The Garrison's underground archive was exactly where Pidge remembered it being—three floors down, past two adult-calibrated sensor corridors—but Amethyst moved through it with far more precision than the girl whose life she inhabited ever had.
She dropped from the ventilation shaft, landing silently beside the rows of glowing terminals. The moment her hand touched the console, the Maker System hummed awake, vibrating faintly through her bones.
[MAKER SYSTEM: Passive Integration Active]
[Linking neural intent to interface.]
It always addressed her as Amethyst (it was a name she hated in her last life but now she grasped onto it fearing she'd lose that part of her forever if she let go).
Never Katie. Never Pidge.
Yet Pidge's memories—Matt's grin, her father's clumsy warmth, the grief that never stopped aching—still hovered like emotional ghosts at the edges of Amethyst's thoughts. They weren't her own, but she respected them. Rescuing this family was a promise she intended to keep, if only to honor the girl who should have had the chance.
Amethyst opened the Kerberos mission files.
She dissected the footage with surgeon-like detachment.
Frame by frame.
Pixel by pixel.
Looking for what Pidge had missed—what the Garrison refused to acknowledge.
Iverson had called it mechanical failure.
Tragic. Unfortunate. Closed case.
But as the System highlighted shimmering distortions across the screen, Amethyst's expression sharpened.
A violet ripple.
A gravity sheer.
A teleportation signature.
[Analysis: 87% probability — targeted extraction, not accident.]
Her jaw set.
Then she found the corrupted data blocks—deep, damaged fragments no ordinary cadet should have been able to access. She reconstructed them with the System's help.
Within the static, Shiro's form flickered—engulfed in Galran energy right before he vanished.
Not a crash.
Not a malfunction.
A strategic abduction.
Amethyst leaned back, her expression unreadable. Pidge had approached these discoveries with desperation and grief. Amethyst approached them with cool strategy.
She would find Matt.
She would recover Shiro.
Not because she was mourning a family she'd never had—but because allowing this deception to stand was unacceptable.
She summoned a blank holo-pad and began to write.
---
"Things to Fix Before Season 1"
* Avoid unnecessary infractions.
* Don't get expelled.
* Intercept Shiro's return timeline.
* Acquire undeniable Galra evidence.
* Upgrade personal gear before Voltron Lion contact.
Pidge's handwriting ghosted through her memory; Amethyst overwrote it with clean, sharp strokes.
The System pulsed again.
[MAKER QUEST: Craft a Basic Item
Reward: Maker Space Expansion.]
A simple challenge.
Amethyst chose efficiency over flair—a multi-tool bracer compact enough to pass as standard tech but advanced enough to serve as her portable command center. Biometric lock. Omni-scanner. Signal interceptor. Microcutter. Fold-out display. The blueprint formed in her mind as naturally as breath.
Inside the Maker Space—her pocket-realm—the components materialized as glowing fragments. Metal bent with quiet obedience. Circuits braided themselves like quicksilver strands.
When she clasped the finished bracer around her wrist, the System reacted immediately.
[QUEST COMPLETE — WORKSHOP UPGRADED]
The Maker Space transformed around her:
Shelves slid from the walls.
Tool racks unfolded like mechanical blossoms.
A holographic blueprint table rose from the center.
Then the entire workshop lifted, drifting freely as a floating island suspended in an endless void.
This—this power—was something canon Pidge never had.
But Amethyst would wield it fully.
---
Late that night, while testing the bracer's frequency disruptor, a sudden warmth sparked beneath her ribs.
A tug—sharp and startling—as if an invisible string had been plucked deep inside her chest, vibrating through bone and breath.
Her eyes widened, the tugging feeling she'd felt before was back but this time as golden-violet light flared behind her corneas.
A presence—curious, distant, alert—brushed her consciousness like a fingertip against glass.
Amethyst staggered, gripping the edge of her workbench.
"What was that…?"
The sensation faded, leaving her heart pounding in quiet alarm.
---
Across the galaxy, another thread pulled taut.
Lotor—mid-strike in a training hall—froze. The faintest shock crossed his face as a foreign awareness brushed against his own, fleeting but unmistakable.
A presence.
A spark.
A soul-thread awakening.
And then it vanished.
---
Amethyst straightened slowly, hand still hovering near her ribs.
Whatever that connection was…
It was only the beginning.