deercountry | The Building Blocks and other assorted tales!

"I understand. I don't even have that specific power, at most I get impressions. I can travel out of my body and see ghosts though, so I can get how strange it would be to suddenly hear people's thoughts."

And that being said...

"The Emperor is the worst though. There were several times he came close to killing me, and he definitely almost petrified my mentor. No one like that should be the emperor of anything in my opinion."

"Travel... oh..." Keith paused for a moment in the scrubbing, and then shook his head. He saw Allura use quintessence based alchemy to transfer a trapped soul from inside a sentient robot spaceship into a dying clone body. And this was after Keith himself momentarily had his soul in the same metaphysical space and spoke to the trapped soul. These things should really not surprise him anymore. He nodded. "Right. It's uh... definitely weird."

He listened as she continued on the initial topic. "Yeah... I've only known one Emperor, and he was a pretty nasty guy, too. Conquered most of the known universe and enslaved entire races... and worse. That's why I was with Voltron. To stop him."

"Yeah...I'm still working on that one. Not even I understand how to do it at will."

Luckily it didn't just happen BECAUSE, so that was a good thing.

"Ugh, that's my worst nightmare, that he's trying to go bigger. I'm glad you guys fight your own version of that emperor guys yourselves. Voltron, you said? That's the big pilot mech, right?"

"Yeah... so I'm kind of hoping to go back to the other type soon."

He nodded in response to her question. "It separates into five somewhat smaller ones, but they're still really big. The big one is humanoid shaped, and the smaller ones are lions.

"There's a couple of them here in Trench, actually." Not the complete set of five, so they couldn't form Voltron, but... three out of five wasn't bad.

"You might still after this month," Luz offered. "They say this is supposed to be temporary anyway, for the people it happened to this month. I'm not certain about that, but then who is about anything around here anyway?"

She knew full well that this wasn't entirely reassuring, but she didn't want to fill him with false hope if it suddenly became new. It was strange enough that it happened to begin with.

"Oh, wow! Like an anime! Don't think about that too much, just know that in my world, there are cartoons and live action shows that depict plucky teenagers in mechs fighting against evil! I didn't know that there were that many that were actually here though! Which ones are you missing?"

"Ugh..." Keith wasn't sure what was worse... the changing process or being stuck with inescapable crowd noise in his head. "Yeah... sounds about right."

He did raise a slight eyebrow at her response. "Yeah... I've seen shows like that on TV sometimes. Though, I don't know if you could really consider our team 'plucky'... and not all of us are teenagers." Well, they probably could have been considered that while Shiro had been missing and Keith had been in the Black Lion the first time, since Allura was technically an adolescent despite her actual chronological age being different than theirs, but... Alteans aged differently anyway.

But, semantics aside...

"Ah, we're missing two... the Blue and Green Lions. We have Black, Red, and Yellow."

They were both pretty bad. Luz wasn't going to act like she really understood other than when she got her Pale Blood magic alongside her own glyph magic, but the adjustment to seeing ghosts ALL the time and having weird premonitions had been pretty startling and took time to get used to.

"'Plucky' is just another way of saying spirited or, you know, slightly going against the grain. You usually don't see someone who's a dog of the state piloting something like that. It has to be people that march to their own drum, usually having some kind of similarity to the mech that they pilot."

Ah. So there were five, and the truth was that Luz had technically only never MET one, only seen her in a memory. So technically, in one way or another, each of the lion pilots had somehow been either in Deerington or in Trench.

"So you're missing...Allura and that other person...Pidge, right?"

Keith snorted a small laugh.

"Well, yeah... I guess you could say that about us, then."

Keith looked a little surprised. He wasn't sure how much Luz had learned from the others, but to think she knew that Allura was in Blue... okay. That was a post-lion-swap situation. He nodded.

"Yeah." He was curious. "Who do you think is in which Lion?" Because, sure... three Lions here in Trench, but there were technically four Paladins...

"I've met a few of you guys! I can tell Shiro is this, like, stoic, leader-y guy, and Hunk is this warm, awesome dude I wish I could meet more often. Believe it or not, there's a female counterpart to him who's the best person I know. Anyway, then there's you, still figuring you out since we just met, and Lance, the hot shot kind of guy."

After seeing his memories, Luz could tell that Deerington had put a pretty big gash in Lance's sails. She knew from experience anything green you had about you was pretty much ruined in a few months. The less said about that, the better though.

"And then there's Allura, who I'm PRETTY sure is a pilot even though that throws the count awry. So let me think. Oh, I should ask. What are the colors of the Lions?"

Keith listened as she ran through the list, and almost seemed more amused the further she went on. He nodded.

"Black, Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow," he said. "And you're right. The count is off. We had some stuff happen back home which kind of explains that. Like I said, Green and Blue aren't here. Just Black, Red, and Yellow. Allura and Pidge aren't here, so...?"

Luz had it for sure. And, it was kind of nice to think about this in a way that wasn't like upsetting for the fact that they had too many Paladins bonded to Lions... and one of them had to step back in favor of the others.

"Ah," Luz said, flexing her hands. "THAT is a challenge. It's like math! But hold on, hold on, let me think."

So. Shiro. Keith. Lance. Hunk. Black. Red. Yellow. Someone was missing from the count, and she was going to have to factor that in. Out of the remaining people, who wasn't there anymore?

"Ok. So Hunk is yellow, because come on, he just is. That one is easy. But the other ones. Hmm. Lance isn't left out of the count, he's talked about being a pilot before. That leaves you and Shiro. Now, if I had to choose, Shiro would be the leader, so his color would be...Red, since most anime have that be the leading color. BUT! That means you wouldn't be a pilot, and that's obviously not true. So of the remaining three, I'd say Shiro isn't the pilot anymore. But for colors. I'd have to go with you for Red and Lance for Black. How'd I do?"

Okay... he wasn't expecting that. He shook his head.

"Close... but here's a hint. The Lions all have personalities. Black is actually the head and looks for natural leaders, people willing to put others before themselves. Red is..." Keith considered her for a moment, a nostalgic look on his face. "Well, she's the right arm of Voltron and very strong-willed, but protective. Blue is kind of the morale of the group. She's welcoming and forms the right leg. Yellow's been called the heart of Voltron, being a strong support for the team as the left leg. Green is curious, intelligent, and the shield arm... the left arm of Voltron.

"Shiro... from his point in time, is a pilot. All four of us here are. And, yes... Allura is one, too, but she started off flying the Castleship until after Shiro's point in time when she became a pilot for a Lion." Care to try again, Luz?

Edited 2022-02-26 09:01 (UTC)

Luz was a nerd, and unawares to her, she was using both her mech anime know how and math to try and figure this out. Sadly, it looked like she may have miscalculated.

"Ooh. I see. So now you want me to figure out who was who with hints! Ok. Lemme think."

She was lost in thought. "Ok, so you're giving the impression that Shiro WAS a pilot, but isn't now. That means without a doubt he was the Black Lion's pilot since he oozes leadership but isn't anymore. From what I saw of Pidge, and we only had little conversation, they were pretty smart and inquisitive. That's your Green pilot, so that's out. Allura is self-assured and smart from what I saw, and she COULD be the red lion, but there's still Lance to consider. Now, Blue, you said, is the morale of the group. I think that could be Lance, but I feel like when Allura joined, that'd be a better fit for her. That still leaves who the current Black pilot is, and who's Red. If Shiro isn't black...I'd have to say you, because I can't see Lance as the Black Lion. He's strong and he's protected me before, so I'd peg him as Red lion's pilot."

"Okay. So you've got it mostly." He smiled, definitely amused now. "So, you figured that Lance could be Blue's and Red's pilot, and that Allura could be Blue's, which is right. And that Shiro was Black's, and that I'm now Black at the point in time I'm from... which is also right." Though, Keith still was kind of surprised that anyone could actually guess he was the current Black Paladin. He still had trouble seeing himself as the leader type. "So, if Lance was Blue and Red... And Shiro and I were both Black... and Allura became Blue...?"

Anime mech knowledge was pretty decent, but she needed the added sentai color coding to make the original formation........ as the team tended to dress in their original colors...

Edited 2022-02-26 09:39 (UTC)

"Thanks! It takes some figuring out, and I have to guess who's who based on what I know about you guys. I only met some of you guys in limited ways, and Allura is the hardest since I've never met her once."

She didn't want to mention how she SAW Allura, since that would mean going into Lance's memories, and that would be something she was sure Lance would want to tell Keith himself.

"So that leaves Pidge at Green and Hunk at Yellow. I couldn't imagine him being any other color."

Keith nodded.

"Mm-hm. I wasn't always in Black, though." He considered something for a moment. "Have you see the Paladin armor that some of us sometimes wear? The colors are what color Lion we all started in. So Pidge and Hunk are the only ones that stuck with their Lions through the whole thing."

"I don't think I've gotten to see anyone in their armor yet!"

That she knew, anyway. How would she know if they had their armor on? She MIGHT have seen Lance in his, but that was in his memories, something that she was pretty sure she didn't specifically want to remember.

"So if you weren't Black, that means your color was...uh. Red?"

"Oh... well, I have mine here. Now that I found all the pieces that washed up on the beach." He made a face. "Took a few days.

"But, yeah. I was in Red when we started." Aaaaand that's why things were complicated in regards to the Lions that were in Trench vs which Paladins were in Trench. Yay for timelines. They'd figure it out eventually, Keith was sure, if it was ever needed (which it would be come Leviathan time, go figure), but they could do that when the time came.

"Sorry to hear it was in pieces. Usually, all the stuff we need is in those bags on the beach. Maybe it was too big and bulky to fit?"

At least he had all of it now.

"That hasn't made things awkward now that you're here, has it? Wait. Wait a moment. Does that mean that Lance came here in another lion? You said that three of them were here."

"Oh, it was definitely too big to fit." Keith honestly wasn't surprised. But having it kind of just wash ashore in sections had been weird.

"It's a little awkward?" Keith sighed. "I don't know. He's always had Red here from what I can tell. And Hunk has Yellow. And Shiro has Black. I guess I didn't show up with a Lion here because the two I've bonded with were both here already."

"No kidding! I bet it would be annoying though. I'm sure you'd have preferred it in one piece."

Oh. OH. Now she got it.

"So...does that mean you won't get to pilot a Lion here?"

"It definitely would have been easier," Keith said quietly. And then he shrugged.

"I don't know. It depends on how things work out. Which Lion responds to me and which Paladin each Lion wants to be with." Yes, the Lions' opinions mattered.

"Maybe you can find even better armor here, who knows?"

Not her. Luz didn't exactly go around looking for armor, though it might be a good idea.

"Oh. So in a way, the Lions are sort of like our omens, where they function on their own and bond with you when they feel it's necessary?"

So only sort of like omens.

Keith shrugged a bit.

"I've already got two suits from home, now that I have all the parts." The undersuits, at least, had been folded up in the bag. It had just been the actual armored pieces that had shown up on the beach... along with a few other things between the bag itself, and the other items that slowly floated in over the course of that first week or so.

"I don't know much about the omens, but they're... Yeah. I guess. I mean, they're not always running around on their own. They still need a pilot or a bond with someone to function. The most I've seen them do on their own is respond to their Paladin when that person's in trouble and needs rescue. They'll come for you if you call to them."

"Oh, well. Good then! I didn't think it would be a good idea to walk around with an incomplete set!"

Luz nodded, realizing that there was still so much she didn't know about the Voltron pilots.

"I'm always curious about what makes beings like that. I get where our Omens are supposed to come from, since they're sort of extensions of ourselves. But the Lions are mechanical. How are they sentient?"

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