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Nov 5, 2017

Voltron: Answer Man in Space

Tagging @kingofthewilderwest @oreramar @wolfie-dragon-rider. Enjoy this Halloween-style fic!

Season four spoilers under the tag!

Keith was hot and tired when he walked into the Castle. It had been a long, trying period of time going undercover, in the hopes of finding Lotor. Then all that effort was wasted now that Lotor had apparently switched sides, to ally with Voltron and the Blade of Marmora. He had pretty much given himself up, and allies were holding him in cusotedy on their planet. Keith didn't trust the prince, especially after their past encounters, but it wasn't his decision. The Blade were obviously considering the ramifications of an heir to the throne as a hostage, and perhaps as a means to end the Galra Empire with less violence.

He had returned to the Castle for a break from the politics. While the team hadn't wanted him to leave in the first place, and they kept berating him for making a suicide run, they were his family. Besides, Lance had promised he had figured out how to work the pool so that they could swim.

So here he was, surprised to see an old friend in the flesh. A friend who was now taller than him, and had a scar across his cheek. Keith had walked to the main deck, hoping to reconvene with Shiro and Allura.

"Matt," Keith said with muted joy and relief.

Then Matt was embracing him, and lifting him off the ground. Lance and Pidge, who had come, were surprised to see this output.

"Whoa, take it easy, soldier; I'm not a weight in the gym," Keith said, trying not to smirk.

"I can still bench press you, mullet head," Matt said, in the drawl of their old commanding officer. "I may not be a paladin of Voltron, but I can still fight."

They both laughed, briefly basking in the memories of sparring sessions and leaning over computers. Lance stared at them weirdly.

"When's the last time Keith laughed?" he whispered to Pidge. "I'm suspecting the Blade of Marmora put a humor chip in his head."

"I heard that," Keith called loudly. Matt put him down.

"There's so much to catch up on," he said.

"But first, we need to celebrate you not dying," Lance announced. "And by my count, it's October. You know what that means? Don't you, Keith?

Keith knew what he saw in Lance's plaintive, excited expression. Matt didn't seem to know.

"Oh no," Keith groaned. "Not the Answer Man."

"Lance, I told you I didn't know if it would be ready," Matt said with hesitation.

"The Answer Man?" Pidge asked with curiosity.

"Pidge, remember that cadet initiation that you skipped out on, which was after hours and during Halloween?" Lance asked.

Pidge shook her head. Lance, Keith and Matt sighed. She looked at the boys to figure out which one would tell her. Matt took up the task.

"It's a game based off the phone call game the Answer Man. It's basically you try to call an otherworldly being to seek true answers. And for every question you ask, you must answer one truthfully. Or you lose a limb."

"It's so stupid," Keith answered bluntly. "You can't lose a limb because you answer a phone call! And given that, why wouldn't you lie?"

"Admit it, you were scared when you did it," Lance replied, poking him.

"Isn't there video footage that measures how loudly the cadets scream?" Matt asked. "Lance, if I recall, didn't you scream louder than anyone in your group when you received an electric shock to the toe?"

Lance stopped smiling. He glowered at Matt.

"Thanks for that. It spoiled my good mood."

"The point is, that's not my idea of celebrating." Keith crossed his arms. "It was just a stupid trick to scare the freshmen."

"Hey it is fun if you're the voice talking in the phone," Matt said. "I know I had fun when I was a senior doing that."

"Why can't we do something else related to October?" Keith waved his hands. "Trick-or-treating in space, or carving pumpkins?"

"Keith, we haven't found a single planet with pumpkins on it," Lance replied. "And you've tried space candy. There aren't any chocolates up here."

"Lance helped me scrounge up a box of old flip phones," Matt interjected. "I've been working on making them work within the castle, so that they can call each other."

"But what's the point if we know that it's you?" Keith asked. "The reason why it was scary for freshmen is that they thought a ghost was haunting the premises. We know there aren't ghosts in the castle, not after what happened with Alfor's AI."

"I'm sure Matt can be scary," Lance promised. "After all, the game involves answering questions truthfully. And how honest are you?"

He playfully punched Keith. Keith couldn't help but return the punch with amusement.

"I'm not getting out of this, am I?" he asked.

"Nope!" Lance responded.

"I want to hit the pool first," he said. "I at least want some downtime to recover from Lotor."

Six of them were sipping milkshakes, sitting in a circle. The circle comprised Lance, Allura, Shiro, Hunk, Pidge and Keith. Pidge was fidgeting with her cellphone. She frowned through her glasses.

"Lance, this isn't going to work," she said. "These cellphones haven't been well maintained, and they can't be activated with an updated network. Only radio towers would work."

"Hush, ye of little faith," Lance said and poked her. "Are you saying Matt couldn't make this work, Miss 'I Got the Video Game from Earth to Work'?"

"Not with these." Pidge held up the phone. "They don't even have the means for WiFi!"

"That may be for the best," Shiro said. "It's better to play something harmless than to toy with something like Bloody Mary or Pogo the Clown."

"I'm with Shiro on this one," Hunk said. "Man, I hate this game."

"Oh come on, big guy," Lance said. "You seemed to enjoy it after the cadet initiation."

"What exactly are the rules?" Allura asked. She had finished half of her milkshake. Obviously she was worried about the mention of ghosts, and was eyeing her phone with suspicion.

"The rules are we dial the number of the cellphone to our right as soon as it's 12:01 AM Earth Time," Lance explains. "That would normally cause a busy signal, since then phones can't handle more than one call at a time.

"But the Answer Man isn't real, right?" Allura asked. "This is just a game?"

"Relax. It's only going to be Matt," Lance assured her. "He will answer our questions as truthfully as possible, and he will ask us questions. The main rule is that everyone has to be honest, no matter how embarrassing the question."

"I still don't see how this is going to be fun," Keith said.

"Oh, it'll be interesting to hear all your deepest, darkest secrets." Lance gave a wicked grin.

"You know you'll have to answer about your deepest, darkest questions as well." Pidge said.

Lance frowned at her.

"You know I have no secrets. I'm like an open book!"

"Yeah, like a picture book," Pidge snarked. Lance glared. Keith suppressed a smirk while Allura ducked her head, on the pretext of studying her cellphone.

"Anyway, this is just awesome winding down time to celebrate Keith not ramming himself into a ship to save us!" he announced. "And this is to remind us that home is still safe, and intact."

On his signal, everyone pressed the Talk Button on their phone. Four phones got busy signals. One went to voicemail. One picked up.

"Hello? Who is this?" A deep voice hissed through the phone. Static broke up the words, but they were articulate.

"Hello, Answer Man," Lance replied with confidence. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Do you know the rules?”

“Ask a question, answer a question truthfully, whatever,” Lance leaned back. “And I expect you to be entertaining.”

“This is creepy,” Hunk whispered.

“I don’t see how this is fun,” Allura said.

“Matt found a good voice distorter,” Keith said while rolling his eyes. “It doesn’t sound like him at all.”

Deep within the ship, in front of a few computer screens, Matt sat in front of several computer screens. His face was pale, and he was trying to type. His fingers were stiff.

“Ah, there you are, Matt,” Coran came in, offering him a large milkshake. “Are you working ona new program?”

Matt didn’t respond. He typed rapidly. Coran frowned.

“Guys, can you hear me?” Matt spoke through a microphone. “There are strange waves going through the sound system. It’s causing static.”

“What is it?” Coran leaned forward. He placed the milkshake on a coaster that he had tucked into his coat pocket.

"Lance wanted me to try and reconnect old Earth technology for a game. I thought I could do it but the signal is too old. I can't even get WiFi on the old phones!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but that energy signature looks familiar," Coran said with a frown. He leaned forward.

"Where have you seen it?" Matt moved the milkshake out of the way before Coran could knock it over with his elbows.

"Are you familiar with quintessence, Matt?"

"It's the essence of planets, what makes life sustainable on them," Matt replied. "And it can be harvested through rifts to other realities. Pidge filled me in on the details."

"The waves are messing up communications because quintessence has interfered." Coran rubbed his mustache. "The last time I saw those waves, was when a quintessence being came through the rift on Daibazaal and was threatening all the living inhabitants nearby . . ."

His voice trailed off as the implications sunk into both of their minds.

"Oh no," Matt said. "It's locked me out of the systems. I can't do a thing."

"What can I do to help?"

"Pidge," Matt said. "She has to stall that thing while we battle it on here. Do you think the paladin suit has enough remote communication to reach her?"

"We can try." Coran clenched his fist. "An AI haunted this castle once before. It shall not again!"

"So, I get the first question," Lance announced with a grin. "So great Answering Man, who is the prettiest girl in the galaxy?"

Pidge smacked him on one shoulder. Shiro did the same on the other. Lance winced at the mutual blows. Keith groaned, and Allura gave Keith a look that expressed her displeasure.

"What? I consider that a serious question! I want to know which galaxies we should explore next."

"Unable to answer," the distorted voice through the phone said. "Standards of beauty vary by society and species. Now Lance, who are you in love with?"

"Of course," Pidge muttered with displeasure.

"That's a long list, Matt." Lance started ticking off his fingers. "There are a lot of girls I'm in love with. Allura, Plaxum, Shay though I'd never flirt with her because I know how much you care for her, Hunk, those alien chicks on the last planet we saved . . ."

Hunk had just taken a sip of his milkshake. He spat it back into his cup. Allura patted him on the back and glared at Lance. Keith could tell she was biting the urge to tell him off, in her lecture mode.

"That's enough," the voice said curtly. "You have answered the question honestly and correctly."

That seemed to break the tension among the group. Keith noticed Pidge's helmet crackling with static. Pidge cocked her head towards it, and she listened. Her eyes widened.

"Answer Man, I have to go next," she said.

"Ask your question."

"What is two times five?"

Everyone stared at her.

"Trust me," she said. "That's not Matt doing the answering and the asking. He just told me over the mike."

"That's the sort of thing he WOULD say," Lance said.

"Lance, wait, Matt wouldn't lie about something like that," Shiro said.

"He would for the ANSWER GAME!" The boy narrowed his eyes.

"I want to keep all my limbs," Pidge said stubbornly. "Answer me, weird phone creature."

"The answer is ten. You know that." The voice through the phone seemed displeased. "How dare you waste my time. If I were to give you twenty apples, and you divided each into quarters, how many quarters would you have?"

"Eighty," Pidge said. "Eighty quarters."

"Well answered," the voice said. “And equally as inane.”

"Pass," Hunk said. "I don't like this sort of game."

"I'll go," Allura said. "Answer Man, are you Matt?"

"No." The answer was abrupt. "Are you a deposed princess?"

The question monetarily took her off-guard. She opened her mouth and closed it.

"I am not deposed!" she said. "I may have lost my home, but I have not been overthrown by my people!"

"Well reasoned," the voice said.

"So you say you aren't Matt." Keith leaned back. "That means you could answer anything about the universe. And you have to tell the truth. Can we trust Prince Lotor to not betray us?"

"I don't think even Matt knows that, Keith," Lance said. "He hasn't been out of that asteroid hideout in ticks."

"Lotor will betray you the minute you depose Zarkon again," the voice came swiftly. "He will work to dismantle the resistance so that when he defects, half of the party will join him. And that will happen when Haggar, formerly Honerva, finds out how to channel the new quintessence to revive Zarkon's body so that he can rule without assistance. That will take months to gather the quintessence and distribute it safely."

Momentary silence. Keith stared at the phone from which the voice came.

“That actually sounds pretty useful,” he said. “But it’s also not something Matt would say.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” the voice agreed. “Now for my question: why did you leave the Garrison?”

“Oh boy,” Lance muttered. Shiro and Pidge looked worried.

“I didn’t leave!” Keith snapped. “They asked me to go when I was asking questions about Shiro, and not showing up for class because no one seemed to care that Shiro and the Holts had gone missing. Did you consider that I was kicked out?”

“Kicked out, left willingly, it’s all the same,” the voice countered. “You weren’t there at the Garrison when you reunited with Takashi Shirogane. And you have answered why.”

Keith crossed his arms. He felt irritated, vexed and injured. Allura gave him a concerned look. He didn’t meet her eyes.

“Answer Man, I think it’s time for you to go,” Shiro said. “It’s time for you to hang up.”

“Wrong chant to banish me, and I can offer more information. More knowledge on how to complete your mission, on how to return home.”

“Go away,” Hunk begged. “Go away, creepy spirit.”

“Still the wrong chant!”

“What is the right one then?” Shiro asked.

“Is that your question?” the voice countered.

“Yes, it is.” Shiro’s expression was resolute. “How do we get rid of you?”

“The proper protocol is to say, ‘Answer Man, you must go.’ Not ‘I think it’s time for you to go.’ Not ‘Go away, go away, creepy spirit.’ ‘Answer Man, you must go.’ But now that you have asked a question, you must answer one before making the banish chant, or I will take that metal arm of yours.”

“Shiro-” Hunk started.

“It’s fine.” Shiro waved the arm in question at him. “I’m an honest person. Fire away, Answer Man.”

“Where is Takashi Shirogane?”

This period of silence was dreadful. Keith jumped, like a startled cat with scraggly hair. Lance had just swallowed some of his milkshake. He made a weird face, as if he wanted to spit it out. Shiro looked frozen for a minute.

“What are you talking about?” he said, in a small voice. “I’m here. I’m Takashi Shirogane.”

“Wrong answer!” The voice boomed. “You know what you saw, Kuron! Now answer the question: where is Takashi Shirogane?”

The tension tightened in the room. Beads of sweat appeared on Shiro’s brow. He closed his eyes, and tried to think.

“THIS is Shiro!” Keith said, suddenly angry. “I don’t know why you’re calling him Kuron, but this is Shiro. He’s right here.”

“Keith’s right,” Pidge said. “I know Takashi Shirogane. He is right here.”

“The leader of the Paladins has always been selfless, self-sacrificing and kind,” Allura said. “I believe this is our Shiro.”

“He must answer,” the voice retorted. “If he doesn’t . . .”

A strange purple vapor started wafting from the phone. It started to curl around Shiro’s robotic arm. He didn’t tug it away, staring into space. Lance and Hunk stared, Hunk’s face frozen with horror.

“Answer Man, you must go,” Keith said with pure venom. “And it seems you don’t know everything. You’re a liar.”

Before anyone could stop him, he got up and wielded his Marmora Blade.

“Keith, no!” Hunk yelled.

Keith slashed through the phone with the voice. It happened to be the phone Lance held.

“Hey watch it!” Lance shouted. “You could have taken off my hand.”

The vapor tightened around Shiro’s arm and tugged at it. He hadn’t moved from the spot.

"Shiro, move!" Keith shouted. He stepped over the plastic remains of the phone and tugged at his mentor. The vapor dissipated. That seemed to awaken something.

"Prepare for a fight!" he ordered. “This thing isn’t friendly.”

All the Paladins got to their feet. Each fortunately had their bayard on them. Before they could do anything, however, the vapor formed around Shiro’s arm and broke it off. The snapping of metal joints echoed against the castle walls. He yelled in pain.

“Shiro!” Everyone turned to him as he slumped. Keith caught him.

“You’re okay, I got you,” he was saying.

“This wasn’t part of the game!” Lance said with panic.

The vapor formed around the arm, levitating it. It shaped into a being with a round jaw and rows of teeth.

“Matt says it’s a quintessence creature!” Pidge shouted. “It’s a formless being that wants form. That’s why it wants your arm. Matt, how to we get rid of it?”

Static crackled. Keith couldn’t hear it, and Shiro was heavy. He wasn’t moving from the spot though. Lance, Pidge and Allura circled the creature. Hunk’s bayard turned into a cannon, and he started to aim it.

“Don’t let it touch you,” Allura ordered. “Quintessence is highly dangerous and corrupting.”

“That’s reassuring,” Hunk yelped.

Meanwhile, Matt and Coran were battling with the controls they had at hand. The computers for the castle kept locking them out. Occasionally they even received purple zaps of quintessence; then Coran had brought out thick gloves for them to wear. It was extremely frustrating, and worse when they could hear the fighting through the faint crackle of Pidge’s helmet. Matt was sweating and trying not to panic about his sister being in danger. They had to take cover behind the chairs.

“How did you last defeat a quintessence creature?” Matt asked frantically. “And how could it have gotten into the system with defunct technology?”

“Last time it took the power of Voltron!” Coran struck a prose; another electric shock threw him off and made him stagger. “And I can’t answer that. None of us touch the quintessence. Allura’s the only one who’s managed to handle it without a problem.”

Matt leaned back behind the chair they were using as a barrier, using his gloved hands to shield off the shocks. His brows furrowed in thought. At times he returned blows with a small blaster he had, but that only seemed to hurt the computer and not the creature.

“When Alfor’s AI was corrupted, Allura went to its core and ripped it out.” Coran bowed his head. “That was not an easy day, to lose him again. If we could find a similar core, however . . .”

“We’re near the Daibazaal rift,” Matt said. “That’s where the quintessence first came in, as wella s the quintessence monsters, right?”

“It’s possible it might have escaped, given how unstable the rift is and how much fighting has recently happened around it,” Coran admitted. “But the question is how it got into that defunct technology. It couldn’t just know a random Earth game that you just happened to be playing.”

“Wait.” Matt’s mind flashed to when he and Lance had gone searching for raw material to use, and Lance had come across that cheap box of old cellphones at the mall. Lance had only needed a few damp coins from a nearby fountain. Older models of technology were built to be more durable and less disposable.

“The phones,” Matt said into the wire they had for Pidge. “The phones were somehow imbued with quintessence. Destroy all the phones, and eject them from the ship!”

For his part, he had to sever the connection between the phones and the ship’s computer, which he had been trying to use for the game, and he had to make sure the creature was forced to retreat to the phones. That wouldn’t be easy; it was trying to put up a fight and keep him away. He wouldn’t be able to type anything in; all changes would have to be manual, through a backdoor.

“Coran, cover me!” he said. “I need to take a computer apart!”

The Paladins weren’t faring so well. Lance and Hunk tried their best to fire, but the creature changed its shape so that blows passed harmly through it. Pidge attempted to grab it and the remaining phones with her bayard whip, but before she could get a good grip it narrowed and fled to the walls. She did manage to get two of the phones, however, and smash them; the rest were scattered throughout the fight. Allura chased after the creature, but it was swifter than she was. Keith wanted to help, but he had Shiro to support and protect. The creature fired purple electric shocks at them, sometimes using Shiro’s arm as a battering ram whenever Allura got closer. She sported a few red marks and dents across her armor.

“I’ve heard of hand to hand combat, but this is ridiculous!” Lance exclaimed as they saw the arm crawl across the metal floor.

“Keith, I’ll be fine.” Shiro tried to stand on his own. Keith held him tightly.

“You’re in no condition to fight,” he said.

“The only way we’ll be able to defeat this thing is if it’s frozen in place!” Pidge said. “This is like trying to squash a giant roach!”

“I have an idea,” Allura said. When the creature fired another shock at her, she took the full front. Her body started to glow.

“I did this once when fighting Haggar,” she explained loudly to the other Paladins as she fired the shock back at the creature. It wailed and screamed.

“So only its own attacks can hurt it.” Pidge sounded like she was thinking hard. “We need to draw its fire.”

She used her whip to lasso another phone. Allura caught on and stepped in front of Pidge as the creature fired at the Green Paladin. This was a larger charge, and the creature shrunk back as Allura returned the energy. Sparks sprayed from Shiro’s arm, which was looking more scorched by the minute.

“Hunk, Lance, aim for the phones!” Pidge ordered. “I’ll try to recover Shiro’s arm.”

Lance knelt, took a deep breath, and fired. One of the old phones exploded when the laser hit. Hunk managed to destroy three with his cannon. The creature shrieked. It attempted to fire at the boys, but Allura got in the way again.

“Not today, beast,” she snarled. Her body glowed with purple energy.

Pidge’s whip curled around the metal hand. It detached from the creature with an echoing snap. She caught the arm with a tight hug. The sparks left black spots on her uniform.

“Pidge, here!” Keith called. He set Shiro down by the wall. Pidge ran towards them as Allura unleashed a purple electric beam on the beast.

“Matt says that we also have to get it out of the castle systems!” Pidge said. She set the arm down by Shiro, who had retreated to a sitting position. “Allura, you have to do a castle jump! That’s the best way to get rid of it. Get as far from the ruins of Daibazaal as you can.”

“I understand,” Allura said with cool fury. She took a great leap and jumped over the beast, aiming for the castle controls. Lance and Hunk used the distraction to destroy the last phone.

“Pidge, are you hurt?” Shiro groaned.

“I’m fine. You just lost an arm!” Pidge attempted to reattach it. The sight of snapped wires poking out of Shiro’s shoulder was almost sickening. She tried, but the arm wouldn’t catch onto the broken joins.

“It’s not that simple,” Keith said. “We’re probably going to need more than the healing pods for this.”

They heard snarling, a large jolt and Lance screaming. Keith turned to see Lance slumping, his hair slightly burning. Hunk was trying to smother the tiny flames with his hands, all the while screaming as the creature prepared another shock for him.

“Paladins, brace yourselves!” Allura called.

The jump was so fast that they had barely moved when it stopped. Keith saw a white flash, as he had before, and leaned forward to brace Shiro against the wall. Pidge dropped Shiro’s arm, so that it clanked to the ground. A screech for a split second accompanied it.

A smoldering pink scorch marked where the creature had been, as well as plastic and electronic pieces from the phone. Hunk had pulled Lance onto his lap. The flames had died out from the impact of the jump.

“Lance, come on, say something,” he begged.

Allura gasped. She let go of the castle controls and ran over.

“I think the Answer Man has hung up,” Lance muttered, blinking through burnt bangs.

Lance came to visit Shiro in the sick bay with an ice cream sundae, before Shiro could enter the healing pod. Keith was also with Shiro, who was still shaking and sweating. The Black Paladin had stripped off his uniform to a simple shirt and pants, partly so that Matt and Pidge could examine the damage to his joints from his arm getting snapped off.

“Here,” he said with a nervous grin, offering. Part of his hair was singed and smelled like a burned hairbrush. A bandage covered his forehead and eyebrows.

“What is this for?” Shiro asked with amusement and confusion. “You should be in the pod too, Lance; I’m amazed you’re able to walk.”

“It’s an apology, Shiro.” Lance bowed his head. “Hunk helped me make this with Kaltenecker’s assistance. I was just trying to celebrate Keith coming back to us, alive. I didn’t mean for all this trouble to happen.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Lance,” Keith said, surprising himself and the others. “It really wasn’t. Matt and Pidge figured out what happened.”

“What did happen then?” Shiro asked as he picked up a spoon and tried the ice cream. His face turned blue, but he swallowed.

“The phones were scavenged from the mall, but they shouldn’t have been able to work in space at all,” Keith explained. “That should have been the first sign. Their seller or some merchant must have soaked them in quintessence so that they could work. That wouldn’t be too hard given the Galra are in charge of that mall. Even so, the creature only able to come through because we happened to be parked near the Daibazaal rift.”

“That doesn’t explain why it took the form of the Answer Man.” Lance frowned.

“Probably when you picked up the phones it was able to sense the game as we explained it,” Matt said, coming in. He had Shiro’s arm covered in a cloth. “There’s a lot we don’t know about quintessence, except it’s addictive and turns its users into parasites. Thus while it was a creature born from the rift and trying to form, it latched onto the first form that it could perceive. But no, it wasn’t your fault, Lance.”

“We even got some useful information about Lotor,” Keith added. “How can we complain about that?”

“I’ll never begrudge a Paladin for having fun,” Shiro managed a smile. “How is the arm, Matt?”

“Pretty damaged,” he said, examining it. “The problem is that while I can work with Galra tech, medicine isn’t my specialty. We probably won’t be able to attach it until you heal in the pod.”

“Then I need you to do me a favor.” Shiro’s face adopted a hard look. “Scan and see if there were false memories implanted.”

The three boys turned with surprise. Lance, who had just been looking relieved, was shrinking away again.

“What?” Keith asked.

“That creature called me Kuron, and asked where Takashi Shirogane was.” Shiro took another spoon of Keith’s ice cream. He swallowed with a groan. “I need to find out why.”

“Shiro, it doesn’t matter,” Keith said. “You’re our Shiro. The creature was just messing with you to get your arm.”

“It matters to me.” Shiro locked eyes with Matt. “Matt, please. Do it for me. Find out if the Galra have affected my mind.”

“I will.” Matt looked away and stole a lick of Shiro’s ice-cream. He made a face as the flavors hit his tongue. “What is this supposed to be?”

“Chocolate,” Lance said in a small voice. “We couldn’t find chocolate, though, so Hunk found the closest substitute.”

“Maybe you two should get in the pods,” Keith said, feeling like he was either going to shout at Shiro or laugh about Lance’s cooking. “Whatever happens, you both need to get better. We’ll handle what comes next.”

Shiro gave a pained nod. Lance shrunk away and crawled into the pod without comment. His bandage had started to peel away. Keith glimpsed mildly burnt skin. He hoped Lance wouldn’t be too vain if it left a scar. Then he and Matt helped Shiro into the pod, and set it so that he could sleep.

“I guess the Answer Man left us more questions than answers,” Matt said. “When we played it in the Academy it was all about scaring the freshman.”

“I guess we’re no longer freshmen here,” Keith said. “We’re soldiers. And we have a long battle ahead of us.”

They watched Shiro shift into a more comfortable vertical position. Matt stroked the damaged parts of Shiro’s arm. Keith placed a hand on his shoulder, not sure who he was comforting.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #the answer man #voltron fanfic #keith #pidge #hunk #matt holt #allura #seriously do not play this game in real life #it is creepy

jayalaw