A sense of déjà vu swirled up inside Shiro's chest as he watched Pidge walk into the room and take a seat between him and Hunk, giving them both a puzzled look.
The strict yet somewhat pitying looks from the teachers, the unsure policemen, the cups of hot chocolate Present Mic had sneakily prepared for them on the coffee table – everything an incomplete replica of the night they had first landed in this reality.
"Where are Lance and Keith?"
That was the only thing that broke the illusion. But also the pajamas and the interrogation room swapped for the UA teachers' lounge, not to mention the quiet, tired atmosphere Shiro wouldn't even have dared to think of with Keith and Lance around.
"I wish I knew," he breathed out in response.
Pidge tilted her head backward and gave the ceiling a dirty look. Taking it all in, contemplating for a second, perhaps asking herself just what she had done wrong to deserve this. "And here I was, wondering about the strange questions Lance asked me during dinner."
"...Questions?"
"About security systems. I assumed he'd just sneak into the town, take some time off from everything. Never did it even cross my mind he had teamed up with Keith."
A small smile forced itself onto Shiro's face – he would have never thought of that possibility either. Now, if only the boys had chosen a better time to show off their ability to work as a team.
"Do you have an estimate as to when they could have left?"
The police officer exchanged an unsure glance with Aizawa, receiving an empty look and turning back to Shiro with the same cluelessness written on her face that had been there three seconds ago. She lifted a hand to her forehead, tipped her hat backwards and began scratching the hairline at her temple, just until she figured out what to say – the truth, without seeming utterly incompetent, if that was possible.
"We have reasons to suspect your friends left the U.A. dorms between ten p.m. and one in the morning. The security cameras have been tampered with, however, making it impossible for us to pinpoint a more exact time frame."
"How can you give us a semi-exact time frame, then? If they sabotaged the security footage, I mean." Hunk straightened his posture and leaned forward. His furrowed eyebrows formed a thick dark line above his curious, worried eyes.
"Lance was last seen at ten and we assume they were gone by one a.m. due to the fact the 'explosion' outside the city took place at 2:17. As far as we know, your teammates don't have the ability to teleport?"
It took Shiro a second and a half to comprehend the officer was expecting an affirmation from them. He clumsily flicked his head to the side as a sort-of-head shake. Trying to comprehend what the word explosion meant in this context required all his self-restraint to the level he lost the ability to keep a completely calm exterior at all times.
"Then they needed at least an hour to get to that place from here. Meaning they must've left by one a.m. the latest." The officer nodded sharply. She seemed to have regained her sense of control over the situation, as the insecurity she'd displayed barely a minute ago appeared to be history by now, with all the leaning-on-the-desk and drilling glares she attempted to salvage the situation with.
Shiro managed to compose himself before Pidge or Hunk, meaning he got to be the one to cough out the question itching in the throats of each of them: "What explosion?"
"That's what the news called it," Aizawa sighed, "though I assume it was just your… spaceships that were mistaken for some kind of explosion when Keith and Lance took off to who-knows-where."
"They left Earth?" Hunk let out an audible gasp and turned his head to Shiro. Then to an unfazed Pidge, who took a sip of her hot chocolate before returning his gaze. And again back to Shiro. "You know what this means, right? They want to-"
"I know." He nodded before meeting their interrogators' gazes. "We think Lance and Keith are trying to find the alternate versions of our extraterrestrial friends, having probably figured they could help us return to our reality. Our ships rely on the ancient technology of their race. The Alteans know a lot more about traveling between realities than we do."
The grimace the police officer reacted with could have only been described as a cruel mixture between amusement and anger. She bit her lip, hoping that would help her urge to cringe to go away, and snapped her head around to look at the others. "Who again decided that these five aren't just delusional? Like seriously? Ancient alien technology capable of traveling between alternate realities?"
Aizawa pushed himself off the desk he'd been leaning on and took a step in the direction of the door. "You three can go now. We'll talk again later. If you find out anything about the two until then, tell us."
"I can't believe they really did this." Shiro ran a hand through his hair after stepping out of the room.
Confusion. Or rather helplessness. Nausea. He felt a heavy ball of frustration spinning around in his stomach like a round piece of metal in a centrifuge. The ground looked so inviting – just let himself sink down and hammer his fist against the ground in his imagination until a reasonable solution came to mind.
No. Had to compose himself. Hunk and Pidge expected him to tell them what they would do now.
"Maybe they'll actually find something useful?" Hunk reasoned.
"Let's hope they do. Until their return, we hold our position here and keep cooperating. The last thing we need is to test the heroes' patience even more."
"They're but children. Whether they're telling the truth or only what they believe the truth to be, you can't hold it against them to follow their convictions."
His colleagues eyed Toshinori with facial expressions ranging from exhaustion to polite agreement.
At last, Aizawa spoke up, preceded by a deep sigh. "I principally agree with you. But I think we both know we can't let them run rampant like that. Even if they consider their actions to be of utmost importance and priority."
"We can hardly lock them up and tell them to wait it out, though, can we?" Present Mic threw in.
Principal Nezu shook his head and shared a deep, meaningful gaze with the half-empty coffee cup secured between his paws.
"Their situation is lamentable, really. Truly unfortunate and so, so complicated. Like All Might said, most of them are not even adults yet, and yet they could recount having fought more than some pro-heroes. What they perceived to be their reality – regardless of its actual realness – is nothing less than burdensome. Having to fight every day to keep your family, your friends, your whole planet safe – safe from something you don't fully understand yourself, it seems… And then you get ripped away from all that, forced to take a break while everything you know might be gone by the time you get back."
A tide of glum silence washed over the room. Full of pity, sympathy, and the unspoken urge to help, an instinct etched deep into each and every one of them. They were heroes, after all, goddammit, their job description entailed assisting others wherever they could.
And yet there was a hint of something else, too. Of suspicion, indecisiveness. Of an intruding thought sneaking into their heads, encouraged by years of experience that told them second-guessing things was always a necessary step: What if they were being deceived? If the paladins just played the roles of puppets in some greater, intricate plot weaved by a malevolent mastermind?
Patience to wait things out never belonged on the list of pro-heroes' virtues.
"I'll make sure to have a talk with them," Toshinori intercepted the quiet, "lend an ear if they need to vent. In my humble opinion, it's completely logical they feel overwhelmed by their situation. And maybe in return, we'll get to understand them a bit more, too."
"Everything alright, Todoroki? You look tired."
It took Shouto a whole five seconds to avert his gaze from his soba and meet Midoriya's soft, worried eyes. And another two to realize Iida was the one who had spoken.
"I just had a weird dream. Couldn't fall asleep after being woken up by it."
"Make sure you don't read anything too exciting before bed, Todoroki. It's harder to drift off to sleep with raised adrenaline levels, and the sleep quality is worsened as well," Iida stated in return.
"Thank you. I don't remember reading anything of the sorts, though, for that matter."
Midoriya propped his elbows on the table and let his chin rest on his hands, still clamming his chopsticks in his right so that they protruded in front of his chin like chin-horns of a wayward, malformed, green-haired goat. He pursed his lips and stared off into the distance, lost in thoughts. "Weird. Can you remember what you dreamed about?"
Shouto's head-shake prompted the other to grimace and skillfully grab a piece of tonkatsu with the aforementioned chopsticks. There obviously was nothing else to be added to the issue, at least not anything helpful, he must've decided.
"Have any of you seen Shiro and the others today, by the way?" Midoriya changed the topic, "They didn't come to breakfast and I missed them in all our classes, too."
Iida nodded and hurried up with chewing the food in his mouth so he could speak. "Uraraka told me that Pidge said they had some stuff to discuss with the teachers. Apparently, Keith and Lance left to talk about asteroid samples with a scientist outside the city. She said they would be gone for a few days."
"I thought they are here to train their quirks?" Shouto's eyebrows disappeared into his bangs.
"They are. Just thought they would make the most of the opportunity and exchange information with the scientists of Japan as well, I suppose."
"Don't… Don't you guys think..." Midoriya began after a short pause. He gulped, then pressed his tongue to the wall of his mouth as if he was trying to track down the words that had gotten lost on their way out of there. "Don't you guys think there's something off about the five of them?"
A frown settled on Iida's face. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know." Almost inaudible muttering and a shrug. "I… I just noticed a few things about them that don't quite add up. Or rather… Or rather things that don't make any sense."
Shouto inched closer to the edge of his seat. Had he noticed anything strange in the past few days? No, he had not – not beside the weird dream last night. If what he had experienced actually had been a dream, that is… He couldn't quite remember, and he hated himself for it.
What had the voices said? Something about a princess. Yes, a princess had most certainly been mentioned. Was the woman the princess, or someone else? What was she the princess of?
He'd almost stepped on his mother's old radio when he'd woken up that morning. The radio had been sitting on his desk ever since he'd moved into the U.A. dorms. Objects don't move on their own. Not even at night.
It couldn't have been a dream.
But what was it then?
"Hmm. I don't think I recall witnessing anything particularly weird since the exchange students arrived." Iida shook his head. "You, Todoroki?"
"No."
No.
What was Midoriya getting at then?
"Iida. You remember them telling us they go to a school named Garrison, right? And they study space exploration there. Well, there exists no American school under that name teaching anything related to space."
"Could it be that we had misheard the school's name, Midoriya? That would explain it."
"Then there's this." Not letting himself get discouraged by Iida's doubt, Midoriya turned to his bag and rummaged through it until he had pulled out his phone. As he unlocked it and opened an app, he stuck out the tip of his tongue in concentration. "See?" An Instagram page became visible as the phone got shoved in front of Shouto's face. The account belonged to a man named Adam.
"Adam is engaged to a guy called Shiro. Who happens to look exactly like Shiro. Except older, with completely black hair and two completely ordinary arms," Midoriya proceeded to explain.
Shouto shifted his attention back to his soba and slurped up a bundle of noodles before glancing back at a Midoriya eagerly awaiting a reaction. "Maybe it's his brother."
"No. He's also called Takashi. And they look exactly, exactly alike. Because that is Shiro. He must be."
"My brother knows a guy from Romania who has a cousin with the same name as him. They supposedly look so similar they've been mistaken for twins several times," Iida suggested.
Midoriya could offer no good arguments in retaliation, it seemed. He cast an unreadable gaze into the crowd of cafeteria-visitors and buried his smartphone under the pencil case in his bag.
However, that had been enough to pique Shouto's interest. What were the odds Iida's idea was actually the case? Slim, but not any slimmer than the possibility that there existed an older, slightly different version of Shiro, living his best life back in the States. Or whatever it was Midoriya was suggesting.
"It truly is strange," Shouto affirmed.
"Right? And… I overheard them say several things that just don't sound right: Shiro mentioned some kind of mission and reprimanded Keith to cooperate and to play along."
A hundred ideas regarding possible explanations swirled around in his head, each one seeming more and more implausible than the last. And now that Midoriya had brought it up, Shouto could not forget about it, could not ignore the question-raising details of the almost-normal-appearing situation. Even if one would've given the five the benefit of the doubt and considered an exchange program a sort of 'mission', having to 'play along' still sounded wrong somehow. Then again, Midoriya was recounting things most likely taken out of context. But if one could argue other weird things have happened since the exchange students' arrival too, like Shouto's 'dream'…
Correlation does not equal causation.
"I think something is wrong. I don't know what, or if it even has anything to do with Shiro, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and Keith. But I want to know more, need to understand what's going on. I mean… What's the worst thing that could happen if I just asked Shiro about it?"
The hastily scribbled sketch laying on the coffee table was nothing less than messy. Egg-shaped figures supposed to be circles, small clusters of points, and several arrows navigating between them, one of which Pidge had finished drawing that very second.
"If they don't find anything on Arus, I can imagine them searching for a Balmera. Assuming their crystals would be a possible option to help us get home."
"Is there really no way we could ask the lions for help?" Hunk's gaze wandered to a Shiro bent over the drawing in absolute concentration. Brows furrowed, hair hanging in front of his eyes, the scarred nose slightly scrunched up and everything.
"No. We don't know how to summon them, and even if we did, we wouldn't be allowed to. You heard what a huge commotion Keith and Lance's take-off caused. It would be mistaken for a villain attack again. The guys will eventually return. We'll just have to wait for them."
"You know, I wonder how much time has passed already over there." Hunk exhaled deeply and leaned back, pulling his legs onto the couch to sit in a cross-legged position. "In our reality. Time is relative and all, it goes by differently in space… Will it be too late already by the time we get back?"
"We can only hope for that not to be the case. But I have faith in Princess Allura and Coran."
He felt a heavy, metal hand on his shoulder, followed by a set of warm, dark eyes that looked like broken fragments of space, an ink-pot filled with dark matter and stars and galaxies. They would return there. Now he was sure of it.
The huge windows of the dorm's common space offered a great view of the sky at dusk. Somewhere up there, Lance and Keith were currently zooming between the stars with Blue and Red, on the lookout for something familiar. Allura and Coran must've been up there somewhere as well. Along with Shay.
Hunk couldn't help but wonder whether or not their friends had developed differently in this reality. Or if they were completely different people. After all, all it took was one tiny change, one tiny decision unlike that of their reality, and boom, everything could be different. Maybe Allura's father had survived in this universe, maybe they weren't even needed as defenders of the universe. Perhaps completely different people had been chosen.
What superpower did the Hunk of this reality possess? More importantly, what was he like? Did he even exist or did his parents meet completely different people so that he never came to be? Was he friends with this reality's Lance?
The thought of his friend made Hunk slump, in turn causing Shiro and Pidge, also lost in thoughts, to look up.
"Maybe we could try telepathy. If the lions are part of us now, I mean-"
His mouth shut closed suddenly as he noticed the green-haired boy from the class approaching them. Mi… Midoriya. Must've been Midoriya.
"Mind if I join you guys?"
Pidge scooted to the side of her couch to make space. Midoriya carefully took a seat
"How was your day? Are you enjoying it here at U.A.?" He leaned back, but something insecure still lurked inside him, behind the confident demeanor and carefree appearance.
Nervousness, if Hunk had to make a wild guess. But why was he nervous?
"Good… Good. Kind of weird, with only the three of us here at the moment – Lance and Keith are visiting a nearby town to talk to an expert of space technology."
"Yeah, I've heard."
"But it's still awesome here. The teachers are so much friendlier than ours. Everything is much more casual in general."
"The teachers at Garrison, right? ...Do you miss it, though?" Midoriya glanced at Shiro. He absolutely wasn't content with Hunk and him being the only active participants of the conversation.
"Yes. A lot of things. It feels like ages have gone by since we've left. Or one year, at least." Shiro flashed a charismatic smile, one that could perfectly mask just how accurate he was being.
Midoriya beamed in response, but something still let Hunk's admittedly-somewhat-unreliable alarm bells go off.
The enthusiastic, calculative green eyes.
"I don't think I could ever spend such a long time on the other end of the world… Much less in space. My mom would get sick of worry. It's already bad enough."
"That's not that much of a concern to us," Pidge waved dismissively, "you know, a lot of our acquaintances work in the same field. My dad and older brother work as space researchers, too, for example."
There must've been a good reason this chat felt so staged to Hunk. Dubious and uncanny, like poorly done middle-school acting. He just couldn't pinpoint what felt so off. Yet the metaphorical sponge of concern inside his stomach kept growing bigger and bigger as it sucked all the worry up.
"Makes sense. I'm assuming you met Adam through the Garrison too, Shiro?"
The black paladin tucked his chin to his chest and glared at his lap for a very, very long moment filled with silence – what had begun as a nod turned into obvious, undeniable confusion. Shiro pressed his lips into a thin line once he looked up at last, just like his eyebrows. It came as no surprise to Hunk the leader of Voltron had a fight- instead of a flight or fight response. He did it out of instinct at this point.
"Adam?"
Heyo!
Thank you guys so much for reading this chapter, I really hope you enjoyed it!
I'm so sorry for the unannounced, year-long hiatus. I was in the hospital (still am) and could not update because of my health issues. I am doing better now and will try to post more frequently. Again, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.
As always, I'd love to hear your opinion about the story, so a comment would make my day. :) Thank you for reading, see ya next chapter!