The curtains moved in the wind, puffy clouds on sky blue fabric that hung just a little bit lopsided on their drooping curtain rod. Outside, the sun was bright and the air was that perfect fall temperature that drifted somewhere between too hot and too cold. Shouts echoed back and forth under the windows, and the constant roll and clack of skateboard wheels only made the background noise sound more familiar.

Inside, the phone was ringing.

Tori sat on the floor of her dorm room, the carpet rough against her skin where she knelt on the floor. Her surfboard hadn't been waxed in weeks, and the ocean's abuse was starting to show. It wasn't the most important thing she could be doing right now, but it was the easiest, and right now that counted for something.

She knew who was on the phone. Her parents had e-mailed her the night before to ask if she was coming home for dinner tonight. She wasn't; she had promised to attend a teacher's meeting at the academy this evening, but she had been putting her family off all week. There were only so many times she could use the "overwhelmed by homework" excuse before they started to make her feel guilty.

The door banged open and her roommate flew in, brought up short by the surfboard in the middle of the floor and not able to stop in time. She leapt over the end and crashed into her bed, bouncing up off of the end and reaching for the phone. "Hi Tori!"

"Don't--" But it was too late. Her roommate had already picked up the phone, but she frowned in Tori's direction when Tori sighed.

"Oh, hi Lila!" her roommate said, and Tori mimed collapsing on the floor. Maybe if she closed her eyes and pretended not to be here. She loved her mom, but she really didn't know what to say to her right now.

"I'm great, thanks," her roommate was saying. There was a pause. "No, it just took me a while to answer because I had to take the phone out in the hallway. Tori looks like she's sleeping and I don't want to wake her up."

Tori smiled without opening her eyes. Her roommate was a lot more devious than Tori gave her credit for, sometimes. "Looks like she's sleeping," indeed.

"Oh, sure," she was saying. "I'll tell her you called. You want me to give her a message or anything?"

No. Tori knew what the message was. Her mom must have repeated it anyway, because her roommate echoed, "Dinner. Right. I'll tell her, Lila." A moment later she added, "You too! Bye."

Tori waited until she'd hung up the phone to open her eyes. "Thanks," she said, sitting up. "You didn't have to do that."

Her roommate shrugged it off. "It's fine. What's up with you? Avoiding your family all of a sudden?"

Tori sighed again. "Not on purpose. It's just... I have to spend so much time at the academy, and I don't know what to tell them. I don't live that far away. It's not like college takes up all my time, but between that and being a teacher, well--"

"You can't just zip home every night for dinner," her roommate finished.

By some whim of fate, the residential staff had managed to assign two ninjas to the same room. Not only had Tally joined the Wind Academy after her encounter with kelzacs at the Abyss of Evil, she had even ended up in one of Tori's classes. It was nice to have someone to talk to about ninja stuff, even if she hadn't told her everything.

"And I can't explain why," Tori said, slumping back against her bed. "My parents think my summer job ended last month, and it's not like I've had time to get involved in anything outside of classes here. So they think I'm spending all my time surfing and studying."

"Like that's not enough to keep anyone busy," Tally said, rolling her eyes. "What about that dance thing you were talking about? Don't they have auditions or something? Tell your parents you're doing that."

She'd really wanted to do it, too. She missed dancing. But her schedule was too full already, and she couldn't justify adding something else on top of it all. "I was supposed to meet with someone about it tonight," she admitted. "But I can't go. Even if I had time to be on the dance team, there's a teachers' meeting at the academy tonight."

"So get one of your friends to take notes for you," Tally urged. "Come on, you don't have to be everywhere. You're in college now. Tell your parents that school comes first, tell the academy that you're learning new skills to bring back to the program, and go do something for yourself for a change."

Tori wrinkled her nose. "I do plenty of stuff for myself," she said, thinking of the three-hour phone call to Blake the night before. If only he wasn't so far away...

"And you do more for everyone else," Tally countered. "Come on, girl, I know what you're up to. I wish I could be as devoted to the academy as you are, you know? But my parents want me here, and I can't give all I've got to both places. No matter how good you are, neither can you. Sometimes you're just gonna to have to decide which one is more important."

"This is important," Tori insisted. "School is totally important to me."

The voice mail on her cell phone chimed, and she frowned over at it. It hadn't even rung... that was almost always a bad sign. She picked it up, dialed voice mail, and waited impatiently while Tally looked on.

"Goon alert," Cam's voice told her. "All teams, full ninja gear, now." He gave an address, the time, and that was it. She hung up without saving the message.

"I have to go," she told Tally.

There were a lot of things Hunter missed about being a Ranger. One of them was the way he hadn't had to sleep. Okay, he'd had to sleep, but not all the time. Not all night every night. It had been nice to get in a few extra hours of whatever and still feel like he'd had a full night's rest when he got up in the morning.

Those days were obviously over. He was tired and grumpy and nothing seemed to be working out quite the way he expected it to. He couldn't even have a great idea anymore without it causing more trouble than it was worth. Silly him for thinking that a dual-Academy class would make things easier for anyone.

He took the stairs outside of Ninja Ops two at a time, glad to be going down instead of up for a change. It seemed as though everything at the Wind Academy was uphill lately. He hadn't noticed it as much when he was here all the time--when he still had Ranger powers, his mind reminded him. Now that he had gotten used to the Thunder Academy again, though, the mountainous terrain at Cam's academy was just one more annoyance.

There was someone at the mainframe, and he opened his mouth to shout out a greeting. Then he stopped, hesitating on the last stair and almost tripping onto the ground before he remembered to put his other foot down. That wasn't Cam in front of the computer. And this place was a far cry from the disaster area it had been the last time he'd seen it.

He tried to remember when he'd been down here last, but his mind couldn't get past the stranger at the computer. She had turned at the sound of footsteps, pausing in her rapid typing to stare back at him. Her ninja uniform established her as a student. Her empty hands and relatively weak stature indicated a low physical threat, but he knew better than to take that sort of thing for granted.

"Hello," she said politely. "May I help you?"

Hunter blinked. "I could ask you the same question," he said with a frown. "What are you doing here?"

"Rewriting the command protocols for the holographic portals," she replied. She was studying him with a look that was familiar enough to be disconcerting. "I'm sorry... are you Hunter?"

His frown deepened. "Yeah," he said brusquely. "Who are you?"

She smiled, rising from Cam's chair with a grace he hadn't expected from someone so skinny. "I'm Mei Lien," she said, bowing slightly. "Cam told me that he was expecting you, but I'm afraid I was so absorbed in the protocols that I forgot for a moment. He's probably on his way here right now."

Okay, she knew too much. He didn't like that. Since when did Cam just invite random students into Ninja Ops? Since when did Cam share his precious computer with anyone at all? And since when had Kapri been replaced by someone calmer, more clever, and so much more... Asian?

"Where is Cam?" Hunter demanded. "He was supposed to be here at noon." He didn't appreciate feeling guilty about being late for no reason.

"So were you," Mei Lien pointed out gently. "His grandfather asked to speak with him after class this morning, but for what reason I don't know. He told me to tell you that he would still be here for lunch."

Oh. She was that Mei Lien. The one in Cam's samurai class. The only one in Cam's samurai class other than Cam. So, what, they didn't see enough of each other in class, now they had to work together, too? "How long have you been helping out down here?" he wanted to know.

"Since Sensei Cam freed me from my cat form," she said, looking down at her hands. "I know he told you of the incident, but please, I would ask that you not refer to it in front of the other students. Cam has arranged for only the teachers to know of what happened."

Her cat form? She had been a cat? And Cam had told him about this?

The missing student. Right, Dustin had lost one of his students and there had been something about a cat. He hadn't really been paying much attention, and in all fairness he didn't think Cam had tried very hard to explain it. That had been back during the whole Japan thing, and they had all had more important things to worry about.

Not anymore. Especially if the cat in question was now an Asian chick who wasn't half bad looking and happened to be brilliant with computers. She was in the samurai class, too, but that was obviously because she was trying to get close to Cam. Great. Just their luck, she would turn out to be some shapeshifting kelzak or something. Lothor's revenge from beyond the Abyss.

More footsteps kept him from interrogating "Mei Lien" further, and Cam appeared a moment later. "Hey, guys," he said, sounding surprisingly cheerful for someone who was supposed to be as overworked as Hunter. "Sorry I'm late. I take it you've already met?"

"Yeah," Hunter said shortly.

"I introduced myself," Mei Lien offered. "We talked only briefly before your arrival."

"Great." Cam was definitely happy about something. "I've been wanting you two to meet each other, but there was never a good time."

"This was a fortuitous meeting, then," Mei Lien said with a small smile.

If she could pretend to be friendly, so could Hunter. "Yeah, well, we're all busy lately," he muttered. "And I've got an afternoon class, so..."

Cam got the message. "We should go," he agreed smoothly. "In fact, do you want to join us?" He was addressing Mei Lien, and Hunter's eyes narrowed. Unwritten rule of the meals he shared with Cam: they were his. His and Cam's. No one else was invited. Apparently Cam hadn't gotten the memo.

Mei Lien had, though. She looked from Cam to him, then shook her head slowly. "No," she said, with obvious reluctance. She didn't take her eyes off of Hunter. Smart girl, he thought. "I think I'd better... stay here and finish up. I'm almost done with the adjustments to the holographic portal."

"Good," Cam said firmly. "Then we can finish them this afternoon. Come on, you're the one who's always telling me I should get out more."

That didn't surprise Hunter in the least. He interrupted before Mei Lien could answer. "Cam, let her do her job, okay? You hate it when people pull you away from the computer. Let's go."

That got him a frown from Cam, but whatever snippy reply he might have made was cut off by an alert from the computer. Much to Hunter's annoyance, it was Mei Lien who slid back into the chair and spun around to face the screen. "There's an Abyss escapee downtown," she reported. "Walking the streets in broad daylight down by Storm Chargers. You want me to call the others?"

"Do it," Cam agreed, leaning on the back of the chair to study the screen. "Record this and put it in the allcall." When she nodded, he reeled off the street name and current time, and Mei Lien's fingers flew across the keyboard.

"Hey, Cousin?" Kapri's voice preceded her around the corner, and she stuck her head into the room just as Cam was straightening up. "Is that sound what I think it is?"

Cam didn't bother to answer. "Let's go," he said, heading for the stairs. "Full ninja gear, everyone. We don't want anyone recognizing us."

Hunter's voice mail chimed as Cam's "goon alert" was delivered to his phone, and he tossed it onto the nearest empty surface before shifting into his field uniform. He and Kapri followed Cam out of Ninja Ops, and it was only as they ran up the stairs that he realized Mei Lien was right behind them.

"Stay here," he ordered. "We don't need to be rescuing stray cats from this monster too."

He couldn't see her expression behind the anonymous headgear, but he heard Cam snap at him from somewhere up ahead. "Hunter, she's with me. Move."

Glaring at Mei Lien as she passed him, he moved.