AN: EXPOSITION TIME! Did I ever mention I suck at pacing lol? In any case, it's right now. Now that thing I said you only need to know twice comes up again. " " " This bultshit."""
"Bae! Mr. The Bae! Come on, wake up time, cutie!"
What, Keith thought to himself groggily, the ever loving fuck was that ?
Keith was shaking. No, someone was shaking him, by the shoulder he hadn't been stabbed in. Because he'd been stabbed. Why was being stabbed the only thing he remembered?
"Uh, his name's actually Keith," Lance's voice said hesitantly, dragging Keith back to reality in one sudden jerk.
The fight. The underground Galra base. Lance's legs, red and seared with melted fabric.
Keith's eyes shot open and his body jerked forward, pain instantly meeting the too-fast movement where a hole ran through the length of his body. A flurry of flashy red feathers and a geruda was gently catching his falling body to help him sit upright with a wicked groan, every part of his body screaming in muted pain.
"He's awake!" Lance shouted the instant Keith sat up, shoving the geruda aside to scramble to Keith, sliding an arm under his back to help him sit up. "You're awake, you're alive! Are you alright, how do you feel?"
"Are YOU alright?!" Keith countered frantically instead of answering. "You BLEW UP! Your legs, how are your legs?"
Lance shook his head. "I'm fine, it's just some skin," he denied like having a layer of flesh seared off was not their highest priority right now - which, oh god, it really was pretty low on the list, wasn't it? "You lost so much blood, and there's still a big-ass hole in your shoulder!"
"I feel fine," Keith said, and then realized afterwards it wasn't even a lie. Okay he felt like shit, yeah, and he still felt like he'd been shot, but compared to the pain he remembered from last time he'd been awake this was... this was crackerjacks. "I feel - no, I'm. I'm good. I think I can stand up on my own."
"Okay I'm good, but I'm not THAT good. There's fruggin noooo way you can walk right now," a girly voice reprimanded. Keith finally grounded enough to become aware of the rest of the room, and more namely, the trio of geruda girls therein. The short-haired one who'd spoken was waving a small white case meaningfully. "I mean I'm totally awesome AND the only one smart enough to know we'd need to bring a med kit, but I like, had NO way of dealing with," she gestured to the entirety of Keith and Lance. "Alllll of whatever y'all have done to yourselves. I never even figured out what species you guys are, man. I thought for a sec maybe Altean, but those are all extinct now, soo... " A shrug.
Goddamned Elpis. Miles of underground sewers for what appears to be no reason whatsoever, and fucking medical treatment advanced enough that even an amatuer winging her way blindly through first-aid could treat a bullet wound and a three-inch deep gash well enough to save Keith's worthless life. Keith couldn't decide if he loved this planet or hated it.
He looked down to take stock of Lance's legs, but the geruda had managed to strip bandages out of the last tatters of Lance's coat that Keith wasn't already been wearing himself. Ridiculously enough, since Lance's pants had had to be peeled off his burned skin this left him in no clothes left but a beaten up Altean overshirt and his blue and white striped boxers, and Keith almost wanted to laugh. It was like no matter how badass Lance was, the universe just couldn't let him go too long without looking silly.
"You thought to bring a med kit," the tall geruda with the deepest voice said, meaningfully raising the point of an AK-looking laser rifle she was holding at half-arms. "And I thought to bring a gun. We all have our own ideas of what's important." Before Keith had time to worry about the gun she had turned back to the doorway she was standing in to look back into the hallways outside, and it became instantly obvious that she was meant to stand sentry.
The last girl leaned in next to Lance, and said in an almost conspiratorial tone, "I brought the map," and grinning like she'd shared a secret.
Keith's jaw fell open as he finally had time to wonder just what the fuck was going on here. Who… Why… Galra base... Girls? Where the fuck had these three even COME from? Not that he wasn't grateful that they had apparently saved his and Lance's lives, but… What?
"And can that map. Actually like. Get us the hell out of here?" Lance asked dubiously. He'd been awake longer than Keith had - hadn't he already asked what was going on? Why had no one explained anything to Keith?!
"It got us this far, didn't it?" The girl swished her hips cutely when she chirped this, and a wave of familiarity slammed into Keith.
"Wait a minute," Waitwaitwait wait, this wasn't just three random geruda girls that had appeared out of nowhere - this was. He KNEW these girls. He only remembered one name out of the three of them, but Keith was dead certain of their identities. "Are you - Lala from Fyrestone?!"
Lala's face blossomed into a flattered smile, beaming "You remembered my name! OmiGAWD, I'm so happy I could like, totally die, you're so sweet!"
Lance's jaw dropped down to meet Keith's on the floor, and the recognition dawning in his eyes was visible. "A- W- Did we wind up all the way to Fyrestone?! What are we doing here? What are YOU doing here!? How far underground are we?!"
Rather than any kind of actual helpful response, the short-haired one grinned and pointed at herself to ask, "You gotta remember my name too, right?"
Lance's brow furrowed, more out of concern that he hadn't gotten an answer than a look of trying to recall something as he dumbly said, "Like, Sasha and Leash, I think? Look, it just occurred to me to wonder what the fuck is going on here? We keep passing out, and I don't even know what DAY it is anymore, and now you guys are here and I'm kinda afraid I've just gone crazy at this point?"
Sasha bounced on her heels excitedly when Lance got her name right, but Lala was already swooping in with "Oh, don't worry, it's not a coincidence! We came to Concordia specifically, because we're the only ones who have seen your faces before!"
Sasha nodded next to her. "Yeah, no one else even knew what species you are, much less what to look for. And since we don't have access to any of that fancy technology that can just pull an image from our brains, that really left just the one option, lol." Did she just say 'lol' out loud? Who the fuck - who VERBALIZES that? Did it mean something else in Elpisian? Fuckin… No. Least of his problems.
From the doorway, Leash didn't bother to turn around to look at them to finish, "Not that we're qualified for an extraction mission like this," her voice carried a hint of irritation, "But apparently they didn't have anyone actually trained in combat to SPARE." All three girls stuck out their tongues at once, without looking at each other or indeed facing vaguely similar directions.
"And who the fuck are 'THEY,'" Keith demanded, the panic of too many unknowns starting to set in. Lance shot him a worried look. "You were sent? Who knew we were here to send you?"
" " "The R.A., of course(/naturally/obviously)!"""
It was Lance who snapped at them this time. "And who the quiznacking cockwaffle are the RA?!"
The girls all exchanged a sort of confused look. "You know, UAGRA! Isn't that what you came here looking for?"
" "THEN WHAT'S UAGRA?!"" He and Lance shouted in a familiar almost-unison.
Exasperated, all three girls shouted back, " " "The United Anti Galran Rebel Alliance!"""
Which was of course… What? The fuck? Was this some kind of… cosmic joke?! Because with a name like that it sounded like…
"Or," Leash said with a flourishing wave of her hand, "As we're commonly known, the Revolutionary Army. The RA. PLEASE tell me you guys really are the paladins of Voltron because today has just been the PITS, and I really don't need this kind of drama."
No way. No fucking way. The stupid fucking revolutionary army Allura had sent them here for, an entire MONTH on this goddamned planet, and literally the first fucking people they spoke to were the ones they had been looking for?! All of this. All of this work, all of their injuries, ALL of this… Wasted… Pointless… Jesus fucking christ Keith was having a heart attack.
Lance was in a similar state of upheaval. "Are you telling me," he said lowly, "that we just… This entire… And all I really had to do was keeping talking to the very first person I freaking met?!"
Lala shrugged. "Honestly? Yeah. Buuuuut that's because this is Elpis? Like, it's harder to find a geruda that ISN'T involved with the RA than one who is, yanno?"
Keith and Lance exchanged uncomfortable, twitchy glances. "We don't know, actually. We don't know ANYTHING," Lance whined, sounding like a man on the verge of mental breakdown. "Like, how did you guys even know we're paladins to remember our faces? We met you for two minutes!"
Lala and Sasha both pointed, surprisingly, to Keith. " "Your outfit,"" they explained, Sasha picking up where her friend left off. "We've all seen it before in the archives. There's not a single geruda on the planet that hasn't heard of the Red Paladin Kara Thrace, dudes. And you were wearing the same spacesuit, right down to the color."
"Not to mention you kind of told us," Lala giggled. "You mentioned 'important universe saving business' twice and then didn't even use it as a line to try and pick us up!"
Lance of course had not heard the story from Coran to be taken aback by this information like Keith was. "The Red Paladin who now? Is that… Another geruda?"
"Kara Thrace," Leash said firmly, still not training her eyes away from the halls outside their hidden little… Keith didn't even know. Closet, maybe? "Is the indisputable historical proof that geruda are more than people think we are. People hear the story of Kara Thrace and they remember that no matter how fragile we may seem, geruda can fight. If one of us alone was that strong, than all of us together can make a force that can't be stopped." Then, in a lighter tone, she shrugged, "Or at least, that's the idea."
"It's really theoretical," Lala waved with a queasy smile. "Leash here can fight or sure, but when we were cleaning your wounds I almost passed out just from looking at you guys!"
"You still came with us though, eh?" Sasha grinned, elbowing her in the side.
Lance clutched at his hair like this was giving him as much of a headache as it was giving Keith. "Okay, okay, then how did you know we'd be here in this Galra base, then?"
"Oooh, this part's so cool!" Lala chirped excitedly. "Like, omigawd, okay. So the RA's this huuuuuge intergalactic organization, right? So since it's so big, it's really rare to find an entire planet with as many RA members as Elpis has! So natch the Royal Palace actually has a TON of super secret meetings going on between all these important bigshots, not because it's the safest place but just because it's the easiest place to get all these different people in one room, or whatever. ANYWAY, this just means that Concordia is crawling with RA members pretty much all the time, BUUUUT we kinda still have all these Galra same as anywhere else does, sooooo. Not everything works out perfectly all the time, yanno?"
Sasha sighed. "Your stories are too long, chica, we gotta get these bozos on the move soon. I don't know if you noticed, THIS is where all those Galra tend to hang out." After careful consideration, she abandoned the medical kit to offer Lance a hand up, both he and Keith still slumped against the wall together. "Ya ya ya whatever, the RA has a flag in the Galran prison database. We get alerted to who and where every time someone is registered, because that way we can bust out any of our crew if they get taken in."
Lala was helping Keith up, insisting he rest some of his weight on her tiny shoulder as they hobbled towards the door. "But the data we get is usually like, REALLY specific, and since this time we only got a flag saying two VIP prisoners were locked in a boiler room instead of a cell where their names would be registered, everyone was all like 'whaaaat?' And there's no way to contact our mole who set up that program because like, hello, deep cover or whatever."
"And since everyone had heard the rumor that the paladins of Voltron were in Concordia -" Leash picked up for her, before dropping the idea for Sasha to finish.
"- And because we happened to have already reported that we saw a couple peeps running around that looked like they were probably said Voltronic paladinos…"
" " "This seemed like the easiest way to handle things!""" They all sang like it was just common sense. Once Lala and Sasha wrangled Keith and Lance to the door supporting them like four foot ten feathery crutches, Leash stepped out of the doorway to finally glare back at them, "Except for the part where we had to come find your dumb butts when you weren't in the boiler room! Do you know how long we had to spend figuring out which fracking way you'd gone? If something hadn't blown up we might never have found you."
Lala smiled apologetically at Keith. "I'm um, not actually great with this map though, so I only know how to get us OUT of here if we backtrack all the way back up to the route I planned out in the first place."
"Left our stuff back there anyway," Keith mumbled in return, mind still reeling with the overload of information. All of Elpis... No, not Elpis - the geruda specifically, that's what they'd said. Every member of a society that Keith had previously observed to be built on flirting with foreigners... All of them secretly working to take down the Galran Empire. Nearly every one of these strange girls that flocked together more naturally than birds… Keith was still missing something.
The missing last names. The shortened lifespans. The secret Galran underground. The Merchant's Guild.
The Merchant's Guild, Keith thought with a frown, letting his brain stew on the idea as Sasha lead them first through the tunnels, Lala in the middle with Keith and Leash and their only gun bringing up the rear. If the geruda were all revolutionaries and the MGE was invented to protect the geruda… Holy shit. It wasn't a protection racket against other planets: the Merchant's Guild was bait. A red herring created to draw Galran attention away from the Queen's rebellion, something that grew into its own monster but didn't need to be contained, because the more outrageous its influence the more distracting it became, all the more perfect in its design… Some fucked up kind of brilliant, right there. Let the mafia take the city; the planet itself was still theirs.
No… It didn't add up yet. Keith was still missing something. Something "too delicate to be conquered by warfare," Veret had said. The reason the Galra were here, the reason they hadn't destroyed the planet outright like they had so many others… What weren't these girls telling them?
"Ummm," Lala's hesitant voice broke through the silence. "Next we have to be… Up there?" She pointed at a huge tunnel pouring a stream of muddy sand-and-waste sludge into a pool below. Which was not the bad part. That was the fact that it was about, oh, ten feet off the ground, he'd guess? And there were very clearly no ladders of any kind present? This was a fun day.
"We can't climb that," Lance explained tiredly. "Is that how you guys got down here?"
"Yeahhhh, we know what we're doin'." Sasha shifted Lance's weight from her shoulder where she'd only been helping him to her entire back. "Gimme all your weight and try to keep it low, 'cause this spine is not meant for your heavy keester, Handsome."
Dubiously, Lance leaned his weight onto her and did the best effort he was capable of bending his knees right now. Keith then watched his eyes widen in surprise as Sasha used those thick lizardy legs to leap directly into the air, letting out a strangled "HURK," of alarm as she propelled them into the open sewer tunnel.
Ah. Actually, that explained kind of a lot. Evolution required one to defend against predators, and it looks like the geruda had been blessed with cast-iron legs. All the better to fly these hollow bird bones with, my dear. "Hey, you two weigh the same?" Sasha called back as she and Lance stumbled into a wet landing.
Leash looked back at Lala, still at Keith's side. "Yeah, there's no way that's a good idea," she agreed, unlooping the strap of her gun from around her shoulder. "Trade me, darling" she nodded towards Keith, holding out her gun in offer.
Lala shuddered as Keith, too tired to feel humiliated, allowed Leash to bear his weight on her back as she jumped up into the sewers above them with surprising grace.
It was once they reached this higher floor that the trouble began. Quite generally Keith didn't know how they'd managed to avoid the Galra for this long, but their luck ran out the instant they started making headway back upwards. Considering they were currently a party of three civilians, two heavily injured moronic paladins, and one gun, the only option was another long, terrifying game of hide-and seek, ducking quickly through hallways with the harsh ringing echoes of Galran footsteps nearby their constant, ominous companion.
Eventually, after god knows how long they made it back to their old enemy the boiler room. But more importantly the room next to it, which after barely any effort to break into contained an entire storehouse of confiscated and spare weaponry.
Including, as surprising as it was that Veret had been telling the truth, their bayards. And including, even more bafflingly, his fucking knife. His knife, the knife he'd smuggled through countless foster homes by sewing it into the back of a stuffed elephant until he was big enough for no one to notice he was carrying it on him at all times. Fucking A, was this a good day or a bad one? Keith was afraid he'd lost this baby for good this time.
Veret telling the truth… The image of a red fruit cracking flashed in Keith's mind.
If there was one place the Galra weren't gonna look for them, it was back where they'd escaped from in the first place, right? Now. They had two spare seconds in which they didn't need to be silent, and Keith couldn't wait any more. They were doing this now.
When Lala tried take his arm again, he rejected it with determination. "What," he started firmly, eyeing each of the girls in turn, "exactly, are the Galra doing on Elpis? What do they need from this place? Why haven't they already enslaved this planet like all the rest, and why is every single member of an entire species dedicated against them, to the point where casual passersby on the street can report our actions to a secret revolution?! What is going ON in this place?!"
Each of the girls exchanged an uncomfortable glance with the others. "Well, you know," Sasha winced cagily. "It's… Kind of this whole complicated thing, you know?"
"I think we have a minute," Lance agreed flatly. "Summarize it."
Lala made a pathetic, whiny sort of noise of distress, eyes on the ground towards the doorway Leash was, predictably, standing in. Leash huffed a short sigh out of her nose, and tiredly said, "We already told you, honestly. The Galra are here for the same reason everyone has always come to Elpis for, since the beginning of society."
Keith frowned, mind reeling as he tried to put together that vague hint with the rest of the information he had. The reason aliens had started coming to Elpis was… because geruda could breed with anyone? Because the geruda could give children to nearly any species in the universe.
"Something that can't be taken by force." Something the geruda would fight and die rather than give up freely. Something as valuable as life itself.
Keith's eyes widened in horror, his heart seizing in his chest. No… no way. Even for the Galra that was just… Just too…
"What are you talking about?" Lance demanded, anger and frustration straining his voice. "Why won't anyone ever just TELL me anything?!"
Oh, shit. Keith swallowed hard, instantly understanding why the geruda had been so hesitant to give a straight answer. Finding himself equally unable to voice the horrific truth, Keith offered in a voice shakier than he had hoped it would come out, "Lance. What's the one thing an empire needs to stay an empire, more than any other? More important than money, or weapons, or land, or anything? The one thing a war needs so badly that once this resource run low, the war is instantly over, impossible to continue?"
Lance scowled at him, ready to snap that he wanted a real answer until he saw the tortured look on Keith's face. "The one thing…" He let out an aggravated scoff, desperately shrugging, "I don't know, people?"
Keith took in a deep breath, and, very deliberately, nodded. "Yeah, Lance. People. Every Galran base or ship we've ever seen has had at least a couple of living Galran soldiers commanding the drones, right? Even if they each live thousands of years, you saw the span of their territory on Allura's map. You've seen the number of Galrans here just in this sewer! There must be... countless numbers of them. And yet as far as we know, they have nothing like a civilian home base. Their planet was destroyed, we've known that practically this whole time." It was partly the blood loss, partly the horror, but mostly, Keith was sure, the barely suppressed flow of rage that was making his hands shake like this. "So where are they all coming from, Lance?"
He could see the cogs reeling in Lance's brain, and it did not take long for the pieces to snap into place. He watched Lance's eyes widen in the same disgusted horror that had overcome Keith only moments before, and his head snapped to look at the girls as he gasped out, "Oh god, you can't mean-"
"To be fair!" Lala held up her hands quickly, voice forced into cheerfulness. "It's significantly less creepy than it sounds when you realize we only have to give them the eggs we lay. This whole thing would be waaaaaay different if any of us had to be like, present for fertilization."
Sasha rolled her eyes and Leash buried her face in one hand. "You are just. The most tactful," Leash said with flat sarcasm. "My delicate rose."
"In for a henny, in for a dround," Sasha huffed to herself. "Geruda start to lay eggs when we bond with someone, there's this chemical in our brains that starts the whole mating cycle when we're like, in love and junk. So, if you identify this chemical, and then say, pump it into a city's air supply with some well-placed vents, then every girl in the city will be in full heat year-round, laying eggs every few weeks like crazy." The air conditioning - the vents the'd just been crawling through - jesus god, this was fucked up.
"Not very good for a girl's body, it turns out." Leash said dryly. The shortened lifespans and lack of older women, of course… "Can we get moving again now that you know our dirty little secret? I am so far beyond not willing to die down here."
"Why," Lance's voice was choked with distress and residual horror. "Why are you just… giving them your children! How can… How long has..."
Leash sighed again, her eyes pinching shut as the other two exchanged another set of looks. "Well that's what the RA is for, isn't it? It's not that hard to understand. Lots of people were dying in the space war, so some old queen made a deal with the Galra, and made UAGRA and the MGE at the same time. We head to a Nursery when we're about to lay an egg, they do their thing, if it's a geruda daughter they send her up to the Kindergarden to join the system and be raised by the Governesses and if it's a Galran son they… Take it to do whatever with. Probably just raise them down here, but no one's found any proof of where yet."
"They keep track of us," Sasha explained with a shrug. "So if you miss a date at the Nursery they notice. They don't bother trying to find the egg you kept for yourself, just make sure you don't miss the next date by ah, 'quarantining' a sister."
"Jailed in a hospital bed," Leash's voice with thick with bitterness, sending an ominous chill down Keith's spine.
Sasha and Lala exchanged uneasy looks. "Me and Lala were both born out in Fyrestone, so we've never…" Which left of course, the open implication that this meant Leash had . Unsettling indeed.
"Yeah, I think I… get the picture," Lance said thickly, eyes downcast. "She's right, we need to focus on getting out of here."
Immediately, the clatter of boot steps alerted them to the fact that maybe hanging around here hadn't been such a great idea after all, and they were quick to get on the move again with an inappropriately cheerful reassurance from Lala that she'd get them out of there in no time.
They were a large, slow-moving party, but Keith figured they were still better off than just he and Lance had been by themselves. Even knowing if and when they got into a fight they'd have to find a way to protect at least two civilian non-combatants, Sasha's first aid been invaluable. Or well, Keith didn't feel like he was about to die anymore, which was kind of a big deal. He had been… Really quite certain he'd been dead for a minute there.
Keith seemed to be fairly alone in his newfound optimism. But that was understandable considering after what was definitely another half hour or more of wandering Lala and Sasha were getting worn down, bearing less and less of Keith and Lance's weight until the four of them had sort smashed together in a horizontal line, all dragging each other through the hallway like an exhausted prisoner chain.
Leash was pausing, turning one ear to the hallway behind them to ominously confirm, "Someone's coming."
Keith nodded to her gun. "Can you handle out backs?"
She looked grim. "Probably not. I've fought my way out of a Nursery, but that wasn't against real soldiers and it with one of these," she raised the tip of her gun meaningfully.
"I can shoot," Lance said quickly.
"The fuck you will," Keith hissed back. Jesus fucking quiznak, there was no way he was letting this happen all over again. Not today. Not when Lance was only barely alright to begin with; he only had one goddamned limb left as it was. "We're running."
The decision was accepted immediately. The repercussions were also immediate, because even the soft padding of gerudan claws turned loud when a group of them were all scrambling together. Their footsteps echoed through the tunnels, loud and heart-poundingly ominous under the sickly white fluorescent lights of the sewers.
But not as loud as the deep voice shouting behind them: "This way! I can hear them! "
"Oh, cluck, oh cluck, oh jinkies, oh cluck," Lala was quietly whispering to herself on every stumble, jammed between Keith and Lance with an ECHO screen bouncing unsteadily in front her face. "There's - we're close, there's still one way out from here, and it's like the only way we CAN go, but-"
Lance didn't let her finish. "'Out' is good enough for us, just tell us if we're going the wrong way!"
She craned her head as best as she could while running as fast as she could and sandwiched between two men nearly a foot taller than her. "It's just where it leads…" She said nervously.
The footsteps were close enough that Keith heard the warm-up fire of a laser rifle and it's flash in the corner of his peripheral vision, and Sasha squawked in alarm. "Anywhere it leads is really good right now, I'm thinking!"
Their four-person wall broke apart in their efforts to hurry, turning from a moving game of Red Rover to five tired people stampeding through a damp tunnel like they were being chased by hellhounds. Which, actually would have been better, because at least hellhounds wouldn't have been shooting lasers at their freaking backs.
Lance stumbled, nearly falling until Leash grabbed his arm as she passed to drag him along with her.
"I see them! There's five, not just the two we knew about!"
Fuckfuckfuckfuck FUCK. Keith didn't spare a glance over his shoulder, just heard Lance direct a quick, "Here, let me -" before a few shots fired from a significantly closer proximity.
"LEFT!" Lala cawed, just in time for the party to swerve into an almost-unnoticed door that opened directly into a blissfully upward-climbing staircase.
There were - a lot of stairs. Too many stairs, too too many stairs, and Keith had a bullet hole in him, and whatever Sasha did with that first aid kit he's petty sure he just managed to undo because his shoulder was warm with blood again. By the time they reached the top of the stairs, nearly slamming into another closed door, everyone was weak with exhaustion and Keith was distressingly lightheaded.
There - there was no way to open the door. He could see it, and it was a solid black metal wall with no handle of any kind and when he looked over his shoulder he saw the first Galran soldier catch up enough to fling the door open after them and start up the stairs himself -
"Come on, we didn't take that LONG, answeransweransweransweranswer," Lala impatiently bounced, pounding her tiny fist against the door.
Jesus christ they were like fish in a barrel here, easily picked off one by one and the Galra was close enough for Keith to be able to see the yellow of his eyes.
The door clicked. Sasha and Keith threw their bodies against it, barreled the door open with a wide swing that had all five of them spilling out into a pained pile onto immaculate pink brick tiling.
The harsh red sun burned at Keith's eyes, and everything was white with dizzing light blindness for a few seconds before he could coordinate. Leash was already slamming the door shut behind them as he sat up, grabbing his head and blinking at their sudden and unprecedented arrival into… Lush blue-green bushes, perfectly sheared into uniform symmetry, a brick pathway that bridged over a lake of equally perfect shape, and even the intricately carved black metal door seemed to sprout out of nowhere from between two trees. A garden? A very NICE garden, even. And judging by the uniform on the confused geruda guard that had just opened that door for them…
"Uh, Ma'am!" The guard called back to somewhere Keith couldn't particularly see through the small crowd of gerdua peeling themselves off the ground. "There are some people here, and um. Did you know about this? Should I be throwing them back in the sewers?"
"No, I've been expecting them," a husky voice answered, and Keith couldn't even get off of his ass and back onto his feet before she was stepping into view. A familiar face, one he and Lance had both seen countless times since they'd come to Concordia. Although more weathered in person, this was the face from newsclips and public service billboards, currently looking down on them like someone had alerted her to the pile of dogs at her feet: Shirun Shera, Queen of the kingdom of Sheba. "Although that was hours ago now, you're lucky anyone was around to open that door for you at all."
"Yeah speaking of, your high majesticness ma'am," Sasha pointed back to the door. "There's totally some Galra dudes who are about to come trying to bust this down after us, so sorry!"
The Queen, towering over her two guards at a regal 5'6, rolled her eyes like this was just another tick in a very long line of them. "I can never find the time to get exercise anyway," she muttered, gathering up her loose skirts in one hand as she marched towards the closed door, unceremoniously grabbing the axe from the hands of her beleaguered guard as she threw it open and stormed inside.
Keith looked to Lance, who was slowly rising to his feet with the support of the doorframe. "Should we just… be letting her go down by herself like that?"
"Yeah," The guard slumped, an odd mixture of frazzled and resigned. "I'd have been surprised if she DID let me do anything."
An almost disturbingly short amount of time later there was a polite knock from the other side, and Lance opened it with only minor hesitation. The Queen wiped the bottom of her bare foot against the ground before she stepped back outside, a little bit of purple blood staining her tiles anyway when she handed the axe back to her guard. "Get down there and do some cleanup, I don't want any more rats finding their way into my garden."
Before the door had even swung shut behind her, Shirun Shera was turning her sharp eyes on Lance and Keith. "Now," she said firmly. "Tell me you are who I think you are, and for the love of all that is holy please tell me one of you is in charge."
Lance and Keith exchanged helpless glances, and then, because it seemed like the thing to do, both stiffly bowed. "We are the Paladins of Voltron, your highness," Lance offered magnanimously. "Voltron's right arm and leg, and um." He smiled nervously. "As for that leader thing, I don't suppose you could lend us a phone or something?"
Her eye twitched minutely. "I don't know what you're referring to. Would you at least tell me where I can find the person who IS in charge? I understand there's going to be a Galran battlecruiser launching in a few minutes and I'm really rather hoping it has nothing to do with you."
Both of them winced unconsciously at her biting tone. Well this was not the warm heroic welcome the name Voltron usually got, that was for sure. But more importantly, that battlecruiser was not a good sign, and since the Galra presumably had all of the information Veret had, that included the location of their shop, which is where at least two people would BE right now because it was daylight and -
His eyes shot back to Lance, who was looking like he was coming to similar conclusions himself. "Maliwan - our stall, our friends are set up in the Maliwan district right now, they could be headed straight FOR -"
Keith whipped to the Queen, restraining his rising panic to force himself into politeness as he stuttered, "We need - A ride, if we could be so... So bold as to ask a favor, we really need to get over there, or back out to the castle, Allura or Shiro will be back there anyway and what do you mean by a few minutes, exactly?"
Queen Shirun let out the sigh of the truly put-out. She turned to her remaining guard. "Go have someone prepare my personal ship. Apparently, I am going out into town."
Lala tentatively raised her hand. "We can come, too right? It's a lot harder for a girl to get out of Concordia than it is to get in."
The fly over had done nothing to soothe the renewed rise of adrenaline from their chase into the Royal Gardens, and before the shop was even in sight the tell-tale purple speck of an impending Galran ship was visible on the horizon.
Lance and Keith were stumbling their way out of the ship without even letting it land, just hovering in the streets like a jet plane in the middle of a sidewalk as they ran to an incredibly baffled and concerned Hunk and Shiro.
Questions of where they had been all night or why they seemed to have stolen a small airplane and what the hell had happened to Lance's… Both of their everything were all shoved aside in favor of shoving them INside, corralling the two into the waiting ship with a nervous eye on the increasingly looming Galrans hunting after them.
"Pidge, Pidge is in town somewhere still!" Hunk protested, looking back at the stop stall they were currently trying to abandon as Lance shoved at his back.
"She has to be nearby," Shiro confirmed. "And unlike you two… shining examples of common sense, SHE actually has her communicator on her. We just need to pick her up."
Pidge was still in Maliwan with them, but still far enough off that she had to arrange a meeting place to swing by and get her. It only left more time for the Galran ship to catch up to them of course, so close that by the time Pidge was inside and they were taking off again Keith was worriedly scanning the horizon for traces of purple.
Had he not been, he might not have seen it. In the distance towards the local shipyard, a familiar hull rising unsteadily into the sky.
"Is that… Is that the Inara?" He asked hesitantly, watching what appeared to be their rented Firefly hobble drunkenly into into flight.
Pidge didn't even look out the window to check. "Uhhh, I'm guessing yes. When Shiro said we didn't have time to take any of the leftover furniture I sort of gave the guys her keys before I ran off."
"'The guys' being..?" Lance asked dubiously.
This gave Pidge pause. "You knoooowww. Just some dudes I was hanging out with," she said with a casualness no one found comforting. "They owe me a favor so," she squinted out the window over Keith's lap. "So, I mentioned it would help me if they could stall those Galra."
They were still zipping through streets now, avoiding the traffic in the sky by staying low to the planet's surface, uncaring of the effects of their passing. Tables knocked over, stall wares were blown off shelves, a Galra ship loomed overhead being quickly gained on by a cargo ship full of knick-knacks, and the last thing Keith saw before their ship punctured through Concordia's barrier like a knife through jello was a confused Galra in pink sunglasses and a hawaiian shirt ducking his face behind a newspaper to pretend he didn't exist.
Pidge's gang slowed down their pursers enough for it to be safe to drop the girls off in Fyrestone before rushing back to the castle. There was hardly time for a dramatic farewell considering they needed to get out of there ASAP lest the Galra chase them down to find this friggin' place, even with the Queen's cloaking tech covering their tracks and asses. Still, considering who it was they were dropping off, they could hardly get away with no goodbye at all.
"Now don't forget about us!"
"It was honor to get lost and almost die with you boys~"
"And you should super duper DEFINITELY remember to visit us sometime! Or at least just call, I gave that cute honey with the big goggles my ECHO number so you have no excuse not to-"
Keith was hanging halfway out the door of a jetship with a running engine, and felt like there was not quite enough time for this. "Yep," he cut her off, "oh for sure Lala, but we gotta take off now so -"
"Bye!" Lance waved cheerfully from over his shoulder, before Hunk was yanking him back inside with a less than gentle: "No standing, damn it!"
The ship was already in gear and starting to slide forward again. And of course, just as Keith was about to duck back inside and shut the door behind him, his eyes caught sight of the last thing he expected to see and he froze on the spot. "Oh god," he said as he watched the ink-stained face of a familiar alien. "Oh god, he's still blue, Pidge!"
Pidge twisted to look out the back window as he shrunk from sight. "Oh crap on a Christmas tree," she cursed, head whipping back to Keith. "You're right, it's that guy we robbed!"
Shiro's voice was flat as a school principal's. "The guy you what now?"
"STOP!" Keith yelled up at the frazzled royal guard piloting the jet. "Swing around, we gotta circle back!"
"WHAT?" Queen Shera barked back. "Are you shitting me right now?!"
"It'll only take a second!" He insisted. "We owe money to that onion!"
A short aggravated growl and she was waving the pilot to turn around. A fast curve swooped them back in a circle, still gaining speed again as they passed by the startled and very confused alien, who had just been hit in the chest with a sack full of credits, only looking up just in time to see a little girl belt out "THANK YOU," as she disappeared into a barely-visible podship.
It took only minutes to fly out of Fyrestone, but it was enough time for the Galran ship to catch up. Or heck, maybe it wasn't even that first battlecruiser from town, because there were two more spotting the horizon and looking a whole lot like they knew exactly where everyone was headed. There was no avoiding it: they'd have to fight them.
He was tired. He was tired, and everything hurt, and there were probably still more Galra coming after them, and Keith couldn't even BEGIN to deal with everything that had happened today.
In front of him in the copilot's seat, the Queen of the Geruda was sitting tall and indomitable, mouth pinched into the same grim line she's been wearing since he first laid eyes on her. Quite against his will, he was struck with the sick curious nagging wondering if she, too, were subject to these mandatory "Nursery visits."
Leash had said she'd fought her way out of one. What did that even mean? Holding-a-scalpel-to-a-hostage-throat kind of fought or kicked-in-the-heads-of-ten-men fought? He wondered what had happened, and how she'd even gotten to Fyrestone at all. And, even though he really didn't want to think about it, he wondered about the missed visit that had landed her trapped in the Nursery to begin with. Had she tried to keep her egg for herself, to have and raise her own child? Had she intentionally skipped out of spite, just to deny them? Had it just been a fluke of her body, punished for an absence she couldn't control? And if that was the case, what about the geruda who for some reason or another, simply couldn't bear children? What happened to anyone who missed more than one appointment?
He didn't want to ask, and so he would never know.
This place… These women. And really, that's all they were, wasn't it? They were just… Women. The same as humans or Alteans or anywhere else over the universe, the geruda were, at their very core, nothing more or less than normal women. Taken on whole as a group they could easily seem vapid and shallow, but… Keith was in a ship with four geruda whom he'd all known for less than half a day, and he could already describe a bit of each of their personalities if asked. Once you got them down to individuals, they were as different as anyone.
The flirting, he realized instantly, was deliberate. It was how their society had been built, right? People had come to Elpis because they wanted geruda to bear their children. And the fact that they couldn't even do this anymore hadn't been noticed by anyone… which means they hadn't stopped. Geruda all over Concordia must have continued to steal their own eggs away from the Galra, spending a month in confinement as the price for raising their own child. And even the ones who surely had no intentions of falling in love and having children, like Leash and Sasha, continued to flirt and tease and charm and go on dates because… because that's what they did. They made the conscious decision to act that way.
Every day, they all made the deliberate decision not to let the Galra change who they were. The Galra could take everything - their names, their lifespans, even their children, but the geruda still could not and would not be swayed, would not let anything suppress who they fundamentally were. Wouldn't even let them take away their right to motherhood. Rejecting despair and fighting back each in their own small way, the geruda refused to be anything other than… Well. Geruda.
Yeah… Definitely just like any other woman across the universe, huh? Any planet anywhere would have done the same - an underground revolution boiling under the surface of a peaceful facade. A smile wearing poison lipstick.
What must that first queen have gone through, to come to such a place? How much could she have lost to decide the only choice was to pay the cost of her people knowing family, how much suffering must she have endured to place the future of their entire species on the hope that every generation after hers would be strong enough to keep on fighting?
Keith was well used to the tight hot tension of anger in his chest at the thought of the Galra, but this was... was something new, here. He wanted to fire up Red and tear every one of them apart for this. This madness. As if just taking land wasn't enough. As if just murder and genocide weren't enough! 'Inhumane' didn't even begin to cover it. When he spotted the fires of more Galran ships coming up behind them, all panic was gone in favor of anticipation, every hair on his body eager to get back to the castle and into Red again. Every one of them… He'd clear every last one of them off this planet, exterminate them like the cockroaches they were.
Except that that's not what happened.
What happened instead, was Keith being dragged kicking and screaming to the med bay while Shiro promised just the three of them alone were enough to take care of their pursuers. Slighted but not deterred, even once he let them go without him he refused the healing pod, determined to at least hear Allura and Queen Shirun's meeting even if he couldn't be a part of it directly. But he got to them too late for even that - the geruda queen was already departing with just an exchange of contact information.
And then Coran was carefully herding him back into a nearby healing pod, but no, he couldn't, because Allura was - she was taking off. She was raising the castle barriers and preparing for flight like they were leaving, like they had already gotten everything they came for and didn't have any more reason to stay, like they weren't even going to do anything!
He screamed at her, shouted that they couldn't just leave, tried to explain what the Galra were doing here and why they couldn't just go, but…
The healing pod had already sealed shut around him. No one heard a word he said.
AN: ...That… doesn't count as another cliffhanger, right? Ahaha… Ahahaha…
WELL THE NEXT TWO CHAPTERS BOTH HAVE FLUFF AND PORN I PROMISE 100% NO GETTING AROUND IT OR DELAYING THEM BACK TO SOME FUN TIMES IS2FG