#cloneganes

Shiro as the core.

Kuron as the alter who doesn’t know he is an alter.

Kuro as the alter that the others don’t acknowledge is there.

With recurring appearances of Sven as the Moon Knight from an alternate reality with a Norwegian accent.

Falling - start here for the story up to this point

It was crowded on the thin walkway.  Now that the renamed jaegers had been recreated and reworked, it was time for their first test flight and Bartok was coming along in the shuttle as back up.  They trusted the lion entirely by now - but that didn’t mean that something couldn’t still go wrong.  If the jaegers could fly - if this first real flight outside of the hangers went right...

if it went right than Shiro and his teammates would finally be ready.  It would be time to let them loose on the universe at large and God help anyone that got in their way.  Or at least show mercy to their souls once the jaegers were through.  They were still arguing, in a friendly, persistent, come and go kind of way about what to call their team.  Everyone had, finally, admitted they wanted something appropriately shounen anime sounding because some things from childhood just stuck - but it was also an entire team of Shiros - and one unanime raised Galra plus a spirit lion - and it turned out that Shiros at least still sucked at coming up with satisfactory creative names for things.  Fred was polite enough not to remind them of that - too often.   So, nameless but determined, they were ready to take to the stars and see how far they could go.  Everyone was eager to get off the station.  It was too big to defend properly and too empty for comfort but more - it was too Galra for any of the Shiros to feel comfortable in.  ‘Old style’ Galra, like their tubes had been, like their fragmented memories remembered.  The jaegers were ‘new style’ Galra - half witch left on her own, which was different enough from what they had known to not jar them.  Plus -

plus something strange had happened while the lion had been working with them on reworking the jaegers.  Each of them had chosen their own jaeger, out of instinct or feeling or just random direction but as the lion had worked with each of them on fitting it to them, those chosen jaegers had changed.  Edges softening out or hardening up, alien design starting to sleek down into something almost recognizable, bulk adding on or winnowing out.  The jaegers still looked, generally, like they had at the beginning.  And yet they looked - ‘Earth’ now too.  ‘Garrison’ for sure considering they’d been repainted with orange sections - and white and blue to match their team lion’s colors.  The jaegers the team were going to fly now looked noticeably and distinctly different from the rows of dead jaegers hanging on their hooks right next to them.  And the strangest thing of all - was that each of the team’s jaegers looked subtly different from each others.

Which, shouldn’t have been a thing.  Because they were, technically, all the same mind, the same person.  But, somehow, it was.  Each of the jaegers was distinguishable from the others on sight.  Shiro’s and Ryou’s were closest looking to each other.  And then Ta, Ka and Shi all had a patterning that complimented each others while still being distinct to anyone paying attention.  Fred’s was the most obviously different, standing alone almost entirely white and blue with what looked like almost a mane starting to sprout from the back of its head and a definite build in its right arm of reinforced plate.  Shiro took the differences as proof that they really all were their own and developing into their own as well, given they all had differences to work with.

But the plan was to take their maiden flight and then get some rest before blowing up the station and taking off.  Off to slay a witch and save an Altean Skywalker and - go home.  Go home and then go back to the stars.  ‘Space Rangers’ Ka had suggested and it was the closest they’d come to an official name.  Save the universe, explore, go home, rinse, repeat.  Somehow the ‘go home’ was the hardest sounding part.  At least the first time.  But first the witch.  Then everything after.

First their maiden flight.

Which was why they were all standing around Shiro on the walkway that led up to his jaeger, clamped in a close huddle except for Fred who watched it all from nearby through his jaeger’s eyes.

So many fears.  So many fears they all constantly ignored, that tried to crawl up their spines and strangle them when they weren’t ready.  Shiro took a deep breath and looked down at his hands, raised in front of them all.  Time to take the coating cast off.

The lion couldn’t work with human bodies.  It could work metal, but it said it only knew alchemy of the unliving.  It needed its Altean, with her Altean powers, to restore anything living.  It couldn’t help them with this.

Fred didn’t need controls to fly his jaeger - but the rest of them had all ended up with various foot panels and joy sticks in their cockpits.  Because there was something mentally important about them - and because there was something visceral about flying that way.  Something that linked them in, tied them closer - brought more pleasure.  Shiro’s jaeger had the same sticks and panels the rest did and he wanted to feel them under his palms, wanted to feel the security of wrapping his fingers around them, wanted the pressure and resistance and solid weight of them.  He ached for it.

And it would all be pointless if his hands were ruined.

He’d fucked them over pretty badly when he’d taken over Bartok’s shuttle....

Now everyone gathered around the foam casts that had been on his hands since then and tried not to show they were as worried as he was.  They were a team.  What happened to one, happened to them all.  And, without knowing how, Shiro had somehow become the heart of them all.  Bartok held those cast hands in his own larger, clawed ones now, as gently as if he was holding a baby and crooned words Shiro couldn’t hear, much less understand, could only feel vibrating down through their linked hands.  Ryou put his hand on Shiro’s shouldn’t and Shiro looked up and over at his brother, his twin.  Gave a weak smile.  Then he pulled himself straighter with an inhale and a nod.  A lifetime of tests and doctor’s visits - he knew how this went.

“All right,” he made his sure his voice came out steady and even, “let’s do this.”

Bartok took the small instrument from Ta’s hands and started to run it over Shiro’s hands.  The hardened foam of the casts started to fracture apart in small pieces.  Pale skin, long denied any sun much less Earth’s started to show.  Shiro waited as long as he could and then he gave in and tried to curl his fingers into fists.  The foam broke apart easily and turned into power that drifted away from his feet as his fingers closed completely and then tight until his knuckles showed white.  The only pain was a twinge as unused muscle readjusted to movement.  Unable to help himself, Shiro raised both fists into the air and whooped.  Seconds later, the bay reverberated with whatever sound Fred’s jaeger had made and Shiro found himself in the middle of a tangle of Galra and human hugs.  Laughing and feeling their laughter and it felt as if that sound must have spilled out to fill up the entire bay and then burst out into the waiting galaxy beyond.

When he finally found himself on his feet again, wiping away at his eyes, getting left over casting dust in them that the tears washed away just as quick he reached out and gave his twin one last hug, turned to Bartok with a grin.

“Thanks.”  It came out rust and wet and rough but the Galra beamed back, grinning his human learned grin in his ruined face.  Said something he knew Shiro couldn’t hear but the gist of it, triumph and smug ‘Galra tech is good’ clear all the same.  Shiro found himself laughing in sheer happiness and relief again.  It was okay.  They really were going to do this. 

“All right!” he clapped his hands together and enjoyed the feeling of the smack of them, skin on skin.  Turned to his own jaeger with his hands on his hips and a growing impossible to contain excitement inside himself.

Shiro at first not knowing that Kuron is still there, there’s blurry spaces in his memories, actions he doesn’t remember doing. With time he gets an understanding of what’s happening, he’s upset and he finds the way to communicate with the other inhabitant of his body. They’re both scared, confused and angry, hurtful words are exchanged but also truths, there’s a discussion about neither of them had a said on the decision of using Kuron’s body as vessel for Shiro. They fight each other for the right to be on front and eventually they realize that sometimes is better for Shiro to be in control and other times is Kuron, they start to cooperate with each other albeit reluctantly until they build up a symbiotic relationship.

Then something happens in a mission, Shiro is about to receive an attack and before the impact Kuron takes control over the body and put Shiro’s consciousness aside. When Shiro wakes up he finds himself alone, He doesn’t know what happened to Kuron, he is gone and the silence is unbearable, like being trapped inside Voltron all over again. He doesn’t want to be alone, he doesn’t want to left Kuron behind, so he decides and unlike the other decision he didn’t made that put him in this messy situation in the first place this one is his and no one else: he’s going to save Kuron and bring him back.

Shiro finds Kuron in The Black Lion’s astral plane but when Shiro reach him Kuron is paralyzed, Shiro talks to him but Kuron doesn’t answer and Shiro cries, he tells Kuron how much he cares about him that Kuron saved him and Shiro wasn’t going to abandon him, words echo to Marc’s speech to Steven.

Shiro hugs Kuron and the embrace breathes life back to him, they cry from joy and the embrace strengthens. The Black Lion appears in front of them, they walk to her, their arms over each other’s shoulders. They don’t have to be alone anymore, they’re a package deal.

- Lost siblings, who may or may not have known about each other existence in the first place, finding each other after so long.

- Twin siblings deep connection, they can perceive when the other is having a hard time, they finish each other lines, they’re synchronized with one another, etc.

- Clone who discovers is actually a clone, have an identity crisis and ultimately embarks in this inner journey where they build the person they want to be and reach the understanding that humanity is not defined by their origins.

That’s why I got attached to this concept in the very moment Kuron appeared on screen the first time.

That’s why the fallout of the clone arc hurt so much to the point I couldn’t continue the series once I knew the end of season 6, and hurt even more when Shiro wasn’t given a proper background and family like the others.

That’s why I created this blog in the first place, to give them the stories they deserved.

That’s why I always come back to this blog, even if I disappear for periods of times because of real life stuff or because of a new hyperfixation.

I just love them so much to let them go dude.

Happy birthday to Shiro and Kuron!

Oh! And Sven!

And to the other clones in project Kuron!

And to the Shiros from other alternate realities!

Now prepare for: