“Is she gonna be okay, Kepler?” That was Clay’s voice. It was good to hear they were okay.

“She should be, Clay. She just used too much energy in the last fight. She needs to rest.” Kepler; I must have been in the command centre. The lights had been dimmed, maybe so I could sleep. 

“I’m just glad we all made it out,” Blain interjected. 

“So everyone’s all right?” I mumbled. It was hard to speak any louder or clearer. 

“Thanks to you,” Stella responded. Good, they heard me.

“But what about the Gold ranger? If it weren’t for him I might have…” I might have lost my friends, that was all I could think about. If it weren’t for him showing up, they might have been drained of and it would all have been on me, the leader. 

“He’s been silent since he came here. Kepler said Astrus chose him.” There was an obvious distrust in Clay’s voice; they usually were the first to jump to conclusions. 

“I need to thank him.” Gold had saved my team, my friends. I needed to thank him. I needed to tell him how glad I was to have him on the team.

“You need to rest,” Stella said soothingly. 

“Your parents -- you all need to go home." They’d already spent enough time worrying about me.

“We are all studying at your place,” Blain responded with a wink.

“Rest now,” Kepler said. Trying to keep me calm was admirable, but it wasn’t going to work. 

“Not until I can talk to the guy in gold.”

“Ay yi yi, I’ll go get him.” Kepler rarely showed anything close to exasperation, unless it was around me. Stubbornness tended to not compute. Before he came back, though, there was something I needed to say to my team. To my friends. To the people, I’d failed. 

“I’m sorry for pushing you all so hard.”

“It’s okay, none of us blame you for what happened out there.” It was always Stella who calmed us all down after a tough fight. She was such a sweet girl. It was hard not to feel at ease when around her. 

“You should,” was all I could say before Kepler returned with the still-costumed Gold. “You guys should go. I need to talk to Goldie here alone.”

The team left and the door sealed shut behind them. Hopefully, they’d actually go home to their families and get some proper rest. They all needed to recuperate and I needed to learn about the new ranger.  It was uncomfortable being alone in a room with a stranger whose face you couldn’t see and whose voice showed almost no emotion, but that discomfort was a small price to pay to thank the person who had saved my friends.

“You can take your helmet off here, you know? We aren’t going to bite,” I said, in a poor attempt to break the ice with this new team member. Besides thanking him, there were other things I needed to know. He was my new teammate. I at least needed to know his name and how he got here. 

“I can’t,” he said quietly. 

“Why not?”

“My face scares people.” Maybe it was best not to ask too many more questions for now. It was going to be on me to keep things light-hearted. I was great at that. 

“Well, what’s your name then?” I demanded

“You called me Goldie earlier. Stick with that.” His voice was monotone, and deep. I couldn’t sense any real emotion there.

“You are not one for conversation, are you?” I lied. I was not great at keeping things lighthearted.

“I don’t like talking, sorry.”

“Then I guess I’ll leave it at this. Thanks, Goldie, for saving my friends.” 

He left the room after that. No response, nothing. It was disconcerting, to say the least. No face, and a monotone voice. Kepler seemed more human than Goldie did. Kepler returned and informed me that everyone else had gone home and that I would be teleported to my bedroom to sleep. They would be monitoring me through my communicator in case something happened. 

“There will be a meeting tomorrow afternoon, Joanne. There is a lot to discuss.”

-----

Waking up after a fight where your friends almost died shouldn’t feel normal, but after fighting for two months now, it was basically par for the course. I went out to the bathroom. There wouldn’t be any bruises or scars, nothing to prove what had happened. I splashed my face with water to help wake me up. Today was going to be a long one. I needed a shower, even if there was no physical damage leftover the sweat and dirt from the unmorphed fight were still there. You would think the magic healing would come with magic cleaning, but no. We still had to do that like mortals.

It felt good to be clean, even if it left me with no reminder of what happened last night and knowing my friends they would forgive and forget way too quickly. I loved them all, but I wish they held me accountable for my failures as a leader and as a friend. 

“Joanne, you are needed at the command centre.”

“I’ll be right there Astrus,” I spoke into my communicator. The person that made this must have been a genius. From the parts of the explanation that I understood, each communicator had a homing beacon that allowed Kepler and Astrus to teleport us to them while also doubling as a communication device. There were times where I wondered how they made the homing device or why this technology wasn’t being used around the world, and then I remembered I got power from a red spandex suit powered by an invisible grid of Infinite Power and maybe the rest of the world doesn’t have access to any of that.

A red light enveloped me, as my surroundings disappeared into a blur of shapes and colour. Here I was weightless, there was nothing, there was so much and then I found myself at the command centre. Teleporting never got less cool, or less terrifying. 

“Hello, Red,” Astrus said from one of the many holograms he could inhabit. For some reason, he always liked to appear behind us. It was likely for drama’s sake; he seemed like the type.

“Hi Astrus, where is everyone else?” 

“They are not required for the meeting. You are their leader. It’s imperative that you understand what’s going on so they can trust things are fine.”

“So what is happening?” The emphasis on leadership reminded me of my complete failure from the day before. Was I even worthy of being the leader of this team after I almost got them all killed?

“Firstly, I am sorry Joanne. I failed as your mentor. I should have helped you more. There is a lot of pressure on you, and I should have recognised that. I’ll work harder to help you become the leader that Kepler and I know you can be.” 

“I almost got them killed, Astrus. It’s all my fault.”

“Any failure of yours is a failure of mine. Your friends don’t blame you. When you passed out, they were incredibly worried about you.”  Of course, they would be. They are my friends. There are a lot of things friends can forgive. 

“I need to become a better leader,” I said.

“You will, and your team will be by your side.” Despite being a mysterious old hologram that appeared in random parts of the room, Astrus was a surprisingly comforting presence. He felt like someone who had your best interests at heart. 

“Now the second reason you’re here. The new Gold, he doesn’t want to reveal his identity to everyone.”

“I figured.” Goldie wasn’t exactly the type of person I wanted to spend a lot of time around, just based on how downright edgy he seemed.

“Trust me when I say he has the makings of a great asset.”  Astrus was frustratingly cryptic at times. I guessed that came with the alien mentor territory. 

“How am I meant to trust someone who I have never met, and who refuses to reveal his identity? Astrus, he knows who I am. I know he saved our ass yesterday but--”

“He came today to reveal his identity to you.”

“What?”

“He won’t tell everyone but I was able to convince him to tell you. As the leader, the others will listen if you say he’s trustworthy.”

“Then where is he?”

The command centre went dark. Then I saw the light coming from behind me, and fog rolling over the floor. Of course, Astrus would organise for him to be behind me.

“Welcome, Gold.” 

I watched as Gold walked past me and up to Astrus. It was obvious they knew each other. Astrus recruited him, after all (He probably also set-up that entrance). Astrus always made a spectacle of this type of thing, when we got our mechs and when we got our suits, he’d done the same dramatic reveal. Was it a custom where he was from? Or did he just want us to feel special? Either way,  I was surprised Goldie didn’t float down from the ceiling like an angel.

“Do I have to?” he whispered to the floating giant. Gold knew how to defuse drama. It was a struggle to not burst out laughing. Did he want to remain mysterious that bad? 

“We went over this. She is your leader. I won’t make you reveal yourself to anyone else after this,” Astrus said calmly. How was I supposed to take Gold seriously when Astrus was treating him like a child who was too scared to leave his mum? The thought of Astrus telling Goldie to ‘go play with the other kids’ cracked me, and I let out a snort. Oops.

“I don’t want people to know who I am,” Goldie responded, as monotone as ever. He was looking at his gloves and rubbing his fingers together. 

“They can not trust an ally they do not know.” 

“Okay. I’ll show her. Only her though, Astrus.” 

He slowly reached up to his helmet. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to defuse the drama but instead add to the suspense. It hadn't worked. I was getting impatient with him. The guy that had saved my life yesterday was starting to get on my nerves. Would it be appropriate to tell him to hurry up?  Most of us just morphed out helmets away, it was more convenient since it avoided the hassle of fiddling with buckles and straps but no, he had to waste my time and be inefficient. Finally, after what felt like five minutes he reached his helmet buckle.  He started pulling his helmet off to reveal…

A boy, one who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. There were dark bags under his eyes and his skin was a pale white like he hadn’t seen the sun in years. His hair was a shaggy blonde and his eyes seemed to say nothing, it was unsettling. He was familiar, but I knew a lot of kids in the area, so it wasn’t really surprising. I felt like I should know him though.

“Justin?” I blurted out. The loner kid in the back of the class who never seemed to say anything was my new teammate? The guy that always seemed to watch our group with a stare that no one could discern? Stella had invited him to sit with us once and he declined the offer with a simple “no thanks”.

“Unfortunately.” He sounded disappointed.

“Wow, that's the most tone I have ever heard in your voice,” I said half-jokingly. 

“Sorry, I don’t know how to talk right.” Was that a sincere apology? If it was then why did he say it like that? If it wasn’t, then why say it at all? His words weren’t needed to convey a broody and loner attitude. His refusal to say who he was, did that enough.

“It’s all good?”

“Please, keep calling me Gold from now on. I don’t want the others to find out who I am.” 

“Do you really wanna keep up that mysterious vibe that much, Goldie?” I said, hoping he wouldn’t get pissed at me. Guys tended not to react well to being mocked. Instead, I saw a faint smile on his lips and his eyes seemed slightly less empty than they were before. He quickly turned around before I could call him out on it, and then put his helmet back on. 

“I will call you both back here with the others this afternoon. For now, enjoy some rest, you two. I’ll be here if you require anything.” 

We nodded and suddenly I was back in my room. It was noon. That gave me four hours of off time to figure out what the deal was with Goldie. I laid down on my bed and started thinking. Justin was quiet but he never really came off as edgy. How did he become the new ranger? He never seemed like he was the type to do martial arts. The suits had a lot of knowledge built into them, but they couldn’t turn someone into a pro-fighter. Maybe that was why his moves seemed un-coordinated. But, why choose him as a member instead of someone who had some previous fighting experience? The guy didn’t seem like he was built at school, then again it was hard to see things like muscles when baggy hoodies cover you. There had to be some reason he was chosen.