"I don't think Billy does either...which is part of the reason I'm doing this." Skye said, struggling to find the words to explain. "None of you have ever really tried to compete with him on his ground--he has no way to rate himself now. As he learns more, he tends to focus on what he doesn't know, rather than what he does so he has never regarded himself as particularly above normal. I guess...I guess I've done this to give him an insight into his own abilities and boost his confidence in his capabilities." Jamie took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. For Zarador's first meeting with his court of advisors, the Rangers had been instructed to morph and remove their helmets. That, Zarador had informed them, was the Ranger equivalent of military dress. Jason, of course, had no helmet, but that was a minor point. Chris had been quite impressed with his first glimpse of his Ranger uniform. Since the removal of the helmet placed the powers in standby mode, Chris didn't have to worry about them failing on him. It seemed a little strange to Jamie that the first time he morphed would be for a ceremonial occasion, rather than a battle. There was no whistle of wind as Storm Blaster continued to accelerate, racing into the heavens without so much as a nod to planetary gravity. As the horizon darkened and disappeared, the stars came out around them and a tunnel of hyperspace whirled them away from the world below. The visible universe was left behind, but Storm Blaster's self-contained environment simulated normal light even as it provided air in the vacuum of space.

"That's not what I heard," Andros was saying, and she realized belatedly that he was responding to something Justin had said. Neither of the boys seemed bothered by their abrupt transition from the normal universe to the external world of hyperrush. "I thought the Eltaran Rangers had enough to worry about right now without dimensional experimentation."

          Unlike the rest of the team, she was not dressed in her Ranger outfit. Zarador had thought it a good idea to play up her Zarakin heritage, and so she wore the dress uniform of a Zarakin warrior, a heavily embroidered tunic belted with a wide sash and a pair of loose trousers. The outfit was royal purple, with silver needlework and a silver sash. A silver lightning bolt sewn over her heart completed the ensemble. Silver, Zarador had explained, was the color and metal sacred to the Goddess, and by extension the Power. "We're going to rub their noses in the fact that you're an avatar of the Power," he had informed her. "The Sword of Lightning, most powerful of the Elemental Blades, accepted you as its wielder. Not only that, but the Shard in the handle didn't reject you. They'd rather ignore that- it doesn't fit into their worldview. I want them to be constantly confronted with the fact that you are Zarakin, a Ranger, and a Swordbearer to boot. It might sway one or two to my side."

Jason nodded. That was Billy all right. When he was teaching him karate, the Blue Ranger tended to get really depressed because he couldn't get the next move quite right, and brushed off the compliments about what he had achieved as if that didn't matter. Only under the influence of a spell had he ever heard Billy say anything that gave the impression that he was smarter than the rest of them. Especially recently, now he had cut down on the techno-babble, it was easy to assume he was just the same as them all. There was something slightly unsettling about this realisation to Jason, as if he was guilty of something, of underestimating his friend, and in doing so not providing the support he needed.