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Disclaimer: I do not own Power Rangers. But I do own cookies.
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***
"Can I have the yellow?" Karone asked, putting down the pink crayon that she had been using.
Her brother, who was sitting next to her at their kitchen table looked up from his picture. He looked around the table, finding the yellow crayon sitting in a small pile next to his coloring book. "Here it is," Andros said, handing it to her.
"Thank you," she smiled, taking it from him and starting to color the kitten. Andros always colored the pages in his book in order. Karone jumped around, coloring whatever suited her mood that day. Today, she had chosen a happy kitten playing in a field of flowers.
Karone glanced over at Andros' coloring book. He was coloring a picture of a boy and a girl, both with crowns on their head. He had colored the girl's dress bright yellow, and was coloring the boy's shirt red.
"Who's that?" Karone asked.
"It's you and me," Andros told her. "We are the prince and princess of KO-35!"
Karone giggled. "You mean princess and prince," she corrected.
Andros didn't argue as he resumed his careful coloring. Andros never argued, Karone thought, as she went back to her kitten. Well, not never, but almost never. After a minute, she sighed. The kitten was a lot more work than it had looked like. She got bored coloring one large space. It took a lot of work.
They both looked up as the kitchen door swung open. "Hi!" Zhane announced loudly as he sauntered into the room.
"Hi Zhane," Andros and Karone chimed almost simultaneously.
"What are we doing today?" he asked, looking around the kitchen, presumably for something to amuse himself with.
"We're coloring!" Karone said brightly. She looked back down at her kitten, debating abandoning it for now in favor of coloring the flowers first.
"You can share my book," Andros offered.
Zhane looked at the coloring book with a frown. "Thanks..." he said slowly, "but we can color any time."
Andros looked at Karone, somewhat concerned, but she was ignoring them both as she busily filled in a flower with a bright pink crayon. "What do you want to do?" he asked carefully.
Zhane put a hand on his stomach. "I don't know, but I think we should have cookies first," he decided, walking over to the pantry.
"Cookies?" Karone's head shot up at the mention of anything with sugar in it.
"We don't have any cookies," Andros told him.
Zhane frowned, opening the doors to one of the cupboards, apparently still searching for the cookies that weren't there. "Why not?" he asked.
Andros shrugged, although he must have known that Zhane couldn't see it. "We have fruit," he suggested after a minute. Karone could picture the expression on Zhane's face without seeing it.
"I have a better idea!" Zhane announced.
"What?" Andros asked cautiously, knowing from experience that this was going to be trouble. He heard Zhane grunt with effort.
"Let's make our own cookies!" Zhane said, pulling a giant bag of flour out of the cupboard.
"Yay!" Karone shrieked, immediately jumping off of her chair and running over to help him.
"Zhane, we're not allowed to bake cookies!" Andros told him, following her.
"Come on Andros, what could go wrong?" Zhane asked with a grin.
***
"No," Andros said plainly.
Karone smiled, the more time that she spent here, the more she remembered, and the more it felt like home.
She didn't know how long it was before their parents had walked in, but she remembered exactly what the kitchen had looked like, covered in flour, sugar, and frosting. She also remembered what the three of them had looked like. Zhane had accidentally dumped a cup of flour on Andros' head, and had apparently decided that it looked like fun, so he poured half of the remaining flour in the bag over his own head.
Karone had found the frosting, but since there were no cookies yet to put it on, she had proceeded to eat it straight from the can. Somehow, by the time they where done, the cleanest thing in the room was the bowl that they had intended to mix the cookie batter in.
Karone looked at her brother, then at Zhane, of course it was possible that she was imagining things, but she could swear that they both wore the same expressions they had that day. "Come on Andros," she said innocently, "what could go wrong?"