This chapter is going to be one last warm-up chapter before Mustang drags Shiro into the proverbial school of sharks that is The Sovereign's court. Mainly a bit of Shiro reflecting on his situation, conversing with Mustang about the color hierarchy, and so on.

12/4/17: Expanded on the chapter a bit to flesh out some of the exposition and get into Shiro's thought process a little more.

Chapter 3: Chameleon:

Hyperion

Luna

October 16th, 2840

I have to admit, Shiro thought to himself as he looked in the mirror that evening. The gold eyes and hair make me look kind of badass. He and Mustang had spent most of the previous day crafting his cover story and fake credentials so that he could go out and mingle with Gold high society without anyone looking too closely into where he'd come from. Today they'd been up since sunrise putting in the contact lenses and dyeing his hair so that he had the physical appearance of a Gold. There were Carvers, Violets specializing in body mods and genetic engineering, who could give him genuine Aureate eyes and hair. But even if just the idea of being on an operating table again hadn't brought him to the brink of another panic attack, he just didn't like the idea of changing his appearance so completely. He was going to find a way back to the past eventually, and he wanted his friends to be able to recognize him. Virginia understood his reasoning, which was why she'd agreed to hair dye and contact lenses and didn't try to force the issue.

In addition to his speed-listening sessions, Virginia had brought in one of her Pinks after ensuring his silence to teach the Black Paladin how to act like a Gold. Shiro might be absorbing information on history and culture faster than humanly possible, but none of that would matter if he couldn't play the part of an impoverished Gold convincingly. If he didn't, if he slipped up and said the wrong thing, he'd be dead either way. The best-case scenario was accidentally insulting someone and getting sliced to ribbons in a duel. Worst-case scenario, he said something to give away that he wasn't really a Gold, and the most ruthless killers on Luna would be all over him like a wolf pack devouring a lost sheep. But that's what the Pink is for, he reminded himself. To get me into shape mentally so that I can carry on a conversation without slipping up. While he knew he had to make the most of his situation to survive, the idea of referring to people as Colors, of having to treat those lower than himself on the social pyramid as subhuman, was already starting to make him uncomfortable.

While the original purpose of the hierarchy as Virginia had explained it to him – to organize labor positions among humanity's first interstellar colonists to maximize resources– made sense in theory, the fact that Gold had genetically altered humanity so that the different Colors were barely even the same species anymore disturbed him. Combined with the way Mustang described the social system and how everything worked, it sounded like all the other colors' labor only served to make life comfortable and luxurious for the Golds. He'd shared all his reservations with Virginia yesterday, hoping that she would be receptive to an outside perspective on her culture. As it turned out, she already considered the hierarchy to be a flawed system.

"At the Institute of Mars," she had explained. "Darrow and I created something new, using a philosophy that we felt had the benefits of the order provided by The Society but without the flaws and disadvantages we'd already seen. Instead of turning the other houses into our slaves as we were instructed, we took the Oathbreakers, and convinced them to follow us willingly by providing them with food, furs, and a purpose without demanding that they lick our bootheels. We earned their trust and loyalty instead of forcing them to obey our whims."

Shiro was impressed and a little awed at how two teenagers had managed to turn the castoffs of their class into an army strong enough to effectively declare war on their instructors. Not only that, he admired their willingness to eschew conventions in order make something good and decent in a place of cruelty and horror. He'd have to meet Darrow in person to see how the reality measured up with what Virginia had told about him, but both Darrow and Virginia seemed like potential Paladins. There was something about Darrow in particular that screamed "Future Black Paladin". Of course, that's if Voltron hasn't been destroyed at some point in the last eight hundred years, he reminded himself sadly.

"If all The Society were like that," Virginia had gone on to comment. "then civilization would be so much better. Morale would be higher, there wouldn't be any dissatisfaction in the LowColors… Honestly, I agree with you. Gold gets to live in luxury for over a hundred years while lowReds mining under the surface of mars die by thirty so that everyone else can live comfortably. The hierarchy has been corrupted from its previous purpose. But despite how I feel about the system, I am not presently able to change anything, and so I work with what I have and make things better in other, smaller ways." Shiro had nodded, understanding that despite the sizable block of reformers in the senate advocating for the improvement of society to make things less oppressive for the other Colors, the reformers didn't have the numbers or the individual personal influence necessary to make significant changes.

The whole caste system reminded him heavily of his time as prisoner of the Galra, and as a Paladin of Voltron, he hated the idea of not doing anything while billions of his fellow human beings were trapped in an oppressive system, but he could not do anything at this point that wouldn't reveal himself to the Sovereign, the elected ruler of human civilization. For the last sixty years, Octavia au Lune ruled the solar system from the Morning Throne on Luna as de facto empress of humanity. While nominally an elected official, those who crossed her did so at their own peril. And if she detected even the slightest hint of who Shiro really was, there was no doubt in the Black Paladin's mind that he'd be lucky if the woman stopped at dissecting him.

Despite Shiro's refusal to get his hair and eyes replaced, he couldn't make it through his stay in the future without going under the knife at least once. There were still some parts of his disguise that Virginia would have to take him to a Carver to have added. For one thing, he had to get the correct Sigils grafted onto his body. The thin sheets of metal would be grafted onto the backs of his hands and connected directly to his body's central nervous system. Then, he would still need to get the correct ID chip implanted in his forehead. Shiro sighed as he thought about all the things he had to do to survive. Thankfully Virginia reassured him that when they found a way to return him to his own time, the Sigils and ID chip could be removed. While he was with the Carver, Mustang would be busy putting together the necessary documents and forgery to set up his cover story.

She'd combed through old records looking for obscure Gold families wiped out by space travel accidents, who had no money or holdings, and who lived far enough away from the public eye that the sudden appearance of an heir kept hidden from society wouldn't be far-fetched. In this case, he would pass himself off as the middle child from one of these families kept hidden because he was born with an abnormally low bone density. Once they had planned out his fake family history, they moved on to finding him employment. For Shiro's presence not to arouse any questions about his past beyond the usual gossip of the Sovereign's court, he needed to have a credible reason for spending time with Virginia. While the Black Paladin disliked taking advantage of someone else's misfortune, the fact that Darrow was currently in hot water with Virginia's father had provided them with the perfect opportunity to secure his position in this era.

Yesterday, several members of House Bellona, the Augustus family's chief rivals for the position of Mars' ruling house, had beaten the twenty-year-old warlord following his disastrous defeat at the Academy and publicly broadcast the humiliating beatdown. Darrow's contract as a lancer of House Augustus was due to expire in two months, and after the public humiliation, the Martian ArchGovernor would be unlikely to renew the young man's employment. According to Virignia, her father's decision had likely been influenced by the schemes of his chief Politico, Pliny au Velocitor, but neither she nor the time travelling Paladin were going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Virginia clearly didn't want Darrow to lose his employment - the Bellona family matriarch literally wanted the young Gold's heart served on a silver platter for the death of her favorite son, Julian - she still intended to take advantage of the fact that her father was looking for fresh lancers to fill all vacancies before Darrow was cut loose.

In any case, she had already made her own plans to protect her friend from the Bellona without crossing her father, so Shiro didn't need to worry about feeling guilty for taking Darrow's job. At the same time, he couldn't help but feel that the Bellona family's reaction to Julian's death was hypocritical. The Passage, the Institute's final entrance exam, was a brutal culling where a top scoring student was locked in a room with a low scoring student and the only way out of the room was for one of them to kill the other. The fact that Julian's family had sent him to the schooling knowing that there was only a fifty-fifty chance of him surviving past the first day made their bloodlust towards the young man who'd been forced to do the deed seem unreasonable to Shiro's mind.

As he prepared himself for his second day learning highLingo and Aureate ettiqute with the Pink, Shiro couldn't help but feel a pang of homesickness. Since neither he nor Virginia had any idea what had caused his sudden voyage to the future, they had no clue where to start in their quest to send him back to his own time. He had no idea when, or even if, he'd ever see his team again. He could only imagine how his friends would take his sudden disappearance. Keith will take it the hardest, he thought to himself. Considering what I saw in his mindscape when he took the Trials of Marmora, me disappearing like this will destroy him. Shiro's heart ached as his mind brought forth hypothetical images of his friend working himself into an obsessive frenzy trying to find some proof that the Black Paladin wasn't dead.

Get it together Shirogane, he chastised himself as he walked over to gaze out the window at the Luna skyline. If you're going to survive, you need to keep a lid on your emotions. You can't let your grief show except for in private. If you can't get a handle on maintaining a straight face in public, you're as good as dead. And then it won't matter what your friends think happened to you. As much as it hurt to remind himself of that fact, he needed to be pessimistic if he ever wanted to see his friends again. To survive in this hostile new era, he couldn't afford to get his hopes up.

But despite the odds stacked against himself, he refused to give up. Even though he was centuries away from the rest of the team and Kieth would take over as leader, he was still a Paladin of Voltron. It wasn't in his nature to give up. As he looked out the window, he caught sight of the first stars beginning to peak through the smog in the atmosphere of Luna's ever-dimming sky. Despite the difference in positioning, he felt a small amount of comfort knowing that when night finally came to Earth's moon, he'd be able to see the familiar constellations he'd grown up seeing every night. Don't give up on me yet guys, he said silently, more both as a vow to himself and a silent reassurance that, despite his best efforts, would never make it back across the ages to the people he'd come to consider family. Someway, somehow, I will find my way back.

The Institute is basically the Golds' version of high school, where they're sorted into houses, Harry Potter-style (twelve, each named after a Roman god or goddess), then dumped in the Martian wilderness with Game of Thrones-level weapons and technology, each given a castle and one resource that the other houses don't have, and basically compete in war games for nine or so months until one house reigns supreme over all the others. The highest-ranking student in each house is known as the Primus. Prisoners from rival houses become slaves to their captors for the duration of the game unless freed by members of their own house, or in the case of Darrow and Mustang's army, released once their trust has been earned. It's essentially an entire school for Spartan military training in space.

After graduating the Institute, students can attend other schools in the solar system that function as Space!College. There's a school for politicians on Luna, Law School on Venus, etc. The Academy sits in the heart of the Asteroid Belt and teaches students fleet warfare and other interstellar military tactics.

Terminology:

Carvers: artists who specialize in working with body alterations. Their specialty ranges from simple cosmetic surgery to DNA modification (which covers everything from grafting wings onto a person's body for kinky sex to creating a real-life dragon just because they can)

Sigils: The insignia corresponding to one's color that every person in Red Rising society has on their hands as an extra ID-marker on top of hair and eye color. Despite their appearance, they're not tattoos. Rather, they are thin sheets of metal grafted onto a person's body and connected to their nervous system.

Lancers: A soldier who has sworn allegiance to a particular family for purposes ranging from body-guarding a member of the House to conducting military battles in their liege's name.