#because it subconsciously reminded her about how Don would tell her all about the planets and stars when they were little | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tacticianlyra · 7 years ago

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Those who Remain - original

I. May or may not have uploaded this here before? But I don’t remember if I had or not, so. Yes. (This is getting a rewrite.)

Meredith Wilde liked to think of herself as a pragmatic person, and like any pragmatic person, she counted all of her facts before making a decision regarding a problem. It came with being a lawyer, and she hadn’t lost many cases because of that mindset.

The problem she was faced with now wasn’t a case, but a personal problem. A very serious personal problem. The only facts she’d been given were that A) Jordan had been shipped off to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what, and B) that he’s dead. No how, no why. Her brother Alex wasn’t buying it, and neither were her nieces.

The Garrison isn’t telling them what exactly happened to their son/nephew/cousin, and that was sending up multiple red flags, because when the government is being vague about something, that meant something was very wrong and they didn’t want everyone to panic, and it reminds her too much of what happened to her father, who her son both admires and curses.

There is a distinct odeur-de-Kerberos to this entire thing, and that was enough to make her look through her case records to one of the few losses she had.

The Garrison—no, the Coalition—is trying to sweep this under the rug, too.

She needs to call up that client to discuss a few things.

Pragmatic as Meredith is…her gut’s telling her that whatever her son had been doing is somehow connected to the Kerberos cover-up.

Miguel is the most stubborn person in the town of Wolfbridge, and everyone knew it. It was for that exact reason that he’d refused to hire new mechanics.

No matter what that official-looking letter he’d found in the mailbox one morning said, because there is no way in hell that the two street-rats that had lived through the single most brutal winter the area had ever seen were gone.

Then he’d gotten a job that had been a mostly-technical one. It took far longer than the client was happy with, because Miguel just couldn’t make sense of computers as well as Koji could.

Can, he’d corrected himself immediately. He’d still managed to get it done adequately enough.

And then there was yesterday’s job—he’d miscalculated in how heavy that engine part was, and had gone and hurt his back.

It wouldn’t have happened if Stan had been here to help him with it, but he wasn’t.

So now Miguel was left with a major problem. He couldn’t do any heavy-lifting himself for at least two weeks, which means he couldn’t get any work done.

Stan and Koji weren’t here to help him out, nor would they ever be back, according to that letter.

He’s refusing to accept it, because damn it all his boys were not dead!

Katie Holt was forever going to curse the name of Kevin Chaucer for ratting Pidge Gunderson out when he’d walked in on her changing.

There’s nothing that can be done about it now, though—she supposed she was lucky that she’d had a contingency plan involving a very quick getaway, a meticulously-coded computer-worm, and some forged files.

The unfortunate bit was that now she wasn’t allowed within a certain distance of any sort of Garrison base, and neither was any part of her immediate family, all because of “suspected connections.”

Which meant they’d had to pick up and move.

At least she had Hunk, who’d bailed when Iverson decided to move him over to combat piloting. She had a feeling it’s because he wanted the “troublesome trio” separated.

Lance was understandably pissed about all of it; he’d cooled off after a week, and kept in touch. They coincidentally all live in the same town now.

It was at her mother’s quiet request that she went job-hunting, for something to keep herself busy, and she and Hunk both somehow managed to find one at the same place, in a garage that specialized in star-racers.

Their boss had a rotten attitude ninety-five percent of the time, and he was all melancholic for the other five percent.

It was on the fourth day that Katie notices a picture on a shelf; there was their boss with two younger boys in it. They all look just a bit too different to be related, more so with one of the boys; her boss and Kid #1 definitely were Hispanic/partially Hispanic, and Kid #2 was definitely Asian.

Unless, of course, the kids were both adopted…and suddenly, Miguel’s behavior seemed familiar.

“It’s not just the Garrison covering things up.” Colleen Holt sits up a bit straighter in her chair in response to Meredith’s words, attentive now. Meredith kept her hands laced together, waiting.

“Do you really think they’re connected?” Colleen asks finally.

“That’s what my intuition’s saying.” The lawyer paused. “Do you believe me?”.

“…yes. I do.”

She found the file completely on accident, at four in the morning, but the fact that it had the same amount of classification as the Kerberos Mission piqued her interest.

The Great Race of Ōban.

Katie first saw the assortment of names, pictures, and paraphrased information to go with the names and pictures.

Don Wei. Manager of the team, and former CEO of Wei Racing. That same business had announced a new business leader without warning some time ago.

Rick Thunderbolt. Three-time winner of the Star-Racing Grand Prix, champion of the minor leagues afterwards. Primary pilot. Lance was a major fan of his.

Jordan Wilde. The son of the lawyer they’d had that her mom had since befriended, which she was relieved about. Designated gunner…which made no sense if it was a star-racing competition.

Stan and Koji Martinez. The boys from the picture—her boss’s adopted kids. The shared surname proved it. Team mechanics.

And then, Molly. No last name. Secondary pilot.

All privately reported as deceased, save for Molly, who didn’t have any contact information either.

Katie glared thoughtfully at the screen—way too much like Kerberos, this was.

And then she scrolled down further, and saw one of the final details tacked onto the file.

“Shiro’s alive?”

The two he ended up with were diamonds in a pig trough, Miguel grudgingly admitted. Both were Garrison dropouts, one because of being subject to a surprise class-switch, and the other for reasons she wouldn’t disclose. They must’ve been friends, since they had nicknames for each other—Hunk and Pidge.

They were Garrett and Holt to him until further notice.

Garrett picked up everything about as fast as Stan had, and Holt blazed through whatever she was told to do like a maniac, and business goes on smoothly for almost a week.

Then, one morning, out of nowhere, Holt asks about Stan and Koji.

He warily gives her a brief spiel about them (as much as he can say without his voice wavering).

It's when he found himself saying that they were hired for a job that they wouldn’t be coming (haven’t yet come) back from that she stood a bit straighter, looking a little more intent.

“I think I might know what happened to them,” she said.

…maybe he’ll start calling her Pidge.

“We can all meet at my place this Tuesday.”

A lawyer and a schoolteacher―Alex had left a friend in charge of Sasha and Amelia for the time being.

An engineer―Miguel had closed up early today for this reason; he was understandably perturbed to learn that his new technician hacks government databases in her free time.

An astronomer―they were all gathered in Colleen’s living-room right now.

And lastly, a teenager―Katie, or Pidge as she likes to be called, the reason for them being here.

None of them really had anything in common, save for having missing family members.

The curtains were shut, if only because Pidge had her findings displaying on the TV screen, so they could all see it at the same time.

“Twenty-five thousand light-years,” Colleen said slowly, shaking her head in amazement. Shewas the only one standing up. “What kind of competition even was that?”

“Something big enough for the Coalition to want to keep it under wraps,” Alex replied from the couch, sitting next to Meredith.

There was a few moments of erratic eye-twitching from Miguel, who’d claimed the recliner chair, before he swore profusely in Spanish. “I knew those star-racers would end up scrap!” he exclaimeds angrily, gesturing with one hand at one of the details; the Whizzing Arrow I had exploded before it could finish its first race, and was left in an irreparable condition.

The team’s initial pilot, Rick Thunderbolt, had been rendered unable to race competitively ever again due to damage sustained by his nervous system in that same crash.

The team found a spare pilot in “Molly,” who had originally been a stowaway.

“I had to do some digging to figure out who she really is,” Pidge was saying. “Turns out, she’s the manager’s daughter Eva. Ran away from the Stern Boarding School five times.”

“He didn’t recognize his own daughter?” Meredith asked, flabbergasted.

“She was there for ten years and he never visited,” was the curt response.

There was a few long moments of silence, as they regarded her with silent shock. “What the shit,” was Alex’s only comment. “What about―?” He cut himself off, face falling. “Maya Wei…of course.”

Meredith remembered having seen that horrific incident on TV; she’d been watching the race when it had happened. The authorities hadn’t been able to determine the cause of the Cloud II’s explosion.

But she had to agree with her brother’s thoughts. To abandon his daughter like that after her mother’s death? How could someone be so callous? No wonder Eva had gone under a false name.

“Then what happened?” she asked, and Pidge scrolled down.

Colleen made a choked sound, and the others, Meredith included, all leaned forward a bit subconsciously.

An unidentifiable ship had crashed on Alwas (which was the planet they’d gone to), and inside it had been Takashi Shirogane.

Whom the Garrison had publicly written off as dead, along with Colleen’s husband and son―and Pidge’s father and brother, who’d she’d infiltrated the Garrison under a false identity in an attempt to uncover the truth for.

Not even three hours later, the island that the competition was being held on found itself under siege by an unknown assailant, labeled with a name Shiro had provided.

Galra.

Meredith has been in Garrison buildings enough times to know the names of most other alien races that the Earth Coalition has been in contact with, and that isn’t one of them.

The word “Voltron” stood out to her. Something that the Galra seemed to think was on Alwas, as they’d presumably assaulted the planet for, if the multitude of SOS calls picked up was anything to go on.

“I think I caught some of those distress signals on my deep-space radio,” Pidge was saying. “I mean, I couldn’t understand them, but they sounded frantic.” She paused. “Then there’s this last bit here.”

The message provided by the one who had supplied the Coalition with the information was one of the few non-natives to Alwas (the “Scrubs” were able to remain underwater for a length of time, apparently) who hadn’t been taken away by the Galra.

Of ninety-six different racing teams, all from different planets, none of them―save for some minor members of some delegations―were on the planet any longer.

The Earth Team’s backup star-racer, the Whizzing Arrow II, had not been identified as any of the destroyed/taken star-racers, nor had any sign of it been found anywhere on the island.

The team manager and the ex-pilot were among those taken by the Galra.

Shiro, Eva, Jordan, Stan, and Koji must have all been in the star-racer, as they weren’t among those taken…but they hadn’t yet been found, either.

The final detail was that of a second unidentified craft having left Alwas, going at speeds that no other ship had ever reached, aside from the one that had brought them there to begin with, and what was assumed to be the main Galra ship.

It had simply vanished, prior to the Galra leaving the galaxy altogether.

Alex was silent, face pale. Coleen’s eyes were watering, shining with hope once abandoned. Pidge iwas pulling off a first-class pokerface, but she’d already had time to process everything.

“They’re alive,” Miguel said gruffly, voice tinged with relief.

“They’re just…” Meredith stopped, taking a shaky breath. The truth wasn’t much better.

“They’re just lost in space,” Pidge finished, adjusting her lens-less glasses.

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