Lance sank back against his seat with an audible sigh, enjoying the way that the cracked leather embraced his lanky frame. Idly tracing a deep gorge in the wood of his armrest, Lance noted once again, just how ugly the furniture in Keith's study was. If the chairs and sofa hadn't been so horribly comfortable, he would have added his voice to Nanny and Allura as the women urged Keith to allow them to redecorate his study.
Thinking of inconsequential matters kept Lance occupied and stopped him from going insane. He would be the first to admit that patience had never been one of his strong points and this insufferable waiting — while Keith met with Coran — was beginning to get on his nerves.
Checking his chronograph for the seventh time in as many minutes, Lance resisted the urge to fidget impatiently. Without any conversation, the atmosphere in the study was hushed and solemn, something that seemed to suit the moods of the other members of the Voltron Force.
Gentle snores emanated from the sofa where Hunk was sprawled. Much to Lance's amazement, the large space explorer had taken advantage of the momentary lull and had fallen asleep within minutes after their arrival at the castle.
Sven, on the other hand, had occupied himself by doing something productive— going over reports about unusual weather patterns. The dark-haired space explorer's patience and attention to detail was almost legendary. Sven was one of the few people Lance knew who could sit motionless for hours at a time, seemingly unaware of how much time had passed.
Lance's gaze sharpened with concern as his eyes lit on Pidge. For once, Pidge wasn't doodling madly into his portable computer — something he did during idle moments. Instead, the young genius was on his feet, staring out at the rolling green fields that surrounded the castle.
A pang of guilt washed over the first officer of the Voltron Force. He had been so busy worrying about Keith that he hadn't thought of checking up on Pidge. Besides being princess and teammate, Allura had also been a friend and sister to Pidge and her disappearance and subsequent reappearance must have been difficult on the young man.
Pidge stared out of the windows of Keith's study, watching the play of sunlight as it glinted off the sparkling waters of the castle's lake. Far off in the distance, he could see rolling green hills and majestic forests.
It was an idyllic scene that filled him with an inner peace and an impotent rage. Although he was Baltean by birth, after his planet's destruction at the hands of Zarkon, he had embraced Arus as a second home.
A newcomer to Arus would have thought that the entire planet was as green and peaceful as the area around the Castle but Pidge knew better. He and the others had seen first-hand the devastating effects of Zarkon's weaponry.
The fields around the villages near the Kistrani mountains were empty — their produce gone; devoured by Haggar's swarm of insects. Without assistance from the castle, the year ahead would be a difficult one for the villagers.
Shaking his head, Pidge marveled at the irony of things. In their efforts to protect Arus from the ro-beasts, the Voltron Force themselves caused much of the damage to the planet. Incidental damage happened in all battles, despite the Force's best efforts otherwise.
He knew that Arus would heal itself. It had done so often enough in the past. Renewal was like the coming of spring. Without knowing how it happened — or even exactly when — a luxurious green carpet would suddenly appear to cover the scorched earth.
Pidge's brow furrowed as something occurred to him; a little niggling in the back of his head that would not go away. There was something strange about the way that Arus recovered from its injuries. Things grew back so fast that it wasn't natural.
Crossing to the console on Keith's desk, he tapped out a series of commands. Entering a sequence of coordinates, he summoned up an aerial view of the battleground where the Green had faced Haggar's tree-beast.
It was blackened and devoid of plant life.
Entering another set of coordinates, he pulled up another visual — this time, of the place of the battleground where they had fought the Minotaur beast that attacked just before Keith and Allura's wedding.
It was verdantly green. New shrubs and bushes poked out of the crevasses and crags created by the incredible force of the explosions during the battle. Wildflowers blossomed haphazardly, sprinkling the area with riotous patches of color.
A hand on his shoulder made him jump.
"What's up squirt?" Lance asked.
"These are two separate battlegrounds," Pidge explained, pointing with one hand while he adjusted his glasses with the other. "The image on the left is the Wahanab forest on Arus' southern continent while the one on the right is where we fought the minotaur before the wedding."
"Minotaur Beast? That's the bull-like one, right? The one that made me lose my desert to Hunk?" Lance wondered as a puzzled frown drew his eyebrows together. "And the forest you mentioned is where you fought that tree-thing before All—"
"Yeah. That's the one." Pidge interrupted his friend curtly, not wanting to remember the disastrous events that followed the Wanahab battle. "There's something funny about those battlegrounds. It's almost as though nothing ever happened in the one on the right. Here, look at this.."
Lance gave the monitor a cursory glance and saw what Pidge meant immediately. The contrast between the two sites was startling. Realization and confusion dawned on his face. "Why do they look so different?"
The discreet sound of someone clearing his throat brought conversation to a halt and the Voltron Force looked up in unison at the other people who had joined them in the room. Keith, Coran, Nanny and a familiar blonde-haired woman whom Lance recognized from his intelligence profiles as Allura's Aunt Orla, the Queen of Cador.