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The alarm sounds, and Shiro leaps for his helmet. He’s fully suited up, of course - but for once, had been halfway to sleep, lying on his bed and everything. Now he’s on high alert, the high-pitched noise cycle sending adrenaline coursing through tired limbs.
“What’s going on?”
Normally he wouldn’t ask, would just get to the bridge, but it’s not the usual proximity alarm. This one’s shorter, sharper sounds; a new unfamiliarity in a place he’s only just beginning to get used to.
“It’s not an attack,” Allura confirms through the speaker in his helmet. She sounds sleepy. Shiro’s pretty sure he remembers her working on interplanetary treaties last night before he retired to his own room. No doubt she didn’t let herself even consider sleep before she’d triple-checked them and practised her speeches to the mice’s satisfaction. “I’m going through the castle’s systems and processes now, I’ll let you know when I figure out what’s happened and we can fix it.”
She’s got a terminal by her bed now. They all do, even if some of them aren’t as good at using theirs as Pidge and the Alteans. Lance’s idea: thoughtfulness shrouded in an attempt to encourage laziness. It’s mostly for Pidge and Allura, to encourage them to actually sleep sometimes, maybe.
The alarm stops while Allura works on pinpointing its source. Knowing that he’ll get an answer and a course of action soon enough, Shiro is able to relax a bit.
It’s at this point that he realises that he’s floating.
“Pretty sure it’s the gravity,” he confirms aloud, though it wouldn’t have taken Allura that long to figure out, he’s sure.
“No, no, the castle’s internal gravity field is functioning perfectly. It’s-”
“Uh, no, it’s not.” He wouldn’t normally interrupt Allura, but he’s about a foot off the floor and steadily moving towards the wall.
“I’m looking at a screen right now that’s telling me there is a fire, Shiro,” she corrects him, thankfully sounding less annoyed and more alarmed.
Or perhaps not thankfully, since there’s a fire inside the castle somehow.
He swears under his breath, swings his legs in an attempt to kick against - anything that’ll send him in the direction of the door, really. No such luck.
“Where is it? I’ll--” Well, he’ll do something, as soon as he can touch off against a surface.
“It’s--” she lets out a noise he can’t quite define, a confused little ‘hm’ where he half-expected a worried gasp, and when she speaks again to confirm, her tone is more thoughtful than anything. “Keith’s room?”
“Yeah, and it’s out,” comes another voice over the helmet speakers. Keith sounds a little out of breath. “Sorry for the wait, I’d’ve been faster if I hadn’t been putting out a fire.”
From anyone else, it might’ve been a joke, but from Keith it feels like an honest apology.
“Shiro, did you say something about the gravity?” Allura has that same strange thoughtful tone to her voice, and it makes Shiro want to just ask her to be straightforward and tell him whatever her suspicions are, but he already knows there’s no use. She tends to let things stew unless it’s urgent. Apparently this isn’t urgent.
“Uh, yeah,” he confirms. “I’m floating.”
“What-” Keith, at least, is showing some concern for him.
“Hm,” is all he gets out of Allura. Her voice shifts from the small speaker in his helmet to the castle-wide PA. “Paladins, please come meet in Shiro’s room.”
And he’s left gradually rotating in the middle of his room.
There’s enough silence for him to entertain the idea of elevator music accompanying his slow circling, and then a babble of voices all at once as the rest of the paladins put their helmets on.
“Why Shiro’s room--”
“Hey, Allura, there’s something seriously--”
“Did you say floating--”
“So I came to the bridge for--”
“What’s going on--”
“I’m actually kinda--”
“Is Shiro--”
He closes his eyes, takes off his helmet, and takes a deep breath through his nose. By the time he puts it back on, Allura has told everyone to shut up. Or more likely promised to explain it to everyone in person. He takes it off again. It’ll take less than five minutes for everyone to make it to his.
When the door to his room opens, he’s facing away from it, and it takes some awkward midair twisting to see that it’s Keith, who has stopped in his tracks at the sight of the black paladin suspended a couple of feet off the ground, diagonal and, now, twisting like a falling cat without landing.
“Hey,” Shiro waves, and Keith manages to wave slowly back, maybe a little dumbfounded. The sleeves of his jacket are singed black and brown in patches up to his elbows. Before either of them can say anything else, Pidge, suited up and running full speed, slams into Keith’s unarmoured back, followed immediately by Hunk. To his credit, Keith catches himself and doesn’t quite fall flat on his face.
Now there are three pairs of eyes round and startled and fixed on him. He’s beginning to feel a little self conscious. But he’s still turning, so he doesn’t have to see them looking for at least a few seconds.
Or, like, half a second, because of course Pidge immediately scuttles up and starts examining him from every angle, eyes sharp and puzzle-wide. Hunk prods him in the shoulder, and his rotation accelerates.
“How are you doing that?” Pidge asks, as the four of them work together to get Shiro mostly upright and relatively still. Shiro frowns.
“I’m not doing anything, it’s the-”
Keith, Hunk, and Pidge all have their feet firmly on the floor, and as Allura and Coran join them, Shiro realises that if it was the artificial gravity, everything else in the room would be floating along with him.
The fear curling in his chest must’ve shown on his face, because Keith steps closer, concern obvious in the way his hands almost start to reach out and his eyebrows tilt together.
“Where’s Lance?” Shiro asks, because as much as he’d love it to be the case, it’s not like Keith can just pat him on the shoulder and resolve this.
A tinny noise echoes from his helmet; he puts it on and, sure enough, Lance is shouting.
“--trying to tell you! I’m trapped in this stupid room and it’s snowing indoors which by the way makes no sense, and--”
“Lance,” he keeps it simple.
“Oh, thank quiznak, Shiro, you gotta tell Allura there’s something wrong with the castle again!” There isn’t. At least, Shiro’s pretty sure the castle isn’t the problem.
He can’t take his eyes off the burns on Keith’s jacket.
But Lance needs to just yell sometimes, and it’s probably to let him settle down that way at the same time as he gives Shiro more information on the problems at his end.
“The alarm woke me up but my door wouldn’t open, right? Turns out it’s frozen shut! Or, at least, it looks it. It’s not cold? When I touch it I mean, it’s doing that hazy steaming thing ice does so I don’t know what’s going on there. And the floors wet so I couldn’t break it down, and the frost kept spreading and now the ceiling is snowing and no one was listening to me !” A pause, then, in his usual conversational tone, “So what’s up with you?”
He actually laughs.
“I’m ‘up’, is what.” Allura snorts. Keith covers his smile with his hand. “I’m stuck floating about...” He looks. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but, “About a foot and a half off the ground? And Keith set fire to… probably his bedsheets, right?” The flush rising on his cheeks says yes. “Pidge and Hunk are fine, but we’re not on land and there aren’t any plants in the castle.”
“What’s plants got to do wi- ohhhhhh…” It’s obvious when you look at it from that angle. “So this is our lions, uh, doing something?”
“Yes, exactly!” Allura chimes in, clapping her hands together and beaming, head tilted just slightly in that way it always is when she’s talking to someone through the communicators that dangle at her earlobes, or when she's terribly proud of them. In this case it might be both. “It’s an indicator that the five of you have crossed yet another threshold in communing with your lions. You’re beginning to truly reflect their aspects!”
She sounds very pleased, and theoretically it’s great, but Shiro can see a few issues that have already arisen.
He holds the joke in, for now.
“Well, that’s neat, Allura,” Lance is saying through the headsets, “But how do I open my door?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” It isn’t. “It’s the same as piloting your lions. Relax, and open your mind, and you’ll be able to control it just fine.”
It does make sense. Shiro closes his eyes.
“What, like I just ask Blue to fix it?”
“Mm, not quite. If you can’t, we can always send Keith to come melt it for you.”
Shiro takes off his helmet before the indignant screeching begins, drops it onto his bed, and closes his eyes a second time. Separates his consciousness from his body - that’s easy enough, now - and reaches out to that deep rumble that might be the Black Lion’s purr. Dropping into her mind is like dropping into open sky, and always has been, really, even if he didn’t recognise it before. She seems to think it’s really funny that he’s stuck like this, but she relays the information, like a knowledge echo. Just like piloting, he just - gets it, suddenly. It makes sense, now, that he can lift his body through the air. Of course he can.
He drops with relative grace, and it’s honestly a relief to have both feet on solid ground again.
Lance skids past Shiro’s room, then backpedals, grabbing the doorframe. He’s grinning and wild-eyed, elated and dripping wet.
“I just - I can - you guys, I made it rain!”