IC Contact

[lionhandler]

If you want to get in touch with Shiro, through crystals, messenger bird, or in-person, this is the place to do so.

Comments

[lionhandler]

Right. Keith's met the Blade of Marmora, and Lance says we've got a plan to take Zarkon down for good that we're working on.

I'm guessing that doesn't go how we wanted it to.

[ She sure hasn't been acting like they won and everything is awesome, to say the least. ]

[heartofalioness]

[No plan survives first contact with the enemy, after all.]

Not quite. Once most of the components were in place and we'd baited Zarkon, we realized that we still hadn't heard from Thace about his part in the plan: disrupting Zarkon's flagship's power systems long enough to upload a virus to keep the ship disabled. The Blade of Marmora were about to abort the mission when Keith volunteered to sneak aboard the ship in a cloaked pod to deliver the virus himself. Obviously it was a risky idea and Kolivan even refused at first, but Keith insisted.

[Allura takes a second to pause and stave off any worries Shiro might have for the Red Paladin; she knows he probably knows Keith is fine by now, but it's their nature.] He's alive and well when I left, by the way.

[lionhandler]

[ He's not super happy to hear about Keith doing something so uniquely dangerous, but he did already figure he must've gotten out of it fine, if only because, well. It's not Keith's name Allura had hesitated to call out to when she first arrived. ]

Good. Does that mean he succeeded?

[heartofalioness]

In a way. He made it into the core room just fine, but then he found that the codes had been switched. Luckily Thace managed to reach the core room too.

[It's there though that the damp chill in Allura's aura is more keenly felt, and it darkens the air around her as well. Juniberry blossoms start to sprout from the floor around them.]

Keith said they were "trying a workaround," but they were silent for a while, and the next thing I knew Keith just barely managed escaping from the ship with an explosion behind him, and the Red Lion moved in to save him. Thace... Thace wasn't there.

[And there's no way Keith would have left him behind if he knew a way how.]

Thace didn't seem surprised when I mentioned saving Keith's life when he first contacted me, before I knew about all the temporal disparities. Either this place brought him here just before the explosion, or... or this place is capable of resurrection...

[And honestly she's not sure which theory unnerves her more.]

[lionhandler]

It is. I've read about it, at the Welcome Center. [ Allura's lucky to have so many friends already here to explain things to her; Shiro was alone when he arrived, and he spent a whoooole lot of his first month or so here just. Reading. ] People can show up here after they die, and.... Even if an Otherworlder like us dies here, they come back. I don't know why or how. I'm not sure anyone does.

[ He pauses to take a sip of his water while he thinks the news over. ]

...Whichever case Thace falls under, he does a good job of hiding it. I didn't suspect a thing until you said something.

[heartofalioness]

[She is lucky; she can only imagine how hard it would've been to arrive to nobody she recognized from the timepoint she did. She admires Shiro for being able to come so far after arriving on his own.

Still, that information is... difficult to parse, emotionally, so she lets Shiro move the subject back onto Thace gladly.]

I am glad that we have the opportunity to meet him here, and I hope that it's a long time before he's returned to our world, if at all.

[It's a mercy, this world letting him live a free and peaceful life, but a cruel one that he won't be able to enjoy it in his own world, or that no one will remember the memories made here when they leave. Only Keith will have the honor of actually meeting Thace, and only for those last few moments.]

I suppose that's item one of this "counseling:" my thought is to let Thace tell all of us on his own terms, and that the two of us should respect that secrecy in the mean time. Do you agree?

[lionhandler]

[ Shiro, for his part, has a pretty different perspective on whether or not forgotten memories count for anything, to say the least. Forgetting something doesn't make it not matter. He knows that better than anyone. So, he's glad for the chance to have met Thace, regardless of whether or not he'll remember it when he leaves here.

He nods his assent. ]

Thace is his own man. Whether or not he chooses to share such personal information is his decision, not ours. I can't really blame him if he just wants to move on from it entirely.

[ It'd be pretty hypocritical if he did try to hold it against him, really.

It's about now that the waitress returns with Allura's tea, ready to take their orders. Shiro orders a turkey sandwich, and apparently this is less than what he usually gets by a significant enough margin to bear commenting on, but he brushes it off by claiming he had a big breakfast. ]

[heartofalioness]

[Her smile grows a fraction larger.] My thoughts exactly.

[And there's the waitress again.] Thank you, miss. [Turkey... That's bird meat, she remembers...] Hmm the turkey sandwich actually sounds appealing. I'll have the same please, with a small fruit salad for the side?

[lionhandler]

[ Two turkey sandwiches and a small fruit salad, coming right out~

Just as before, the smile Shiro held on his face while the waitress was close by quickly disappears once she's off again. ]

So, that's Thace. What's next on the agenda?

[heartofalioness]

After that, the plan goes smoothly for a while. We finish disabling a ship and wormhole Zarkon's ship to cut it off from the rest of the fleet. Voltron was making quick work of destroying the ship, when... apparently Haggar and the druids had been working on a weapon to directly drain quintessence from planets, and Voltron was hit with a direct blast.

[The air chills and dampens again in remembered fear.]

Voltron was disabled, and it was a few moments before you responded to our hails. Shortly after that though, Zarkon emerged in this... power armor, the size of Voltron, and he was coming for you while you were still immobile.

[Another pause as Allura takes a sip of her tea. To keep her voice from drying out, to give Shiro a chance to react... to steady her own nerves at the fresh memories.]

[lionhandler]

[ Shiro's been working very hard on keeping calm through this conversation, and using dunamis techniques to keep his emotional effects from showing, but that wasn't going to work forever. A dark cloud starts to gather over his head. A weapon to drain quintessence from an entire planet at once.... The implications are horrifying, as is the thought of taking a hit from such a thing. Even if it disabled Voltron, it seems incredible that they even survived something like that.

Though, if they had Zarkon coming at them while Voltron was still out of commission, they (he) might not have survived much longer. He takes a deep breath to help steady his emotions, but otherwise waits in patient silence for Allura to continue. ]

[heartofalioness]

Luckily we were able to divert enough of the Castle's remaining power to fire at Zarkon and distract him. He reflected our blast back at us, and when we came to again all of our systems were down. I set Coran and Slav to try and get the Castle back online while Kolivan, Antok, and I went to take out the komar.

We were successful in infiltrating it, but Haggar and her druids fought back furiously. [Another fall in her expression, another aura of cold damp air.] We lost Antok...

And then... Shiro, Haggar is an Altean. I knocked back her hood and she was an Altean. I can only imagine she's been using the same methods as Zarkon to extend her lifespan but-- [She shakes her head to bring herself back on track, but it doesn't shake the look of confusion on her face.] And then she tried to hit me with a blast of magic, but... somehow I was able to shield myself... with quintessence. And use it to counter-attack, and to destroy the komar.

[lionhandler]

[ Shiro frowns. That was a lot of names and terms he doesn't recognize, but he understands the important parts. Haggar is Altean. He understands why it's such a disquieting revelation for Allura, but... it doesn't change a thing about how he feels about the witch. Still, maybe that's information they can use. ]

...I know you probably don't want to think about it right now, but... if Haggar is Altean, does that mean we have a better understanding of what she can do now?

[heartofalioness]

[If Shiro thought even a fraction of her anxiety was out of pity for a woman who betrayed EVERYTHING to Zarkon for reasons that Allura doesn't know and doesn't care to? Well, it's easy to see how nonexistent THAT is, the air around them taking on a sharper chill and some frost even forming on Allura's side of the tablecloth.]

Hopefully so, Shiro. And she'd better PRAY I never get the opportunity to use that information against her.