IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE!
This is the ROUGH version of this story, which is still a work in progress. I'm posting here for constructive feedback, especially about whether I seem to be leaving out too much plotwise or giving too much away. Please, please, please let me know your thoughts about anything and everything. Writing style, character balance, narration/dialogue balance, I really, really need your feedback.
This means that I will be editing as I go, but edited versions will not be posted here. Once the story is done I'll be posting the finished product to AO3. For now, read, review, and enjoy!
EDIT: So I didn't realize that ffnet ate my line breaks since they were made of underscores, thank you to the guest who pointed that out to me in a review. I'm editing those in now.
Castle of Lions, 1 cycle (1.2 Terran years) after the return of Voltron
Allura jolted upright in her bed, gasping, every muscle tensed and alert. A deep unease filled her, a sense that something was...not wrong, necessarily, but changed. Something was different that shouldn't have been.
Despite the unpleasantly early hour indicated by the timepiece on the wall, a deep unease drove her from her bed looking for the source. One didn't survive a war by failing to listen to subconscious instincts. On slippered feet she padded softly down the hallway, all her senses straining for anything out of place. Her eyes and ears and nose betrayed nothing amiss, but her Altean ability to sense quintessence…
The air of the Castle was filled with Blue, thick enough to choke had it been something tangible. It was just starting to dissipate, but such a concentration was like nothing she'd ever felt, far beyond what should ever occur naturally. Allura searched her memory for an explanation and came up empty, her disquiet only growing.
The bridge doors whirred softly open before her, the lights coming on at a low setting out of deference to the early hour. Stepping to her control platform, she sent a wordless command to scan the Castle for all lifeforms. A moment later the screen flared to life, the results of the scan displayed as colour-coded dots over the blueprints of the ship.
One yellow Altean dot in the bridge-herself-and one down in the engine room, Coran likely making use of his night watch to make some overdue repairs. One blue Human dot in the training room-Keith, most likely-one in the Green Lion's hangar-Pidge, no doubt-three in the living quarters, and two in the Blue Lion's hangar.
She froze. Ran the scan again.
The computer displayed the same result. Two Alteans, and seven Humans where there should have been only five. Unease flared into alarm, heart hammering in her chest, and she rapidly ran through her options before deciding on one.
Quickly she pulled up the camera feed for the training rooms and breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar sight of Keith carving a swath of destruction through a group of gladiators, bayard glinting in the bright overhead lights. A touch of a screen shut the sequence down remotely and opened a com line into the room. "Keith, could you join me on the bridge, please? We have a problem."
A few minutes later, Keith was standing beside her, still breathing hard from his workout as he peered around her shoulder at the display. After a moment's consideration he pointed to the two dots in the Blue Lion's hangar. "We'll start there."
Allura pursed her lips and nodded, trusting the instincts of her red paladin. "Let's move. Before our mysterious intruders do."
The hangar was still and silent as they entered, no sign of anything amiss. Blue stood calmly, seemingly unconcerned. Keith frowned. "Are they inside the Lion? There's nowhere else to hide."
Allura frowned as well, reaching out mentally to the Blue Lion. She sensed mild confusion, a great deal of surprise, but no real concern. It was enough to confirm the answer to Keith's question, however. "They are. How, I don't know. We'd better hurry."
Blue's head dropped, ramp opening in response to the Altean Princess's wordless request. Keith moved in ahead of her, darting silently from corner to corner as he peered around each one. Tension was evident in every line of his body, from furrowed brow to the way his hand clenched around the handle of his bayard. Allura followed, her staff held firmly as she pressed back against the wall, ready to cover him at a moment's notice.
Keith moved to peer around the last corner into the cockpit and abruptly threw himself backward as a streak of red and silver flashed through the space where his head had been. Metal shrieked against metal for an instant as Keith blocked and backpedalled desperately. Allura lunged forward to support him only to be forced abort her strike to avoid a plasma shot from a second unseen assailant. Then:
"Fuck! Keith! Hold!"
The voice was unfamiliar, deep and rough, and Keith blinked in obvious confusion, even as he pulled back his attack. Opposite, his attacker pulled back as well, stance defensive, and Allura, still holding a defensive position beside him, got her first good look at the intruders as the unseen shooter moved into view beside his partner.
Her breath caught in her throat, a feeling of wrong wrong wrong echoing in her chest. There was no mistaking the faces in front of her. The attacking swordsman was Keith, still staring down her Keith across two blades still held defensively. And the shooter was Lance, gun lowered but clearly ready to be brought to bear in an instant. But this was not her Keith, or her Lance.
For one, these two were older. Tall, broad-shouldered adults with stubbled chins and ropey muscles under the black undersuits of their armor. The armor itself was all but unrecognizable as Paladin armor, pitted and scarred and stained dark almost all over. And then there was the scars.
There were so many, some faded almost to invisibility, others still pink and barely healed. Lance bore one in particular that started at his hairline, ran vertically down the side of his nose, then veered sharply outwards across his cheek, just clipping the end of his lips. Keith meanwhile displayed a set of prominent claw-scars where something had ripped open the side of his head from the mid-cheek back, taking most of his left ear as it went, and the top edge of something was visible just above the neck of his suit before disappearing beneath the fabric.
Even their bayards were subtly different, Keith's blade longer and narrower, with more reach and finesse than that of the younger Keith standing beside her. Gone were the playful curves of Lance's familiar weapon, in favour of something sleek and deadly that screamed of precision.
Most unsettling, however, were their eyes. They reminded her of Coran and Shiro, darkened with pain and lined with exhaustion, and with a deep weariness about them that spoke of too many battles and too few victories, of too much loss and too little hope.
There was a tense silence inside the Blue Lion as the two sides stared each other down.
"Who the fuck are you?" Keith, her Keith, snarled after a moment, body still curled in a defensive crouch. After a cycle of fighting beside him, she could see his uncertainty and confusion. This situation was bizarre, and he didn't know how to react. For that matter, neither did she.
"Calm down. We're not your enemy." It was the older Lance who spoke, dismissing his bayard into its dormant form. "Literally the furthest thing from it, in fact." He rested a hand on older Keith's shoulder, the gesture seeming to be a signal as the other man released his own bayard. Even without their weapons, however, they both carried themselves with a wary tension, never dropping their guard.
"That doesn't answer our question." Allura stepped forward with a frown. "Who exactly are you, and how did you get inside the Blue Lion?" She demanded.
Older Lance sighed and grimaced, running a hand through his hair. "It's...complicated. And you're probably not going to believe us."
"Allow us to be the judge of that."
"Fine." The Cuban man huffed, eyes flicking to his companion. The shorter male gave a diffident shrug, leaving it up to his partner to do the explaining. "We are...Keith and Lance, obviously. But from the future. A future, I should say. One we'd like to try to avoid having happen again. We're in Blue because that's where we started from."
Allura and Keith exchanged stunned looks. Whatever possible explanations they might have expected, that had definitely not been on the list. "You're telling us you've come back in time?" Allura clarified cautiously, and received a nod of confirmation. "And how, exactly, did you achieve such a feat?"
A flicker of pain crossed tanned features. "...Blue quintessence. The Blue Lion's core is pure blue quintessence." Lance's tone was raw, and laden with guilt, and Allura's spine went rigid with realization.
"You killed the Blue Lion." Her voice came out in a snarl of fury at the thought of the total destruction of part of her people's legacy. "You killed the Blue Lion to come here!"
In an instant she was on the other side of the narrow passage, pinning the man to the wall with her staff pressed against his throat. She heard a shout of alarm behind her and felt more than saw her Keith moving back to back with her, holding the older version of himself at bay.
The older Lance, oddly, did not struggle, only regarding her with tired eyes. "We had no choice, Princess Allura. It was a last resort, our only remaining option."
"That remains to be seen." Allura growled. What possible excuse could there be for a paladin to deliberately allow part of Voltron to be destroyed?
"Then hear us out. Let us explain exactly why we're here, why we felt, why I felt that ripping the soul out of my Lion was our best chance for survival. Please." It was the grief in Lance's tone that gave her pause, the raw pain of someone who had just lost something utterly irreplaceable. Who meant it from the bottom of their soul when they said that there had been no other choice. Finally she stepped back, lowering her staff with a stiff nod.
"Very well. I will call for a meeting of Voltron, and we will all hear what you have to say." She gestured ahead of her toward the mouth of the Lion. "Don't try anything," she warned.
Lance gave a shaky laugh, rubbing his neck. "Wouldn't dream of it." He moved obediently toward the ramp, older Keith falling in beside him with a concerned look at his taller partner that was met with a lopsided smile.
Allura followed them out, wondering what the two would have to say.
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A light touch on his shoulder was all it took to startle Shiro awake. Eyes snapping open, he was met with the unexpected sight of Keith, in full paladin armor, with an oddly pensive expression on his face. "Keith? What's going on?"
"Meeting in the lounge in ten minutes. It's…" He seemed to struggle to find a word that would convey the situation correctly, finally settling on "...Important."
Swinging himself upright in the bed, Shiro glanced at the clock and blinked. "An important meeting at this hour? What happened?" Growing concern sent adrenaline surging through his veins, waking him more effectively than any stimulant he'd ever tried.
A complicated array of emotions played across Keith's face as he bit his lip uncertainly. The black paladin didn't think he'd ever seen the younger man so rattled. "Just...you'll see when you get there. And can you get Pidge from Green's hangar on the way? I still gotta wake up Hunk and Lance." All Shiro could do was nod in agreement as Keith turned and left, wondering what exactly had happened while he'd been asleep that could leave Keith so shaken while only qualifying as 'important' rather than an 'emergency.'
By the time Shiro reached the lounge with a sleepy, stumbling Pidge in tow, the others were already in attendance, judging by the muffled voices audible even from down the corridor.
"-last time, I will explain once the rest of the team is present! Now sit down!"
Allura snapping at the younger paladins like that? Maybe the situation was more serious than he'd been led to believe. He quickened his pace, drawing a mumbled protest from the green paladin leaning slightly against him for support, and strode through the doorway. "Sorry we took so long, it-" He ground to a halt physically and mentally as his brain caught up with what his eyes were seeing.
On one couch, Hunk and Lance sat together, the former fidgeting anxiously and the latter all but bouncing in place with nervous energy and excitement. Keith sat at the other end of the same couch, eyes flicking across the various people in the room. There was a tension evident in the way he held himself, a nervous wariness that Shiro knew only showed when he felt out of his depth and unsure of how to act.
Between the couches stood Allura, pacing slightly in agitation. She was still dressed in her nightclothes, a robe draped overtop, but she carried her staff in a position that suggested she would be ready to use it at a moment's notice. Behind her, Coran could be seen leaning against the far wall, eyes narrowed and expression unreadable. He carried himself more like a soldier than Shiro had ever seen from the usually cheerful Altean.
And on the other couch, the obvious object of the attentions of the other five, another Keith and another Lance. The difference between the two sets of paladins was painfully, jarringly obvious, from the cracked, blackened armor and pattern of scars to the way they held themselves as though anticipating a fight without any warning or provocation, and with a readiness of the seasoned warrior. As Shiro's jaw worked wordlessly, there was a quiet "What the fuck" from beside him as Pidge took in the sight as well that he couldn't bring himself to reprimand her for. Allura waved them over to the open seats and he hastily shook himself back to his senses, moving to sit beside Keith while Pidge dropped into the open space between himself and Lance.
As soon as they were seated, Allura began to speak.
"As you can see, we have some...unexpected guests. They claim to be Keith and Lance from the future."
"Whoa whoa whoa, time travellers?" Lance yelped, giving voice to the shock Shiro was feeling and undoubtedly the others as well. Beside him, Hunk looked more alarmed than curious.
"Dude, that's really dangerous! What if you cause a paradox? How do you know you're not going to destroy the fabric of reality?"
"Because we're from a future, not the future. And hopefully not the future that will play out if we manage to do what we came here to do." The older version of Lance shot Hunk an easy grin. "Even if it was, the, ah, method we used to get here is, by nature, one that allows us to make changes with impunity."
"About that." Keith spoke up suddenly from beside Shiro, startling him. There was a deep frown on his face as he stared across the room. "Allura said you killed the Blue Lion to get here. What did she mean by that?"
There was an outraged "You did what?!" from the younger Lance that nearly drowned out similarly horrified exclamations from Hunk and Pidge, and Shiro's jaw fell open once more in shock. The thought of Lance, any version of him, doing such a thing, was almost impossible to conceive of, the two having a tighter bond than any of the other lion-paladin pairs. "How could you do that?!"
Across from them, the grin dropped away from older Lance's face, and he scrubbed at his eyes tiredly. "Like I told Allura and Keith before, there was no other choice. We needed the pure blue quintessence her core provided to make the jump back here."
"Of course there was a choice! There's always a choice!" Lance raged, lurching to his feet, fists clenched and white-knuckled.
"Lance!" Shiro warned, trying to calm the younger paladin. It took a lot to rile the teen up, but when pushed over the line, his fury could be explosive. Shiro had only seen such an outburst once, and hoped to prevent a recurrence here and now.
The teenager would not be diverted, looking about two seconds from lunging across the room to attack his counterpart."You chose to kill Blue! She's our friend! Our partner! And you killed her!" He shouted, waves of fury rolling off him in the direction of his time-travelling self on the other couch.
"You think he doesn't fucking know that?!" Older Keith roared, surging to his feet to stand protectively in front of his partner, who had buried his face in his hands. "You think he's fucking happy about what he had to do? Listen to us when we say that there was no other choice. We lost! Our allies were dead, our families were dead, the Lions were destroyed, everyone except the two of us and the Blue Lion were dead! The only other choice we could have made was to let the Galra keep hunting us down like rats until they killed us too!"
A thunderous silence followed this revelation, seven pairs of wide eyes fixed on the future red paladin, whose chest heaved with the force of his outburst. As abruptly as he had risen, the man dropped back to the couch and wrapped his arms around the other Lance's shoulders, pulling the trembling man close and murmuring softly to him, too quietly for anyone else to hear.
Internally, Shiro reeled. That was the unaltered future? Total Galra domination and the deaths of not just nearly everyone in this room, but everyone and everything they cared about as well? A glance around the room told him that everyone else was just as hard-hit by the information as he was. Lance had stumbled back and all but fallen back onto the couch, face ashen, and Hunk looked as though he was going to be sick. Coran's expression was one of naked horror, and Allura's was much the same. Although he couldn't see Pidge's face from this angle, he could feel her trembling beside him and hastily put his arm around her, allowing her to bury her face in his side. On his left, Keith fumbled for his free hand, a terrified light in his eyes. He held them both tightly, trying to offer what comfort he could while drawing his own comfort from the contact.
For several minutes, no one spoke, the only sound in the room the breathing of its occupants and the barely-audible humming of the tired and battle-scarred version of Keith sitting across from them as he rocked his Lance slightly in his arms. Finally the blue paladin sat up, rubbing at his eyes. Shiro could hear a soft you gonna be okay? from Keith, which was met with a weak shrug and an equally quiet not really, but what else is new? The dark-haired time-traveller frowned but nodded, placing a soft kiss to his partner's forehead that had Shiro raising an eyebrow in surprise. If anything drove home how much these two had changed from the versions sitting beside him, that tender concern and affection cemented it.
Taking one last look around the room at his shell-shocked team, Shiro's resolve hardened. They would do whatever was necessary to alter the disastrous events that had led to such battered, broken men, alone and desperate instead of victorious side-by-side with their team and family. He straightened, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room. Dark eyes flashed with determination. "Tell us what we need to do."
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Keith shoved his spoon into his plate of food goo and stirred it mindlessly, tuning out the chatter around him. After Shiro had effectively pledged their support to the two visitors and asked what needed to be done, they'd barely gotten started when Lance's stomach-both Lance's-had declared it to be breakfast time. Once the laughter had died down, Hunk had declared, in a tone that brooked no argument, that they'd all strategize better on full stomachs and properly awake for the day. The Samoan boy had shooed them off to their rooms to shower and dress, offering the use of his own room for the time-travellers, with instructions to reconvene in the dining room in half an hour. Keith himself had been grateful for the opportunity to get the sweat of training off of him and strip out of his armor.
25 minutes after breakfast had been served, the group trying to plan their strategy had apparently already run into a minor roadblock, in that the missions they'd been running recently were apparently so minor that future Keith and Lance had all but forgotten them. They were arguing back and forth over their food as they tried to recall details that would help them figure out, from their perspective, exactly how far they'd gone back so they could predict the movements of the Empire. Pidge was taking rapid notes on a data tablet, cross-referencing with notes she'd made on the missions they'd run as she tried to line up the two timelines, and the others were offering any details that occurred to them, trying to spark the two's memories. With nothing to add to the discussion, Keith had quickly spaced out, thinking about the brief battle with his future self in the passageway of the Blue Lion and the way he'd barely been able to hold his defensive through his retreat against the older man's attack. His older self's fighting prowess was formidable, and it was a shock to realize how far he still had to go.
"-you say, Keith?"
The red paladin's head snapped up, abruptly refocusing his attention on the conversation going on around him at the sound of his name, looking around in confusion. "Huh? I didn't say anything."
At the end of the table, Pidge grimaced, pushing her glasses up her nose with one finger. "Um, sorry, I was talking to Future Keith. He was trying to explain something and I couldn't hear him over the dishes."
Beside her, the younger version of Lance gave an exasperated snort through a mouthful of food goo. "You guys need nicknames. Future Keith and Future Lance are too much of a mouthful, and just calling you Keith and Lance will get us confused. How about…" he waved his spoon in a slow circle "...Mullet and Sharpshooter?" Keith snorted. Trust Lance to come up with the most ridiculous names possible. Lance shot a frown in his direction. "What? Do you not like my nicknames?"
Keith rolled his eyes. "Those are our nicknames for each other, idiot. Pick something else."
Lance huffed. "Blue and Red?"
"Our lions' names. Try again." Across the table, their counterparts were doubled over in silent laughter, glancing back and forth between their younger selves and each other and exchanging affectionate, amused looks. The blue paladin raised an eyebrow as Keith glared at him, giving him a knowing look that had the teenager fighting not to let his cheeks redden.
Lance scowled, but went quiet, clearly thinking hard. His spoon waved distractedly through the air as he stared at the wall as though it held the answers he sought. Suddenly he slammed his hand down on the table with a yell of "I've got it!" causing Keith, who had just swallowed a mouthful of goo, to choke violently in surprise. He coughed harshly, trying to clear his airway with the help of a concerned pat on the back from Shiro. One of these days that boy was going to be the death of him.
Older Lance leaned across the table, grinning. "Oh? What names do you have for us, o younger version of myself?" He raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
Younger Lance shot his teammate a smug look. "Your nicknames will be...Alejandro and Kurogane." He announced.
His counterpart's grin was instantly wiped away by a look of shock. He straightened, turning to look at his Keith, who looked equally stunned. They seemed to hold a silent conversation in quirked eyebrows and small shrugs that left Keith baffled, before Lance turned back with an easy smile. "Alejandro and Kurogane it is. Now then," he leaned forward again to tap one of the tablets in front of Pidge in an obvious change of subject "Where were we?"
Pidge blinked, then cleared her throat and picked up the device. "Maybe this would be easier if you just told us what missions you do remember, and I'll tell you if we've done them yet or not. It'll give us a starting point to try to pin things down more precisely."
Lance, now Alejandro, nodded. "Right. Well, you said you've already gone toe-to-toe with Zarkon twice? Once to rescue Allura, the second to try to take him out? And the second time was the incident where Shiro accidently activated the emergency quintessential stasis feature and it took two months to find him?"
Shiro's face flushed pink and Keith gave him a light punch in the arm to remind him of how worried they'd all been, for nothing as it turned out. In order to protect Shiro from an attack that she had judged unsurvivable for her pilot, the Black Lion had activated an emergency feature that allowed her to 'store' her paladin as quintessence in amongst her own. Neither Allura nor Coran had ever seen the quintessential stasis feature in use, and had forgotten about it entirely until an exasperated Black had finally managed to get the message across, by way of Yellow and Hunk, that Shiro was just fine, thank you, and would the Alteans please get their small fleshy rears in gear and help her separate their respective energies again. The red paladin still hadn't quite forgiven all of them for two months of gut-wrenching fear over Shiro up and vanishing a second time, and he had no intention of letting them forget it.
"Yes, that's correct." Allura nodded, also trying to hide her mild embarrassment. "It's been quite a few cycles since then without any sign of Zarkon. I had hoped that meant we'd been successful in taking him out."
Kurogane grimaced, running a hand through his hair. "Only temporarily unfortunately." At the various exclamations of disbelief and dismay, he elaborated. "As far as we know, we did do a number on him, enough that we didn't end up facing him again for over four years. Problem is, he's not the only major player in the Empire. By the time he came back, Haggar and Lotor already had us on the ropes."
"Lotor?"
"Zarkon's son. Nasty piece of work, cunning, sadistic, and not handicapped by an obsession with the Black Lion." Kurogane's expression was grim. "Ideally, we need to take him out before he finishes consolidating control of the Empire. Which means we need to figure out how long we've got before that happens." He looked back over at Pidge and Alejandro, who nodded grimly.
"Right. So as I was saying, Zarkon's down for now, and you've already got Shiro back." Alejandro tapped his chin thoughtfully. "...Have you been to Chalthus yet?"
Pidge scanned down her list of places Voltron had operated in the last few months, frowning. "No, I don't think so. Why? What's on Chalthus?"
If Keith hadn't been watching closely, he might have missed the almost-imperceptible flinch. "Nothing critical. It was just a memorable mission." Alejandro waved a hand dismissively, but Keith couldn't shake the feeling that the time-traveller was hiding something. Chalthus, whatever that was, was more important than they were letting on. He filed the information away for later, intending to confront one of them if the opportunity arose.
If Pidge had noticed the evasion, she didn't push it, instead looking over her list. "Alright, so how long after getting Shiro back was the Chalthus mission?"
Alejandro hummed softly, glancing over at Kurogane. "About 6 months, I think? Yeah, about that long. Hard to keep track." He shrugged apologetically.
"Tell me about it." Pidge's fingers flew over the holographic keyboard, making rapid notes. "It's already been almost five months since we got Shiro back, which means we're about a month early of when we would have gone to Chalthus. How much time does that give us?" She peered up at them over her glasses.
Kurogane and Alejandro exchanged dark looks, the latter letting out a soft curse in a language none of the humans in the room recognized, although Coran startled slightly. Obviously this was not going to be good news. "Not as much as I'd like," the older Cuban said finally, tapping his fingers on the table. "We went up against Lotor for the first time just two months after Chalthus. It...didn't go well."
"Three months is still better than none at all." Hunk declared decisively, leaning over their shoulders to swap out their empty plates with extra portions. The yellow paladin had clearly noticed that the two time-travellers were worryingly thin under their muscles and armor, which made Kurogane's fighting abilities all the more impressive, and was taking it upon himself to try to remedy years of stress and self-neglect. "That give us some time to prepare, and do anything that need to be done beforehand."
Shiro nodded approvingly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. "Hunk's right. We know the when, now let's deal with the what. Pidge, new list." He shot a smile at the tiny green paladin, who smirked back and held up a data tablet to show a fresh, blank file waiting for input.
Alejandro blinked, seemingly caught off guard. Then he smiled, a small, oddly shaky expression that actually reached his eyes in a way that his earlier playful grins hadn't. "Right, okay. To-do list. Kurogane, buddy, help me out here, we can't afford to miss anything."
The other man fidgeted with his gloves, staring off into the middle distance as he thought. "Start with the critical things that won't necessarily be prevented by other alterations? Like the Marmora and the Weblum's Breath?"
"Can do." Alejandro pointed at Pidge's tablet. "First item, we need to talk to Kolivan. The Blade of Marmora has been or will be infiltrated by an Empire spy."
Keith straightened in alarm. With how paranoid Kolivan was about secrecy, it just didn't seem possible. The memory of his older self's earlier outburst flashed through his mind. Our allies were dead. "The Blades are in danger?"
"Can you be any less specific?" Pidge grumbled, her fingers moving rapidly to key in the item. "Do you know anything else we can tell him? Who or when?"
Kurogane scowled darkly. "If we did, we'd tell you, but we don't. We didn't find out until it was too late, when we went to the main base to...consult," the last word came out in an odd tone that had Allura raising an eyebrow, "and found them all dead. Murdered. We had to assume their deep cover operatives were also wiped out, because we never heard from any of them again."
The blood drained out of Keith's face, and he felt ill. The Blade had started to become something like family to him, treating him as one of their own due to the blade he had first inherited, then awoken in his own right. The thought of them being slaughtered by the Galra Empire…
"And we need them to be on the lookout for something specific." Alejandro continued, leaning over now to press shoulder to shoulder with his partner, the other visibly calming at the touch. "The development of a new weapon. I have no idea what its codename might have been while it was still in development, but the final name it was given was the Weblum's Breath."
Hunk looked alarmed. "That doesn't sound good. 'Cause, y'know, I've met a Weblum, right? Scary as hell. Based on that, a weapon with a name like 'Weblum's Breath' sounds…" He trailed off, but the fear was still evident in his face.
Alejandro shot the younger male a sad smile, looking far, far too old for his chronological age. "You're right to be worried. The Weblum's Breath is exactly what it sounds like. A civilization ender, a world destroyer, a planet breaker. Another thing we didn't know about until it was too late and couldn't stop." He took a deep breath, and now it was Kurogane placing a comforting arm around the taller man's shoulders.
"But this time we do and we can." Kurogane murmured softly, placing a kiss to the side of the other's head. "We won't let it happen again." Alejandro drew in a shuddering breath and nodded, drawing himself upright again.
"The other thing we need to do is make contact with the Icebringers, as soon as possible. They're a large resistance group, with connections to several others, and we'll need their help with a lot of things." He started counting off on his fingers. "Information about fleet movements, manpower for the final assault, quintessence training, Shiro's arm…"
Keith's head snapped up, looking quickly between Alejandro and Shiro, who looked as alarmed as he felt. "Wait, what's wrong with Shiro's arm?" he demanded. Had Shiro been in danger from his prosthetic the entire time?
"It's got an override hidden in it that Haggar can use to control Shiro with her quintessence." The scarred man's voice was grim but understanding. "But if anyone can disable it, or even replace the limb entirely, it'll be the Icebringers. They've got the know-how of dozens of different species available to them." Shiro looked green, but nodded, staring at his arm with an expression of wary horror on his face.
Allura leaned down to peer over Pidge's shoulder at the notes she had been taking throughout the conversation. "So we need to contact the Blade, and we need to locate and ally ourselves with these Icebringers. Is there anything else that would be an immediate priority?" She glanced up at the two on the other side of the table as they looked at each other, checking mental lists, before Alejandro shook his head firmly. "Very well. Follow me to the main deck, and we'll get things underway."