at all?" He asked, his hand straying to his own face. It hadn't escaped his notice that he looked the same now as he had when he found the Energem, but since he was now strong enough to cause seismic shocks with his bare hands, he presumed that the energy somehow made him age more slowly.

"As long as you're bonded to the Energem, you'll never age." Kendall reaffirmed. James found a rock to take a seat on, the information he was hearing becoming too much for him. The team gathered around, seeing that this was obviously a lot for him to take in all at once.

"Dr Navarro?" Shelby asked. His thoughts, however, were elsewhere.

"This Energem stole 10 years of my life." James told them. "But then again, it saved my life."

"How did it happen?" Chase asked, finally approaching the question they'd all been wanting to know the answer to ever since they found him. James took a deep breath.

"I figured out there were some islands off the coast of Harwood that had been largely untapped, that nobody went to, but given the conditions there, it seemed like they were prime sites for a number of species." James began. "But, with my reputation being somewhat less than it used to be by that time, the university refused to fund me. So, I put together a small team, just me, Rusty and a couple of enthusiastic undergrads and whatever money we could scrape together ourselves. We paid for a boat and a captain, the only one we could afford...unfortunately...that was mistake number one. The guy was pretty much permanently ripped out of his skull on Jack Daniels. By the third day we were miles off-course and got caught up in a storm that beached us on an island I couldn't find on any map."

The Rangers all looked to each other, knowing that this was Gosei's Island. In truth it didn't show up on any navigation system, and was protected by an energy field which they must have mistaken for the storm. Having been through it themselves in search of the Ankylo Zord, they knew first-hand how it felt.

"We had no idea where we were and the boat needed a lot of repairs, but the place was incredible! I hadn't seen anything like it! It was built around a volcano, but there were carvings of animals on it that must have been done by tribes that died out long before we got there." He continued. "Everywhere we looked we were finding species, LIVING species that were long-thought extinct! The place was a virtual treasure-trove, so Rusty and I decided that while we were there, we should make the best of it and explore."

"You went exploring the caves." Chase surmised. He got some loud groans and a few of the team hit him to silence him. They were wanting to hear James' story, not the parts they already knew.

"We were deep underground in some caves, I swear I've never seen anything like it, we literally couldn't move for stepping on or tripping over something that would justify a full government grant for studying the island for decades. I even found a whole Ankylosaurus buried right there, miles under the Earth! It must have gotten caught in an eruption."

"An...um...Ankylosaurus you say?" Riley said. "So...what went wrong?"

"I don't know, but as I was trying to dig to get closer, I could almost swear I saw it moving." James told them. "Then the cave started to come down. We tried to get out, but Rusty slipped and fell. I went back for him. Rusty got out, but...I got trapped by falling rocks. Rusty kept calling out for me, trying to come back, but I knew I was done for, so...I told him to go."

"It was a difficult decision to make." Ivan told him. "I have known knights that would sooner save their own skin than sacrifice themselves when the time came."

"When the dust settled, I was trapped, unable to move. I wasn't killed, but I knew I'd never be able to get myself out. That was when I saw something glowing a little way off, in the fossilised Ankylosaurus." He continued his tale, recalling that day. "I didn't know why, I was nowhere near close enough to reach, but I reached out my hand, and this just flew into my hand right from the fossil. All of a sudden, I felt strong, stronger than I ever had in my life. I managed to free myself from the rock, but with my way blocked, I had to find another way out. By the time I finally found another way out, about three weeks had passed. Rusty and the others were gone."

The whole team was silent as they heard this. It was an incredible tale, but not one that was beyond belief. The Energems had sustained them through a lot. They regularly survived things that should realistically have killed them. Between that and James' natural survival instincts, it wasn't impossible to believe he could survive crawling through caves for almost a month.

"The island was great, there were a ton of edible plants and animals, I made a camp and stayed there waiting for a passing ship, but after a few months, it became pretty clear no one was coming back. So I figured if I was going to get off that island, I had to get off it myself."

"How?" Kendall asked him.

"I made a raft, but...that didn't last long. A few miles out from the shore I hit another storm. The raft was smashed into splinters in seconds." James explained. "I started swimming, not even knowing if I was going in anything like a direction I'd find someone to rescue me, but I figured I'd have more chance if I tried than if I just gave up. Before I knew it, I saw land...inhabited land. I couldn't believe it when I crawled up onto a pier and was told I'd managed to get to Harwood Harbour."

"HARWOOD?" They all chorused together.

"You swam all the way to Harwood?" Chase asked him.

"I know, I couldn't believe it myself, these Energems...they really do have a lot of power." James said, holding up his Energem. "My first thought was to get back home, but it wasn't long before a creature started following me, he ambushed me not long after I got into Harwood."

"Fury." Tyler surmised, remembering reading his dad's journals. James just nodded sadly.

"I tried everything to throw him off the scent. Abandoning my belongings, taking long routes, anything I could think of to get him off my trail, but every time, he seemed to end up finding me eventually, like he could smell my Energem." James told them. "I considered just giving it to him but the thought of this much power in the hands of something like him...I couldn't do it. That's when I realised I could never go home again. I couldn't take the chance of something happening to Tyler or his mother. So, I found Rusty, and after explaining things, I spent the rest of my time in hiding."

"You found Rusty?" Shelby asked him. "I'll bet THAT was a surprise for him!"

"Believe me, it was! He fainted the second he saw my face." James chuckled, remembering it. "But he did what he could to help me, sending me money when he could. We knew I couldn't risk anyone tailing me, so I had to cut myself off completely from my old life. I never stayed anywhere for more than a couple of days, I never was able to get a job or anything...Rusty's pretty much kept me going all these years."

"I knew it; I knew he knew more than he was telling us!" Shelby remarked. "He could have told us this ages ago and..."

"Please, don't think badly of him because of me. He only did what I asked him to do." James told them. He looked sadly to Tyler. "You have to believe me; if there was any other way...can you ever forgive me?"

"Of course, you didn't have a choice!" Tyler assured him, hugging James tightly. "But you don't have to run anymore."

Just then, an alarm sounded on the computer. Kendall checked it out.

"Alien bio signs in the city." She said, typing in a few keys. "I'm sending the co-ordinates to your Morphers."

"Alright, let's go!" Tyler declared. Kendall stopped Phillipe and James.

"Dr Navarro, Phillipe, I need you to stay a little while longer." She told them. "I'm working on a weapon that needs the energy of all the Energems. I've already uploaded the signatures from the others, but I need yours."

"But the team..."

"Trust me, we've been doing this for a while mate." Chase told him. "We'll call if we need you."

Reluctantly, Phillipe and James handed over their Energems as the rest of the team ran out find out what Heckyl...or Snide's...latest plan was.