τHΣ ϢΔRRIΟR ϢIτH ϢIͶGς

the ark of taujeer

"there's no point in debating this further. zarkon is clearly tracking us through me."

rhys frowns and crosses her arms at the words that left allura's lips. she had a vague idea of why the princess believed herself to be the cause of zarkon's continuous assaults on the castle, but it didn't make complete sense to the commander.

"why would that be so hard to believe? zarkon's forces showed up on arus only after i awoke."

"she's got a point. i would absolutely travel across the galaxy to find you," lance adds, and rhys sends him a small glare.

"not a very good one. the galra have been searching for energy signatures  relating to the lions or anything altean for centuries now, and its possible haggar was using her tainted magic to see if allura or any other altean had been saved from the destruction of altea."

then, keith decided to give in his own opinion on how the galra were finding them.

"it's not you, princess allura. it's me."

the commander tenses, head snapping to him with narrowed eyes. he falters slightly under her gaze, but keeps his stance.

"because?"

"i just think zarkon must've imprinted on me during our fight or something," he tries to explain, a weird look on his face, and rhys full on glares at him with suspicion in her eyes.

"that's not possible. you were barely in contact with zarkon, and even then, i doubt the bastard even knows how to do that. only druids would have a clue out of all those fucking imbeciles, so i have no doubt that it isn't you."

the red paladin stares at her nervously and in surprise, but turns back to the others as pidge pitches in.

"look, the fact is, we don't know how zarkon is tracking us. it could be through the black lion. every time zarkon gets close to it, shiro has to fight him for control."

"that's only when zarkon is nearby. no paladin has ever been able to connect with a lion over a vast distance," coran tries to reason, but catches the contemplative look the most experienced of them adopted.

"so what are we going to do?"

"look, it doesn't matter how he's tracking us because we're gonna take the fight to the galra soon enough. they've been chasing us from galaxy to galaxy. the last thing they expect is for us to come after them."

"i hate to break it to you, shiro, but that's a shit way of thinking about it."

the others give her strange looks, and the man looks somewhat offended.

"how?"

"how will we be able to connect with more allies if zarkon still has a way of tracking us? i won't allow us to go to noxenna or the blade of marmora until we have figured it out, and we risk putting potential allies in danger if he up and decides to follow us once again. if we don't figure it out soon, we risk falling even more into one of the traps he and his witch have set up. in my opinion, i believe he has developed a way to connect with the black lion after centuries of waiting," she reasons, and pidge nods in agreement before sitting at her chair.

"as it happens, i took our list of recent galra attacks and analyzed it for both commonalities and anomalies among the attack sites. i was hoping to create an algorithm that would, within a statistically acceptable margin of error, provide a list of target-rich galra environments—color-coded, of course, because what are you, animals?" the kid genius explains to them, making a small smile form on rhys's lips.

she ignores the next few things said between the group as she stares at the newly dubbed "galra finder" to try and see what was closest to them. she watches one planet be singled out, pidge explaining it was called "taujeer," and then turns to look upon the group.