"Aquitian Megazord, this is the Delta Sun. What's your status?"

There was a longer than normal pause before the response came back, but the voice on the other end sounded perfectly composed. "This is the Aquitian Megazord. We are no longer battle-ready. You will have to reinforce the others without assistance."

"Casualties?" Kris asked sharply, and Carlos winced.

"Negative," the voice answered. "Our team will secure Ranger Control."

"Not without me," Carlos put in quickly. "That's my responsibility down there."

Kris nodded once, already reaching for the controls. Her mind was probably miles away, back with the fighters she had left behind to back up the Aquitian team. "As soon as the ground forces are defeated, we'll start a search for the Astro Megaship," she said, glancing back at him.

He was trying not to think about that. As she had said before, there were people who needed him right here in front of him, and he had to put them first. "Right," he said aloud. "Good luck."

The world flared jade green the instant he touched his communicator, and the teleportation snatched him off the Bridge of the Delta Sun. *Hang on, Ashley,* he thought silently. As the darkened Power Chamber began to take shape around him, he had time to know that Matt would alert him as soon as a rescue effort was feasible. He would be out there after her before the night was over.

Then a creak behind him made him stiffen, and the flickering dimness of the ruined command center washed over him. He shot a glance over his shoulder, just to make sure nothing was about to come crashing down on him, then started forward. The main control panels were dead ahead, and that was where they had left TJ...

He tried not to jump as a bright flash of teleportation lit the room with a rainbow sweep. Red, yellow, blue, white, black; brilliant water molecule shapes illuminated the room momentarily before fading to reveal the Aquitian team. He didn't give them more than a cursory look when he realized they were all morphed; he would have to match real life faces to those he had seen on the screen later.

"TJ?" he called, taking another step forward and trying to get his night vision back in the wake of the teleportation flash. "Are you all right?" What had possessed Ashley to bring him with her?

"Was TJ the only one here?" the White Ranger asked. She walked forward with considerably less hesitancy than he, and he reminded himself that her visor probably let her see in the dark just fine.

"Yeah," Carlos said, wishing for a flashlight. "We'd better split up--"

There was the sound of a cough, and he broke off abruptly. "TJ?"

"Yeah," someone answered weakly. "What--Carlos?"

Carlos gestured and one of the Aquitians stepped forward, shadowing him as he tried to follow the sound of TJ's voice. "Yeah, it's me TJ. Are you hurt?"

"No..." There was a sound that might have been a chuckle, and he heard shuffling. "A little freaked out, but physically fine." There was a bang, followed by a reflexive exclamation, and he heard TJ mutter something.

"Don't hurt yourself trying to get up," Carlos suggested dryly, finally catching sight of movement in the dimness. He glanced over at the Yellow Ranger, and she nodded. They stepped around TJ's shadowy figure, taking him by either arm to haul him to his feet. "You're sure you're all right?"

TJ rubbed his head ruefully, his gaze shying away from the morphed Ranger at his side and coming to rest on Carlos. "I... I mentioned the freaked out part, right?"

"Yeah," Carlos said, trying not to sigh. "Sorry to get you involved in this. It's not your fight."

"Yes, it is," TJ contradicted, surprising him. "It's everyone's fight. Some of us just aren't as, uh, equipped for it as others. Sorry about that."

Carlos gave him a second glance, a little startled. Interesting that he would apologize for not being more help rather than accuse them of not protecting him--it was something a Ranger might say, but not anything Carlos had expected to hear from a civilian. "Don't apologize for doing your best," he said at last. "Let's see what we can do to get this place back online."

"Can I help?" TJ asked quickly, as they stepped away from him.

"Sure," Carlos said, not looking back. He thought he could start to like this kid. "We have no power at this point, which means no diagnostics, and that means we're checking this place out on foot. We need everybody who's willing to help."

"No solar power?" the Blue Ranger asked.

Carlos tapped the nearest control panel experimentally and shook his head. "Nope. Anybody here not afraid of heights?"

The Red Ranger volunteered immediately. "I will go."

"Want me to look at the generator?" the Blue Ranger offered. "It's probably not offline. It's usually the routing system that goes down, not the generator itself, and we might be able to get it fixed tonight."

Carlos grinned to himself. *Translation: Billy could fix it tonight. Anyone else could be working for days.* "That'd be great, man. Thanks.

"Cetaci," he added, fumbling for one of the accesses below the control panels. "Think you can find the zord bay? Assuming we can get it operational again, the Power Chamber's cloak won't cover the zords unless they're inside."

"I have seen schematics," Cetaci confirmed, already turning to leave.

"Wait," Carlos called after her. He yanked a flashlight free and tossed it in her direction. "Even the Power's night vision isn't that good."

She snatched it out of the air with one hand, giving him a nod before disappearing. Another light flipped on at his side, and he looked over to see Billy moving toward the generator at the back of the room. "Delphinius," the Blue Ranger was saying, "Can you give me a hand with this?"

"Cestria," Carlos said, watching the Yellow Ranger tilt her head in his direction. "Can you take TJ to Medical for me? It's the only place here that has independent power--"

"I said I'm fine," TJ protested, but Carlos didn't pause.

"And we need to know what kind of shape it's in. I hope we don't have casualties coming in, but the Power only goes so far. TJ, consider yourself a test subject."

"I will do so," Cestria agreed.

Muttering to himself, TJ followed her out.

"The access ladder's behind the time warp," Carlos told the Red Ranger, who seemed to be studying the Power Chamber a little too closely.

"Thank you," she said, sounding--just slightly--irritated at having to be told.

"I think it's--" He bit off a curse as his toe connected solidly with an unyielding piece of metal. "Not in the most stable part of the room," he finished, feeling his way around the chunk of debris.

"Nearest the exterior," she murmured, stepping easily over the fallen strut and going on ahead. "I would not have guessed."

He stared after her suspiciously. Sarcastic aliens? *Great. Just what I need right now.* He turned and made his way carefully back to the main control consoles, deciding that if she didn't want any help he wasn't going to argue. "Billy?"

"I don't know yet," the Blue Ranger answered, not waiting for the question. "Give me a few moments."

Carlos sighed, feeling more useless here on his own turf than he had on the Delta Sun. For lack of anything better to do, he lifted his left wrist. "Ashley," he said into his communicator. "Ashley, this is Carlos. Can you hear me?" He had tried before and gotten no reply, but he was closer now--

A violent crash shattered the stifling quiet, and he heard several Aquitian words he didn't recognize. "Aura?" he heard Billy call. "You all right?"

"I am fine," she replied, her voice muffled by the time warp. "The access hatch has been disabled."

Carlos sighed again, wondering why he hadn't thought of that before. "Hang on and I'll get it." Without power, all of the hatches went manual, and the manual release only responded to the Turbo Power.

This time at least he remembered to grab a flashlight, but before he could step away from the console there was a yelp and a brilliant flash from behind him. "Billy?" He turned, sweeping the flashlight across the room and trying to keep his eyes from tearing after the assault of brightness.

"We're fine," Billy said immediately. "But the Power--"

"Cetaci," his teammate muttered. "Billy... I can't..."

There was a clanking sound from behind him, and the Red Ranger brushed past Carlos without a word. He followed her quickly, shining the light into the corner ahead just in time to see her grab her teammate by the shoulders. He was unmorphed, but Carlos didn't have time to register more than that.

"Delphinius." The red uniform flickered as Carlos joined them, and he thought it was a trick of the unsteady light until another blinding glow seared his vision. The Red Ranger was demorphed when his vision returned, and she was kneeling on the ground next to her friend. "Look at me, Delphinius; don't think about her!"

They weren't demorphing on purpose; that had to be what Billy meant about the Power. Carlos pulled out his Turbo key, wincing as Billy's uniform vanished in another painfully bright flash. He felt his key slip out of his fingers, saw someone grab for it instinctively, and then the entire Power Chamber winked out of existence.

He squinted hard against the desert sun, his mind running in circles as he tried desperately to find some kind of context. The Power Chamber was nowhere in sight and this wasn't any part of Angel Grove that he recognized. A sound from nearby made him glance down just as he clenched his fingers around a Turbo key that wasn't there anymore, and he could only stare.

A girl he didn't recognize bent over an equally unfamiliar boy, hands on his shoulders even as Aura's had been on Delphinius' in the Power Chamber. "Dammit," she exclaimed, apparently talking to him despite his lack of response. "When will you listen!"

"Who are you?" he blurted, wondering what in the world had happened. The only thing that could have snatched him from the Power Chamber so quickly was teleportation, but he hadn't seen the telltale glow of the teleportation stream. "Where am I?"

The girl glanced up, pinning him with an intense glare before dismissing him just as quickly. "Who are *you*?" she retorted, pressing her hand to the boy's forehead.

"Carlos," he said. "What's wrong with him?" he added, Ranger conscience kicking in as he settled down beside her on the sandblasted stone.

She started, giving him a longer look this time. "Carlos?"

"You know me?" he asked, looking up again.

She just stared for a moment. "I always wondered what an alien would look like in the grid," she muttered at last. "I suppose I look as strange to you as you do to me. I'm Aura."

His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. Her dark hair billowed over her shoulders, auburn highlights catching the sunlight. Her pale grey eyes and the red of her shirt were the only things that even remotely reminded him of the Red Aquitian Ranger. And speaking of shirts... he didn't know what Aquitians usually wore, but he was pretty sure it wasn't spaghetti-strap tank tops and cutoff shorts.

"But..." He did his best to formulate some sort of coherent sentence. "But you're human!"

"And you are Aquitian, to me," she told him. She finally looked away from him, glaring down at the boy beside her. "Dammit, Delphinius," she repeated irritably. "You were trained for this, for all the good it did."

He couldn't help running his fingers through his hair the moment she said he looked Aquitian, but it felt the same way it always did. It was she who was different... human. His brain couldn't seem to get past that fact. He had the sudden bizarre urge to reach out and touch *her* hair, just to see.

She shot a sideways glance at him, almost as though she knew what he was thinking. She looked quickly down again when he caught her eye, and he wondered exactly what she saw. He looked at Delphinius too, trying to focus on something other than the impossible. "How--what's wrong with him?"

She sat back on her heels, obviously frustrated. "I don't know. But I think the telepathic backlash when Cetaci lost the Power was too much for him to take."

"The... what?" The Black Aquitian Ranger appeared just as jarringly human as she did, but the fact that he was apparently unconscious worried Carlos more.

"The Power links us mentally," she said, still staring down at her teammate. "But Billy is the only one of us with no natural psi-sense at all. The loss of the Power must have disrupted Cetaci and Delphinius' bond."

He supposed she thought that meant something to him. "So... you can't do anything for him?" he guessed, looking over at her.

She tossed her head, impatience dancing in her eyes. Not impatience with him, he realized suddenly, watching her clench her fists momentarily, but impatience with her own helplessness. "No," she said, uttering the word with more force than was necessary. "Cetaci is a latent telepath with no training, and Delphinius is psi-blind to anyone but her. I can't reach either of them right now."

She shifted on the hard stone, staring off toward the horizon. "We all knew this could happen," she muttered. "The Power enhanced Cetaci's ability, but she never learned control without it."

"Her... her choice," a soft voice offered.

Aura glared down at Delphinius again, not seeming at all surprised to find him awake. "And if I believed for one second that you had influenced that choice, I would have already left you here!"

"Whoa, chill," Carlos said, startled by her vehemence.

She turned her glare on him, but Delphinius spoke before she could. "Couldn't influence her," he murmured, struggling to push himself up. "She's as... as stubborn and willful as you are."

"Which is the only reason I'm still here," Aura muttered. "I don't suppose you can walk."

"I can walk," Delphinius said, putting one hand to his head. "I--I can't hear her anymore, though." He turned a pleading gaze on Aura. "That doesn't mean..."

Aura remained stonily silent, but he couldn't finish and finally she took pity on him. "She's probably fine. Cestria may be with her, blocking her so she can't hurt you."

"She didn't hurt me," Delphinius said, frowning at her. "I knew what could happen and I took my chances. She didn't hurt me," he repeated.

They glared at each other for a long moment until Carlos couldn't stand it anymore. "Look, whenever you two have finished your little grudge match, do you think someone could tell me where we are? And why?"

Delphinius looked away first, giving Carlos a surprised look. "Have you never seen the Morphin Grid from the inside?"

"The what?" Carlos tried to pull that phrase out of the million other things he had had to memorize since becoming a Power Ranger, and failed. "Something to do with Zordon" was as close as he could get.

"The Turbo Power relies less on the grid," Aura muttered, pushing herself to her feet. "It is conceivable they have never been inside it."

"It's a Power source?" Carlos scrambled up too. He was about to help Delphinius when the other stood on his own, not looking much the worse for wear.

"In a sense." Delphinius looked around thoughtfully. "We must have been pulled here when we lost the Power?"

Carlos shook his head, sure there was something he was missing. "Why did you lose the Power?"

"I don't know," Aura put in impatiently. "This has never happened before."

"I've never been inside the grid this long," Delphinius agreed. "Much less had the Power vanish like that."

"I assume the grid explains why you both look human," Carlos said, bemused. He glanced around again. "But is there any particular reason it looks like the California desert?"

Delphinius gave him such a long look that he couldn't help remembering what Aura had said earlier. He had to wonder what he looked like as an Aquitian.

"You see a desert?" Delphinius asked at last, following his gaze. "Interesting."

"What do you see?" Carlos wanted to know.

"The ocean," Delphinius said simply. He didn't elaborate, merely turned toward Aura and asked, "Have you--"

He broke off abruptly, an odd look crossing his face. Then, without warning, he doubled over, clapping both hands to his head. As his knees hit the ground, Carlos could have sworn he heard the other whisper, "Cetaci..."

Just like that, he was gone. Aura had taken no more than a single step in his direction when he vanished, erased from the landscape in front of them as if he had never been there.

"What--" He got one word out before the cold touch of sharpened metal at his neck made him freeze. He stared wide-eyed at Aura's shuttered expression, not moving even when she relaxed, letting the blade fall to her side.

"I apologize," she said, not looking particularly sorry. "I did not know you were still here."

"Where else would I be?" he demanded, his brain indignantly pointing out to him that he had just been inches from decapitation. "And where the hell did that sword come from?"

"Wherever he went," she said, jerking her head toward the place where Delphinius had just been. "And the blade is part of my Ranger uniform. I suppose it manifested itself when I was threatened."

A bright flash cut off any answer he might have had for that--which he didn't--and he turned quickly, shading his eyes against the sun. "Did you see that?"

The question was unnecessary, for the glow remained against the horizon. He had no way to judge the distance of the flare, but when he looked over at Aura he found her looking back. "That way?" she suggested dryly.

A familiar whine cut through the atmosphere and he spun, adrenaline racing as he caught sight of the fighters outlined against the sky. He didn't have to ask, he *knew* they weren't a good thing, and they were coming awfully fast for his peace of mind.

"Get down!" Aura shouted, over the hum of approaching engines. He didn't think that was particularly practical advice, given where they were, and he almost said so. But then she swung her sword easily over her shoulder, releasing what looked like laser fire into the fighters' midst, and he could only stare.

Something made him glance over his shoulder then, and he found himself face to face with a stone outcropping complete with cave entrance. He didn't question, he just yelled Aura's name and took cover inside. She was right behind him, somewhat to his surprise--he had half expected her to stay outside and fight.

There was a flashlight in his hand and he flipped it on, leading the way toward the rear of the cave. He heard an odd hum and he glanced back--just in time to see Aura slipping her sword into a shoulder sheath that he was positive hadn't hung across her back a few minutes ago. He shook his head and kept going, unsurprised when the cave opened into a large tunnel in the flashlight glow.

By the time the cave entrance had disappeared behind them, they could no longer hear the whine of the fighters. He paused, putting one hand against the wall and pushing, just to make sure. It didn't budge. It felt like what it looked like: solid rock.

"This isn't bad," Aura said, leaning against the wall opposite him. "If you're going to create a tunnel, you might as well make it a big one."

"What do you--" he began, but then he gave her a sharp look. "Wait. You see a tunnel too?"

She nodded. "Probably not the same one you see, but yes. Much more effective than my blade."

"Although that was a good trick," he remarked, diverted. "I didn't know they did that."

Her face lit up with a fierce grin. "They don't. It's one of the things I like about the grid."

"That your sword turns into an energy weapon?"

She looked at him as though he were being deliberately dense. "No, that it responds to need. The blade was my solution; the tunnel is, I assume, yours. I like yours better," she added frankly.

He shrugged, wishing he didn't have to confess his ignorance yet again. "I still don't understand. What are we doing, again?"

"Going after the flare," she replied promptly. "That was probably Billy. If we follow that, we'll find at least one of our--my teammates."

He didn't miss her slip. "Which reminds me. Delphinius said we got pulled here when you lost your Power. So why am I here? Unless I lost mine too..."

"Or because I was holding your morpher," she muttered, looking down. "Sorry."

"You grabbed my key," he said, suddenly understanding. "Yeah, I guess that would do it. So, right, we find your teammates. How are we going to follow the flare from in here?"

Her embarrassment faded as she realized he wasn't holding it against her. "The same way we would out there. This tunnel isn't a place; it's just a defense. If we keep walking, we should get there eventually."

"How do we know we're going in the right direction?"

She shrugged. "There are only two choices. Forward or back."

He considered that for a moment, but it wasn't one of those observations a person could argue with. "Forward it is, then."