Come Together
Keith Kogane, age nineteen, was pulling a late night working at the Alchemix Chemical Plant in Central City as thunder rumbled outside. It was a quiet night, the building nearly empty, while Keith experimented with reagents and combinations, busying himself and testing compounds, writing down reactions. Was a tester's job what his father had envisioned for his son? Probably not, but he hadn't seen the bastard in almost eight years, so Keith didn't really care what he thought. His other father-figure- who was really more of an adoptive older brother- Takashi Shirogane, would have also displayed his displeasure in Keith's dropping out of college despite passing with perfect marks but Keith hadn't seen him in almost four years, either. He wasn't sure what he'd say to Shiro if he had seen him. He just… couldn't find it in himself to care about school. He thought about joining the military but he couldn't find it in himself to commit to that either. That was why he moved away from the Shirogane family (who had taken Keith in after his father's disappearance) and out of Texas entirely. He just couldn't stand the thought of Shiro coming back some day and how disappointed he would be. He wanted to earn the other's approval so badly but he simply didn't know how.
As Keith worked, the storming outside grew even worse and the windows actually rattled. He didn't know why he couldn't focus on things. He didn't think it had anything to do with his dad, or his mother that he'd never known. There was a part of him that just felt like he needed something more. Keith walked away from the chemicals for a moment to open a window, ever so slightly, just because he needed some air. He pulled off his safety goggles and took off his gloves, rubbing his eyes. Keith just wished he knew what he wanted out of life, of what he thought was so special about himself, what part of himself wanted more. It was as intrinsic a part of him as the part that built walls around himself and made him standoffish and difficult to understand with and connect with others. He couldn't answer either of them. Maybe it was something he got from his mom.
'Huh,' Keith thought to himself as he watched lightning race through the clouds, 'That lightning is pretty intense.' Then he turned his back to the window and walked back to his chemicals, putting his gloves and goggles back on. 'If the storm gets any worse, I'll have to stay the night til it blows over. Maybe I'll get overtime.' The thought was barely out of his mind when a bolt of lightning shot through the window and hit Keith straight in the back. Keith screamed painfully as the lightning raced through his body and into the chemicals on the table in front of him. The chemicals exploded violently, covering Keith as a second bolt struck him, causing an incredible chemical reaction before a tremendous explosion sent Keith's body hurtling through a wall, leaving him laying in a crumpled heap as smoke curled off of him. He was vaguely aware of the sounds of people shouting in distress and alarm klaxons blaring as his eyes shut and he slipped into blackness.
OoOoOoO
Tsuyoshi Garrett, "Hunk" to his friends, had always been a great swimmer. You could be forgiven for not thinking so, even if he was Hawaiian. Hunk was always big, both in terms of being tall and heavyset, and he liked to spend most of his time tinkering with machines more than he did swimming laps. Still, when he took to the water, there was no one better. Honestly, saying Hunk was a "great" swimmer was an understatement. Michael Phelps was a great swimmer. Hunk, modestly, was probably the greatest swimmer there had ever been.
Hunk sometimes wondered just why he was so good at swimming. His father had once told him, jokingly, "You're Hawaiian, what else are you gonna be good at?" Hunk didn't really buy that, though, since he was good at other things that had nothing to do with being Hawaiian. The closest he ever got to an actual answer from his dad was that he got it from his mother. Okay, yeah, so Hunk's mom was a navy admiral who'd been honorably discharged. But why did that mean Hunk loved going to the aquarium so much? Why did it feel like the animals were trying to talk to him? Why was it that when he went in the ocean, it always felt like something was pulling him to go further? Why was he so strong?
Why had he never once had to come up for air?
Hunk had often asked his father these questions but dad would always say he'd tell Hunk "When he was ready, when he was older." Well, Hunk was eighteen now, and he was ready as he was probably ever going to be. Hunk was thinking about all of this as he dove deep into the waters of the Pacific ocean, just off the coast of his home island of Kauai. Every time he'd go swimming in the ocean, he always went a little deeper. Maybe, a part of him thought, if he followed whatever that voice was that was telling him to go, he'd find his answers. But he would always pull himself back up because another part of him was afraid of what the answers might be.
After Hunk came back up to the surface and swam toward the shore, there was a man standing on the shore waiting for him. Or, maybe he wasn't waiting, but it did seem a little weird that a man was standing on the beach in a black suit and tie.
"Uh, hey," Hunk greeted as he walked up out of the water and toward the shore. "Can I help you with something?" The man– honestly only probably four or five years older than Hunk– adjusted his large round glasses. The sunlight had been glinting off of them and making him look sinister, but after the adjustment Hunk got a better look at his light brown eyes and discovered that the man actually looked quite pleasant.
"Tsuyoshi Garrett, right?" the young man asked. "But you prefer to go by Hunk." This made Hunk take an uncomfortable step back as the young man held out a hand for Hunk to shake. "My name is Matthew Holt, but you can call me Matt, Hunk. Everyone else does." Hunk eyed Matt's hand suspiciously before shaking it cautiously. "I represent some very powerful people interested in keeping the world safe, who are very interested in people with abilities like yours."
"What," Hunk asked sarcastically, "Really good swimmers?" Matt raised an eyebrow at Hunk, who had a feeling the suited man knew more about Hunk than he knew about himself. "So what is this, like a recruitment drive?"
"Iiin so many words," Matt agreed. "All I'll need is for you to sign some paperwork– which has already been mailed to your house– and then tomorrow some men dressed like me will come to your house and take you to a facility where you'll stay for about a week while my people run some tests on you to get a proper gauge of your abilities."
Now it was Hunk's turn to raise an eyebrow. "You know this all sounds shady as heck, right?" He asked. Matt shrugged and gave a little chuckle before fishing into inside pocket of his jacket.
"Does fifty thousand dollars up front make it sound less shady?" he asked, handing a check to Hunk, who took the piece of paper from his hand and gaped at it in amazement. He almost dropped it in astonishment. Fifty thousand dollars? Just like that? "And another fifty thousand at the end of the week," Matt added to get his attention. "All tax-free."
"Ooookay," Hunk admitted slowly. "So maybe it does sound a little less shady." He chewed on his lip thoughtfully for a moment. Maybe this was how he'd get his answers. "What time are those guys gonna come tomorrow?" he asked. Matt grinned.
OoOoOoO
Lance McClain was getting bored. He'd been standing in this plain white room for what felt like six hours now (in fact it was only about twenty minutes). He huffed and crossed his arms, staring at the mirror on the opposite wall, the only other thing in the room, and just knew there was someone on the other side of it. There had to be. He'd seen movies. Plus, this blue and white bodysuit those dudes in lab coats had made him wear was making Lance a little uncomfortable. It was… kinda snug.
"Hey!" he finally shouted. "Is somebody gonna talk to me or what?" He figured this had something to do with that meteorite that had fallen in the forest when Lance had been out camping with his siblings that he'd gone to check out. It had to, right? Why else would did those guys in body armor show up with guns to chase him off when he got close to it? All he really knew was that some guy named Iverson had shown up outside his house one day and had offered Lance a hundred thousand dollars (split into two halves) if he took some tests. So, here he was, although he wondered if he was still in Cuba.
On the other side of the glass, Katie Holt, known to her friends and family as "Pidge", was fussing with the mess that had been left of her station by whoever had been there before her when the voice of the young man in the room made her jump. She huffed and pushed some papers aside to press the red button that activated the microphone on her side.
"Hey, just gimme a minute, okay?" she asked irritably. "I just got here, it's late, and I've been up since six this morning. So I'm a little behind. Just give me a chance to get organized." As the daughter of Samuel Holt, head of the Global Defense Alliance, and the kid sister of Matthew Holt, one of its foremost agents, there were some who thought Pidge only got her job because of her family connections. Yes, sixteen probably was a bit young to be a member of the science division of a paramilitary worldwide defense force, but Pidge was a prodigy and she did deserve to be there. So she'd worked twice as hard to prove herself, especially after the mysterious death of Dr. Erdel, and had been personally appointed by the overseer of Project Justice to work with and handle the testing for all of the potential applicants. She'd already done today's testing with Keith and Hunk and was… well, she was thankful for the invention of coffee. She took off her lab coat and hung it across the back of her chair as she sat down, leaving her in her signature green tank top and khaki cargo pants. She let her long, light brown hair drop down before tying it back up with a green scrunchie and finally getting comfortable, her workstation manageable at last. "Alright," she said as she pushed the red button again, "You ready to start?"
"Uh, y-yeah," Lance stammered out, his face still faintly flushed. He hadn't expected the voice on the other side of the mirror to sound the way it did. Not just young, but a girl's voice. He had been picturing a room full of old men in lab coats with glasses and mustaches, so this was a pleasant surprise. She sounded pretty cute, too.
"Awesome," Pidge replied. "Okay, let's start with the basics," she said, smiling a little at Lance's reaction while she flipped through his paperwork. "So you're Lance McClain," she began. "Age eighteen, youngest of four children, one niece and one nephew, born and raised in Varadero, Cuba. You got a grant to go to the US to attend a school of the arts in Florida," she continued, "And you were recently back home in Cuba visiting family when a giant rock fell out of the sky and you went to go check on it. Am I right so far?" she asked. Lance blinked for a minute, rubbing the back of his neck. That paperwork sure was detailed, huh?
"Uh, yeah," he agreed, "That's about where we start. But, hey," he added, "Before we go any further… who am I talking to?" he asked.
Pidge hesitated for a moment at that question. Keith hadn't really seemed to care who she was and she'd had to tell Hunk her name to get him more comfortable so he'd actually talk to her but this… she hadn't actually expected him to just ask who she was. "Katie," she said finally. "I'm Katie Holt. But everybody calls me Pidge." Lance raised an eyebrow and she shrugged, even though she knew he couldn't see it. "Now," she continued, "describe to me what happened the night you encountered the meteor."
Lance nodded thoughtfully, letting himself go back to that night. It had been almost a month ago now, two weeks at the very least. "I was out camping with my siblings a few weeks ago out in the forests by Sierra Cristal. We were getting ready to call it a night when we all saw this bright light in the sky. We thought it was a shooting star, but it kept getting bigger and brighter. Then it came sailing over our heads and crashed into the ground a couple miles away. I told everyone to hang back and that I'd go check it out."
"Wow," Pidge observed, "Real take charge kinda guy, huh?" Lance grinned, puffing out his chest a little and nodding. Which made Pidge take her finger off the button because she had to turn to laugh. She had screens that were connected to the suit's biometrics, which meant she could tell that Lance was fibbing. Okay, so, really it had been that they'd all drawn straws to see who would go check it out first and Lance had been reluctant to go when he'd drawn the short straw and Angelo and Maya had to tease him into it. But that didn't make him sound as cool, you know? "Sorry, continue."
"Well, I ran off to go check out whatever it was, in case maybe it was some kind of ship and somebody needed help, you know?" Lance explained. "When I got to where it had crashed, that's when I saw that it wasn't a ship but a huge meteorite."
"Describe the meteorite for me?" Pidge asked. She'd already seen the object in question but she wanted to hear Lance's description of it just to make sure that it matched up with what she'd seen. She highly doubted that there were two objects from space that had fallen out of the sky and into their laps in the same week but it never hurt to check. Plus, maybe its appearance had changed since its initial contact.
"It was a big crystal," Lance said after thinking about it for a moment. "It was big and clear, maybe about the size of one of those big blue mailboxes. But there was also something red and blue moving inside of it…" he paused, chewing on his lip. "There was something alive in there, wasn't there?" he asked. "Whoever it was… didn't make it, did they?" There was a moment of silence on Pidge's end.
"I'm not authorized to give you that information and you don't have the clearance for it," was all she said. Which basically meant yes. Pidge looked down at Lance's paperwork again, looking for a way to change the subject. "It says here," she prompted after a moment of looking, "That you started to change after you came into contact with the meteorite. Did you touch it? What sort of changes occurred?" she asked.
"Uh… yeah," Lance agreed reluctantly. "I just put my hand on the outside of it for a second and it felt like I got shocked, knocking me down. So I was just laying there for few minutes in the weird glow that the crystal was giving off. When I got up to try and touch it again, that was when the big van with the guys in guns showed up and I ran out of there. The changes didn't come for a couple more days, though," he explained. "First, I got really sick. Dizziness, fainting spells, vomiting, all that stuff. My parents took me to a hospital to make sure I didn't have cancer or anything."
Pidge nodded thoughtfully as she looked over Lance's paperwork. Everything was matching up so far. "But, obviously, you got better," she observed. "What happened after you got better? It just says here that you started 'changing.' Did you experience changes in your sleeping patterns, your appetite, things like that?"
"Sorta," Lance answered carefully. "I don't really need to eat or sleep as much anymore. I don't get tired, either. Not really. As long as I can stand out in the sun, I'm usually pretty good." Pidge nodded, jotting down some notes. So, going by that pretty unscientific explanation, it sounded like Lance's body now operated on some level of solar absorption to provide him with energy. It obviously wasn't photosynthesis, since he wasn't green. She just wished that the guys back in Cuba had been able to get a proper blood sample from him. Pidge wasn't sure how much she'd be able to get from a cheek swab. "I've also gotten stronger," Lance continued, "A lot stronger. I got faster, too, and I can't really be hurt. Plus, my senses are all a lot better now."
"Okay, hold on," Pidge had to stop him there. "We need to unpack this. Now, when you say that you can't be hurt, do you mean that the nerve endings don't work anymore?"
Lance shook his head. "No," he clarified, "I'm just really tough now. It's a lot harder to hurt me physically." It hadn't done much to lower his emotional vulnerability, but Lance would take what he could get.
"Riiiight," Pidge replied suspiciously, raising an eyebrow at him. "And when you say your senses are better, what does that mean? Stronger? Sharper? Do you have more of them?"
"I…" Lance chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment. This, he knew, would be difficult to believe. "I can see and hear things that are really small or really far away. My sense of smell is a lot stronger, too. It was really hard to control for a couple of days. I thought I was going crazy, but my mom helped me out. She made it easier for me to focus and filter stuff out." Pidge nodded, smiling. That sounded sweet. Then Lance continued somewhat reluctantly. "And I can see… through things."
Pidge scribbled down some notes again as he spoke, nodding. So he had telescopic and microscopic hearing and sight, good to know. "Wait…" she looked up from her notes at that last one. "See through things?" she echoed. "Like, what, x-ray vision?" Lance nodded and Pidge had to laugh. "Sorry," she said while folding her arms. "I find that hard to believe."
Now it was Lance's turn to smirk and, suddenly, his eyes glowed with a milky white light. He looked through the one-way mirror like it was a two-way mirror to finally get a look at the girl on the other side. "Whoa," he muttered as his face flushed again, his eyebrows lifting slightly. "You're… you're really cute."
Well, Pidge hadn't expected that. Her face burned bright red, a burning that only grew worse when she realized he could see her blushing, and she hid her face in her hands, smiling shyly. "H-hey," she stammered, "L-let's just focus on the tests, okay?" This definitely wasn't professional, especially since she was looking at him again and noticing that… well, Lance wasn't that bad to look at, either. Plus, Pidge had never been all that… confident, in her appearance, so someone actually thinking she was cute was… nope. Nope. None of that. Focus on the science. "So you can hear me right now?" she asked, deliberately keeping her finger off the intercom button.
Lance nodded, his eyes still glowing as he looked at Pidge. "Yeah," he told her, "I can hear you just…" he swallowed thickly, feeling suddenly… warm. Very warm. Not like a blush, either, or like he was just turned on or sweaty. He felt like he was heating up and that heat was swiftly building up and focusing in his face. He grimaced painfully, unsure what was happening to him.
"Lance?" Pidge asked with concern. "Lance, are you al–" before she could even finish the question, Lance cried out in pain as two beams of red light shot out of his eyes. She cried out in fright and dove down to the floor to avoid being hit as the beams pierced through the mirror before Lance jerked his head back, the beams slicing through the mirror and the wall as he buried his eyes in his hands. Despite herself, Pidge couldn't help but stare at the burn marks and the melted concrete and glass. So this was… heat vision. Wow. "Lance!" Pidge called out as she got up to her feet and saw the young man crumpled down to his knees with his face in his hands. "Lance, you need to control it!"
"I don't know how!" Lance cried, his voice strained. He sounded in terrified and more than a little in pain. Why was this happening?! What was he doing?! Why couldn't he make it stop?! "M-my eyes have never done this before! I-I don't know what to do!"
Pidge swallowed nervously, staring at Lance as she tried not to panic, watching red light splay out from behind his hands and shoot across the room, digging into the walls. Ohhh, this was bad. This was really, really bad! She wasn't equipped to handle anything like this! She hadn't expected that he'd be able to do any of this! What could she do, what could she…
"L-Lance!" she shouted again. "Lance, I need you to listen to me! J-just focus on me, okay? Like what happened with your other powers! Listen to my voice! Focus on me, filter it out! You'll be okay!" Lance tried his hardest to focus, listening to Pidge as she continued to talk. He focused on her rapid pulse, on the beating of her heart. By zeroing in on it, it started to have a strangely calming effect on him. His breaths became slower and deeper as the light faded from his eyes. He slumped forward once it had passed, gasping, his face resting on the cold tile floor. Despite her best judgment, Pidge grabbed a first aid kit and quickly opened the door to the testing room, wanting to treat Lance's hands and face in case they were burned, which they almost certainly were. No matter how tough Lance might be now, how could he not have taken some damage from something so destructive? She knelt down by Lance's side, rubbing his back gently with one hand as she opened the medical kit. "It's okay," she told him soothingly, "It's okay. Lemme see your hands." Lance sat up slowly, sitting back on his knees as he held out his palms for Pidge to look at. As she'd expected, they were burned badly, though not as bad as she'd expected.
"Yeesh," Lance grimaced as they both winced. "That's pretty bad." Pidge nodded, turning his hands over carefully to look at them before looking up at his face and wincing again. The skin around his eyes had also been pretty burned. "Ah, no, am I not hot anymore?" he asked. "That's basically all I have going for me."
"Don't worry," she assured him with a smile, "You still look ho–" Pidge caught herself, her face turning red again, and Lance snickered. Her eyes went wide when she realized he'd been joking and had lured her into a trap and she punched him in the arm, even though she knew it had probably done nothing. "You jerk!" Still, she was surprised that he'd recovered quickly enough to start making jokes again already.
Lance laughed again as he rubbed his arm before giving a not-quite-apologetic shrug. "Man," he muttered, "That's the first time I've been hurt since after I stopped getting sick."
"So this hasn't happened before?" Pidge asked while she turned back to her medical kit, looking for the burn ointment and some gauze. He might have said so earlier but it sorta got lost in all the screaming.
"Nah," Lance replied with a shake of his head. "The most my eyes could do before now was look through stuff. That was… kinda scary," he admitted. He looked down at his hands again, only to see that… they were fine. "Uh, Pidge?"
"I know, I know, it hurts," she told him. "Just gimme a second. Don't know why these things are always so unorganized."
"Pidge?" Lance repeated a little more insistently.
"I said gimme a second!"
"Pidge!"
"What?!" she asked irritably as she looked up at him again, gauze and ointment in hand. Lance held up his completely unburned hands to Pidge, causing her to drop the medical supplies in shock. His face was healed, too. She touched his cheek gently, not really able to believe what she was seeing. "O-okay," she muttered nervously as she slowly let her hand drop. "So you can… heal quickly, too."
"Uh, yeah," Lance agreed with a nod. "Guess I can." Pidge was sitting… pretty close to him. "What, uh… what other tests are we supposed to run?" he asked. Pidge's face flushed and she stood up quickly, holding out a hand for Lance to help him up.
"Nothing in here," she admitted reluctantly. "Especially with the damage this room's taken. My supervisor handles the physical tests in the main lab. Let's go." She grabbed her lab coat before leading Lance out of the room and down a hallway toward the aforementioned main lab.
"Hey," he asked suddenly, "I know I've had my suspicions… but we're not in Cuba anymore, are we? No way the Cuban government would hire a gringo like you." Pidge turned back to him and gasped, putting a hand over her heart.
"Yo?" she asked, playfully offended. "Soy offendito!" She laughed as Lance's eyes went wide and his face flushed again.
'Oh no,' Lance thought worriedly. 'Oh no, that was really cute. And hot.' He tried to push the thought out of his mind as Pidge finally walked him to the main lab, which was about half the size of an airport hangar. There were people in lab coats bustling every which way, all of them shuffling papers or carrying various high-tech gizmos like Lance had never seen before. He definitely wasn't in Cuba anymore. At the center of this maelstrom of white, nerdy chaos, there was one man who was different from the rest. A man dressed in black dress slacks with a gray dress shirt, a black waistcoat, and a gray tie. He wore black leather gloves and dark sunglasses. He had a scar across the bridge of his nose and a large tuft of white hair on his head, despite the fact that he looked far too young for his black hair to start graying.
"Hello there, McClain," the mysterious man greeted with a grin as he held out a gloved hand for Lance to shake. "I'm Agent Takashi Shirogane, but everyone calls me Shiro. I'm the head of Project Justice and the reason you're here today." Lance eyed Shiro's hand suspiciously for a moment before shaking his hand. There was something about the man that made him uncomfortable. "From what I've read of your file, you can do some pretty impressive things," he noted as they shook hands. He let go of Lance's hand and jerked his thumb to the slightly raised white platform beside him with a control panel in front of it. "How about you hop on there," he asked, "And we see what you can do?" Lance looked back at Pidge, who gave him an encouraging nod. She knew he could trust Shiro. Shiro was her brother's best friend, he was awesome! Lance shrugged and walked onto the platform.
"About here?" he asked Shiro as he stood in the center. Shiro nodded and gave him a thumbs up. "Okay," Lance said, "So what's first?"
"You're pretty strong, right?" the sharp dressed man asked as he punched some buttons on the control panel. Lance nodded with a smirk and crossed his arms, puffing out his chest. "Well, we'll just see about that," Shiro remarked with a smirk of his own. A large square panel separated from the ceiling and began to lower itself down toward Lance on a pneumatic press. Then it dropped suddenly and Lance's arms shot up to catch it. "Good reflexes," Shiro pointed out, chuckling to himself as the system computers filed it away.
"Shiro…" Pidge said disapprovingly. "That wasn't part of protocol." Shiro waved a dismissive hand, smirking a little.
"Ah, I was just messing around," he assured her nonchalantly. "He's fine, aren't ya, McClain?"
"I can do this all day," Lance retorted cockily as he held the metal plate up effortlessly. "When's the hard part start?"
"It hasn't started at all yet," Shiro shot back as he started moving some sliders. "I'm increasing the pressure by an increment of one ton per second. That plate is made of a tungsten-inconel alloy, it's the strongest compound on planet earth. So you can push all you want, it'll be fine." Lance locked eyes with Shiro as he held up the plate. Thirty seconds passed and Lance didn't seem to have any problems yet. "Impressive," Shiro allowed as he watched Lance's performance.
"Definitely the word for it," Pidge agreed as she watched while keeping one eye on Shiro. So far he was keeping Hunk's own lifting capacity when he'd come in for his first tests a couple of days ago. Shiro nodded and spiked the increment suddenly to ten tons a second.
"How's it goin', McClain?" Shiro asked. "Starting to feel the burn yet?" Lance was now supporting nearly four hundred tons over his head and didn't seem any worse for wear.
"Have you turned the machine on yet?" he asked. "I couldn't tell." Ten seconds later and Lance was now supporting five hundred tons and Pidge could see his arms starting to tremble.
"Shiro," she said cautiously, "I think you can stop now. You have your baseline, okay? He's really strong!" About as strong as Hunk, if not more so. Especially impressive considering that Hunk had been born with his abilities while Lance had only had his for about two weeks. Shiro waited for a few more seconds and watched Lance grit his teeth and shoot daggers at him, chuckling before turning off the machine. The panel raised back up toward the ceiling and Lance stumbled forward as the weight was suddenly taken off of him.
"I could have kept going," Lance said stubbornly, speaking to both Shiro and Pidge. That just made Shiro chuckle again.
"You got spirit, McClain," he said appreciatively. "That's good. I like that." As Shiro pushed a few more buttons, he muttered under his breath, "That's useful to me." That made Pidge uncomfortable and she gave Shiro a suspicious look. Useful to him? What the hell was Shiro talking about? Why was Shiro talking about Lance as if he were a weapon? "So, you're fast, too, right?" He asked.
"You better believe I am," Lance said defiantly, trying not to lose his footing when a treadmill that looked like it was made out of solid light suddenly grew out of the floor under his feet.
"We'll put that to the test," Shiro told him as he pushed some buttons. "You start moving whenever you're ready and then that'll activate the treadmill's automatic accelerators to increase the speed by a hundred kilometers an hour every second."
"Kilometers?" Lance echoed, raising an eyebrow.
"It's science stuff," Pidge reminded him, "Science stuff is always measured in the metric system." She thought that talking to her and her trying to be funny would put Lance a little more at ease.
"Oh, yeah," Lance nodded with a bit of a smile. "That makes sense." Then he started running, moving in a smooth and effortless runner's form. He was also moving at about three hundred miles per hour. He was already generating an enormous wind that was blowing around papers, lab coats, and scientists as he sprinted, yet Shiro's feet were planted firmly to the ground as he put in some earplugs.
"Everyone, put on ear protection, now!" Shiro ordered as he handed some heavy duty ear muffs to Pidge. "I'd say Mr. McClain here is about ten seconds away from breaking the sound barrier!" Without warning, he increased the increment to five hundred kilometers per hour. Just as Shiro had predicted, there was a great boom like a crack of thunder that took everyone but Shiro off of their feet and Lance just kept on running, pumping his arms and legs, the first bead of sweat running down his face as he was now running in excess of twelve hundred kilometers an hour.
"Shiro!" Pidge shouted over the wind as she struggled to her feet. "Shiro, what the hell?!" He hadn't pushed Keith anywhere near this hard or this suddenly. Why was he so fixated on Lance like this?
"Come on, McClain!" Shiro taunted as Lance pushed himself to three thousand kilometers an hour. "Let's see you push it! Kogane got to 6k before his feet started to burn!" Lance didn't know who the heck "Kogane" was but he felt an instinctual need to beat him. Pidge remembered when Keith had done that and that Shiro had specifically admonished the mulleted idiot for pushing himself so hard. So why was Shiro egging Lance on to do the same?!
"That's enough, Shiro! Seriously!" Pidge demanded as she tugged at Shiro's arm, trying to pull him away from the controls. Shiro finally acquiesced and turned off the treadmill, letting Lance come down suddenly to a trot and then finally to a stop so he could double over, panting with his hands on his knees. Lance hadn't ever had to exert himself to this kind of an extreme since he'd gotten his powers.
"How're you feeling, McClain?" Shiro asked as Lance struggled to breathe. "Need to take a break?" Behind his smug demeanor, though, Shiro was very impressed. Lance was turning out to be everything he'd hoped he would be and more. Especially if he continued to improve over the next six months.
"Screw… you…" Lance panted as he stood up straight again. Shiro just chuckled infuriatingly again. "What's next, huh?" he asked when he had recovered himself. "Gonna zap me with electricity to test my pain threshold? Shoot me with a bazooka to test my durability?"
Shiro clucked a tongue and wagged a finger in playful disapproval. "Now, now, McClain–"
"My name's Lance," the young man shot back fiercely.
"Your name's whatever I tell you it is," Shiro responded coolly as his thumb hovered over a red button. "And don't worry," he continued, "I won't do anything so barbaric. This next test is simple. In fact, if I'm right about you, it should be painless."
That made Lance raise an eyebrow. "Hey," he asked suspiciously. "What do you mean should–" Shiro pushed the red button. "Beeeeeee?!" Lance cried out in shock as the floor suddenly disappeared out from under him and he plummeted down into a pit that didn't seem to have any end in sight. That was the last straw for Pidge.
"Okay," she growled as she grabbed Shiro by the arm. "We need to talk, now. What the hell is going on here, Shiro?!"
"Don't worry," he reassured Pidge calmly as he tossed a quarter down into the pit. "I didn't send your boyfriend out of the airlock. He'll be fine." Pidge's face burned with anger and embarrassment but before she could say anything, Shiro's coin came flying back out of the pit, landing in his outstretched hand, as if he'd expected it to happen. A second later, a blue-white blur came flying out of the pit as well, slowing down after a second for everyone to realize that this blur was Lance. Everyone but Shiro gawked up in amazement at Lance as he floated more than fifty feet up in the air. Even Lance looked amazed with himself as he hovered, looking himself over.
"Lance… y-you can fly!" Pidge exclaimed, her amazement and excitement at the fact outweighing her dislike for stating the obvious. Lance was flying! That was incredible! Without any sort of harness or wings or exterior propulsion system!
"Y-yeah," Lance agreed, as astonished as she was. "I can!" This was the coolest thing that had ever happened to him! He could fly! He'd always wanted to be a pilot but this was so much cooler! "How do I get down?" he asked after an awkward moment. Pidge and Shiro only shrugged and Lance just had to think about it for a minute. After thinking about just… coming down, Lance floated slowly to the ground, touching down in front of Shiro and Pidge and grinning.
"That's an excellent start, Lance," Shiro told Lance encouragingly, finally addressing him by his first name. "There's a conference room where our other two successful applicants have been called. Why don't you go meet them?" Lance had a feeling that whoever else was here wouldn't appreciate being woken up or pulled from whatever they were doing at eleven thirty at night, but… what the heck? It wasn't like he had a lot else to do. "You go to the end of the room," Shiro instructed Lance as he turned and pointed. "Go through the red door, then take the hallway down and it's the first door on your right. You can't miss it." Lance rolled his eyes and gave a very sarcastic salute before walking to the other end of the room. He looked back at Pidge and looked at her sympathetically before going through the red door.
Pidge returned the look before she turned to Shiro again and grabbed his arm. "We're not done here," she told him. "I still want answers. What the hell is going on here? What was all of that crap with Lance? What is Project Justice?" Shiro just offered Pidge a coy little smile as he took off his sunglasses, looking at her plainly with his grey eyes.
"Into my office," he told her, "I'll explain everything so you're up to speed before we go talk to the other three." Pidge huffed and eyed Shiro suspiciously but followed after him all the same.
OoOoOoO
Lance walked into the conference room as per Shiro's instructions. The room inside was fairly plain, just a big circle of a conference table surrounded by eight chairs with a large, flat monitor against one wall. Lance sat down in one of the chairs and swung it from side to side as he waited for the others, questions filling his mind. What the hell was happening to him? What was that big crystal? Was he going to keep getting crazy powers? Who were the other applicants?
After a few minutes, another question entered his head. Was he in the wrong room? About a minute later, though, the door on the other side from where Lance had entered opened up and two other young men of about his age stepped into the room. One guy was enormous, with dark skin and short, shaggy black hair who wore an orange headband to keep his bangs out of his eyes. He seemed friendly enough, if a little shy. The second guy, though. If there was a personification of the word "asshole"... well, it would be Shiro. But if that personification had a baby brother, it would be whoever this skinny, mulleted jerkoff was. Seriously, who had a mullet in 2025?
Like Lance, they were wearing bodysuits. Only while the neck, outside of the arms, torso, and inside of Lance's legs were blue (in contrast to the white along the inside of his arms, his sides, and the outsides of his legs), the big guy's was yellow and the skinny guy's was red.
"Hey," Lance said as the pair sat down. The big guy sat across from Lance and mullet sat next to him, though he rolled his chair to one side to put that little bit of extra space between them. "I'm Lance. Who're you guys and what do you do?"
"Uh, hi," the big guy greeted with a bit of an awkward wave. "Uh, I-I'm Tsuyoshi. But everybody calls me Hunk." Lance grinned, giving him a thumbs up.
"Now that's a confident nickname," he said sincerely. "Good on you, man." Hunk smiled back at him, blushing a little.
"I'm Keith," the other guy said bluntly. "I move fast and I hit hard. Just stay out of my way for… whatever this is, and we won't have any problems."
"I bet I hit harder," Lance shot back with a bit of a grin. "And I can fly." Hunk gasped excitedly at that and his eyes lit up.
"That's so cool!" He exclaimed. "You can fly? Oh, man, that's awesome! I wish I could fly!" Lance looked at him curiously, the unspoken question of "What can you do?" written on his face. Hunk seemed reluctant, almost embarrassed, to answer. "I can… I'm pretty strong. I can swim really fast, I'm… pretty sure I can breathe underwater." Then, almost inaudibly (well, inaudible to anyone but Lance), he added "and I think I can talk to fish?"
Lance grinned at Hunk, reaching across the table to pat him on the arm. "Hey, that's all really cool, man!" Hunk's face brightened at that and he grinned broadly.
"You think so?" he asked in an almost bashful tone. Lance nodded, his smile widening.
"Heck yeah!" he told the other encouragingly. "I can't breathe underwater! Besides," he added while looking directly at Keith, "It's always cool to be able to do more than one thing."
Keith glared at Lance and gave him the finger. "You see that?" he asked sarcastically, which confused Lance for a moment. But since Hunk didn't really react, Lance guessed Keith had done it at super-speed.
"Yeah," Lance told Keith with a smirk while giving it right back. "Did you?" Keith glared at him and Lance shrugged. "So how'd you guys get roped into working for Captain Jackass?"
"Hey!" Keith snapped hotly at Lance. "Don't talk about Shiro like that!" It was the most emotion the young man in red had shown since Lance had shown up, making Keith raise an eyebrow. "And I didn't get roped in," he muttered, "Some of us don't have to be roped into doing the right thing." Shiro had been there when Keith had woken up in the hospital. Keith had been astonished to see him. It was the first time they'd seen one another in years, how had Shiro even found him? Shiro'd apologized to Keith profusely for making him feel pressured into running away, for not being there when Keith needed him and making Keith think he was disappointed in him. He promised to do whatever it took to make sure Keith was alright and to help him in his recovery however he could. Then, when Keith had started showing signs of his abilities, Shiro had promised Keith that Shiro would be able to give Keith the thing he'd been searching for. The chance to be something more.
"Some guy named Matt told me that he worked for some people who wanted to keep the world safe," Hunk said mildly. Then, a little embarrassed, he added, "Aaand he offered me a hundred grand."
"Same here," Lance told him, "But it was an older guy named Iverson. Really chill dude, probably high as a kite." That made Hunk snicker and Keith roll his eyes.
OoOoOoO
Pidge walked with Shiro into his office and took the seat across from his desk. Shiro sat behind the desk and looked down fondly for a moment at the picture of his family from a few summers ago. It was himself, his parents, his young brother Ryou and Keith. They were all down at Lake Houston. The picture was actually quite a rare one, as it featured a Keith that was smiling unprompted. Shiro's smile turned a little sad as he looked at Ryou. He hadn't seen him since he'd returned from space about a year ago. The last he'd heard of his little brother, who was only a couple years older than Keith, their parents said he'd moved to Gotham City. He just hoped he was okay.
"Shiro," Pidge said tersely, interrupting his introspection. "Are you gonna tell me what's going on or what?" Shiro opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out three folders. One had a lightning bolt on it, one had a stylized 'A', and the other had a stylized 'S'.
"There's an attack coming," Shiro began dramatically, "From far away. These three," he tapped the folders in turn, "Are the first pieces of the Global Defense Alliance's best chance of stopping whatever's coming. You already know about Keith," he explained, "And the accident that gave him his powers."
"Yeah," Pidge nodded as she took Keith's folder, flipping through pictures of the security camera footage from that night at the Alchemix Chemical Plant in Central City and from the Central City hospital where Keith had been recovering, as well as street camera footage of a red blur that had to be moving at impossible speeds. "His accelerated metabolism and healing, as well as his incredible speed and the weird energy he's connected to that allows him to move that quickly without his body or his clothes catching on fire."
"Matt calls it the Speed Force," Shiro replied. Pidge gave him a quizzical look and he shrugged. "Corny, I know, but the boys in marketing like it. As for Hunk," he tapped the 'A' folder, "The vital information with him has to do with his mother."
"...Admiral Eileen Garrett?" Pidge asked suspiciously, not seeing the connection. Shiro shook his head.
"Not the woman who raised him," Shiro explained as he opened the folder. "His birth mother." Pidge took the folder and, on the top of it, was a series of pictures of a woman. The pictures were taken from a remote submersible camera, watching this woman attack a whaling vessel. She was… hauntingly beautiful, with dark skin, pale white hair, and large, dark eyes. She was otherworldly and ethereal, dressed in orange armor that looked like scales and wielding an enormous trident. She was also frighteningly powerful, as she tore through steel like tissue paper.
"Whoa," Pidge whispered as she flipped through sheafs of pictures and paperwork. "Who is she?" she asked.
Shiro gave a shrug. "We don't know," he admitted. "We think her name is Atlanna. We don't know what she is or if there's anyone else like her, but hopefully, Hunk will be the key to finding more of that out, on top of the usefulness of his own abilities. And then," he turned to the final folder, "Then there's Lance. If my information is right, which it always is, he just might be the most important piece." He opened the folder and Pidge saw a series of photographs taken of cave drawings found in Iceland. The drawings depicted an enormous object falling from the sky. Then, the object became a great beast that attacked people. Spears and rocks did nothing to it. Then a second, much smaller object came from the sky. A person came out of that object and battled the creature. The person flew and there were lines being drawn off of its face, which Pidge gathered were like Lance's heat vision. The creature was slain and then the person returned to the object, a ship, that they had come out of and flew away.
"So… wait," Pidge said slowly. "Are you saying that Lance isn't from Earth, either?" she asked. Shiro chuckled and shook his head.
"No, no," he assured her, "Lance is definitely human. Or he was, until about two weeks ago. Wherever that crystal came from, its latent cosmic radiation transformed Lance on a molecular level. He's still human. Mostly. Of course," he added with a weary sigh, "Iverson– spiritual pain in my ass that he his– thinks that the soul of the life form inside the crystal bonded with Lance's at the moment of his death and that's what changed him. But I've never seen a soul. I can't quantify it, I can't measure it in grams, watts, or degrees Celsius, I can't put it in a jar. So I do my best to ignore him."
Pidge frowned slightly as she handed all of the folders back to Shiro, who put them all back inside his desk. "That still doesn't explain," she told him, "Why you were being a jerk to Lance earlier."
"Because I want to push him," Shiro told her. "I need to see just how strong he is. This isn't a game and they all need to realize that."
"Okay," Pidge finally conceded. "But what's not a game? Who's this attack from far away?" Shiro took out a pocket watch and looked at it before standing up and putting it away.
"I'll explain it when we talk to the others," he told her. "By now, they've gotten acquainted. Let's go make sure no one's tried to fight anyone." Pidge followed after Shiro reluctantly, wondering just what in the world she was getting herself into.
OoOoOoO
"So what's Hawaii like?" Lance asked. Hunk shrugged.
"It's pretty nice," he said nonchalantly. "What's Cuba like?"
"Pretty nice," Lance replied, matching his tone. "You'll have to come check it out sometime." Hunk was pretty cute, actually, with the whole "gentle giant" thing going on. Keith huffed and rolled his eyes, one palm pressed to his cheek while he leaned on his elbow. "Hey, I got a question," Lance said, "Where the heck are we?"
"In the United States, duh," Keith retorted dryly with another roll of his eyes. What kind of stupid question was that?
"Okay, yeah, but where?" he asked. "Because I came from Cuba. Hunk came from Hawaii. You came from Central City which is out in the midwest somewhere. And none of us traveled for more than an hour and we're all in the same building. Also," he added, "Have either of you seen a single window since you showed up?" The pair thought about that for several moments, Hunk tapping his chin and Keith trying his hardest not to look like he thought Lance had a point.
"Y'know," Hunk admitted, "That's a pretty good poi–"
"An excellent question, Lance," Shiro said as he and Pidge walked through the door Lance had come through. Hunk and Keith sat up straighter in their chairs. Lance didn't move. "I'll be happy to answer all of your questions," he assured them as he took the chair under the large monitor. This meant that he sat next to Keith, who sat up that little bit straighter, making Lance roll his eyes. Pidge, not quite sure where to sit, took the chair between Shiro and Lance. "First and foremost," Shiro began, "Full disclosure: This agency has no connection to the United States government. Or the Korean, Japanese, or Cuban governments, either. What you are all now working for is called the Global Defense Alliance, a multinational paramilitary organization designed to protect the world from all threats. As to where you are now…" Shiro pushed a button on a remote and the monitor came to life, showing them… a large, white satellite hovering over the earth. It was needle-shaped, with the point aimed down at Earth's surface and a ring spinning gently around the widest point at the top.
"No way," Hunk whispered as they all slowly made the connection.
"You gotta be kidding," Lance breathed, sitting up in his chair at last. It was so incredible that he didn't even bother to question when exactly he'd become an employee of a military organization.
"We're in space?" Keith asked in a tone that was a mixture of shock and excitement. Holy cow, he was in space!
"You are all members of the GDA's top priority for global defense: Project Justice. As you know," Shiro went on as slides of people in brightly colored costumes rolled across the monitor, "There have been several groups of people with remarkable powers fighting impossible challenges over the years. The All-Star Squadron, The Seven Soldiers of Victory, and the Justice Society of America, just to name a few."
"Yeah," Hunk interjected, "But those were all years and years ago. The Justice Society was the most recent and even they retired in the late eighties. I mean, even the Star-Spangled Kid's gotta be sixty now, right?"
"Precisely my point," Shiro agreed with a nod. "The time has come for something better. Something new. Project Justice, my own creation, was designed to create something called the Justice League."
"Okay," Keith put in, "But what are we protecting the Earth from? What's the problem, Shiro?" Shiro didn't seem to answer that question at first.
"For centuries," he said, "Mankind has wondered as to whether or not we are alone in the universe. Well," he told them, "I can tell you that there is something out there, and it hates us." He pushed a button on the remote again, showing several pictures of a fleet of sinister, jagged-looking purple and black spaceships. The fleet was enormous, and some of the ships looked bigger than aircraft carriers. "This," Shiro explained, "Is photographic evidence collected by our farthest-reaching satellite cameras. They are the Galra," he continued, "And they will reach Earth in the next six months, by our estimation. When they get here, they will almost certainly try to kill us all. Earth's defenses aren't prepared for them. That's where you come in."
"Wait," Lance put in, "How do we know these guys are bad? How do they 'hate' us? I mean, sure their ships look scary, but that doesn't mean anything. How can you be so sure they're the bad guys?" That made Shiro furrow his brow and purse his lips. He looked genuinely irritated for the first time since the conversation started.
"I know," Shiro began calmly, though his voice was tight with restraint, "Because they did this to me!" Shiro ripped off his right glove and slammed his fist on the table, showing them a robot hand. The back of the hand was silver and the fingers, thumb, and palm were black. He rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt as they all continued to gawk, except for Pidge who'd seen it already, showing that his prosthetic ran all the way up to his shoulder. "As some of you might know," he continued, "Three years ago, I was a member of the NASA 'Excalibur' expedition, along with four others: Hank Henshaw, his wife Terri, her brother William Leather, and Jacob Greene. We were the first manned mission outside of the Milky Way Galaxy." He sighed heavily, the memories uncomfortable. "We came out of hyperspace and came into contact almost immediately with the Galra. We were boarded, taken prisoner, and tortured for information. I was the only member of my crew who managed to survive and escape." He looked pointedly at Lance, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "So that's how I know they're the bad guys," he explained tersely.
"Shiro," Pidge said softly as she put a hand on Shiro's arm. "It's okay. Take a deep breath. They didn't know." Keith was horrified as he looked at Shiro. He had no idea these things had happened to him. It was awful! He'd make the Galra pay for what they'd done to him.
"When I was recovered," Shiro continued, "I explained everything to Samuel Holt, the head of the GDA, who put me in charge of assembling this task force of the four of you." Pidge blinked at that.
"Four?" she echoed. "But there's only three of them." That was when Shiro turned to look at her. She stared at him dumbly for a moment. He didn't mean… there was no way! "But I'm not… I don't… Shiro, I'm not a fighter!" she protested, flabbergast. "I'm just the girl who runs the tests! I just work here, I don't have any abilities!" Shiro smiled at her and took off his left glove.
"A few months after I returned," Shiro explained as he ran his thumb over his index finger, "We were visited by an alien. At first, I thought it was an attack, but this man wasn't a Galra. His name was Abin Sur and his ship crash landed here on Earth somewhere out in New Mexico. We kept him alive on life support for about an hour and he told me his story. He was something called a Green Lantern. Basically like Space Cops. His ring, one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, was supposed to go on autopilot and look for a worthy successor after he died. Someone with courage, imagination, and willpower. I convinced him that it would be safer to leave the ring with me and that I would be able to find that successor for him." Lance frowned at that, wondering just what Shiro's 'convincing' had entailed. Shiro slowly pulled a green ring off of his finger and held it up between thumb and forefinger. It was hard to tell if it was made of metal or crystal as he held it out to Pidge from the way the light glinted off of it.
"You're kidding," she whispered, unable to look away from it. Shiro produced something from his pocket with his other hand and laid it on the table. It looked like a tiny lantern, with a handle and everything.
"I can assure you, Pidge, I'm not," he told her. "I've known you for about as long as I've known Matt. I've watched everyone at this facility, every worker and failed applicant, for the last several months. None of them have your stubbornness, your tenacity, or your intelligence. If there's anyone who deserves this, it's you." Shiro let go of the ring and it actually hovered in the air for a moment.
Then it shot forward and went straight for Pidge, sliding up the middle finger of her left hand. The Lantern on the table grew instantly in size to match the size of Pidge's head as the ring lit up and glowed on Pidge's hand. "Katherine Holt of the Planet Earth of Sector 2814," a voice coming from the ring said, "You have the power to overcome great fear. You have been chosen. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps." There was a blinding flash of Green Light and then Pidge was wearing a suit of her own. The torso was green with a white circle on her chest and a stylized green circle and bars that looked like a lantern inside of it. The upper arms and thighs were black and the forearms and legs were white, like a pair of long gloves and boots. Pidge stared at herself in amazement as a green domino mask formed over her face, under her glasses. She took her glasses off as now they made her vision blurry, realizing that the mask was correcting her eyesight.
"Whoa," she breathed as she looked herself over.
"Whoa is right," Lance muttered, blushing slightly. She looked awesome.
"The ring works by thought," Shiro told Pidge as he grinned broadly. "It can make basically anything you can think of as long as you focus. It requires a charge, which is what the battery is for." He laid a hand on top of the lantern and Pidge looked at it, nodding. This definitely warranted further experimentation later. "Well," he continued, "As long as Pidge has her codename, I might as well let you all know yours. As long as you're all on board?" he added/
"Of course we don't get to pick," Lance muttered with a roll of his eyes. "I mean, jeez. Almost-certain death, small chance of success… what are we waiting for?" Hunk paled nervously at that and Lance patted him on the arm. "I'm just kidding. I mean, we've got the king of the seas," he gestured to Hunk, "The space cop who can make anything real," he pointed to Pidge, "Captain Awesome," he gestured back to himself, "Aaand… Zippy Doo-dah over here," he pointed at Keith, who glowered at him.
"I'm in, Shiro," Keith told him as he turned to put his attention on his dad-brother. "Whatever the plan is, I'll follow you all the way."
"Me too," Pidge added, "I mean, obviously. But I guess I just felt like I needed to say it?"
"I don't know how much I can do to help," Hunk confessed, "But I'll do whatever I can." They all turned to look at Lance, who shrugged and sighed.
"I mean, yeah, Shiro's a dick, but I'm not gonna let bad dudes from space just blow us up. I'm in, too."
"Excellent," Shiro declared as he grinned again. He pushed a button on his forearm and Keith, Hunk, and Lance's suits changed. A white circle suddenly formed on Keith's chest, a red lightning bolt running through the center. "Keith Kogane, Codename: The Flash." A large white stylized 'A' formed in the center of Hunk's chest. "Hunk Garrett, Codename: The Aquaman." Hunk poked his chest inquisitively, wondering why the symbol on his chest looked so familiar. A white pentagon appeared on Lance's chest, outlined in blue, with a blue 'S' running through it. "Lance McClain, codename: The Superman." Like Hunk, Lance found something oddly familiar about his own symbol, though he had no idea why.
"Okay," Lance acquiesced with a bit of a grin, "I can work with that."
"I'll have someone show you all to your new quarters here on the Watchtower," Shiro told the four of them. "Then you all should get some rest and be ready to start training tomorrow morning. The real work hasn't even started yet." None of them really knew what that meant and they weren't quite sure what training would entail, yet they couldn't shake the excitement that buzzed through them. They were going to be a part of something huge! They were going to save the world! They were going to be… the Justice League.
I'm really excited to start working on this and hope that everyone reading will like it as well! Believe it or not, I didn't just give people powers based on their lion colors. I actually thought they would be interesting places to take the characters and might challenge who they are and how they carry themselves. How does someone like Keith, who's the best at everything, handle an ability that's so specialized? How does someone with insecurities like Lance, who's unsure of his own worth, deal with basically having ultimate power? will it make him better? Will it go to his head? Will he crumble under the pressure and think he doesn't deserve it? ...Will they make out? And those are just two examples!