Chapter 32:Mourning (Honerva's POV)
Honerva stares at the casket with her husband's dead body in it. She had watched the battle that had ensued Dark Zarkon's death. Wincing, she remembers it was her son who had landed the killing blow, making sure Dark Zarkon could not be revived again.
And Honerva is fine with that. However, an ache in her heart still persists. Dark Zarkon had been her Zarkon at one point, but that point had long since vanished. Although she can't help but think if things had turned out differently…..
No. There is no way to change the past, and even if she could, well…. She doesn't even know what the consequences would be.
One of the Galra priests, a Galran dressed in purple robes and has the hood over his head, a symbol that represents grieving in the Galra community. It happens all the time whenever we hold funerals for all the fallen soldiers(only the Galran ones) in the past thanks to this war.
She chews her lip as the priest begins to speak, "In ten thousand years we priests have never had to attend the death of an Emperor for so long. Zarkon was a great and powerful leader and conquered many planets for our people to call home throughout this bloody war. His reign will be remembered as the longest and bloodiest in all our history, but also one that established the strength of our people, our will and strive to survive despite never being able to call a planet our true home again. These are dark times, but soon at the Kral Zera in just a couple of days, a new era will begin once the torch is relit. And let us hope that the poor soul who does can live up to Emperor Zarkon's legacy."
"Now let us have a few minutes of solitude to remember Zarkon, our greatest Emperor."
Bowing her head, she feels uneasy. She knows of the plans her son has to become Emperor and why he wants to do it. To stop this war and bring a new era of peace. However, it is not safe for him to do so. The Galra have been at war for centuries, sure the common folk might have no issue about the war ending and peace being brought. But the soldiers, commanders, generals, and admirals? Their whole career has been fighting, conquering, and having control of planets.
Peace will undoubtedly bring new troubles, and her son, while an expert strategist has never been in a leading role. And when he was, well, he didn't do much for the Empire except further his own goals at the time. Like the Syncline Ships for example.
It makes her want to stop her own son from going, but. He has long since been without his mother and he is older than most of the Galran, meaning his fighting is, well, superior then that of the Galra military.
Perhaps she should just wait for now, and see where things go and intervene only when she deems necessary. And since the Shiro clone(Kuron is what she personally likes to call him, since clones are their own being and most of the clones she tried to create of Shiro couldn't handle being a copy. And there were hundreds of them. But for some reason Kuron does? Or rather does not know it? Hard to say. But then again since she had run out of Shiro's DNA when Kuron was almost completed she had to give him some of her DNA so that could be a reason. Because it knows it isn't a complete copy.) is her window into her son's new life, it gives her some ease, but not much.
Lance's POV
Instead of sitting in his room, Lance decides to go to the gladiator arena and practice doing some sword slashing, cause you never know when you need to fight in close quarters. And guns won't work because they are more of a long range weapon.
Once he gets to the arena, he pulls out his bayard. It's still weird seeing it as red instead of blue, since blue is more of his colour than red. It changes to a red sword, like the one Keith always liked to use.
Getting into a stance, Lance pulls the blade closer to his body and shifts it to where it's slightly on an angle but still facing outwards.
"Castle put the Gladiator simulation on Level One."
A robot falls from the ceiling and onto the floor, it has a flat, long, wooden sword that looks like the one he has in his hand now. The robot gets into a stance, where the sword is up and close to the face and its knees are bent with its feet shoulder to the part.
Quickly he rushes to fight the Gladiator, putting his sword to the left side of him while he charges. The Gladiator leaps nimbly out of the way and successfully hits his back. Dang it! Lance hisses in his mind.
"Not very good with swords are you, Sharpshooter?"
He looks up and sees Marinette defending him with a black baton keeping away the wooden sword from touching her face. Then she pushes the Gladiator away, making the Gladiator's wooden sword hit it and fall. It falls through a circle, never to be seen again.
"Gladiator simulation level one complete, would you like to continue?"
Picking himself up, he mutters, "No thanks."
"Oh come on Lance, it was just one little robot with a wooden sword," Mari teases.
"Which I failed to beat."
"True, but swords aren't really your style. Why not try out any other gun forms that your bayard might have, since shooting is more of your style."
"Yeah but…."
"But what? And don't tell me this has to do with Shiro and the way he insulted you earlier. I already told him to back off, besides you're our sharpshooter, no one else. You're the person we depend upon to always hit their mark when all of us have failed. I remember hearing about how you freed Slav from the Warden's grasp. Noone else but you could have made that shot."
"I guess…."
Marinette shoves into him, "Stop it with the self hate. We all have our talents, strengths and weaknesses. And you're not the only one who has had self-doubt."
He looks at her, and his eyes widen in shock, "What?" It comes out as a squeak.
"Oh don't look so surprised. You must have noticed my nervousness when I was learning how to pilot the Altean pod, and my newfound confidence when I took over as Black Paladin."
"Well, yea but…"
"And I went through the same thing as Ladybug. I didn't think I deserved to be a hero or that I was the right choice, but Tikki stood by my side. I found confidence while fighting Stoneheart but it quickly shattered when I realized I hadn't caught the akuma like I was supposed to. I thought of giving the earrings to my best friend, but as luck would have it I couldn't. I had them with me when Alya got in trouble and that's when I decided to be a hero again. Because I couldn't let Alya or any other people get hurt, especially Alya. I finally managed to cleanse the akuma after figuring out toi fight with Chat Noir and found new confidence in me again."
Marinette looks straight at him, with her bluebell eyes. "So, I know how you feel right now. But the truth is I need you, like I needed Chat Noir by my side when I was on Earth. So you're not alone, and I got your back and so do the rest of our teammates Lance."
His breath hitches, maybe someone had said this to him before, but it coming from Marinette makes him speechless, especially since she shared something so personal. He wouldn't have ever imagined her to have doubts since he thought the nervousness was from it being the first time she ever was learning how to pilot spaceships.
He feels his face redden, like the time she had called him her right hand man.
"Well Lance, other than that, I just came to tell you that Allura has set up the recording station so we can do our messages. But don't forget what I said, we're in this together and I got your back. So don't worry about being perfect."
She smiles and then walks away.
Author's Note: It's done. Okay so I kind of forgot that the Olkari have to battle a Virus before the Kral Zera(in fact I kind of forgot it happened at all). So I had trouble writing, because I wanted to jump straight in the Kral Zera, and then I kind of had an idea but I got distracted by reading and I work at Wendy's now(because the motel was being stupid about hiring me if anybody was wondering why I was being depressed about not having a job. That's the reason). So I'm just going to skip over that part because I don't have any writing inspiration for it(but it does happen, I just don't feel like writing it into the main story, because again no writing inspiration for it whatsoever). Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter:)