riverviewlogs | Trek to the Portal

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Trek to the Portal

who: Keith, Shiro
what: Exploration, trying to investigate the portal, but they get interrupted by something else from home.
when: This week
where: Out and about in the woods surrounding the city
warnings: None at the moment

Keith had gathered together some supplies. After their last trek into the woods to that temple, he had a better idea of what to expect and what they might need. Even with their armor, it didn't hurt to have a bag with supplies. Carrying it could prove interesting if they needed to use the jetpacks for anything, but they could figure that out when the time came... if the time came.

He headed upstairs to Shiro's floor. They hadn't moved out of the community building, yet, but it had definitely gone up in priority since the fire. But, there were still other things that were important. Investigating the fact that Allura had been there before them and had apparently disappeared was pretty high on the list, too, and was definitely more important than finding a private place to live.

He poked his head in the door from the elevator lobby, then knocked before calling out.

"Hey, Shiro. You ready?"

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Shiro was also weary about actually finding Allura. Finding her meant she was safe, but she was also stuck here with them. Then the question became how did them being here impact those back home. No pilot for the Red or Black Lions, only one Altean to pilot the ship.

If they didn't find her, they could say she went home even though what he had been told by that one person suggested she might have returned to some other place entirely, which he didn't exactly want her to return there. It also meant that something else entirely could have happened and she was here, but not safe.

Shiro stepped into the elevator when it arrived at their floor, stepping to the back as Keith moved towards the buttons.

"I've heard a few about people talking about others who have disappeared without hearing anything at all so it would seem unexpected disappearance are common place. Even if we can find some basic information about how a random disappearance can happen, then it will be successful."

He watched as the lights on the panel indicated the elevator going down.

"At least one person was able to give me some useful information when I asked."

Not Ivar who had started by making jokes and devolved the conversation into Viking philosophy, which was interesting, but didn't help his original question.

Not to mention that Coran wasn't a royal Altean, so he couldn't manage a wormhole jump on his own without enough of Allura's residual energy stored in the system. He'd get one, maybe two if he was really lucky, but, after that, no more wormholes.

"Yeah." Keith sighed a little. "The whole portal thing sounds pretty mysterious as it is. I'm guessing there's still a lot about it that people don't really know."

He stepped off after the doors opened on the main level, walking with Shiro to the doors.

"At least we don't have to worry about an escort, right?" he asked as they stepped outside. With them both on the Perimeter guard, no one would stop them from going out as a pair.

"I would suspect they don't really know everything that it can do. Based one what they've said, its definitely not the same as the teladuv where you can specific locations. It sounds more like it scans through different locations and you have be lucky to catch it when its focused on the right place."

Shiro walked with Keith to the doors, pushing it open and holding it for Keith to be able to walk through without having to push open the door again.

"No, I wouldn't think we would. We're both search and rescue in the guard and you have your bayard. We're probably better prepared with just the two of us than we would be with three."

Besides, they had supplies for two, not three and in the event of an issue, someone else with them was just someone else to worry about. They knew each other's abilities and could trust each other.

Keith nodded in agreement at the comparison to the teledav. That was relatable, even if the teledav was something still relatively new to both of them. They'd gotten used to it pretty fast, thanks to necessity.

"Yeah." Bayard... dagger... check and check. Plus, Shiro was sort of physically attached to a weapon, so that helped, too. Weird that he could think of something horrible like what the Galra forced onto Shiro as a helpful thing, but they'd been able to turn it around against them, so he supposed it was, in the end. "I think we'll be good."

He fell into step next to Shiro easily enough as they headed for the gate.

They at least knew enough about the basics of the teledav to know what it was and the principles of how it worked. Along the same line, they knew enough about the teledav to know that the portal was not the same thing as the teledav.

"We'll be fine. We usually are."

Keith's two bladed weapons and his arm were a formidable arsenal that didn't take up that much space. They didn't really need long range weapons or at the very least they had been getting along without this long.

Shiro lead the way towards the gate. Of course there were the usual questions from the person standing at the entrance, but two members of the search and rescue team were usually well-equipped so no requirement for an escort was made and aside from the questions, they were allowed to pass unhindered outside of the city.

"We should head over in the direction of the portal and see what we can find."

Keith nodded.

"I downloaded their map into my armor using that trick Pidge showed us," he said. Tapping on the red section over his left wrist, the projection of the local area came up over it. It showed the perimeter of the town with a heavy solid line, a black dot and a red dot showing their respective locations (right next to each other near that line), and an 'x' for the portal (off in the distance). "Hopefully, it won't be hard to get to," he said. "It looks like there's a route along here we can take." A few more taps, and a winding path through the woods came up on the screen.

Shiro leaned over to look at the projection that came up when Keith activated it, studying the map. Seemed pretty straight forward. Of course once leaving the city there wasn't much there so there wasn't a lot for them to be distracted. Yes, there were some ruined cities, but that wasn't the point of this trek. They'd already seen that might take more than two people to accomplish depending on what was living there.

"Yeah it does. We can try that route and see where we go and what information we can find. Good job."

He'd head over in that direction once Keith was ready to go.

Following the map, Keith started off with Shiro, heading into the woods. The path was pretty well defined, considering the number of times it had probably been traversed since the portals had opened. There were a pretty decent number of people around, and, between the coming and going of new arrivals and residents returning home, it wasn't hard to see which way they went. After a while, Keith shut off the projection. They didn't really need it unless to make a decision at a split along the way.

Shiro noticed how well worn the path was as well. It made perfect sense. The portals weren't exactly isolated or unused. People were arriving, people were leaving so it was well traveled.

Of course people weren't the only things that came through the portal and Shiro was keeping eyes and ears peeled for anything that sounded unusual. The last thing they needed was for something to come around the corner and attack them. They had their armor yes, but that still would have been bad.

Funny that... just as one started to really think about something, it was almost always bound to happen. As they got closer to the portal (it was slightly visible in the distance now), a large growl could be heard off to their right. It was one of the strange lion/alligator things they had come across on their way to the temple shortly after they had arrived. Keith had both his weapons out in a literal flash to defend against it as it charged in towards them.

Oop, sorry Keith. You could blame Shiro for that thought crossing his mind.

Shiro had could see the portal in the distance, but the growl got his attention, noticing the same creature that they had seen when they had been helping to go after that deity. It had been surprising before, but now was pretty much par for the course. Shiro immediately freed up his right hand, waiting to see if it would come for them, ready to activate his arm at any moment.

Keith grit his teeth as the creature charged. It reared up at them, and Keith went low, jabbing forward with his bayard at its exposed underbelly.

Shiro's hand activated as the creature reared up at them. Keith was quicker though on the draw and nailed it his bayard. Shiro however didn't let his guard down and when it tried to fight away from Keith, Shiro nailed it with his Galra hand.

"There's probably more of them out there."

"Probably."

Keith didn't put his weapons away just yet, but the noise of the first creature had hidden the noise of a second, and Keith was blindsided by another attack. He hit the ground hard, and his Marmora blade fell from his grip. He managed to keep hold of the bayard, though, and brought it up defensively, the creature biting down on that as Keith held it between them.

There was a sudden roar from the woods, and a thin blue laser shot out from the woods, hitting the creature in the back. It fell forward, on top of Keith, pinning him there for a moment, and there was a sudden loud crashing sound from where the laser had come from. A blur of bright red, and a "miniature", for lack of a better term, Red Lion of Voltron was suddenly dragging the creature off Keith by clamping her jaws around it's foreleg.

"Keith!"

As the second creature came crashing out of the woods, knocking Keith to the ground, Shiro immediately leapt forward with the intent to stop it as the creature began biting Keith's bayard. He was nearly upon it when there was a loud sound from the forest nearby - was that a roar? - and the creature collapsed.

What had just happened was still processing when that red blur leapt out of the forest and began to drag the creature off Keith. That... that was definitely the Red Lion. But significantly smaller. No less protective of Keith though...

Another sound and Shiro glanced back into the forest. The darkness of the forest might have hidden it completely, but the glowing, unblinking yellow eyes staring back at him with the familiar glowing blue markings were telling even if it hadn't come out yet.

"Oh... quiznak."

There was more crunching through the trees as if something else were approaching them, but then the Black Lion stepped out and roared in the direction of whatever seemed to be lurking around. If Shiro didn't know better, he would say Black was trying to put itself between the forest and the paladins.

Keith barely managed to push the creature off, even with Red's help. He stared, wide-eyed, as he slowly sat up. Once Red was sure the creature wasn't going to attack again, she came over and nudged Keith from behind.

"Woah..." She almost knocked him back over. "Hey... easy there." She purred at him, a deep rumbling sound, and he brought his hand up to place it on her forehead. "You're so small..." He wrapped his arm around her head as she leaned down to put it on his shoulder from behind, and looked over as the Black Lion emerged from the forest, also scaled down in size. Not that it wasn't still a massive robot, but no where near as large as normal.

"They're so small..." As the threat of the creatures seemed to fade off for the time being, and the Lions slowly started to relax, Keith started to pick up on the general sense of confusion. Red was maybe even a little nervous. What had happened to them?

Shiro was getting that too; they were confused, probably just as confused as the paladins if not more. Black, having chased away the threat at least temporarily, came over to Shiro, ducking its head to nudge his shoulder. Shiro wrapped his arm around the lion's neck as it practically rested its head against his shoulder.

"They are small... insanely small for them. How... how did this happen?"

He was getting a vague general feeling of traveling through the portal because of needing to take care of something, but it was hard to tell even so. Had the lions chosen to come through the portal on their own because they were in trouble? Well didn't that just take the cake for Red being overprotective if it were true.

"I think we need to post-pone the trip to the portal. Get them back to the city."

"Yeah..." As worried as Keith was about Allura, this kind of threw a wrench in things. But then, maybe not? He remembered something Coran said shortly after they found the Castle. "Wait... the Lions are all connected to Allura. They'd know if she was here, wouldn't they?" Red gave Keith a nudge, as if he was on to something, but it was still a pretty strong nudge, and he lost his balance. "Wooaahh..." He caught himself before he fell over. "Easy, Red."

"That's a good point. They are connected to her and she to them. If she were here, the lions would be able to tell. I'm not really getting anything that tells me they can sense Allura here. You?"

He couldn't help a chuckle as Red nudged him, almost knocking him over.

"I guess they really don't know their own strength." As Black shifted around and bumped Shiro he almost fell as well. "Nope, they really don't know their own strength."

Keith shook his head.

"Red says she doesn't."

All things considered, that was probably the best answer they were going to get. If Allura wasn't actually in Riverview, then there wasn't much more they could do. Even if she had pushed her luck with the portal and ended up some weird place, they might not be able to go find her.

"I just hope she got home."

"I don't think we're going to get anything more conclusive than that. If they can't sense her, then it's likely she's not here. They found us after all. I hope she got home too."

There was a moment of silence from the group as Shiro thought about the best course of action. The rustling in the woods around them and crunching of leaves on the ground quite easily convinced him as Black looked up again, eyes turning towards the spot the sound had come from.

"We should go back to the city."

If she wasn't here the remaining trek was pointless and if the creatures were out, they may not be as well prepared as they thought.

Red had also focused in sharply on the sound, but didn't leave Keith's side. Her stance, though, was much more aggressive than Black's. Keith looked over there, wondering what they could see. He kind of wished he could see the sensor readout in the cockpit right about now.

"Yeah... good idea."

He got up, now that Red wasn't attempting to stand over him anymore, and gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. That was weird, having her small enough that her shoulders were just around his hip, and he could easily just rest his hand on her back without a problem.

She moved with him, a lot like a very well-trained military dog, staying right next to him.

Shiro wondered as well what the lions were looking at, but whatever it was seemed to be hesitating with one robot lion in an aggressive stand and the other standing almost the full height of the human it was next to. They seemed to be in pretty much a stand off with whatever was in the forest.

As they started off back towards the city, Black stayed nearby Shiro as well before falling behind slightly. When Shiro looked back, he could see the larger lion making sure whatever it was wasn't following them before catching up with them.

Seemed to make sense, based on what he had seen of the lions acting on their own. Black had seemed to be the guarding them when the first robeast arrived, putting itself deliberately even in front of Green.

Since Black wasn't lagging, but periodically stopping to watch for anything, Shiro chose to keep up with Keith and Red, knowing Black wouldn't be far behind.

With Black watching the rear, Red was keeping an eye ahead. Still on edge, Keith had kept his bayard in his hand, though he did deactivate the blade part of it for now. He was going to feel that tackle later, but nothing major. Another reason Red was staying close, though, and Keith could tell she was trying to make sure he was okay.

Thankfully, the two very large robot lions kept most of the other creatures at bay for now. Black was a pretty intimidating presence. Though, the gate guards were curious upon their return. Red was wary of everyone, being protective. However, the fact that Keith seemed to remain calm and was familiar with most of the people they ran into in town on their way back to the apartments kept her from getting too riled up about all the attention.

Shiro made his way back down, leading as much as possible. Probably the only reason he was really able to was because Red wa staying closer to Keith. He had a feeling if the lion ran full tilt, he wouldn't have a chance. This was further proven when Black quickly closed the distance with them as they neared the city walls. Yep, even the slower Black lion was able to catch up. No way beating Red if she really wanted to go.

Black was also weary as they entered the city, standing close to Shiro, practically leering at the guards over the Black Paladin's shoulder. So it was a good thing both Keith and Shiro continued to act like this was normal as they headed back to the apartments.

One problem Shiro realized when they neared the building.

"No clue how to get Black up to Floor 15."

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