"Now what?" she asked. She had a name, now what was she supposed to do?
"I must go out again and look for supplies," Hunter stated, "That's what I was doing when I found you."
"Oh."
"You can stay down here with me," Sam said, and Star hopped up on the crate next to him. She reminded Katie of a Senegal bushbaby, tail and all, with shiny golden fur.
"I hope you're better with machines than Scholar here is," she said. She pronounced consonants very sharply.
"I'm not exactly the mechanic my wife is, that is for certain," Sam laughed. Katie smiled.
"I'm not sure anyone from our house is the mechanic she is," Katie commented. "What are you trying to do?"
"Take apart things Hunter finds to use the parts in other ways, or for trading," Star answered. "I'm not sure you hands will be of much use getting the smallest parts, they are too close to the size of Scholar's."
"Oh." She watched as the alien unraveled and separated wires, undid screws with her nails and took out data chips from the panel sitting in front of her. Katie wasn't sure even two of her fingers could get into where Stars hands were going. Her palm would probably get stuck first.. Star pushed a pile of screws, cords and other objects she was disconnecting over to Katie.
"Sort these," she said. Sam busied himself by taking the larger parts and breaking them up into sizes Star could work with.
"How did you and mom even meet, anyway?" Sam looked up at her.
"Why?"
"Well, aunt Jen said you were high school sweethearts at one point when I asked when you met but like… you didn't even live in the same state… and that farm's been in Grandma's family since before the civil war so how the hell did you date in high school."
"Honey the internet existed before we were even born it wasn't that difficult to keep in touch."
"Okay, but how did you actually meet? Like was it in person?"
"Yeah."
"So what happened?"
"Well, since Jennifer and I were going to have to start applying to colleges our parents decided to take a road trip to visit some of the out of city options we were interested in. Then, once we got to Indiana, our car broke down in the middle of nowhere because of some engine problem. The Callaghans were the only mechanics in town. Colleen and Christina were in the shop that day and took us all around town while their dad talked to our parents. Eventually, Jake and David just went back to the shop and played with their dog and Christina split off with Jen so Colleen and I just wandered around the woods for a bit. I made a Bridge To Terabithia joke when we got to the creek and I think she started crying."
"Wow. Aren't you just great with women."
"I was sixteen Katie. No sixteen-year-old boy is great around someone they think is cute."
She thought of Keith and snickered.
"What?"
"You just reminded me of something that happened between Keith and Lance."
"I thought you said they were rivals."
"According to Lance they are, but really that just adds to the drama."
"Oh boy."
"I know."
"At least he has Shiro again."
"Oh yeah. He got kicked out of the garrison and was apparently just. Living in a shack. In the middle of the desert with his conspiracies."
"That wild son of a gun really loved aliens."
"Dad no…"
"Dad yes." Just then Star cleared her throat. The two looked at her as she held up a computer chip.
"Look at this neat rock I found."
Katie stared at her in confusion. Sam Burst out laughing.
"What?"
"It's a joke Fearless started."
"Oh. Of course. What else would Matt be doing during his time in captivity but … learn to fight… and make memes…."
"It is what he's best at," Sam said eventually, once he had stopped laughing enough to do so. "It first started that he actually found a rock he thought was cool but that can only go so far. Eventually, it was expanded to things that are very obviously not rocks."
"Oh!"
"His other ones were a fair bit more concerning, however." Star stated.
"What do you mean?" her father grimaced, clearly not wanting to comment.
"Well, every so often he'd disappear and come back to the barracks in a nasty shape." The light-hearted mood in the room dropped below zero. Katie didn't want to know to what extent 'nasty shape' implied. "Sometimes we'd ask what happened. He'd just smile and say it was nothing, just 'Quality time with Commander Saztas', or Hexin, or Tzuril, depending. Hunter would patch him up with whatever we had on hand and he'd just keep smiling like nothing was wrong, trying to keep us from worrying." Star's voice cracked. "He knew we needed a strong leader to keep us together and refused to let us see anything but that, no matter the cost of his actions."
"Next on Not Being Able to Tell if Your Son is Suicidal or Just Joking as a Coping Mechanism: What to do when he Won't Talk About His Trauma Because He Doesn't Want to Worry You," Sam said monotonously, undoing panels on some kind of box to expose the wiring. Katie grimaced.
"Well… Shiro's kind of been like that too, it's probably just how they're dealing with things."
"It better be. How's the rest of your crew doing?"
"I'm not sure that Keith's all that upset about leaving Earth since he doesn't really have anyone there to miss, but he's kind of hard to read him sometimes so I'm not sure I'd really know," she sighed. "It's hitting Lance pretty hard, Hunk too but since the Balmera incident he's been a bit more driven to defeating Zarkon, he talks to Coran about it mostly. They're pretty close."
"Coran and Lance?"
"Yeah."
"And what about you?"
"Uh… I'm good." He slowly looked up at her from his box with a blank expression.
"Katherine I know you and Matt are alike to the degree only siblings can be but if you put me through what he did again I will actually cry."
"Well-!" she backpedaled at light speed- "I wanted to somehow get into space through the Garrison so I could abandon whatever mission and find you guys and bring you back to Earth so really this whole Paladin thing just enabled me!" He raised his eyebrows at her.
"Great."
"What?"
"Well the Garrison told the general populous we were dead, and then clearly, from your description of what happened, were going to lock up Takashi, so I really don't think we'd be able to go back to Earth anymore. Even if we kept a low profile and stayed under the radar they would just hunt us down. They investigate everything that doesn't burn up in the atmosphere with almost paranoid vigilance there's not a way around that."
"How do you know?" she asked stubbornly, crossing her arms.
"Well that's quite a bit of a 'because' so I hope you're ready for storytime." Star sat up straighter in anticipation. The humans' stories of their planet were always entertaining. Katie nodded, and he began. "Back about three years before you were born, there was a guy I worked with named Haneul Gyeong. We weren't exactly close, but we had some lab hours together so I knew him well enough. One night during the summer something crashed around the cliffs in the desert. Reports were that they couldn't find anything. No meteor, no aircraft, nothing. I knew by accident that he lived off grid around there from walking in on him talking to himself complaining about sandstorms, so the next day when we were the only one's in the labs I asked if he had found the aliens from the previous night. Looked like I gave him a heart attack before he realized I was joking. All I know was that Iverson was assigned to the case, and about a week later Haneul went missing. Don't know what happened to him, but it was pretty much cold until a year later. Overheard things about them finally catching someone, and Iverson was promoted. Figure they probably caught up with Haneul. When I tried to read the files on it out of curiosity they were encrypted to hell and back, so I'm not entirely sure. Just one of several shady operations they had going on."
"Did what crashed ever leave?"
"Yes, actually, it did. About a month before I heard they caught someone."
"Huh. And you're sure they landed by the cliffs?"
"Yes."
"That's where the blue lion was hidden."
"Interesting."
"And they didn't just take it either, so it couldn't have been anyone sent by Zarkon."
"Perhaps a friend of your Alteans wanted to make sure the lion was still there," Star suggested.
"But who could that be, though, no one's come to us, if there was an ally of theirs still out there they would have tried to approach us by now don't you think?"
"That's a possibility, but they may need to lay lower than that. From what you've told us it doesn't seem like your castle is very discreet."
"Who knows what their tactics against Zarkon could be," Sam added.
"I guess," Katie sighed. "Probably won't be hard to find us if they want to."
"So are you going to go back to your lion?" Star asked, standing on the countertop while Katie sorted through what they had in the cabinets and taking stock.
"Eventually, yeah. Gotta tell her what's going on."
"But you found your father." She said, marking down how many tubs of antiseptic they had on some kind of tablet.
"I'm still a Paladin of Voltron, family or not Star."
"Will they stay with you? Scholar and Fearless when we find him?" Katie laughed nervously.
"Well, I'm sure there's room on the castle for 12 more people."
"All of us?"
"I don't see why not." Star nodded silently. "Do you think people wouldn't want that?"
"If Fearless stays with you, I'm sure some will stay as well."
"Would you stay?"
"I have nowhere to go. I am a fugitive of my planet, many of us are, my house would be put to death by the Empire if they were to hide me."
"Oh."
"I know Hunter will stay with him," she said with a sly grin. Katie raised her eyebrows.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"He gave Hunter hope and someone to care about."
"Care about how much?" Katie chuckled softly. Star smiled.
"You can ask him yourself if you're really that curious."
"Oh, I'd rather not. I'll just tease Matt about it when we find him." That made Star laugh, a squeaky chittering sound.
"I'll have to be there for that."
"I'll make sure to do it when you're in the room."
When Katie was done taking stock with Star she went back to the cargo bay, expecting only her father to be there, but Hunter was with him. They stood at an improvised desk in a corner, talking. Katie ducked behind a stack of boxes to listen. Neither of them seemed to notice her.
"You don't need to keep these for him!" she heard her dad exclaim.
"It was his kill Scholar, not mine. I only did what I did because he wasn't there to do it himself."
"What if he wouldn't have? What if they never had taken him and he decided not to kill any of them?"
"After everything they did to him?!" Hunter exclaimed. "I understand your dislike for this but it's Matt's justice, and they deserved far more suffering than I gave them in return for his pain."
"And you're qualified to be handing out his 'justice'?" She'd never heard Sam take that tone of voice before.
"I'm clearly more willing to go to the lengths to do it than you are," Hunter snarled. Sam turned on his heel and stomped off, still fuming, but not wanting to extend a pointless argument. Katie came out from behind the box when he was gone, and Hunter had started working on whatever was on the desk. He glanced at her, but neither of them spoke. She watched what he was working on. They looked like gauntlets, covering the front and back of the hand, and the backs of the fingers, each finger ending in a sharp point extending past the nail. The knuckles weren't covered, making them flexible in his hands. She watched as he attached a latch to the palm cover to clasp it shut and adjust it. He looked at her for a moment again.
"Give me your hand."
"What?"
"I need to adjust it."
She held her hand out to him and he slipped her fingers into the metal sections, closing the armor around her palm and the lower section around her wrist.
"How is your range of motion?" She bent her fingers, clenched her fist as tight as the claws would allow, tested the movement in her wrist.
"I don't know how flexible you want to make this, but my thumb can't really touch my other fingers." Hunter nodded.
"The palm folds in to allow that yes?"
"In a way?" she showed him her other hand, and what it looked like when she brought her thumb to her pinky.
"I need to make the palm plate follow that motion," he muttered, taking the gauntlet off of her hand.
"How are you going to do that?"
"Not sure. Hinges wouldn't work if they went out, and if they folded in it would pinch your skin. Is no cover over the knuckles good?"
"It's fine. What are you making these for anyway?"
"Having claws would help Matt better than a traditional weapon with the way he fights, holding something would limit his movement."
"Oh." He set them down next to three silver rectangles she only noticed then. They were engraved with Galra'n letters. "What are those?" She asked.
"Name badges."
"For who?"
"The commanders who were in charge of our labor camp."
It was then that Katie understood what he and her dad had been arguing about.