non-author's note: howdy! Adrienne here. today in the Whatever It Takes series, I would like to introduce a guest author -- Starhawk! :) I want to thank her for agreeing to play in this universe when she knows very well how I can be. *grin* thank you for the wonderful story! :)

author's note: Buena Vista puts Power Rangers on the air. Adri puts Whatever It Takes into cyberspace. Lee Ann Womack puts the album Some Things I Know on store shelves, complete with the song "Now You See Me (Now You Don't)". Thanks for letting me play in your universe, Adri!

***

7 months, 4 weeks, 3 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes...

"Hey, Will!"

He glanced down and found a kid with sun-bleached hair standing at the bottom of his ladder. The youth braced his arms against the support as soon as he had Phantom's attention and grinned up at him. "Come on and get something to eat, yeah? Danny's mom's serving rhubarb pie over by the grange."

"The staging is not complete," he pointed out, lifting his gaze to the untreated beams again. There were several more lantern hooks to be installed, and any number of rough places that would have to be sanded before children were allowed on the construct.

"Sure, and it's never done, is it," the blonde boy replied. "Halloween comes anyway. It won't matter if we pass out from sugar deprivation first."

Phantom shook his head, amused by the dramatization. Nonetheless, he allowed himself to be convinced, partly because he was hungry and partly because he had learned a few things in his travels. One of them was that small towns often valued social courtesies as much as labor.

He climbed down from the ladder and followed Lauren out of the staging area, dropping his hammer onto one of the sawhorses as he passed. He didn't bother to empty his pockets. He would probably need the nails again anyway, and a few more seemed to go missing with every transfer from pocket to can and back again.

"Joey," his coworker called, gesturing at one of the children fawning over Companion. "We're going for pie, you coming?"

The little boy could have been Lauren's, so closely did he resemble the California native. Instead, he had been born and raised in the heart of the Rocky Mountains and, like Phantom, understood Lauren's tales of surf and sail only in the abstract. Still, Joey worshipped the older boy, and Lauren pulled in a few extra dollars a day by babysitting.

Joey scrambled to his feet and raced over to his hero, running into his legs full tilt and clinging there as Lauren laughed. "I win over the dog again," he remarked, glancing sideways at Phantom. "Still waiting for the day he finds someone stranger than me to idolize."

Phantom smiled, but didn't comment. In a society that judged so much by appearance and affiliation, he found no small amount of satisfaction in his own ability to "blend in". He was from a place farther than most of these people bothered to imagine, and yet it was Lauren, with his dreadlocks and unabashed surfer drawl, who was labeled "strange".

"Lauren, Will!" Someone hailed them from across the square, and he recognized one of the women that had hired him. "Alice has her pies out; you boys go and get some, you hear?"

"You'd have to beat us off with a stick, Jan!" Lauren yelled back.

Phantom glanced back, wondering if Companion had deigned to follow. The dog was still lolling in the sun, off to one side of the staging area with his small admirers. The loss of Joey had allowed an even younger girl to take the favored place at Companion's head, stroking his ears lovingly and cooing whenever he moved.

He shook his head. That dog knew the good life when he saw it.

There was a slice of rhubarb pie and a paper plate in his hands before he knew what had happened, and he found himself in the middle of a knot of people that would have made him uncomfortable not so long ago. Crowds still were not his element, but he could relax enough to consume his treat and even converse when he was called upon to do so. And called upon he was, by what seemed like every individual gathered around the makeshift picnic table.

One thing that everyone he had met so far had in common was their unceasing concern for his welfare: there was rarely an interaction that didn't begin with "how ya doing?" and most of them seem to end with "have a nice day!" The inhabitants of Earth, he had concluded, were an amazingly involved people. He supposed their willingness to welcome a complete stranger into their community without any notice was indicative of that.

He was given another opportunity to observe the phenomenon that evening. Although his involvement in the planning and construction of the festival stage was minimal, everyone who had worked on it with him was insistent that he should attend. The party of the year, they told him, or at least the autumn, if you didn't count the Harvest Fair. They seemed to have a large number of parties, and as far as he could tell, whichever one they were talking about at any given time was the biggest and the best.

"You must go in costume," he informed Companion patiently. "I'm told it's tradition."

Seated by the steps outside the general store, the dog did not look impressed. He did sniff the new bandanna Phantom had bought for him, but when it came to removing the old pink one, Companion protested. He backed away or wriggled free no matter Phantom's efforts to hold him in place.

Finally, he relented. "If you want to keep the bandanna, you could at least wear this one also," he told the dog. "You are supposed to appear different from your usual self."

Companion cocked his head, giving him a distinctly curious look. Phantom took the opportunity to loop the new bandanna around the dog's neck, tying it behind his ears. He tugged it into place, a little surprised when Companion didn't so much as twitch.

"You're very possessive," he informed the dog.

Companion's tail thumped twice, and Phantom smiled.

A cheer went up from somewhere behind him, and he turned in time to see the stage lights lit with some fanfare. Musicians were already tramping across the stage, and there were a respectable number of people thronging the square. Some were kicking hay bales into place in front of the stage, while others were helping stabilize torches and set up refreshment tables.

Phantom started toward the stage, despite the fact that he had been sent away with affectionate instructions to "get ready" only a short time before. His preparations for the event consisted of acquiring Companion's new bandanna and finding a quiet place to morph. He supposed, in retrospect, that his explanation to Companion left something to be desired: if one was supposed to appear different from one's usual self, he was not complying.

On the other hand, there was something liberating about wandering around town in his Ranger armor. The Phantom Ranger had never been his real identity, but for a long time, it had been the only one he had. His own self had been a shadow, eclipsed by the title.

To these people, though, he was more. Now the Phantom Ranger was the shadow, no more representative of his identity than his real self had been before. Just a mask he chose to put on, like so many of them, for the sake of the festivities.

"Katrina! Katrina Jackson, come back here!"

It wasn't the shout that got his attention so much as the sound of running footsteps. Companion let out a bark, play-bowing and apparently untroubled by the headlong rush of a very small child. The dog allowed himself to be tackled, although he wouldn't roll no matter how much she pushed. Phantom belatedly recognized the girl who had taken Joey's place earlier that afternoon.

"I'm sorry," a woman's voice said, apologetic and a little breathless. "She's crazy about dogs lately, I don't know why. We've never had one."

He glanced up, and his smile froze on his face. Cassie stood in front of him.

"Come on, Katrina," she was saying. "I'm sure Companion has played enough for today."

Breathing out carefully, he offered silent thanks that his visor hid his expression. It wasn't her, of course. But the dark-haired woman would be dressed in a Pink Astro Ranger costume, with the same laughingly repentant look that Cassie had worn more than once.

Her soft-spoken command had absolutely no effect on the little girl, he noted. Katrina continued to hug and pet Companion, giggling when he knocked her over and growled playfully at her helplessness. The dog paid no more attention than Katrina had when Phantom warned him to be gentle.

"Will?" The woman seemed to expect an answer, and he lifted his gaze reluctantly. She was not an easy vision to face, no matter who she really was. "That's you, right?"

There was nothing for it but to remove his helmet. He couldn't help but remember a time when that would have been his last reaction, and yet now... These people were more visually oriented than he had ever realized. No wonder Cassie had not been able to believe in him.

He shook off the thought, forcing himself to smile at "the Pink Ranger". If he had been introduced to her before, surely he would remember it. "I'm sure Companion is not suffering," he offered, looking pointedly at the happy playmates at their feet.

She laughed, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. "I'm Jesse," she said, holding out her hand with a smile. "I hear you put up the stage for tonight."

"I helped," he corrected, taking her hand carefully. He tried not to stare at their black and white gloves, so reminiscent of a time he wanted to both recapture and forget. "My participation was neither extensive nor pivotal."

"All the good ones are humble," she replied cheerfully. "You're the Phantom Ranger, right?"

She didn't seem to notice him start at the title, and only then did it occur to him that he was still holding her hand. He let go abruptly, and she gestured at her own uniform. "I'm so glad I'm not the only adult here dressed as a Power Ranger. I thought we should be fairies, but no, Katrina insisted..."

He glanced down, suddenly recognizing the child's yellow outfit for what it was. "Katrina is your sister?" he guessed, wondering that she knew his own designation. He had not thought knowledge of the Phantom Ranger so widespread.

She laughed again, and surprised him by taking his arm. "Oh, I like you," she informed him. "Just for that, you can get me a drink."

Her daughter, then. He was becoming more familiar with native mannerisms as time went on, and age and its accompanying familial relations seemed to be an oddly sensitive subject. Unless he was mistaken, he had just paid her an inadvertent compliment.

So he found himself still at Jesse's side when the music started, and he was somewhat alarmed when she asked him to dance. He tried, politely, to decline, but she left him no way out without seeming unbearably rude. He was surprised when she drew Katrina with them, however, and the little girl turned out to be his saving grace.

There was no doubt that some of the people in front of the stage were dancing. They moved rhythmically in a series of steps that could only be telepathically coordinated, and yet he was sure no one here had the ability. He would have felt horribly out of place were it not for Jesse and Katrina.

They had clearly done this before, possibly with or without a third partner. Jesse told Katrina to grab his hand, which she did--though not without a backwards glance at Companion. The dog was circling the outskirts of the crowd, distracted when Katrina left and probably drawn now toward the refreshments. Phantom found himself in a circle of three, turning with no regard for the music and paying more attention to keeping Katrina on her feet than anything else.

The experience was unexpectedly enjoyable.

Katrina was bored long before the music stopped, and Jesse let go of his hand to make her way out from among the other dancers. It was at that moment that Katrina collapsed, and Phantom looked down in alarm. The child had appeared perfectly fine only seconds before--

"Katrina!" Jesse's tone was exasperated but not worried. She exchanged glances with him, clearly expecting him to understand. "She wants to swing," she said, tugging ineffectually on the little girl's arm. "Her father started doing it, and now she thinks everyone does it."

"Swing?" Phantom repeated, his grip tightening on Katrina's hand automatically. He, too, tried to pull her to her feet, and the girl bounced up excitedly. This time when she lifted her feet they were ready for her, and she was suspended in the air.

"Swing," Jesse repeated, in a fondly resigned tone of voice. "She lives for it."

They were walking again, albeit awkwardly, with Katrina running every few steps and letting them lift her into the air. Reaching the edge of the lit dance area, Katrina jumped again and they swung her up onto a hay bale. She pulled them forward, demanding to be let down on the other side, but Jesse caught her and pointed into the shadows.

"Look," she said quietly. "The ghosts!"

Phantom looked where she was pointing, noticing as he did so that he wasn't the only one. A few people behind them had stopped dancing, and they too were staring toward the grange. He heard someone else utter the word "ghosts", and he frowned.

There were lights over where the picnic tables had been set up earlier. They were silent, colored, and they luminesced in a way he didn't associate with electrical lighting. But there was nothing particularly ghostly about them, at least not the way he understood the term. They were simply pretty lights, no doubt reflected from some unseen source.

"Ghosts?" he inquired of Jesse.

"Over there," she murmured, as though he might not have seen. "We always see them on Halloween."

"What... are they?" he asked carefully. He did his best not to sound skeptical, but he had yet to find any pattern or process to the myriad superstitions held in the mountains. Their tendency to surprise him at the most inconvenient of times was a source of mild annoyance.

Katrina diverted her mother's attention by demanding a candy apple, and Jesse shot him an apologetic look. The girl was one of the few who seemed unaffected by the lights. Phantom resisted the urge to follow when Jesse hustled her away, though he thought his presence might not be unwelcome.

Instead, he took advantage of his "costume" to fade into the darkness. Making his way around the edge of the square, he circled around behind the grange and slowed, casting about for any evidence of the lights' source. He was tempted to replace his visor, for its scanning ability would easily enhance his search--

Then he saw them. Crouched down among the picnic tables, so clear at this distance that he was surprised they had been invisible from the square, two boys and a girl were reflecting light up into the sky. They seemed to have several flashlights, and certainly more than one reflective surface. Their ethereal designs flickered over nearby trees before climbing back toward the slowly emerging stars.

"You are deceiving your neighbors," Phantom said, loud enough to be heard from where he was standing.

The lights vanished as though someone had thrown a switch. There was a long moment of silence, and then a boy's voice drifted back to him. "Who are you?"

"That is not important," he said with a frown. "Why do you seek to convince these people that there are ghosts among them?"

"We're not trying to convince anyone," the same voice replied. "This is just for fun."

"Besides," another voice added, "they like it. It gives them something to talk about."

"It is deceptive," Phantom insisted. His own history made him more sensitive to this particular injustice, and he would not turn his back.

"But it's not." The girl's voice drifted through the shadows to him. Her flashlight came back on, illuminating her entire form. She was standing now, hands out to her sides... empty.

She wasn't holding a flashlight.

Next to her, one of the boys appeared, and from somewhere in the darkness a stream of colored light danced to his fingertips. He spread his fingers and the light dimmed and lifted, forming the same reflected patterns Phantom had watched from the square. A moment later, the second boy wavered into existence where the colored sparkles had begun.

"You're the ghosts," he breathed, amazed.

"Sure," the first boy said with a smile. "If you want to call it that. The townspeople like the show."

"We try to do it a couple of times a year," the girl put in. "Always on Halloween, though."

"But..." He could only think of one question. "Why?"

"Why not?" one of the boys replied. "Haven't you ever done anything just because?"

He thought about that for a moment. "No," he said at last.

"You should try it." At first he thought it was a trick of his eyes, but they were fading now and he wouldn't know how to make them stay if he wanted to. "Some things are their own justification, Phantom."

He started, wondering if it was his own imagination that made him think it was Cassie's voice talking to him now. He waited, disappointed but not surprised when it didn't come again. They were gone... but seconds later he saw floating, colored shapes appear in the trees above the general store. He watched for a long time, wondering.

Finally, he made his way back toward the festival. He had made his token appearance, but he should retrieve Companion. And thank the many people who had invited him to attend. Maybe obtain something to eat, if he could do so without being presumptuous.

Perhaps he would even seek out Jesse again, and Katrina... just because.