Sorry for the delay between chapters! Between school and all the speculation building up to Voltron Season 8 (which was very much a disappointment, but there is evidence mounting up that the season the production crew made was not the one we got, having been cut up and rearranged by the Dreamworks execs before release: . post/181249037547/was-season-8-of-voltron-changed (this isn't all the evidence, this is just the main one that's mainly free of ship bias)

There's a petition going around for Dreamworks to release the unedited version, and it's at over 20,000 signatures as of December 23rd. Fan campaigns have worked before, so I figure we've got nothing to lose by trying. . post/181249037547/was-season-8-of-voltron-changed

In the meantime, please enjoy the next chapter of Omnis Vir Lupus. I promise to not make you all wait so long for the next chapter.

Chapter 33: Bear Witness:

Nessus

Io

March 31st, 2841

As expected, Romulus au Raa would not be pledging his support to the Rising.

Not that Shiro and Keith were surprised. The Ionian ArchGovernor's decision had already been made before the time travelers even set foot on his moon. Kicking them out of the conference room for "deliberations" was just a stalling tactic to maintain the illusion that he was giving them fair consideration. It wasn't like Shiro was exactly disappointed. He and the other leaders of the Rising had known going into this that appealing to the man for an alliance was a gamble. But knowing that House Raa were his descendants made the coming battle harder to swallow.

Their negotiations concluded, a contingent of Peerless knights escorted them through the open-air halls of the Raa estate towards the exit. The number of troops would have seemed overkill, but Shiro couldn't help but suspect that Romulus knew more about his ancestor's time as The Champion than he let on. It wasn't out of the possibility that his son had passed down the knowledge of Voltron and their war with the Galra Empire down to future generations as had been the case with Fitchner and Lorn.

My son… Quiznak that's going to take some getting used to, he thought to himself. It was easier to wrap his head around the possibility of Team Voltron's descendants running around the solar system when it wasn't his own.

Fortunately, his closest friend leaned in to distract his mind from burrowing down that particular rabbit hole.

"I'm sorry things didn't work out," Keith whispered as they made their way along the dirt floor of the Raa estate to the landing pad, where Legate Vela au Raa would return them to their ship. From there, they would rendezvous with the armada assembling in Jupiter's orbit and hold a holo-conference with the rest of the rebellion. Once their conference was complete, Shiro would take command of their forces and lead the Classis Plutus and the fleets of Norvo and Arcos in a full-scale invasion of Jupiter's moons.

Shiro's heart was in turmoil as he and Keith were led toward the exit. Thought he had been hoping to resolve the situation peacefully, the part of him that had survived the horrors of the Galra Empire's arena and Haggar's experiments looked forward to the battle to come. But now that he knew he would be facing his own however-many-times-great-grandchildren in a few hours, he was conflicted.

It wasn't like they had any kind of connection beyond the biological. The time traveler and the Golds were strangers to each other. But Shiro couldn't help but feel that it was a personal failure of his for not being able to reach them and lead them on the right path. Maybe it was the fact that he was clinging to any scrap of familiarity so far from his own era. Maybe it was the knowledge that his own son would lay the foundations for the Aureate regime. But whatever the case, it felt that he should have been able to use that connection to help them realize that the Hierarchy was wrong.

But I guess it's too late for me to reach them, he thought to himself as their escorts guided them into the gardens they'd originally entered through. And now there's a very good chance that all of them are going to die as the war goes on.

Suddenly, their escorts doubled over, pressing their hands against their ears as their faces contorted in pain. One by one, they spasmed and collapsed onto the dirt floor of the gardens.

"Hurry, this way," a familiar voice called out behind them. The two Paladins turned to see Thesalia au Raa peering out from behind the corner. In her hands she held the small device that Shiro and Keith both recognized was generating a jamField. Confused, they followed her as she led them back into the manor until they came to the last intersection they'd just passed, then turned down another hallway until they reached a storage area used for keeping cold food refrigerated Inside, they found Aeneus and Diomedes leaning against the pre-packaged food waiting for them to arrive.

"I don't understand…" Shiro spluttered. "What… why…"

"We want to help." Aeneus said. "Father always said we weren't allowed to watch other people's opinions before we had opinions of our own, but he thinks nothing of us reading biographies of our ancestor. The Rim deified Akari after his death, treating him as an example to follow. But I did some digging in father's study while you were meeting with the ArchGovernors of Ilium. And I found this".

The teen gently placed the holocube in Shiro's hand. The air above the small storage unit flickered momentarily before an image began to form in a flurry of pixels. Shiro was about to ask what Aeneus had found when the image finished materializing and his train of thought came to a screeching halt.

Despite spending months keeping his emotions under wraps for his own survival, Shiro let out an audible gasp as he looked at the photograph. The color-coded uniforms of the first Lunar colonists were identical to the cadet uniforms of the Galaxy Garrison in every way but color scheme. Each uniform corresponded to a color on the pyramid. There were people in the photo graph of every Color. But what drew his eyes was the Gold in the middle.

Of course, he wasn't easily recognizable as a Gold. The date on the recording was decades before the Aurate aristocracy rolled out their genetic modifications. But despite the familiar gray eyes, and hands unblemished by Sigils, the man exuded the authority and power that Shiro had come to associate with Golds. Before he could reflect on the man any further, Aeneus pulled up a holo recording of the same man now considerably older and lying in bed with medical monitors hooked up to his body. Shiro barely had time to process what he was seeing before his descendent hit play.

"This is the last will and testament of Akari Shirogane, son of Takashi Shirogane of 21st Century Earth, and Tactus Shirogane of 29th Century Mars. Father, if you're watching this, please forgive me. I have failed.

Silenius was one of the only people who ever knew where I really came from. I trusted him will all my secrets, and in the end, he betrayed that trust. We had taken inspiration from Voltron itself for the Hierarchy, each Color functioning as a limb of society the way that each of the lions formed one piece of Voltron. In the early years, things went smoothly. But after the greed of the other Golds drove us to war with Earth, Silenius and the other leaders of the Lunar colony began to believe that we were naturally superior to the other colors. That was when they started their eugenics program. It happened so slowly that by the time I'd even realized what we were doing, it was already too late. The system had become entrenched, and when I attempted to revere our course, Silenius stripped me of my influence among our peers."

"So, I took my family and led the expansion beyond the asteroid belt, hoping to secure a power base beyond Silenius' reach that I could use to reverse the course of events. I was so convinced that if I could model a better path for humanity on the Rim, I could undo the damage I had caused. But it was already too late. By that time, my children had already become indoctrinated with the Gold way of thinking. Io was originally an independent colony, but my eldest usurped my position as governor and pledged our moon's allegiance to the new Sovereign."

"By this point, my influence has been stripped away to nothing. My children have effectively confined me to a glorified nursing home. The Yellows treat me like an invalid, as if I am incapable of caring for myself. I have not had contact with any of the other children of the Paladins in decades. What little remains of my estate has already been seized by my children. The only things left in my possession are the relics of my early years being raised on Olkarion, and the family photo album. My children have dismissed the tales of their grandfather's heroism as fairy tales, but it is my hope that by preserving the history of Voltron in these documents for future generations to find, that your legacy will live on."

"My nurses refuse to speak of this to me, but I know I am dying. I know not whether one of my former family chose to poison me, or if this is simply my old age catching up to me. But the result is the same. My days are numbered. I only hope that my words can reach my descendants after my own children failed to hear: The Hierarchy as it has become is wrong. And if anyone of my bloodline chooses to stand up against this tyranny, know that your forebearer would be proud of you."

Shiro failed to keep his eyes dry as the recording finally ended. For every question his son's final words had answered, dozens more sprang up in their place like weeds. But now wasn't the time to worry about puzzling out the answers to those questions. After taking a few moments to compose his thoughts, he looked down at the young Golds. Aeneus met his eyes and smirked.

"If my father is going to uphold the great Akari au Raa as an ideal to strive towards, then surely Akari's own words are reason enough to support the Rising," the heir to House Raa commented. "And as our father's heir, I have access to his study. I can get us security codes for the 7th Fleet Garrison, strategic blueprints for Nesos and Sungrave… We can give you all the resources you need to take Io in a day."

The surge of pride the Black Paladin felt at managing to reach even a handful of his descendants was quickly buried beneath new concerns and worries. Foremost of his concerns was how he was going to be able to keep these kids safe once the fighting broke out. While Aeneus and Diomedes had no doubt received basic training in self-defense and introductory Karavat lessons, that did not mean they were fit for combat.

While there hadn't really been any other options with Voltron and his fellow Paladins had no idea what they were getting into, that didn't mean he approved of the idea of teenagers fighting in this war. There was nothing he could really do though. Even if he were to overlook the fact that many of the LowReds serving in the rebellion after being liberated from the mines were as young as Pidge, he recognized the looks in all four of the children's eyes. He'd seen that same stubborn, defiant refusal to back down enough times in his life, both in Keith's eyes and his own, to know that none of the Raa children would be deterred by pleas to leave the fighting to the adults. They were going to get involved any way they could. The best Shiro could do was find a balance between protecting them and respecting their desire to participate.

"It's going to be dangerous," he told them. "No matter what we do, a lot of people are going to die. Your father might be killed. You could be killed. I can't stop you from helping, but I need to make sure you're absolutely committed to doing this. If we fail, at best your father will lock you up for the rest of your lives. At worst, the Moon Lords will execute you alongside us. Once you throw your lot in with the Rising, there is no going back." All three siblings exchanged looks confirming that they were in agreement before Aeneus turned back to Shiro and spoke for the group.

"We're in."

Shiro nodded, swallowing his concerns as he activated his commlink and placed a call to the bridge of the Shirogane.

"Tactus, I need you to contact the Reaper," he said once the call went through. "There's been a change of plans."

I struggled a lot with figuring out when to do this chapter, but I wanted to having a twist on the whole situation with the Rim by having the youngest generation of House Raa reject the hierarchy.