chapters:

1. straight up

"I don't understand why you feel the need to burn things."  Dr. K was working at the kitchen table for once, on a tiny laptop instead of the hulking computer screens she usually hid behind.  She was pretending not to pay any attention to the preparations going on around her.

"Well, I don't understand why you'd have to ask," Dillon said, banging on the table as he passed and getting a glare in return.  "So we're even."

"I didn't ask," she informed him.  "I merely made an observation."

"Yeah, here's another one," he said, swinging around the counter and stealing a marshmallow while Ziggy wasn't looking.  "Don't wear that."

"Don't wear--what, this?"  She actually glanced down at herself as though she had no idea what she wore every single day.  "Why not?"

"Are you eating my marshmallows?" Ziggy demanded.

Dillon took another one.  "Yeah, why?"

"Because!" Ziggy exclaimed.  "They're for the s'mores!"

"What's a s'more?" he asked, amused by Ziggy's sputter and only partly distracted by the way Dr. K was now totally ignoring him.  "Hey," he said, chucking the marshmallow in her direction.  "Catch."

She did--without flinching, without even looking up--and he tried but he couldn't figure out if she'd been watching out of the corner of her eye or if she'd reacted after he said something.  More interesting was the fact that she actually ate it.  One hand still on the keyboard, the other holding the marshmallow: it took her three bites but she licked her fingers afterwards and the sight made him smile.

"S'mores are delicious sandwiches of goodness," Ziggy was saying, "which always leave you wanting some more.  Hence the name.  If you'd leave some of the marshmallows for the campfire, you could try one yourself."

Correctly deducing that this didn't require an answer, Dillon sat down across from the laptop and stared over it until she looked up.  "Yes?"

"Corinth has bugs," he said.  "I assume you're familiar with the concept of crepuscular biting insects?  It's sunset.  They're going to eat you alive."

"I think not," Dr. K said, returning her attention to the computer.

"I think yes," Dillon countered.  "Also, your lab coat is going to smell like smoke, and I happen to know that Summer has been too distracted to do laundry for... let's say quite a while.  So unless you're planning to do it yourself, or you for some reason don't mind smelling like a campfire, I suggest you change."

"I am capable of doing laundry," she told the laptop.

"So am I," Dillon said.  "Doesn't mean I'm falling over myself to volunteer."

"Unless it's yours," Ziggy called from the refrigerator.  "Hey, that could work!  Just get Dillon to do your laundry instead of Summer."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Dillon said.

Dr. K didn't look up.  "Starting when?"

He assumed this was directed at him.  "What?"

She did stop typing then, and she caught his eye with a look that was either amused or unimpressed.  Sometimes it was hard to tell.  "Responding to something necessarily indicates that you are, on some level, aware of it.  If you didn't hear Ziggy's suggestion, did you perceive it on some other level?  Or are you planning to start pretending you didn't hear it later?"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Dillon repeated, "to the extent that I will forego physical retribution.  Clear enough?"

"A verbal warning is technically physical retribution," she pointed out.  "Since your vocal chords are, physically, a part of you."

He put both arms on the table and stared back at her, willing his smile away.  "That," he said, "is a petty argument about semantics that I personally think is beneath you."

Dr. K blinked.  She didn't look away, though, and after a moment she admitted, "I... have no idea what to say to that."

He couldn't keep from smiling any longer.  "And that's what I like about you, Doc.  You give it to us straight up.  No matter what it is."

"Does that mean that you're going to do her laundry?" Ziggy wanted to know.  He was hanging over the kitchen counter, looking unabashedly interested in their conversation.

"Excuse me," Dillon said, pushing his chair back.  "I have some physical retribution to exact now."

2. enough to ask

Ziggy hadn't been sure Dr. K even owned regular clothes.  And maybe it didn't count just because she'd taken off her lab coat, but the dark pants she was wearing with her usual sweater and blouse looked suspiciously like jeans.  He kept trying to check, to look closely enough to be sure one way or the other, but she was really good at catching people trying to sneak up on her.

When Dillon started to frown at him, he realized two things.  One, it didn't look good to be repeatedly staring at Dr. K's butt, and two, if there was anyone on the team he didn't want mad at him, it was Dillon.  So he blurted out, "Hey, Dr. K, are those jeans?"

She was still hunched over her laptop while the rest of them loaded up the camping gear: wood and kindling and folding chairs and marshmallow toasting sticks, the marshmallows themselves, more food, drinks... they were probably forgetting something.  Bug repellent?  Warm clothes?

"In terms of DNA, or clothing?" Dr. K asked without looking up.

Ziggy blinked.  "Uh, what?"

"Clothing," Dillon said.  "He's surprised you're wearing jeans."

"Many things seem to surprise Series Green."  Dr. K frowned at the screen, tapping briefly on the keyboard and then tilting her head to study the result.  She didn't say anything else, and Ziggy wondered if that was the whole answer.

"Okay."  He sat down at the table, prompting Flynn to yell for whatever he'd been sent to get in the kitchen.  Ziggy couldn't really remember what it was, but he saw Dillon adding something to his armful of stuff and he figured it was covered.  "What's it gonna take to get you to call me Ziggy?"

Dr. K glanced down at the keyboard as she started typing again.  "Do you want me to call you Ziggy?"

"Yeah!" he exclaimed.  "I mean, I get that Dillon's special and all, but there's nothing wrong with us, right?  I like the Ranger title thing as much as the next person--really, it's great--but it would totally help with the whole garagemate part of the deal if you maybe sometimes used our names."

She didn't look up.  "Very well."

"Look, I'm just saying," Ziggy began, and then his brain caught up.  "Wait, what?"

"Very well," Dr. K repeated.  "I will endeavor to use your given name instead of your operator designation when appropriate."

"What, just like that?" he demanded.  "All we had to do was ask?"

She shrugged.  "Dillon did."

"Yeah, but--" Ziggy sputtered to a halt, not totally sure whether the more important question was when or how.  Dillon said she'd called him by name since they met, and he couldn't quite imagine Dillon asking Dr. K for anything back then.

"'Asked' might be overstating it," Dillon said dryly.  His gaze raked across them as he passed the table again, heading back into the kitchen.  "I told her to call me Dillon.  And if I recall, she told me to go to hell."

"You obviously don't recall," Dr. K replied, still watching something on her screen.  "I'm quite certain I never told any of the Ranger operators to go to hell."

"I could hear you thinking it," Dillon said over his shoulder.

Dr. K raised her eyebrows at the screen.  "I find that unlikely."

Dillon didn't answer, so Ziggy asked, "Uh, so, why did you?  I mean, why do you?  Call him Dillon?  Unless that's a stupid question, in which case, you guys should totally be more obvious.  Because we're all pretty sure you like each other, but the betting pool is based on the assumption you haven't actually kissed yet."

Dr. K lifted her head to stare at him.  "Excuse me?"

"Uh..."  Ziggy looked back into the kitchen, where Dillon stood frozen with bottles in both hands.  Okay, so they hadn't thought of that yet.  Or were they shocked that he'd seen through them?

No, he decided.  That was a genuinely stunned look on Dillon's face.  If the two of them were actually making out behind their backs, he would look at least a little amused.  Or smug.  Or even innocent--Dillon had a particularly entertaining innocent expression which worked on exactly none of them except Scott.  And sometimes Flynn.  And Summer, once.

It worked on Ziggy all the time, which drove him crazy.  But the point was that he knew what it looked like, and this wasn't it.  This was Dillon actually being surprised that someone had mentioned him, Dr. K, and kissing all in the same sentence.  Which meant that someone seriously needed to teach the guy how to court a girl, or they were all going to get clipped by pre-dating antagonism for possibly the rest of their lives.

"Yeah," Ziggy said, turning back to the table.  "What I'm saying is that if you were actually together, it would be kind of stupid for me to ask why you call him Dillon, but everyone's betting you're not, so if you are you should be more obvious about it so we can adjust the pool, right?  Hello?  Is this making sense?"

"Not really, no."  Dr. K was looking at her laptop again, apparently dismissing him the way she always did when he said something she found stupid.

There was no answer from behind him, and Ziggy smiled.  It didn't take much to make Dillon think.  It just wasn't always the usual things that did it.

3. better because of you

It had already been dark when they rolled up to the beach, and Dillon assumed that was the only reason Flynn's vehicle didn't draw more attention.  Its hulking silhouette was uniquely distinctive to his eye, but he was used to other people not being good with the details.  They hadn't exactly kept their voices down while they were unloading, and the little campfire wasn't subtle on the sand, but other beachgoers were giving them a wide berth.

"Flashlights," Ziggy said, for the twenty-seventh time.  He was rooting around in the cooler, trying to tilt it toward the fire without spilling everything all over the beach, and he complained, "I knew we were forgetting something."

There was plenty of light for Dillon, but it had been funny to watch Scott and Flynn trying to organize the fire.  Summer had gotten it lit, but only after they'd given each other splinters, fumbled the kindling, and tried to ignore Ziggy's completely unhelpful advice.  Dillon wasn't sure why they had done it when he could build and light a fire in under two minutes--without pre-supplied fuel or kindling--but they didn't ask, so he didn't offer.

"Give it here."  Dillon reached out and hooked the cooler with one finger, dragging it toward him.  "What do you want?"

He didn't bother to wonder why he helped Ziggy without being asked, when the rest of the Rangers' activities still struck him as invitation-only.  No more than he wondered why Dr. K was sitting serenely on the same piece of driftwood he was leaning against, instead of in one of the chairs.  These things just were, and it really didn't matter if he understood them or not.

"Thanks," Ziggy said, flopping down beside him with his drink.  "You want anything, Dr. K?  Another drink?  More chocolate?  Marshmallows to burn?"

She had to have been doing it on purpose, but Dr. K had caught every single one of her marshmallows on fire.  He'd been surprised she agreed to the activity in the first place; he thought at first that she was deliberately trying to sabotage it.  But she'd eaten them all.  Most of the blackened marshmallows went directly into her mouth--or at least, from her marshmallow stick to her fingers to her mouth--but at one point she'd sandwiched a couple between crackers and chocolate and she'd eaten that too.

"More bug repellent," Dr. K said, and he heard her waving invisible bugs away yet again.  "I thought smoke kept them away."

If there were any bugs on the beach at all, he hadn't noticed them.  Corinth was a lot more insect-friendly than some of the places he'd been in the last year, but the beach was actually kind of familiar.  The sand, the wind, the fire... even the water, sometimes.

"Sit next to Dillon," Ziggy was saying.  "The bugs don't bother him.  He has some kind of magical anti-bug aura."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dillon muttered.  Which was true, even if he was pretty sure Ziggy had just implied that Dr. K wasn't close enough.  To Dillon.  And it wasn't that he minded; the Rangers were always hanging all over him.  It was just what they did.

But someone could have asked him, right?  It wasn't like it mattered that they all thought he and Dr. K were tight.  But if they were going to harass him about it every time they turned around, they could at least ask him if it was true.

"I'm already next to him," Dr. K said.  "And I assure you, whatever aura you think he has is not helping."

"Have a blanket," Scott offered.  He rooted one out of the pile and got up, walking it carefully around the fire to her.  When she just stared up at him he added, "It's another layer between you and the bugs.  Trust me, it makes them way less annoying."

"And you less cold," Summer added.  She already had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, knees pulled up in front of her camp chair as she smiled at them.  "That makes everything more tolerable."

"The trick is to get low," Dillon grumbled, holding up his hand for the blanket.  Scott hadn't glared at him yet, but he figured it was only a matter of time before their fearless leader decided it was his fault Dr. K was unhappy.  "Here."

He leaned forward, tossing the blanket over the log behind him and pulling a corner of it onto the sand.  "Sit," he said, pointing at the blanket-covered sand.

Dr. K looked at him like he'd lost his mind, but at least she didn't point out that she was already sitting.  "Why?"

"Because you have less exposed surface area when you're on the ground," Dillon told her.  "It's warmer, it's less buggy, and if I have an aura it probably doesn't extend very far.  So.  Conduct a trial or something."

She stared at him the same way she'd stared at Scott, but this time when she shook her head she also moved.  Off the driftwood, onto the blanket.  Next to him.  He flipped the far corner of the blanket up over her shoulder, not looking at her face, ignoring any expression Scott might have as he made his way back to his chair.

"You have to put it around you, too," Ziggy said, tugging the other end of the blanket around Dillon.  "Otherwise the bugs just sneak in between you.  Everyone knows that."

It was the last straw.  "If everyone would mind their own business," Dillon snapped, "that would be great.  Okay?  Just back the hell off."

He saw Flynn hold up his hands in surrender on the other side of the fire, but Summer scoffed.  "Please," she said.  "If we minded our own business, you'd be in jail and Dr. K would still be locked in her little control room.  I think this team has made your lives slightly better, don't you?"

That was too much, even from her.  "Like I'd still be in jail," he sneered.

Summer just raised her eyebrows at him.  "Well, that wasn't the question, was it."

"Okay," Ziggy jumped in.  "Now would be a great time to talk about something else, because if I know Dillon, and I think I do, he's about to say something that will make at least one of us really mad and he'll probably feel bad about it later.  But he won't apologize, because he thinks it's true, and even though you don't have to say every single true thing that springs to mind, no one ever told him that.  Apparently.

"So," Ziggy continued, talking too fast to let any of them get a word in.  "Yeah, Dillon could have gotten out of jail.  Trust me, I was there.  Thanks for taking me, by the way; did I ever thank you for that?  Thanks.  That was nice."

"Ziggy," Dillon said.

"Also," Ziggy continued, ignoring him, "Dr. K obviously doesn't need to be dragged away from her work every time you guys decide to humor me with the whole team-building thing.  We all totally get that.  But I think we can agree that it's good for morale to have you with us, right?  Right."

"Ziggy," Dillon repeated.

"And furthermore--"

"Okay!" Dillon said loudly.  "Okay, Ziggy, stop.  I get it.  Okay?"

He could feel Ziggy staring at him, head tilted, squinting in the firelight as he lifted a finger to emphasize his question.  "Do you?

"Yeah," Dillon told him.  "I totally do."

Ziggy took a deep breath, almost silent, maybe unnoticeable to the others.  "Well, all I'm saying is that my life is better because of you guys.  And I wouldn't be able to say that if you hadn't taken a chance on me.  So.  Thanks for that."

"Yeah," Dillon repeated grudgingly.  "Fine.  My life is better too.  Happy?"

He was slumped down against the log, trying to ignore the blanket Ziggy had pulled over his shoulders, trying harder to ignore the fact that Dr. K was sitting right next to him and whose brilliant idea had that been?  He folded his arms, staring at the fire.  Deliberately not looking across it at the others.

Who were strangely quiet, and after a moment Dr. K said, "Why are you all looking at me?  I don't have anything to say."

And Dillon couldn't help but smile.  "Straight up, Doc," he murmured.

"Well, obviously," she continued, "without operators the Ranger technology is largely useless.  So I suppose, in that sense..."

She trailed off.  He hadn't expected her to go on at all, but now that she'd started he wanted to know how she was going to finish.  He glanced over at her and found her frowning at the fire.

"You're all very--good at what you do," Dr. K said.  Awkward.  Complimentary for the first time since he'd known her.  "You... perform adequately in defense of this city."

"Making your life better," Ziggy finished, when no one else said anything.  "Yeah," he added.  "We know."

4. being there

That was the last they saw of Dr. K for several days.  Between the malfunction in Flynn's suit and the new megazord design she was working on, they were lucky if they saw her for training, let alone meals.  Flynn got all their training spots the day his suit freaked on them.

Flynn also got near-exclusive interruption privileges afterwards, which Ziggy could tell drove Dillon crazy.  Scott and Summer didn't seem to care... or at least, they seemed used to it.  Ziggy interrupted her anyway, but she yelled at him for it more.  Dillon made the mistake of assuming that "go away" actually meant "leave me alone," and nothing Ziggy said could talk him out of it.

So the morning they were scheduled for a vid conference with the tower, everyone ended up standing around in the briefing room until the screen actually lit up and Colonel Truman was there, looking back at them.  Ziggy still found him kind of creepy.  He tried to make sure he was standing next to someone scarier than he was when the colonel was around.  Even if it was just on a screen.

"Good morning," Colonel Truman said, while they were still looking around like Dr. K might have snuck in while they weren't paying attention.  It was the tone of voice that said, I know everything you've ever done.

"Colonel."  Scott nodded at the screen, and Ziggy wondered if his dad ever regretted reprimanding Scott for his lack of formality.  He must have, right?  Scott didn't act like that with anyone else.

"Dillon," Scott added.  "Would you let Dr. K know we're ready?"

That was politer than Scott ever was, too, but it didn't have any effect on Dillon.  He didn't even straighten up.  "You hear the violin?" he countered.  "She's busy."

"She approved this meeting," Scott said, turning a little away from the screen.

Dillon just stared back at him.  "She can tell time."

"I'll get her," Summer said, and she came close to rolling her eyes without actually doing it.  That was a trick Ziggy wanted to learn.  "Sorry, Colonel.  It'll just be a moment."

"We'll wait," he replied.  In a tone that implied, At a thousand dollars an hour.

So they just looked at each other while Summer stuck her head into the training room--then, after a brief hesitation, walked the rest of the way in.  The violin didn't stop.  Ziggy shifted, glancing away from the screen.

If Summer said anything, he couldn't hear it, but the music abruptly cut off.  There was another pause, and Summer's voice was very quiet when she said, "We're ready in the garage whenever you are."

Too quiet.  Something was wrong.  Ziggy looked at Dillon and saw him staring in the direction of the doors.

"Thank you, Ranger Series Yellow."  Dr. K's voice was just audible around the corner, and Ziggy thought maybe it was his imagination that it sounded a little off--but Dillon had stopped slouching.  "I'll be right there."

Summer reappeared in the doorway but she stayed there, out of range of the camera pickup, and shook her head at them.  When Scott raised his eyebrows at her, she made a "cut" motion that anyone could understand.  Dr. K wasn't coming?

"I'm sorry," Scott said smoothly, turning back to the screen.  "We'll need to reschedule.  Can you give us half an hour to get back to you?"

"Is something wrong?" Colonel Truman wanted to know.

"We'll get back to you," Scott repeated.  "Half an hour, Colonel."

Dillon was already heading for the training room, so Ziggy thought it couldn't hurt to follow.  Until Summer stopped them both at the door, actually catching Dillon's arm when he didn't pay any attention to her.  "Hold up, guys," she said.  "Just give her a second, okay?"

"Why, what's wrong?" Ziggy wanted to know.  "Is she okay?"

With a sigh, Summer shifted her weight.  "She's fine.  She just needs a second.  Dillon, I'm not kidding, you can't just go charging in."

"Why not?" he demanded.  "It's the training room.  Maybe I want to train.  It's a free base."

"Oh, good," Summer said.  "Thanks for interjecting elementary school wit into the conversation.  That changes everything."

"What's going on?" Flynn asked, as he and Scott joined them in the doorway.

"Is Dr. K all right?" Scott wanted to know.

From behind Summer, Dr. K's voice inquired, "What part of 'I'll be right there' was confusing to you?"

As soon as Ziggy saw her, he knew.  She'd been crying.  Her eyes were red and her nose was pink and he'd never thought she needed a hug more than he thought it right now.  Unfortunately, she was still Dr. K, and it was hard to imagine giving her a hug without her looking at him like he was a moron.

"I think it might have been the part where we didn't really hear you," he said instead.  "Yeah, 'cause we were way over there?  By the screen?  And you were in there, and you and Summer were talking kind of quietly, so we couldn't actually hear you at all.  Did you say you'd be right there?  I didn't hear that.  Did you hear that?"

He was nominally asking Dillon, not that he expected an answer, but it was Flynn who shook his head.  "I didna hear anything except Scott telling his da we need another half an hour.  And the telling of it was pretty funny, too.  I don' think the colonel's used to being asked to wait."

"Don't be ridiculous," Dr. K said.  "I ask him to wait all the time."

"Good," Dillon said gruffly.  "So we can eat.  Next time can we schedule this thing for after breakfast, instead of during it?"

Ziggy knew for a fact that Dillon had already eaten.  Furthermore, both Scott and Summer had made breakfast at the same time he had.  But it was Summer who complained that she was hungry, and if Flynn was telling the truth when he backed her up he was probably the only one.

"I did tell him we'd get back to him," Scott told Dr. K.  "In half an hour."

"Very well," she said, unexpectedly compliant.  "Far be it for me to interfere with one of your more practical social rituals."

Ziggy grinned.  "That means you'll join us, right?  Come on, you totally will.  We'll split it up: we'll be social, and you can be practical."

"I'll make you a smoothie," Flynn added.

"I'll just have some toast," Dr. K said.

"Aye, and a smoothie," Flynn agreed.

A sigh was her only answer.

That, Ziggy thought, was a win on so many levels.

5. doctor k

The training room was a disaster.  It was also empty, and that was what made Dillon stop while the others ran ahead, exclaiming over the damage and yelling for Dr. K.  He stared around the room, taking in every place big enough to hide a person and ruling them out just as fast.  She wasn't hiding.

They'd all heard Tenaya over the comm.  They'd been meant to hear her, she'd been talking to them--mocking them and their inability to help--and he was going to smash her face in the next time he saw her.  But Dr. K had never backed down, not in the face of anything, which meant she wasn't hiding.

She could have been taken, certainly; the signs were there in the scorch marks and scattered equipment and the way the sonic cannon lay abandoned on the floor.  Dillon didn't buy it, though.  He didn't know how the fuck Tenaya kept getting in, but he'd seen Dr. K fight.  She fought over stupid things like her life depended on it... and when it came to Venjix and its minions, she would die before she surrendered.

It was a cold certainty in the face of an empty control room, but it was a certainty nonetheless.  Venjix would never capture Dr. K.  The realization had hit him hard but he was learning to live with it, even if it meant there were only two possible outcomes to any danger she faced: she'd either come through free, or she was dead.

Every screen in the training room went white simultaneously, and Dillon turned around.  He could hear the others slowing, looking up, curious even as he figured it out.  The door to the control room was closed.

He was already striding toward it when a "K" appeared in the center of each of those screens.  He didn't have to look to know there would be a little voiceprint bar at the bottom of the larger ones.  Why she thought that would work, he had no idea.

"Rangers," Dr. K's voice began, and at least it was her voice, not the synthesized scrambler she'd been using when he first arrived.  He didn't wait to hear what she would say.

"Hey," he said loudly, banging on the control room door.  "Doc.  Turn off the damn screens and get out here."

The rest of the team was staring at him even as Dr. K continued, "The new megazord configuration is fully powered and ready for controlled testing.  Tomorrow's training sessions will be devoted to--"

"What?" Dillon demanded, pounding his fist on the door in a way that probably sounded even more obnoxious on the other side.  It was a small room; he would drive her crazy with the noise if nothing else.  "Sorry, can't hear you through the door.  What are you saying?  Something about having tomorrow off; is that it?"

"Ranger Black," her voice said coolly.  "Step away from the door."

"Fuck you," he snapped, and it was reflexive, unintentional.  Like he cared if she used his name or not.

Except, yeah.  Apparently he did.

The other Rangers were gathering around him, finally getting the picture.  She wasn't hiding from Tenaya.  She was hiding from them.  And anything that could make her do that after everything they'd been through together had to be really, exceptionally bad.

"Look, Tenaya was here," he continued, talking to the closed door instead of the screens.  "She can change her voice.  How do we know it's even you in there?"

"Tenaya 7 would not be able to get in here."  She sounded angry and hateful and raw.  A long way from the calm scorn he had been expecting.

"Yeah, and that's what we keep saying about the garage," he shot back.  "So far I'm not impressed with your follow through."  He didn't know if it would make her more furious or less, but it was the first thing that came to mind and he was fucking tired of letting her have her way.

"Ranger Black."  The voice that came over the audio link was icy and he could hear the much quieter echo of it through the door.  "Kindly go to hell."

"Been there," he snapped.  "Done that.  I'll peel this door away from the wall if I have to.  You gotta know I can do it."

The screens went dark and the door hissed open at the same time.  He didn't question it, just lunged through the door and grabbed the back of her chair.  The part of his brain that was still thinking knew it was stupid and the rest of him didn't care.

Dillon didn't actually remember picking her up.  He was pretty sure she had been scrunched up in her chair, knees drawn tight to her chest, hair tousled and tear tracks on her cheeks.  How she ended up pressed against his body he didn't really know.

She was standing, at least.  She couldn't be too badly hurt if she was that tense, unable to hit him with her arms pinned between them and his wrapped around behind her back.  He couldn't let go.  He knew she would tell him to, and he didn't... he just didn't care anymore.

Then her face was buried in his chest and she wasn't stiff at all.  She was shaking and he was holding her up and he had no idea how it had happened but he thought she was crying.  He heard himself mutter, "Hey, it's okay," like it ever was, and even "it's gonna be fine" which no one had any right to promise.

The rest of them were standing in the doorway.  Ziggy and Summer had been pushed through by Scott and Flynn, all of them trying to see, to make sure she was okay.  It didn't matter, because he could hear her and he had no idea what she was talking about.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.  "I'm sorry."  Over and over, she just kept saying it, a constant hitch in her breath that was muffled by his shirt and probably inaudible to anyone else.  "I didn't mean it; I just wanted to get away."

It made his grip on her tighten, holding her harder in the face of a too-familiar longing.  "I know," he murmured.  "Me too."

She didn't move, and for several long minutes, everything was quiet.

6. glass half full

Flynn coordinated dinner, but he made all of them help.  Even Dr. K.  Summer made sure everyone had wine, which Ziggy didn't think was a good idea after the day they'd had but he wasn't going to be the one to turn it down.  None of the others did either, he noticed.

Scott set the table, and Dillon pretended total incompetence when it came to vegetables.  Flynn had fallen for that the first time he tried to get them to help out in the kitchen, but he was long past it now.  He gave Dillon a knife and told him, "Half centimeter slices.  No more, no less."

Ziggy found himself in charge of the marinade, which he figured was a compliment.  Dr. K was just supposed to crush up some bread crumbs from their leftover cheese crackers, but even that wasn't going well for her.  She was predictably overthinking it, and she had way more questions than anyone with a pestle should ask.

"Refill," Dillon said, as Summer reached around him for something on the counter.  He nodded at the glass next to him, and when she rolled her eyes he added, "Please."

"You're awfully enthusiastic for someone who says alcohol doesn't affect him," she remarked, rescuing his glass and topping it off anyway.

Dillon set the knife down and took his glass back.  "It's not for me."  He stepped around her, hand brushing against her shoulder, and Ziggy heard him mutter, "Thanks."

Summer didn't answer, turning to watch as he approached Dr. K.  "Hey," Dillon said, louder.  "I'm right behind you, so watch what you're doing with that thing."

"I don't know what I'm doing with this thing," she snapped.  "This is an inexact process, and I don't have enough information."

"Uh-huh."  Dillon put his free hand on her shoulder and she went immediately still.  Ziggy and Summer exchanged glances.  Only Scott and Flynn were still talking, trying to negotiate the cookies for dessert--with dinner, or after it?

"I've found that pleading ignorance sometimes works with Flynn," Dillon was saying, setting the wine down on the counter beside Dr. K.  "And when it doesn't, sometimes someone else is willing to help."

"Well, we don't all have a Ziggy," she said.  It was very clear, and Ziggy blinked, pausing in the act of picking up the knife Dillon had abandoned.  The marinade was ready; it wasn't like he couldn't chop a few vegetables.

"Everyone should be so lucky," Dillon agreed, plucking the pestle out of her hand.  "But even I can crush crackers.  Drink your wine."

"I notice you aren't drinking yours," Dr. K said.

Ziggy saw Summer smile out of the corner of his eye.  Flynn and Scott were bringing their argument back into the kitchen, but there was a pause between sentences long enough for Ziggy to hear Dillon say, "I already had some.  That's for you."

And Flynn, proving he could pay attention to multiple conversations at once, exclaimed, "Are you daft, man?  She must weigh a hundred pounds; she can't drink two glasses of wine!"

Thereby ensuring that she would, Ziggy thought, watching Dr. K scowl at Flynn.  Interesting tactic.  He wouldn't drink two glasses of wine in a row, not around these guys--well, Dillon, maybe.  But only because he knew Dillon wouldn't laugh at him.  Much.

Dr. K didn't do more than finish the first one before dinner, though, and he figured she'd be better off once she'd eaten something.  Aside from a slight flush--which was really kind of cute, and he came close to saying so before reason reasserted itself--she seemed fine.  She let Dillon pull out her chair for her, and she actually smiled at Summer when the Yellow Ranger went to serve her, so maybe the wine did help a little.

He almost said something when Dillon went to refill her glass, though.  Three was definitely too many, and Dillon had put his own glass next to her plate.  When Dillon took a sip from her glass and set it in his place instead, Ziggy closed his mouth and tried very hard not to smile.  Grin.  Okay, laugh, because that was adorable.

Unfortunately, there was a very real chance they might kill him for saying so.  There was an even bigger chance that they might stop... well, being like that, at least for tonight.  He didn't want that on his head.

He settled for trading looks with Summer and pretending not to notice when Dillon goaded Dr. K into eating cookies with her vegetable casserole.  They all laughed when she laughed--both times, it was that contagious--and no one said a word when Dillon put his arms around her to pick up her dishes after dinner.  Apparently wine made him more touchy than usual.

When she excused herself from the ensuing conversation to work, no one tried to stop him from following her into the training room.

7. hope

They'd gotten the place cleaned up after they'd made sure she was all right.  Well, the others had gotten it cleaned up.  He'd stood outside her door while she pulled herself together and listened to make sure she didn't do anything stupid.  Like sneaking out.  He wouldn't put it past her, and who knew where Tenaya was now.

She was still here, though, and when Dillon walked into the training room after their late dinner, he expected to find her at her station: slightly above everything else, mostly hidden behind computer screens, tapping away at the keyboard like nothing had happened.  Like the place hadn't been torn apart, like Tenaya hadn't invaded her space and ripped away any illusion of control... like she hadn't been in tears when they found her, curled up in the one place that was still hers alone.

She wasn't.  She wasn't working.  She was standing at the far end of the screens, staring at the frame that braced them from the outside.  "Hey," Dillon said, in case he was suddenly unwelcome.  "Thanks for, uh--having dinner with us."

She didn't look at him.  "I need to tell you something."

Something about the way she said it made him look over his shoulder.  The doors were open, but she was at the other end of the room and she wasn't exactly raising her voice.  His approach was careful, not sure how close he was supposed to get but aware that lately it never seemed close enough.

She took a deep breath, shoulders squared as she turned to face him--and that might have been too close.  Or maybe it was something else that surprised her, that made her lift wide eyes to his and fold her hands in front of her.  It was what she always did when she was getting ready to answer, but it wasn't answers he wanted.

He didn't know how his fingers ended up on her face.  He did know that he wanted to be touching her, maybe to comfort, maybe just to reassure himself.  She was still here.  Still with them.

She caught his hand and pulled it away.  She was almost gentle with him, like he couldn't take whatever she was about to say.  "You're my fault," she told him.  "What happened to you?  Whatever Venjix did?  It's my fault, Dillon."

His fingers twitched, and she let go of his hand.  "I find that hard to believe," he said.

She just shook her head, turning back to the frame.  The little curls of ribbon on the final junction: that's what she was staring at.  He didn't know why.  Nobody else would own up to putting them there, so he assumed she had done it herself.  But if any of the others knew why, what possible significance the tiny decoration could have, they weren't telling him.

"Hey," he repeated, reaching out and squeezing her arm when she didn't look up.  "You're not Venjix, okay?  You don't get to take the fall for this."

"I am Venjix," she said softly, not moving.  "Venjix is mine."

He caught her other arm and turned her around, searching her neutral expression for some clue what she was talking about.  "You want to explain that?"

"It was supposed to help me escape," she said, staring back at him.  "It was supposed to get us out.  I never meant... I didn't want this, I didn't want any of it.  I swear, all I wanted was to get out--"

"Okay, okay, stop."  He was talking over her, fumbling her arms in an effort to get a hand over her mouth, stepping closer as he tried to stave off the panic of the afternoon.  "Don't freak out.  I can't handle it when you freak out."

"I'm not freaking out," she snapped, but she let herself be folded against him.  When had this become his default response to her hysteria?  "I'm presenting you with a detailed account--"

"You're not," he said, even as her words were muffled by proximity.  "This is not you giving a detailed account; believe me, I know what that sounds like.  I have a really big frame of reference for you giving a detailed account.  This is you about to get upset.  I have no idea what to do when you get upset."

"I created the virus that took over the world," she said.  When she tried to pull away he made a split-second and mostly subconscious decision not to let her.  "If anyone should be upset, I think it's me."

"You created Venjix," he said flatly.

It was, though he hated to admit it, perfectly plausible.

"I designed their security," she whispered.  "I needed something that could be better than me.  I created it to grow, to learn faster than I could.  It was never supposed to leave the base."

"Okay," he said, frowning over her head.  "What base?"

"The base where I destroyed the world; what does it matter what base?" she demanded, tense and shaky in his arms and why couldn't she for once just do what he told her to do?  "I don't even know!  How would I know!  The military never found them!"

"Um, hi," Ziggy's voice called from the other end of the room.  "You guys, uh, okay in here?"

"We're fine, Ziggy."  He could feel her trying to push away from him again, and he might have let her go if he didn't think she'd just keep going.  Too far away to reach again.  "You mind closing the doors?"

"Yeah, no," Ziggy agreed.  "I mean, sure thing."

"What base?" Dillon repeated more quietly.  He could hear the doors sliding shut from here.  She was still shaking, but she was less stiff, and he could feel every shift as she tried to be... less uncomfortable.

"I don't know," she insisted stubbornly, but she added, "They abducted me.  From the lab.  They suppressed my memories, made it so I couldn't remember.  They told me I was still working for Alphabet Soup.  That I had been for years."

"The one in California," he muttered when she stopped.  "Working on spaceships, or whatever."

"Exploratory robotics," she said.  She corrected him like it was habit, like she couldn't not.  Like she hadn't expected him to know, and that annoyed him as much as anything.  Why shouldn't he know?

"They needed software," she was saying.  "I didn't know, at first.  I loved JPL.  I loved it.  Do you understand that?  I would have done anything for them."

"Obviously it didn't go both ways," he grumbled, because what was she talking about, anyway?

"It wasn't them," she snapped.  She sounded so angry he should probably be glad he couldn't see her expression.  "They were the cover story, to keep me docile while the new memories settled."

"New memories," he repeated.  What the hell?

"Of working there," she said.  "Of being sick.  Of having to work there because I couldn't do anything else."

"You're not sick," he said, more because he wanted it to be true than because he had any way of knowing.  She didn't act sick.  She didn't fight sick.

"Yes, thank you, I figured that out," she said.  She finally turned her head, and it was almost resting against his chest.  There was a long moment where, he didn't know, maybe she was waiting for him to let go.

She'd be waiting a long time.

"I didn't remember," she said quietly.  "I didn't remember anything else.  They told me that was what I did, and I believed them."

"Yeah," he said, because... just, yeah.

She didn't say anything else, so he asked, "What changed?"

He felt her twitch.  Her arms were still stiff at her sides, but he felt the lightest brush of something--her hand.  Her fingers whispered against his stomach, barely warm through his shirt.  Her hand came to rest awkwardly against his side.

"They let me have friends," she whispered.  "The twins took care of me.  I had to take care of them too."

That he understood instantly.  "You had to get them out."

"They were being used.  As test subjects."  The words came out as a hiss, wounded and appalled and he felt her fingers clench in his t-shirt.  "They could have died."

He assumed now was not the time to point out that she did the same to them all the time.  "So you designed a virus to kill the security."

"No," she said.  "It was part of the project.  Project Venjix; that's what they wanted me for.  I just co-opted it.  The latest version, I mean.  For early upload."

"So you designed a virus to kill the security," he repeated, more slowly this time.

There was only a brief pause.  "Yes."

"It got free and took over the world," Dillon continued.  "Okay.  What about your friends?  They make it?"

This time she was quiet long enough to let him know just how stupid a question that had been.  "I don't know," she mumbled at last.  "I don't know what happened to them.  There was an attack.  Venjix got me out after all.  But we got separated, and I... I couldn't find them."

He knew when to stop asking questions.  "I'd say you need more to drink," he said, "but I don't think wine's gonna be strong enough."

"I don't want to forget," she snapped, but her fingers were still fisted in his shirt.  She lifted her cheek off his chest and laid her forehead there instead, and her voice was fuzzier when she added, "I'm sorry."

Then, again, "I'm sorry."  She was whispering, but he could hear her perfectly clearly when she said, "Maybe I have to be sorry enough for both of us if you don't even remember what you lost."

"Hey."  He only dared let go of her when he took her arms immediately afterward, holding her there.  She looked up--she always did, defiant even when she wasn't proud--and he told her, "You gave all of us a clean start.  As far as I'm concerned, we're giving you the same."

She shook her head--and she always did that, too.  Dismissing things before they'd even made their argument.  "None of you did anything like this."

"Like you know," he told her.  "Look, I find a little arrogance as amusing as the next person, but at the end of the day, none of us has any idea what we've done.  And we couldn't go back and undo it even if we did.  Mourning the past gets us nothing but dead.  Dealing with the present keeps us alive."

She was staring at him.  "I created Venjix," she said, like he might somehow have missed that.

"Yeah," he agreed.  "Seems to me that makes you uniquely qualified to stop it."

"It's not like I'm not trying," she said.  "I don't know if you've noticed, but it got big and mean really fast."

He felt his lips twitch.  "Not like anyone else I know."

"I can't keep up," she said softly.  "I wasn't supposed to be able to.  It's better than me."

"Don't buy it," he told her.  "No one's better than us."

"It's not a person."  She sounded impatient, and he figured that was her way of not sounding afraid... upset.  Despairing.  The way she'd sounded during the vid conference this morning.  

"That's why we'll win," Dillon said.

There was a long moment, but she did ask.  "Why?"

"Because I believe Ziggy," he said simply.  "You can call me stupid, but he's got something I want."

She raised her eyebrows at him, a slight smile on her face, and it was kind of a rush to realize she wouldn't.  She wasn't going to call him stupid.  "An inexplicable way with shadow puppets?" she said.

"Hope," he said, letting go of one arm to touch her face again.  Because he could, apparently, and she was standing right there.  "I think it might be contagious."

"That's highly improbable," she told him.

"Oh, now you're an expert on intangible realities?"  He'd always wanted to touch her hair.  It was so close, and then it was soft under his fingertips and he hadn't really expected that.  "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it."

She had a funny look on her face, like she wanted to be curious but was actually feeling something completely different.  "Why are you touching my hair?"

"Why aren't you stopping me?" he countered.  He wasn't curious.  He was weirdly terrified.

"I assume you have some purpose."  She didn't move even when he let go of her other arm, suddenly unable to restrain her.  "Logical or otherwise."

He wanted to smile, because she'd given him that opening.  Possibly on purpose.  But he couldn't make his expression do anything other than what it was doing right now, and the only reason he was leaning forward was because he couldn't stop himself.

She never stopped watching him.  He knew she wouldn't; he didn't have to hold onto her now because she wouldn't look away and she wouldn't back down.  She might mock him mercilessly afterwards, but if he wanted to kiss her, she was going to let him.

He thought it would probably be worth it.  He was aware of every fraction of a second between intent and execution, every moment he could have stopped and looked away and pretended this wasn't happening.  He almost did, even.  Stop.  Look away.

Then his lips brushed hers, and it was too soon--too soon to stop, too soon to pull back.  Her eyes were wide and green and she was wearing something on her lips that left them smooth and smelling vaguely of strawberries.  Her hair was fine under his fingers, and his other hand twitched at his side... wanting to touch.

"I believe," she murmured, warmth breathing across his skin, "that it's customary to follow a kiss with some sort of declaration."

He hovered, torn between the truth and... and what?

"I want to kiss you again," he blurted out.

She seemed to consider that.  "That will do," she agreed after a moment.

So he did.  He was gonna have to remember to thank Ziggy for closing the doors, because he was sure the rest of the team would find this hilarious.  Summer would be smirking at him for weeks.  Scott would probably make him start setting her damn alarm clock.  He hadn't figured out Flynn's angle yet, but he knew there had to be one.

Right now, all he could think was how much he didn't care.

8. background check

Dillon was gone in the morning, which wasn't really that unusual.  He didn't sleep a lot, and Ziggy didn't know exactly what he did while the screens in the garage were dark.  He did know it was more than just working on his car, which was what Scott thought he did, and it was definitely more than reading or playing jacks or the occasional load of laundry, which was what Summer thought he did.

He wasn't sure what Flynn thought Dillon did at night, but it was hard to tell what Flynn thought about a lot of things.  Dillon had once muttered something about never pissing Flynn off again, and that was good enough for Ziggy.  Anyone Dillon didn't deliberately antagonize was better left alone.

What Dr. K thought Dillon did was probably the most relevant question.  She was never happy to find him missing in the morning, but today she pretended not to notice.  She joined Scott and Ziggy for breakfast, which was nice and definitely not typical--Ziggy guessed she'd been expecting to find Dillon with them--and she even managed to make conversation with Scott.

By the time Flynn wandered into the kitchen, Summer had been and gone: something about her parents.  Ziggy was on his third attempt to make oatmeal palatable, and Scott was laughing at him when he wasn't trying to show Dr. K his serious face.  Maybe Flynn knew some secret trick for making oatmeal taste... not like oatmeal.

Of course, that was when Dillon showed up.  His entrance was dramatic even for him, which was saying something.  He didn't buzz the door, which had always been the rule for non-Ranger guests, and he certainly didn't wait for Dr. K to scan them, which was their new procedure after the last--well, second to last--Tenaya 7 infiltration.

Ziggy didn't know what they were going to come up with after yesterday, but Dillon would probably ignore it too.  He got really mad about security for someone who never thought it applied to him.

"Please tell me that isn't Ranger Black," Dr. K said, staring past Scott and out into the garage, "bringing two complete strangers onto the base without so much as a background check."

It was the first time Ziggy had thought she might answer, so he asked.  "Hey, why do you call me Series Green and everyone else Ranger whatever?"  And more importantly, "Is that a puppy?"

"Dillon."  Scott was already on his feet, moving around the table to put himself between Dr. K and the newcomers.  "What are you doing?"

"It's okay," Dillon said, catching Ziggy's eye as his mouth quirked a little.  "I know them."

Ziggy took that as permission to push past Scott and fawn over the puppy.  It was a drooping ball of yellow limbs and floppy ears, cradled in the arms of a guy wearing a red sweatshirt.  "Can I pat him?" he wanted to know.

"You know a lot of people I wouldn't necessarily invite onto the base," Scott was saying, while sweatshirt guy hoisted the puppy higher so Ziggy could offer it the back of his hand.  "You know procedure, Dillon.  You can't just walk in here with anyone you want."

The puppy licked the back of his hand, a little half-heartedly but it made Ziggy grin.  "Hey, he likes me!"

"Technically," Dillon replied, "I think I can."

"Proving what?" Dr. K demanded.  "That Venjix isn't the only thing that could tear this base apart from the inside?"

"Hey, whoa," Ziggy said, and he only took his eyes off the puppy for a second before he yanked his hand back in alarm.  "Ow!"

"Ziggy, step away from that animal," Dr. K said sharply.  "Who knows what kind of contagion it could be carrying."

"It's just play-biting," the guy in the sweatshirt said, but he pulled the puppy back.  "Sorry.  We think she's had kind of a rough day."

"Ziggy?" Dillon repeated.  Something in the tone said it wasn't entirely directed at him, and Ziggy tried not to smile.  So Dillon had heard her call him "Ranger Black" when he came in.  "You okay?"

There was a hazy undefined area between "make them stop baiting each other" and "make everyone hate the puppy," and he was in it.  Right now.  "Uh, yeah," he said quickly.  "She, did you say?  Sorry, girl; didn't mean to, you know, malign your gender or anything."

"We found her--"  The woman with sweatshirt guy spoke for the first time and stopped just as quickly.  Ziggy didn't really get what happened except that he was left with an armful of puppy as the guy in red grabbed for his friend and they both ended up on the floor.

Then Flynn was in the middle of it, and the woman was insisting that she was fine, and only when Dillon said, "Flynn, he's one of Doc K's Rangers," did Ziggy realize that sweatshirt guy had looked to Dillon when Flynn moved in.  So they did know each other.  And they trusted each other.

Oh.  Red and purple: just like that, it clicked.  "You're the Rangers Dillon and Summer met at the pizza place," he blurted out.  And, because that was kind of rude, "Sorry, are you okay?"

"Ziggy; Casey, RJ," Dillon said.  Possibly by way of introduction.  "That's Scott.  You sure you're fine?"

Despite the names, he was pretty sure Casey was the guy, and between him and Flynn they got his friend up.  She looked sort of amused by the fuss, actually, but Ziggy frowned at the way she found her balance.  It looked weird, somehow.  Like she was still dizzy, or she was trying to keep herself from doing something, or--he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Yes," she said.  "Just a slight... spiritual imbalance."

"Uh-huh."  Dillon didn't sound surprised--or convinced--but he didn't push it, either.  Ziggy remembered him saying things about crystals and electricity and wondered, not for the first time, who Dillon had been.  "You want to sit down?"

"Okay, time out," Scott said.  "You're RJ and Casey?"

"Yeah, Summer told us about you."  Casey kept one arm around his friend--girlfriend, Dillon had said--and offered the other to Scott.  "Red Ranger.  Nice to meet you."

Because Scott was Scott, he shook Casey's hand.  "Likewise.  I think.  Dillon?" he added pointedly.

"Found 'em wandering the streets," Dillon said with a shrug.  "Figured you'd want to see them."  This last was directed over Scott's shoulder, and Scott raised his eyebrows as he turned.

Dr. K was still sitting at the table, one torn-off corner of toast raised halfway to her mouth.  She was staring at them.  "Oh," she said coolly, and maybe it wasn't "them" she was staring at so much as one of them in particular.  "Now you want my opinion?"

9. unified biofield

It had taken them all morning to get her to admit it, but finally she said the words: "It's possible that the Series Black technology is drawing a disproportionate amount of bioenergetic current through the interdimensional portals."

Dillon knew better than to say thank you loudly or sarcastically or at all.  He did wave a hand in her direction, though, and the gesture might have looked equivalent to one of those.  Possibly all of them, if the way she narrowed her eyes at him was any indication.

"Hey, look, I think the puppy understands you better than I do!" Ziggy exclaimed.  He was sitting on the floor of the training room, alternately trying to convince the puppy to climb on him or to eat something.  "Not that it would be hard."

"So the wolf spirits are affected first," Casey said.  "When you morph, people like RJ are most likely to notice."

She frowned.  "Theoretically."

"Except she wouldn't have used those words," Dillon put in, and she pressed her lips together.  He didn't know why he kept prodding her, trying to make her react, except that she'd barely spoken to him since last night.

"I don't recognize the spiritual connection you claim to non-human elements of the biofield," she said, fingers flying across the keyboard in front of her.  "But if the way you operate your Ranger technology is similar to the way we operate ours, it's conceivable that our actions could affect your ability to do the same."

"It's less a question of Ranger ability," RJ remarked, "and more a question of... being in balance with the world around us."

She shook her head and pulled a face, still typing.

"Doc's not really into balance," Dillon said, watching her watch the screen.

"I balance what's real now with what could be real in the future," she said sharply.  "I have no interest in debating abstract concepts like spirituality."

"Or hope?" he said.

The look she gave him was almost betrayed, and he had no idea why.  What was wrong with hope?  She'd been okay with it the night before.  And it wasn't like her science never got wildly abstract.  So these guys called them spirits instead of conduits; who cared?

"Excuse me," Flynn said, "but it seems to me that if what we're doing is causing them problems, we need to find a way to do it differently."

"Look, we want to help your planet," Casey said.  "I just want to even it out a little.  There must be something we can do to make sure people like RJ aren't carrying more than their share of the burden."

"Oh, yeah," Ziggy said from the floor.  The puppy was lolling against one of his arms, chewing on a finger while he told Casey, "Dr. K can totally do that.  I mean, that's the kind of thing she does.  Right, Dr. K?"

"I've only nominally accepted that it's happening at all," she said.  "I'm not ready to say I can change it yet."

"How many people are we talking about here?" Scott wanted to know.  "How many Rangers do you guys have, anyway?  I'm assuming RJ isn't the only wolf--"  He glanced at Dr. K.  "Uh, person with a wolf affinity."

"And if you could have this conversation somewhere else," she continued without looking up.  As though she hadn't paused.  "I could more effectively assess the possibility of assisting you."

It was a "go away," plain and simple.  Luckily, one of the only good things about the entire team betting on them was that no one tried to drag him out of the training room with them.  They took Casey and RJ, and the puppy, and she didn't even wait until they'd cleared the doors to say, "I suppose you'd like to exploit my uncertainty some more."

He had no idea what that meant.  "I was going to offer to help," he said, eyeing her.  "I thought we agreed I wasn't stupid."

She snapped one of the keys with a deliberate flourish, giving the monitor an irritated look that he assumed was meant for him.  "And I thought we agreed that hope was an acceptable, even desirable commodity, one that might be spread and shared--yet this morning, you're taking it back."

Dillon frowned, bracing his arms on the back of her computer frame as he leaned forward.  "What are you talking about?"

"Just now," she said, stabbing at the keys again, "you indicated that I had no interest in it."

"I said you did," he countered, "so why not try the spirit thing too?  Hope worked, right?  Why not weird spirit animals?"

She stopped typing--she went so far as to put her hands in her lap--and stared up at him.  "You want me to accept that they have some sort of direct metaphysical connection to the unified biofield."

"Isn't that the nature of a unified biofield?" he asked.  "That all our individual biofields are unified?"

She didn't look impressed, but she didn't look so thoroughly disappointed in him anymore either.  "I fail to see why an ecological fact has to have spiritual ramifications."

"I fail to see why you're fighting over words," he told her.  "What does it matter what they call it?  At the end of the day, it does the same thing."

"I couldn't care less what words they use," she said, and the look she gave him was so pitying he almost interrupted her right then.  "I care what words you use.  I thought I'd made that clear."

He had several seconds to decide whether he was going to take that as a compliment or condescension.  It was almost too long.  "You saying you care what I think?" he asked at last.

"I'm considering someone else's opinion," she informed him.  "If you think it's something I do regularly, you're mistaken."

"Yeah, well."  He was unaccountably self-conscious about this revelation.  "Ditto the math help."

She gave the monitors beside her a pointed look.  "Which I'm not currently getting."

Dillon's mouth quirked, and he pushed away from the frame long enough to walk around it.  He might have offered more than just a backup brain if he'd had any reason to think she would take it.  As it was, he settled for sharing the space and the work.

She settled for not insulting him again, so maybe they both won.

10. freefall

The puppy was fun.  Casey was cool.  RJ was kind of weird, but in a funny way, and it was hilarious watching the rest of Rangers respond to her.  Or pretending not to respond to her.  She kind of provoked something, though, almost without trying--even when she was minding her own business, she drew the eye.

At first Ziggy thought it was because she was weird.  He couldn't pin it down further than that, but the way she moved wasn't right.  Like a kid, almost, like a teenager with her sudden unexpected clumsiness in the middle of unthinking grace.  Dillon didn't know what he was talking about, though, and if Dillon hadn't noticed then no one else had either.

So then he thought maybe it was just the moving itself... the fact that she was always in motion.  Her hands moved when she walked, her whole body shifted when she spoke.  Of course people would watch her.

On the second day of their visit, though, Ziggy realized two things.  One, RJ must move the way she did on purpose, because she was invisible when she went still.  Ziggy almost walked into her in the kitchen that morning, and when he made a joke about ninjas RJ said, with a totally straight face, that she had some training.

Two, RJ and Casey weren't going anywhere until they got some answers.  They were being very polite about it; they were earnest and helpful to the point of being unobtrusive.  But they weren't Aisha and Taylor: they weren't here to pass on academic information, and they weren't here just to see if they could get here in the first place.

They slept in the hydroponics loft.

They went shopping with Flynn "for the chance to see the city," and they made pizza for everyone the next night.  They had several conferences with Dr. K, including one that went so late Ziggy fell asleep waiting to see who would call it quits first.  When the city alert woke him up, he spent several seconds trying to remember who he knew owned a purple sweatshirt.

Dr. K let them fight.  It made sense, maybe: Corinth was overwhelmed, the shield sabotaged from the inside, and the Rangers were under siege.  They could barely keep up with the infiltration, let alone spare him and Dillon to track down the source of the sabotage.  So Casey and RJ were dispatched as a unit, covering one side of the city while Summer, Scott, and Flynn took the other.

Ziggy forgot everything else when Dillon went over the edge of a skyscraper.

He knew before it happened, even from the ground: if Dillon was supposed to send the saboteur running in Ziggy's direction, didn't that mean getting off the roof?  It took too long, and Ziggy could still see the giant satellite 'bot moving around up there.  He debated asking Dr. K for instruction, but she really had enough to do.

Besides, there was only one order he would follow at this point.  The sooner he acted on it the less uncertain he would feel.  So Ziggy teleported to the top of the building--just in time to see Dillon get thrown over the side.

He didn't think.  He did have time to realize, en route, exactly what he was about to do. Impulse, gear, voice recognition.  His suit appeared around him just as he leapt out into the air.

Freefall.  Really not his favorite thing.  The cold, the terror.  The falling.

The body he slammed into, arms locking instinctively.  Dillon's form sucked, which was the only reason Ziggy had caught up to him, but just being there while they both died wasn't what he'd had in mind.  In the midst of mindless panic, it was those endless training sessions that saved both their lives.

When in danger, morpher first.  Everything else is secondary.  The morpher won't let you down.  Dr. K had drilled it into his head, without flinching and seemingly without end, until he believed in teleporting even in his sleep.

For someone who wouldn't talk spirituality, she'd taught him faith like no one else.

Everything went green.  When the world came back it was dizzying and still and painful... and Dillon wasn't dead.  Funny how that made the rest of it seem like kids' stuff.  The teleporting, the fragments of awareness too fast to be totally there in his head--the way his world had just irrevocably changed.

"I'm not sure how you did that," Dillon muttered, barely moving.

The ground was solid underneath them.  He had just teleported out of the air, onto the street below, dumping speed and changing direction while he was noncorporeal.  The only thing the same was the fact that he was still holding onto Dillon.

It was the first time he'd taken anyone else with him.

"I know," Ziggy blurted out, patting Dillon's arm to make sure he was really there.  Dillon grimaced, which was weird and was that the arm he'd been clutching when he fell?

Drawing back, he added awkwardly, "Uh, me neither."

He was in so much trouble.

11. control

Ziggy disappeared after the whole satbot thing, which Dillon didn't really notice until he woke up in the lab with Summer standing over him.  Then he got distracted by the way he wasn't in the doghouse for disobeying orders--apparently a Venjix death sentence was considered an extenuating circumstance--and the devastated expressions on both their faces.  Like they were surprised or something.

There's no cure.

"Doc," he said, staring at a supposedly infected arm that looked the way it always had.  He lowered it, catching her eye instead.  "Tell me something I don't know."

She and Summer exchanged glances, and he shook his head.  "I don't know what Venjix did to me, but I always figured I'd turn on you someday.  You can't tell me you're not ready for that."

"I couldn't until today," she replied, and the flash of irritation almost made her expression bearable again.  "Until you overrode a remote shutdown of your suit not once, but twice.  Now I can.  I can definitely say I'm not ready."

"Yeah, how did you do that?"  Summer sounded as curious as she was concerned.  He figured she had a right to be, after his first "override" had taken out all three of them together.

"Don't know," he muttered.  "I just--"  But he hadn't thought about it, he hadn't even tried.  "I don't know."

"Has that ever happened before?"  In the absence of useful information, Summer turned her attention elsewhere.  One of his favorite things about her, actually.  She didn't dwell.

"You're using the prototypes."  The response was sharp and to the point.  "If it had happened before, you'd know."

"So maybe there's something wrong with the Series Black shutdown," Summer said.  "I mean, if you've never had to use it before--"

"Of course there's something wrong with it; it doesn't work!"  She was glaring now.  "Why are you telling me things that are patently obvious?"

"I'm just saying," Summer began.

"Don't," Dillon interrupted.  "Just--"  He put his feet on the floor, getting ready to stand up.  "Don't.  It's not you she's mad at."  Lifting his gaze, he added, "Isn't that right, Doc."

"I'm not mad at anyone," she snapped.

"Okay," Summer said, putting the scanning bar down.  "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me.  Don't hurt each other."

"Hey," Dillon called after her.  "See if you can find Ziggy, would you?  I think the whole leaping off a building thing kind of freaked him out."

She waved over her shoulder as she headed out of the training room.  "On it!"

It wasn't enough, but it would have to do.  He couldn't leave now.  "Look, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you.  It was weird to have memories thrown in my face like that, okay?"

"Dillon, the satbot was lying," she said.  "That's what they do.  You can't trust something like Venjix.  It was designed to deceive."

"It wasn't lying," he muttered.

"Yes, it was."  She sounded--urgent, somehow.  Like it mattered to her that he believed this.  "If it makes you doubt, it wins."

"Well, I doubt," he snapped.  "That's what I do.  What have I got to believe in?"

She didn't flinch.  "What have any of us got?"

"You've got... this."  He waved around her lab, meaning all of it--the garage beyond and everyone in it.  She had a whole city at her back.  "Everything."

"You have this too," she told him.

He had, once.  He'd had something.  And every time he tried to think about it, all he could feel was it slipping through his grasp.  A hand in his, fingers sliding through his own... holding onto nothing.  "I can't remember."

He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes until a voice that didn't belong to whatever he'd lost was closer than he expected.  "Then how do you know the satbot can?  What makes you think whatever it told you is real?"

Dillon looked up at her.  She wasn't that much taller than him even when he was sitting down.  "I sleep sometimes," he said.  "I have these dreams."

She turned, sitting heavily beside him.  And how someone that small could make it feel like the weight of the world, he had no idea.  "Is that what Summer's always asking you about?"

She'd started bringing it up around the others after he'd stopped answering when they were alone.  "Here's a hint," he grumbled.  "Never tell her you don't want to talk about something."

"Lesson learned the hard way," she said, and it was so unexpected that he couldn't tell if she was agreeing or making fun of him.  "So what makes you think it knows any more than you do?"

He turned to stare at her, and she shrugged.

"Maybe it's telepathic," she said.  "Maybe it sees your dreams.  Maybe it sent them in the first place.  Maybe it showed you something so vague you projected whatever you felt onto it.

"The point is," she added, when he didn't answer, "there's always another explanation.  For it or for us.  It can always rationalize what we say, and we can always rationalize what it says.  At some point, you have to decide who you'd rather believe."

She wasn't sitting quite close enough to touch.  He thought she could be, though.  If he asked.  He just knew--suddenly, without question--that if he shifted closer and bumped her shoulder, she wouldn't move.  She might even lean into him.

His arm twinged, even though everything in him came up green.  There was nothing wrong.  That was what it told him, and that was a lie.

"I believe you," he said quietly.

She didn't say anything, so he moved closer and she leaned up against his shoulder.  Right now, that was as much of an answer as he needed.

12. drawing home

"He had a fine view from the balloon," Ziggy said, "but he couldn't see his window.  He couldn't even see his house!"

He took the moment while he was turning the page to look out over the kids' heads, sure someone had come in while he was reading--and there was Casey, standing at the back of the room.  Smiling?  That was a good sign, right?

Ziggy caught his eye for a second, waiting for a signal that would tell him his morpher wasn't working and giant robots were attacking the city.  Casey lifted his hand in a tiny wave, shaking his head.  No robots, then?

"So he made a house," Ziggy continued, trying to stay alert in case he'd misinterpreted Casey's "all clear" gesture.  "With windows.  But none of the windows was his window."

One of the girls was leaning against his knee, which was really cute and he tried to remember not to wave his arms too enthusiastically for fear of hitting her.  "He made some more windows.  He made lots of buildings with windows.  He made a whole city full of windows, but none of the windows was his window.

"He couldn't think where it might be," Ziggy told them, and seriously, he had no idea why no one else wanted to visit schools.  These kids were adorable.  "He decided to ask a police officer."

"Why didn't he ask a Power Ranger?" one of the boys wanted to know.  There was general murmured agreement with this statement, and Ziggy considered it carefully.

"I think it was probably because he didn't know how to draw one," he said at last.  "I mean, those uniforms aren't easy."

"And his police person isn't very good," a little girl with black braids pointed out.

"Well, he's using a crayon," Ziggy reminded her.  "He probably couldn't get in all the details."

"If I got lost, I'd want to have a green crayon," the girl leaning against his knee mumbled.  "So I could draw you."

He beamed.  "And I would be happy to tell you which way to go," he said, thumbing the page to see how close they were to the end of the book.  He'd promised the teacher it wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes.  "The police officer pointed the way Harold was going anyway, okay?  So he kept going.

"He walked along with the moon, wishing he was in his room and in bed."

"Why?"  This from another boy, emboldened by the question about Power Rangers.  "What's so great about his room?"

Ziggy knew that one.  "It's where the whole adventure began," he said.  "Adventures aren't really adventures if you don't have something to come back to afterwards, right?"

The boy paused.  "I guess," he said at last.

He was pretty sure none of their parents would thank him for expounding on the differences between mob life and Rangering, so he let it go.  "Suddenly, Harold remembered," he said instead.  "He remembered where his bedroom window was when there was a moon: it was always right around the moon!"

Turning the page, Ziggy made sure all the kids could see Harold drawing his own window around the moon that had accompanied him since the beginning of the book.  Curtains and all.  "And then Harold made his bed.  He got in it, and he drew up the covers."

The last page showed Harold, his purple crayon finally set aside, sleeping peacefully in a home of his own making.  "And Harold dropped off to sleep," Ziggy told them.  "The end."

Fourteen and a half minutes, if his watch was right.  Well, Dillon's watch.  He didn't know why Dillon even wore a watch, since it wasn't like the one in his pocket didn't tell time.  But he did.  He could usually be convinced to lend it to Ziggy when he had somewhere to be.

The kids had more questions, of course, but it was almost time to go.  Casey came up and loomed a little, which worked about as well as when Dillon did it--the kids immediately started to ask him questions too.  The teacher was totally on top of it, though, and they were ready to go when the bell rang.  Casey and Ziggy walked out just ahead of the kids.

"That's RJ's favorite story," Casey said, waving over his shoulder at them.  "Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We have the video and the mp3 and everything."

"Really?"  Ziggy forgot to ask what he doing here for a moment, pleased as he was by the idea of another Ranger reading kids' books.  "I always liked it.  I mean, choose your own adventure, right?  Create your own life."

He could hear Casey grin.  "Yeah, that's what RJ says.  I'm sure the color of the crayon is just a bonus."

The noise in the hallway stunted the conversation, but Ziggy was eventually reassured there hadn't been any new disasters since he'd left the garage.  Casey just said it was weird being around Dillon and RJ at the same time, which was a strange thing to say but he didn't seem to want to talk about it, so.  They passed the walk back trading stories about invasions, Pandora's Box, and team life in general.

"You ever think one of your teammates was going to die?" Ziggy blurted out, a few minutes after the garage came into view.  It wasn't actually tall enough to see from a distance, but the zord bays around it were high and distinctive.

Casey didn't answer right away, and Ziggy wasn't sure that was comforting.  No matter what he eventually said.  "Maybe," Casey said at last.  "No?  I'm not sure.  I mean, they probably thought I was going to die a couple of times, but... I don't know.  It sounds bad, but--I was the new guy.  I didn't have to worry about them as much."

"Even RJ?" Ziggy asked.

Casey laughed.  "RJ's invincible," he said, and his tone had a fond certainty that Ziggy barely recognized.  "The one time we lost RJ, we ended up on the other side of death and RJ came back clean-shaven and smiling."

He blinked.  "Clean-shaven?" he repeated.

Casey waved his hand in a gesture of unfathomable exasperation.  "Wow, I went two whole days this time.  It just goes to show, you can't tell stories about someone without mentioning their gender somehow.

"I've gotten so careful," he added, when Ziggy just stared at him.  "When I'm talking to someone who doesn't know, I only use her name.  Or I make her tell it.  She always makes it sound plausible."

"Uh," Ziggy said cleverly.  "So she's not... uh, she's not a chick?  Woman?  Sorry; chicks, bad.  Summer keeps trying to get it into my head, but I'm conditioned, you know?"

Casey ignored this.  "She used to be a guy.  Kind of a long story.  But no, I've never thought she was going to die."

"Oh no," Ziggy declared, turning around to walk backward so he could get a better look at Casey's face.  "You can't just throw something like that out there and then be like, 'oh, my bad, you were saying?'  Your girlfriend used to be a dude?"

Casey gave him an irritated look.  Maybe the first one since he'd shown up--definitely the first one Ziggy had seen directed at him.  "Is that a problem?"

"No, no."  Ziggy held up his hands quickly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't about to walk into something.  "That's totally cool.  I mean, we used to think Dr. K was a dude.  At least, most of us did; she didn't exactly go out of her way to act human.  I think Dillon could tell, though.  I don't know how, except that he has superpowers and also a kind of gigantic crush on her ever since--"

He winced as he suddenly realized how that would sound.  "I mean, not that he couldn't have had a crush on her if she wasn't a she.  He totally would have; Dillon flirts with anything that walks, so--"

"Ziggy."  Casey stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and Ziggy froze where he was.

"Yeah?" he said carefully.

Casey nodded over his shoulder.  "You're about to walk into a streetlight."

Ziggy glanced back again, then took a step to the left.  "Yeah, okay.  Anyway, sorry."

Casey actually smiled at that.  "Not your fault," he said.  "It's weirder than it sounds, and it's been a little stressful.  I didn't mean to snap at you."

"No, sure, it's fine."  Ziggy frowned.  "So, you're a Power Ranger.  And all that stuff, the box and the fear guys and all that--the being on the other side of death?  And you never worried that maybe something would happen?"

"Something always happens," Casey said.  "That's what it means to live.  If nothing happens, you're doing it wrong."

"Yeah, but what if you don't live?" Ziggy insisted.  "What if you screw up and someone dies?"

"Everyone makes choices," Casey told him.  "If you take responsibility for someone else's choice, you take away their power.  ...And that's not helpful at all, is it."

Ziggy squinted at him, but he had to admit, "Not really, no."

"I've become one of the cryptic ninja masters I always complain about," Casey said, like it was a revelation.  "Don't tell RJ.  She already makes fun of me for the whole 'running the order' thing."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ziggy informed him.

"Yeah, neither do I," Casey said ruefully.  "Look, you can't go out there thinking about everything you could lose.  You have to think about what you want to win.  It isn't about death.  It's about life.  It's about what you do while you're here, like this."

Ziggy considered that, and, cryptic ninja master or not, he thought he kind of got it.  "What about other people?" he asked at last.  "How do I make them see what they do?  What they've got?"

"You don't," Casey said.  "Sorry.  Everyone has to find their own reasons... to stay, or to go.  All you can do is make sure they know yours."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.  "Huh," he said after a moment.  "Okay.  Thanks."

"If that actually helped you," Casey said with a grin, "you should write it down and give it back to me so I can use it again."

"I'll let you know," Ziggy promised thoughtfully.  "If it does, I totally will."

13. the nature of the contract

The other Rangers forgot how well he could hear.  The other Rangers--but not Ziggy.  Ziggy had once conducted an extensive test, the results of which Dillon could only assume he hadn't shared with the rest of the team, determining exactly what Dillon could hear and from where.

So when Ziggy walked right past him on his way into the training room, leaving the doors open behind him, Dillon figured he was supposed to overhear the exchange that followed.

"Hey, Dr. K," Ziggy said cheerfully.  "You busy?"

"Would saying 'yes' make you go away?" she replied.

"Only if you qualified it with 'something very large is about to explode."

"In that case," she said, and the pause was definitely deliberate.  "No more so than usual."

"Great!"  He could picture Ziggy getting ready to ask his question of the day.  Hour.  Whatever.  "How do you feel about cheating?"

Dillon raised an eyebrow.  He wondered if seeing Ziggy's expression made the question easier to interpret.  The person he was asking didn't seem to have any trouble, so maybe it did.

"The possibility of cheating in itself indicates that a rule is breakable," she replied.  "This proves the underlying scientific principle is flawed.  Therefore the act of cheating, whenever possible, is necessary to advance our understanding of natural laws."

"Uh, no," Ziggy said.  "That's not what I'm talking about."

"Then you'll have to be more specific."

He could hear the constant click of keys beneath their conversation.  It was at the edge of his awareness unless he concentrated on it, and it was possible that knowing it was there made it easier to pick out.  The fact that her initial reply had been longer than a sentence meant she was taking Ziggy seriously, but she wasn't stumped until she stopped typing.

"I mean, cheating in a relationship," Ziggy said.  "A... personal relationship.  Like someone you're dating, right?  How do you feel about that kind of cheating?"

"You'll have to define cheating in that context," she said.

"Cheating," Ziggy insisted.  "Like when you're seeing someone and they start seeing someone else.  Without telling you."

The clicking stopped, and her voice didn't change but the words were dangerous.  "Why wouldn't they tell me?"

Ziggy, Dillon thought.  What are you doing?

"Oh--no!"  Ziggy sounded startled, his tone sliding into horrified as he babbled, "No, that's not what I--they didn't!  He isn't!  No one is doing anything!  Well, I'm asking you a question, but.  No one is doing anything without telling you, I swear!"

"I see."  She wasn't smiling, but there was an amusement in her voice that only Ziggy could provoke.  Her face would be lighter, now, looking down at the keyboard in an effort to keep anyone from noticing.

He wished he could see it.

"So?" Ziggy prompted after a moment.

"My original answer stands," she replied.  "The act of cheating indicates the underlying relationship is flawed.  Communication is vital in any interpersonal interaction, and if language fails to define its absence, then actions will suffice."

It was exactly 4.8 seconds before Ziggy said, "So, wait."  Not that Dillon was counting or anything.  "Cheating tells you that you're not talking?"

"By your definition, yes."

"But how do you define cheating?" he insisted.

"I don't," she said, like it was obvious.  "Clearly, the nature of a cheat depends on the contract being cheated.  It changes from one situation to the next."

Ziggy must have given her a totally helpless look, because she sighed.  Well, she didn't sigh, but the way she spoke made if clear she'd just lowered her shoulders.  That was her version of a sigh, and Dillon found it very efficient.  It didn't waste any time she could have spent explaining the problem.

"If you go out and get ice cream right now," she said, "you're not cheating.  But if you and I have previously agreed to go on an ice cream-free diet together, and you go out and get ice cream while telling me that you are still adhering to the terms of our agreement, you're cheating."

"Uh, okay," Ziggy agreed.  "But cheating on a diet isn't exactly the same as cheating in a relationship."

Her tone clearly said, I fail to see the difference, but what actually came out was, "Only if you value the relationship with whomever you're dating over the relationship with your dieting partner."

"No," Ziggy said.  "No, that's not it at all.  If you go on a diet there are rules.  You spell it out, right?  In a relationship there are expectations, assumptions, that kind of thing.  It's implicit.  Totally different relationship, totally different cheat."

"Assumptions aren't scientific," she replied.  "I don't make them."

Dillon heard her start typing again, but Ziggy wasn't done.  "Okay, so, do you and Dillon have rules?  About what you can and can't do?"

Yes, Dillon thought.

"No," she said.  "Why?"

"Ah, then why did you get all upset when I asked what you would do if Dillon was seeing someone else and didn't tell you?" Ziggy wanted to know.  "It's a rule that he can't see other people, right?"

"I did not get 'all upset,'" she retorted.  "You didn't even mention him.  I simply expressed a wish for clarification."

"Is it," Ziggy said, very clearly, "a rule that he can't see other people.  Yes or no."

Her pause was shorter than any of Ziggy's, but it felt longer.  Not typing again.

"No," she said at last.  "We haven't discussed it, so, no.  It's not a rule."

"Let's discuss it," Ziggy said.  His voice was audibly closer to the door when he added, "Come on."

She definitely hadn't moved when she replied, "I have--at times--appreciated your efforts to intervene.  But I don't see why it's called for in this instance.  If Dillon wishes to define the parameters of our... relationship, I think allowing someone else to speak in his stead is counterproductive." 

"No, he's not the one who wants to define it," Ziggy assured her.  "I am."

She asked exactly what Dillon was thinking.  "Why?"

"Because I want to ask him out," Ziggy said.  "I gotta know if that's a problem.  I mean, not the--just the asking.  'Cause he'll ask me, you know?  If it is or not.  And I don't know.  I mean, for most people it would be, but you guys are kind of... weird.

"In a good way," he added hastily.  "Don't get me wrong, but.  Um.  Is it?"

He sounded like he was cringing.

"You want to ask Dillon out," she repeated.

"Yes?"

She barely waited for him to answer.  "Well, that's all right then."  The click of keys accentuated her words.  "We don't have to discuss that."

Dillon thought, We don't?

"Yeah, we do," Ziggy said.  On this he was very clear.  "You say you don't have any rules, but Dillon expects stuff he doesn't even know, let alone admit.  I'm actually asking you first because I think you're less likely to kill me.  Which is kind of ironic, given the number of times he's saved me from things you got me into, but whatever."

"You must be exaggerating," she said.  "Dillon has explicitly stated that I'm at the top of his so far hypothetical 'to kill' list.  And he has certainly implied that you are at the bottom."

Dillon shook his head.  Were they seriously arguing over which of them he was more likely to kill?

"That's old data," Ziggy said.  "I'm introducing a new variable.  All bets are off."

He'd had enough.  "Ziggy," he said, raising his voice.  "How long am I supposed to pretend I can't hear you?"

The reply was immediate.  "Kind of surprised you lasted this long!"

Dillon took this as permission to join them.  At least, permission from Ziggy.  He stood in the door, waiting for acknowledgment from the other half of the conversation.  "Mind if I come in?" he asked, when she just sat there staring at him.

"Did you put him up to this?" she wanted to know.

He figured that was as close to permission as he was gonna get.  "No," he said, pushing away from the door.  "But I think it took a lot of guts to say it."

Ziggy was wearing his blank face, the one he only got when he didn't want anyone to know what he was thinking but couldn't come up with anything to cover it.

"Then," she said, "I understand we have something to discuss?"

"Yeah," he agreed.  "So I hear."

14. what should be done

Dear Casey...

The two Rangers from the other dimension left as abruptly as they'd come, announcing one morning that they had a restaurant to run and classes to teach.  Neither of which had stopped them from spending almost a week at the garage, but Dr. K had apparently found a way to diffuse the bioenergetic drain, and RJ was eager to get back and see if it was helping "the rest of the wolves."

Ziggy was pretty sure that statement had alarmed Dillon, but he wouldn't say why.  The only other person to notice his reaction was Scott, who seemed willing to write it off as just another weird thing Dillon did.  Normally Ziggy would have asked, but Dillon was already putting a lot of thought into the whole dating thing and it didn't seem smart to distract him more than he already was.

You said if it helped, I should write it down for you.  So here's what you told me:

"I would have been more subtle," Ziggy told them that first night, before he reconsidered.  "Well--let's face it--no, I wouldn't have been.  But if I had been, I'm pretty sure you guys wouldn't have gotten it, so really, that's just proof that my natural approach lends itself really well to the way you're all, like, focused and... unsubtle."

Dr. K gave him a look like he had suggested changing the way they fought.  "Why would greater subtlety be desirable?"

"Mostly it keeps people from getting their feelings hurt," Ziggy offered.  "As much, anyway.  'Cause if you don't say, 'hey, I want to date you,' then the other person doesn't have to say, 'hey, I really don't.'  They can just, you know.  Let you know without having to actually say it."

She frowned.  "That sounds inefficient," she said, her eyes flicking to Dillon.

Ziggy took that as an excuse to look at him too.

The only one I can do anything about is me, right?  I'm not really used to that.  I mean, usually it's all about other people.

"I'm not big on subtlety."  Dillon said it like it was the understatement of the year, like he didn't even know why it was a question.  "You got something to say, you say it."

"I'm gay," Ziggy blurted out.

Dillon held his gaze.  "Yeah," he said evenly.  "Kind of guessed that."

"Um, what, you mean--"  He probably shouldn't have admitted that.  Why had he admitted that?  Why was he even doing this?  "Just now?"

"No."  Dillon looked faintly amused, and that was better than pissed off, right?  "I can hear you breathe, you know.  It's not like I don't know who you react to."

Wow, that was actually way creepier than he'd ever thought of Dillon as being.

"But you always talk about impressing 'chicks'."  It was like she made the quotes audible when she said it, Ziggy thought.  And he could hear her frowning.  He still hadn't managed to look away from Dillon.

"Yeah, it turns out women don't really go for that," he said.  "Saying that you want to impress chicks isn't actually about hooking up with women.  It's about posturing for other guys."

But I tried telling those other people about me, and the weirdest thing happened.

"I find it amusing," Dr. K said unexpectedly.

That made him look.  At her.  He looked away from Dillon long enough to catch Dr. K's uncertain glance between the two of them, but he had no idea what it meant.

"What, talking about chicks?"

She looked down like she was shrugging, then sat back in her chair.  Which was hard when her feet barely reached the floor, but she managed.  "Well, that.  And the way Dillon rolls his eyes whenever you do it."

"I don't roll my eyes," Dillon said.

"Then you have some clever disguise that makes it look like you're rolling your eyes when you're not," she told him.  "Because I've seen you do it."

"Um, hi," Ziggy interrupted.  "Should I go?"

He didn't really want to see them being all cute when he was feeling this stupid.

"Can we take her?" Dillon asked, jerking his head at the computer screens.

Ziggy just stared at him.

"On a date," Dillon clarified.  "You were gonna ask me, right?  I'm with her.  But I can't get her to leave the damn base.  I'm pretty sure you can."

"So, wait," Ziggy said.  "You'll go out with me because I can get her to go too?"

Dillon gave him a look like he was an idiot, which actually wasn't a look he got from Dillon very often.  "I'll go out with you 'cause you're funny.  I'm pretty sure she will too.  It would save a lot of time if we all went together."

They listened.  The people I was talking to totally got it.  Still not sure how, but that part was up to them, right?  And they did it.

Between the look and the explanation--Ziggy had finally learned to hear "you're funny" as "I like you," and he was embarrassed it had taken him as long as it had--he figured Dillon had just said no.  Well, yes.  But no, he wasn't doing it just because it would make Dr. K happy.

But maybe it would, Ziggy thought?

"So, Dr. K," he began, leaning in between two of her screens so he was on a level with whatever they displayed.  "Ever been bowling?"

Was it his imagination, or did she hesitate for, like, half a second?

"Hard as it seems to be for you to remember," she said, "I do work around here.  Quite a lot of it.  I don't have time to go gallivanting off across the city on unimportant business."

"You make time for his team nights," Dillon pointed out.

"Yes, and all I need is to add a date night to that list of distractions," she retorted.

"Oh, hey, that's a good idea," Ziggy said.  "If we put it on the schedule, you could plan for it, right?"

"I can't magically add more hours to the day," she informed him.  "No matter what's on the schedule."

"Can I help," Dillon muttered.  He sounded so gruff it didn't even register as a question until he continued, "It's not like I've got anything else to do while you're all asleep.  Can you... I don't know, leave some of it on the screens or something?"

They were both staring at him again.

"Or not," Dillon added.  "Whatever."

"Possibly," Dr. K said at the same time.  Carefully.  Well, careful for her, which still would have sounded flippant from anyone else.  "You do--make it go more quickly."

The corner of Dillon's mouth quirked, and they shared a look.  This time Ziggy didn't ask to leave.  When he wasn't feeling so stupid, it really was cute.

I get that it doesn't always work like that, but I picked the right people and I got lucky.  You gave me good advice.

He dragged them both to the bowling alley the next night, and it was hilarious.  It was adorable.  It was exhilarating.  It was the best time he'd had since becoming a Ranger, and that was saying something.  He was totally incapable of sleeping afterwards, so he stayed up and wrote a letter to Casey instead.

He got interrupted a couple of times... well, four, to be exact, although maybe the fourth one didn't count.  After every single member of the team who hadn't gone bowling that night stopped by to quiz him about it, he went down to the kitchen for a snack and maybe a quick look to see if Dillon was around.  There he found RJ, ended up talking about Dillon instead of to him, and was left with the sort of comforting feeling that Casey's girlfriend didn't find it at all strange.

He finished the letter on the kitchen counter, signed it with a flourish, and offered it to RJ to give to Casey.  The next day he was glad he had, because they were leaving and he wasn't sure he would have wanted to hand Casey a note in front of everyone.  

He would have, though.  He knew he would have done it anyway.  Sometimes the things that should be done had to be done--and he could do them.  That was a good feeling.

Thanks for that,
Ziggy