TRIGGER WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF SELF-HARM AND SWEARING

Arc One: Reaction - Pidge 1

Groaning, Katie Holt sat up and rubbed her face, pushing the sleep dust out of the corners of her eyes, feeling strangely energized after the all-nigher that she pulled.

Huh, what a surprising turn of events.

Slowly stretching her aching muscles, she started to get ready for the day, getting changed from her night clothes into the ugly orange uniform that the Garrison decided that they simply must have and put her hair into a high ponytail so that it followed the Garrison's regulations, letting her bangs fall into her face, frowning to herself as she could have sworn that she cut it all off-

Oh, wait, that was in her dream.

Her, surprisingly vivid and highly detailed, dream, where she piloted a mechanical lion from outer space with four other people (with their own lions, of course), and lived on a castle-ship thing with them and these two aliens, all of which were helping her find her brother and father, who were kidnapped by these other aliens during their journey to Kerberos, of which they were fighting an intergalactic war against, with the colour-coded (because what are we, animals?) mechanical flying lions that could become a bigger mechanical flying robot when combined that even had its own name: Voltron.

So, basically, Power Rangers in space mixed in with some Transformers shit.

Frowning slightly, she ran her hand through her long hair to remind herself that it was all still there as she entered the bathroom that was connected to her room, and brushed her teeth, staring into the mirror feeling as if there was something off about her face, as if something was missing. Sighing when, after five minutes of staring at her face in the mirror, she gave up, deciding that she was not going to be comparing what she had been wearing in her dream to what her real life was.

Or maybe, she thought as she placed her tooth brush back into its cup, this was all a dream and she'll wake up again in her lion and wonder about the ridiculous dream she had about having a normal life.

It was too fucking early to be dealing with this level of deep thinking. She'll leave that shit to Kogane, thank you very much.

Walking back into her room, Katie packed her bag for the day, filling it with the homework, textbooks, a notebook for her doodles and idle thoughts and the random project she'll finish during one of her easier classes. Just as she was leaving the room, she backtracked, entering her room again only to cross off a day on her calendar, a gift from a grandparent for Christmas last year.

April 3rd.

Happy birthday.

Life at the Garrison was something that Katie doubted that could be replicated anywhere in the world.

The way that they advertised it was that it was a military establishment, which want something that Katie was going to argue with. There were officers assigned here, and not only to teach, not that most of them wanted to be there, something that they made sure to remind the students on a daily basis.

So, yes, it was a military establishment, but it was also a school, though, the ages were varied, from 15, like herself, up to about 25, with all students learning more about space travel, training to be some of the only people of their time to leave their home planet and explore their solar system, and maybe even further with the leaps that technology was going. That being said, most of the students were 17-20 years old.

Meaning that, when Katie walked into her Communication's class to see a girl crying over a dead meme, two people loudly arguing over quidditch being a legitimate sport and having a spot in the next Olympics and somebody in the front row furiously scribbling over their piece of paper, they obviously hadn't done the homework, all she did was take her seat in the back of the class, not fazed in the slightest, and take out her notebook and began to let her pencil take over, doodling to her heart's content, ignoring when the teacher, an older man who thought that the best way to control the class was to be their friend and not their commanding officer, asked the class to settle down and to give in their homework.

Not that it worked, but at least a small gold star can be given for effort.

Sighing as she let her head hit the table, Katie bit back a large groan while continuing to doodle as the class went on to talk about the teacher's, whose name had completely slipped Katie's mind for some reason, private life to stop them from having to do much work.

She had decided to come to the Garrison because she wanted to be challenged, wanted to be pushed further than when she skipped grades at school, than when she had planned the most complex of pranks that caused her name to go down in school history the year that she left, more than when she decided that she was going to learn all the programming languages she could get her hands on and then make one that was 10 times better and more logical than the shit that everyone else was using.

She did not come here to listen to some bullshit about how the commander's (what was his name, it was on the tip of her tongue, she was sure of it) youngest child had just their fourth birthday. If she really wanted to know, she'll just hack into the Garrison's systems and find out for herself; it wasn't like it was that hard.

Then the bell is going off, and there is a flurry of activity as everyone packs up their empty notebooks as they rush off to their next lessons, or, if they're lucky, a study period. Picking up her own notebook, she closed it, ignoring whatever her subconscious mind decided was a good thing to draw.

Written on the now hidden page, ingrained onto the page in her large messy bubble writing, was something she could only think of as a dream.

Voltron.

Katie had the weirdest feeling of being watched as she stood in line in the simulation room, vaguely listening to whatever Commander had been assigned to cover Iverson that day go on about good techniques that fliers should use when entering an atmosphere, stuff that didn't really relate to her in the first place anyway.

Just because she had read all the flight manuals doesn't mean that she'll get behind the controls of even a cargo ship anytime soon.

(She held her breath as she was overtaken by the feeling of déjà vu.)

(What's wrong?)

(Nothing's wrong.)

(Everything's right.)

"Hey Holt."

Turning her head, Katie looked at Keith Kogane, an amazing pilot in the making and the leader of their group for the simulations, practically born to be better than anything that the Garrison can train, even Tadashi Shirogane.

(No, something was very wrong.)

(No, everything was okay.)

"So, it turns out that Hathaway has skivoliosis, for the third time this semester. So, for the third time this semester, we're not going to be going into the sim." Kogane muttered under his breath with enough anger that made Katie wince, making sure that neither the commander nor the others lines up with them could make out what he said as they watched the first group go into the simulator. She sighed in response, feeling oddly happy that she wasn't going to be in the sims today.

Joshua Hathaway was the mechanic and the last member of their team, when he could be bothered to be around. When he was, he did not stop with the sexist comments, racist jokes, and crude humour as well as flirt with anything that has two legs and has something that resembles boobs. But, he was smart when it mattered, in the fact that he could fix anything to a decent standard in an emergency, which is all the Garrison really cared about. It wasn't them that had to put up with his behaviour after all.

No, it was her and Keith that had to deal with it.

"Jackass is lucky that he's not here then." She replied, keeping her eyes on the screen as the class watch the group inside fail tremendously at entering Mars' atmosphere, as they ended up crashing, not only onto the planet, but onto one of the research bases.

The look on their faces showed that they knew that they were in for a walloping.

Katie did not pity them one bit.

So, instead of watching the team be dragged below their graves and into the depths of hell, Katie slyly glanced at her classmates, making sure to take a mental note of the ones who were smiling cockily at the team for their mistakes, the ones who were shaking in their Garrison grade boots in fear that they will be the next victim of the nameless commander.

Her eyes glided past Lance McClain, only to be drawn back to him.

She could have sworn he was in the cargo pilot class.

Keith hadn't dropped out yet, or ever.

Next to the Latino was Hunk, who never seemed to have changed and he looked like he feared for his life, not that Katie blamed him because he always crashed the simulators (or did he, should couldn't remember), and behind the pair of them was a clock, with no ticking hand, reading 13:67.

Was she dreaming.

She could have sworn that she woke up this morning.

Pinching herself, she frowned at the weird tingly sensation it created, instead of the sharp pain that she had been expecting.

"I didn't take you to be a self-harmer." Kogane muttered, looking straight down at her.

"I'm not." Katie muttered back, staring at Lance, Hunk, and tall girl as they entered the simulator.

"What time is it?" Her pilot looked puzzled by question, but, nevertheless, he turned around to look above where Lance had just been standing.

"Just gone 12. Are you hungry for lunch for something?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

A.N. SO HERE'S THE FIRST CHAPTER, WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK? NEXT WEEK IS KEITH, SO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR THAT.

SEE YA!