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They were calling him "Champion".
This made Haggar's position harder. It was normal for the druids to take successful gladiators and test out enhancements that could be applied to Galra in leadership positions. But Prisoner 117-9875's fame was spreading since his defeat of Myzax. He was a regular in the main arena and winning every match. Taking him out of rotation beyond what was necessary for healing his wounds would attract attention, and she did not want Zarkon to take notice of this alien until she understood the nature of his strange quintessence.
Her lord's obsession with extending and strengthening his life force was second only to that of locating the other pieces of Voltron. The drive to harvest more quintessence in greater amounts, to refine and distill it in greater strengths, was the heaviest burden on her and the Komar. If Zarkon knew of this alien's ability to host two powerful quintessences at once, he would insist on immediate answers instead of allowing careful study.
She had to rely on a few of her most trusted druids to watch Champion's matches and report the occasions when his quintessence flared in that meld that never completely left him. They had achieved similar results by pulling him out briefly, usually grabbing an extra day or two after an injury was healed, and subjecting him to their own quintessence-borne attacks.
She could observe it. She could make it react. But Haggar was no closer to understanding how this situation existed. It defied every fact collected through millennia of studying the energies of the universe. And Zarkon had finally realized that a new gladiator had earned a name from the crowds that packed the arenas and wanted to see him in action.
Then her luck changed.
Today's fight had one basic problem. His opponent was twice his size, which was the norm, but reasonably agile, which was unusual. Shiro's main advantage was his familiarity with the layout of the arena and its obstacles—they had not been moved for days. He ran, jumped, tumbled and flipped to avoid the alien's massive claws and fists, pinpricking with strike-and-run attacks whenever possible. The alien had over a dozen cuts from Shiro's sword, all bleeding, but not quickly enough to be a drain on its strength.
And not quickly enough to be a merciful killing.
Shiro dodged yet again, taking a chance when the alien overextended in trying to catch him. He ran and threw himself to the ground, sliding between the opponent's legs and swinging the sword. The crowd roared in appreciation for his "signature move" and he gave a mental eyeroll. How could this society be so impressed that Shiro understood basic anatomy and looked to hamstring his opponents as soon as possible?
He successfully severed one tendon and the alien howled in pain. That was a major shift in his favor, as the alien could no longer move with speed. He backed out of range of the long arms.
"Will you yield?" Shiro always tried to convince his opponent to stop at this stage.
The alien howled again and said…something.
Great. Translator failure. It didn't happen often, but once in a while there was an alien whose brain structure was too different for the Galra translation process to work. These fights more often than not ended with Shiro having to kill the opponent simply because he could not communicate that surrender was an option.
The alien made a sudden move at him, pushing its weight from its uninjured leg. Shiro dodged in between a couple of the stone slabs to avoid its claws then drove his sword out from his defensible position as his opponent staggered, landing on the injured leg. He felt the blade catch on ribs as it threaded them and found the alien's heart.
Shiro inhaled sharply and pulled away, barely hearing the roar of the crowd over the blood rushing in his ears. As he watched, the alien swayed and clutched at one of the row of stone slabs, toppling it and starting a domino effect.
With Shiro still in between two of them.
He pushed to the opposite side, trying to sprint through so the slabs would be between him and the alien in case its death throes were more dangerous than Shiro had assumed. He was nearly clear—
And then he was pulled to the ground, pain exploding along his right arm.
Keith skimmed over his path along the cliffs in the early-morning sun, driving back to the caves for another day of exploration. The bond hummed, wavering in intensity. Shiro was in yet another fight, but his mental state indicated that it would be challenging, but not impossible. Keith kept a light touch on their connection as he headed for his current destination.
Every time he found a new cave and mapped it, he wondered yet again at the imaginations of the people who left the carvings. The styles varied, the stories varied, but he had already found two commonalities: a mystical blue lion and a date coming up in several months that foretold an arrival. As he wandered the caves, his skin tingled with the strength of the strange energy, calling him in a constant rumbling undertone: find me find me find me.
His corkboard in the cabin was now littered with pictures and maps, sticky notes and string connecting wherever there was a link. He was already making plans in his head for what he might need on Arrival Night. He needed to purchase the best binocs he could afford in order to watch the skies. He needed to travel as lightly as possible to make maximum use of the hoverbike's speed, but he had to plan for any possibility. He needed to explore the abandoned town more for weapons or other useful things. He needed—
From out of nowhere, excruciating pain shot up his right arm. His hand lost the grip on his hoverbike as he screamed in agony. The bike veered sharply from the path and suddenly he was airborne as he went over the edge of the cliff.
Keith fought to clear his head: divide, compartmentalize, worry about Shiro AFTER you survive this!
He battled the pain, trying to curl his unresponsive fingers around the handlebar again, and focused on the ground that was coming up way too fast. He had to time this perfectly if it was going to work…
In his head the unknown energy thundered through like a roar, drowning out the pain just enough for him to concentrate.
NOW!
Pop the antigrav to create bounce. Kick in the accelerator to send momentum forward instead of up. Keep control of the steering so the hovercells could recalibrate for the return of the ground underneath.
He barely hung on as the bike swerved and shot forward several dozen yards, steering with the wrist instead of the useless hand, but managed to bring it to a stop. He unclenched his other hand from the handlebar and brought it to his face, scrubbing at the tears he found there. His entire body was shuddering from the twin floods of his own adrenaline and Shiro's anguish. His right hand still felt pulverized and he tried his best to send back his support, to let Shiro know he was there, with him, no matter what.
He looked back to the top of the cliff and swallowed hard at how close he had come to being killed. His mind immediately went over what he had done with the bike, memorizing it against the possibility of practicing the move in safer circumstances in case he needed it to get away in the future.
But that was for later. Right now he had to take shelter in one of the lion caves and concentrate on Shiro.
The now-familiar purr reverberated in his essence, stronger than ever.
Handlers came in and lifted the slab off his arm. Shiro kept his eyes closed—he didn't want to see whatever might be left of it. He tried to distance himself from the pain but his focus was shaken when he realized Keith had come very close to crashing a vehicle. It was the Garrison all over again, where Keith's injury had made him crash a sim. Except this time Keith had come too close to dying.
They shoved him onto a stretcher, tossing the useless hand across his body. Shiro bit into his lip, drawing blood, as he stifled a scream.
This was worse than seeing it. He could feel the wrongness, the places where shattered bones shifted and the spreading wet warmth of his blood. It rolled on its own as they turned a corner and Shiro fought down the bile rising in his throat.
Then a familiar voice hissed, "In here! Quickly, he's losing blood! Get it ready!"
Hands shifted Shiro's body to a stationary table and straps came down across him. He opened his eyes and recoiled at seeing several of the hooded things hovering over him, sending purple lightning dancing over him.
The voice came again. "The prosthetic is ready. It hasn't been tested thoroughly, but the Champion can handle that for us." One of the hooded figures leaned over him. Her white hair spilling down like a waterfall from where her face should be confirmed who it was. Haggar, the torturer. She stroked Shiro's cheek with one hand and he jerked away, trying not to imagine what new horrors she would have in store for him now that he was no longer able to perform.
"Yes, this will be a most interesting experiment. Stabilize him, take the limb, and install the replacement."
After the devastating injury to Shiro's arm, Keith's focus shifted. He still searched the caves every few days, but now he had a different plan. He had to try and get to Shiro, which meant finding a way to leave the planet.
The Garrison was a non-starter. Even if they were the type of institution that gave second chances, the Garrison had tried to break his bond with Shiro. He would not risk approaching them.
But the Garrison was Terra's primary facility for training people for space missions. The few smaller institutes didn't have the Garrison's resources—the one in Mumbai was the only one to have a team make it to Mars so far.
And even the Garrison had only just dared to try Kerberos last year, with Shiro's mission. Humanity would take decades, possibly centuries, to leave its own solar system.
But something was coming. All the carved stories on the cave walls pointed to something arriving from deep space in just a few months. If he could find them, he might be able to convince them to take him when they left again.
He just had to find them before anyone official did.
He didn't know how many hours the process had taken. It might have even been days. All he did know, once he swam up from unconsciousness, was that his throat was raw from screaming and something was hideously wrong with his arm. And before he had time to begin recovering, to adjust to the constant sparking jolts between the flesh of his arm and the tendrils of metal that threaded into his elbow and shoulder joints, he was pulled out of his cell and into a training room where a Galra with a similar prosthetic began showing him how to use it.
He barely slept for several nights after the procedure, lying awake in paranoia. Were those tingles of energy in his arm spreading further? Was the prosthetic designed to infiltrate his body, assume control of his heart, take over his mind? The single thing that kept him sane against the living nightmare was Keith's presence, reassuring him and steadying him.
I will find you. We will find each other again. We will survive this. We will not be divided.
The bond, and Keith's constant encouragement through it, sustained him as they took him out of his cell and thrust him into the staging room at the arena. He looked at the array of weapons on the walls with haunted eyes, at the sword that had become his preferred weapon.
He looked down at the smooth metal hand that had clenched involuntarily, just as his own hand might. He lifted the fist and watched as something in him flexed, causing a purple glow around the hand.
Ignoring the armory, he walked back to the door.
Two days. It was two days until the Arrival.
Keith had everything he could possibly think of ready. His excursions into the abandoned town closest to the cabin, his original destination when he had run from the Garrison, had yielded excellent results. He found enough parts to bring the hoverbike into top condition. He didn't find much in the way of guns or other weapons, but the remaining inventory in a hardware store had enough ingredients to rig some homemade explosives in case he needed them. He was going on the assumption that whatever was coming could land anywhere in a hundred-mile radius around the caves, which meant that the Garrison could easily track it.
He was restlessly polishing his knife, the strange symbol on the hilt unwrapped for the moment, when he felt a spike of fear from Shiro slam into him. He laid the knife aside and closed his eyes, concentrating on the bond and ready to flood it with all the support he could muster.
And, for the first time, he was awake and could see what Shiro saw.
The white-faced Galra medic took down the two guards without warning, then did something to his metal arm. He gave a name—Ulaz—and claimed that something called the Blade of Marmora was on his side. He released Shiro from the cuffs holding him down and told him he had to return to Terra and find a blue lion. Shiro had to get Voltron before the Galra Empire could.
Shiro was almost there when he collided with a transport cart and alerted a pair of sentries. He ran and opened the pod that was waiting, tossing one sentry away from him. But the drug in his system was slowing his reactions and the second sentry grabbed him from behind. He had failed, he wasn't going to get away—
And the explosion knocked him into the pod, cracking the sentry in half as the doors closed on it and the pod launched.
Keith jerked into awareness as Shiro slid into unconsciousness. The bond was rising within him, almost singing in anticipation. Of all the scenarios he had imagined when he devised his desperate plan, not once had he come close to the truth of who was arriving.
Shiro was on his way home.
Pidge Gunderson had earned a reputation around the Garrison. Every single time someone mentioned the Kerberos failure in his hearing, he argued. He claimed that there was no evidence at all to support the claim that Captain Shirogane had crashed. He questioned the disappearance of Shirogane's soulmate, who would have been able to prove the pilot's survival. He lambasted the Garrison's budget-driven decision against having a rescue team in place on Mars. These arguments and the rumors they produced had caused him to be pulled aside by a few of the teachers and only the threat of being sent to Commander Iverson would make him shut up.
It was another strange thing about this strange student. People had noticed that he never mentioned his family, never got letters or care packages or phone calls. He was almost always alone unless doing a team exercise: retreating to his room, the library, or sitting by himself at meals.
Pidge Gunderson continued to be a poor fit with his team. McClain and Garrett were already fast friends and they tried, each in his own way, to include their third. He ignored them outside of training. He continued to slip away at night and scan the heavens for communications. He listened desperately for any hint of a familiar name, jotting down any repeated references and trying to decode them. But the only thing among the chatter that kept cropping up was "Voltron". Judging from the varying tones of voice, these aliens were searching for it and getting more and more desperate.
And then it was the first day of sim training under Iverson's direction. Pidge ground his teeth as they proceeded to run the Kerberos rescue scenario, wondering why such training had not been happening before the mission was launched. And then he failed to hide his frustrations with his teammates, snarking as Lance bragged about his piloting skills just before crashing spectacularly. Hunk had a weak stomach for the motion of the sim, eventually puking in the gear box. And once they emerged, Iverson was there to berate them for their miserable showing.
Later on, sitting under the stars, Pidge would admit to himself that Lance had done him a favor, silencing him as he began to rant at Iverson about Kerberos. Staying under Iverson's radar was a priority—the commander was a bully and went for the easy solution too often, but he wasn't stupid.
And then the chatter in his headphones picked up exponentially. He focused, trying to tease more meaning out of the rapid gibberish that sounded almost panicky over the Voltron. Was it something they were searching for? Had they found it or lost it?
"You come up here to rock out?"
Deep in a cavern, the river flowing sweetly in front of her, she waited as she had waited for millennia. There had been a few times while she waited when the call surfaced from a distance, on some other area of this planet from her resting place, from the nearest neighboring stars. None had ever come close enough to feel her presence in return.
Until this little, divided one felt her and began seeking her.
She was amused and puzzled by this one. His quintessence was indeed the stuff of paladins, but not for her. This one was more likely to fit her sister of Fire. Or of Sky. But her sisters were far away and she was here. She reached out to the little one, offering a thin trickle of comfort and companionship, and was surprised when he responded in kind.
It was a fascinating thing, how his quintessence was so firmly entwined with another's that they would never stand apart and alone again. This joining of two into one was something she had never seen before arriving on this planet; it was unique to this species as far as she could tell.
The little one's other half approached. She observed as their bond, already strengthened many times over by the immense distance, swelled in power as the distance closed. She understood that this was a new thing.
She wondered if they would be able to survive it once they were reunited. Or if she could help them survive it.
Thank you as always for reading!