Author's Notes: The four-people joke was, in fact, a reference to Tommy's four colors, and the different aspects of his life apparent when he wore those colors. Sorry to those of you that missed it.

This chapter goes out to Steven Quinlan and Jarel Jones, Steven for helping me out with some stuff for the OLaB sequel, and Jarel for sending me a wonderful list of errors made in OLaB that I'm currently working on correcting.

Chapter Sixty

Life's a Masquerade

"Any of you know how to work a video camera?" Rachel asked as she, Sandra and Dee marched purposefully through Stony Creek Park, with Rocky, Zack and Conner practically jogging to keep up. The three girls were each carrying well-worn shovels and had stuffed their pockets full of Sharpie markers.

"I'm 'technologically challenged,' according to my buddy Ethan," Conner said.

"I can," Zack said. Rachel shoved a camcorder into his hands. "Um, what do you want me to film?"

"We'll tell you once we find it," Rachel told him absently, choking up her grip on her shovel handle.

"Keep your eyes peeled, guys," Sandra said.

"For what?" Rocky asked.

"Nothing," Sandra said.

"How can we keep our eyes peeled for nothing?" Conner asked blankly.

"OOH! That's it!" Dee screamed, pointing wildly at a picnic table dead ahead. The three girls rushed at it, stabbing their shovels into the ground and flinging themselves onto the benches before uncapping their markers.

Rocky, Zack and Conner looked at each other. "They're going to vandalize public property, you know," Conner muttered.

"I'm aware of that, Conner," Rocky said. "What do you want to do? Walk away, call the guys to come get us, and hope that we find three more girls without a fondness for petty crimes?"

"When you put it like that…" Conner said slowly, thinking it over.

"I was joking," Rocky said. He nodded at the girls; Rachel and Sandra were doodling all over the tabletop with their Sharpies and Dee was scraping something off the underside of the table with a knife. "We passed like six tables on the way here. What's so special about that one?"

"And why's Dee scraping that gunk off?" Conner wondered.

"You guys," Zack said in exasperation, "we're reaching. This happens. I do it all the time. We all do. You see something weird, you start trying to reason it out, but sometimes, just sometimes, there's not a reason. It's just that we're so used to there being a reason. When our friends act funny, we wonder if they're under evil spells. When our wallets go missing, we wonder if it's been turned into a wallet monster. There's always that momentary flash of 'this is an evil villain's work.' It's just something we never grew out of. Because it used to be reality."

"Zack! Come get some shots of this," Sandra called.

"Coming! Just a sec!" Zack yelled. He turned back to Rocky and Conner. "Anyway, it's not our reality anymore. Sometimes our friends act weird for no reason, and sometimes we accidentally flush our wallet down the toilet. So they're defacing a picnic table. Yes, that's bad. But in the end, they're just girls who like to draw on stuff they're not legally supposed to draw on. There is no conspiracy. We're not crime-fighters anymore. We're three guys looking to—"

"Where'd they go?" Conner interrupted suddenly.

Rocky and Zack looked around. The girls had disappeared. "Aw, damn," Rocky complained.

Rocky, Zack and Conner jogged over to the picnic table. The girls had drawn a small version of their logo in the bottom left corner of the tabletop, and covered the rest of it in everything from stars and stick figures to unrecognizable symbols. "Look, the logo's a little faded," Conner said. "Like it's been here a while. Maybe they did it a long time ago, when they were here before. Maybe that's why they wanted this table."

"Now I know where I've seen the logo before," Zack said. "There's a huge mural on a bridge near my cousin Curtis's house. He told me he saw three chicks drawing it in marker. They put the same logo on it."

"Okay, bigger picture—where'd they go?" Rocky asked.

"Shovels are gone," Conner pointed out.

"This is ridiculous," Rocky grumbled. "This only happens to people like us, you know."

"Well aware of that," Zack said. He sighed and looked at Rocky. "What do you think, man? Have we been ditched?"

"Ditched? No. No way," Rocky said firmly. "We've just… been momentarily forgotten."

Rocky's phone went off, blaring an old song that Tanya had written about her days as a Ranger (only not in so many words). Rocky groaned; all of his ring tones were personalized. "It's Adam," Rocky said, hitting the send button. "Hello?"

"Rocky? Where the hell are you?"

"I don't know. Somewhere in Stony Creek Park."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Trini found some stuff on the Internet."

"What kind of stuff?" Rocky joked.

"Your new girlfriend's a criminal."

Rocky rolled his eyes. "Yeah, the graffiti stuff, I know."

"Not the graffiti stuff. They're axe murderers!"

"Come on, Adam, that's Trini talking, not you. They're not axe murderers. I think I would've noticed an axe in the car."

"There's one in the back seat," Conner said helpfully.

Rocky frowned at him. "Conner, I'm on the phone."

"No, seriously," Adam insisted. "They make a living robbing convenience stores and stuff."

Rocky frowned. "Adam, you're blowing things way out of proportion."

"I am not! Look, just hold still. Billy, Trini, Jason and I split up; we'll find you eventually."

"You're looking for us?" Rocky demanded incredulously.

"Yes! Those girls are dangerous!"

Rocky rolled his eyes. "No, Adam, they're not. Evil space mutants are dangerous. Giant robots are dangerous. We are dangerous. Not them. Now calm down, would you? I'm having fun. I'm hoping I'll get to have a lot more fun. But that's not going to happen if my crazy best friend interrupts because he's under the delusion that I'm trying to score with an axe murderer."

"Rocky—"

"Adam, I mean it. No interruptions. Remember what happened that one time with that Sarah chick?"

"That Sarah chick was completely different!"

"You thought she was a prostitute."

"She was an undercover cop! Anyone could make that mistake!"

"Adam, seriously. Back off. I'll talk to you later." Rocky hung up and shook his head. "You were right, Zack. We're totally reaching."

Zack nodded wisely. "It's an ex-Ranger thing. We all go a little overboard sometimes."

"Right." Rocky glanced around. "Okay. Let's see if we can find their footprints or something. They can't have gone far, and I wanna find them before Adam does. Or one of the others."

"Clock's ticking," Zack said determinedly. He and Rocky each took one side of the table and began searching for traces of the girls.

"Um… I thought we weren't going to go overboard," Conner said in confusion. "You know, try to act like normal people."

"Normal people look for footprints, too," Rocky said absently.

Conner frowned. Conner had been "normal" only nine months ago, whereas it had been much longer for Zack and Rocky. "Um… are you sure?"

"How else would normal people find someone?" Rocky pointed out reasonably.

Conner cleared his throat. "Um… so… what was that about axe murderers and prostitutes?"

"The prostitute thing was about my ex-girlfriend," Rocky said vaguely, intent on his search. "Adam saw her dressed like a hooker and picking up guys on the street. He spent the next three days trying to tell me, and finally burst out with it in the middle of a crowded restaurant on a double date. Right in front of her. Only she wasn't a prostitute, she was a cop. Vice squad. Not only did I lose a girlfriend, I lost one of my favorite restaurants."

"Adam's got a thing about ruining double dates at restaurants," Zack muttered sourly, remembering the morpher malfunction.

"Oh. So, um," Conner began, "what about the axe murderer thing?"

"Oh, nothing. Adam said something about Trini finding a webpage with criminal information or something."

"Oh, man, I hate when she starts with the Internet thing," Zack complained. "It's all downhill from there. You date one transvestite by accident once and people think you can't pick out a decent girl. If I had a dollar for every criminal background check Trini dug up—"

"Transvestite?" Rocky and Conner repeated, staring at him.

Zack cringed. "Um… oh, hey! Ah-ha!" Zack bent down and picked up a red Sharpie off the ground. "They went this way!"

Rocky and Zack headed down the path through the trees. Conner, however, hesitated. Rocky had totally dodged the axe murderer question. Adam was in the park and searching for them. And even though Rocky and Zack were acting calm, they were putting a little too much work into reassuring themselves that nothing was wrong. And now the three girls had vanished into the woods. With shovels. After making their truck as inconspicuous as possible.

"Conner! You coming?"

Conner fished a ski mask out of his pocket. "Right behind you."

He caught up with Rocky and Zack at a fork in the path, and nearly got his butt kicked for the crime of popping up behind them while wearing a mask.

"Jeez, man, don't do that!" Zack complained.

"What's with the ski mask?" Rocky demanded.

Conner shrugged. "There was a bunch of them in the truck."

Rocky and Zack stared at him. "Dude," Zack chided, "when you see something as fishy as a pile of ski masks, you warn us."

"Oh. Okay, sorry."

Rocky and Zack looked at Conner expectantly; after a long moment, he figured out what they wanted and handed them the two spare masks. "They were in your pocket, this time, right?" Zack asked suspiciously.

"Yeah. Promise."

"Okay, then." Zack inspected his mask carefully. A small blue dragon was embroidered on the dark purple knit. "What did you get, Rocky?"

Rocky held his up. "Cat."

Zack pouted. "Yours is black."

"And red."

"Mine's got a blue dragon." Zack shook the mask at him enticingly.

Rocky looked tempted, but held firm. "Nuh-uh, man. Trade with Conner."

"No way!" Conner exclaimed. "This one's Dee's."

"How can you tell?" Rocky asked.

"It's got a hermit crab. Dee strikes me as a hermit crab kind of girl."

"Come on, Conner, trade with Zack."

"No! He's black, not green!"

"I wanna wear the black one," Zack insisted.

"For crying out loud!" Rocky snatched it from him in exasperation and yanked it onto his head. "I can't believe we're arguing about which ski mask we want!"

"Yeah, it was definitely on the 'Unlikely List of Arguments,'" Zack agreed as he cheerfully slipped the red-and-black mask on.

"I like the mask," Conner proclaimed, looking around the picturesque park and breathing as deeply as he could with the material covering his mouth and nose. He felt oddly calmer now that he had anonymity on his side again. "Any luck finding them?" he asked.

"Nope," Zack said, gesturing at the path. "They could have taken either fork. Maybe we should split up."

Conner pointed at a woman sitting on a bench down the left fork, reading a book and absently petting a leashed golden retriever. "I'll go ask if she's seen them."

"Wait, Conner, I don't think that's such a good—" Rocky began.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Conner asked the woman in his most polite, normal-person voice. "Have you seen three girls carrying shovels go by?"

The woman looked up at Conner. Only she didn't see Conner. She saw a tall, muscular guy in a ski mask looming over her.

"Attack!" the woman screamed.

Conner, without thinking, dropped into a martial arts stance. "Attack who?" he started to ask, only to realize she hadn't been talking to Conner. She'd been talking to her dog.

With a bark loud enough to mark the dog as a close relative of Cujo, the dog sprang forward, almost snapping his leash as he attempted to snap his jaws onto Conner. Conner yelped and backpedaled, narrowly avoiding the snarling dog as he sprinted back down the path. Rocky and Zack had vanished from view. Conner ran back down the path towards the picnic table when an arm reached out and grabbed his shirt, hauling him into the trees.

Conner was three seconds from punching out his new attacker when he realized Zack had hold of his shirt. Rocky was a few feet away, crouched behind a bush and spying on the dog owner.

"Did you see that?" Conner gasped. "I was almost Kibble and Bits!"

"Dude, you don't chat people up when wearing a ski mask," Zack said in exasperation. "Even I know that."

"Good point." Conner took a few gulps of air, then frowned. "Wait. How do you know that?"

Before Zack could reply, Rocky stood up and headed towards them. "The lady's on her cell phone. I think she's calling 911."

"Great. Do we lose the masks?" Zack wondered.

"Nah. She might have gotten a good look at what Conner was wearing. If we're gonna be caught, we might as well have a shot at not being identified."

"Makes sense," Zack agreed.

"Wait, wait, wait. Caught?" Conner repeated. "Caught doing what? Asking for directions?"

"I don't think we want to explain to anyone that we were just looking for some graffiti artists we picked up at a carnival we got kicked out of," Rocky explained grimly.

"Ah," Conner said slowly. "So… what now?"

"Now we keep looking for the graffiti artists we picked up at a carnival we got kicked out of," Zack said cheerfully. Rocky and Zack set off through the woods. Shrugging, Conner pulled his mask a little lower and followed.

"I don't believe him!" Kimberly raged as she stomped mindlessly through the carnival, Kira practically running beside her, struggling to keep up. "Can you believe him? I can't believe him!"

"What, exactly, can't you believe?" Kira asked.

"That he would… would… orchestrate that!"

Kira thought it over. "Why does it bother you?"

"What do you mean, why does it bother me?"

"Well…" Kira swallowed, choosing her words carefully, "why does Dr. O wanting to, you know, kiss you, make you so upset?"

"That's not what makes me upset!" Kimberly proclaimed, whirling around to face Kira so fast that Kira had to fight the urge to retreat.

"Then… what is?" Kira asked in a small voice.

"I… he… I… he challenged me, Kira. Challenged!"

Kira tried to see Kimberly's logic and failed. "I'm not following."

"He's fighting me, Kira. Challenging me. He's out to take me down, not to kiss me."

Kira scratched her head. "Dr. O doesn't strike me as the type who kisses you as part of a fight. I mean, I've seen him go after some pretty major monsters, and—"

Kimberly sighed. "It's not about that. It's that Tommy's gone all… all Trini on me."

"Trini tries to kiss you?"

"No! Oh, man," Kimberly moaned, massaging her temples. "Okay. How do I explain this? All week, Trini's been trying to get me to get back with Tommy. And now Tommy's doing the same thing."

"And you don't want that?"

"No! Yes! No—I don't know!" Kimberly stamped her foot in frustration. "That's not the point!"

"What is the point?" Kira asked desperately. "I mean, I'm trying to get it, I really am, but… it sounds to me like you're more concerned with fighting Dr. O than you are with whether or not you want to give it another shot."

"Exactly!" Kimberly shouted. "I'm not going to let anyone goad me into doing anything!"

"So… um… what is it you do want to do?"

Kimberly opened her mouth to reply. Then she shut it. What did she want?

Well, for starters, making out with Tommy on a park bench sounded pretty nice.

Kimberly cocked her head to the side and stared at Kira. "Huh."

"Huh, what?"

"I want… I wanted that. I really did."

Kira pushed aside her personal feelings about the ick factor of her science teacher having a social life and tried to put things into perspective. "So… basically, you're not doing what you want to do because Dr. O's trying to get you to do it anyway?"

There was a long pause. Then Kimberly nodded.

"And… why does it matter that Dr. O wants you to do it if you want to do it anyway?" Kira asked.

Kimberly giggled in a helpless sort of way and threw up her hands. "I don't know, Kira. I don't know."

Kira's eyes narrowed. "I think you do."

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not great at this relationship stuff, but—I think you do know why it bothers you."

Kimberly stared at her for a moment, halfway to offended, before sighing. "Okay, so maybe I do."

"And?"

"And you can't tell a soul. Not Tommy, not Trini, not Trent, nobody."

"Promise."

Kimberly took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's the fight."

"The fight?"

"Yeah. The fight." Kimberly shook her head. "I haven't gotten to fight anything in a long time, Kira. My life went really smoothly after I left the team. Made a name for myself as a gymnast, opened a successful school. I haven't had anything to truly fight for in a long time. And… and I'm not about to lose the first one that's come along in years!"

Kira raised an eyebrow at her. "You know that's a stupid reason, right?"

Kimberly shifted uncomfortably. "Maybe, but… well… I don't care! Trini has all these interesting projects with Ranger stuff, and Tommy's got all these weird dinosaur experiments, and Zack can't have a normal life for three seconds straight, and Billy's king of an alien planet, and Jason's always Mr. Leader and solving everyone else's conflicts, and what am I? A gymnast. And I love gymnastics, I really do, but damn it, Kira, I want to kick something's butt!"

Kira regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment. Then she slowly raised her fists. "All right. You and me, let's go."

"Kira, I meant—"

"Come on! You want to kick someone's butt, let's go. I mean, we might've sparred the other day, but I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve and maybe I'll surprise you."

"Kira, that's… um, sweet, but—"

"I'm not being sweet. I'm throwing down. It's you and me. Or, more accurately, it's you or me."

Kimberly chuckled. Then she went oddly still, as if she'd just had an epiphany.

Then she lunged at Kira.

"There you are!"

Rocky, Zack and Conner jumped and spun around to find themselves face-to-face with Dee. "Did you get any shots of the picnic table?" Dee asked, as though nothing out of the ordinary—like disappearing so that the guys had been forced to follow a trail of Sharpie markers all over the park—had happened.

"Uh, yeah," Zack lied quickly.

"Sorry about borrowing your masks," Conner said.

"Gotta do what you gotta do," Dee said, shrugging. "Why are you wearing them, anyway?"

The three guys looked at each other. They didn't really have an actual reason, unless one counted uneasiness and the desire to have a secret identity in a possibly volatile situation. "No reason," Conner said finally.

"Ah," Dee said, as though it made perfect sense to wear ski masks in public without cause.

"Where are Sandra and Rachel?" Zack asked, figuring it was time to change the subject.

"Over there. They sent me to find you guys."

"Really?" Rocky said, grinning at Zack (which didn't work so well when his mouth was covered by a mask). At least they knew the girls hadn't been trying to ditch them.

"Yeah. Oh, and you know that one friend of yours? They're here."

"Which friend?" Rocky asked, his good mood evaporating.

"Um… I forget her name. The Asian chick with the pretty hair and the loud screaming voice…?"

"Trini," Zack whispered, wincing.

"Yeah, that's her. She chased me for like fifteen minutes straight, calling me an axe murderer."

"Are you an axe murderer?" Conner asked suspiciously.

"What? No. Of course not. I've never killed anybody."

"Well, that's settled, then," Rocky joked, though Conner thought he looked distinctly relieved.

"Back to Trini," Zack said quickly, "how'd you get away?"

"I threw Sharpies at her head and ran for it," Dee explained. "Lost her around the fourth or fifth Sharpie. I think your friend is really unstable, by the way. And she owes me half a pack of fine points."

"Sorry about that," Zack said, glancing about uneasily, as if expected Trini to pop out from behind a tree at any moment.

"No problem. It's not like we don't have a lot of Sharpies to spare," Dee said cheerfully. "Come on. Rachel and Sandra should be almost done by now."

"Done with what?" Rocky asked as they followed Dee through the woods. He and Zack both began tossing the Sharpies they'd been picking up off into opposite directions, just in case Trini or any of their other friends was also following a marker trail.

"Digging," Dee replied.

"Digging what?" Conner asked.

"Dirt."

"No, I meant, what are they digging up?"

"A box."

"You're not much for straight answers, are you?" Rocky asked dryly.

"Sometimes."

A few moments later, Dee, Rocky, Zack and Conner arrived at a small clearing in the woods, where Rachel and Sandra were fervently digging. About a dozen other holes, roughly a foot wide and two feet deep, marked the area.

"Hey!" Zack called.

"Oh, hey! Where you guys been?" Rachel asked.

"Around," Conner said.

"This soil's a lot harder than I remember," Sandra said, tossing a shovelful of dirt out of the way. She paused to push her hair out of her eyes. "Just so you guys know—we've found it's usually not a good idea to wear ski masks in public."

"Yeah, tell me about it. Some lady sicced her dog on me," Conner complained.

"Did it get you?" Dee asked, concerned.

"No, I—" Conner paused. "Ran away" didn't sound quite… right. "I, um, I scared it off."

Dee shuddered. "I hate dogs. Cats are cool, though."

"You know," Conner mused, "plenty of people hate dogs and like cats, and plenty of people love dogs and hate cats, but how come if someone hates a cat, it's not because the cat tried to bite the person's leg off?"

Dee thought it over, then gave him a deeply impressed look. "Wow. You really are the brainy type."

"Yeah, that's Conner for you," Rocky said wryly as he hopped over a couple of holes and headed towards Rachel. "Need any help?"

Rachel shrugged. "If you want to grab Dee's shovel, we'd appreciate it. She sucks at digging. That's why we sent her after you three."

"I do not!"

"You do when you're distracted by anything. Which is always."

Rocky picked up the shovel. "What exactly are we digging for?"

"Box. Metal. Down about three feet. We buried it here a year and a half ago."

"Why?" Conner asked curiously.

Rachel's expression and tone became a little too casual to be natural. "It's not important."

Steven sighed as he stomped down a path through Stony Creek Park. "I can't believe they're going to send forty of us to Angel Grove," he grumbled to his partner, Jarel.

"Aw, come on, Steven," Jarel chided. "Don't you want to meet the Power Rangers?"

"I did meet the Power Rangers," Steven informed him. "Several times. I was also at the first Power Rangers Day. I got sucked into another dimension with the rest of the town."

"What are the odds of that happening again?" Jarel said, smirking.

Steven rolled his eyes. "Well, it's happened to me twice. I know it's not exactly scary to you. You got to grow up in nice, safe Los Angeles."

"Yeah, cuz Los Angeles doesn't have a single crime," Jarel drawled. It was a conversation they'd had many times before, pretty much since the moment they'd become partners on the Stone Canyon police force. Angel Grove, with a population of roughly four hundred thousand, didn't have a fraction of L.A.'s crime rate. Steven, however, insisted that the trauma of growing up with Power Rangers was just as bad as growing up amongst murderers, rapists and thieves.

"Listen," Steven began, but Jarel ignored him, calling out to a teenaged couple coming up the path.

"Can we help you, Officer?" the girl asked politely.

"I was just wondering if you've seen anything out of the ordinary," Jarel said politely. Jarel had a talent for knowing just how to make people feel at ease; he was often the good cop to Steven's bad cop.

"Eh, no—we just got here," the boy replied. "The only weird thing we've seen so far was a beat-up orange truck in the parking lot, but unless you're looking for goofy bumper stickers—"

"Thanks anyway," Jarel said, and stepped aside so the two of them could pass. He turned to Steven. "You think we'll find this guy?"

"Hope so," Steven said. "Although Angel Grove might not want us if we can't find one single guy in—"

"In forty-odd acres?" Jarel interrupted. "When we've got a vague description off a hysterical housewife? Yeah, not finding this guy might even cost us our jobs. Dream on, man."

They were currently looking for some freak in a ski mask who had scared a housewife out walking her dog. Though she hadn't been harmed, and had even admitted that on second thought he hadn't seemed all that threatening, there weren't many reasons for wearing a ski mask in June. There hadn't been any crimes reported in the area committed by someone wearing a mask, so they had to assume that it was a kid pulling pranks to scare people or something a bit more sinister, like a criminal burying evidence, though the latter weren't often prone to trying to chat up dog-walkers.

"Let's get off the path," Steven said. "He's probably not wandering around in plain sight while masked. At least, not anymore."

"If he's still wearing the mask," Jarel pointed out, but he followed Steven into the woods anyway. "And all we have to go on besides a green ski mask with a crustacean on it is that he was wearing either a black shirt or a red shirt."

"Maybe we'll be able to stave off getting sent to Angel Grove while we look for him," Steven said hopefully. "It could take until at least Saturday night, right?"

"It's Wednesday. You're still reaching, dude."

"No one says 'dude' anymore."

"Except for every other person on the planet who says it and also has to listen to everyone saying that no one says it anymore. Anyway, don't change the subject."

"What subject were we on?"

"Why you don't want to go to Angel Grove."

"I told you why."

"No, mostly you bitched about going. There was no why."

Steven sighed. "Do you know how long the citizens of Angel Grove were trapped in an alternate dimension on the last Power Rangers Day?"

"No, how long?"

"No one knows. All our watches stopped. Pagers, too. Some people even had their cameras fried."

"And your point is…?"

"My point is that it's not fun to get teleported into another dimension!" Steven exploded. "It's also not fun to get shot at by Power Ranger blasters—"

"They shot at you? Dude, Rangers shot at you?"

"Technically, Putty Patrollers disguised as them fired duplicate weapons on us helpless townsfolk. And that was just an average day." Steven had never gone too in-depth about his days in Angel Grove, primarily because he didn't like to rehash the trauma, but now that he was letting it out it just wouldn't stop coming. "That's not to mention the giant monsters and zords crashing into buildings and stepping on everything from chewing gum to my dirt bike. And the regular monsters that chased you down or attempted to kidnap you or just fired blasts of god-knows-what at you. I've been burned, kicked, punched, thrown, kidnapped, teleported, knocked unconscious, tossed a good fifty feet from explosion shockwaves, attacked by creepy clay monsters, attacked by creepy bird monsters, attacked by creepy robot monsters, turned into a photograph, turned into gold, held hostage, hypnotized, put under sleep spells, forced to sing the same song over and over and over again, and put under two different love spells, one of which had me making out with my bio lab partner that I wouldn't have ordinarily touched under any circumstances, and the other had me believing that it was a good idea to marry a neon sign that said 'Winky's.'"

Jarel stopped and stared at him for a full two minutes without blinking. At last, he seemed to fully process this speech and responded with, "Dude… Winky's?"

"Yes, Winky's. It's a pool hall that I'm never going back to."

"I don't think you should have gone there in the first place, all things considered."

"I'm telling you, man. Angel Grove is psychotic. I got the hell out of there right after that Astronomer, or whatever her name was, held the entire town hostage."

Jarel digested this new information as they started wandering through the woods again, looking this way and that, automatically scanning for anything suspicious. "Okay. I guess that's a good reason for not wanting to go home again. But… correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't all that over with now? Angel Grove doesn't have its own Rangers. They're off in Reefside or something now."

"That's not enough. I mean, the Space Rangers weren't around that much, and we were still held hostage overnight. Besides…" Steven sighed. "As crazy as this sounds, I have this… theory. That the place is, well, tainted. Every time I go back there to visit my folks or see my friends or anything, it's one moment of chaos after another until I find my way back to the safety of Stone Canyon. And the people there are completely insane. Trust me, Jarel—a three-day stint helping patrol the city of Angel Grove is four days too long."

"Yeah, well, you're on the other side now, right? Keeping a lid on the craziness, not falling victim to it."

Steven simply shook his head. "Just don't blame me when you're spending your Saturday wandering around an alternate dimension with a couple hundred thousand other people and a broken two-hundred-dollar watch. I tried to warn you."

"Hey, do you hear that?" Jarel asked, pausing to listen.

"What?"

"This way." Jarel made an abrupt left turn, following what sounded like a small group having a bit of a party. It probably was just a small party, but they were pretty far off the path and most people picnicked in the grassy areas or by the barbecue pits, not this far in the forest.

A few moments later, he and Steven were at the edge of a small clearing, staring incredulously at the sight before them. Two girls holding shovels were grinning happily at a box held by a third, while three guys stood nearby, whispering amongst themselves; one of them was holding his own shovel. All three guys were wearing ski masks.

"That's the one," Jarel whispered. "Green mask with a crab."

Steven shook his head. "Who really gets custom-designed ski masks?"

Jarel shrugged. "I don't really care. Not that there are lots of guys in ski masks running around a public park in southern California in summer, but it's always nice when they make it a little easier for us."

Steven shook his head. "Fifty bucks," he muttered darkly. "I'll bet you fifty bucks that these people are from Angel Grove."

Jarel chuckled before drawing his weapon and stepping out into the open. "Freeze!" he shouted. "Hands in the air, now!"