seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Poland
seen from Malaysia
seen from Mexico
seen from China
seen from Philippines
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Australia
seen from Italy
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seen from Russia
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seen from Italy
Jesper: Wylan’s been going to work with a fever and chills all week, and I can’t convince him he’s ill enough to rest
Inej: Kaz caught a bad cold once and he was so worried he’d sleep in that he asked me to keep him from sleeping at all
Jesper: What the fuck
Inej: They’re Kerch. I haven’t found a cure.
Yo have another thing fam
The short and sweet: Pidge becomes a badass and I’m Seasalt trash
The long version: The team is aboard a Galra ship for a mission, Pidge is doing her usual thing of hacking the main computer and pulling the strings when she’s discovered, she manages to secure the room again but in the process gets shot, like mortally wounded if the team doesn’t get to her soon she’s dead kind of shot. Cue her four big bros freaking the heck out and trying to get to her. She can see the odds are against them, she knows that they’ll either escape without her or get captured with her so she does what she needs to do, leads them away from her and to safety before, with what’s left of her strength, rigging the ship to short out and trigger an explosion that’ll knock out the systems and get the team out. In that final moment before in all goes to hell Lance murmurs “We’re going to need a miracle to get out of this” and Pidge manages to choke out “Then say hallelujah cuz here it is.” Things blow up, hangar doors are flung open and everyone is sucked out into space. Cut to Shiro’s visor and all you see is a reading on Pidge’s armour showing she’s flatlined. No time to get her though, Allura swings in, picks them up and off they go. Once inside the ship it starts to settle in: Pidge just blew herself up to save them. Shiro practically roars amd punches a hole through the wall before sinking to the floor, face in his hands. Keith sits next to him, staring blankly ahead as his eyes grow glassy. Poor Hunk doesn’t have the chance to give way to his own grief as he tries to calm down Lance, who’s having a full blown grief driven panic attack. Allura and Coran arrive and try to console them but it’s no use. The final shot of is of the inside the Green Lion’s cockpit, the lights are all off, everything is dimmer than usual. As the screen fades out we hear a small sniffle and see Lance’s leg poke out from behind the empty pilot’s chair where he’s sitting.
Weeks later, the team has gone numb, Pidge’s loss still heavy in the air. But they have a mission to complete aboard another Galra ship. It’s going well, until they’re attacked by something. It’s cloaked in black, small and moving freakishly fast, darting in and striking before retreating back into the shadows. Shiro manages to grab the robe and pull it off, revealing Pidge. Only it’s not her.
Haggar’s handiwork is instantly recognizable.
Every part of her has some kind of Galra tech now. Her left leg from the knee down, her right from the thigh down, the right arm from the elbow and most of her left hand are all prosthetic as. There are power nodes and panels across her body and her left arm has some kind of control band built in. Even the base of her skull, under what’s left of her hair, is Galra tech now, all of it glowing eerily purple. She stares at them, expression blank and eyes vacant. Her right eye glows purple in the second before she launches forward to attack with enough force to leave dents in the floor. Her attack is mechanically precise, each move carefully calculated and executed, her size and speed used as an advantage as she lands blow after blow. Hunk is the one to save the day here, while the other three fight just to keep her at bay he rips open a wall panel and uses the wiring to short-circuit her. The glow of the tech fades as she falls heavy and limp to the floor, surrounded by her teammates nursing the wounds she gave them.
They get their Pidge back of course. Once Hunk hooks her up to the Green Lion and uses the Lion’s energy to re-boot her she’s back with no recollection of what happened - her brain is half electronic now so the memories were literally deleted. Everyone’s ecstatic, Pidge is ok and has some p cool new abilities including downloading info directly into her brain, hacking things at a finger touch and the increased strength, stamina and resilience that her mostly tech body gives her. (She also loves her new ‘techno undercut’ and the fact that she glows green) Lance jokingly calls her the Miracle Maker but it sticks. He starts affectionately referring to her as ‘Miracle’ and whenever she does something techie and helpful on a mission he’ll say “hallelujah” and it kind of rubs off on the rest of the team and becomes a sort of call-sign for her. One time Lance called her ‘My Miracle’ and didn’t even notice until Hunk told him later “So that’s why she blushed?”
Whether or not Fran can be labelled specifically as bi, I kind of adore that the bi Bridgerton who was able to make some peace with his queerness, and had same-sex relationships, and was more stereotypically the artsy queer kid ended up in a hetero-presenting relationship and that the bi Bridgerton who has not explored her identity, is afraid of it, unfamiliar with it, and certainly has a lot less choice in her life and presents a lot less stereotypically has a same-sex endgame. This is wonderful. I love the way this show is doing bisexuality. It’s just there.
More things I believe happened in the months after Crooked Kingdom:
- Marya and Inej’s parents don’t speak each others’ only languages but they do not need to for their few days of companionable silence. Who else understands grieving your child just to find out they are a rich criminal traumatised and grown beyond recognition? Where did it all go? They get each other.
- Kaz says goodbyes in Suli. Inej is unable to stop her parents from hugging him before they go. He is frozen and it’s not all trauma discomfort. It is also shock.
- Jesper half-jokingly asks Marya to paint him when he notices she’s just sort of rehashing the same old things. She does. He cannot get her to stop coming up with slightly different portrait ideas after that. There will be a thousand Jesper portraits. And if he has to stay somewhat still? she cannot get him to shut up. So it’s also his questionable excuse for therapy.
- When Inej sails out, Kaz stops visiting the mansion altogether. Buries himself in work and amassing the empire and whatever. Cannot bear to go where Inej was yesterday and the day before and the day before and now she might never be again. Terrifying. What’s the point.
- ^ Wylan is concerned, but Jesper is offended. Starts showing up at the slat and the club constantly to say as much. Checking up on him through the guise of being mad or bored. Inviting him to dinner again. Inviting him to go out with them.
- Eventually this results in a miserable Kaz third wheeling Wesper because they’re all aware he needs to remember he has friends. Wesper basically parenting him is so funny though. You know Wylan will go like “uh, when Kaz let you on that job last week, how was he…?” and Jesper like “oh yeah it was all but a suicide mission. But I think the air did him good.” “We should take him to a park or something.”
- Meanwhile Inej is spinning out about having her parents in her life and her boyfriend being her boyfriend and now she’s committed to being with neither. Being by herself. Doing the right thing; the scariest thing. Flashbacks to the first time she was ever on a ship. She might be confident and getting to know people and calling the shots by day but when she is alone she’s going to make herself sick. It’s horrible until they take down their first ship, finally, and she knows she can do it.
I’d like to say, if you gave the crows a time to be somewhere it’d be like:
Matthias: 10 minutes early
Kaz: 1-5 minutes early
Inej: Exactly on time
Wylan: 1-5 minutes late (unless arriving with Jesper)
Jesper: 15-45 minutes late
Nina: At least 1 hour late
Pim and Rotty pulling Inej aside when she’s back in town like “okay when’s your next stay?” and she’s like “why? end of summer? I’m not sure about these things until they happen really” and they have to be like “oh we try to plan around his mood” “he’s never available when you’re here” “but he gets happier the week before, and he starts working around the clock, more than usual, so it’s when he lets shit slide.” “Yeah everyone wants to know.” and they go on and Inej just. In a delighted shock.
Imagine. Nina back in Ketterdam after years, either disguised or as the very diplomatic queen/queen-to-be of Fjerda, and the only thing that can compete with the horror of knowing Kaz owns seemingly half the city is learning that the man has not moved out of the slat. Or bought a new wardrobe. He needs it.
