Once upon a time, or maybe it was just yesterday, there were a lot of Rangers. And among these Rangers were relationships. Special relationships. The ones that lead to flowers, leather jackets, shared health insurance, and children. They were sometimes unconventional, usually unpredictable, and those involved were always just a bit more smug about it than everyone else.

So their children left them and struck out on their own. As children are wont to do, especially in their rebellious teenage years. Not that their Ranger parents would know anything about that. But the children grew and learned from each other, like their parents before them, and became a force to be reckoned with in their own right.

Or they were supposed to be. A force to be reckoned with, that is. But these things don't happen overnight.

Because children are, by their very nature, young and inexperienced. The universe is a big place. And the children had a lot of ground to cover.

So they went off to school.

This is not their story.

This rather is the story of those Ranger parents who raised them and gave them teddy bears and made sure they wore their coats when they went outside. They are the Rangers who fought for the freedom of their worlds only to find out that freedom from small clinging hands and whiny voices and spilled milk was much harder to achieve. And perhaps much less desirable, too. These are the Rangers that will always embarrass their children.

This is their story.

And what a story it is.

***

Ashley had found that when it came to her daughter, there were two different ways to wake up: by poke or by scream. Hope wasn't as much of a screamer as Kae had been, but she wasn't a restful bed partner either. She did sleep through the night--but she didn't do it without squirming, twitching, and rolling. She did everything but get up and sleepwalk, and somehow Ashley thought that might be next.

At least she was quiet about it. Ashley had forgotten how much she appreciated that until she woke to the unmistakable sound of childish shrieking. It brought her to full alertness in a matter of seconds, but when she rolled over she found her twenty-month-old daughter still sleeping peacefully beside her.

Then a second voice joined in, indistinguishable from the first. Hope finally stirred, making incomprehensible sounds in her sleep as a prelude to waking. Ashley offered silent thanks that Kae and Hope were years apart. One screaming toddler at a time was quite enough, thank you. She didn't know how Cassie and Saryn did it.

The screaming degenerated into babbling, interspersed with Cassie's soothing voice and the occasional rebounding whine. Ashley rolled out of the new double bed her parents had put in her old room and changed out of her pajamas while Hope woke up. Then she changed Hope, put her in a new baby shirt, and decided to brave the hallway.

Not that it was much of a decision. She had to use the bathroom, and Hope had to eat. Otherwise, they'd have a third screaming girl-voice in a matter of moments, and she didn't think any of them would be able to survive that. Hope knew enough words to know that anything she could say was more widely received if she screamed.

By the time Ashley arrived in her parents' kitchen, order--such as it was--reigned supreme. She smiled at the picture they made. The twins were ensconced on opposite ends of the Hammonds' kitchen table, with Cassie in between on one side and Ashley's mom fussing over all of them from the other. Ashley's dad was cooking what looked like adult food on the stove, while Saryn stood a safe distance away with a coffee mug in one hand.

"Good morning, honey," her mom greeted her with a cheerful smile. The smile, Ashley thought wryly, of a woman who knew all these kids would be going back home when the weekend was over. "Hi Hope! How's my youngest grandchild this morning?"

"Hey, Ash," Cassie offered, her smile a little more distracted and definitely more tired.

"Good morning," her dad added. "Would you like some eggs, and if so, what kind?"

"Thanks, Mom," Ashley said, letting her mother take Hope out of her arms and slide her into her high chair. She caught Saryn's nod to her out of the corner of her eye, which she figured was equivalent to a "good morning" from anyone else. She smiled at him and her dad together. "Some scrambled eggs would be wonderful," she added, dropping into the chair across from Cassie. "Thanks. Morning, Cassie."

"Would you like some cheerios, Hope?" her mom was asking. "I bet you would. And maybe some apple juice too, honey?"

"Sorry if we woke you up," Cassie said. And she actually managed to look sorry, too, which was what impressed Ashley. "It's later on Elisia right now."

"No, we were already up," Ashley assured her. Which wasn't totally true, but it should have been... she just hadn't been able to bring herself to set an alarm clock on her "vacation." "I have to head out early if I'm going to meet Kerone by ten."

She was really looking forward to that. Her parents had offered to watch Hope for the day while she and Kerone took Kae to see some of the rowdier sights in California. "Rowdier," that is, as defined by "things that are inappropriate for an almost-two-year-old but acceptable for a boy of eight." The morning was devoted to the X Games, which were being held in LA this summer and just happened to coincide with their vacation.

"Can I have some more apple juice too?" the twin on Ashley's right asked. She stopped whatever she was doing to her egg to hold up her plastic cup, and her other hand made a gesture that Ashley vaguely recognized as "more."

Terra, then, Ashley thought, making a mental note. Terra was wearing a blue shirt today, and Jenni was wearing purple. Terra, blue. Jenni, purple. She repeated it a few times to herself so she'd be able to keep them straight. For the morning, at least. Until they switched clothes while she wasn't looking and smiled angelically at her while she called them the wrong names.

"May I," Saryn corrected from where he was standing by the sink. They were the first words he'd said since Ashley had come into the kitchen.

"May I have some more apple juice, please?" Terra said immediately.

"Of course you may," Ashley's mom said, emphasizing the "may" with a smile. She turned the same smile on Terra's sister, who was waving wildly. Holding up Terra's cup, she signed, "Same?"

Jenni nodded emphatically, holding up her own cup with an expectant expression. Cassie raised her finger in a "wait" gesture to Ashley's mom, and as soon as her mom looked at Cassie, Jenni followed her gaze. Cassie signed something that Ashley didn't understand at all. Jenni made a face, but she repeated it dutifully to her grandmother.

When Cassie nodded, Ashley's mom smiled at Jenni and signed, "Sure." By the time she got to the refrigerator, Saryn had set down his mug long enough to retrieve the apple juice. He filled both cups halfway while Ashley's mom got a sippy cup for Hope and some cheerios. Ashley's mom told him he didn't have to do it, thanked him for it afterward, and seemed utterly unfazed when Saryn didn't say a word in return.

Ashley glanced across the table at Cassie and they shared a smile. Her mom and Saryn had reached a sort of social compromise--she would talk, he wouldn't, and they would both be fine as long as neither of them expected anything else.

Saryn brought the twins' juice over to the table. They both signed "thank you" at exactly the same time before diving back into whatever they were chattering silently about across the table. Saryn circled the table to lay a hand on Cassie's shoulder before retreating to the sink again.

She smiled up at him just as Ashley was distracted by the plate of eggs that appeared in front of her. "Two orders of scrambled eggs," her father announced. "Saryn, I put yours on the counter. Cassie, can I get you anything else? More breakfast? Two-for-one coupons? A kid-free vacation?"

"Thank you," Saryn said quietly, as he left the table. Ashley's dad didn't ask if he wanted to sit down. He understood Saryn better than her mom did, she thought--or maybe it was just a guy thing, that you didn't make a fuss over people who kept to themselves sometimes.

"We alternate vacations with Raine and Azmuth," Cassie said with a laugh. "So we can watch each other's kids. But I'll have another one of those eggs, if you don't mind. Girls?" She tapped the table gently before asking, "Would you like another egg?" She signed as she spoke, and both twins signed back.

"Just one for me," Cassie translated with a smile for Ashley's dad. "Thanks. We really appreciate you making us breakfast like this."

"Mm-hmm," Ashley agreed, her mouth full of scrambled eggs. This, she thought idly, would be a really good time to be able to sign the way the twins did.

"It's my pleasure," her father assured them.

"We love having you here," her mom added. "Isn't that right, Hope? You tell your mom that you want to come visit your grandmother more."

Hope was chasing cheerios around the tray of her high chair, and Ashley was more worried that she might knock her cup over than she was that her daughter might badger her about coming to Earth more often. Her mom had tried to take the tray away so Hope could sit at the table "like a big girl," but Hope liked the tray. At home she made do with just a booster seat.

"I think the house is a little small for all of us at once," Ashley said ruefully. "Maybe we should stagger our visits."

"Why else do we keep this big house for just the two of us?" her mother wanted to know. "So you can all come and visit us at the same time. We'll get another sofa bed by the time Hope is old enough for a real bed, don't worry."

Ashley smiled down at her scrambled eggs. Sure, the house could fit all of them now, and it would even absorb Andros if he'd stop going off on these extremely convenient "secret missions." But it wouldn't fit the rest of their family along with him, and she knew perfectly well why these missions only came up when they were planning visits to Earth.

"I'll never get tired of coming back here," Cassie promised. "I think I like Earth better now than I did when I lived here.

"Gently, Terra," she added, when her daughter pounded on the table. She signed something to them both while aloud she said, "Yes, you may be excused."

Ashley's smile widened, and this time she didn't bother to hide it while the twins slid out of their chairs and scampered off. There was no doubt about where they were getting their table manners. She wondered if Saryn corrected Jenni's vocabulary in sign the way he corrected Terra's speech. She thought he probably did.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" her mom asked, just as Ashley looked around for a glass that wasn't there.

At the same moment, her dad remarked, "More eggs, Ashley?"

She laughed, grinning at Cassie across the table. "Yeah," she agreed. "I'll never get tired of coming home either."

***

Only one more day until they went home. And he wasn't going home without some answers to take with him, because if he were to name one thing that Cam got exponentially better at in his own territory, it would be evasion. Hunter didn't tolerate evasion well.

He knew for a fact that Blake was still asleep, so he kept his knock on the bathroom door quiet. Cam's voice called, "Just a minute," and Hunter didn't miss the exasperation in his tone. Yes, he knew Cam was in the bathroom. He also knew that Cam had already finished his shower and had wasted enough time in there since to qualify for honorary girlhood.

Hunter knew this because it had taken him way longer than it should have to get up the courage to knock in the first place. He didn't like evasion. But since there were a lot of questions he'd never asked straight out, he wasn't totally sure that what Cam was doing qualified as evasion.

He wasn't sure he wanted to be sure, either. And he definitely wasn't sure he wanted Cam to know he cared. So they'd never talked much about what they were doing. Together. Or otherwise. It shouldn't matter, right?

Yeah, well. Turned out that it did.

The door opened, and Cam was frowning at him. Like that was a surprise. "You couldn't wait two seconds?" he said sharply. He moved to push past Hunter, but Hunter didn't get out of his way.

"Nope," he said, catching Cam's arm and crowding him back into the bathroom. "You're not going anywhere," he added, closing the door behind him. "I have questions."

That had seemed like the most honest, up-front way to start, but it made Cam raise his eyebrows. "Couldn't they have waited until I was out of the bathroom?"

He wished. "Considering this is what passes for privacy around here?" Hunter asked, pretending to think about it for all of half a second. "No. And you owe me."

Cam rolled his eyes at that. "If you're talking about those twenty questions in the zord bay, I think you've collected at least half of yours by now."

"Fine," Hunter told him. "So I get ten. What does this mean to you?"

Cam eyed him. "That you can do basic arithmetic?"

"No, this," Hunter emphasized irritably. "This, between us. Whatever we're doing: sneaking around, dating, whatever."

That made Cam frown, but he let the impossibly vague attempt at clarification slide. "Are we sneaking around?"

"No, sorry, you already got your questions," Hunter informed him. "You get to answer mine now. What does this--" He gestured impatiently, unable to come up with a better word for it. "Mean to you?"

"I'm not sneaking around," Cam snapped. "I thought we were dating. What, have I been missing something all this time?"

"Fine, dating." Cam sucked at this game. "That doesn't answer the question. What does it mean?"

Cam was looking more pissed as the seconds passed, which was either because he had no clue what was going on, or because he did and he didn't like it. "Since when do you need someone to explain what dating means to you?"

"I don't need you to explain what it means to me," Hunter told him. "I want you to explain what it means to you."

"It means I like you," Cam snapped, in a tone that implied he didn't at all. "It means that most of the time, I prefer your company to that of anyone else I know. And most of the time," he added, "I have no idea why."

Eyes narrowed, Hunter thought about that for a moment. Okay, that was fine. Backhanded compliment, very Cam-like. "Do you expect it to last?" he asked bluntly. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it all the way.

Cam just stared at him. "What? My confusion over your inexplicably enjoyable company?"

Hunter folded his arms. "Us dating."

Cam visibly stiffened. "That's not really up to me, is it." The words were no sharper than usual, but there was a coldness to them that took Hunter by surprise.

"Why not?" Hunter demanded, forgetting himself enough to ask a question he hadn't planned. Damn. The trick to twenty questions was not letting the other person startle you into a question mark.

Cam crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking Hunter's posture. "Look, if you don't want to do this anymore, just say so. I don't need the whole talk."

Hunter blinked, but this time he thought before he spoke. "Why would you think I'd want to break up?"

"Why do you think I would?" Cam countered, still frowning.

The corner of Hunter's mouth curled into a smirk. "So not your question."

Cam sighed in annoyance, but some of the frostiness had gone out of his tone. "You're coming across a little confrontational," he pointed out dryly. "If you hadn't noticed. Whatever you want to hear, you're not going to intimidate it out of me."

Hunter shifted, letting his hands fall and shoving them into his pockets. "Answer the question," he muttered uncomfortably. He hated it when Cam got all... knowing on him.

"I did," Cam informed him. "You're talking about--us, and you sound angry." Had he imagined the slightest pause before Cam said "us"? "It's not such a huge leap of logic to think that you're... looking for a way out."

At least, Hunter thought distantly, Cam looked almost as uncomfortable as he felt. And for someone like Cam, that was saying a lot. So maybe things evened out.

"I don't want to break up," he mumbled, and wasn't that an embarrassing thing to say, all on its own. Breaking up implied that there was something between them to begin with, and okay, maybe Cam had agreed that there was, but still... "I want to get together."

Cam raised his eyebrows, and Hunter grimaced. "I mean--you know. We don't have to be like... Dustin and Marah." Sneaking around.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that," Cam said dryly.

Hunter didn't find his attempt at levity particularly funny. His expression must have conveyed exactly that to Cam, because Cam sighed. "What do you want from me, Hunter? Do you want me make an announcement? Fine. I'm dating Hunter Bradley. I'll tell them at breakfast."

"No, look--" Hunter stumbled over his own words. "That's not it. I know you don't want to do that. And seriously, neither do I--"

"You keep saying that," Cam interrupted. "But you keep bringing it up. If it's that important, let's just do it. Just because I think they should be able to figure it out on their own doesn't mean I value their mental acuity over your peace of mind."

It took him a moment to figure that out, but eventually he found a compliment buried in there. It was a nice enough gesture that he figured it deserved a little honesty in return. "It's not them I want you to tell," he muttered. He hesitated, but he was past the point of no return. "It's me."

For once, Cam's expression didn't do anything that was even remotely readable. Finally he said slowly, "You already know." But he didn't say it with quite the right amount of conviction, and Hunter heard the question in the words.

Hunter watched him carefully. If he asked again, Cam would know what he meant. And maybe there had been a certain amount of safety before, when he'd half-expected Cam not to get it. That was gone now. But he was going to ask anyway.

"Do you expect it to last?" he said quietly.

He saw the exact moment when Cam understood, because he opened his mouth before the words really sank in. Cam was always doing that, his body compensating for his brain's speed by getting ahead of it and then counting on the brain to catch up. This time it didn't. Cam just stood there and stared at Hunter for a long moment.

It would have been pretty funny, Hunter thought, if they'd been talking about anything else. Actually--even now it was kind of funny. It was just that he didn't dare let Cam know that, because then he'd never get an answer.

"I... I don't know what to say to that," Cam admitted at last.

Hunter's perception of the situation as "funny" made a ninety degree turn toward "sweet" just that fast. Because Cam had stammered. Cam never stammered. And when was the last time he hadn't known what to say and had said so, out loud? Never. Except now.

For Hunter.

"I do," Hunter muttered.

Cam waited. Finally he asked, "What?"

And Hunter realized that he'd misunderstood. "No," he said, holding Cam's gaze steadily. "I mean, I do expect it to last."

Cam stared at him. "Oh," he said at last.

"I mean, I want it to," Hunter amended, and he could feel his face getting red. He really could. This was bad, so he was going to do the only thing he could. He was going to cleverly ignore it.

"I didn't expect that from you," Cam said quietly.

Well, that was... crushing. Hunter held his ground, determined not to let it show on his face. He could keep at least something to himself... couldn't he?

Cam seemed to see it anyway. "I didn't mean--" He broke off abruptly, frowning in confusion instead of annoyance. "I just meant, you're... impulsive. I didn't know--maybe you just asked me out to see what I'd say."

Hunter managed not to retort that that was exactly what he'd done, because how else did you know if someone would go out with you or not? "If I'd meant it to be casual," he muttered, "I would have told you."

"Well, I'm not up on the secret Hunter code of telling versus not telling," Cam informed him. "How could you know you wouldn't want it like that before you even asked me out, anyway?"

Hunter smiled, just a little. "Easy. It was you." He could be charming when he wanted to be. Even if Cam was giving him a look like it was the most useless thing he'd ever heard.

Cam liked cute. Hunter knew it, and he also knew that Cam wasn't going to call it quits just because Hunter had said maybe he wanted something more than just "casual." Play by Cam's rules, and you were allowed in Cam's world. He was willing to back off if it meant he got another chance with Cam--because really, plenty of long-term relationships started casual, right?

Disappointed, maybe, but not defeated. Challenged.

Hunter kept his smirk to himself. Cam had always been a challenge.

"Did I mention that I don't know why I like spending time with you?" Cam was asking. Hunter was all ready for a retort when he added unexpectedly, "It'll probably take me a while to figure it out."

Caught off guard, Hunter was torn between acknowledging that or not. "Yeah?" he said at last. He was such a sucker for Cam's hesitance... feigned or otherwise. "How long?"

"Could be a long time," Cam said with a little shrug. "I'll probably need to do a lot of field research."

Hunter's lips twitched, and he fixed Cam with a knowing look of his own. "Okay, two things," he said firmly. "One, coy is not a good look for you. Two, referring to me as 'research' isn't gonna get you anywhere."

To his surprise, Cam just smiled. "I'll remember that," he said simply.

Hunter blinked. If Cam was going to take him seriously, maybe he should be a little clearer. "Well, okay, one was a lie," he told Cam. "But two was true."

Maybe not so much of a challenge after all.

Cam's faint smile became a grin, and he looked away. If Hunter didn't know better, he'd think maybe he'd embarrassed him. Then Cam told the shower curtain, "You were never research to me." He glanced back at Hunter when he said it.

"Yeah, well." Hunter shifted awkwardly, not sure what to do with that. "You either."

Okay, a challenge. Just a different kind of challenge than he'd originally thought. Maybe a harder one. Because no matter what Blake claimed, Hunter did know how to make people like him. But making them keep liking him?

This was all new ground, here.

***

Kerone watched her son fly across the curved surface of the half pipe set up in the Staples Center. Not literally fly, of course, at least not here on Earth. He was a little clumsy without the anti-gravs he took for granted on his Kerovan skates, but he was also fearless. After all, his wheels were stuck to the ground, so what was the danger?

She knew perfectly well he could still hurt himself in those skates. Especially with all the other kids cruising around out there, making a constantly-shifting obstacle course for Kae to navigate with unfamiliar equipment. On the other hand, his typically three-dimensional awareness was now focused on only two, and that gave him an edge.

She also knew that a parent could only protect their child so much. What was the point of a life devoid of all experience? As a former Ranger, she understood the lure of risk better than most--and she also understood that adventure was the best teacher.

Someone bumped her shoulder, and she looked up at the hasty apology. She smiled as a man with tousled brown hair spun past her, dragging a dark-skinned man in his wake. They seemed to be comparing the merits of the upcoming skateboard practice to the motocross practice already in progress on the other side of the arena.

Just then, someone called a five-minute warning to the kids' "exhibition" participants, warning them to clear the area for registered X Games competitors. Skateboard vert, she noted absently. Like the skating--she was sure some of the "kids" on the half pipe had to be competitors--but with boards, and maybe Kae would want to watch that.

If they were clearing the half pipe, though, it must be almost ten. She looked around, but she didn't have much hope of picking out a familiar face in the crowd from down here on the floor. Luckily, she didn't have to.

*Ashley?* Kerone called silently.

*Hi!* Ashley's cheerful thoughts replied. *I'm in line outside the Staples Center now. Are you inside?*

*Yes,* Kerone answered, smiling as she watched Kae "accidentally" slide down the far side of the half pipe again. He spun as he went, avoiding the thinning exhibition participants with ease. She lifted one hand over her head and waved in his direction, telling Ashley, *We're at half pipe. We should be around the skateboard practice when you get in.*

*Great. I'm just waiting to go through security,* Ashley told her. *I'll let you know when I'm there.*

Kae went to his knees at the bottom of the half pipe, skidding on his protective gear deliberately. He'd been going too fast to stop any other way, she supposed, although it made her wince to see it. He had to have picked up that trick from the other kids just this morning, since skidding wasn't an option in most of the places he skated at home.

Still, he did it and did it right, coming to a stop just a couple of paces from the edge. Instead of pushing himself up he swung his legs around and slid over, looking very comfortable in his baggy jeans and X Games t-shirt. He hopped down, landing on his skates without a single wobble and heading straight for her.

"Hi there," Kerone said with a smile, as he skated up to and around her with practiced ease. "You looked like a competitor out there."

"Nah," Kae said dismissively. He spun backwards around her, then walked in place on his wheels for a moment. "That one kid was way better than me. And these skates are slow," he complained. "I don't know how they get going fast enough for their jumps here!"

"Well," she told him, "your dad says that anyone can do amazing things with good equipment. It's the people who can do amazing things with bad equipment who are really impressive."

Kae turned in place, looking absurdly graceful for a little boy with wheels on his feet. "Pa says impressive people should have good equipment," he told her.

"Yes, well, that sounds like him," she said with a smile. "But since he used to have no equipment at all--even bad things--I think he knows that's not always how it is."

Kae gave her a skeptical look. "But he was a..." Here he paused dramatically and was very obvious about looking all around him to check for eavesdroppers. "Special person," he said at last. "Just like you. You always had stuff."

"Well, he wasn't always a special person," Kerone told him. She decided now wasn't the time to talk about the different kinds of "stuff" one might have. "Once he was just a boy, like you, and he was all alone when his parents died. He didn't become a special person for many years."

Kae frowned at that. "If he was all alone, what did he do?"

"His ma and pa took him in," she told him. "Just like we did with you. But they didn't have much to give him, and when their home was invaded they lost everything. Even him, for a while."

"That's when Dad rescued him," Kae put in. "Right? When... home was invaded, Dad rescued Pa because no one else would go back for him."

Kerone smiled at his deliberate care in avoiding any mention of Power Rangers or "alien" planets. "That's right," she agreed, wondering if Zhane knew which parts of his stories stuck with Kae and which apparently didn't. "So, see, sometimes it's not what you have, but how you use it that matters."

"Don't worry," Kae told her confidently. "If home is ever invaded again? I'll come back for you, Ma."

She couldn't help laughing, and the fact that the idea was in any way laugh-worthy warmed her heart. The Kerovan system had come a long way in a very short time. "Thanks, sweetie," she told him fondly. "I'll come back for you too. I promise."

"Kerone!" It was Ashley's voice, somewhere in the changing crowd. Spectators were swapping places now, and the number of kids was dwindling while X-Games registered participants became a more serious presence on the floor.

She caught sight of Ashley's bright yellow blouse, and she lifted her hand in acknowledgement. "Over here!" she called, even though Ashley clearly knew where they were.

"Hey, guys!" Ashley managed to sound breathless as she joined them--it was a habit she had never really outgrown, Kerone thought with some affection. Ashley put everything she had into whatever she was doing, and sometimes, maybe, she got so involved that she just forgot to breathe.

It wasn't a problem that Kerone had, for obvious reasons. But it was an idiosyncracy she found endearing in her sister.

"Mom, guess what!" Kae was bouncing up on the front wheels of his skates in an effort to get her attention--not that it took much effort, really. "I got a t-shirt, and then I got to go out and skate on the half pipe! Except I used these skates, and I couldn't do half the stuff I wanted to do..."

Kerone didn't miss the quickly horrified look Ashley gave her before turning her smile on Kae. "Wow, that's an awesome t-shirt! Where do I get one of those? And I learned to skate on skates just like those, so don't go saying bad things about them!"

Scattered applause from the crowd drew Kae's attention back to the half pipe. "Hey, did you see that?" he demanded, despite the fact that even he probably hadn't. "Wow!"

*You let him skate up there?* Ashley demanded, under cover of Kae's distraction.

*They had an open exhibition for kids before the serious practice,* Kerone told her, just as silently. *He brought his skates, and he's wearing all his protective gear.*

*Kerone, he doesn't have any identification here,* Ashley scolded. *Let alone health insurance! If he breaks a leg, you think they're just going to believe us that he doesn't need to go to a hospital? 'Oh, no,' we'll say, 'it's okay, we'll just take him to our spaceship and have the ship's computer set that bone for him.'*

"Ma, Mom," Kae interrupted, totally unaware of the conversation. "Can I get a skateboard before we go back home?"

Kerone exchanged glances with Ashley and guessed that now would be a good time to let her sister answer. Ashley wasn't really mad about the exhibition, she knew--just worried. They took turns playing the responsible mom, and since it was Ashley's planet the task fell more heavily on her shoulders today.

"We'll talk about it at lunchtime," Ashley said at last. She gave Kerone a sideways look, and Kerone nodded her agreement.

"I could use it on the street," Kae continued, undeterred. "Cause you don't have to have one of these things, there's park practice too and stunts that you can do on steps and--"

"Kae," Kerone interrupted, because Ashley shouldn't have to be the responsible one all day, "the streets at home probably aren't the best place to be learning a new sport."

"But I could try it out on the trails!" Kae protested. "That way it wouldn't go very fast and I could practice before I went anywhere else--"

"Hey, whoa," an unfamilar voice broke in. "You don't want to be taking one of these boards off the pavement. They make special boards for that."

Kerone looked up to see the guy who had bumped into her earlier standing nearby, and his friend was the one talking seriously to Kae. Just when her internal mother alarm would have gone off, the man looked up at her and smiled. Before he could say anything else, though, his friend exclaimed, "Yeah, those boards are awesome, dude. They're like a bike without a motor, you know? Or a seat. Or, like, handlebars and stuff."

"But they do have brakes," the other man assured her. "You can probably find some riders out at Woodward West, now that the BMX finals are over. If you want to see what they look like or something."

"They go on the bike trails?" Kae squeaked, staring up at him with wide eyes.

"Oh yeah." The man transferred his attention to Kae with a grin. "They're pretty sick."

*Friends of yours?* Kerone asked, curious about the strangers' apparent familiarity. Not that everyone here hadn't been friendly, but Ashley did know a staggering number of people.

*Maybe both of ours,* Ashley answered cryptically. Before Kerone could prod her for more of an answer, she added, *Look at their wrists.*

Kerone glanced down, and for a fraction of a second she saw nothing more than a couple of watches. Then she blinked, and the bulky devices wrapped around their wrists were instantly recognizable. Her eyes widened. The vision wavered. When she looked for watches, she saw watches--but when she listened to Ashley?

She saw morphers.

"Ma, can we go see them?" Kae was asking. "Please?"

"Why don't you thank this nice man first," Ashley suggested. There was an indulgent tone in her voice that seemed to be for more than just their son's impatience. Kerone wondered what she was thinking.

"Thanks for telling us about the trail boards!" Kae declared enthusiastically.

"They're actually called mountain boards," the man told him, and Kerone could see that this piece of information only made them more exciting in Kae's eyes.

"Thanks for the tip," Ashley said, holding out her hand with a bright smile. "I'm Ashley Hammond. This is Kerone, and our son Kae."

"Shane Clarke," the man said easily. He shook her hand, gesturing at his friend with his other hand. "And Dustin Brooks. I can see you're gonna be a member of the competition soon," he added, grinning down at Kae.

"Hey..." The guy Shane had introduced as "Dustin" was staring intently at Ashley. "Did you say your name was Ashley Hammond?"

Ashley just smiled, and that was when Kerone knew. She wasn't just introducing them.

She was introducing them.

***

Shane seemed to think it was his mission to pick up women wherever he went. Cam tried to ignore it, but... they had a child with them. A school-age child, no less, which could conceivably make them a good deal older than he was. Since when did Shane flirt with single moms, anyway?

"Is it me," Hunter muttered, loud enough for Cam to overhear even in the crowd, "or is this day just getting weirder?" It seemed that he too had caught sight of Shane and Dustin.

"Are the two mutually exclusive?" Cam wondered aloud.

Hunter didn't answer, but he saw the other Ranger smirk out of the corner of his eye.

Needling Hunter was habit by now. A comfortable habit, one that didn't require restraint or careful consideration beforehand. That didn't mean he wasn't listening. Nor did it mean Hunter was wrong. In fact, in this particular instance, Cam might have said the same thing if Hunter hadn't gotten to it first.

The day was getting weirder. He should have known that any day that started with Hunter ambushing him in the bathroom--not to make out, but to talk about commitment, of all things--could only end up in the dictionary as the definition of "surreal." Cam had followed through on his threat to announce their relationship to all of their teammates at breakfast, only to be met with utter nonchalance.

Every last one of them had already known. Which explained some of Dustin's muttered remarks lately, and Cam planned to exact revenge in his own time. It also meant that Hunter had been right about Dustin knowing, which came as less of a surprise after catching the earth ninja with Marah the night before. Cam was still working through the implications of the possibility that Dustin was fully aware of the way other people perceived him and was actively using it to his advantage.

It was difficult, though, when the ninja in question was currently trying to drag strangers into his comic book obsession with him. Cam and Hunter came into hearing range just as Dustin was asking, "You don't, like, know a guy named Andros or anything, do you?"

"He's my husband," one of the women replied.

"My brother," the other woman added.

Not to be outdone, the boy with them piped up, "He's my dad!"

"No way!" Dustin didn't seem to get that he was being mocked. "This is, like... dude, this is the sickest thing ever!"

Cam sighed, giving the strangers an assessing look. "I'd call the CDC," he remarked, shoving his hands in his pockets as he and Hunter joined their little group, "but I've learned not to overreact."

Shane's eyes flicked to him in welcome, but his comment was, unsurprisingly, addressed to the women. "You're kidding," he said skeptically. "Right?" Not skeptical enough, as far as Cam was concerned.

"Dude!" Dustin, on the other hand, could barely contain himself. "Guys! Check it out! This is Ashley and Astronema!"

"I prefer Kerone," the blond-haired woman corrected with a small smile.

"Oh, yeah." Dustin looked totally chagrinned, and Cam rolled his eyes. "Right. Sorry."

"We're really not." Her companion was apparently talking to Shane. Her gaze went to Dustin, and then, to Cam's own surprise, she glanced over at him. "Thanks for the thing on Friday, by the way. Andros told us that you guys dropped everything to help."

Just like that, he saw the Yellow Astro Ranger instead of a young woman taking her son to the X Games. Cam stared at her, willing his vision to make her what she had been just seconds before. It didn't cooperate--because how could she know about that?

"Okay, wait." Hunter was looking from Ashley to him and back again, and he actually sounded a little bit amused. "Who are you, exactly?"

"Exactly who you think we are." Ashley was smiling brightly at him, and for one fleeting moment she reminded Cam of Dustin. "We recognized your watches," she added, tapping her left wrist meaningfully.

Hunter and Shane both looked down at their wrists. Dustin just crowed in delight. "I knew it! This is so awesome! Wait--"

As quickly as he'd burst out he came down, looking at the women with an expression of vaguely confused concern. "It is awesome, right? I mean, you're not here because there's some other, like, ultimate evil threatening the planet?"

Ashley exchanged amused glances with... well, she had to be Kerone, didn't she. A human from another planet, the sister of the first Red Astro Ranger, formerly the princess of evil in a monarchy that no longer existed. More recently a Power Ranger herself, or so rumor had it.

Cam would rather not share with his teammates just how much he knew about the Power Rangers. He preferred to feign ignorance and dismiss those comic books as the cheap marketing ploys they were. He'd seen the tapes, and he knew perfectly well that comic books weren't all they were--but he'd also seen the Wind Rangers when they were after a secret. They'd never leave him alone if they so much as suspected he had access to records like that.

"No ultimate evil," Ashley was saying cheerfully. "We let the boys handle that. They can't seem to take a vacation without manufacturing some kind of..." She trailed off, looking around at her entirely male audience. "Well. You probably know how it is."

She and Kerone exchanged glances again. They weren't quite smirking, but the knowing look they shared made their opinion very clear. Cam was sorely tempted to say something, to throw in with the only Rangers other than Tori who seemed to grasp that not every situation had to be met with force. But the little boy with them spoke up first.

"My dad says that evil always attacks at the worst times," he informed them.

"Yes," Kerone murmured thoughtfully. "But is that coincidence?"

"Or just very good planning," Ashley finished for her. "We'll probably never know." Her expression said she already knew perfectly well.

"So, seriously." Shane's impatience probably meant that he had no idea what they were talking about. "Are you guys really--" He leaned in and lowered his voice in a typically unsubtle way. "Power Rangers?"

"Not anymore," Kerone said, just as quietly.

"We're retired," Ashley agreed. She seemed strangely happy about it. On the other hand, she seemed strangely happy about everything, so maybe that didn't mean what he thought it did. "We're just here visiting my parents."

"And exposing Kae to some local culture while we're at it," Kerone said, her hand brushing against the boy's shoulder. "It's good for him to see what his mom's home planet is like."

"You have better candy," the boy said with a shrug.

Home planet. Intellectually, Cam knew that Astronema and her brother Andros were from another galaxy. But the fact that she must have traveled a lot farther than he had to be at the X Games had been only a background thought until she said the words. That she had made such a trip with a young child indicated a familiarity with space travel that he could only dream of.

"Whoa," Hunter broke in. "What? Are you seriously on a field trip from another planet?"

"Dude!" Dustin exclaimed. "What do you expect! They're space Rangers!"

Cam couldn't help noticing the occasional odd look being directed their way. Yes, this was the X Games, and yes, half the people here would probably be offended by words like "traditional," "mainstream," and "reality." But their tolerance also meant that they were more likely to take claims of a Ranger presence seriously, and somehow Cam didn't think the former princess of evil was looking for that kind of attention.

"Actually," Ashley remarked mildly, "one of the reasons we like coming here is because most people don't know who we are."

Cam realized two things. One, he was right. No surprise there. Even he could see the benefits of relative anonymity. Two, Kerone wasn't the only one visiting from offworld, and that should have occurred to him a lot sooner. His first clue should have been the realization that Ashley wasn't kidding about being married to the Red Astro Ranger. And the second was the phrase, "his mom's home planet."

"What, like, here to the X Games?" Shane apparently hadn't gotten it either.

"No, dude." Dustin had lowered his voice, proving that he had heard as much as Cam in what Ashley didn't say. Something in the world felt vaguely off when Dustin was correcting people. "Here to Earth."

"It's better than Aquitar," the little boy said confidently. "I don't like going there. There's water everywhere."

"Hey, DECA said something about Aquitar before they left," Dustin said, surprising Cam again since he'd thought Dustin had been totally engrossed in his bike at that point. "They were supposed to, like, meet Carlos there or something?"

For some reason that made Kerone smile, but it was Ashley who answered. "He actually wanted Andros to bring me," she admitted. "But I wanted to see my parents, and Zhane didn't. So he got Zhane instead."

"Pa doesn't like Aquitar either," the boy announced. "He only goes 'cause Dad does. He told me," he added with authority.

Arms crossed, Hunter raised an eyebrow at the boy. "Pa and Dad?" he asked, very innocently.

"Meet our son, Kae," Ashley said with a laugh. "Child of many parents."

"How many?" Hunter wanted to know. "Exactly?"

The boy sighed, loudly, and Kerone moved a little closer to Ashley. "I'll take Kae out to see the mountain boarders, unless you want us to wait..." She spoke softly enough that it was clearly a private remark intended only for Ashley, but Cam couldn't help overhearing.

"I'm coming with you," Ashley said, firmly and not nearly so quiet. "It's really great to meet you all in person," she added, smiling around at them. "I'd love to swap stories, but we're only here for the weekend and I think we've got a lot of ground to cover."

"You headed out to Woodward West?" Hunter asked.

"It sounds that way," Ashley agreed. "Shane mentioned that there might be some people with mountain boards there?"

It occurred to Cam that he hadn't heard any introductions, yet she and Kerone seemed perfectly comfortable with all of them. For the first time, he wondered what she knew about the current team of Power Rangers. Had she ever watched tapes of them?

"Might be," Hunter allowed. "You want some company, or is this a family trip?"

Cam looked at him in surprise. He wasn't sure whether it was stranger to hear Hunter being polite, or to hear him being interested. In something other than motocross.

Okay, to be perfectly fair, something other than motocross or Cam.

He didn't notice the hesitation until it was over, but something had definitely passed between Ashley and Kerone in the silence. "We'd love the company," Kerone said, as though it hadn't happened. Her smile seemed genuine, and Ashley's, if it was possible, brightened even further.

"I miss Earth," she confessed, in a way that made it sound like she was talking about an old friend from whom she received the occasional Christmas card. "I'd love to hear about what's really going on. You can only get so much information from civilians."

"But the finals are at eleven thirty," Shane was complaining, and Dustin actually threw his hands up and then buried them in his hair. It would have been more comical if Cam hadn't missed whatever had prompted his response.

"Dude, they're Rangers! And it's not even the park finals, it's vert trick! Call your brother and get him to record it for you!"

They were going to have to take the bus, Cam thought. Blake and Tori were at the beach again, despite the fact that the surfing events were over. Wakeboarding, maybe. Or just an excuse to get away from the rest of the team, and if that was it then he couldn't really blame them.

"Do you have the--" Cam broke off as Hunter handed him the bus route map before he could finish asking for it. "Thank you."

On the other hand, he decided, watching Hunter smile over at the boy now skating circles around his two guardians, being part of a team had its good points.

***

And so Cam began to understand what Hunter had already known: what you expect isn't always what you get, and sometimes knowing what you want is all you really need. Relationships born under pressure, in times of great stress, aren't bound to dissolve just because those circumstances change. At the end of the day, it's enough to know that you are loved, and the rest of the details have a way of working out.

Cam had no way of knowing, when they first got involved, that Hunter would eventually propose to him in front of the entire Wind Academy. He couldn't know that Hunter would marry him contingent upon serious consideration of foster parenting, or that Hunter would change his name when their kids' adoptions were finalized. It would be up to Blake's son to carry on the Bradley name, after Hunter became Hunter Watanabe.

"Because I want us to look like a family," he would say of the change, "and I'm not gonna inflict a name like 'Michiko Bradley' on anyone."

Cam didn't know that the Ranger who had held him hostage during his father's abduction would end up spending the rest of his life at his side. He didn't know that the man who had cornered him in the bathroom that morning was already the most serious relationship he'd ever have. But that day he did learn that not every romance looks like something you see on TV, and that love does better in the face of acceptance than analysis.

Eventually, his children would learn the same thing. And Hunter would smirk at all of them and pretend that he was very in touch with his feelings, which he wasn't. But it wouldn't matter, because the feelings were there and they all knew it and so life went on.

Because love does many amazing things, and foremost among those is the connection it makes between otherwise unrelated people. More than a marriage. More than a home. Love makes something more important than anything else we can imagine.

Love makes a family.