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Osaka Sougo was the second person to wake up the morning after they rescued Banri from the Garrison. He did not wake, as was normal for him, from his alarm, or from the morning sunlight getting in his eyes; rather, he woke up when he was gently lifted off of the floor he’d been sleeping on by somebody with a metal arm and tucked carefully into a bed next to the still-sleeping Tamaki. He cracked his eyes open with the door and watched Banri’s back retreat from the bedroom, movements a little too quick and stiff for him to be as calm and collected as the Banri Sougo had known. Sougo waited in the bed, counting his heartbeats until he was certain that a few minutes had passed, long enough that Banri would be able to pretend to be calm, if he so desired.
Last night, after he and Tamaki had brought their unconscious mentor inside, Tamaki had declared that he would guard Banri personally and had curled up in the bed next to him, like a scared child. Sougo had wanted to do the same, but couldn’t think of a good enough excuse, so he’d taken a page out of Yamato’s book and gone to sleep by the door, just in case the Garrison came knocking overnight. It seemed that they hadn’t; good.
Sougo carefully slipped out of bed and pulled the covers back into place over Tamaki, just as Banri had done when he’d tucked Sougo into this bed a few minutes earlier, and then headed out into the main room. Everyone else was still asleep; a window was just slightly open, one of the curtains shifted in a way Sougo was fairly certain, even just from their brief encounter yesterday, that Izumi Iori would never, ever allow. He made a beeline for it, pushing it open wider and carefully making his way out. Banri was standing near the edge of the property, staring off into the distance as though trying to drink in the entire horizon. It was easier, in the early morning sunlight, to see how the past year had changed him: his entire body was tense, and lean muscles were visible even through Iori and Riku’s old hoodie and sweatpants they’d laid out for him. He’d pulled his hair into a high ponytail, though kept long bangs loose over his ears, hiding the new scar on his face. His new metal arm gleamed in the sunlight, and Sougo was glad that the light hurt his eyes, because it gave him an excuse not to look, to try and not think about how his mentor had lost an entire arm in his year away.
It wasn’t very easy.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Sougo said softly.
“I’m glad to be back,” said Banri, turning away from the horizon to give Sougo a soft smile. It was smaller than it had been before he’d gone off to space, but it was still there, and Sougo nearly wanted to cry with relief. He had missed him terribly.
“What happened out there?” Sougo asked, swallowing slightly. “I mean—if you’re comfortable talking about it, I’m sorry if I’m prying—”
“It’s alright,” Banri said. “You’re not prying. To be entirely honest, though, I don’t actually remember most of what happened. Pretty much everything after the initial abduction…it’s all a blur, I’m afraid.”
Sougo looked at the metal arm, the scar poking out from under his now far longer hair. “…Maybe that’s for the best,” he ventured.
“Maybe,” said Banri. “I don’t remember enough to say.”
Sougo swallowed, nodded. “Tamaki and I never gave up looking for you,” he said. “Even if—even if they were right, and you really were dead. We weren’t going to stop until we’d found out the truth of what happened.”
Banri frowned. “Is that how you knew to come looking for me last night?” he said. “I hope you boys didn’t do anything risky—Tamaki is a teenager, but I expected you to know better than to storm the Garrison, Sougo.”
Sougo winced. “How much of last night do you remember?” he asked.
“Not much, but I remember how many guards there were,” Banri said. “And how dangerous it was there.”
Right—the guards. And the break-in. And the distraction. Banri would probably disapprove of Tamaki’s homemade bombs; Sougo would have disapproved, this time last year, but he had been desperate. They both had been. And that desperation had paid off, in the end, but—
“On the bright side,” Sougo said weakly, “I don’t think anyone died.”
“—Died,” said Banri suddenly, his voice terrible. “Who?”
“Nobody that I know of!” Sougo said quickly. “We didn’t check—but none of the explosions were anywhere people are supposed to be—I think—so everyone should be already. I mean, Yamato might have killed Chiba Shizuo—”
“What?!”
“—but he was still breathing when we left so he’s probably fine.”
Banri took a breath. “You’re going to have to explain a little more to me what exactly happened last night, Sougo,” he said.
Sougo nodded. “Alright. I’ll give context for who everyone is first, as far as I know it—it seems that there’s more to Nanase Riku and Izumi Iori than I know at the moment—and then I’ll give you the rundown on what happened. The short version is we broke you out of the Garrison after they captured you, and we are now almost all wanted for treason.”
“Sougo—”
“Our dramatis personae,” Sougo said quickly, pretending he hadn’t heard anything. “The students at the Garrison: myself, pretending to be a model student while in reality scraping as much data about the Kerberos mission off of their servers as I can and piggybacking off of their technology to pick up signals from space. Nikaido Yamato, engineer, not as terrible as he pretends to be, enjoys messing with the instructors, Chiba Shizuo in particular.”
Banri winced. “That’s not a surprise, coming from that boy, but it is a good way to paint a target on his back,” he said.
“Did you know him?” Sougo asked.
Banri shook his head. “No, but Yuki did. He…thought very highly of him.” He swallowed. “Thinks. He thinks very highly of him. Likes him, thinks he’s a good kid, if lonely and angry. —And spoiled absolutely rotten, too, but that’s not something Yuki’s in any place to criticize someone for, I’ve been spoiling him since he was ten.” The fond smile on his face faltered and then vanished. “…Not something Yuki was in a place to criticize someone for,” he amended. “After…everything with those aliens…”
“I’m sure Captain Orikasa will find a way to escape too,” Sougo said.
“Are you kidding? Yuki can barely feed himself,” Banri told him. “He’s an excellent cook, but if he’s focused on something, he won’t remember to eat—and he can never get up in the mornings—and he isn’t a tactician at all, he—he can’t survive on his own. And I don’t know if Momo’s with him… —I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “This isn’t for you to worry about. Who else was there?”
What could Sougo do but continue? “Rokuya Nagi,” he said. “In training to be a communications officer…he speaks eight different languages. He’s from Northmeir originally, but moved here to be a cadet at the Garrison. He’s a genius in a lot of ways, but most of those are related to magical girl anime. Izumi Mitsuki, pilot. Used to be a cargo pilot, consistently top of his class there, now that he’s a fighter pilot he’s at the bottom of his class. I checked his records—he barely made it into the Garrison, and his initial scores were lower than those of a lot of the other cargo pilots, but he works harder than everyone else, and is great at inspiring others to work hard, too. As far as I know, neither Nagi nor Mitsuki was involved with anything illegal before last night.”
Banri nodded.
“Outside operators: Tamaki, obviously. He got banned for life for trying to fight the officer who told us you were dead, and he’s spent the past year learning—uh—self defense—” Best not to say fighting, Sougo didn’t want to worry Banri too much— “—as well as, ah, bomb…building and the like. Sabotaging the Garrison, mainly; keeping their eyes off of me while I investigated.”
“Bomb building?!”
“If you’re going to say something about me knowing better I’d like to remind you that I couldn’t speak to Tamaki in person without getting arrested for treason,” Sougo said quickly, leaving out the pertinent fact that he and Tamaki had, in fact, been in constant contact through secure channels the entire time and he had, in fact, sourced some bomb-making materials for his dearest friend.
Banri sighed. “I see. I’ll speak with him about safety measures later, I suppose.”
“Please do,” said Sougo, sending Tamaki a silent apology for snitching. “Nanase Riku, desert hermit whose brother was allegedly abducted by aliens. He lives out here off the grid chasing mysterious energy signals with Izumi Iori, Mitsuki’s younger brother, a Garrison dropout. He used to be the fighter program’s star student; rumor has it he dropped out so that Mitsuki could be a fighter pilot, but…after last night, I’m not so sure. That thing you were talking about…Ainana…he already knew about it, him and Riku both.”
Banri began to say damn! , cut himself off, and said something in the alien language that Yamato swore up and down was ruder than any other swear word in existence. Sougo flushed despite himself.
“I think they’re—on our side, whatever ‘our side’ is,” he said quickly. “At any rate they don’t trust the Garrison. And—it was the Garrison who was working with those aliens, right?”
“It…certainly seemed like it,” Banri sighed. “It isn’t that I mistrust your friends, Sougo. I’m just worried…you’re so young. You’re all so young. This is—it’s not something that you kids should have to worry about.”
“I was going to graduate from the Garrison this year, Banri,” Sougo said dryly. “I’m not an infant.”
“You’re still a teenager, though,” said Banri. “Unless I’ve lost more time than I thought.”
“It’s been a little over a year since you were reported missing,” said Sougo. “Nearly two years since the Kerberos mission left.”
Banri nodded. “That’s about what I expected,” he admitted. “And further proves my point. Sougo, you’re seventeen—”
“Eighteen, it was my birthday last week.”
A flash of pain shot across Banri’s face. “…Eighteen,” he repeated. “Happy belated birthday, Sougo. I’m sorry I missed it.”
“It’s alright,” said Sougo. “It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t do too much this year, anyway—I didn’t even realize it was my birthday until Mitsuki, Yamato, and Nagi came by with a cake they’d made for me.”
Banri smiled at him. “I’m glad you’ve made such good friends,” he said.
Sougo flushed a little, pleased. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m glad you approve of them.” He swallowed, cast a glance back at the desert shack. There was some motion from inside, though still somewhat obscured by the curtains—someone else was up, and he and Banri would be missed soon. “Would you like to come inside and meet them?”
“Yes, I ought to,” said Banri. He took one last long look at the horizon and turned to follow Sougo back through the window and inside the shack, where the Izumi brothers were arguing in whispers about what constituted as nutritious when you lived off the grid in a desert shack, careful not to wake the others but still passionate in their discussion, which carried on all the way until everyone had finished eating and it was time to talk about whatever it was that Iori and Riku had been doing since Iori had dropped out of the Garrison.
The answer, as it was, was simple: they were tracking down something called Ainana, which, according to some old carvings they’d found and the energy levels they’d been monitoring, was maintaining a barrier around the solar system that had been fluctuating for years now and was set to go down wholly today, in the late afternoon. It had something to do with lions—most of the carvings included an image of a pale orange lion, at any rate, and the number 3—and something to do with aliens—which had just been a suspicion, at first, but after last night, when a whole crew of dumbasses had shown up and reported that an alien abductee—and here Iori nodded to Banri—had discussed it.
“Do you know what it is?” Iori asked after that, and Banri shook his head.
“Unfortunately, I don’t,” he said, “—at least as far as I’m aware. I’m aware of what happened to me, and I remember most of yesterday, but aside from that, everything after the initial abduction is a blank.”
“That’s unfortunate, but, ah, probably for the best,” said Iori, eyeing the scar on Banri’s face, the metal arm. “Well, Nanase and I were planning to head out to the cave that most of the carvings are centered around this evening,” he said. “All of you are very welcome to join us if you so desire.”
Banri nodded. “I’ll take you up on that,” he said. “If some sort of barrier is coming down—then the Galra Empire might be closer than we expect. Regardless, knowledge is power and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.”
“If Ban-chan is going than Sou-chan and I are coming too,” Tamaki declared, and Sougo nodded quickly as Mitsuki said that he wasn’t letting his little brother run off into danger alone, and Yamato said something about having nothing better to do, and Nagi simply smiled and said that wherever his friends went, there he, too, would go.
So that was how they all ended up on their way to a big cave in the middle of the desert, each with his own pack of survival essentials scrounged up from Iori and Riku’s desert shack. Nagi, for example, had taken advantage of Sougo leaving his bag in the main room last night to download every single piece of Magical Kokona media to ever exist onto his laptop and was presently explaining the order Sougo ought to watch them in; Sougo was only half-listening, keeping his eyes on Banri’s back as he walked next to Tamaki, getting caught up on the past two years. Banri clearly disapproved of most of their activities, but he was keeping it to himself for now; Sougo was fairly certain, though, that the next time the three of them were alone he and Tamaki would be getting a stern talking-to.
“Here’s the epicenter of the carvings,” said Iori, nodding at a large outcropping of rock. “There’s a cave inside, and inside that, a barrier of some sort—it’s nearly invisible, but under the right circumstances it’s a very pale orange. We haven’t been able to get past it, but it isn’t the only barrier maintained by its power source—and we’ve been able to calculate, from the fluctuations and the carvings here and the timing of alien activity on Earth, that the other barrier is set to go down fully at some point today, to maintain the integrity of this barrier.”
“Why?” asked Yamato, starting walking towards the cave; everyone else followed. “If the other barrier’s around the whole planet, wouldn’t it be safer to drop this one to maintain that one?”
“Not if this one is surrounding Ainana,” Banri said grimly. “If it is—then it’s far more important to keep the Empire away from it specifically than it is to keep them out of our planet. The destruction they could wreak if they got their hands on it…”
“What is it?” asked Riku.
Banri shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t remember. I know—somebody told me about it, before I escaped, but…it’s all a blur. I don’t know who it was…he had to be important, though. He said…” Banri broke off into the alien language for a moment, mumbling it under his breath. Yamato and Nagi both listened intently, and then Banri resumed, “He’d had a good time betting on the arena, but he couldn’t do that anymore if the Empire used Ainana to fully subjugate the universe; if I managed to keep it out of their hands even temporarily, he would give me…something. I don’t know. Something I was willing to die for…”
“So someone in the Galra Empire helped you escape?” said Riku.
“Probably?” Banri grimaced. “I’m not entirely certain. I can’t remember much—though hopefully it’ll come back to me soon. I can tell you, though, that not all galra agree with the Empire or are loyal to it; most haven’t thought about it at all, and a small number of them are actively working against it. I think that the person who let me out must have been involved with that, but I can’t quite remember…” He sighed. “Hopefully it comes back to me eventually. It would be good to be able to connect with any sort of allies.”
Everyone nodded; none of them could really imagine taking on a whole evil alien empire as they were now, although they all wanted to break it somehow. Iori and Riku took the lead once again, winding their way through the desert to the entrance of the cave, and then they all squeezed through, single file, until suddenly Iori stopped.
“Here’s the barrier,” he said, pressing his hand against what appeared to be thin air. “I’m not sure what’s past it, or even if there’s any way we can get past it, but—”
The narrow passage lit up with orange light. Riku yelped; Banri jumped; Mitsuki yanked his hand away from one of the carvings and shook it out as the light faded.
“That was—weird,” he said, a nervous grin on his face. “Iori, Riku, does that sort of thing happen often?”
“…No, that’s never happened before,” Iori said slowly. “Touch it again, Nii-san.”
Mitsuki did so, and the passage flooded with light once more. The light was coming from the carvings themselves—carvings of lions, and of people, and of a strange, runic language. Sougo stared around at them in awe, wondering how this was happening, what it meant.
Mitsuki’s brow furrowed. “Do you guys hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” said Riku.
Mitsuki shook his head. “Nothing, I guess…” he said. “Hey, should I touch that weird energy barrier? Maybe something’ll happen with that, too.”
“Go for it,” said Yamato. “Not like today can get any weirder.”
“Believe me, things can always get weirder,” Banri told him. “—Go on, Mitsuki.”
There was a moment, and then the light faded as Mitsuki squeezed up in line to reach out for the barrier. The moment his fingers reached where Iori’s palm was still flat against the barrier, there was another flash of light—the barrier became visible, a light orange color blocking off the passage and extending into the walls, ceiling, and floor, and then it broke apart and vanished.
“—It’s gone,” said Iori softly. “It’s gone now. Nii-san, how did you—?”
“I don’t know,” Mitsuki said. “I’d barely touched it…”
“Let’s keep moving,” said Banri. “How much time do we have before the barrier around our solar system goes down?”
“A few hours, I think,” Iori said; Riku nodded.
“Sunset tonight. Whenever that is.”
“Then we have no time to waste.”
They continued on through the passage, their way lit, now, by Mitsuki trailing his hands over the carvings on the wall. Soon enough they made it into a large cavern; there were even more carvings inside, and ancient bones, and enough rusted bits of metal that it looked like somebody had lived and died here, once.
“Is this—Ainana?” Sougo whispered. “It’s so…small.”
“So are you, Sou-chan, and you’re plenty scary,” Tamaki told him.
“No…this isn’t right,” said Mitsuki, slowly walking forward. “Are you guys sure you can’t hear that?”
“Hear what, Mitsu?” said Yamato. “I’m telling you, there’s no noise here other than what we’ve been making—”
The floor collapsed out from under them. Everyone screamed; Sougo grabbed at Tamaki, who was closest, and desperately reached out for Banri, who wasn’t far; when the eight of them landed on the ground, their mentor was shielding them both, his strange metal arm glowing with a purple light. There was a moment of complete stillness, everyone waiting to see whether or not the ground would fall out from under them once more—or, nearly everyone waiting.
“Nii-san!” Iori cried, rushing over to his brother. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m…fine…” Mitsuki said, staring at something over his brother’s shoulder, eyes wide and face pale. “That’s—a lion.”
“What?”
Mitsuki pointed; Sougo followed his finger and froze, wondering how on earth he could have missed it before. A massive robotic lion sat behind another pale-orange energy barrier, in the perfect position to look as though it was staring at them. Mitsuki was completely entranced by it; as everyone else finished clambering to their feet, Mistuki had already started forward towards the massive lion’s energy barrier.
“It’s Ainana, I think—” he said, “a piece of Ainana.”
“Just a piece?” said Yamato. “Where’s the rest?”
“She doesn’t know,” said Mistuki. “She came here—all alone—just herself and her paladin—”
He reached out and pressed his hand flat against the barrier; it dissolved under his touch just like the earlier one, and the lion roared to life.
“It’s official,” said Yamato. “Mitsu’s the Chosen One.”
“How old is he?” said Banri, genuinely distressed.
“Eighteen,” Sougo told him. “A few months older than me.”
“I hate this,” Banri said faintly. “I hate this so, so much…you’re all children, all of you, you shouldn’t be involved in this…”
“Well, tough nuts,” said Yamato. “We’re involved. Plus, isn’t Tama, like, fourteen?”
“Tamaki shouldn’t be involved either!”
“I know how to make bombs, Ban-chan!” Tamaki protested. “And I’m good at it, too!”
“That isn’t a good thing, Tamaki! Bombs are dangerous!”
“Yeah, that’s why I like them,” Tamaki said, pleased. “Nobody messes with you when you can make bombs.”
Banri’s sigh was so long-suffering that Sougo almost felt bad for him—almost. At any rate he didn’t get the chance to continue the argument: Mitsuki, Nagi, and Yamato were already trying to get into the robotic lion, Iori and Riku hot on their heels, and Tamaki rushed over to keep up. Sougo shot Banri a rueful grin and hurried off after them; Banri sighed again, and it almost could have been any day, back before it all went wrong, when he was tutoring Sougo and Tamaki and they’d been particularly troublesome.
But this was not any day back then; this was now, and they were deep underground in a cave with a giant robotic lion that was one part of a weapon powerful enough to destroy the universe. This was now, and Banri was trying to convince everyone that hey, climbing into the superweapon that the evil aliens who had abducted him were after maybe wasn’t the best idea in the world. This was now, and Sougo and Tamaki were still raising Banri’s blood pressure without even trying.
Somewhere very far away, there was a boom ; Mitsuki, who was sitting in the pilot’s seat at the front of the lion and poking at the controls, jumped and slammed his hand down on a button, and the lion’s gaping mouth closed; Banri said something else in the alien language, something that Yamato had once claimed was the equivalent of saying that someone was sleeping with their own mother, a prostitute with every venereal disease known to man who still made her own children pay for sex; Mitsuki slammed a lever forward and the lion stood up and lept out of the cavern, sending rock bursting everywhere over the desert.
“I’m not sleeping with my mother and she isn’t a prostitute!” Mitsuki yelled as they roared past the red sand on the ground, but everyone else was screaming too loudly to notice or even answer. He finally managed to get the lion to stop still in midair, halfway through the atmosphere, after spinning in circles for a few minutes to keep from gaining any more altitude; Sougo sank to the ground, shaking, and around him everyone else snatched at their bearings and held them close to their chests in the hopes that, once the lion started moving, they wouldn’t escape again.
“Sweet baby fucking Jesus,,” said Yamato breathlessly. “I am so sorry for every single time I said you weren’t a shit pilot, Mitsu.”
“Do you want to try piloting an alien spaceship with absolutely nothing legible on any of the controls, Yamato?” Mitsuki snapped. “Because if you do, then be my fucking guest.”
“Language,” said Banri.
“You just called my mother an STD-riddled prostitute!”
“You what ?!” Iori squawked.
“I did not,” said Banri, “or, at least, not your mother. I have some complaints for whoever designed this spaceship. And you boys shouldn’t have understood that, anyway!”
“Hi, hello, raised by a Galra Empire spy here,” said Yamato, waving. “Obviously I paid attention to every damn swear I could, and obviously I taught them to my friends. Doesn’t the one you just used translate basically to ‘ you pay your whore of a mother to sleep with you, and every time she gives you a brand-new STD’ ?”
Banri raised his eyebrows. “I heard it used more like we use the term motherfuck! , but I suppose you’re not wrong,” he said.
“Huh,” said Yamato. “Intergalactic cultural differences are wild. ”
“The kids at the orphanage would call other people motherfuckers all the time without actually meaning that they were sleeping with their moms,” said Tamaki. “Most everyone doesn’t even have moms.”
“I hope nobody’s been calling you a…”
“Oh, no, I got expelled last year,” said Tamaki. “The orphanage director said that you messed up on the Kerberos mission and your shuttle exploded, so I tried to fight him, and then I tried to fight a bunch of the old dudes at the Garrison and got arrested. Sou-chan’s been renting an apartment for me to stay in so that I don’t have to go back as long as I stay in school.”
Banri looked completely horrified, but before he could say anything further Nagi, looking out the window of the lion, let out a yell; everyone turned to face him and Sougo felt his blood chill in his veins as he looked upon the largest black-and-purple spaceship he’d ever seen in his life. It looked more like a cargo ship than a spaceship; it looked as though it could fit an entire city’s worth of people and still have room for a few farms and maybe a small town, besides. Almost on instinct, Sougo looked to Banri; his face was entirely white and he looked at the spaceship with the air of a deer reuniting with the headlights of a car, or a rat who had gotten out of the maze only to be confronted once again with researchers and plopped back at the beginning.
“They’re here…” he said.
Yamato said the very same word that Banri had used earlier, brightly as though greeting a hall-monitor at three in the morning when neither of you was where you ought to be. Riku gasped sharply, then started coughing so hard he gagged; Iori smacked him in the back repeatedly until a wad of yellow-brown phlegm flew into his sleeve, and then turned to Mitsuki, a stern look on his face.
“Nii-san, you have to get us out of here, now,” he said. “You agree with me—right, Ogami?”
“Right,” Banri said. “The important thing for now is to get Ainana away from them. The Galra Empire is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine, and if they get their hands on this—” He swallowed, his throat working itself up and down. Shiny beats of sweat stood at attention on his still-pale face. “And anyway,” he said quietly, “if we flee they are more likely to follow us. More than anything they want this. There may be a chance that they will continue to leave our planet alone if we get away fast enough.”
“Got it,” said Mitsuki, and he grinned like a lion and cocked his head as though listening to something that nobody else could hear. “Okay, I know what to do. Buckle in, guys.”
“Nii-san, there aren’t any other seatbe—”
The lion shot forward again. Everyone yelled out, gripping whatever they could for some form of stability, as Mitsuki pulled levers and pressed buttons, and the lion reared forward, raking its claws down the side of the Galra battle-ship and leaving explosions and deep gashes in their wake.
“No way they’ll be paying attention to anything other than us now!” he crowed as they bounded away, properly in space now—as Sougo stared out the window, he watched each planet of their solar system flash by—Mars, then Jupiter, then Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto—
“We’re out by Kerberos,” Banri said. “It takes our ships months to get out here, and we’ve made it in only a few minutes…”
“Alien technology really is amazing!” said Riku.
In front of them, somewhere past the edge of the Milky Way, a swirling blue circle began to grow, and Mitsuki accelerated towards it as everyone screamed, as Sougo caught sight of the impossibly huge alien spaceship about to overtake them—
And then suddenly in a flash of light-blue galaxy they were somewhere else, completely alone and surrounded by unfamiliar constellations, hovering far, far above a wholly unfamiliar planet.
“Portals really are real…” said Nagi. “Do you suppose that Kokona might—”
“I think we’re learning a whole lot of things ‘really are’ real today,” said Yamato. “For example, aliens.”
“Also crippling daddy issues,” said Mitsuki, and Yamato spluttered.
“You didn’t know about that before today?” said Banri. “You really should have spent more time with Yuki—the stories he could have told you…”
“What did he tell you ?” asked Yamato.
Banri raised his eyebrows. “I seem to remember a certain story about a first meeting and a Christmas bonus—”
“Okay! Mitsu, any idea where we are?”
“I think I want to hear this story,” said Mitsuki, grinning.
“It’s far more embarrassing for Yuki than it is for Yamato, I’m sure,” said Banri, “but Yamato is right. We should figure out where we are, and save the reminiscencing for later.”
“How is it embarrassing for Yuki ?” said Yamato. “Just because he was washing the old man’s car?”
“No,” said Banri, “it’s embarrassing for him because when I asked him where the money came from, he told me, and I quote, ‘a spoiled little rich boy gave it to me because seeing me so wet massaged his gushing daddy issues’, and so I dragged him by the ear to our commanding officer, one Chiba Shizuo, who did not get the chance to inform me that Yuki was doing odd jobs for him until after I had yelled at Yuki in front of him for a solid five minutes about getting himself involved in prostitution—and then he informed us that prostitution was a solid career choice for young men who couldn’t cut it in the Garrison, and one we ought to look into if we continued bothering him with ridiculous stories like that one.” He smiled, and added, “But I do also have stories that are more embarrassing for you than for Yuki—if we overlook the fact that Yuki knew that information at all.”
“Please don’t share any of those stories with anyone,” said Yamato.
“We’ll see,” said Banri as Mitsuki angled the lion down towards the strange planet. Descending through the atmosphere was almost like moving through liquid sunset; once they breached the clouds Sougo could see landscape that looked almost like something you’d find on Earth, maybe, and then—on the horizon—a great castle.
The lion let out a roar. Mitsuki took his hands fully off of the controls, crying, “It’s in autopilot!” They arced towards the castle, moving at a far more reasonable speed, now, until finally the lion landed in front of the great doors—large enough to accommodate this massive spaceship—and its mouth opened once more.
“Is the atmosphere breathable…?” Sougo asked.
“Not for me!” Riku said cheerfully and started off of the lion.
“Nanase—!” Iori groaned. “He has asthma,” he told the rest of them. “This is his favorite space joke to make…Nanase, get back in here, we don’t know if the outside is safe yet!”
Riku ignored him and so Riku was the first of them out in the alien planet, followed closely by Iori, chasing after him and yelling for him to get back in the lion as if the gas outside hadn’t already entered the cabin. Next was Nagi, who seemed to have decided that if they hadn’t died yet they wouldn’t die at all; he was followed by Yamato, stretching and muttering something about might as well, if the kids were doing it. Sougo figured this was as good an argument as any and so followed him, slipping past where Tamaki was pressed against a window, and Mitsuki followed hot on his heels. Tamaki spilled out a minute later, complaining that Sougo had left him behind. The last to leave was Banri, who had taken it upon himself to get their bags out—just in case, he said, the lion decided to fly off and leave them behind.
It didn’t, though; instead, it sat up, and tilted its head back, and let out a massive roar.
“Everyone, get behind me,” Banri said as the massive doors of the castle began to open.
“Huh? Why?” asked Riku.
“My crew was taken prisoner by aliens once,” he said grimly. “I’m not going to let it happen again.”
—As if there’s anywhere we could go, Sougo thought but did not say. They were on an alien planet, taken there by an alien ship that Mitsuki seemed to have some sort of strange bond with. They had not been in control of getting here; it was very probable that, if they tried to get away, they would not have any control over that, either.
Banri, however, said nothing else on the subject as he led them into the alien castle, their footsteps echoing. The air inside tasted old, musty, as though it had not been breathed in thousands of years; as they made their way inside, Tamaki murmured something about ghosts and Riku shook his head.
“There aren’t any ghosts here,” he said. “No ghosts here at all.”
“How do you know?” asked Nagi. “Ghosts are invisible, after all.”
“What? No they aren’t.”
“They pretty definitively are—” Yamato began, but cut himself short when a light blinked on and an automated voice said something in an alien language. They all froze; some sort of light passed over them; the torches in the hall blinked on. Nothing else happened.
After a few moments they started forward again, but more cautiously now; the lights in the castle kept turning on, as they were moving forward, and everyone found themselves huddling somewhat closer, as if there really were ghosts here—or just maybe something worse. Eventually, they made their way to what might have once been the castle’s throne room—or perhaps something else. There was a raised platform with a terminal that lit up when they entered, and large windows opaque with years of dust or perhaps some kind of shielding; as the eight of them entered, the room lit up and a strange, cylindrical pod rose up from the floor.
“That’s…odd,” Banri murmured. Then— “Nagi, no, stay back—”
But Nagi did not stay back; any teacher at the Garrison could have told Banri that Nagi would ignore any order that so much as suggested he stay away from something mysterious and exciting. He reached the pod at about the same time as icy steam began hissing out of it; before anyone could try and do anything sensible like pull him away, a girl about Riku’s age stumbled out, screaming, “Dad!”
She landed directly in Nagi’s arms; in true Nagi fashion, he dipped her and kissed her hand. “Hello, my princess!” he said.
The girl stared at him. “Your ears…” she said faintly, her voice strangely accented—almost British, but not quite. “What’s wrong with them? Did you have some sort of terrible accident, or suffer an illness?”
Nagi looked deeply confused; Sougo looked at the girl’s ears, which were long and pointed, and then at her cheekbones, which had glowing pink marks on them.
“And—and where’s my father?” she continued, standing and extracting herself from the stunned Nagi. “Where is the king of Altea?”
“What’s an Altea?” asked Tamaki.
The girl looked around, her eyes trailing over each of the humans in the room as they, in turn, got a good look at her. She seemed almost human—other than the ears, and the glowing pink marks, and the place where they had found her. She had frizzy yellow hair, and wide pink eyes, and she wore a simple blue gown; she had two arms and two legs and five fingers on each of her hands. If she hadn’t come out of a strange pod in an alien castle Sougo would have thought she was a girl with a unique taste in clothes and makeup; as it was, he wondered at how similar to humans she looked. The girl drew herself up suddenly, looking very regal and very on edge, and she said, her voice trembling, “Who are you, and how did you get here?”
“That’s a great question,” said Yamato. “I’ve got one better, though: where the hell is here, and why did a weird robotic lion named Ainana kidnap us and bring us here when a whole bunch of alien fucks were en route to our planet?!”
“A lion of Ainana?!” said the girl. “How did you find—? And what happened to her paladin?!”
“There’s that word again,” said Tamaki. “The hell’s an Ainana?”
“Language, Tamaki,” said Banri.
“Lang— Ban-chan!” said Tamaki. “But you said motherfucker earlier!”
“I did say that, and I really should not have,” said Banri, in the tones of somebody who was debating the merits of saying something far, far worse. “You shouldn’t have followed my example in that.”
“You don’t know what…?” The girl looked around at all of them again, her eyes wide. “—I need to see how long it’s been,” she said grimly, and turned and rushed to the strange podium, causing it to light up even further. “The translator’s already running, how odd…” she murmured as it lit up, and then froze. “Ten thousand years?!”
“What’s ten thousand years?” Mitsuki asked.
“Your mom, obviously,” said Yamato.
“I—I’ve been asleep,” said the girl, her voice shaking, “for ten thousand years…”
“Are you sure?” said Iori. “That’s…I can’t imagine how that could be possible.”
“A stasis pod,” said the girl firmly. “My father and I were arguing—our people had been betrayed by our allies, the Galra—”
“You’re allies with the galra ?!” said Yamato. “God fucking damn it, is there anything those creepy fucks haven’t touched?!”
“We were allies until—until they betrayed us, and started attacking the other planets and nations around us…” said the girl. “It was all so fast…I wanted us to summon Ainana, and push back against them, but Dad said that it was already too late and we needed to send the lions away with their paladins—and then—” She shook her head. “And then nothing, until I woke up now…he must have put me in the pod—but why?” The girl sounded genuinely confused.
“I can’t say I know for sure,” Banri ventured, his voice gentle, “but I’ve just spent the past year and change as prisoner of the Galra Empire, and they’re…as far as I know, they’re unstoppable. Our people knew nothing of the broader universe before they took my friends and I—we still don’t know anything, really, and it turns out there are spies for the Empire keeping it that way—but…they are unstoppable. Even just a year as their prisoner was hellish. I can see why your father wanted to spare you that fate.”
“You speak as if winning against them is impossible!” said the girl.
“As far as I’m aware,” said Banri, “it is.”
The girl’s face set. “No,” she said, “it isn’t. There isn’t any force in the universe stronger than Ainana, and if you already have one of its lions here then that means that seven of you have been chosen to wield it, and that means that we can take them down.”
“Who even are you?” Yamato asked.
The girl drew herself up, her posture regal, her bearing that of one who has held power for so long it lived in the very marrow of her bones. “I am the Princess Takanashi Tsumugi, of the planet Altea,” she said, “the only daughter and heir of King Otoharu and Queen Musubi—both,” she added with only a slight tremor in her voice, “long dead. And I am the one who will lead you paladins in battle against the Galra Empire—if only you will have me.”
“If they’re both dead, wouldn’t that make you the queen?” asked Tamaki.
Princess Tsumugi’s lips pressed together in a thin, white line, and she said, “Queen of what? My people are long dead…at least I was crowned ‘princess’ by somebody. ”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Your Highness,” said Banri, still soft, still gentle, like when he was talking Sougo and Tamaki down after a fight, or comforting them after things had broken particularly bad with their respective families. “I promise, we’ll do everything we can to aid you against the Empire.”
“Yeah, we’re all DTF at any moment,” said Yamato.
“Excuse me?” said Banri.
“DTF,” said Yamato. “Down to fight.”
“Oh,” Banri said, relieved. “That was what you meant.”
Yamato smirked. “What, did you think I meant something different?” he said. “Man, you really have spent too much time with Yuki.”
A strange blankness shot down like an iron wall behind Banri’s eyes; the princess’s gaze flickered around them, clearly curious as to who Yuki was.
“My name is Izumi Iori,” Iori said, stepping forward quickly to avoid any awkward questions. “That is Nikaido Yamato; this is my brother, Mitsuki, who found and flew the lion; this is Yotsuba Tamaki, and that is Osaka Sougo; you’ve already met Rokuya Nagi of course; and this is Nanase Riku; and you’ve already met Ogami Banri—he’s the only one of us who’s actually a trained astronaut. He recently escaped from his galra captors; however, none of us know what happened to his crewmates, Orikasa Yukito and Sunohara Momose. It was his escape that taught us about the existence of alien life such as the galra and led us to Ainana.”
“Where are your crewmates now?” asked the princess.
“Believe me,” Banri said, smiling bitterly, “if I knew that I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“They’re…still captured?”
“As far as I am aware,” he said, “yes.”
“It wasn’t Ban-chan’s fault,” Tamaki said furiously. “They’ve been saying it was his fault for a year—but it wasn’t! It’s the evil aliens’s fault, the ones who took him, and nobody else’s.”
“Oh, I—I didn’t mean to imply—”
“You did imply, though,” Sougo said coldly. “Princess or not, I must request that you not make the same mistake twice.”
“That’s kind of you boys to say, but I was at fault,” Banri said softly. “Yuki is my responsibility—has always been my responsibility. And now he’s off in hell somewhere—if he’s still alive at all—and I am not with him.”
“It wasn’t your fault!” said Tamaki, furious. “That’s a lie!”
“Yuki is a grown ass adult, not some kid you were babysitting,” said Yamato, “and also we have video evidence of my whoreass dad saying he sold you guys out, so, yeah, extra super not your fault. And if you’re going to keep blaming yourself I’d like to point out that Sou did almost get kicked out of the Garrison for punching a CO who said that you were at fault just for that crash they made up, which is I think the only time in his life he’s ever gotten violent—”
“He took my door off its hinges once when we were fighting,” said Tamaki.
“Second time in his life he’s ever gotten violent,” Yamato corrected. “Anyway. Totally my dad’s fault and nobody else’s.”
“What do you mean?” said Riku. “Isn’t this all the fault of the aliens who decided to abduct and conquer and build an empire, and not any of us? Even Yamato’s dad. Iori and I watched that security footage you guys took last night, and—”
“Yeah!” said Tamaki. “It was all the Galra Empire’s fault and also Yamato’s jerk dad’s.”
“Hear, hear!” said Yamato.
Banri sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose, looking like he was having a headache. The alien princess’s eyes flickered between the eight humans, clearly off-balance and not a little confused by the circus she seemed to have awoken into. Sougo sent her an apologetic smile; he wanted to say something about how they weren’t usually this bad, but he knew Tamaki, Yamato, Mitsuki, and Nagi far too well to make such an egregious claim, and Riku and Iori had run off into the desert to chase strange energy signals instead of going to school like reasonable people.
The princess took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “if we gather Ainana together, then we’ll be able to defeat the Galra Empire and find and rescue Ogami-san’s crew members.”
“Please, call me Banri, Your Highness,” Banri said. “What does gathering this weapon entail?”
“It won’t be hard,” she said. “Or…it won’t be as hard as what comes after. One of you has already become a paladin…because of that, the rest of the lions will have woken up and chosen from among your number. As a princess of Altea, I have a good deal of experience with quintessence; I should be able to examine each of yours and see which lion you’re connected to and from that where it is…whichever one of your number isn’t a paladin I will train in diplomacy and in working with quintessence, as two of us will be able to get more done than one of us, and—and this is war. If I should die, I don’t want the knowledge of my people to die with me.”
Iori, who had blown up his entire life to chase weird energy signals in the desert, began whispering, “Please, please, please, please.”
Before Banri could say something about if the one of us who isn’t a paladin is a teenager please send him home, Sougo quickly spoke up. “That’s a great idea,” he said. “Especially since we can’t go home now—we’d probably be sold out to the galra if we tried. Thank you very much for taking us in.”
“Thank you very much for finding Ainana and being willing to fight,” said the princess, and then she closed her eyes and a ball of swirling light appeared between her fingertips; it turned a dark blue and she moved, as though walking an invisible tightrope, towards Iori; she said, “The first paladin,” and then moved over to Yamato as the light turned a dark green. “The second paladin.” Mitsuki was light orange and third; Tamaki was light blue and fourth, and Banri looked furious, muttering something about he’s only fourteen! as the princess moved to Sougo, her light now lavender, and told him he was the fifth paladin. Nagi was yellow and sixth; finally Riku was named dark orange and seventh. Banri was not called at all, probably because even Princess Tsumugi’s strange quintessence thought that he’d gone through enough at the hands of the galra already.
If, of course, galra had hands.
“Perfect!” said the princess, opening her eyes. “All seven paladins are here!”
“You mean not having connections to all of Ainana was an option?!” said Iori.
“Of course,” said the princess. “Your connection as paladins is brought about and sustained by your bonds both to your lions and each other. If there was someone more important to you back on your home planet or somewhere else, then there is every chance that they would be a paladin and we would be in—some amount of trouble.”
Banri nodded. “I see,” he said. “If I were chosen to be a paladin, then necessarily Yuki would have been as well, and likely Momo. And the Galra Empire would then have two paladins captured already.”
“Right!” said the princess, clearly relieved that she hadn’t had to be the one to say it. “Which means that all we have to do is locate the lions. I should be able to do that by tracking their quintessence…Banri, would you mind helping me with that? —The rest of you can start making yourselves at home here. We have plenty of space.”
“Will it be safe for them inside the rest of this castle?” Banri asked.
The princess nodded. “Nobody has been here in ten thousand years,” she said. “There won’t be any threats around.”
“Alright,” he said, “but you boys don’t go far, understand? And don’t leave the castle.”
“Yep!” said Riku cheerily. “We promise we won’t do anything you wouldn’t do, sir!”
The look on Banri’s face suggested that he had led a far more wild life than anyone else in the room would have believed, and Yamato leered, likely about to say something unwise about things he’d heard from the missing Orikasa Yukito, but before he got the chance Mitsuki slammed a hand over his mouth and dragged him from the room. Sougo followed, curiosity getting the better of him; the seven of them wandered through the ancient rooms, lights flitting on at their approaches, until there was a crackle from the ceiling and the alien princess called them all back to the main terminal room.
“I’ve located your lions,” she said. “The first and sixth have been sealed away in the castle, and can only be released once all of the others have gathered here. The second, fourth, and fifth are all still hidden on peaceful planets; the seventh appears to be…moving somewhere, not of its own will. It’s possible—likely, even—that it was captured by the Galra Empire.”
This was worrisome and disheartening news; however, there was nothing that could be done about it until they all knew more about what was going on, and so neither Banri nor the princess seemed inclined to dwell on it at the moment.
“We’re going to be splitting up into three groups to get the lions,” said Banri. “Mitsuki, Nagi, and Yamato, you three will be going in Mitsuki’s lion to get Yamato’s. Riku, Iori, and Tamaki will be going in one small spaceship—I believe it’s known as a pod?—to get Tamaki’s lion, and Sougo and I will take another to get his. These should be peaceful planets, but Princess Tsumugi and I have divided us up based on combat ability; the planet that Yamato’s lion is on is most likely to be dangerous, and the one Sougo’s is on is second most likely; the planet that Tamaki’s lion is on is the most obscure and most isolated, and thus the least likely to be dangerous.”
“Wait, why aren’t we sending three people to Sou’s lion, then?” asked Yamato. “He’s not exactly a fighter…”
“Sou-chan can kill people easy,” said Tamaki.
“Don’t say things like that!” Sougo spluttered. “I don’t—I’ve never —”
“I have a gun, a mechanical arm, and a great deal of anger at the Galra Empire that I would love to get out,” said Banri, “while, as far as I know, neither Riku nor Iori has any combat training. I promise that we’ve split everyone up into what we think are the safest teams possible that can still get us to the lions as quickly as we can. And…Sougo, everyone. I’m very sorry to have to put this on you, especially since you’re all still so young, but…this is a war, and you will all be fighting on the front lines. Hopefully it won’t be an up close and personal thing, but you will have to kill people. Hopefully not today—hopefully not any time soon. But unfortunately, someday you will have to. When that time comes, I want you to choose your lives over everyone else’s.”
“Did you do that, Ban-chan?” asked Tamaki.
“…Of course I did,” he said flatly. “It’s the reason why I’m standing here today, and Yuki and Momo are not.”
There was a moment of silence as that sunk in. Tamaki said, “But Yukirin and Momorin aren’t dead, right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember enough about my time as a prisoner of the galra to say…though I intend to find out, for better or for worse. I do know, though, that I did get out, and I definitely remember killing my way to the pod I used to get back to Earth. I don’t want any of you to ever be in that position—and, quite frankly, I disapprove of the fact that you’ll be fighting this war at all, but it doesn’t seem that there’s any better choice out there—but I do want you prepared for what you’ll likely be facing. Today, there shouldn’t be any major threats. Tomorrow may be a different story.”
Everyone nodded. This wasn’t the most heartening of speeches, but as far as explanations went, it wasn’t too terrible. Across the room, Mitsuki and Nagi started poking Yamato in the arm and hissing in his ear.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m not doing it, that’s too embarrassing.”
“Come on, leader,” said Mitsuki, grinning despite the accident.
“You can do it, leader!” Nagi added.
“Who says I’m the leader?!”
“You’re the oldest of the paladins,” said Iori. “It makes sense.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s my job to give a motivational speech! You guys do this to me every time we have a test. It’s unfair.”
“Well, this isn’t a test,” said Mitsuki, “so you have nothing to complain about.”
Yamato scowled at him.
“I think it would be excellent if you gave a speech,” said Banri, smiling kindly at Yamato, and then, because he was just a little bit of a bastard, added, “Yuki always did say that you had such a way with words.”
“I am never going to live any of that down, am I,” Yamato sighed.
“Ooh! Ooh! Banri!” Riku said. “If Yamato doesn’t want to give us a speech, then could you tell us one of Captain Orikasa’s stories about him?”
Banri smiled a little. “Yes, that seems reasonabl—”
“I’ll give the speech, damn!” said Yamato. “Okay, we’re flying out today to psychically connect to big powerful alien spaceships. Banri’s speech was a hell of a downer, but he also wasn’t wrong. We’re not in school anymore, and losing isn’t an option. Let’s get out there and get home quick and safe, but if we run into trouble, then let’s fuck those alien bastards the hell up and look good while we do it!”
Everyone cheered, because that was better than staring at Yamato in silence or thinking about having to kill people. Sougo was desperately relieved that he would be going with Banri on this mission, at least; Yamato, Mitsuki, and Nagi would absolutely be messing around on their mission and if they didn’t blow up at least one galra spaceship Sougo would eat his metaphorical hat. Banri would take this seriously, though; he had been a comforting, grounding presence for as long as Sougo had known him and his stint as a prisoner of the Galra Empire hadn’t taken that away from him, even though he was far more pessimistic now. He wished Tamaki could be coming with them, but he knew it was better that they get as many lions as possible as fast as possible. He didn’t know about alien tracking technology, but he knew that Ainana was absolutely trackable with just the human technology they had on them. Riku and Iori had been doing so for the better part of a year now; it simply was not possible that they had cracked it but the aliens hadn’t. Banri was right: they needed to move fast.
Mitsuki, Yamato, and Nagi left the way they’d all come in, clearly enthused to get a move on and get Yamato’s lion. The princess led the other five to the hangars, and gave a quick run-down on some of the less fine points of piloting the spacecraft; then, almost before Sougo could absorb any of the information given, they were off, leaving the atmosphere and shooting through the wormholes the princess had opened for them. Banri was piloting the pod, his brow furrowed and lips pressed together so tightly they were almost white; it had been long enough since they’d all left Riku and Iori’s desert shack that his hair had begun to fall out of his ponytail, and Sougo could see the scar once more as his long bangs shifted.
How did you get it? he wanted to ask, but didn’t dare. What happened to you, out here in space? Why did you say that, about choosing us over everyone else—aren’t we supposed to be saving the universe? How can we do that if we choose to damn someone else for our safety?
“—We’re here,” Banri said, breaking the silence as the pod touched down on the forest-covered planet. “Stay close to me and keep your guard up. There shouldn’t be any galra presence here—and if there is they certainly aren’t aligned with the Galra Empire—but there could still be dangerous flora and fauna here…and we don’t know enough about what’s toxic to humans and what isn’t to act recklessly.”
Sougo nodded. “Do you know if there’s—oxygen in the atmosphere?” he asked.
“There is, I already made sure with the princess that all three planets weren’t immediately fatal to us,” he assured him. “She’s marked on our maps where your lion ought to be, as well. If all goes well, we should be back at the castle within two hours.”
“Got it,” said Sougo. He moved to open the door, glanced at Banri to make sure he wasn’t doing the wrong thing, and then made it fully out into the strange, forested planet. If Sougo unfocused his eyes, he might have thought he was in some foreign forest on earth—but looking closer at everything around them, it was clear that they were somewhere very, very different.
They wound their cautious way through the alien trees until they reached a river, running in the same direction as the alien princess’s maps; they walked along it in silence, Sougo marvelling at how, strangely enough, life seemed to be carbon-based on both this far-off planet and on the other one that they had been to. Perhaps it was because of the biological similarity of the princess of the planet Altea to humans: if the previous paladins had all been from there as well, it would make sense that they would hide their lions on planets that also supported carbon-based lifeforms. And anyway Banri had said that he and Princess Tsumugi had already vetted all of the planets as safe for humans ahead of time…
They had not been walking for long when Sougo caught the first glimpse of the ziggurat. It stood above the banks of the river, ancient and rotting; it would not have been out of place in a textbook about ancient Mesopotamia or perhaps as a model in a museum, but it was quite strange to see such a thing here. Strangest of all, though, was the way that Sougo could almost feel something calling out to him from inside of it—something that felt, strangely enough, almost like his own voice.
“I think it’s in there,” Sougo said, his voice as achingly quiet as if he were inside a cathedral.
“Well, go on, then,” said Banri. “Be great.”
Some unnameable emotion almost like pride swelled in Sougo’s chest; he nodded and started off into the ziggurat. There were traps inside—several of them—but they must have been old; as he touched the carvings on the walls they lit up with a pale purple light and the various traps completely disengaged as a voice like his own heart began welling up in the back of his head, and when he found the robotic lion, it felt like coming home. They roared in tandem out of a large opening in the topmost floor, and even with loading up the pod from the castle into the lion Sougo and Banri were back at the castle in less than half the time it had taken them to get to the ziggurat in the first place. Tamaki, Riku, and Iori got there next with Tamaki’s lion; finally, right before the deadline, Yamato, Mitsuki, and Nagi sailed in in two lions, laser beams pinging off of them until the portal closed, and when they spilled back into the main terminal of the castle, they were still chattering about the skirmish they’d had with an imperial mining crew. Tamaki and Riku immediately zipped over to get all the details, and Sougo followed, though Iori went in the other direction in order to listen in on Banri and Princess Tsumugi’s conversation.
Before Yamato, Mitsuki, and Nagi were even halfway done with their story, though, screens appeared and flashed throughout the room; Sougo turned and saw the words INCOMING MESSAGE come into focus. The room went silent; the princess stepped up to a podium and placed her hand on it.
“Accept,” she said.
A screen fuzzed over with static before the image resolved itself to reveal a fluffy purple humanoid in what looked like a futuristic version of full plate armor, and Sougo heard Banri suck a breath in through his teeth.
“Greetings, rebels,” said the alien on the screen. “I am Prince Tsunashi Ryunnosuke of the Galra Empire. You have eight hours to surrender the lions on Ainana that you have gathered here, or else I will have no choice but to destroy you and leave your bones as examples for the rest of your planet.”
“Take off the fursuit, babe, and then we’ll talk,” Yamato called.
The alien prince frowned. “What…language was that?”
Iori smirked. “I guess the translator doesn’t go both ways,” he said. “I wonder if that could help us buy more ti—”
Yamato called something in an unfamiliar language, and the alien prince looked shocked and scandalized. Banri massaged the bridge of his nose. “Yamato, that was ‘sex suit’, not ‘fursuit’,” he said. “The direct translation would be—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Yamato, “but I bet they don’t have furries in evil empires, so I had to adju—hang on, what the fuck.”
On the screen, the alien prince was removing his armor; Yamato let out a gleeful wolf-whistle, and Banri buried his entire face in his hands. Sougo thought with horror of the likely many pre-battle negotiations with the Galra Empire they faced, and about how this precedent was a very, very bad one; the shirt under the chestplate was taken off and Banri forcibly herded Tamaki, Riku, Nagi, and Iori out of the room before the alien prince got entirely naked on the video call.
Luckily for Sougo’s mental health, however, another armored alien entered, this one more pink and less fluffy, with a helmet covering their entire face, and stopped short when they saw the alien prince stripping while on a video call with a group of increasingly baffled rebels.
“Ryuu, what the fuck, ” the second alien snapped.
“Tenn! Hello,” said the alien prince, sounding only a little ashamed. “These rebels don’t speak our language, and apparently in their culture wearing armor means you want to have sex, so I’m removing my armor to continue negotiations.”
“And you think stripping entirely naked will make it seem like you don’t want to have sex?!” the alien named Tenn demanded. “Fucking shit—and what civilized peoples don’t speak Galran, honestly—-” They turned to the screen and fixed the remaining paladins, the princess, and Banri with a glare that pierced even through their faceplate. “Surrender the lions by the end of the day or we will raze your world to the ground.”
The call turned off; Yamato started snickering.
“Betcha next time I can get one of those aliens entirely naked on video call,” he said.
“Do that alone and on your own time,” Banri told him as the princess pulled up the tracking hologram for the Ainana lions once more.
“The seventh lion is moving closer,” she reported. “It is projected to enter this solar system in four hours’ time and reach this planet an hour and a half later. It is highly likely that it’s on the Galra ship that Prince Ryuunosuke is commanding, which will give us the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone—we can retake the seventh lion and fight off the Empire’s forces at once, if we play our cards right.”
“We don’t know how to fight,” said Sougo.
“Your lions should help you learn how to use them,” the princess assured Sougo as Banri went to let the younger four back into the room, now that there were no images of naked aliens for them to be exposed to. “And we can use the next few hours to get you prepared for this mission. We will take back the seventh lion, repel the Galra, and, for the first time in ten thousand years, successfully form Ainana!”