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Katie didn't know how to process the image flittering on her laptop screen before her, millions of thousands of questions swimming through her head without allowing her a fraction of a second to give even one a significant amount of thought. It was next to impossible, so why should she believe it? With her teammates, however much attachment they lacked to her situation, his situation, and their situation, became her stability for the first time of many in the next coming years.
Katie, who was know Pidge, frowned and shoved Matt's glasses further up her nose with a gentle nudge, fingers pressing hard against her computer's silicone casing.
He wasn't that big when he left her planet.
Shiro, Takashi, went through a complete Steve Rogers sort of transformation, mutating from an eighteen year-old lanky dork who watched cartoons with her on spring break to someone who looked like they drank protein shakes for a living. The stupid adorkable fluff that hung on the top of his head was now bleached white and a searing scar was tattooed across his nose, right arm replaced with a cybernetic double to nearly his shoulder.
That wasn't Takashi. That wasn't someone who read stupid magazines in lobbies, who dyed his hair with her and her brother with Kool-Aid every Summer, who winced every time her brother and her sang horribly off-key. That wasn't her brother's best friend yelling desperately at a group of scientists, wasn't the same guy who stirred her heartstrings with his smile.
She swallowed hard as someone shoved a needle in his arm, his human arm.
This was the figure the rest of the universe saw, the figure that came quite literally crashing into her world.
This was the smile and wave, stuck in a Garrison flight suit, Golden Boy Shiro.
The kid who laughed and shook his head was now screeching for the end of times.