A/N: Hello! This is a one-shot I wrote for funsies and for a good friend of mine. Her OC, Shikari Shirogane, belongs to her. Enjoy!
**I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender (duh)
After exploring the universe for years, meeting all sorts of unique individuals with incredible powers, fighting evil alien emperors and space witches, and traveling all the way to the center of all of existence and back, Mari thought nothing else that life threw at her could faze her.
…That is until Matt made contact with an alternate reality for the first time without the use of a trans-reality comet.
Ever since Voltron had been sacrificed to save their worlds, Matt had started working on a device that could send out encrypted signals through the veil of their reality to reach intelligent life dwelling in completely new universes. It was purely a personal project fueled by his curiosity — he'd been incredibly interested in the topic ever since Pidge told him that Voltron had traveled into a different reality and that she'd met alternate versions of Shiro, Slav, and Mari. And it was completely safe too, he'd assured a skeptical Sam and Iverson.
If his signals did reach another reality, someone on the receiving side would have to be smart enough to decode his messages. And if they managed to do that, and, for whatever reason, they happened to have malicious intentions toward alternate reality citizens, the chances of them being able to reach their world were practically zero with a 0.001 percent probability, according to Slav. After all, the only way anyone could physically breach the walls separating realities would be if they 1) had trans-reality ore infused with Altean alchemy, and 2) had it turned into a giant ship or mech like Voltron that could pierce the barrier. But that unique set of circumstances happening again in any reality was even less likely.
Besides, they had Vehicle Voltron and the Titan Class warships to protect them now in the event that something did go wrong and their reality was put into danger again. After their harrowing war with Honevra, they were more than capable of handling any sort of threat.
It was late in the evening when it happened. Mari was sitting in her office, leaning back in her chair and stretching after having wrapped up the last of the day's work, when out of nowhere someone burst through her door.
"Gah!" Mari squealed, her heart leaping into her throat at the sudden intrusion and nearly falling out of her chair. Upon realizing it was only Pidge who had entered, she scowled and dropped her arms. "Dammit, Pidge, could you please knock?" she huffed.
Pidge grinned, unperturbed by her irritation. She was panting heavily from her sprint across the Garrison campus, and the look in her eyes was almost frenzied. If Mari had to guess, she'd just had a breakthrough on one of her projects. That, or she'd just downed a coffee with a gazillion shots of espresso.
"He did it!" Pidge blurted once she'd caught her breath.
Mari raised a brow. "Who did what?"
"Matt! He made contact with another reality!"
Mari blinked at her in surprise. "Seriously? No way."
"Yes way!" she insisted, already inching back through the doorway and frantically gesturing for Mari to get up and follow her. "Come on, I wanna show you!"
Thankfully, Pidge didn't have her run all the way back to her lab. They walked side by side through the halls at a brisk pace, conversing in hushed tones and pausing only to nod and smile politely at straggling cadets and officers as they passed.
"An alternate Matthew Holt got his message and decoded it this morning. They both set up a link and now we can talk to him and anyone on his side!" Pidge explained, a giddy skip in her step. "It's so crazy seeing him talk to another version of himself. It's awesome!"
Mari hummed, impressed. Figures that the only one capable of decoding Matt's signals was another version of himself. The brilliance of the Holt Family (in any reality) never ceased to amaze her. Still, she couldn't help but feel apprehensive as they approached the science and engineering wings of the Garrison. Not counting the time they crossed realities in the Voltron-Atlas mech to stop Honerva, she'd never made contact with people from a different universe, not like Pidge and the other paladins had. She didn't know what to expect, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't at least a little bit freaked out to meet this other Matt.
"Is he from Marie and Sven's reality?" she asked.
Pidge shook her head. "No, this Matt says the Galra were evil tyrants in their world too." She paused, pushing her glasses further up the bridge of her nose before continuing, "Their universe sounds like it's a lot like ours, actually. They've got a Keith, Lance, Hunk, Shiro, a version of me, all working similar jobs to ours right now. They even have friends who don't exist in our reality and their own version of Voltron."
A knot of dread twisted in Mari's stomach. "Another Voltron?" she repeated thinly, and Pidge nodded.
"Yeah," she said, the corners of her mouth drooping into an unnerved frown. "Freaked me out too until the other Matt said their lions left on their own after the war. Voltron's as good as gone in their universe as it is in ours. More or less."
Mari let out a sigh of relief. She supposed Slav's calculations technically proved to be correct once again: the chances of another breach of the reality barriers was still extremely improbable. They were still safe from alternate universe invaders.
"So who else have you told about this so far?" Mari wondered, feeling a bit more at ease about all of this now.
"Just you and the group chat," Pidge said, fishing out her phone from her pocket and waggling it at her. "Dad said if we managed to get Matt's device to work, we had to keep it under wraps. And we could only use it sparingly, like once or twice."
"Makes sense since this isn't an official Garrison-approved project," Mari said, and Pidge nodded. Pulling out her own phone, she found their group chat exploding with new messages from the others who couldn't be here.
HUNK: OMG! Say hi to my other self if you see him! Send pictures!
LANCE: Aw come on! Why does all the cool fun stuff have to happen while I'm away?
HUNK: Also, ask if Other Hunk managed to perfect our recipe for haperindi sauce. I'm still struggling to find a way to give it that extra tangy kick I'm going for.
LANCE: Seriously, Hunk? We make contact with another reality version of yourself and all you wanna do is share cooking tips?
HUNK: Uh, yeah? Cooking can be a team effort. Two Hunk heads are better than one!
LANCE: Well, if you meet the other me, let him know he's one handsome devil. ;)
KEITH: If he's anything like you, I'm sure he already thinks he's the greatest thing since healing pods.
LANCE: You're just jealous we look handsomer than you and all the other Keiths combined.
MARI: You wish.
LANCE: Biased opinion. Doesn't count.
PIDGE: Right back at you.
LANCE: :(
KEITH: Hey, be careful when you interact with these people.
ALLURA: I agree with Keith. We don't know what they could be like.
HUNK: Hopefully nothing like those crazy Alteans.
HUNK: Man, I sorta miss Sven and Marie…
HUNK: Oh! No offense, Allura.
ALLURA: None taken. Hira was very disagreeable.
MARI: We'll be careful, don't worry. I'll call you later and tell you how it goes.
LANCE: Hey, no, none of that! Keep your lovey-dovey flirty messages outta the group chat!
MARI: That was meant for the whole group, Lance. "You" as in "all of you." -_-
LANCE: Suuuurree it was. Just make sure you keep your PDAs to your PMs.
KEITH: Then YOU stop spamming paragraph-long love letters to Allura in here!
LANCE: That was one time and it was an accident! D:
ALLURA: Agreed. As sweet as they are, let's keep those between us, Lance. :)
PIDGE: Okay, I'm ducking out of this before I hurl. If anyone has anymore questions for the other reality, leave them here. TTYL!
When Mari and Pidge finally reached the lab, they found Matt sitting at one of the desks, the holographic displays pulled up as he chatted away with another person on screen. A metal box with several glowing tubes and Balmeran crystals attached to it had been plugged into his computer systems and was gently humming away as it worked. This must've been the device he'd built to contact different realities, Mari realized, and she was surprised by how small it was, the machine only about the size of a tackle box. To think such a small thing could send out signals that were powerful enough to reach whole different realities. She wasn't even going to bother asking him or Pidge how it worked – she still couldn't understand their nerd jargon, even after all this time – but she was sure it involved some sort of magic and/or super complex alien tech she'd never even heard of.
Matt turned to them, a huge smile lighting up his face. "Hey! Mari, come check this out! I have someone I'd like you to meet," he said, a chuckle in his voice. He stood from his chair and gestured for her to sit, waiting until she was positioned in front of the display and staring back into the face of…Matt. "It's me! He's one good looking guy, isn't he?"
The other Matt on screen, wearing an identical grin to the Matt standing right next to her, winked and shot him a finger gun. "Aw, right back at you, Matt!"
Their Matt giggled and waved at him. "Oh, stop it, Matt!"
Mari gawked at the Matt on screen in front of her, struggling to process. Alternate Matthew Holt looked exactly like their Matt, except Alternate Matt had longer hair tied up in a ponytail behind him while their Matt's hair was shorter. If she didn't know any better, she might've thought she was just looking into a trick mirror reflecting the Matt currently hovering by her side. But no, this was real, and the Matt beaming at her on screen was a completely different person from another reality.
"Um…Okay. This is super weird," she squeaked, her awe and nervousness getting the better of her. "Uh, hi, other Matt. I'm Mariko Shirogane."
"You're telling me!" Alternate Matt laughed, and even that sounded the same. "It's nice to meet you, Mariko!"
"Just Mari is fine."
He giggled and bounced in his seat, his eyes bright with an uncontainable excitement as he drank her in. "This is fascinating!" he gushed. "Your Matt says you're Shiro's sister, right?"
She nodded. "That's right."
"Well, you completely don't exist over here!"
"Oh." Mari sat back, feeling a bit like he'd just slapped her in the face. "Um. Okay…Darn? I don't really know how to feel about that."
"Turns out not everyone in our reality is multi-universal," Matt said, giving her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
"Maybe your mom sneezed the wrong way over there and decided not to have a second kid," Pidge said, and Mari threw her a scowl.
"Geez, thanks Pidge," she muttered flatly.
Alternate Matt laughed again and shook his head. "No, no, I didn't mean it as an insult," he rushed to correct himself. "It's okay to be a bit freaked out. Every reality is different, right? In ours, Mariko Shirogane doesn't exist, nor any version of her. But our Shiro still does have a younger sister. She's just not you."
Pidge raised a confused brow. "Who is she then?"
"That would be me," a new voice suddenly chimed in, and a face Mari had never seen before popped into view on screen. A woman with blue hair and sapphire eyes and scars that looked like claw marks decorating her face sat down where Alternate Matt had vacated his seat, her smile wide and bright as she focused on Mari. "Hiya! I'm Commander Shikari Shirogane, Shiro's sister," she introduced herself. "Nice to meet ya!"
Pidge's jaw dropped and Matt let out a tiny, "Whoa." Mari herself was at a loss for words, taking in this stranger from the other reality, this Alternate Shiro's sister. Shikari Shirogane…She was pretty, Mari noted, and she looked absolutely nothing like her. She really was a whole different person, a whole new person.
"H-Hi," Mari managed after a moment. "I'm Mari. Also Shiro's sister."
Shikari's smile grew wider, her blue eyes crinkling at the corners. "Oh my god! You're adorable! I've always wanted a little sis," she chuckled, her voice light and easy with amusement and keen interest. "I can totally see the Shirogane genes in ya. It's all in the eye shape."
Mari blinked, again struggling to find her voice. She could vaguely remember a few times ojiisan had commented on how she and Shiro had inherited his and their father's eyes, a piercing shape with long and dark and full lashes. And Shikari, it seemed, bore the same Shirogane eye features as well.
"This is so weird!" Pidge wheezed, snapping Mari out of her stupor as she latched onto her shoulders and gleefully shook her back and forth. "You have a sister!"
"Your Matt and I thought you two would wanna meet since you don't have alternate versions of yourselves," Alternate Matt said, glancing between Shikari and Mari before exchanging a grin with Matt. "And since you both work at the Garrison, grabbing you for the conversation was quick and convenient."
"Oh! You work at the Garrison, too?" Shikari wondered, her eyes flicking curiously to the purple on Mari's uniform.
"Yeah. I'm the captain of a cruiser," she explained.
"And one of Earth's representatives for the Galactic Coalition," Pidge added.
Alternate Matt whistled. "Wow! Impressive."
Mari shrugged, a bit embarrassed. "You said you were a commander, right?" she said, shifting the topic from herself. Her gaze drifted down to the gray uniform Shikari wore, her focus landing on the golden rank stripes on her shoulders. "Should I, uh…call you ma'am, or something?"
"No, we can drop the formalities, I think. It's just us, after all. And it's not like I actually have any authority over ya," Shikari said with a playful wink.
It was Mari's turn to chuckle a bit, her initial nervousness ebbing in the face of Shikari's open and fiery friendliness. "Yeah, true."
Shikari cracked another grin at that. "So! What's your story, Mariko Shirogane?" she asked, eagerly leaning forward and propping her elbows on her desk. "You're my sister, but I know nothing about ya."
"Well, geez. Where to begin?" Mari sighed and sat back in her seat, mulling it over while Matt and Pidge sat on the table, making themselves comfortable. "I guess it started with space. I always wanted to be a pilot growing up."
"Same here! I'm obsessed with space," Shikari exclaimed, her eyes seeming to sparkle a million times brighter just at the mere mention of the word.
"Yeah, she's our resident Space Nerd," Alternate Matt said with a smirk, and she grinned and nudged him teasingly in the ribs.
"Well, I don't blame her. It's beautiful out there," Mari continued. "And the thrill of flight, the freedom it brings…Nothing beats it."
That warm and electrifying feeling she always got when they launched into the air, streaming away from the planet's surface to venture into the unknown on a whole new adventure, flickered inside her core and left her wishing for her next mission assignment to begin. But she wasn't scheduled for another journey until next week, after the Garrison crew finished prepping the Theia for the trip and Shiro came home in the Atlas. All she could do was wait for now, looking forward to her next flight.
Shikari hummed and nodded in understanding. "I know what you mean," she said, the look in her eyes rather wistful. "It's nothing like the simulators at the Garrison, ya know? It's a whole new experience."
"Oh, I've never really tried the Garrison simulators. I studied in the pilot track for a bit, but I got pulled out before I could do any serious training," Mari admitted a bit sheepishly. "Takashi – my Takashi went missing on a mission to Kerberos and our parents got scared, so they pulled me out of the program."
"The Galra kidnapped him. And me and my dad," Matt provided.
"Same here," Alternate Matt said. "Except in our reality, they also took Shikari."
Shikari stared at Mari as if she'd just grown a second head, her eyes wide and her mouth an 'O' of disbelief. "You still have both your parents?"
"Yeah."
"Even your mom?" Her brow pinched when Mari nodded. "What is she like?"
Her voice sounded strange, full of a curious longing and a hint of envy. Mari hesitated, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "My mom's a bit, uh…difficult to be around," she confessed, sparing Shikari from the unwholesome details of their rocky relationship. "Why? What happened to your mom?"
"My mom…" Shikari paused, grimacing. "Well, she's dead. She died right after I was born, so I never knew her. It was just my dad who raised me and Takashi. Plus our dog, Shasta."
Mari tried not to wince, instantly feeling bad for having asked. "Oh. I'm…sorry about your mom," she managed. "Our parents were always busy, so my Takashi and I were raised mostly by our grandpa until he passed away. We didn't have a dog, but we have a black cat named Kage."
"Hold it! Back up," Pidge interrupted, stopping their topic of conversation before the mood could become any more dour. She pointed a finger at Shikari. "You went on the Kerberos mission with your Shiro?"
Shikari immediately brightened. "Yep! I was his co-pilot," she said, beaming with pride. "I started out at the Garrison pretty young, and it turned out I'm a pretty advanced pilot."
"Seems like piloting really does run in the family," Mari mused, and she and Shikari exchanged a knowing smirk.
"What happened to you when the Galra took you?" Matt wondered, fully enthralled by her story that was so different from the events he'd experienced. "Did you fight in Zarkon's gladiator arena like me and Shiro?"
"Yeah, for a little bit…" Her voice trailed off as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Until I, unfortunately, caught the eye of Sendak, Zarkon's right-hand man."
Pidge and Mari stiffened. Sendak…Nothing ever good came about when it concerned the late Galra commander, not even in a different reality, it seemed. Mari took a deep breath, steeling herself and shoving back the painful memories associated with him.
"What did he do to you?" She almost didn't ask this, fearful of Shikari's answer. But this was an important part of her story, and she, Pidge, and Matt wanted to know, to know her and her alternate world better.
"He asked Zarkon if he could keep me as his personal servant. He wanted to make me a perfect weapon, like him. Fearless, cold, ruthless…absolutely brutal," Shikari said, her voice hollow and her expression turning stormy with unspoken memories. "When Zarkon agreed, I was taken to Haggar's labs. She and her Druids stole my arm and gave me this thing as my own personal weapon to train with." She lifted the left sleeve of her uniform, revealing a gray Galra prosthetic arm that was identical to the one Shiro used to have. "Afterwards, Sendak took me and trained me. Gave me these pretty scars too whenever I disobeyed."
She pointed to the jagged claw marks on her cheek and the particularly long slash across the bridge of her nose. Pidge inhaled sharply, thoroughly unsettled, and Mari grimaced, her heart clenching in horror.
"That's awful," Matt murmured, and Alternate Matt nodded grimly.
Shikari smiled ruefully as she tugged her sleeve back down. "Horrible, ain't it?" she agreed. "But if there was anything good that I got outta all of that, it was that I got even better at fighting."
"Don't get on her bad side, it's terrifying," Alternate Matt said, jerking a thumb at her. "She'll kick your ass into next week, no matter how big or dangerous the opponent."
Shikari laughed, the shadows clearing from her features. "You're right there, Matty."
A grin stretched across Pidge's face at the nickname. "Matty?" She snickered, throwing her brother a teasing smirk. "Maybe I should start calling you that too."
He scowled at her, unamused. "Don't even think about it, Katie."
Shikari tried for a small smile. "I'm guessing you all had your fair share of run-ins with Haggar and Sendak too?" she asked.
Mari pressed her lips into a thin line. "Unfortunately. We were well acquainted with them." She crossed her arms over her chest out of habit, grounding herself as she spoke of the past and all its traumas. "Haggar and her Druids tortured me a couple times, but they never took any of my limbs. And Sendak…he nearly crippled me. He destroyed my coalition base and killed many of my comrades."
Shikari winced, her features softening with sympathy. "I'm so sorry…I'm glad you survived them in one piece."
"It sounds like they're monsters in every reality," Alternate Matt said, and there was no missing the disdain in his tone.
Matt nodded in agreement. "And what's with Haggar stealing arms?" he wondered. "Shirogane arms, to be specific."
"Maybe we're just built different," Shikari half-heartedly joked, absentmindedly flexing her metal fingers. "She was obsessed with the strong and making them into powerful soldiers."
"You weren't made into a buncha clones too, were you?" Pidge asked, squinting suspiciously at Shikari as if she were trying to figure out if she was a copy or the original.
Shikari shrugged. "Not that I know of."
"That would be terrifying!" Alternate Matt gasped, cupping his face in his hands in exasperated fear. "You could create an unstoppable army with a bunch of Shikari clones."
Shikari rolled her eyes, but he'd earned another grin from her nonetheless. "Funny, Matty. But you're right, in a way. Maybe if there'd been more of me, I could've escaped that place sooner."
"So, how did you get away from Sendak?" Mari asked, directing them back to the story at hand. "A Blade of Marmora named Ulaz saved our Takashi. Did a Blade save you too?"
"I wish," Shikari said with a bitter huff of a chuckle. "No, I got my chance for freedom when Sendak attacked Arus. Voltron took down his cruiser, but we escaped and confronted the paladins in the Castle of Lions. And long story short, they fought and captured Sendak, I was reunited with my family, and I was finally free from the Galra. From then on, I was a part of Team Voltron."
"Until you joined the rebels and met Olia~," Alternate Matt sing-songed, wiggling his eyebrows at her. "And then you went back to Earth when things got dangerous after Voltron's disappearance and you became a Garrison commander."
A dusting of pink colored Shikari's cheeks and her smile widened. "Yeah," she hummed, leaning her head on her hand. "Until all that."
"I'm guessing you guys had problems with Sendak invading Earth too?" Matt surmised.
Alternate Matt nodded. "Yep."
"That about sums up our timeline as well. We fought Lotor and went through this whole time-skip thing before returning to Earth to fight Sendak," Pidge provided.
"Wait, so what did you do after you were pulled out of the Garrison, Mari?" Shikari wondered, backtracking to the beginning. "If you're a captain now, did they eventually let you back in to study?"
Mari shook her head. "No, my life sorta took a weird turn after that. My parents crushed my dreams taking me out of the Space Exploration program. Combine that with dealing with the grief of Takashi's disappearance, and I was pretty miserable. I thought my life was over, and I felt lost for a long time. But then one day, when I was in the canyons near the Garrison, out of nowhere this strange energy reached out to me. It led me to these caves with a bunch of Blue Lion markings."
"So you were there when you discovered your Blue Lion?" Shikari gasped and sat up straighter, her eyes widening. "Wait, were you your reality's Blue Paladin?"
"No, not exactly," Mari said with a breath of a laugh. "I found the caves, but not the lion. I wasn't Blue's paladin or any lion's paladin for that matter."
"She was a candidate for the Red Lion though," Pidge chimed in. "But our Keith ended up piloting Red. At least until our Lance took over as Red Paladin and Keith became Black's paladin."
"I see. That's how it went in our universe too," Shikari said. "Except our Keith found the Blue Lion's caves."
"Our Keith did too. That's where the two of us met," Mari elaborated, and she couldn't help but smile fondly at the memory. "We worked together to decipher the wall markings and figured out Takashi would be arriving on Earth."
"Yeah, begrudgingly," Pidge snorted. "I still can't believe you tackled him. Talk about an unusual meet cute."
Matt whirled on Mari, appalled. "You tackled him?" he wheezed.
"I thought he was a stalker!" she insisted in her defense, her cheeks warming with her flaring temper. "Or some creep in the desert."
Alternate Matt tilted his head, his brow furrowed in confusion. "You didn't know him before?"
"No. Takashi told me about him, but…I was sorta jealous of him. I hated him, honestly," she admitted. "I didn't want to meet him."
"Huh. Weird," Alternate Matt murmured. "Shikari met our Keith way back when he was recruited by the Garrison. They were so alike, they were practically attached at the hip." He grinned and nudged her playfully, adding, "Even more so now."
The color in Shikari's cheeks deepened and she nudged him back to shush, unable to hide her bashful smile. Mari watched her for a moment, and all at once the realization dawned on her: Shikari Shirogane was dating her reality's Captain Olia…and Keith Kogane.
Mari mulled that over, trying to process. In a reality where she didn't exist, Keith – a different Keith – was dating Shiro's sister and one of their rebel friends. She was unsure whether to feel shocked or glad or indifferent about that, but her indecision nearly made her miss Shikari's next question.
"Are you and your Keith at least friends now?"
Pidge laughed, a sort of cackling, impish sound that had Mari rolling her eyes. "Oh, they're more than that," she said, a teasing glint in her eyes as she pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. "If you know what I mean."
Shikari blinked, her eyes widening with a surprise that mirrored Mari's own. Then she smirked, the pieces clicking into place.
"Ahh, so you're with your Keith too," she concluded, and when Mari shrugged and nodded, her cheeks heating up, Shikari granted her a wry grin. "Oh ho! I guess we've got similar tastes."
Mari chuckled. She couldn't argue with her there. "I guess we do," she said, her initial shock deciding to give way to an easy contentment.
"Do you happen to be with your Captain Olia too?" Shikari asked, curious now.
"Oh, um, no. I've only met her a few times. She's a nice lady, but we're not like that," Mari clarified, ignoring how Pidge was now wiggling her eyebrows at her. "It's just me and Keith."
Shikari nodded in understanding. "Gotcha. I get it, it's not for everyone."
"Everyone's different, after all," Matt wholeheartedly agreed. "Just like every reality."
"So, if you weren't a paladin, did you become a rebel?" Alternate Matt wondered, steering them back on topic.
"Yeah, after a while. Keith taught me to fly, I got my own ship, and I joined the rebels to command a coalition base and refugee camp on a planet called Vurelle," Mari explained, listing the events off on her fingers. "Then Voltron disappeared, Sendak attacked us because he thought I knew where the lions were, I was captured by a Druid and unable to walk for a while, and then I was living on the run for a few years."
"Until Scarlett and Acxa found us and brought us to you again," Pidge pitched in, giving her a knowing look.
"Scarlett? Who's that?" Alternate Matt asked.
"She's a Utearen engineer for our coalition," Mari said, smiling at the thought of her. She was currently off-world helping Immea, Keith, and the rest of the Blade of Marmora repair and convert Zarkon's old headquarters into a training base for the Blade, and would be pissed when she found out she'd missed them contacting another reality. "She made my first fighter ship and is one of our closest friends."
"Ulaz was raising her when we met him. The Blades had adopted her and her sister, who's a Galra half-breed. She can also read minds," Pidge said.
Alternate Matt frowned, caught between concern and astonishment. "Wait, really? She can actually read minds?"
"Yeah. She's awesome." Pidge nodded rather proudly. "And pretty scary."
"Whoa…Amazing!"
"Anyway," Mari continued, ready to wrap up her tale. "Long story short, after we got home to Earth, defeated Sendak, and then defeated Honerva, I became the captain of my own cruiser for the coalition."
"With the expanding coalition, we started making more cruisers like the Atlas to reach more people. We're calling it the Titan Class Initiative," Matt explained. His eyes brightened as he leaned over and began to tap away at his control panel screens. "You should see her ship! We just finished it, we're calling it the Theia. It's the first cruiser in the whole project to be completed."
With a final flourish of his hand, he pulled up multiple images of the Titan Class ships and blueprints for their alternate reality friends to see. Alternate Matt's jaw dropped, his eyes sparkling with wonder, and Shikari blinked, taking in the brand new beauty that was the completed Theia cruiser.
"Wow," she breathed, beaming from ear to ear. "This is so cool!"
"We should do a project like this," Alternate Matt said, already scrambling to grab a tablet to jot down the idea. "I'll pitch it to Iverson and my dad!"
Matt smirked, rather pleased by their reactions. "Good thinking, Matt," he said with an amused nod of approval.
Alternate Matt grinned and winked at him appreciatively. "Thank you, Matt!"
Pidge rolled her eyes and closed out of the files on screen, making Alternate Matt pout. "Okay, enough about you guys, the rest of us have questions we wanna ask," she huffed. She whipped out a tablet to take notes, smiling innocently and bouncing up and down where she sat as she said, "Tell me about my other self. What sort of cool things has she made? What's she working on right now? Can I talk to her?"
Alternate Matt hummed as he set down his own device. "Our Katie's usually working on Vehicle Voltron, like you, but she's actually not here right now," he admitted.
Shikari nodded. "She's got a date tonight."
"I – Wait, what?" Pidge's giddy grin dissipated in an instant, her face scrunching up in confusion.
"A date?" Matt repeated, his brow lifting in disbelief.
"With whom?" Mari wondered.
"With Lance," Shikari replied without missing a beat, as if this should've been the most obvious thing in the world.
Pidge nearly fell off the table. She looked like she'd just been slapped in the face. "WHAT?!" she squawked when she'd finally found her voice, making the other four wince. "Lance? No way, absolutely no quiznaking way! What's wrong with her? Is she insane?"
She was seething, her disgusted and appalled levels at their max. She was gripping her tablet so hard, her knuckles had turned white and Mari feared she'd snap it in half.
Alternate Matt smiled thinly. "I'm guessing you're not with your Lance then," he surmised.
A choked sound rumbled in the back of her throat. "Ew, gross! No, of course not!" she spat, glaring daggers at him as if she couldn't believe he'd seriously just said that. "Our Lance is with Allura!"
Now it was Alternate Matt's and Shikari's turns to look like they'd been punched in the gut. Their complexions paled, a mixture of shock and grief creeping into their features.
"Your Lance…is with Allura?" Alternate Matt asked slowly, his voice threatening to waver. "Your Allura…is still alive?"
Mari frowned. "Yeah. Why wouldn't she be?"
Shikari grimaced, a flicker of sorrow in her gaze. "Our Allura died to save the universe," she said quietly. "She sacrificed herself for us."
Matt stared at her, incredulous. "What?"
Mari and Pidge exchanged a look. They'd never told anyone how Allura — how their Allura had been so close to sacrificing herself for all realities instead of Voltron. It was heart-wrenching to realize that she'd gone through with it in other realities. Pidge put down her tablet and her shoulders hunched, her initial anger waning as she struggled to form a response.
"That…is definitely not what happened in our universe," she muttered, frowning hard at the floor.
"Our Allura was going to sacrifice herself, but the spirits of Alfor and the old paladins intervened," Mari explained carefully, throwing Matt an apologetic look when he turned to her in surprise. "Along with the lions' and Honerva's power, they saved us. That's why Voltron is no more in our universe."
A heavy beat of silence passed as the others absorbed this information, yet another major deviation in their similar timelines. Shikari sighed and leaned back in her seat, her arms folding over her chest.
"That is very different from ours," she said finally. She paused, drumming her fingers against her bicep for a long moment, her expression thoughtfully resigned, but there was no missing the lingering confliction in her eyes. "Our lions still exist, but they left to go who-knows-where," she continued. "They know we don't need them anymore, so they just…left."
Mari, Pidge, nor Matt knew what to say to that. There were so many questions as to why Allura had been sacrificed in their universe, so much unfairness in the matter. And yet there were still so many possibilities, so many unfathomable answers as to why it had happened. Maybe the lions knew somehow that their reality would need them again one day, that a new generation of defenders would be called upon to protect their universe from whatever dangers lurked in their future. Each reality was different, after all, and ever changing. Perhaps Mari, Pidge, and Matt were just lucky enough to exist in one where Allura lived and their universe would never be in such dire peril ever again.
On screen, Alternate Matt took a deep and steadying breath, breaking their silence. "How is your Allura doing?" he asked finally, quietly, his question hopeful but still heavy with an unshakable sadness. "Is she okay? Is she happy?"
Mari tried for a reassuring smile. "She's very happy," she promised him. "She's doing well as the Queen of our New Altea."
Alternate Matt sagged with relief and Shikari cracked the tiniest of smiles. "That's good," she said, nodding to herself. "Our Lance will be relieved to hear that. Everyone will be."
Pidge sniffled and made a disgruntled sound, hugging her stomach as if she was going to be sick. "Ugh, the mood in here's getting too weird and uncomfortable," she griped, waving a frustrated hand in the air. "Someone change the subject before I cry or throw up thinking anymore about dead Allura or me being with Lance."
Alternate Matt and Shikari shared a light laugh, while Matt and Mari exchanged a helpless look, silently grateful for the break in tension.
"Well, we do still have some questions from the rest of the group," Mari reminded her, pulling out her phone to examine their group chat.
"So do we," Shikari said, retrieving her own phone and scrolling. "Like our Hunk wants to know if your Hunk–"
"–figured out his haperindi sauce recipe?" Mari finished. Shikari nodded. "No, no he didn't. That's what ours wanted to ask yours, too."
Shikari chuckled. "Classic Hunk."
"Our Lance, um, also wants us to tell your Lance that he's, erm…a 'handsome devil'," Mari awkwardly added.
Alternate Matt smirked. "We'll tell him your Katie thinks so too," he said, and Pidge's irritation flared anew as she whirled on him.
"Ew! Don't you dare, 'Matty', or else I'm gonna figure out how to pierce through realities and come over there and strangle you!" she warned, jabbing a threatening finger at him, and he raised his hands in surrender.
"Your sister would kill you if you said that to her boyfriend anyway," Shikari said, scoldingly poking him in the arm. Then, casting Pidge a teasing grin, she elaborated, "She doesn't like to share, not even with another version of herself."
Pidge made a 'bleh' face and clapped her hands over her ears. "Gross! God, stop it!"
"Oh!" Alternate Matt exclaimed, a chirp from his tablet drawing his attention. "Our Shiro just sent a message. He says he's sorry he couldn't meet you, Mari, but he's glad to have another little sister out there."
Mari laughed a little, a comforting warmth enveloping her. Shiro was still Shiro, it seemed, no matter the reality: caring and patient and an endlessly kind older brother. "Tell him I say thank you," she said. Then she granted Shikari a pointed smile. "I'm glad to have another brother and a new sister too."
Shikari grinned, the spark in her eyes burning bright with a steadfast pride and delight. "Same here."
Suddenly, Matt's signal device beeped and a warning symbol popped up on their screens, the live feed of Alternate Matt and Shikari starting to go fuzzy.
"What's happening?" Mari asked, cautiously eyeing his machine as it began to whir a bit louder.
Matt slid off the table and began to type at his panel, a scowl pulling at his lips. "The signal's cutting out," he said. "We're losing our connection."
The Alternate Matt must have been experiencing the same connection issues, because he was working away at his controls as well to try and stabilize their feed. "The veils separating realities are always shifting and moving. Our universes must be moving farther apart," he realized. "We can't stop that. When we completely cut out, we probably won't be able to contact each other again."
Alarmed, Pidge jumped off her perch and frowned at him. "So this is goodbye?" she concluded, her voice small and tight. "Already?"
"It wasn't the most stable connection to begin with, honestly," Matt admitted sadly.
Alternate Matt nodded. "But maybe it's for the best," he said, trying for a consoling smile when Pidge pouted at him. "Contacting other realities like this isn't exactly…natural."
Once again, Mari, Pidge, nor Matt could find the right words to reply. He was right, after all: there was no denying that there was something unnatural about building machines and meeting different versions of themselves like this. It was a forbidden realm, a hidden place of knowledge that shouldn't be delved into for too long, lest they risk madness. Honerva had been a prime example of that, her desire to live in a perfect reality having nearly destroyed all of existence. This separation was for the best, and contact wouldn't be made again if the abrupt smoking of Matt's machine was any indication.
"Maybe we'll see each other again someday. We still have the lions in our universe. Maybe one day, if they're ever needed again and come back, we'll meet each other," Shikari piped up, trying to remain optimistic in the face of the disheartened atmosphere. "There's a lot we haven't talked about. And a lot more I've always wanted to do with a sister. I'd like to spar with ya, test out your flight skills, do races and stuff. And I'm curious about your mom and how you and your Keith went from enemies to lovers. I'm a sucker for a good love story."
She beamed knowingly at Mari, at silent promise and a million unspoken stories hovering between them. Mari smiled back, her heart aching as the live feed became more and more unstable.
"I'd like that," she said, nodding in agreement. "Maybe it'll happen someday too. You know, just as long as it doesn't cause a catastrophic collapse of all realities."
Shikari chuckled at the half-joke. "Of course."
The image on screen was threatening to break, the audio on the verge of giving way to static. "Say hello to your Allura for us, okay?" Alternate Matt called out through the garbling noise.
"We will," Matt promised.
"It was great getting to meet you, Mari," Shikari said, and she gave her one last brilliant grin. "Really."
Mari drank in the sight of Shikari Shirogane and her Matthew Holt, committing them to memory, reminding herself that this was real. That they were real. That this had all actually happened and it wasn't just a dream.
"You too, Shikari," she said, giving her a little wave. "Good luck with your future."
Shikari returned the gesture with a wink. "Right back at ya, sis."
And with that, the live feed blipped out, followed by the conclusive POP and sizzle as the signaling device fried. Matt coughed and waved the smoke away from the machine, inspecting its charred remains.
"Well," he said as he unplugged all of its cords from the computers. "If that ain't a sign from the universe telling me to stop with this project, I don't know what is." He laughed and turned to Mari and Pidge with a satisfied grin. "That was a huge success though!"
Pidge grimaced, unable to agree or disagree with him. "No one better tell Lance the other me is dating him," she grumbled, and she hugged herself tighter as a shiver ran down her spine. "I'll never live it down."
"His ego doesn't need anymore inflating," Mari agreed, more than willing to keep that part of their conversation with Alternate Matt and Shikari a secret.
The sudden SWISH of the door opening drew their attention away from the screens, and they turned to see Shiro entering the lab.
"Hey," he greeted them, smiling at the pleasant looks of surprise they were giving him. "I thought I heard voices in here."
"Shiro!" Matt grinned and stood up a little straighter as he approached. "You're back from your mission early. How was it?"
"It was good. I just finished submitting the report." He paused behind Mari's chair, glancing curiously between the busted signaling device on the table and the trio staring back at him. "What are you three still doing here this late?"
"Matt made contact with another reality," Mari said, pointing to the machine before throwing him a smirk. "You have another sister in another universe."
Shiro's eyes widened. "Do I now?" She nodded and he blinked, processing that new bit of information. "Huh. Well, now I wish I'd gotten back sooner. I could've met her."
Mari opened her mouth to respond, but she was cut off by the gurgly growling of Pidge's stomach. They collectively looked at her and she shrugged.
"What? Reality-crossing builds up an appetite." She grinned, plucking up her tablet again. "I'm ordering pizza. Matty's treat!"
Shiro lifted an amused brow. "'Matty'?"
Matt shook his head and scowled at Pidge. "We are not sticking with that nickname," he adamantly insisted. "And if I'm paying, lemme pick the toppings, at least."
As he hovered over her shoulder, the two of them murmuring back and forth about adding extra cheese and ham, Mari leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table. She smiled slightly at Shiro and gestured to the empty space beside her.
"Pull up a seat," she said. "We'll tell you everything over dinner."
Shiro let out a breath of a chuckle and relented. "Deal," he agreed, and he pulled over a chair from another bench in the lab before lowering himself into it next to her. "I can't wait to hear all about it."
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