Chapter Text
In which Kyoya is up to something
Kyoya had been on the roof doing something slightly illegal with extremely illegal equipment that would definitely get him dismissed from the Galaxy Garrison if anyone caught him when his roommate threw the exit door wide open and dramatically whisper-shouted that they had to leave, right that minute, or else.
Kyoya did not move. It was a good night for research, and he didn’t want to squander it. He finished the last of his calculations, writing the result in a small notebook, then calmly looked up.
“Why?”
“Haruhi is in Trouble!” Tamaki wailed in the melodramatic tone of voice he often adapted when discussing their junior classmate, who had inexplicably become Tamaki’s Special Favorite. “Those so-called teammates of his, those scoundrel twins, are trying to sneak him out! They’re heading off the base! They want to bond with him!”
“I fail to see how this is my problem,” Kyoya informed him.
“They’re planning to hotwire your bike,” Tamaki said mournfully.
“… ah,” Kyoya said, just barely restraining a twitch. He stood up and collected his things, packing them neatly but quickly into a bespoke metal case. “That’s slightly more compelling. I’d have led with that, were I you.”
By the time they caught up to the Hitachiin brothers, they were already in Haruhi’s room. Kyoya’s not-quite-legally-adapted key card opened the door just in time to hear them telling him how they’d already borrowed a bike to go into town. They were each draped over one of Haruhi’s arms. Haruhi had his hands on his keyboard and was still resolutely trying to type.
In their typically shameless way, the twins did not look remotely fazed to see either Tamaki or Kyoya enter. Haruhi was a different story.
“For heaven’s sake, Tamaki, you could at least knock first,” he said, clearly exasperated. “This is the third time this week you’ve just barged in. Hello again, Kyoya.”
“Sorry to intrude at such a late hour,” Kyoya said politely. Beside him, Tamaki was positively vibrating with indignation as the twins smirked up at him.
“Haruhi’s too busy for you right now, anyway,” Hikaru—or was it Kaoru?—told Tamaki.
“We have plans,” both twins chorused smugly.
Tamaki pointed an accusing finger at them. “I know what you’re up to!”
At that point he loudly announced that it was only Right and Proper for he and Kyoya, as seasoned upperclassmen, to accompany them (“No one invited you!” the twins protested, at which point Kyoya pointedly held up the key to his hoverbike, which made them quiet down) as chaperones on their little trip (“I already told them I’m not going anywhere, I have to study for tomorrow’s communications exam,” said Haruhi) to make sure they didn’t get into any Serious Trouble, and, with an alarmingly rapid mood change, declared he had the perfect idea for One Truly Magnificent Excursion (“There’s no excursion! I’m studying! Get out of my room!” Haruhi said as Kaoru took one of his arms and Hikaru took the other and together they stuffed him into a grey fleece jacket that matched their own, zipping it up past his mouth) before promising to meet them in ten minutes and leaving the room in a whirlwind of sudden excitement.
The twins linked arms with Haruhi, pulling him to his feet, and strong-armed him to the door. Haruhi managed to get his mouth above the tall fleece collar and made one last appeal to reason.
“Kyoya, you aren’t actually going along with this insane idea, are you?”
Kyoya shrugged. “Actually, I’ve been hoping to take a trip off-base. I’ve been conducting some research on my own time, but I’m not able to get the readings I need from here. Now’s as good a time as any. Besides, I’ve already rerouted the security cameras.”
He closed his laptop and slipped it back into his backpack. No one had noticed him take it out in the first place.
“You heard the man!” Kaoru—or was it Hikaru?—said cheerfully. “Now let’s go, before you turn into a pumpkin.”
They headed towards the garage. Even though Kyoya had covered the security feeds, there was still a risk of running into a patrol. But the Hitachiins had long ago memorized their routes as well as the officers’ schedules and confidently guided them through the side corridors, although they did have to crawl under the windows of the officers’ lounge to keep from being spotted.
Tamaki was already waiting for them by Kyoya’s bike. How he had gotten there before them was a mystery that would forever remain unsolved. He was now wearing a navy parka and carrying a backpack of his own, a vintage camera hanging around his neck and an oversized notebook in one hand. Kyoya was slightly gratified to see his own coat on Tamaki’s other arm. He usually kept an emergency go bag in the storage compartment of his bike for when Tamaki suddenly got itchy feet and insisted they go somewhere, but it didn’t include a jacket.
Tamaki waved them closer and proudly opened the notebook. Inside were polaroids of some kind of primitive art, carefully glued to the page along with detailed notes and charts that looked like something out of a lab report.
“BEHOLD!” he declared.
The twins and Haruhi leaned over to look and made impressed noises. While they were distracted, Kyoya took the chance to undo the twins’ slapdash rewiring job and restore his bike to its normal state of pristine maintenance, only partially listening to Tamaki’s explanation of what the notebook actually documented.
“I found these caves in the desert last summer! They’re full of old pictographs that are absolutely fascinating, although they don’t seem to correspond with any particular indigenous peoples or historical period that I’ve been able to uncover. It is a Mystery,” Tamaki finished triumphantly, basking in their awe. He relished having the twins’ full attention, but most important of all, he’d gained Haruhi’s interest.
Kyoya had just finished his repairs when a map was exuberantly shoved in front of his face, one long finger just barely visible over the top of it as Tamaki pointed out an area helpfully circled with large, red marker.
“This is our destination!” Tamaki informed him.
Kyoya firmly pushed the map down to a distance his eyes could actually focus on. He adjusted his glasses to conceal his surprise at the coordinates, then pulled out his own notebook and cross-referenced Tamaki’s map with the results he’d written down earlier.
“How very convenient,” he murmured.
They had another two minutes before the security feeds reset, plenty of time to get out of the Garrison before anyone noticed. Kyoya drove, grateful for his coat as they flew into the wind. Tamaki rode behind him as he usually did when they went out like this, unnecessarily shouting directions in his ear. The twins settled in over the wings for balance while Haruhi, the lightest, sat towards the tail, and he tuned out their chatter as they headed further into the desert.
Tamaki jumped off the bike before he’d even finished landing and made a beeline for the cave, the twins on his heels. Haruhi lingered to help unload Kyoya’s equipment from the storage compartment, shouldering the go bag just in case.
“Hey, Kyoya?” Haruhi asked. “Earlier you were saying something about getting readings from outside the base. What kind of readings did you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Kyoya said, looping his headphones around his neck and grabbing his backpack.
“Oi!” the twins called from the mouth of the cave. “The cave is glowing!”
Behind them, Tamaki was darting around to take photographs with the polaroid camera, babbling incoherently but occasionally shouting recognizable words like Magnificent and Incredible and HARUHI YOU HAVE TO COME SEE THIS.
Haruhi jogged over, Kyoya a few steps behind as he fiddled with his equipment, trying to tune it back to the settings he’d found favorable on the Garrison’s roof while accounting for the sudden spike in energy readings. The moment he crossed into the cave, his equipment went haywire. The ground rumbled and opened below their feet.
The rockslide deposited them in an awkward pile in front of an barrier, behind which sat an enormous metal blue lion, a larger-than-life version of the cave art Tamaki had been documenting so fastidiously. By some miracle, Kyoya’s equipment was still transmitting, a single word repeating over and over in his ears until it was seared onto his brain. As he struggled to untangle himself from the others, he barely noticed Haruhi extending a shaky hand to Hikaru and Kaoru to help them stand and checking them for injuries; he didn’t see the look of pure wonder on Tamaki’s face as he breathed, “The Blue Lion is real.”
Voltronvoltronvoltron, the transmission screamed and finally Kyoya tore the headphones off, unable to stand the noise a moment longer.
“Voltron,” he said numbly. “This is Voltron.”
“No,” said Tamaki, turning to look at him, his eyes glowing with something unearthly that made Kyoya’s stomach clench. “It’s only one part.”
And they saw it. What Voltron was, all five lions coming together to form something huge and incredible. They saw a battle raging across the universe. They saw a glimpse of the shadow threatening to overwhelm their planet, still very far away, but not far enough to be truly safe.
Then the vision ended. It was just them, the cave, and the Blue Lion behind its barrier with its eyes glowing yellow, Tamaki back to normal and Kyoya’s headphones emitting nothing but empty static.
“Did everyone else see that?” Haruhi said a little wildly, reaching up to run his fingers through his already-messy hair. “That… image? Of spaceships, and a giant robot?”
“Voltron,” Kyoya corrected.
“It was–” one twin started to say before the other jumped in.
“—awesome!”
“Amazing,” Tamaki agreed. He looked up at the Blue Lion, beaming at it the way art historians looked in museums. “You’re amazing! No, you’re beautiful! I’d love to take a closer look at you. If we could just get through here…”
Experimentally, Tamaki poked the barrier, but it held strong.
Haruhi peered at it. “It looks like it’s self-generating, doesn’t it? It must be powered by the Lion itself. Maybe it doesn’t want us to get too close.”
“Maybe all you need to do is knock,” said one of the twins, raising his hand.
“Wait, Hikaru, it might be dangerous–” said the other worriedly, but before Kaoru could finish his sentence Hikaru’s hand had gone straight through the barrier and the whole thing fizzled out.
Tamaki’s jaw dropped open.
So did the Lion’s jaw, which was much more impressive, because there were stairs inside its mouth.
“Told you,” Hikaru said smugly. With a sweeping bow, he gestured for them to proceed up the stairs. “After you, My Lord! And the rest of you, of course. Unless you’re scared.”
Tamaki squawked indignantly, but Kaoru cut him off, eyes flashing. “Scared of a big cat? No way. Let’s go, Haruhi.”
He grabbed Haruhi’s hand and tugged him inside, Tamaki and Kyoya a close second, Hikaru following behind them.
They ended up in what looked like the cockpit of a ship, controls in a language none of them could read lighting up the screens one by one, as if the Blue Lion was slowly rebooting its systems. When Hikaru approached the controls, the pilot’s seat rose soundlessly out of the floor and moved forwards until it knocked into the back of his legs and forced him to sit, much to Kaoru’s awe and Tamaki’s envy.
“Guess this thing knows who the better pilot is, eh?” Hikaru said to Tamaki. He winked at Haruhi, who was not impressed.
Tamaki glowered. “Say that when you can actually beat my simulator scores!” he hissed.
Haruhi, with a long-suffering look, pushed the two apart. “Calm down, boys.”
Kyoya narrowed his eyes and abruptly realized that that the suspicions he’d long held about Haruhi Fujioka were probably correct. He fished his notebook out of his pocket, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a slight smile.
Tonight had proved to be a very good night for research, indeed.