Disclaimer: If you recognize the characters, not mine. Playing in Dreamworks' sandbox.
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There was no indication that this would be anything other than a team fight against a beast until they were lined up at the entrance. Shiro was in the middle, with Ch'varr beside him and Xi behind him. Matt was up front.
Then the master of ceremonies spoke over the loudspeakers. "Today, we will find the strongest among these gladiators. Those who survive the encounter with the mighty Myzax will go on to greater glory."
An enormous viewscreen materialized in the arena, showing the audience a large biped, holding a club with some kind of energy ball on the end. It swung the club and the energy ball took off, soaring around the arena before returning to its position on the base. The audience roared its appreciation.
The guard held out the sword to Matt. "You will be first."
Shiro could see Matt's body language—he was about to panic. Dimly over the thunder of the crowd, he heard the shaky, scared voice: "I'm not gonna make it! I'll never see my family again!"
"You can do this!" Shiro hissed back, but heard Matt's gasp of terror.
Shiro only hesitated an instant. He charged forward with a yell, shouldering the sentry and ripping the sword from it. "This is my fight!" He swung with precision, bringing the flat of the blade hard against Matt's knee, and his friend cried out as he collapsed. Shiro grabbed what would be his last chance and threw himself down over Matt. "I want blood!"
And just as the sentries came to pull him off, he whispered, "Take care of your father!"
The last he saw of Matt was Xi bending over him and Matt's stunned expression as he realized just what Shiro had done.
Keith was plagued by nightmares most nights. Dreams where Iverson had succeeded in breaking his bond with Shiro. Dreams where Shiro and the Holts had actually crashed and died. Dreams where Shiro got away from the aliens that had taken him, only to lose himself in the vastness of space forever, unable to find home again.
Tonight was the most vivid dream since the moment he realized that the Kerberos crew had been kidnapped. He was in some kind of stadium, large crowds seated above him and cheering as he stepped forward to face an opponent. He was keyed up—something important had just happened. He had just taken an action that he might regret later, but he felt he had no choice. He had to help Matt in the only way he saw possible.
The opponent was large, head and shoulders above him. It swung a club, sending a sphere of energy around the arena in a circle wider than the various obstacles littering the floor. Keith's eyes narrowed as he heard an odd shift in the sound of the weapon as the sphere returned to the club and shrank in size briefly before expanding again. At that point the alien sent it out once more.
Keith's hand tightened around a sword and he waved it back and forth, getting a feel for its balance, such as it was. This was a poor weapon, mass-produced and clunky, but it was sharp. As he watched, the alien sent the sphere out a second time, openly grinning at him in anticipation. But as there had been no signal for the fight to begin, he waited.
The bond rose within him, Keith's presence united with his. Keith's mind zeroing in on the weapon he faced, Keith's hand on the blade.
The third time the sphere returned to the base, the sound changed again and the alien waited for the size of the sphere and the sound to return to normal before sending it out again. That was the key. This weapon had to recharge.
The blast of sound, like cannon fire, echoed through the arena, and the alien charged toward him, swinging the club to release the sphere. He dodged to one side immediately, noting how the sphere veered to follow him, and timed a leap behind a stone slab lying on one side so the sphere crashed against it. The alien pulled the projectile back to itself and swung again.
He could do this. Keith was with him.
This time he waited as the sphere hurtled toward him, then jumped up on the slab and leaped out of the way. The sphere tore a chunk out of the wall behind him and he heard the shouts of the spectators closest to the impact as he tried to make it behind the next obstacle—
The energy ball hit him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground as pain seared across his back. That had been much faster than he expected, but now was his chance. He got to his feet and charged the monster, swinging his sword as a diversion before plunging past it and whirling to slice its legs where human tendons would be.
The creature howled in pain and stumbled when it tried to move. He had gotten one leg and it was hamstrung, most of its mobility gone. He could hear the roar of the crowd shift in surprise and then eagerness at the possibility of an actual challenge to the reigning champion.
He switched to defense. He had to evade three times before he could attack again. He felt a growl start deep in his chest and rise through his throat, filling him with a new reservoir of stamina.
Shiro counted and ran and eluded. This time the second attack got him in the thigh, limiting his mobility for the third dodge. But the timing paid off and the next sword strike connected with the shoulder the alien used to throw its weapon. But it caught him around the neck with its other hand and sent him rolling.
One more cycle…one more cycle… He planned his path to bring himself around to the monster's off side. The crowd seemed to realize he was going the wrong way and shouted concern. The alien's swings were weaker, the sphere moving with less force. But he stuck to his plan…he had to lure the alien into swinging wide…
The alien sent its third attack, the aim off, and Shiro was already moving in. As he had hoped, the alien moved to swat at him with the club itself. He used the sword to bind up the club and wrench it from the creature's hand, sending it flying across the stadium floor. The energy sphere went obediently to its base, then fizzled out without its wielder. He immediately brought the sword to his opponent's throat. "Yield!"
The crowd bellowed, approving the conquest but demanding death. Shiro stared at the creature. "I don't want to kill you. Will you yield?"
It growled at him. "Foolish little unknown. If you kill me now, you will not risk facing me again. I will not be so merciful next time."
"I'll take that chance."
Keith shot upright, gasping for breath. His hand flew to his shoulder, aching from the blow it had received, and then he felt his leg where a bruise ought to be.
His throat closed around sobs as he realized what he had seen through the bond. It was worse than he had imagined, so much worse. Shiro wasn't fighting in some alien army. He was being forced to fight for his life for sport, for the entertainment of those who had abducted him. Keith scrubbed at his face, letting the tears fall as he tried to absorb this terrifying revelation.
But he had a strong impression that Matt Holt, at least, was now safer than before. That was one tiny silver lining to cling to.
Keith lay back down, feeling that odd warming purr in his core again, calming him.
Colleen Holt disconnected the call, feeling depressed. It always hurt to speak with the Shiroganes, but she would not stop the weekly communication. They were the only ones who could talk to one another, support one another through their grief of knowing that the chances of their loved ones ever coming back home were slim at best.
The only recent thing was that Shiro's soulmate had sent a message to them. That gave them more proof of what Katie had overheard, that Keith knew Shiro was alive due to the soul bond. He had asked them to contact her because Shiro's emotional state indicated that Sam and Matt were still alive.
At the dining table, Katie was busy typing on her laptop, composing everything that would be needed to make one Pidge Gunderson look good enough for the Garrison. Transcripts, medical records, awards and extracurriculars were all being created along the lines of Matt's history to make a very tempting recruit for a future comms specialist.
Colleen noticed Katie pause and take a deep breath. She reached over and took her daughter's hand. "Are you sure about this?"
Katie's expression hardened, her chin jutting just like Matt's. They had both inherited their mother's stubborn streak.
"Yes, I'm sure. The Garrison is the only place with all the information about Kerberos on site. Getting access to their system and records is the fastest way to learn what they're hiding."
"I understand that. But, darling…even if you find undeniable evidence that they were taken by aliens, how is that going to help? Who knows how far away they are by this time?"
Katie's eyes turned steely. "Oh, I have ideas…"
Myzax had been a mistake.
Haggar paced in her quarters, grinding her teeth in frustration and sending little sparks of quintessence into the air around her fists as she clenched them. She had gained no new information from the fight and now the prisoner was the newest sensation in the arenas. It would be difficult to pull him for prolonged experiments without questions being asked.
There was a soft beep outside her door and she barked, "Come in!"
The door slid open and a druid moved into the room, bowing briefly. "Mistress, you wished to be informed if Prisoner 117-9875 had any change in status. He is currently in the arena infirmary being treated for injury."
"What happened?" Haggar started into the hallway and the druid followed.
"His opponent was a Roztiel. He was bitten on the shoulder and took quite a bit of venom before bringing it down."
"Did you observe any change in the quintessence?"
"Nothing new, mistress. The quintessence strengthened, as usual, and continues to come from the same direction."
That had been one of Haggar's first lines of questioning: where was the other anchor to this connection? The best they could determine so far was that it came from the same general location as Sector X-9-Y, where the prisoner and the other two had been collected.
They arrived at the infirmary and entered. Ulaz was standing over the prisoner, running a dermal repair unit over his bare shoulder. The medic looked up when she entered, giving the bare minimum of greeting. "Mistress."
She was not offended; she had long ago observed that Ulaz meant no disrespect. He was this brusque with everyone. She strode forward and pushed him away, looking closely at the prisoner with both her eyes and her senses.
"The venom has been expunged from his system, but there should be three quintants of rest to give the muscle tissue time to fully recover."
Haggar nodded at that. "Tell the overseer five quintants. I wish to examine this specimen more closely."
Ulaz nodded at that, knowing exactly what Haggar meant. "Yes, mistress. Three quintants is my recommendation."
She understood the implied warning. Ulaz was almost certainly doubling the usual recovery time because he still didn't know a great deal about the prisoner's physical makeup. Setting aside five quintants meant that she could most likely begin her tests in two.
She noticed the prisoner was listening closely. His head was still bowed and his posture slumped, but there was a tenseness to him that had not been there before. He understood the time discrepancy and that something was about to happen.
She decided to give him some more to think about. "Take him to my lab. Cell Seven."
Shiro paced, sharing his tension with Keith. His soulmate's response was a calming aura of care. Shiro was relieved that Keith seemed to have recovered from the trauma of the attack at the Garrison. He was hidden, able to support himself thanks to the grant money from Dr. Hooper's study, and had found some kind of project to investigate.
Keith's company was keeping Shiro from losing it. This was the beginning of the third day in this woman's lab. He would give a lot to be back in his regular cell—there he had four walls and a full door to give the impression of privacy. Here three of the walls were made of thick glass, transparent and open to view for anyone in the room. He felt too self-conscious to maintain his exercise routine and spent more time on the bed, sinking into the soul bond. But his body cried out for movement and he compromised by pacing the length of the cell for long periods. On the plus side, the pacing seemed to bother the hooded ones, judging from their frequent sidelong glances.
The main doors slid open and the woman with white hair entered with half-a-dozen more of the masked hooded figures and four guards behind her.
Shiro instinctively moved to put his back to the one solid wall. The woman's mouth curved up into a smile that had no warmth in it at all.
"It seems our guest is reluctant. Please help him join us."
Two guards entered, seizing his arms and dragging him out. Shiro resisted, knowing it was useless: these Galra were as a rule much bigger than he was and it was four on one. But when one of them backhanded him across the jaw for struggling, the woman intervened.
"Careful, you fools! He must be ready to return to the ring in three quintants."
So, whatever was going to happen could not damage him too much.
That was cold comfort.
The guards dragged him over to a platform, tilted nearly vertical, and pinned his arms and legs in place. A masked one touched a control on a panel nearby and Shiro felt bands spring in place over his wrists, chest, and ankles. He pushed against the restraints, but there was no give to them at all. He felt his unease tip toward fear…
…and Keith's presence surged forward, ready to help him.
The woman in charge was watching him closely and appeared to be disappointed about something. The hooded figures around her seemed to be waiting for something, as did the guards. When two of the guards traded glances and one shrugged, Shiro realized.
They wanted him to panic. They wanted him to struggle and beg for mercy. They wanted a show.
He would be damned if he gave them one. Just like in the arena, his only goal was survival.
"So, let's see what you're made of, prisoner."
She lifted her hand. Shiro had a millisecond to register that some kind of black lightning was leaping from her fingers before he was struck with blinding pain. He arched against the restraints, unable to breathe enough to scream.
NO! Keith pushed into the bond and Shiro felt the worst of the pain level off for himself even as Keith's presence registered it.
Keith! Don't! Shiro tried to send him a warning.
I am not letting you suffer alone, Shiro! Keith rebuffed it, his determination powering back.
The pain stopped as the woman, the witch, broke off her attack. She studied him in silence for several long minutes.
Shiro drew in ragged breaths and stared back as best he could, given that her hood hid her eyes. He could feel Keith, recovering more quickly than he expected. His soulmate braced himself.
One of the hooded figures twitched. "Mistress?"
The witch pursed her lips. "You are going to be an interesting challenge." She raised her hand again.
It was definitely a second presence.
Keith had begun keeping track after the third or fourth time he had felt that comforting presence that purred at him and warmed him. It was separate from his communications with Shiro, though it seemed to respond when the bond was filled with stress and fear. He took the large corkboard that was in the house and stripped it of the previous tenant's attempts to track Mothman's influence over Chinese money-laundering schemes. He tracked when he could feel the presence most strongly on its own: a bit at sunrise and the few times there had been rainfall.
There was also the list next to the graph showing the instances when the presence had seemed to join the soul bond, starting with the night close to a month after he had arrived here.
The night Keith had fully recognized what Shiro was being put through and realized that he was powerless to stop it. The night that Shiro had been forced to kill his opponent because the alien refused to recognize the concept of surrender. The night that the opponent had run onto Shiro's sword in what was clearly a suicidal move. The first time the hooded things brought him into a lab facility and tortured him, and every time since then.
The next time it rained, the storm blew in from the northwest and Keith noticed it took a while before the presence made itself known. The time after that, he felt the presence for an hour before the rain arrived, coming from the southwest.
Interesting that it had a definite direction when water was involved. Keith began taking the hoverbike out, mapping the area and trying to trace a potential source for this strange but welcome energy.
It was almost sickening, really, how easy it was. Pidge Gunderson was accepted into Galaxy Garrison on the strength of his records and a single telephone interview, in spite of being a year younger than the average first-year cadet. Pidge Gunderson arrived and took up residence in one of the few single dorm rooms, previously arranged by some careful incursions into the student database.
And then Pidge Gunderson was assigned to a team with an amiable engineer and a loudmouth pilot who only just made the cut because a more talented pilot had gotten himself expelled. Pidge did what he had to do as far as classes and training, but no more. Pidge spent most of his evenings building his array for picking up alien signals and then sneaking up to the roof and listening in. Every evening he took notes in a diary, gradually decoding a few basics like the numbering system. Much to his disappointment, there was never a mention of any Holt or Shirogane. But the tantalizing repetition of a single word drew Pidge's attention.
What was the Voltron?
Thank you as always for reading!