[MINGLE] One-Man Show

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Inari Shrine and elsewhere
WHEN: 25 January 2019 through ?
OPEN TO: All opted in characters
WARNINGS: Please warn in the subject line of your comment as needed, and remember to move anything turning adult to a new post.
IMPORTANT NOTES: Final reminders and informational links are here. Please label all top-levels clearly so that there is no confusion who they are open to and what they are for, and DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR TAG!
Have fun and ask questions here!

Comments

[ombranera]

"The worst part isn't even the taint, or the way they do not seem to feel pain, but the smell." Zevran shudders in memory, tucked close to Shiro- for warmth. For the moment, nothing more. "There is nothing like this in your world, your war?"

[rebornpaladin]

"No. Maybe, once- but not on Earth. Infantry battles, fighting on the ground? There's a long history of that. But there hasn't been war on Earth in a hundred years. And the war we found when we left it, was..."

The scale of what he saw in Zevran's memories felt overwhelming, but he knows, from a sheer perspective of numbers, it doesn't really compare to a Galra fleet. One plague of aggressive, poisonous demons struggling to overtake a continent is horrific, but it's hard to relate it to the scope of an intergalactic battle.

"I'm a pilot. So I... control a mechanized suit of armor. An ancient weapon that chooses who wields it, and that can join itself to four others, to create a... a super weapon, I guess would be the easiest way to describe it. We fight mostly in space, or at least in the air. It's-"

He breaks the thought off with sigh, and flashes Zevran a rueful sideways smile, then lifts his hand, palm up.

"I can show you. If you want."

[ombranera]

"It is a very different war." One with an intelligence of some sort on the other side rather than ravenous hunger. That- makes it more dangerous. He could attempt to wrap his mind around it but- assassins are not meant for war. Small missions, in and out, on occasion a large coupe but this?

Beyond him.

With a moment's hesitation, he removes his gloves again, taking Shiro's hand. "Show me."

[rebornpaladin]

Shiro hesitates, only in that he's not certain how to access the best, cleanest way to get it across. He closes his eyes, and unbidden there's Adam, in his cadet greys, looking out the observation deck window at the Garrison's newest, untested fighter with barely suppressed disapproval. You're flying that? Shiro forces his mind away from it, past it, and he's standing in front of the Black Lion for the first time, in a massive hall of the Castle of Lions, the other four flanking him behind. It's huge, bigger even than the others, and its eyes gleam as it comes to life after ten thousand years of waiting and roars, like a seismic event.

It bows its head not in submission but in acquiescence, in curiosity, allows Shiro to approach it and reach his hand out to touch his metal fingertips to its metal jaw, and then he's in the cockpit and they're climbing. It's not a fight Shiro needs to revisit, certainly not one he wants to see to the end, but it's the best way he knows to show what they were up against.

The lions dodge around brilliant lances of pink energy, emitting from massive warships. The first Galra cruiser Shiro saw had blotted out the sky, and this is a fleet, an armada. The lions individually do damage, cut through hulls and return fire with their own mounted lasers, but it's not enough.

Paladins, on me! As Voltron, it's easier. Once the connection is forged, Voltron lands bodily on the flagship, kneeling. On Shiro's word, Voltron draws an energy sword from whatever Quintessence fueled ether the lions could access, and they drag it diagonally through the massive ship, even as manned fighters pour from it by the increasing hundreds.

The explosion dwarfs them all, sends a shockwave rippling through the next ship, and Voltron's wings gleam with blue light as they move to forward the attack.

At the last moment Shiro opens his eye, only a split second of the inadvertent memory coming into focus. Standing in a field of black stars, just space, eternal and endless and empty.

He clears his throat, looking over at Zevran with some curiosity.

"Hopefully that wasn't just... additionally confusing."

[ombranera]

It's- quite a lot. A man in an unfamiliar uniform, stars and ships and massive structures unlike anything he's ever seen, flight and magic beyond anything he's ever seen- lions, massive and metal and alive in their own way, ships that bond into a steel warrior-

This is the thing operas and epics are made of.

He doesn't have words. Doesn't have context for any of this- his ears tipped down, his eyes wide and wondering, hand curled in Shiro's.

"That is..." He mumbles to himself in Antivan for a moment before settling. "The lions are- ridiculously awesome."

[rebornpaladin]

Shiro laughs, a genuine peal of it, and nods a little.

"Yeah. They're incredible. We still don't know that much about them, really. What they can really do. But they... revealed it to us, over time." He sighs, squeezing Zevran's hand gently before pushing it back toward the fold of his coat and his gloves.

"...the black lion saved me. When I died, my body was destroyed. But it, uh. Protected my soul. Held it, inside of itself. I wish I could explain how."

[ombranera]

"...That is how golems are made, in my world. A volunteer is encased in armor and molten lyrium poured within- which kills the volunteer but imbues their spirit into the armor." All the more reason to destroy the anvil, Jonas said. A volunteer would only remain so for so long. An eternity of servitude is-

It isn't a thing that should exist.

"So it is- strange but not unfamiliar?"

[rebornpaladin]

"That sounds like a nightmare, frankly, and a bad situation waiting to backfire," Shiro says honestly, wondering if Zevran's talked about golems with Connor yet, "but I guess the concept isn't totally dissimilar. I wasn't bound to Black like that, though, I was just... held there. I tried to reach out to my team a few times, warn them, I just... wasn't strong enough."

[ombranera]

"It was. We destroyed the means, the only man- golem- that knew how it worked? Threw himself into an abyss afterward. It is not something that is meant to be done. A living spirit is not meant to reside in something hollow." Something meant for war.

[rebornpaladin]

"...no," Shiro agrees, looking down at his hand again. Was that what Haggar wanted? To turn him into something hollow to control. Was that what the clones had been at attempt at? He couldn't know, not really. The tactical advantage of having a copy of him to control was obvious, but sometimes her words echoed dissonant and harsh in his memory.

You could have been our greatest weapon.

"It isn't."