"That's right, Champion. Do what you were made to do."
His hands were shaking in a way that they never normally did when he held his bayard, and even if they weren't, he wasn't sure he could have brought himself to fire. Not at Shiro.
But this wasn't the Shiro they knew. Their Shiro didn't have eyes that glowed a sickly purple-blue and narrowed with a cruel smile. Their Shiro would never have thrown Pidge into the wall with such force that her helmet cracked and she slumped to the ground unmoving. Their Shiro would never have grabbed Hunk's arm and bent until the yellow paladin screamed and sobbed and pleaded, then kept twisting until the bones shattered under his hands. Their Shiro would not have ripped Allura's side open with his arm glowing a blinding magenta, and how she had avoided being run right though he didn't even know.
Their Shiro would not be trying to kill them.
He was kneeling, a protective shield in front of their injured with the metal wall of the corridor at their backs, levelling his gun at the Black Paladin and not daring to fire with his shaking hands for fear of hitting Keith as the Red Paladin went toe-to-toe with his brother, red bayard against Druid arm. This was no sparring match, but a life or death battle. And in the background, Haggar laughed mockingly as she controlled Shiro, forced him to fight against them.
Then suddenly Keith was on the ground, knocked off his feet by Shiro's greater strength and size, and Shiro was on top of him, glowing arm reaching to grasp the younger male by the throat.
"Finish him."
The air was filled with the odor of burning flesh and Keith was writhing, struggling, burning his hands against the bright metal as he fought to get free of the crushing, searing grip on his neck, mouth working futily as he tried to breath. There were tears on his cheeks, despair and fear in his eyes. Desperately, Lance aimed his bayard, tried to will his hands to stop trembling.
Shiro lurched backward, a look of horror on his face.
For a moment, there was confusion as Keith gasped for air, Haggar shrieked in outrage, and Lance stared down the barrel of his bayard and looked Shiro right in the eye. One was still the ugly blue-purple of Haggar's magic, the other his normal grey. His arm seemed to glow brighter than ever. The Black Paladin's face was a tangle of emotion: horror, guilt, sorrow; regret, longing, fear; anger, determination, acceptance.
"Get them out of here."
Then Shiro was whirling, surging to his feet with a roar of absolute fury and lunging toward the head of the Druids with his arm blazing ultraviolet and Lance was scrambling to get the rest of his team out of the enemy ship, Allura in his arms, Pidge over Hunk's good shoulder, and Keith running beside them, a wound in the shape of a handprint burned deep into his throat.
"Lance, wake up!"
The blue paladin surged upright with a cry, and would have clashed skulls with Pidge if the tiny green paladin hadn't toppled backward with a yelp at his outburst. He looked around wildly, chest heaving, the pillows and blankets on the floor in the observation lounge overlaying with Galra corridors and bloody burns in his vision. Someone was talking to him but the words were white noise in his ears. All he could focus on was the deep burn in Keith's neck and the sick sense of certainty that he would never see Shiro again-
His eyes landed on the blanket-covered forms of the other two paladins curled up beside each other and with another loud, desperate cry that might have been a swear he scrambled across the uneven mess on the floor to grab onto them. He was only loosely aware of the startled exclamations as he woke them by roughly rolling Keith onto his side and tugging at the neckline of his shirt to expose the red paladin's throat-smooth, unmarked pale skin-before grabbing Shiro's face and staring into his eyes-wide with confusion and alarm, but their normal shade of dark grey, both of them. He sagged in relief, hands tangling in his hair and knees curling into his chest.
"...-ance, breathe, buddy. In, two, three-..."
"The fu-...-ppened?"
"Nightmare. Must've be-..."
"C'mon, La-...-four, and out."
Without conscious thought he recognized the familiar rhythm of someone coaching his breathing and tried to match it, the nausea and dizziness slowly subsiding until he realized Hunk was kneeling in front of him with an anxious expression even as he continued to chant the breathing counts in a steady cadence. Pidge, Shiro, and Keith hovered behind him, their faces showing varying degrees of concern and confusion, and Blue was purring in the back of his head. Hunk must have seen something in his face that gave away the fact Lance was finally aware of his surroundings because he stopped counting and gave a small, hopeful smile. "There we go. You good, buddy?"
Lance nodded, feeling a surge of guilt. They had started having sleepovers in the hopes that it would eliminate the string of nightmares he'd been having. Instead he'd woken up everyone instead of just himself. "Sorry, guys. Didn't mean to wake you." He whispered hoarsely.
The others frowned, and Shiro shook his head. "It's fine, Lance. Waking people up when you have a nightmare so they can help you through it is the whole point of this. We want to help, and we can't do that if we don't know about it."
"Especially when it's as bad as this one obviously was." Pidge agreed, rummaging around in the blankets until she found her glasses and pushing them onto her face. "You were thrashing around and kept muttering Shiro's name, and then after I woke you up you practically threw yourself across the room and started manhandling him and Keith." She tilted her head to the side, the unspoken question obvious in her posture.
Lance bit his lip hesitantly. He'd seen Shiro's renewed wariness of his Galra prosthetic ever since Alejandro and Kurogane had arrived and warned him that the witch who had given it to him could use it to take control of him. The man did not need the added stress and unnecessary guilt of Lance's nightmare weighing him down. It was just a dream anyway, his overactive imagination taking the warnings of the time travellers and spinning horrific stories out of them. "Yeah, but I'll be okay." He evaded, plastering a smile onto his face, and tried to ignore the way not one of them looked convinced. "Seriously, it's fine. Let's get back to bed. Big day for Shiro tomorrow, right?" It was a flimsy excuse at best, he knew, but after that dream he couldn't wait for that arm to be fixed.
Hunk continued to eye him suspiciously for a long moment, then gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine. You're right, we all need to get some sleep." His expression hinted that this was only a temporary reprieve, and that was fine. Lance just didn't want to talk about this particular nightmare in front of Shiro. "C'mere and cuddle with me." The yellow paladin flopped back onto the blankets, pulling one over himself and holding it up for his friend to join him.
The Cuban teen didn't need to be told twice, curling up beside the larger teen. A moment later Pidge was a reassuring weight against his back, and a glance over his shoulder told him that the last two were just on her other side. If Lance wanted to reassure himself again that Shiro was still with them and Keith was unhurt, they were right within arm's reach. He firmly squashed the impulse to reach out and trail his fingers through Keith's long black hair, even if it did look unfairly soft and would probably be really relaxing to play with-no. None of that. The red paladin had made his opinion of Lance's feelings quite plain when he ran off after dancing with him at the party. Heck, Lance was lucky he'd gotten him to dance at all before the emotionally-challenged teen had realized why he'd asked.
Lance firmly turned himself back to face Hunk and closed his eyes. This was fine. They had enough problems without Lance screwing up the team's dynamic with unrequited feelings. Better to focus on solving those, first, so nothing like his dreams would ever happen.
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Alejandro fidgeted restlessly against the wall of the engineering lab that had been set aside for the use of the specialists working on Shiro's arm, his gaze darted from screen to screen as he examined the various images of the internal workings of the black paladin's mechanical arm. He glared at one that showed a horizontal cross-section of the hand as though he could intimidate the image into giving up its secrets.
He felt a soothing rumble in the back of his mind and forced himself to relax, sending back an affectionate nudge. Blue purred approvingly and reassured him that they would have their answers soon enough and all the anger in the world would not make it go any faster no matter how much the red paladins of the world might wish it, drawing a chuckle from the scarred man's throat. Blue's sense of humor was just the same as it had always been.
He was immensely grateful for the fact that sometime after they'd arrived he'd regained a connection with the Blue Lion of this time, and hadn't that been a shock, waking up shaking from another nightly reliving of his worst memories to the familiar comforting purr in the back of his head. He'd been so shocked he'd burst into tears and it had taken a worried Kurogane several minutes to get a coherent response out of him. When he did, however, the other had folded Alejandro into a joyful hug.
Kurogane, sadly, could not sense this time's Red at all, and Alejandro had felt guilty over that for all of a tick and a half before his partner, who could read him like a rookie soldier, smacked him upside the head before he could even open his mouth. Why and how he was able to talk to Blue but Keith couldn't hear Red was a mystery that would likely never get solved; it wasn't like there was a manual for quintessence-based time travel, and even if there had been, it had most likely been lost with Holt.
Blue's touch gently pushed him away from that thought before he could wander into bad memories, directing his attention back to the world in front of him. Shiro was seated at a table with his right arm inserted up to the shoulder in some fancy piece of equipment that seemed to function much like an MRI, but better. A holographic projection of his arm that could be poked, prodded, and pulled apart floated in the middle of the room, surrounded by nearly a dozen aliens of varying species, including four Olkari and three Alteans who had been summoned from throughout the Icebringers and its allies to work on the Black Paladin's arm. Alejandro glanced at the man and snorted softly to himself. Shiro had been anxious as hell when they'd arrived that morning, trying very hard not to look like he was clinging to Pidge's hand and not quite succeeding, but now he just looked bored and his eyes were glazed. The Cuban couldn't blame him, the technicians were conversing in Olkari, and given how technical the language was he doubted the man was following any better with the Castle's translators than Alejandro was without. Even Pidge looked a little lost, which was impressive.
A clearing of a throat drew his attention to one of the Olkari, who had turned to him, looking perplexed. "I thought you said there was some sort of override feature beyond the standard remote shutdown."
He blinked. What? "There is. I've seen it in use. The head Druid of the Empire took control of him and forced him to attack his own allies." On the other side of the room, Shiro swallowed nervously at the thought.
The Olkari frowned, turning to one of the Alteans and asking a question. The Altean shook her head and responded in the Altean language, a complex explanation of something to do with quintessence that Alejandro didn't quite catch. There was a brief exchange before the Olkari turned back to him, shrugging in bewilderment. "We can't find anything like what you're describing. There's no override."
He felt frozen, alarm building despite Blue's attempt to calm him. What were they talking about? "Of course there is. You must've missed it." Even as he said it he knew he sounded ridiculous, challenging an Olkari on technical matters. But he'd seen the override in action. He knew what it was capable of.
"We've been through every inch of the arm and its grafts several is nothing there. It's just a standard enhancement arm. Whatever you saw, it wasn't Haggar controlling him." The Olkari was glaring back at him now, clearly growing frustrated with his stubbornness.
"I know there's an override there somewhere, because Shiro did not try to crush Kurogane's throat with his hand active for shits and giggles!" He snarled, anger boiling over suddenly at the insinuation against the teammate he'd lost. "Check again."
Too late he became aware of the stunned expressions of the black and green paladins on the other side of the room. The latter looked horrified, the former ashen. For a long moment no one spoke. Then the Olkari nodded stiffly and turned back to the projection, thin fingers reaching to study it once more. Alejandro stared down at the floor, unwilling to meet Shiro's distraught gaze. Suddenly his view of the smooth silver-brown metal was interrupted by the intense amber gaze of Pidge, staring up at him with her arms crossed.
"Is that actually what happened?" She asked quietly. "She tried to make him kill Keith like that?"
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. He and Kurogane had intended to keep the details of the horrors they'd seen between the two of them, to spare whatever innocence they could. And now he'd gone and blown it. "...Yes. Among other things that I'd really rather not talk about. But he was being controlled, and it had to have been the arm, because even druids and amvel nayeta can't control sapient beings using quintessence. It's the first thing we ruled out. Something to do with the complexity of the quintessence."
The green paladin nodded slowly, still regarding him with an intense stare. "I believe you...maybe they just missed something."
Alejandro grimaced. "Unfortunately, that's not as likely as I made it sound. These guys are very good at what they do. If they said it's a standard arm, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a standard arm."
Pidge frowned, pursing her lips consideringly. "I didn't think standard Galran enhancements could light up with energy like Shiro's does. I mean, we've only seen a few, so what do I know, but you'd think we'd have heard of it. Or that people wouldn't be so surprised when he uses his." She looked over at the black paladin, who was looking up at the holographic projection with an expression of fear and nausea.
"...That is a very good point." Alejandro whispered, eyes wide. "Why the fuck didn't I think of that? I've never seen another arm that can do what Shiro's does. Hey!" He raised his voice, getting the attention of the specialists. "There's no way that can be a standard arm! Standard arms can't charge up with quintessence!" At the baffled expressions directed his way, he huffed. "Show them, Shiro."
The Japanese male hesitated. His anxious expression spoke volumes about his reluctance to use the weapon that had been forced on him after the time-traveller's inadvertent revelation. "I don't think…"
Alejandro strode across the room, grabbing the man gently by the shoulders. "Listen, Shiro. You didn't do any of what you did that day willingly. Haggar was controlling you. And you know what happened when she tried to make you kill Keith? You managed to fight her off. You pushed back her control enough to turn your arm against her, and bought time for the rest of us to escape. You saved our lives, Shiro. I trust you."
Dark eyes stared up at him, wide in shock and disbelief. Slowly, cautiously, Shiro nodded. He pulled his arm from the machine, the projection of the mechanical portion remaining. Under the curious gaze of the technicians, he held it away from them and activated it.
The reaction was immediate, various combinations of confusion, disbelief, and incredulity sparking startled cries and exclamations across the room. A number of loud, energetic discussions broke out, the Altean and Olkari flowing and overlapping too rapidly for Alejandro to follow. The group watched as the arguments rose in pitch and volume until finally the Olkari who had originally told him there was no override broke away to speak with them.
"Clearly there is more to this arm than is immediately obvious. We will have to study more closely, and that will take time." She glanced over her shoulder, scowling at the projection as though it had personally offended her. Given the natural Olkari affinity for technology, and the way the arm's functions were not matching up with its form, it practically had. "You can leave for now. If we have news we will find you." She turned on her heel and waded back into the conversation, a wordless command for the three Human to get out and let them do their job.
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Pidge was still mulling over everything she had learned when they rejoined the rest of their group in the cafeteria, sliding into her spot on the bench and digging into the offered bowl of blue goo without so much as glancing at it. She let the conversation around her flow right over her head as she mentally reviewed the last few hours.
It had been fascinating, seeing the inner workings of Shiro's arm. Much more mechanical than she'd expected, with tiny, intricate parts that must have been the secret of how it moved so naturally and had to have been far stronger than they looked given the prodigious strength the green paladin knew the limb could exert. The only visible computerized component had been some sort of connective block at the point where metal met flesh that probably served to translate nerve impulses to electronic ones. She chewed contemplatively, wondering if she could convince one of the Olkari specialists to give her a look at the block's electronics so she could see how it worked.
Seeing the way the limb had been connected, on the other hand, was...disturbing. The scans had given them an all-too-clear view of the way metal had been somehow fused to the bone and tied to the muscles, with nerves threaded into the block like wires. There didn't seem to be much of a load distribution system, though, which worried her. Was the full force of the arm's leverage getting transmitted into that connective point? That seemed like a recipe for disaster to her, even if she didn't know much about biology, only what she'd picked up from Matt during his studies. Pidge made a mental note to ask about it later.
Even more worrying was the fact that Shiro's arm was apparently doing things it shouldn't have been able to do. The technicians had insisted that Alejandro's mysterious override didn't exist in the design of it, and they had freaked the fuck out when they saw him activate the combat mode, so obviously it wasn't supposed to do that either. They had said it was a standard enhancement. Either the technicians were missing things in the design of the arm, which was unlikely given how many of them there were and how experienced they were supposed to be, or both the override and combat mode came from somewhere else, which was a mess of possibilities she didn't even know where to start with.
And if it was the second option, she realized with mounting worry, it meant that Alejandro and Kurogane were flat out wrong in some of the information they'd given to the rest of them. Which was frankly alarming, because if they were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about? How much of the action they'd already taken was based on flawed information and faulty assumptions because they had made the basic mistake-she read science fiction, she should be more genre savvy than this!-of assuming that just because someone was from the future, they knew everything?
What sort of critical, game-changing things, good or bad, might they be missing because they didn't?
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A British author named Ian Fleming had once said, 'Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.'
Colleen Holt did not believe in coincidence.
Which was why, the moment she'd seen the report on the morning news about three Garrison cadets killed in a night time training accident, bodies unrecoverable, two faces that she didn't know and one that she unmistakably did, she had forced back her tears for later; gathered up a few changes of clothes, a large quantity of handwritten notes (you can't hack what isn't on a computer, and that was the first rule she'd taught her daughter when she started dabbling with machines), and a good supply of cash; and made well-covered tracks halfway across the state to an old ranch house left to her by a friend.
After all, it would be the height of stupidity to sit around waiting for the third blow when you had every reason to suspect it might fall on you.
The ranch house was private, but close enough to town that neighbours would notice anyone approaching who wasn't supposed to be there, and well-stocked for a variety of emergencies because after decades in the courtroom, Colleen had long since lost any sort of trust in governments, corporations, and the military. People she trusted just fine; organizations, on the other hand, were never to be trusted. Once she'd secured the property, she cleared off the living room wall, took a deep breath, and channelled anger and grief into focus as she began laying out her facts piece by piece.
Fact one: Takashi Shirogane was a damn good pilot, too good for 'pilot error' to be anything other than a load of horseshit. Nevermind the complete lack of details in regards to exactly what that error had been, she'd prosecuted enough accident investigations in her life to know a flimsy excuse when she saw one. Yes, the Kerberos crew was almost certainly dead, because she couldn't think of any way they wouldn't be no matter how much it hurt to think that she would never see Samuel or Matthew again, but whatever had happened, pilot error wasn't it.
Fact two: One year later, her daughter, acting under a false identity, and two others had disappeared under mysterious circumstances from the Garrison. 'Training accident' was an even bigger pile of horseshit than 'pilot error,' because the Garrison didn't do night time training for cadets, not to mention she had it on good authority the base had been under Zulu Niner at the time, meaning everyone back to barracks for a headcount. And yet three missing cadets had not been reported according to protocol and their absence covered up.
Fact three: The Garrison was the biggest den of lies, corruption, and political intrigue she'd ever seen, and she'd worked with politicians, CEOs, and other lawyers. She trusted nothing they said and suspected everything they did.
Coleen's well-honed gut told her that someone, somewhere, had known something they shouldn't, and it had gotten six people, three of them children, killed or vanished. She intended to find out who, what, and why, and when she did she would tear to pieces all those responsible. She set to work immediately, calling contacts and chasing leads to find out if her husband, her son, or her son's best friend (had either of them ever told each other how they really felt, she wondered? God, she dearly hoped so) had knowingly or unknowingly been involved in something the Garrison wanted to cover up, something they were willing to kill to keep secret. She would bring the Garrison down around Iverson's ears if that's what it took to make this right.
And that was how she'd ended up back out in the desert, too close to the Garrison to be remotely safe, following the trail of someone her research had suggested would be most likely to have information about anything Takashi might have known that would make him a target, one former Garrison cadet Keith Kogane, the boy Takashi had mentored for years before the Kerberos mission and who had been expelled for 'discipline issues' (more Garrison horseshit) just a few weeks after the crew had been declared lost.
The shack Ryou had told her about, where Takashi and Keith had often spent their weekends looking at the stars and his best guess as to where she might find the latter (no home, no family, and no close friends except the dead pilot, apparently), looked battered and run down as she approached it warily. The last thing she wanted to do was startle Kogane if he was here, although that was looking less and less likely by the moment. A hoverbike sat half-buried in the sand by a door that swung loose on its hinges, the latch ripped out of the doorframe by the rough demands of the wind. There were no lights on inside, no sound or movement visible.
Cautiously, Colleen approached the door and pushed it open, putting her shoulder to it to force a path through the sand that had blown in to sit in low piles on the floor. Here, too, were signs that this was a place that had been lived in, once, and then suddenly abandoned without warning or preparation. Clothes, ranging from plain t-shirts to an odd purple body-suit, were still draped over the couch, dirty dishes in the sink, what might have been a cup of coffee once resting on the desk beside the ancient computers whose keyboards were choked with dust. Keith Kogane may have been living here at one point, but he definitely was not here now, and seemed to have taken nothing with him when he left. That there were no signs of a struggle was not reassuring in the slightest.
A glimmer on the ground caught her eye, and she crouched, pulling the small object free of the sand and turning it over. Her breath caught in her throat. An ace pride pin that had been custom-printed to read 'Programming is better than sex.' It had been a present for Katie's thirteenth birthday after she'd come out to the rest of them, and she'd kept it securely attached to her laptop bag ever since. If the pin was here, Katie had been too, and Colleen clutched the pin to her chest, taking a deep breath and swallowing the lump in her throat. More evidence in her favour, stacking against the Garrison. Standing, she spotted something covered by a sheet on the far wall, and made her way over to it, picking her way around chairs that had been pulled into a group as though several people had sat waiting for something.
Pulling down the dusty sheet from the wall, her eyes widened. Cave drawings, inscriptions, ancient star charts, all meticulously documented and photographed to be pinned to the wall. Rough interpretations and translations littered post-it notes stuck all over. Notes, coordinates, descriptions of weird energy and a strange pull filled the gaps between. And in the center, linked to the star charts and drawings by black thread, a date circled in red.
The same date Katie and her group had vanished, and, she was now willing to bet, Keith Kogane too.
Colleen Holt pulled out her phone and dialed a number without taking her eyes off the images in front of her. "Ryou? You remember those odd local cave drawing stories of lions and sky warriors you could never find the origin of? I've got something you need to see. Meet me at Takashi's shack near the Garrison. Yes, you heard me. Bring your notes, whatever you need for analyzing languages, and supplies for cave diving and a long stay. See you soon."
Snapping her phone shut and pocketing it, she stared intently at the conspiracy board spread across the wall of the shack. Somewhere in this mess was an answer, she could feel it in her bones. "Alright, Keith Kogane. What do you, my family, and an ancient cave full of blue lions have in common?"