Celestial Taskforce Ponyranger

by Kawa


Chapter 1

“What are they?”

“I dunno. Fandango?”

“Not a clue, Lute dear. I’ve seen a monkey once, but never with clothing on. I can’t even imagine a monkey wearing this.”

Fandango poked at Gokai Green’s helmet with a levitated stick.

“So you think they’re some sort of monkeys?”

“It’s my best bet, Blade.”

Behind the ponies, Blue Buster stirred awake. Blearily looking through his visor, the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer in a generic industrial complex. When he confirmed, with a little help from his helmet’s diagnostics, that he was in good shape, he slowly shifted into a sitting position. With his sense of direction restored, the second thing he noticed was that he and his friends were loosely surrounded by what seemed to be colorful equines, though he couldn’t quite tell how colorful through the tint of his visor – everything tended to look a little blue to him.

“Oh hey, the blue one’s awake,” Blue Buster heard the red pony say. This observation troubled him a little. “Who and what are you?”

Blue Buster coughed into his mouthpiece. A short burst of static sounded from his helmet, and Ochre took a step back.

“Woah! I may not know much about monkeys but I do know they don’t run on electricity!”

“Sorry,” Blue Buster mumbled as he scrambled upright. “Something in my throat. And we’re not monkeys.”

Ochre Flame gave him a ‘well, carry on then’ look as Gilson Process stood next to him.

“We’re humans,” Blue Buster finished. “Specifically, my friends and I, and the pirate-looking people over there, are Rangers. We defend our world from outside threats.”

Ochre looked at Gilson. “You ever heard of those, Gil?”

“Rangers? Nope. I mean, I know of rangers, but those don’t dress like that.”

“Forest archers?”

“The same.”

Blue Buster chuckled. “We’re not forest archers. Though some of us do practice archery, and some have this whole forest theme going. But we never got properly introduced, didn’t we?”

“Completely forgot about that,” Ochre admitted. He took a step closer to Blue Buster and extended a hoof. Blue Buster, in turn, crouched a little for the height difference and extended a hand.

“Ochre Flame, useless slacker and part-time Cutie Mark Crusader.”

“Ryuji Iwasaki, special operative with the Energy Management Center,” Blue Buster said as he shook Ochre’s hoof. He didn’t feel at ease to outright admit he was an agent, but this was clearly not his world – his helmet had informed him of as much. “Those are my partners Hiromu Sakurada and Yoko Usami,” he indicated, “and those are the Gokaigers… I’m not entirely sure who they are, but the red one’s Captain Marvelous.”

He was just reaching for his helmet when something finally registered in Ryuji’s mind. “Wait, did you say ‘crusader’?”

“Cutie Mark Crusader, yeah. We’re looking for our cutie marks, cos we’re all way too old to not have any,” Ochre Flame explained.

“That’s right. Nothing worse than being a late-bloomer,” Gilson Process nodded. “I’m Gil, by the way. Gilson Process, and these are our friends, Lutein, Fandango, and Pine Blade.”

Ryuji took off his helmet, revealing a human face to the ponies for the first time. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Dear Princess Celestia, that’s no ordinary monkey,” Fandango gasped. “It doesn’t even have any fur!”

“Well, you’re no ordinary pony, miss,” Hiromu said in his usual blunt manner. He had woken up just before the ponies were introduced and just barely caught their names. “I’ve never seen one with a horn before.”

Just before Hiromu could reach for the command button to un-morph, Ryuji stopped him. “Can’t guarantee we’ll be able to get it back, with where we are and how we got here.”

“Oh. Okay,” Hiromu agreed as he followed Ryuji’s lead and just kept his helmet in hand. “Wait, lemme try something,” he said as he pushed the button on his chest strap.

TRANSPORT!

Nothing happened. Aside from the weapon he already carried, his Sougan Blade, he had no access to his other stuff. Transporting his firearm, the Ichigan Buster, was officially no longer an option. It made him feel a little helpless, but at least the blade could double as binoculars. Looking over at the slowly rousing Yoko, Hiromu felt a lot better. Not just because Yoko was alright, but because she had the sense to bring a firearm.

“So… where is this? I’ve heard of alternate worlds – we’ve been to one, actually – but I can’t imagine one with talking pastel ponies,” Hiromu said as he took off his helmet.

“This is Equestria,” Lutein helpfully answered. “May I see that helmet, please?”

“I guess,” Hiromu shrugged. When the helmet glowed pink and floated from his hands, he wasn’t even surprised anymore. As a Ranger, you get to see some pretty weird things, and this was a talking yellow unicorn with apparent telekinetic powers in front of him.

“Do you people have any protectors?” Ryuji asked as he watched Lutein turn Hiromu’s helmet around.

Pine Blade stepped up to answer. “We have our Princesses, their Royal Guards, and the Elements of Harmony. The Elements and Princesses are the strongest forces we have, but they can’t be everywhere at once… and we’re pretty far from Canterlot, to be honest.”

“I heard you say… what was it, ‘morph’?” Fandango piped up. “What did you mean by that?”

“We don’t usually wear these costumes,” Hiromu replied before Ryuji could. “They’re our battle armor.”

Still holding her stick, Fandango poked at Gokai Green’s leg. “This doesn’t feel like armor.”

Haptic feedback? She’s not even properly holding that stick, Ryuji thought to himself. “That’s not ordinary spandex. It’s strong enough to block swords and deflect bullets,” he clarified.

“But usually the enemy has something even stronger,” Hiromu finished.

Ryuji held out his arm. “We put them on with things like this. This is a Morphing Brace, and I think the Gokaigers use some kind of cellphone?”

Hiromu caught his helmet as it was deposited in front of him again and watched as Lutein’s yellow glow instead took hold of the device she found inside Gokai Blue’s costume jacket.

“Did you mean these things?” she asked, not knowing what a cellphone is.

“Yeah. They take these little figurines from their belt buckles, and stick them into the keyholes,” Hiromu confirmed. Ryuji walked over to the unconscious pirates and crouched next to his counterpart.

“I wonder,” Ryuji mumbled as he inquisitively tapped Gokai Blue’s buckle. “How do they get all these figurines from such a small buckle? It’s not transport technology like ours – I heard they can do it from anywhere…”

Ryuji rather involuntarily thought of one time when Gokai Blue changed into a previous blue Ranger, just when he found the button to open the buckle. The front plate promptly spun around, revealing a tiny Deka Blue figurine (AN: that’s Power Rangers SPD), sitting in a molded case. Carefully, he pried the toy-like figure out of the buckle and stood up again, holding the object in his fingers.

“Okay, so that’s how that works.”

Gilson took the device from Lutein and set it down on the ground in front of him.

“Then, I think, they flip them open like this,” Ryuji recalled. He pushed in on the sides of the figurine, causing a spring-loaded mechanism to flip its legs up and reveal a key’s blade. He crouched down opposite Gilson Process and stuck the key into the device. “They turn it, and they morph.”

“Hold on. This little guy doesn’t really look like the other one, doesn’t he?”

“No, he doesn’t. That’s kind of the Gokaigers’ thing – they can turn into any of the many Rangers that came before them. I think that one’s a Dekaranger?”

“Hoji Tomasu,” a voice groaned. “Special Police Dekaranger, number two.”

Gokai Silver had woken up.

“Is that your name?” asked Fandango.

“No, I’m Gai Ikari. Goookai-AI-AI! Ow my head!” the silver Ranger called out as he clutched the sides of his helmet and dropped back on the ground, out cold once more.

“Okay. Strange name,” Fandango said to herself. “Gokai Silver, I’d guess.”

“I wonder what would happen if someone who’s not a human turned the key,” Ryuji wondered, forgetting that most of the Gokaigers weren’t actually human at all. “I know the costumes adjust to the user’s gender, but I don’t think…”

“Why not find out? It’s just sitting here, waiting,” Gilson spoke up. He bent down to take the key in his mouth.

“No wait!”

DeeekaRANGER!

Before Ryuji could take the device away from Gilson, the pony had turned the key and was temporarily engulfed in a blue flame. When the effect abated, Gilson was revealed clad in a tight blue-white spandex bodysuit, with a stylized black number 4 on his flank, and a fully face-concealing helmet with red lights on the sides, and points on top to contain his ears. The only parts of him still visible were his wings and tail, though they seemed to be even bluer than they were before.

“This… is so strange it’s awesome,” Gilson gasped in barely-constrained excitement.

Behind them, Gokai Blue’s costume burst away, revealing a still-unconscious Joe Gibken.

“I guess it only works on one person at a time,” Yoko stated as she crouched next to the swashbuckler. “I wonder why that didn’t wake him up.”

“Hold on, I can do a little healing magic,” Fandango said as she hip-bumped Yoko away. “Learned it from my mom.”

Fandango’s pink glow encased Joe’s head as she closed her eyes in focus. “Hmm. I don’t know anything about humans, but this looks like a concussion to me. Minor, perhaps, but nothing real bad.”

“So what do we do?” Yoko asked, pushing Fandango back again in playful retaliation.

“Don’t move them too much, and give them time to recover. That’s my not-even-close-to-professional diagnosis, and I’m sticking to it.”

“And maybe play around with these key thingies some more,” Gilson said, his voice only slightly muffled by his helmet. “You should try it, Fan. It’s a rush!”

As if to underline his statement, the siren lights in his helmet flashed. “Okay I did not expect that. That’s awesome.”

Well I’m not getting left out of this particular fun, Ochre Flame thought to himself as he watched Fandango carefully extract the transformation cellphone from her Gokai counterpart’s jacket. He brusquely stuck his snout inside Marvelous’ costume, intent on fishing out the captain’s cellphone, when said captain suddenly took him in a headlock.

“Don’t get too cocky, little horse.”