Chapter Text
Allura’s eyes shoot open and she fills with momentary panic. Where is she? Her eyes are having trouble focusing and it takes a second for her to comprehend her surroundings. As her eyes adjust, she sees that she’s in a healing pod which is usually used to house the injured. Fear creeps up her spine as she realizes that she’s trapped inside. But right as she thinks that, there’s a hiss of released air as the pod unlocks.
She climbs out unsteadily, most of her body still numb. Her memories and thoughts are a blur as she tries to piece together why she was in the capsule to begin with. She closes her eyes trying to remember. It takes her a second to piece together flashes of the moments she remembers.
Galra, war, destruction, death; those are the main things that come back to her. Shakily, she walks over to a computer panel to try and get any more information.
The date shown is 2017 and her chest fills with panic again. She had been frozen for over 100 years.
Suddenly she hears a hiss of gas from behind her and she spins around, prepared to attach. A figure steps out of another capsule. As they step into the light she immediately recognizes the familiar mustache.
“Coran!” She shouts with joy.
“Oh, princess, glad you’re alright. Do you mind telling me what in the world is going on?” Coran asks rubbing his head.
“Well I’ve only woke up a couple of seconds ago, same as you, so honestly I haven’t the faintest clue. All I know is that we’ve been sleeping for about a century. I’m accessing the history drive now.” She says as she types.
“100 years! Wow that’s the longest nap I’ve ever had.” Coran states as he strokes his mustache.
As Allura reads the recorded events from the past century images of Altea, her home planet, surface. She feels sick to her stomach. A comforting hand is placed on her shoulder and she turns to see Coran standing next to her.
“Oh my, it looks like the war never turned in our favor.” Coran says, gravely looking at the pictures of their desolated planet.
Allura blinks back tears as she reads how the Galra resorted to blowing Altea to dust to neutralize their attacks. Her father, as a final act, had sent her along with Coran to their sister planet Arus, leaving them as the last surviving members of their species.
“This all happened so long ago. How much more have the Galra done to the rest of the galaxy?” Allura mutters, mostly to herself.
“One can only hope that they haven’t taken over the whole universe yet.” Coran replies.
“What they did to us is a tragedy, but we must stop them from inflicting the same fate to other planets.” Allura states angrily and quickly uses the castle to see where the Galra are now. “Luckily it seems that after almost defecting them, they needed to recuperate and have conquered only a handful of planets. They are currently in the Milky Way Galaxy, and the closest inhabited planet to them is...Earth.”
“Well to Earth then I supposed.” Coran says.
Allura nods, “To Earth.”
A dark hooded figure climbs the wall of a house effortlessly, as if walking up stairs. They open a bedroom window entering the house silently. The room they enter belongs to a child. A toddler, maybe three years old, is sleeping peacefully in his bed. Completely oblivious to the figure standing over him.
The dark figure begins to generate glowing purple of energy. It’s hypnotizing with the way it swirls and flows. The figure keeps going until it’s a concentrated ball and then pushes it into the sleeping boy.
The boy continues sleeping, the energy seeming to not affect him. Then, the figure pulls out a vial with liquid inside similar to blood, and a syringe. They fill the syringe with the liquid and carefully inject it into the child’s exposed neck.
The boy finally stirs, screaming when he sees the figure above him. Flames erupt suddenly filling the room at an impossible speed. The figure flees through the window as everything is engulfed in fire. The fire alarm blares, a screeching and familiar sound.
Keith snaps awake to the sound of his own alarm clock going off. He’s covered in sweat and panting. He takes a deep breath to calm himself. This is a recurring nightmare for him, but recently it had been happening more often.
His sighs and swings his feet over the side of his bed. He looks down at his hand to see it covered in flames. He calmly grabs the glass of water that he had, conveniently, put on his side table and dumps it on his hand, extinguishing the flames.
This is his curse, having the power to control the very thing that killed his parents.
Pidge types furiously on their laptop, trying to hack into the server of the supposed Space and Exploration Agency. Everything had led to this Agency, their brother and father last seen there, any disappearances were quickly covered up by this place and there were rumours that they even practiced genetic alterations. Anything strange that happened always came back to this place.
The thing was, their server was incredibly well protected. Pidge had needed to spend at least a week on each firewall to get through. They were on the last one and this was by far the hardest thing they’d ever had to get through.
Nearly two weeks had been spent on this barrier, with little to no progress. Usually getting through security protocols were like a walk in a park for Pidge. This added even more suspicion to why security this intense and advanced was being used by this agency. It’s nearly 2:00 am on a school night so they really should have be getting to sleep by now.
“Come on. Just one more thing, this has to work.” Pidge mutters angrily to themself. An infuriating ‘access denied’ appears on the screen locking them out again. “Shit! Come on!” Pidge shout-whispers, angrily hitting their computer with their fists.
As they make contact with the metal they feel a shock, almost like a current, go through them. Suddenly the screen goes black then pops back up and, amazingly, the final firewall is broken. Pidge laughs out loud with relief. Finally, they had done it.
They analyze the data and it appears that SEA had been tracking what appears to be an unknown craft heading to Earth. It’s projected landing area is in a forest not to far away from their house, and it was due to land in about half an hour.
This is the biggest lead that they have found on their family and Pidge isn’t about to let an opportunity like this get away. They have hope that their father and brother will be on that ship, but they know the theory is far-fetched. They quickly enter the landing coordinates into their phones, pull on some shoes and climb out their window.
Running down the street is not one of Pidge’s nightly rituals but desperate times called for it. They finally arrive at the landing site panting and exhausted. This is probably the most physical activity they would do, like, ever.
Looking around their heart drops. There is nothing but trees. They take a few steps forward and turn on their phone’s flashlight to look around some more. That’s when they see a path of broken branches and debris. Heart racing, they follow the path. After a couple minutes Pidge spots it, a crashed ship that looks wrecked.
They race to it, pulling off branches and leaves. It is a pretty small craft, probably only able to hold one and their heart drops. Had only one of their family member made it? They manage to pry open the main hatch and inside is an unconscious man, around 25, the same age their brother would have been.
Pidge is filled with disappointment. Sure they’d probably help this random person but he still wasn’t their family. Then recognition suddenly hits Pidge, this man was Takashi Shirogane, or as they had know him better, Shiro. Their brother was friends and had gone to school with him. Pidge had a bit of trouble recognizing him with the new patch of white hair and what seemed to be a robotic arm?
Here slumped unconscious in front of them is Pidge’s greatest lead and hope to finding their family.