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Once upon a time, Slav calculted a future he didn't like very much, thus he took it upon himself to sneeze onto an unfortunate butterfly passing by.
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Once upon a little later, a Galra woman on a space whale had a very weird dream about an annoying Bob dropping anvils on her skull. A lot. The headache lasted a week.
Fortunately she recovered quickly and all went on as if nothing had happened.
As if.
· · · · · · ·
"These transports haven't been used in generations," Romelle said. "None of the Alteans in the colony would know how to fly one, even if we desired to."
In light of just being told that a sick child had piloted an escape vessel, Krolia found this very peculiar.
Yet behind her, she heard Keith's confident, "I think I got us covered there."
Her son was young and had not done even close to a significant amount of spy work. She'd reign him in before anything went awry.
"Right. Why don't you get us some rations, we'll stay here to avoid notice," Krolia told Romelle.
The moment she was gone, she faced her son with a stern look.
He was usually unflappable, but she got him to look away somewhat embarrassed. "What?"
"It doesn't add up," Krolia said. "A sick pilot is one thing, but a child who wouldn't even know how to read the controls is another. Something is wrong here. Before we leave, we will scan the planet's surface for any other activity."
She hopped into the aircraft. "I'm going to see whether I can encode this somehow in case it's a trap. One can never be certain enough."
"Do you really think it's a trap? What we just heard lines up pretty well with what we know of Lotor. He's a deceiver out for quintessence. Y'know, victory or death, doesn't matter whose death."
"I don't trust Lotor one wit, but that doesn't mean I'm going to unconditionally trust everyone who speaks against him."
The pod's mechanism was simple enough, an antique probably meant for simple flights around the planet. It was Altean and thus had unfamiliar coding so she didn't get in before Romelle returned, but in case of emergency could probably still pilot it. There appeared to be no complicated hijack programs or fleet mechanisms.
"How long do you think this will take?" Romelle said? "Do we really need this much?"
She had but an arm full of perishable food. Either she was a great actor or a nut.
"Keith, explain her what we need."
Krolia ignited the engine, finding the device a suitable hovercraft. A program popped up asking for authorization and intent, as typical for advanced private property.
After Romelle got food that was, well less perishable but still had no good containers, they lifted off unseen.
It was really cramped inside the cockpit, and a thoroughly unpleasant half day flying to the moon. Keith and Krolia took turns piloting. The atmosphere of the planet was no problem without convenient space whale, but the debris field outside required careful navigating.
The debris field that was right in the path between the moon and the planet. Romelle didn't know where the moon had been at the time of Bandor's crash landing.
All along, she kept her eyes on the quintessence reader, but no signs other than Romelle showed up. She almost doubted her moon guess meant anything, up until seeing the moon.
Oh, it was used already : despite lacking vegetation, it had an atmosphere complete with clouds. A quick scan confirmed the air was breathable too.
It couldn't just be for the enclosed Galra building they found. It was alight with purple lines, but no alarms went off as they approached and no signs of life showed up on her quintessence scanners. Nobody to use this atmosphere.
At all.
Not even bionic. There wasn't a single guard, and no alarm went off when they pried open the doors with blades. They practically could stroll inside all the way into the central rooms of the dome.
Here lay long halls filled with glass containers. The dark purple lights poorly illuminated it, but the heaters were on and moisture had condensed on the pods.
Romelle wiped a nearby container just to stand back in shock, exclaiming her brother's name. What a coincidence it just happened to contain her lost other brother. Perhaps Alteans could subconsciously detect familiar quintessence? Krolia switched on her quintessence reader again. Still nothing.
"Lotor is harvesting their quintessence!" Keith said, because of course he'd jump to conclusions.
"There are no readings from here. Whatever quintessence was harvested, it's no longer present," Krolia said with deliberate calmness. "These people are still preserved. Let's not jump to conclusions."
"Isn't it obvious?" Romelle said. "Why would Lotor even have this secret if not for nefarious purpose?"
Medical bay? But indeed, why the secrecy? She didn't trust Lotor, not with this set up, but that didn't mean Romelle was a perfect source either. As a spy and a rebel, she had run into countless situations of questionable allies.
"Alright, I believe we have fair reason to assume Lotor a criminal, but not that he is a loose canon who will turn on the coalition on a whim," Krolia said. "And we have proof that something else is going down here."
"What is this about? You're actually defending him even when you see this?" Romelle gestured at the pods around them. "How can you?"
"Listen up, child. I have been in the business of lying and infiltration for centuries. The entire creed of my order comes down to knowledge or death. The knowledge you have provided is lacking, as you yourself admitted. You don't have the whole story? Do I and Keith have anything of the actual story?"
Romelle clenched her hands and glared, but said nothing else.
"Right. Let's stay grounded in reality. Romelle, you will stay with me. Keith, I want you to track where those tubes go and verify that they are preserved despite already being drained. Romelle and I are going to find out where Bandor got that pod."
After Keith departed, Krolia went down the hall they'd come from. Romelle stiffly followed her.
Romelle didn't cry so far. Perhaps it was shock, perhaps something wasn't right. Perhaps she was the kind of person to bury her grief when taken by anger.
That did not erase that they were in a very suspicious situation. Still no alarm, still no guards. It did not add up the aggressive reading this girl seemed dead set on advocating. Even in the kindest possible nature, anger and attachment could not be allowed to dictate directions.
She had erred here, she knew that. Choosing her child over the mission, and by proxy everyone else was selfish. Counter to knowledge, a decision driven by emotion. The Blade of Marmora were to sacrifice themselves
But then she saw the flashes of the future on her way here. Potential futures, just glimpses. Some terrifying. Some soothing. After the headache, sometimes contrary.
She had no speculated on consequences on the way here when she had a son to catch up with, a past to reminiscence, but now she stood in what was a graveyard or a medical bay she knew.
Knowledge or death could mean more than choosing one's own life. A lack of knowledge was the death of people, something practiced in the Blade of Marmora in the context of rebellion and spying.
Krolia had never been prepared to stand at the root of a butterfly effect. What they had found here would change the course of history in one way or another, and she lacked information. It was her duty to do everything in her power to wring out as much knowledge as she could.
Even if that meant being a little mean.
At the first closed door they encountered, Krolia stopped. Romelle caught up.
"Is something wrong?"
"Open it," Krolia said.
Romelle had enough strength to throw entire doors, but still needed tools to get a grip on a door. Krolia didn't give her her blade, so Romelle had to walk back and tear loose a plate off of a tank.
"Why are you making me do this?" she asked as they returned to the door.
"I want to verify an Altean could make it out of this facility alone so my report will be as detailed as possible."
"Shouldn't we hurry to warn everyone?"
"We are in a time dilation. Keep walking to the next door and open it."
"But—"
"Knowledge or death, that is the creed of my people." She made a point of emphasizing death with a vicious glare.
They passed five doors while Romelle's hands got a tad bloody for poorly handling the metal.
A lot of rooms were empty, but some had equipment and body suits similar to those worn by the Alteans in the tank. These lacked the markings seen on the afflicted. Krolia took one for later research.
Some rooms were full of equipment she couldn't recognize. She photographed these before moving on.
They found a control station, abandoned. Beyond it lay a hangar full of the same transport crafts as had taken them here. There were a few tiny structural differences in the thrusters and similar, but no doubt the same model.
"Did your brother arrive in one of these?"
"Yes."
Perhaps Bandor had secretly taught himself to fly the craft. But why would Lotor have a craft lying around unused among the Alteans who couldn't employ them? The Alteans didn't have any Galra staff living with them. Precautions?
She photographed all of it, before opening one.
"Romelle, come here. We need to check out something."
When Romelle climbed onto the craft with her, Krolia pushed her into the pilot seat.
"Switch it on."
Romelle looked torn between stubborn refusal and anxiety. Dealing with Galra all her life made her almost amused at this, intimidation shouldn't be this easy.
Romelle fumbled with the controls for a while until she accidentally activated it.
The screen flickered on with a request for a password. No other security, and it didn't seem to act on ground control permissions.
"I can't read Galran," Romelle said.
Krolia leaned over, and hacked the system. A mixture of Galra and Altean coding, probably updated to interface with Alteans better.
"Let's pretend Bandor overheard them say the password."
Once the craft was online, it waited. Romelle closed her hands around the controls.
"Do these buttons do anything?"
"Why don't you pay attention to the throttle first?" Krolia said, and as predicted Romelle had no idea what that was.
When she looked up with pleading eyes, Krolia shook her head.
Romelle poked at things a bit, and eventually made the connection the throttle had to be something physical, even if not what she remember.
Krolia almost hoped she'd overpower it, to end the exercise sooner, but Romelle was actually careful enough to just sent them careening into the opposite craft. A bit of shrieking later, pulling at the controls, and the craft hovered more or less in the direction of the exit.
"Okay, let's presume Bandor overheard the button for opening the doors."
"There is no button to open the doors," Krolia said. "Your best shot is going over there to unlock it. Good thing the really are no guards."
Somewhat irritated, Romelle got out, went all the way up to the control station, slammed numerous buttons, ignited the fire alarm, sent out the cleaning droids, called back the cleaning droids, failed to turn off the fire extinguishers, put on music, and open two wrong doors and a hatch before the hangar got open.
Drenched, she returned to the cockpit. Without a word she plopped into the pilot's seat and closed her hands on the control wheel.
They presumed a lot about Bandor overhearing stuff to get outside and hovering above the ground.
They were in one of the open rings of the compound. Surrounding the building was a pit, spacious enough for flying. The two towers on one side were combat intended, but the building itself was almost hugging the environment and itself. Keeping things close.
"Let's elevate. Throttle up the power. Keep the ship level," she said.
Romelle didn't keep the ship level at all, but they eventually went straight up. Spinning. They 'presumed' Bandor had overheard about the stabilizer in detail.
The low cloud line was rapidly approaching. Romelle eyed it nervously.
"This is good. It's working. Anything going to change soon?"
"Oh, the electromagnetic field of a moon is denser when it's facing the sun," Krolia said. "It may interfere with the readings a little — ah yes, there it is."
Nothing really visible changed about the screens, just a slight zoning out of a line or two, but Romelle started frantically looking around for changes.
"We'll get rubble once we hit the ionosphere," Krolia said. "Mind the turbulence, we want to be stable as long as possible."
"The yono what now? What's turbulence?"
By now Romelle was shaking like a weed, she was almost certainly not faking incompetence.
"Aren't you going to turn on the sensors?" Krolia said.
"What sensors?" Romelle squeaked.
"Alright, we'll pretend Bandor overheard a guard narrating how to use the entire ship's programming so he knows all about pitch, roll and yaw."
She activated the sensors, which provided a neat little line of readings and also summoned a visual map of atmospheric pressure. Neat system, thought of everything. Almost like designed to hold a child's hand.
"I don't know what that means!"
Well, an informed child anyway.
"Well, that over there means things are about to get shaky," Krolia said. "Please adjust the balance."
"But I don't see anything!" Romelle looked between window and readings frantically.
"Don't bother with the window, this is invisible turbulence," Krolia said, gesturing at the screen. "We don't have a meteorologist station to update us, so the readings must suffice."
"But what does it mean?"
"That you pay extra attention to the tilt," Krolia said.
Romelle did this by throwing up her lunch on the dashboard. Unfazed, Krolia tore a bit of her clothes and wiped it off; an acceptable sacrifice for not dying.
Romelle still steered, somewhat. She didn't do anything but give a direction to the craft.
"What are you doing with the throttle?"
"I'm going as slow as he can!"
"Indeed. We're losing the escape velocity and are about to drop to our deaths."
Alright, a little exaggerated perhaps.
Romelle screamed and slammed a few button and a pedal. In her panic, she got speed by accident. They spent the next five minutes in turbulence hell, going up and down and through clouds before Romelle eventually found up.
Krolia had to steady the ship half with her own effort just to keep up a thing.
The red planet was right above them, devoid of any recognizable features.
"We are about to reach the vacuum of space," Krolia said. "Quick, this is the part where we transfer from jets to rocket mode. See, for aircraft the atmosphere provides the reaction mass for the propellant, but for spacecraft reaction mass and propellant is the same force. We switch modes for maximum energy preservation."
Romelle was on the brink of crying. "Please just take us back to the surface!"
Krolia was so tempted to explore the debris ring with Romelle, but at this point it might be crossing into torture. Romelle actually smelled legitimately afraid.
And fact on it when she threw up her hands and crawled back. "Please, just do it!"
The ship veered off course right away. Krolia dove forward, grabbed the controls and steadied the ship.
"Romelle, move."
As Romelle crawled out of the seat, Krolia slipped in and steered the craft back safely.
Keith waited between the two towers for the.
When Romelle dropped shaking and nauseous from the cockpit, he came rushing over.
"What happened? Did you get attacked?"
Romelle ran to the edge of the platform to empty the rest of her stomach.
"No, Romelle just verified that the Alteans on the colony never learned to fly," Krolia said, nodding at the vessel they'd just found. "We need to act on the presumption that in the time Bandor away, he received education on how to pilot."
She gestured at the clouds. "This moon has no vegetation, but it has an atmosphere. It was terraformed to allow out door activity without risk of suffocation, something he would not bother with if this had just been a harvesting facility. I believe we are looking at a training ground of some sort."
"A training ground? Then what about the drained Alteans?"
"The preserved Alteans," Krolia said. "Whatever Lotor is up to is dubious as hell, and he hid it from the Alteans in the ground colony for a reason. Until we know that reason, we will not sound the alarm. Let's take our discoveries back to Kolivan and have this investigated better. We could use someone to hack the mainframe and discover what was going on here."
"But Lotor is stringing along the coalition to use them!"
"That means he needs them," she explained patiently. "As long as he doesn't have his goal, they will be alright. Our priority is to reach the leader of the coalition, princess Allura and inform her of everything. I understand your worry for your loved ones, you know I do. But I have not forsaken the creed of Marmora entirely.
Stiffly he nodded.
"Alright. We will lay out all information before the princess, starting with how a sick child allegedly learned piloting on the spot. Or do you have an explanation for that?"
"Maybe Neo did it?" Keith said.
Krolia just stared at him, waiting for an explanation. There had to be a point. Her son didn't joke.
"Never mind. Just some old movie with pod people who could download pilot programs. You're right. We should be careful about this."
Keith went to retrieve Romelle.
Krolia gathered up all their evidence. Along with her own recordings and the suit, Keith added an empty quintessence canister and a few chips pried out of a mainframe; no doubt for his decoder friend. She packaged everything with care
Now ... now it was time to enter the life of her child had formed. His own group, whom he had turned away from. It would happen in the middle of what might well be a cold war on top of a civil war and liberation front. Any chances for the kind of family life of earth ...
Perhaps it was better not to dwell. The pursuit of knowing about that led her nowhere.
· · · · · · ·
A long time ago, Keith had learned the kind of patience of waiting for someone who wouldn't return. A kind of stagnant enduring, always revisiting what could not be renewed.
The quantum abyss had forced a new way of processing the past onto him. Though his father would not return, he learned more of him as if he was there to teach him. Not like the way he learned from his mother, here and now, breathing the same air.
The way back tested their bond forged in solitude in small ways, now they had company. Both were used to put up walls, content that way, but they hadn't been needed in front of his wolf alone. Krolia didn't quite trust Romelle either, adding to it. The easy little trends, the occasional smile and the lack of strictness they'd developed went away.
And she didn't entirely trust him either. Sending him away on errands while she test Romelle, shutting down his conclusion. Child hadn't been directed at him, but it felt like it did. She wasn't impressed.
Not that he needed awe. It just ... wasn't the warm ease he knew from his father and Shiro.
Returning took less time with a craft, but they still often had to stop to hunt and replenish their provisions. They landed whatever space whale they come across, and if they went the right direction they stayed for a while. Those times were both easier due to the space, and harder because Romelle was bubbly sometimes and that made his mother's occasional coldness stand out more.
Romelle had the strength of an Altean and could handle herself in combat quite decently, but hunting was another thing. It was an excuse to leave her behind with the wolf, but every time he and his mother left he didn't get around to saying it. Whatever it was. Whatever he wanted.
And worse yet, the time flashes had changed for some reason. It had always been the same before. Of Lance in Allura's arms. Of a world without Allura, where Lance shuffled himself away from the public eye to be a farmer of her flowers. Of Shiro drifting away from space to be married on earth, far from adventure. Of everyone falling apart save for selfies with Allura's grave.
The futures he saw now includes everyone death, and voids, and sometimes the old future, and sometimes another combination where others had died. Some things were downright confusing, such as multiple Shiros, or Lance around a darkening Allura, following her into the void. The pieces were even harder to string together because now there were multiple timelines.
Almost always he saw himself, leaving earth behind forever to integrate into the Blade of Marmora.
When he was little, he had wanted one super power. The ability to change the past. Now he was here with the potential to change a future where he'd wish for that again. And he had no idea what to even do about bonding with his mother, let alone the burden of a universe.
They were tied, because he had the sense that Krolia didn't trust him to not screw it all up.
It built up over time, by time.
On their umpteenth hunt together, he stopped in a grove. "Mother ..."
On the journey inward he had spoken with his mother only of the past, things relevant to themselves, as to avoid invading anyone else's privacy.
"It's been like this since a little before we arrived on the colony," Krolia said. "You've started having divergent visions too, haven't you?"
"How did you ...?"
"I just had a vision you'd fret over this till the next meteor shower," Krolia said. "I put it to the test, whether we can change time."
Oh. Of course, she might see whatever conversation they would have ahead of time, if with the right luck.
"Is anything bothering you? We don't have the same ones, right?"
"Just some minor irritations."
"Of what sort? Impact to the mission?"
"Just Lance is showing up a lot more. Do you have any idea how annoying he can get? If he's going to be in the way, then ... ugh. Just believe, he's frustrating."
"I did see him hover around the princess and Lotor a lot. They've started to feature more in our futures, sometimes for better or worse," Krolia said.
"Lance has a crush on Allura, so he's competition for our current enemy," Keith said. "I bet he's going to do something stupid."
Okay, so he hadn't gotten any clear visions about that yet, but he knew Lance. He made a lot of mistakes. It was practically a Lance thing.
And maybe a Keith thing too. Why were there so much futures?
He faced his mother again, hoped she knew the question. She stayed quiet.
"I don't know what to with all this time crap," he said. And all the people involved. Shiro always believed him to be a great leader, but he had nothing to go on.
When she spoke, it was technical.
"The future is cause and effect. Per definition, the cause changes if we get a flash from the future when we are the cause," Krolia said. "I realized this within the facility. We hold the fate of the universe in our hands, but it's less power and more of a bomb. The best we can perhaps do is contemplate different options and hope we get relevant flashes."
She took a cross legged seat before him.
"I believe it's time we explore the creed of Marmora, the Galra who founded the Blade."
"Knowledge or death," Keith muttered, sitting down in the same pose.
It was a story founded in the bloodshed of the Galra empire, and knowledge was their salvation and escape. She told it all in a detached voice, wove together a philosophy of absolute unselfishness to counter the greed of the Galra.
She described it as seeing the world as a tapestry of consequences and beliefs in need of refinement. The stagnant Galra empire only ate, never truly developed under its ageless king. To be here in the quantum abyss, they had more choice than anyone.
Keith's visions were not the same as hers, and the more she told him stories of the Galra, of Marmora, and of other worlds, the less stable the flashes became, and the more he learned and the less he knew he understood.
Knowledge begins with a challenge, she told him in so many ways. A question, the right one, and the answer might not be anything that seemed of value at first.
She did not seem disturbed that with every such a question, they created and extinguished other worlds. Or did they still exist? He didn't feel like he was branching off and ...
Krolia's hand his arm startled him. "Don't wander too far that way," she said.
"I thought you wanted me to learn this."
She sighed. "I do, but you are also young. You don't have to do it all at once, especially here. We'll go back to the camp and sleep tonight. Write down what you saw, I'll do the same. And ... don't show Romelle."
When he stood up, his legs were painfully stiff. The world shook a little, he briefly wondered whether the whale had trouble.
The entire starscape had changed.
"How long have we been doing this?"
No answer, for Krolia had frozen for another flash of herself alone. She stood still longer than ever, before she broke into a smile. "You'll have to show me that movie, once this over."
What?
"The one with Neo. Alright?"
Keith said yes, and forgot about it.
· · · · · · ·
Romelle twisted and turned in her sleep. The flashes brought her back to the life she had lost, and distorted, empty futures that made no sense.
At first she had thought Keith and Krolia had to have the same problem, they took forever to get back the first time. But over time, they stayed hunting longer, and whenever they did so, the flashes got weirder. More intense. Less meaningful. Sometimes they changed in the middle.
Once, she followed them. They were just sitting on a big green patch, talking with their eyes closed. They'd already caught food.
So she was alone with her own visions.
Lotor was in it a lot. The never changing face of their savior, who took her family one by one, to their deaths. There was a future where she took him to his death, melted to the seat of a pilot. A monster on the outside, the way she saw him inside.
Another future where he remained the emperor.
Keith's friend, Allura, was in her future a lot. Allura meant nothing to her, or at least, not as a princess. New Altea had no monarchy. They might need a leader, though, and everything Romelle had seen indicated Allura knew how to. Too bad she'd also seen a few other things she didn't like about her. She was too close to Lotor. Sometimes she was his enemy.
Sometimes, there was an Altean woman on the throne.
Once, she stood on a beige temple.
The visions were only sight and sound, they didn't come with understanding. So she wasn't sure why she was never really in them.
She didn't talk about them with Keith and Krolia, like they didn't talk of hers. Keith asked a few times, she always said she saw her family, and a new family she'd start in the future. If they didn't trust her with their weird meditation stuff, she wasn't going to trust them.
Once they left the quantum abyss, so they left the visions. Romelle was left in peace, and alone with her anger. Seeing her family alive over and over had kept it alive. Even if only by words, it had to go somewhere, so let her meet this princess of nothing.
Krolia contacted her people, who told her Allura wasn't with the coalition, but with emperor Lotor at Daibazaal. Not to be disturbed.
Oh, she was about to be a disturbance.
· · · · · · ·
"How do we know you're the real Keith and not his bigger, cooler, grizzled older brother?"
Thus Krolia met her son's friends, a line of shocked faces and one potent reason to reinterpret her son's minor irritations.
"I don't have time for this, Lance."
While Keith spoke to the others, Lance stood by arms wide for a hug he never got. Keith pointedly ignored him until Lance's face dropped and his arms sank.
Krolia filed this away for later and focused on the task at hand.
The tall one had to be Shiro, her son's mentor. She knew him well from both flashbacks and future; some of which was rather worrying. But for all of the past, he had been nothing but good to her child, and they had a crisis on hand. This too was for later.
"Takashi Shirogane, I am Krolia. We have urgent news. Where is princess Allura?"
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