technopath

receive cursed rhey advice / accepting

It was incredible, really, that Shiro was able to keep his expression from folding into an eyerolling, offensive display when he’d been confronted with this situations and others like it time and time again. The only thing he could do was keep his eye on the target— which, to say for very certain, by the looks of it, had only just realized the gravity of the mistake he’d made, and that, too, had been predictable.

God. My life, Shiro thought, careful to keep his brows from heavying like they wanted to.

“You don’t have to commit crimes against the Olkari for them to process you for the crimes you’ve committed against the rest of the universe,” Shiro said, his arms folding over his chest. “Not with the way things are now. You sold their blueprints to Lotor, which, in my experience, looks… well, it looks treasonous. Discounting everything else, it wouldn’t be right for Voltron to do it, and personally, I think Ryner would be interested to know why one of her own is accomplice to a bloodthirsty dictator anyway. If you want to keep acting like this is a game, you can answer to her directly. By all means.”

It’s your choice.

“We can talk about what’s unethical and what isn’t if you like. I’ve got time to kill. I mean, I’m not sure what’s so unethical about Voltron keeping itself a neutral party so a planet like Olkarion can decide what to do with one of its own citizens, but sure, we can swap opinions about it.” 

He rolled his eyes and leaned up against the bars. They were connected to an interface to his left, and he could barely see the hand print scanner. He didn’t dare look at it for too long, though, even as he could feel its energy thrum through the bars. 

“Or,” he supplied, uninterested in Shiro’s cocky righteousness, “we could both benefit from this little predicament. Even among the Olkari, I am a spectacular engineer. I think we could help each other.”

It was simple. Shiro could either accept his offer, and the both benefit, or Rheylor would be long gone before Ryner and her goons laid eyes on him. His fingers tapped against the bars, feeling the energy. All he hand to do was slid his hand over to the interface, and he could hack it in no time. All Shiro had to do was turn his back for thirty seconds. 

He blinked, unamused. 

She peers at the Olkari silently for a dobosh before giving him a deceivingly sweet smile. With a cheerful hum, her arms folded behind her as Ezor leans back against an opposing wall. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific~” she drawls. “Am Zethrid and I a what?” She’s bored. So she might as well get a little entertainment out of this. He doesn’t seem like the gullible type, though, so she likely won’t be getting too much out of this.

Rheylor rolled his eyes, hands reached out and palms up in a placating manner. 

“Oh, how to phrase this in a way that won’t get me dropkicked into deep space?” he pretended to think on it before his gaze fell back on her. 

His lips curled into a knowing smirk, and he dropped his hands. 

Instantly, she felt her stomach tie itself into a tight knot. Self-consciousness flooded her head, but not because she realized Rheylor’s thinly-veiled insults.

No, she was cursing herself for not realizing that he wouldn’t really have a technology preference. He probably thought she was stupid, and that’s why he was losing interest. 

“Oh, well, um. Hopefully I can get there someday. Could I, um.. Could I see what you’re working on? I bet it’s probably pretty cool!”

He hummed in acknowledgment. She had been his shadow for quite some time, and while he acted aloof, he actually rather liked her company. She didn’t scorn him for surviving, and she was brilliant. For her species, of course. 

He held up a small device to the light. 

“Right,” Shiro echoed. “You do that. It’s your choice— I’m not going back on that.”

A pause tinged the already tense, stagnant air of the brig between the steel bars that separated them from each other.

Shiro’s arm, a dull glow of a threat in the dim overhead lighting, blinked once, then twice, its steel plates flaying up and down flat and ridgeless as the rest of its joint up to his shoulder.

He hadn’t come here to interrogate him, hadn’t come here to harass him— hadn’t even come to try and talk sense into him. Long before he’d arrived, he’d been briefed on Rheylor’s status, including the way he’d been responding to the officers busied with keeping his guard, and he’d been certain even then there wasn’t going to be any budging from him, no matter what they said or offered to him, no matter what they did.

It was…

It was how things were.

Zarkon’s problematic, baneful opinion had spread from galaxy to galaxy, and there were, as he’d predicted, plenty of those, including pirates and scroungers and squatters who claimed neither side of the fence— whatever they could get, greed or no, that was what they were after. They wouldn’t hear Shiro’s logic, considered sound by Allura, or even Allura’s herself. There was no saving those who weren’t looking to be saved— those who believed there was nothing to save.

“I should warn you, though, that Planet Olkarion has requested to have you extradited for criminal prosecution… and they’re just about here to bring you back themselves.”

What was left unsaid? I don’t imagine you’ll go peacefully and I wouldn’t advise you resist.

Oh fuck.

He kept his expression schooled in a cocky, self assured manner, but...that presented a problem. A major problem. Because he could get himself out of this no problem, but if he was held in an Olkari prison, the chances of escape plummeted. Now, he was sure he would be able to eventually. He didn’t want to wait for eventually.

Rheylor cleared his throat and stood up, hopping towards the bars since he couldn’t really walk.

“Hey now, that seems a bit extreme, doesn’t it? After all, I haven’t committed any crimes against the Olkari.”

It was worth a shot because if they looked through his record, he hadn’t. Last time he even saw another Olkari was long before his reign of criminal terror.

Some people… there’s no getting through to them.

Shiro’s used to this.

He’s used to having confronted it while enlisted in The Galaxy Garrison, he’s used to it from having been a prisoner of the Galra for the very long, very grueling year he’d been held captive within the Central Command System, and he’s used to it now that Voltron is making further strides to spread its good word throughout the universe— its allyship, its rebellion, its reminder that there is hope and that the people hurt by people like Rheylor, his co-conspirator Zethrid— they all have a choice.

“And what are you going to do with that? Are you going to rot in your cell, convinced doing whatever you want doesn’t matter, complacent with your nihilistic view of the way things work? Or are you going to buck up and help us fight back?”

The look he gives him is, while tired, decisive.

“You don’t have to say you’re a good guy. You don’t even have to say you’ve joined forces with us. But I think you know who’s winning here… and I think you know that, for Lotor, the outcome is zero sum.”

He laughed. 

He tossed his head back, eyes closed, and laughed. He even went so far as to wipe a tear from his eye. 

“You keep mentioning Lotor like I give a shit. I’m not here because I want to hurt people or because I’m loyal to some larger-than-life scheme. I’m just trying to survive in a universe determined to kill me.”

He tried to be a good guy once. Every time he reached out a hand to help, that hand got burned. Rheylor had learned his lesson more times than he cared to admit, and he had made his decision. Shiro could spout all the nonsense about freedom and bravery he wanted to, but it wouldn’t change Rheylor’s mind. 

He would escape from this cell when he felt like, and then he was hijack a ship and blast off into space. What he would do from there, he wasn’t sure. Or maybe he would stick around, steal parts here and there while pretending to help their cause out of the goodness of his heart. 

Coward. Freeloader. Waste of space. He’d heard it all before, and his easy smile didn’t so much as falter. 

Rheylor stretched out his legs, rolling his ankles in the cuffs. He could get out of them easily enough, but at the moment he didn’t have much of a reason to. Besides, he was curious how much he could rile Shiro up. Just how high and mighty was he?

“Better their lives than mine. I was innocent once too, y’know, and my life was ruined. No one helped me, so I don’t see why I should bother helping them.”

He sat forward, resting his arms on his thighs. 

She knew that wasn’t really a compliment; however, that realization never made it to the forefront of her brain, because that part of it was currently short-circuiting.

Those pretty eyes, that pretty voice—the pretty everything!

“U-um..” She actually stammered over her words, wondering how the room had gotten so hot all the sudden (Really, it’s just that her face was a few shades off from a tomato). “Thank you. Olkari technology is actually my favorite– Right after Altean. Do.. Do you have a favorite type of technology?”

Oh? He didn’t know humans could turn such a color. How interesting...he smiled in amusement before returning to whatever he was doing. The young paladin never ceased to make him laugh with her awkward reactions. And the fact that she completely missed that latter half of the statement, which was an insult. 

“Okay, okay, I know this looks bad, but I swear I wasn’t stealing anything. Honest!”