It struck him like a cinder block, but it wasn't a cinder block...had he been lucky, it would have been a cinder block, but alas, it was not a cinder block that had hit him.
Allura didn't like him.
Didn't like him...
didn't like him...
didn't like him...
The realization bounced back and forth in his brain.
He felt ill.
Lotor wondered why he didn't figure it out sooner. She'd slapped him at least twice in the past year and declared her hate for him much much much times.
Yesterday, she didn't even say anything to him as he carried her through the forest. He was so close...he could hear her breathing, his heart and her heart pounded as one, even when the little androgynous kid drew the grenade.
And he thought -Zarkon- was insane.
Zarkon was more than insane.
Zarkon was an abusive parent.
Zarkon had no respect for him.
Zarkon was MEAN.
Zarkon was an idiot.
Zarkon was slow.
Zarkon was fat.
Zarkon wore a dress.
Zarkon looked like Broadway from "Gargoyles".
Lotor bet that he just picked Princess Coralle's name out at random so that he could be married off.

Lotor decided that he was going insane today. In everything shiny he looked at, he saw Princess Allura.
In the mirror, in the water, in the mess Haggar's kitty left on the floor, in his helmet, on the walls of his space cruiser, in the red alcoholic beverage that he was addicted to...
He was heartbroken. Even in her sleep, she twitched with resentment towards him. He entertained the idea that she had been controlling Pidge that day with her mind. Of course, Lotor totally ignored the fact that Princess Allura couldn't even spell "controlling".
His opinion of her was as high as his opinion of himself, so of course he thought she could do anything. And what she was doing was hating him with all of her heart. The more he loved her, the more she hated him. It was unfair. Lotor was supposed to be the cruel one, not Allura. He figured that if he started to hate her, she'd start to love him just to spite him, but that would never happen.
"Allura hates me," he said aloud and shuddered, hearing the realization outside of his brain for the first time. He looked down at the floor and tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat with no success and scowled.
I'm not going to cry! I never cry! Especially over something so petty! he thought to himself, but found that he couldn't keep his promise. He stood up from where he sat, ordered all his servants out of the room, crossed the floor and went into his bedroom. He sat down on his bed and tried to remember the weird dream he had had two nights before.
"I was wrong," he said to himself, "THEY don't keep her from me...SHE keeps herself from me," he finished his thought and felt the lump in his throat again. Not wanting to fall asleep in his clothes again, as he had the other day (which proved to be painful), he removed what he had on and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed...even though it wasn't even late yet. But he didn't have the spirit to stay up late this time.

Somebody knocked on his door just as he was brushing his teeth. It was Haggar.
"Your Highness?" she called.
"Go away!" he replied as loudly as he could with a mouth full of toothpaste.
Haggar entered his room anyway, "Are you feeling well? A couple of your servants said you looked slightly green."
"A little PRIVACY here?!" Lotor growled, ignoring what the old lady said and slamming his bathroom door shut.
Damn! Haggar thought and looked at her watch, "It's only 4:45pm! Why're you going to bed so early?"
"Because I don't feel like staying awake to watch the SUNSET!!" Lotor snapped from behind the door.
Haggar slapped her own face and started again with the concern, "You're not acting like yourself today, Prince Lotor!"
"Go 'way!"
"You sound ill! Let me take a look at you!" Haggar lied.
"The cat DID something on the floor earlier, did you clean it up yet?" Lotor, the Ever-Eloquent mentioned, trying to change the subject.
"Don't change the subject! I mean it! If you die, King Zarkon will be left heiress!" Haggar protested.
"He IS hairless!!" Lotor retorted.
Haggar groaned and said, "Who's going to lead the raid on Arus today?"
"Yurak," Lotor muttered.
"Yurak is kinda dead, hon," Haggar told him.
"Oh, yeah...um, not me," he replied.
"Your father wants to speak to you," Haggar said.
"Does my father want to see me half naked?" Lotor asked.
Haggar felt herself blush, as it were, and thought, No, but I know someone who DOES!!
"I should hope not!" she told him.
"Keep your robe on! I'm going as fast as I can! PLEASE keep your robe on!"
Haggar smirked.
Lotor emerged from the bathroom in a tank top, boxers and fuzzy slippers, "What does he want THIS time? Is he going to preemptively scold me for tomorrow's failure?"
Haggar turned around as quickly as she could so she wouldn't faint and said, "He's worried about you," she said and thought, Mission accomplished, girls! Payback time!!

Lotor followed Haggar through the twisted corridors of Castle Doom, which were relatively quiet today. In fact, it was too quiet today. There were no soldiers in the halls and Lotor didn't see any guards around so he finally asked her, "How come it's so quiet here now?"
"Everybody's watching talk shows. You've never been about at this time since you've returned, have you?" Haggar asked.
"No, actually, I haven't," Lotor replied, not knowing he was being watched by all the female servants hiding in the foyers.

When Haggar and Lotor got to the throne room of Zarkon, the king, flanked by Commander Mogor on the right and five female slaves holding up a TV on the left, stood up and said, "Lotor, you've been acting strange lately."
Lotor groaned and told him, "I KNOW that! That's what over half the people in the castle are telling me! It has nothing to do with that...lady you put so much thought into setting me up with the other day, I assure you."
"You DO look green."
Lotor groaned.
"...You didn't find that stuff in the basement, did you?" Zarkon said at length.
"Stuff in the basement?"
Zarkon hesitated and finally said, "Y'know, the...ah...expensive...uh... the the the the expensive...um...berries Haggar planted in the basement!"
"You look green today yourself," Lotor told his dad and pointed to Mogor, who had begun to snicker at his superior in fuzzy slippers and clenched his teeth. "Shut UP, Mogor!!"
"I do?" Zarkon asked worriedly.
Lotor smirked.
"Anyway, why in the name of Doom are you dressed for bed at 5 pm?"
"I'm not going anywhere today," Lotor put simply.
"Well, you DO look green...what troubles you my son?" Zarkon asked, finding that it was fun to tell his kid he looked green. The slaves holding up the TV giggled a little.
Lotor turned away from Zarkon and said, "I don't want to talk about it."
"It's Princess Allura he's down about, your Majesty," Haggar told the king. Leave it to Haggar to tell him everything.
"You're still whining over her? C'mon, kid! Be realistic! She's a DITZ!! Get over her!" Zarkon told his son with such eloquence it was breathtaking.
"Don't say that about her!" Lotor snapped, "She's all I ever wanted!! I don't even think I want Arus anymore!! Just HER!!"
"You're taken in by her pretty face, that's all. All you want is the impossible! It's making you miserable! You need to get your mind off of her and out of the clouds and come back on the ground, because lately you haven't been doing what you're supposed to be doing!" Zarkon told him.
"I'm sick. Can I stay home?" Lotor pouted.
"Well, you DO look green," Zarkon said for the third time as Lotor wondered how he was going to slash his vocal cords, "I suppose Mogor could take over for today."
"I can do that!" Mogor said.
Haggar restrained the urge to jump up and down yelling "YAY! YAY! YAY!" and said to Zarkon, "I'll prepare my finest and newest robeast!! It's real shiny and has green things on the sides of it!"
Lotor grumbled something incoherent and began the trip down the hallways and stairs and elevators and escalators back into his room, conveniently as far away from Zarkon as the castle permitted.

He flopped down on his bed...and in the process gave himself a minor concussion, as he had miscalculated the length of his bed.
It hurt...a little.
Then again, compared to the pain of the impact of a cinder block, it tickled. Lotor closed his eyes and thought of the many times Princess Allura had slapped him, the many times she said she'd hated him, the many death threats he got in the mail from her... His throat started with the lump thing again. He cursed and tried to swallow it, but to no avail.

Turning from the somewhat tragic scene of Lotor crying himself to sleep, we now change venue to the cheery midsummer's day of planet Arus in the Castle of Lions...

It was Pidge's turn to pick the movie out at Blockbuster, after all, it was HE (SHE, IT) who saved Princess Allura from the evil, scarily sanitary, gloved hands of Lotor yesterday. Allura was glad he'd (she'd, it'd) saved her and all, but she did not appreciate Pidge's choice of movie. Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" had a CURSE word in it!
Lance leaned over to Keith and asked jokingly, "Did you notice something familiar about King Stephen's clothes?"
"No heckling!!" Keith replied in a hiss.
"I thought that's why Pidge got it!" Lance told him.
"Hey, that's not very nice." Hunk said defensively, surfacing for air, as his head had previously been engulfed by a huge bag of Fritos.
Allura couldn't help but giggling at the pretty little banners they had in the castle in the movie.
"Hand zem over, pretty boy," Nanny threatened Hunk, who had his head back in the bag.
"Nanny, remember you said no violence over snackfoods this time," Koran said, putting a finger up.
Hunk surrendered the Fritos and Nanny told Koran with her mouth full, "Eet von't do any goot to haff anyvon starfe."
"Shhh!!" Pidge hissed, who had been glued to the TV, unblinking since the FBI warning.
Koran snatched the bag from Nanny's face and RAN.
"Come back here vith zat!! Vaht kind off example does this make for ze Preencess?" she shouted and began to run after him brandishing the 7-inch cleaver she usually kept in her apron.
Hunk pulled another bag of Fritos from beneath the couch and began to munch victoriously.
"Will you people be QUIET? I'm watching a MOVIE!!" Pidge yelled angrily.
All was quiet, except for the speakers, until Maleficent's entrance, in which case, the castle shook tremendously.
"Aaah! What's that?!" screamed Allura.
"Wow! This new THX TV we just ordered really makes it seem realistic!" Hunk marveled.
Lance looked out the window and said, "Looks like Lotor's cruiser!!"
"Voltron time!" Keith announced.
Pidge stood up with a bratty stomp on the floor and pouted, "How come Lotor's gotta come along and WRECK everything all the time?"
"'Cuz he's got the money," Keith replied and they ran off to go assemble Voltron.

"What happened on Jerry today, Mogor? I missed it!" Haggar said over the communications thinggy on the big screen on the bridge.
Mogor stuffed a few more chocolate pretzels into his mouth and replied, "Aaaah...a 650 pound woman beats her 12 year old daughter into doing housework."
"Eew," Haggar recoiled, "that's disgusting even for me!!"
"Poor little humans," Mogor remarked, concealing the pretzels, "Gotta go, security's here."
"Okay! See you back on Doom for the victory party!" Haggar said cheerily.
Why is she always under the impression that Voltron is as harmless as a Transformers toy? Mogor asked himself and saw the less-than-sleek robot approach the cruiser.
Voltron knocked on the side of it. "Anybody home?" asked Keith over the audio channel.
Mogor held his nose and tried to imitate Lotor's voice, "No! We're all holograms!"
"Don't give us that, Lotor!! We know you're in there!!" Pidge yelled angrily.
"Fire!!!" Mogor ordered.
Every shot missed. Voltron fired its eye laser thinggies and blew out the cruiser's engine, making it go BOOM!! on the ground.

"NUTBUNNIES!!" Haggar cursed from her post at the crystal ball.
"Will you stop saying that, Haggar?!" Zarkon snapped.
"Sorry...s'not my fault Lotor made me watch Freakazoid yesterday," Haggar apologized, "But with the engine blown out, it'll take a bit of trouble for it to get back here."
"Tell them to get out and push!!" Zarkon said as Kitty hopped into his crown.
"LAUNCH THE ROBEAST, MOGOR!!" Haggar commanded.
"Haggar, get your cat out of my hat!! It's trying to claw my brain!" Zarkon complained, waggling his head around oddly.

"Launch the--no, wait!! I have an idea!!" Mogor said.
Haggar growled irritably, "What now?!"
Mogor held his nose again, "We surrender!"
"Really? You mean it?" Allura asked, her big, blue, archetypal eyes sparkling with hope.
"Yes!!" Mogor lied.
"O-K, team, let's go check it out," Keith said.
Voltron disassembled and its pilots entered the crashed battle cruiser, which was to them, completely deserted. The "robot" guards had hid in storage compartments, little shelves and under their chairs. So did Mogor.
"I guess Lotor WASN'T lying to us..." Allura reflected, looking straight at, but not recognizing some guards under a rug, "...maybe he was beginning to turn good."
"You're going to make it snow, Princess," Lance told her sarcastically.
"I AM?" she asked anxiously.
Lance slapped his head and grumbled as Princess Allura twirled around inanely, singing that she was going to make it snow.
Mogor tried to suppress his laughter as he saw the twirling, stick-like figure of the Princess of Arus, so coveted by his commander, sit down at one of the inoperative control panels and press random buttons as she sang how she was going to make it snow. Several guards began to twitch and giggle silently.
Castle Doom was in an uproar of hysterical laughter, as Allura's prancing around was broadcast to every TV within. Zarkon had never seen something so ridiculous in his life since the time he put his crown on Lotor's head when the young prince was six years old. Even Kitty was laughing in her own little Kitty way.
"I'm taping this!!" Haggar announced, subsiding from an outburst of laughter.
~NOW, Mogor!~ Haggar shouted into Mogor's brain, via crystal ball.
Mogor stood up and singingly shouted, "GOT you!!"
"Huh?" went the Voltron force.
All the guards and soldiers on the bridge stood up and pointed their weapons at them.
"This looks like a good place to stick a commercial," commented Lance.
"Bum bum BUM!"


"Lotor..." a soft, feminine voice called softly. "...Lotor..."
"Who goes there?" he asked groggily.
"Lotor..."
"That's my name, don't wear it out,"
"Lotor..."
"WHAT?!"
"...Lotor.."
"Who are you?"
"..lotor..."
"No, I'm Lotor! Who are YOU?"
"...lotor..."
"You're beginning to annoy me,"
"Open your eyes, Prince Lotor..."
Lotor opened his eyes and looked the wrong way, "You invisible?"
"Wrong way, nimnel..."
Lotor faced the voice and found that it was...