Title: Phantom's Soul
Characters: Cassie, Phantom Ranger||Romance: Cassie x Phantom Ranger/Phantom Ranger x Cassie
Word Count: chapter: 600||story: 600||Chapter Count: 1/16 Genres: Romance, Drama||Rated: G
Challenges: Diversity Writing, H21, K rated fic; Three-Sided Box, 16 chapters, 600 wpc; Ficletchap Competition; Chapter Set Boot Camp, #29, 16 chapters
Notes: Minor rewrite for the Phantom Ranger arc of Turbo and his episode in PriS, and sometime after that as well. AU wherein virtually everyone has a timer or marker of some kind denoting when they meet their soulmate. More information to come in the fic.
Summary: Cassie knows she has a soulmate. But she doesn't know who or where or anything else. And then one day, as the counter edges towards zero...the Phantom Ranger arrives.

Cassie's eyes flicked to the countdown on her arm. She didn't want to focus on that, but the way it cycled closer and closer to zero made it far more difficult than it should have been.

What made matters even more annoying was Divatox. None of the Rangers would have been surprised at that; Divatox existed to make their lives more complicated and challenging than they really needed to be.

But Divatox wanted to rob banks today – rob banks, instead of blowing something up or delivering a monster meant to defeat them somehow. Acquiring money wasn't exactly the usual thing.

I heard she was a pirate, though. Guess she had to go back to that sooner or later.

She forced her attention away from the countdown and back to the business at hand: looking for any evidence of who'd defeated Divatox's goons.

Someone was definitely putting a crimp in Divatox's current scheme and it wasn't one of them. Cassie wanted to find whoever it was and shake their hand. Anything that wrecked Divatox's plans this much absolutely counted on their team.

Unless they weren't somehow and just wanted to wreck Divatox for some strange reason of their own. Cassie wasn't going to rule that out entirely. Too many strange things occurred since she became a Power Ranger for her to do that.

Her attention dropped back for a moment to her arm. She couldn't see the counter, not since she was morphed, but she could feel an odd warmth rising from where the numbers counted down regardless.

She knew it would be today. The numbers told her so. She'd hoped it would be after this mission, but the closer the time came, the more she worried that she was wrong. And now she combined that with the worry about who it was.

The longer she looked, the warmer her arm became. Never enough to hurt, but a solid warning that the one with the other counter was around there somewhere and she should keep her eye out for whoever it was.

It wasn't one of the other Rangers. Justin wasn't old enough to have his timer start yet – if it ever did; if you met your soulmate when you were young enough, the timer never needed to start. Ashley's still had some months to go. T.J. and Carlos both had a few more years; everyone figured they would meet theirs in college or afterward. The timing worked; it would just depend on what they actually did.

Dimitria told them other races on other worlds had other ways to tell their soulmate. Inquirians like her had writing on their body somewhere – hers was over her heart. She'd never mentioned who hers was or what kind of a relationship it was, only that her people recognized theirs by the name, written on one's flesh as if by the hand of your soulmate theirself.

Or themselves; Dimitria said there were occasions when more than two people formed a bond. Cassie didn't quite know how to feel about that.

Something caught her eye. A reflection in the truck's mirror. Black armor, a black helmet as concealing as her own, and the warmth on her arm increased, flooding through her.

The helmet turned towards her, then vanished out of sight of the mirror. Cassie's heart beat faster. "Hello?"

With no answer forthcoming and after a few tentative steps, Cassie reached out, wondering if she'd encounter empty space or an actual body.

Then there it was. Little more than a flicker in the air, but there, and underneath her uniform, the numbers at last hit zero.

To Be Continued

Notes: I dare you to guess who Ashley's soulmate is.