when the system's wrong, you gotta tear it down. {keith; week 1; sunday evening}

[zwischenzugs]

[Whenever Keith and Mello are back at their hut, Keith will probably notice a pretty dramatic shift in Mello's mood. Gone are the smugness and arrogance Mello has projected since the moment he arrived, and in their place, there's quiet focus and deep, intense thought. Something's weighing heavily on his mind.]

What were you doing before you were brought here?

Comments

[alienated]

[The shift in attitude is surprising, and Keith isn't sure how to feel about it. Over the past week, he's come to expect nothing from hostility from his partner. The dangerous sort, nothing like what he experienced back home from his teammate. This is different. He looks at him with apprehension for a moment, before answering.]

I was ending a war.

[Short and simple, and not at all indicative of the sacrifices behind it.]

[zwischenzugs]

Really.

[He picks his head up, interest cautiously piqued.]

What kind of war? What were you fighting for?

[alienated]

The universe. [so, everything.] I'm a Paladin of Voltron. It's my job to fight for every planet across the galaxies. To keep anyone from taking away their freedom.

[Though he won't mention who they were fighting, exactly, because... It's still weird to know he's part of the same species enslaving everyone left and right.

Either way, he frowns at him with suspicion after a moment.]

Why do you even care?

[zwischenzugs]

Huh.

[Well, that's definitely interesting. Not quite the same situation as Mello, but maybe he'd been too quick to dismiss Keith all the same.]

I'm fighting a war too - not for the whole universe, just the world.

[A war to end Kira, and a race to beat Near to the finish line. He immediately sobers again, chewing at his fingernail for a moment before he gets to his main point.]

I don't think they're going to let any of us get back to what we're supposed to be doing.

[alienated]

[That gets a nod from him, storing that but of info away for later. A war for the world... but what side? He won't ask for now, not wanting to defuse this tentative calm.]

No, not if they get what they want from us. The dead don't just come back once they're gone.

[As far as he knows, anyway. Though with Laura on the island, rotting flesh and maggots and all, maybe that's not 100% true. He's not sure how he feels about the possibility.]

That's why we have to figure out how to put an end to this before it's too late.

[zwischenzugs]

No, [he shakes his head, frowning,] what I mean is that I don't think there is a way to win this so-called game. I don't trust that there's going to be anyone left standing victorious at the end, and I certainly don't trust that those two sadists are going to uphold their end of the bargain. They've stacked the deck against us.

[alienated]

I know we can't trust the robots.

[even without mello laying it out... he knows that much.]

They told us one of them always lies. Right from the start, we knew not to trust them. Anything they say needs to be taken with a grain [or a bucket] of salt because we don't know which one of them is telling the truth — if either of them are. None of this is designed to be fair to us.

[STILL.]

But that doesn't mean we should give us. That's the same as accepting what they're doing.

[zwischenzugs]

I don't intend to give up. I intend to fight back.

[He sits up, kicks his legs over the side of the bed, lightly bounces them while weighing how much he can trust Keith with what he's thinking.]

I don't know how, exactly - not yet. But you said you wanted to save everyone here. Is that still true?