Author's Notes:

Okay, we are back. In more ways than one, I should add. First off, huge thanks to Seriff Pilcrow for providing the medical explanation for the magic conductivity. Secondly, for what comes next... How afraid are you of the dark?

Shining Armor: Medical Wing

“How… How could we have not noticed?” Flashfire murmured to himself, pacing back and forth outside the medical way his hooves clanging against the metal flooring. “...How… How could I not have noticed? He’s my best friend for crying out loud. ...I… I should have noticed something like this, don’t you think?” he stammered out nervously to no-one in particular.

Inside the medical wing, a few of the more gear-minded members of the crew had been brought in and to try and assess the damage to Stripped Gear -who Flashfire only now recognized the meaningfulness behind that particular name- while other mechanics set to work assessing the damage to the other ships. Stardust had ordered any non-essential personnel, which basically meant anyone but him- out of the medical wing.

“Hey, you shouldn’t blame yourself, commander,” Fågel said, putting a hand (talon?) on his shoulder. “Sorta managed to slip by everyone’s notice really, this sorta thing.”

“...Fair point, but I’m his best friend. I’m supposed to know everything about the guy!” Flashfire remarked, some bandages wrapped around his chest to stem away the bleeding. The back of his mind was telling him to get that looked at, given Eriedrone did not go quietly into that good night as it were. But right now? Flashfire had bigger concerns.

“So, I have a few good friends? But yet, I don’t know everything about them really,” Fågel remarked. “Just for the record Commander Flashfire, that’s all I’m saying,” she commented, trying to reassure her boss. The jury was still out on the matter if it actually worked.

Flashfire smiled slightly, glad to hear his Taurus Black had managed to find a few people she considered friends outside the team, given her… unique circumstances. Not everyone wanted to associate themselves with a crewmember marked as a former criminal by Prince Stardust himself.

Flashfire was very curious as to who said friends were, but he wouldn’t pry into Fågel’s personal life lest he wanted to be hacked to death by one massive axe. Plus he had more important things to worry about anyways.

“You know,” Spada commented as he observed Flashfire. “Those bandages won’t hold back the tide for long. You really ought to have that looked at. Just sayin’.”

“Later,” Flashfire waved him off dismissively. “I’ll be fine for the time being. I’m more concerned with everything else going on than myself for right now. How are the repairs on the Piercing Arrow and the Celestial Radiance's systems going?”

“Too soon to tell really,” Spada said and winced as Flashfire clutched his chest in pain. “We should know within a few hours but… You sure you don’t want to have that looked at?”

“I’m quite sure, so can you shut up about it?” Flashfire snapped, and Spade stepped backwards a bit in fear. “...Sorry, sorry, it’s just…”

“Yeah, yeah. I understand. It’s the shock and all. Rattled us all quite badly, Stripped Gear being a cyborg, robot… whatever he is. But just sayin’,” Spada replied calmly and softly. “You will have to get those injuries looked at.”

“And I will, in my own time!” Flashfire stated. “I want to worry more about my friend, and what I can do right now.”

“And I’m sorry to say, and I don’t mean to be harsh here,” Fågel put in. “But you’re not a robotics expert, there’s nothing you can do for Stripped Gear. At least not right now. When he wakes, that’s another story as he will probably won’t take this revelation calmly but right now you need to reassure the crew. When they see that one of the Captains of the Guard is worrying and fretting, they start to worry and fret.”

“...Yeah?” Flashfire replied. “Well, maybe they should start to do that!”

“...What… What do you mean?” Fågel stammered out before Flashfire gave her a hard look.

“You know perfectly well what I mean. We just got boarded by a Karō and quite a few of us are in the infirmary from his attack, and two of our ships are currently under heavy repair thanks to his little minion,” Flashfire replied. “I’d be concerned if anyone wasn’t worrying and fretting.”

Flashfire groaned to himself. It’d been weeks and weeks on end since the five ships had left Equus and the known galaxy behind, and now they were in what equated to possibly Hell. He’d heard the old sailors tales, about before the seas had frozen over and when Equestria was thought to be nothing but a flat plane. The whole idea was archaic conception, but in the early days of travel, he’d heard that some crews planned to tie their captain to the mast and threatened to kill him if they did not turn back from unknown lands. On early maps, long before Celestia and Luna came to power, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. Some pony, his -it would be a him, really, because most of all the great early thinkers were stallions- once said: “Equus is flat and rides on air; in the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness.”

As aforementioned, nowadays thanks to modern science and perhaps a bit of courage on the part of early explorers this line of thinking was viewed as ridiculously antiquated. Mind you, Flashfire couldn’t help but compare their situation to the early thinkers in a way. Here they were, on the verges of unknown territory with possibly only a very loony alien to guide them. Sure, they’d made friends in other planets and their inhabitants once they’d freed them but very few societies often ventured beyond their own galaxies it seemed. No thanks in small part to fear of Dark Matter, who’d been ruling for a very long time now indeed it seemed if Manx was correct. She honestly hadn’t known a time when her people weren’t suppressed by Dark Matter’s thumb.

“...It’s starting to get to you huh?” Fågel remarked. “The burdens of leadership. You know, what you need… Well, what you need is a Shadow Leader of sorts, someone to take the reins when you’re not capable. The weight of the world, or the universe in this case… it’s not all on your shoulders no matter how much you think it to be.”

Flashfire bit back a chuckle. “...You know… You know, Stripped, he said something awfully similar to me once. Back on… Vera it was I believe.”

“Like I said, that’s where the shadow leader comes in,” Stripped replied. “Now, I don’t mean me, but find someone you can trust explicitly and delve off some of your duties to them. A Number One, if you will. You’re Flurry’s Number One, who’s to say you can’t have one of your own?”

“Well then,” Fågel remarked suppressing a chuckle of her own. “I’d say he’s a very wise stallion then. Bit insufferable in his intellect, but very smart one. I honestly don’t give a damn if he’s a robot or not, he’s still the same old guy isn’t he?”

“...Yeah, that he is. That he is,” Flashfire replied sitting himself down on a nearby bench. “Probably should listen to him more often really, might do me a damn bit of good.”

“Is it just me, or does he seem a bit more… reserved than normal?” Spada noted, whispering this to Fågel with the parrot nodding in response. She’d noticed a lot of changes in Flashfire of late. Sure, she’d stayed silent on them but she figured it often wasn’t her place to say much on her commander. But she had noticed. Oh yes, she had noticed. She’d noticed how tired the stallion had seemed of late, how prone to cursing himself when he thought nobody was listening. She, at various points had thought it was a good idea to talk to somebody -if not Flashfire himself- on this, like maybe Pharynx given changelings could sense feelings and probably could tell what was wrong with Flashfire easily enough but she thought the better of it. After all, it simply wasn’t her business.

But then again, looking at Flashfire now she figured maybe she probably should have said something to someone earlier. The stallion wasn’t a god after all, no matter how much the younger members of the crew looked up the Kyurangers and thought them flawless.

The simple matter of things was, they weren’t. Flashfire was no exception. The burdens of a leader were often the worst things to bear, and probably the hardest. Fågel knew Flurry had it bad, having to pretend to be this perfect Princess who could say everything was fine and have to get everyone to believe her. On the totem pole, Flashfire was practically one step below her really given he was one of the Captains of the Guards in a way and the leader of the Kyurangers, Equus’ main defenders. But how did you convince a stallion so stubborn and so used to doing everything his way that maybe… just maybe a little help was allowed every now and then?

Simple answer, you poked and prodded at him in the gentlest of fashions until he finally relented and let you help him instead of him helping you. She’d heard Flashfire’s proclamation over the commlinks, yes she had.

“There is no response to you calling me a bad leader, leveling all those accusations at me. And you know why? Because you're absolutely right in saying I'm a terrible leader and I've made a lot of mistakes. And I'll be paying for them, but you know something else? Even if all of the galaxies cry out and scream for my head, I'll never stop extending a hand to help. If I didn't the regret curling up inside me... That would be far worse than any accusation or punishment you could level at me. Flashfire Lulamoon, the Element of Kindness and the Howling Star.”

He wanted to reach out his hand to everyone in the universe, and that alone had earned him his Element but he needed to understand this. Sometimes… Sometimes you didn’t have to do everything alone. No, there was no lottery on Friendship in Fågel’s mind. In fact, she probably would have had this to say: “I would be afraid, yes, maybe I would be. I should be, about… Well, about what-ifs, maybes, and possible outcomes due to frankly poor decisions on my part. I got thrown in prison for a reason. But Friendship… well, that’s like anything else in the universe. You grasp it tight, like a friend and it’d never steer you wrong. It just took some of us a little longer than others to realize that.”

Little did she know this, but she was muttering this aloud, and Flashfire was hearing every word ears folded up in shame as he listened to the parrot. He chuckled, when did she get so wise? He sighed sourly, maybe she should have been leading this team, not him. Celestia knew he’d made far too many mistakes on his part to be worthy of that honor.

But he felt a warm glow in his palm, something comforting and he opened it to see his Cerberus Kyutama pulsating. Apparently, it disagreed. It wouldn’t have picked him for a reason if he didn’t possess some redeeming quality of leading a team. Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld yes, but a guardian nonetheless. And he was the guardian of his team. The pack leader, if you will. They were his pack, and he had to protect them… no matter how hard it got.

Turning his head back towards the medical bay, Flashfire watched Stardust and his little gang of scientists get back to work on repairing -No, not repairing, Flashfire corrected himself. That made it sound like Stripped was anything less than a pony- Stripped Gear. He would have words with Stardust, rest assured. After all, there were very few ponies smart enough to create something like Stripped Gear and the Prince was amongst those very few...

Groaning, Stripped found himself awakening in the med bay, and on pure instinct, he looked to his right to see if… that was there, all the while using his hand to feel his face. No, he felt nothing mechanical, saw nothing mechanical. Maybe he had just been imagining things really.

“Sounds awfully illogical of me, but…” Stripped thought to himself. “The alternative is much worse really in my mind. I’m a pony, not a… robot. Aren’t I?” he asked himself as his hooves touched the floor. Slowly but surely, he took a few steps forwards.

And that’s when he got a good look at himself in the mirror. Staggering backwards in shock, what used to be a crystal-blue eye was unmistakably an optic. Some of the skin had been peeled away to reveal the mechanical workings.

“How… How long?” Stripped whispered, having heard hoofsteps come in. He turned around to face Stardust. “How long have I been…?”

“A cyborg?” Stardust asked. “Well, maybe robot is more technically accurate as it’s just your brain and horn that are organic, but… Well, it’s been as long as you’ve been alive. 30 years, give or take the odd month?”

That really didn’t reassure Stripped much.

“Did… did anyone know?” he whispered. “Did… Flashfire know?” he asked, feeling the hurt of possible betrayal run through him.

“No, he didn’t. He’s been surprised as everyone else really, to be honest. He didn’t take it… well.”

Stripped observed Stardust was wearing what looked suspiciously like makeup around his left eye. Stripped fought back a chuckle, seems Flashfire had ‘words’ with the Prince. He’d have to thank him for that.

That stallion had a horn so far up his arse at times it honestly surprised Stripped that the insides hadn’t been ripped wide open. Celestia’s son he may have been, and while he suspected some of Celestia and Twilight’s DNA rested somewhere in that arrogant exterior he just lacked the proper guidance to use it properly. It was very telling he considered himself a national treasure. At least if what Flurry’s mutterings were to believed. Polite as she was, even Stripped held no illusions that Flurry disliked her relation. She just didn’t make it known publicly. You’d have to have something wrong with you to like him, Stripped thought personally.

Peeling away some of the false skin and fur covering his body, Stripped winced slightly when he saw more wires, gears, and other assorted mechanical bits underneath it. He wouldn’t quite call it steampunk, as magic held the entire thing together but it wasn’t what he’d call the pinnacle of technology either.

“Are… are there any more like me?” Stripped questioned.

“No,” Stardust replied thought Stripped wasn’t quite sure if he was to be believed. “You’re the only one like yourself. Me and your other father, Test Tube thought about designing more but dear old mom shut us down, calling it… unethical. I thought I was advancing the course of science but Celestia begged to differ once she found out what we were up to...”

It was about then Stripped socked the stallion across the face once more, repeating Flashfire’s actions.

“Well, damn right you’re not advancing the cause of science,” Stripped snapped, some of his Marish Isles accent coming out in his speech. “No, you’re just playing God. What gives you the right to do that? To play God and create new life?” he shouted.

“Because… Because I am one?” Stardust asked blinking slightly in confusion.

“No, you’re not, far from it. Gods and Goddesses are supposed to be perfect, and you sir are anything BUT!” Stripped snapped. “You’re just a self-absorbed arrogant little arse who got everything handed down to him, and nobody to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Hell, you probably needed help wiping your own arse didn’t you?”

He advanced on the Prince once more but two of his Praetorian Guard rushed in and held Stripped back. Flashfire walked in to try and defuse the situation, knowing this could get ugly quite fast.

“You, leave,” he told the Prince with a glare. “Let me talk to him.”

“But… But he’s my son, I think I should have a right to explain the circumstances of his creation to him don’t I?”

“You’ve explained enough,” Flashfire stated sternly. “Now go, before I change my mind about letting Stripped pummel you to a pulp. Hell, I’m tempted to join him really,” he continued just barely fighting back a growl. He turned to the Praetorian Guard and looked at them, eying their featureless helmets. “And yes, you can put it on the record I just threatened the Prince. Personally, go on. See how well it goes over with the crew that you arrested one of the Kyurangers and threw them in the brig or wherever.”

The two guards, hands on their pistols appeared to consider this over for the next few moments before relenting and they, along with Stardust walked out of the room.

“...Goddess above, I’ve got such a headache dealing with them,” Flashfire muttered rubbing his head in pain. “Between them, and reassuring the crew it’s been abject misery.”

“...Why would you want to reassure the crew…?” Stripped asked allowing himself to relax a little and taking a few deep calming breaths. Flashfire was here, someone he trusted. He could relax.

“Well, we just took a savage beating from a Karō and two of the colony ships are in really bad shape. They’d have every right to be worried. Damage reports are just coming in now. The Piercing Arrow might have to be left behind for a while, at least until everything’s repaired and that could take at least a good solid month with the damage Madako did to it. The main drive’s been trashed, the ship’s power core is almost completely drained of energy. Everyone’s migrating down to the planet below, I’m on edge waiting for news of a transporter accident.”

Stripped bit back a chuckle. “...Well, at least you don’t have it any easier than I do. In fact, you might have it worse,” he muttered hopping back up on the bed. “My whole world’s just been rocked, and here I am griping about it when there are bigger matters at hand.”

“No, you’ve got every right to be… stunned for lack of a better word I suppose,” Flashfire said gently. “Celestia knows I was.”

“...Can you please not use Celestia around me for the time being?” Stripped requested. “Not sure I feel about her given how badly she raised her son. How badly she and Twilight raised him.”

“Fair enough,” Flashfire agreed. “Though to be fair, well… for over half his life Celestia wasn’t exactly present per say. Just for the record.”

“Yeah… Just for the bloody record,” Stripped muttered fingering his Kyutama. “How… How much of me is cybernetics, anyways?”

“99%,” Flashfire replied. “99%. Excluding the brain, your lungs and your horn. Those are organic. Taken from some dead pony, which I suppose I can’t exactly fault Stardust for at least. Some long dead pony. Apparently donated his organs to charity when he knew he wasn’t going to live particularly long.”

“...Did this story come from Stardust or Test whatever his name is? Because quite frankly-”

“You can’t find it in yourself to believe them?” Flashfire agreed. “Yeah, well, neither can I for the record. So I did my fact-checking. Turns out they’re not lying about that at least. Turns out there are in fact records of at least one unicorn -maybe more- donating their material to charity when the rest of their body started to stop functioning.”

Stripped hmmed to himself, the theory itself was sound. He knew certain medical texts spoke of how magic in unicorns worked. In unicorns, the horn was a bony -hollow to allow certain fluids important to magical conductivity- protrusion that contains a higher number of blood and special nerve cells than any other part of the body. Furthermore, unlike other peripheral nerve cells, the nerve cells contained within the horn had cell bodies that are located inside the horn itself. They're kind of like brain cells in that way. There was a reason some medical researchers call the horn ‘the third brain.’

To put simply, the horn is not the only part of a unicorn's body that has magic in it. It's just the part that has the most magic. Stripped had done tests -per Flashfire’s private requests- to find out exactly why he couldn’t perform more than just the simplest of spells without becoming tired and the simple answer was thanks to that genetic disorder of his, well… He lacked a lot of the nerve cells that were required to perform the magic casting itself.

“Well, I’ll be damned, not everything coming out of that stallion’s arse is a lie,” Stripped muttered. “You and I need to have a few talks about him later, like real talks. You, me and Pharynx. Maybe Flurry, I’m not sure how much I trust her right now.”

Fågel had told him, in private, how she’d witnessed Stardust using storm magic when facing off against that idiot Denvil and his men. Chaos magic. Not like the regular storm magic pegasi could use, but something far more… devilish, almost like the chaos magics the god Seth was said to use.

“I’d agree, much as I hate to admit it. I’m not sure how much the royalty beyond Princesses Luna and Cadence can actually be trusted right now. May be my marefriend or not, but Flurry did a lot of stuff over the years with Stardust. Not sure how much of it is really… ethical.”

“...Knew there was something going on between you two, you were just keeping secretive about it,” Flashfire muttered with a small chortle. “But I think you’re putting too much fear into Flurry into activities. Yes, only the paranoid survive but I say you should trust Flurry. She’s always been one of the nicer of the two Royals currently still alive. Luna knows I’ve caught her muttering unkind things about Stardust under her breath when she thinks nobody’s around. Plus, you two are cute together in your own way.”

“...Cute? Us?” Flashfire stammered out, looking more red than usual. He knew Stripped was deflecting, trying to get away from the fact that his whole world had been flipped upside down from under him. He wanted to talk about something else. He’d let him… for the time being. “Y-You seriously think that?”

“History repeats. You’re like her knight in shining armor… Or knight in shining spandex as the case may be.”

“It’s not spandex,” Flashfire muttered. “It’s a self-absorbing, self-expanding microfiber that was specially designed to take impacts and create itself from virtually nothing.”

“I call it like I see it, if it looks like a duck walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a bloody duck. And our suits look and act like spandex -they even chafe like the damn stuff- so they’re probably spandex!” Stripped remarked.

“Well, what about Fågel’s suit? She’s certainly not that massive and covered in muscles like her suit seems to make her out to be!” Flashfire questioned.

“...Okay, that’s powered armor. Okay, you happy? They’re not all spandex…” Stripped trailed off before the two broke down laughing. “Oh, look at us, debating the qualities of our super suits. They’re cool, that’s what matters innit?”

“...Well, I wouldn’t say mine is cool. I have a cape, yes, and shoulder pads but it makes me look too try-hard and let’s not even get into the color! It’s sea-green for cryin’ out loud!” Flashfire remarked throwing his arms up in the air. “And what is with the explosions every time we morph? You’ve seen the things right? Surely you have!”

“Yeah, just energy run-off from the sheer power contained within the Kyutamas. I mean, this is cosmic energy we’re talking about. That shite is powerful!” Stripped exclaimed before holding up his Kyutama. “I mean here contained in this tiny little globe -about the size of your palm really- is enough cosmic energy to power a whole ship! Enough cosmic energy to power this ship in fact, we should be lucky this stuff hasn’t blown us up really!”

“Yeah… Lucky…” Flashfire murmured looking towards Stripped Gear with a forlorn expression. He wondered which was better, dying from an explosion or learning your whole life was a lie.

As Flashfire and Stripped walked along the hallways of the Shining Armor, suddenly explosions rocked the ship and Flashfire was thrown to the side and would have cracked his skull clean open on a bulkhead had his friend not caught him at the very last second.

“...Thanks. You know people will talk now, right?” Flashfire noted on the way Stripped was clutching him tightly.

“...Isn’t that all they ever do?” Stripped teased. Flashfire blinked for a second, maybe Stripped hadn’t been deflecting. Maybe he was perfectly fine and had accepted what he was without a second thought.

“What’s going on around here?” Flashfire barked into a nearby comm once he’d regained his bearings, using the Lacerta Kyutama to be able to stick to the floors just in case another meteor hit and he was thrown. “What the flying feather was that?”

“Meteor shower, commander!” a female voice responded. Pegasus named Wind Spirit, or Earth Spirit if Flashfire remembered correctly. He didn’t exactly expect himself to know or remember every crewman’s names. Just the ones he considered friends. “Came out of… AGH! Came out of nowhere!”

“You alright Spirit?” Flashfire barked in concern.

“Tsukikage here Commander!” another voice, again female answered. “Sorry, my sister’s a little banged up. Had an explosion at her console. She’ll be fine, but we’re getting battered up here! Suggestions?”

“Can… Can we risk the Voyagers?” Flashfire asked.

“Sorry sir, but not right now I’d reckon,” Tsukikage replied. “Too many meteors out there. You’d likely get yourself destroyed in the process. One hit, and boom. There goes the core and you up with it.”

“Damn the risks! It’s not just us we have to worry about, it’s Vela as well. There are people down there, getting rained on by those rocks! Something’s got to be done!” Flashfire barked.

“...I’d be… I’d be willing to do something,” Stripped said grasping onto a handhold and Flashfire looked at him in shock. “What, don’t look at me like that. Robot or not, I’m still a member of this crew, and if you’ve not forgotten a certified genius. May be no Twilight Sparkle, but I’m still intelligent, and moreover, I’m still a Paladin meaning I can’t just sit down and do nothing.”

“But-” Flashfire started.

“No buts, no buts!” Stripped snapped. “Robotic, yes. Yes, I am. Still coming to grips with that. But as I said, I’m still a member of this crew and still a paladin of the Stars. I swore an oath, the day I first slammed this,” he said holding up his Kyutama as his morpher materialized around his wrist. “Into that. When the people of the universe cry out for help, we come running. That’s what we always do. No matter who we are, or where we came from, we come running. We’re Power Rangers, right? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

“Right…” Flashfire admitted rather humbled in his brief moment of cowardice and loss of composure. “But what are you going to do?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something…” Stripped smirked. “Toss me the Leo Minor Kyutama, I’ve got a plan. Been working on modifying that Voyager, making it useful. Can’t quite sinc it up with the Megazords just yet, -key word being yet here- but I think I can use it to blast those rocks out of the sky.”

“Good luck.” Flashfire said as he tossed Stripped the Kyutama in question.

“Say the Chan-”
“Dorado!” Stripped barked out and with a flash of yellow light morphed into the Sword Star. Heading towards the hanger bay, he climbed inside the Leo Minor Voyager and activated it before powering it up with the Antlia Kyutama. Orange lines glowed all over the cockpit before the entire floor below the Voyager opened and it was dropped into space. The benefits of the Antilla Kyutama increased the speed of the Voyager, allowing it to evade the meteorites.

“Stripped Gear!” Fågel’s voice crackled over the comms. “What in Celestia’s name do you think you’re doing? Have you finally lost it?”

“One, don’t use that name around me, and two! ...I’m saving the planet. Now do you want to help me, or not?” Stripped Gear nearly growled out.

“...Okay, okay. Just hope you know what you’re doing…” Fågel murmured.

“Of course I do, when don’t I ever?” Stripped asked in a smug little tone.

“...Yep, you’re definitely back. Alright, I’ll set all defense systems at maximum. Photon cannons should be online in just a moment.”

“Good to know, I’ll hold these things at by till then.”

“How…?” Fågel asked before muttering: “Wait, don’t answer that. Knowing you, it’s going to be something you’ll be smug about for the next week and a half.”

“Got that right…” Stripped thought. And they doubted him!

“And now for my next trick…” Stripped Gear murmured allowing his optics to narrow in on the oncoming meteorites and his brain to run through all the possibilities of survival. They were quite low… Or they were before Stripped imputed some new variables -like say the modifications to the Leo Minor Voyager.

“Super Star Combination! Leo Cannon Activate!”

Allowing it to split down the middle, the massive tail folded forwards as the entire Zord grew to the appropriate size thanks to the help of the Ursa Major Kyutama. Docking onto the back of the Shining Armor, Stripped took aim and fired off several red-toned laser blasts knocking meteorites out of the sky. When one or two slipped by him, the Shining Armor’s own weaponry took care of them before they could hit another ship or the planet below.

Finally, Stripped Gear allowed himself to relax as the meteors stopped coming and snapped his fingers. “Checkmate. ...Oh yeah, still got it. Robot or not… I’m still me. That's one thing that'll never change...”