Hellooooo, Voltron Fandom!

WHAT DID Y'ALL THINK OF SEASON 7?! I'm not done with it yet! Actually, I finished half of it, and I'm finishing the other half tonight (both times with my amazing, completely off-the-wall Voltron-loving friends, Jen and LariaGwyn). I'm so excited. Really. The writers manage to up the ante every single season without fail. Plot holes are addressed, for the most part. EVERY ACTION HAS A CONSEQUENCE. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. TEAM BONDING. Ugh I'm bouncing off the walls already in excitement.

So this is the oneshot that's been on my computer since...last year. I eventually decided it should be a two-shot, because it just made more sense to break it up this way. This story is what I wanted my debut into writing for the Voltron fandom to be, not the angsty Keith one I wrote a few months back because of the trauma season 4 put me through.

Ugh. My heart.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it! Stayed tuned for the second part, and feel free to spazz with me in the comments! :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron


The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 1: Vengeance is best served as a pissed-off smol Green Paladin.

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Oh, quiznak.

Green's cloaking mechanism just had to malfunction at the exact moment Pidge got close to one of the hangar doors of the enormous Galra battleship. In the back of her mind, the Paladin heard a soft whine of apology from her lion before it growled, and she gripped her controls tighter in response. She would need to be extra alert in the next few minutes.

Or hours. It's okay, girl. She sent a comforting nudge to Green, her hazel eyes darting around to look for an opening.

"Pidge! Evasive maneuvers to the ship's tail," Coran instructed. "You're going to have to go through their cargo chute!"

"I'm setting Greenie on autopilot," she said, pushing a few buttons. "She'll drop me off, create a diversion, and then make her way back to the Castle hangar."

"That will leave you on your own!"

Pidge winced at how high-pitched his voice became. "Entering the Castle's coordinates now."

"If they go after her, we'll try to hold them off as best we can," Allura's voice came over the comm. "We've also managed to contact the Blade of Marmora; Kolivan should be on his way to you. Good luck, Pidge."

With a determined nod she knew they could see on-screen, the Green Paladin swerved and doubled back, flying at full speed toward the tail end of the ship where, sure enough, a cargo door was opening.

"Now!" She yelled, thrusters going forward at full blast as she leapt from her seat, Green's jaw opening right when she activated her jetpack and sailed through the door right before it closed. Once the gates were shut and gravity restored, Pidge dropped to the floor with an ungraceful 'oof.' After nearly four years of being a Paladin, she and Green had been through plenty of risky stunts, but this one may take the cake so far for three reasons-

One – By using Green as a distraction, she could potentially lead the Galra straight to the Castle of Lions.

Two – She trusted her lion like her lion trusted her, but there was always the chance that she would be irreparably damaged…which Pidge knew was unlikely, but that slim percentage, because a sentient flying robot lion was still a robot and a mech at the end of the day, made her uneasy nonetheless. "She" being either or her Greenie, both of which made her sick to her stomach at the thought (because, at the end of the day, an Earthling was still a fragile, breakable human being after all).

Three – She usually had one of the other Paladins watching her back. This time, she had no backup whatsoever, which brought her to the reason she was here by herself, waiting for some sort of signal for her to begin.

Pidge was on a rescue mission, and whomever had hurt her boys, be it the entire Galra army, was going to pay.

It started off as a harmless search and rescue of another planet just yesterday, a couple of weeks after celebrating her nineteenth birthday. The Paladins had their hands full, each lion transporting the civilians to the Castle from the Galra's clutches. Pidge had taken the last group in her lion when the Galra forces appeared out of nowhere, flanking the five lions and cornering them on the planet's surface.

"Pidge!" Shiro yelled. "You have to get them out of here!"

"But then we can't form Voltron!" she shot back. Keith's frustration burst in the back of their minds through the Paladin bond, Red breaking from where she was flanking Black in formation to fly in front of Green as one of the Galra ships fired at her. They took the hit, and Blue fired off an icy blast at the in retaliation a moment after.

"Keith!"

"We'll cover you!" Hunk exclaimed, Yellow backing her and Lance up. "Rescuing the civilians comes first!"

Pidge grit her teeth, knowing they were right, and flew off as the others covered her retreat. There were some aboard Green that were panicking so much they were beginning to cry; the sounds of battle didn't help the situation, so against her every instinct, Pidge muted her comm, turning it back on as soon as she landed in the Castle's hangar. Just as she left her passengers to Coran's care, ready to jump back into the fray to help her team, Shiro's voice rang inside her helmet.

"Pidge! Pidge, do you copy?!"

"I'm here! I'm headed over, hang on!" she called, running up the ramp into her lion.

"No! Stay where you are There's too many, they've got us surrounded-"

"I can help!" Pidge yelled, starting Green's launch sequence.

"No, Pidge! You have to stay with Allura and Coran. You're the Castle's first line of defense now. If they get you too, they'll have Voltron! We can't let that happen. We'll get out of here and meet up with you guys later!"

"Shiro, I can-"

"No, Katie! We'll make it out, you guard the Castle!"

Uh-oh. He used her real name. "But I-"

"They've got Keith."

Her blood ran cold. "Keith?" she yelled into the comm. "Keith?! Lance?! Hunk?! Shit, Keith, come on!"

She knew better than anyone, being the other arm of Voltron, just how good of a pilot Keith was. The others may be in awe of his abilities looking outwards, but their bond put her in his place sometimes, where she saw through Red's eyes the raw talent that he had. If he and Red were down and everyone else was overpowered, that was not a good thing.

Shiro was right; they would stand a better chance regrouping without her flying in recklessly. Eventually, they always found a way out. Almost always, anyway. But it was that almost that made Pidge disobey direct orders from her leader and launch a one-woman rescue mission, damn the consequences and what Shiro had to say. Shiro couldn't be disappointed with her or even angry at her if he wasn't alive to do so.

A violent quake pulled her back to the present, grounding her nerves and making her focus. "Pidge!" Allura said in the crackled static of their connection. "The Green Lion has started the diversion. Now's your chance!"

The Paladin looked down at the holographic windows projecting from her arm gauntlet, typing away furiously to hack into the ship's communication channels, and barely flinched when a foreign voice- presumably the ship's commander, as she had tapped right into the bridge- sounded in her helmet.

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 2: Know that she can hack better than you.

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"The Green Lion! Focus your attacks and bring it down! Once we have it in custody, send a message to Lord Zarkon and tell him we'll be delivering Voltron and all five Paladins to him!"

There wasn't a moment to lose, not with her lion being hunted down. Pidge prayed to whomever was listening that Greenie would be fast enough to outrun the ship and not lead them to Allura and Coran. A faint, slightly annoyed whine in the back of her head from Green made her chuckle softly before her lion's presence faded. Pidge's bioscanner and information from the ship's computer mainframe was still loading, costing her a precious minute as she waited for the results to show. She brought her right thumb up to her mouth before she bit down on the leather of her gloves right where her nail should be, grimacing as she realized she had yet to break that nervous habit when she didn't have her hands full piloting her lion.

Hunk and Keith had called her out on that nervous tick one day in the lounge, and she had all but growled at them every time they brought it up since. She tried switching to playing with her now-longer hair, which came down past her shoulders, whenever it was tied up in a ponytail, but the fingernail biting seemed to win her over every time. She couldn't even fiddle with her glasses anymore; they had been crushed during another mission, and she was forced to put them away- not that she really needed them anyway, but it felt right to have something of her brother's close by.

She really missed having Matt around, especially on a mission where she could definitely use a little help. The Holt siblings made a badass tag team. Unfortunately, the main resistance force of the Voltron coalition had been called to the other side of the universe to intercept a Galra fleet's attempted takeover of Plaxos 3. Pidge knew that if she really had asked, her brother would leave and be by her side in an instant, but she couldn't- she could, and would, handle this on her own.

The blink of the screen on her gauntlet pulled her back into the moment as her information buffered and struggled to load. "Come on, come on…" she muttered impatiently. Immediately, fifteen flashing dots appeared on screen- one of them her, two on two different sides of the ship, two in another area, five in a room some ways away from that, and then five clustered on the bridge. Pidge pinched her nose, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before pulling up the camera feeds all over the ship to see the sentries make their rounds.

The best thing about dealing with Galra ships? Sentries. They were in no way as creative or as ruthless as commanders in flesh and blood, and programmed only for one purpose.

The worst thing about dealing with Galra ships? Sentries. She had to memorize their patterns each time she encountered them; every ship and every base had a different patrol pattern, and they didn't show up on the bioscanner.

Quietly, she slipped out of the airlock, looking up and down carefully for any approaching figures before breaking into a dead run down the hall toward the closest blinking light. Every time she hit a corner, she had to stop and wait for any signs of approaching sentries before continuing.

Mental note to self: try to hack into the sentries' computer systems. Find out if the sentries have a cloud or hive mind, or if they have to be reprogrammed individually. She was briefly brought back to the mission three years ago at the Galra Universal base where she had tried to hack into a sentry's system, but she had really only scratched the surface of that technology at the time. And then reprogram the damn robots to all just get out of my way and fire at their original programmers. Maybe that's how we can take down the whole Empire at once.

Pidge allowed herself a low, sadistic laugh before peeking around the corner to see that the coast was clear. She was coming up close to the blinking light now, a locked door standing in her way.

"Just a tick..." she muttered, dematerializing her bayard to use her right hand to access controls to the door. It slid open with a hiss, and she wasted no time running through and closing it behind her.

Pidge – 1, Galra – 3.

In the dim room, she made out a shape slumped in against the back wall.

"Who's there?"

She instantly relaxed at the familiar voice, running forward. "Lance!" A light came on from her gauntlet and shot forward for her to see the Blue Paladin, his arms chained to the floor, with dark bruises mottling his cheeks and a gash coated in dried blood on his side clean through the spandex that connected the other pieces of his armor. "Allura, Coran, I've got Lance!"

The Alteans breathed a sigh of relief. "Good work, Number Five!" Coran cheered. "And the Green Lion has returned to the hangar!"

The Green Paladin quickly checked the ship's comm system; someone was pissed that the lion got away. Good. That meant that Coran, Allura, and the Castle weren't in any danger, and she could fully focus on the mission at hand.

"How are you feeling? Can you get up?" Pidge asked Lance, doing a quick med scan before she tried moving him. The scan didn't show anything to be too concerned about, no broken bones or internal injuries. She looked into his eyes; he didn't have a concussion, so there was that going for them. Lance chuckled, his voice strained.

"Whaddya know, Pidgey coming to the rescue."

At any other given moment, she would have kicked him hard in the shin, but she had three other Paladins to find and rescue. "I've rescued you before, maybe I should just leave you here this time," she grumbled half-heartedly, putting an arm around his waist. "Come on, I need to get you out of here so I can get the others and get you guys to your lions. Do you know where Blue is being kept?"

Pidge held her arm out, pulling up a schematic of the ship. Lance's eyebrows furrowed for a moment as he tried to connect with his lion, to pinpoint her exact location as they made their way to the other corner of the room where Lance's helmet and bayard were kept well away from the prisoner.

"There," he murmured, pointing to a spot on the map. Sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth, Pidge quickly found a route to Blue, double-checking the camera feeds for sentries before she helped Lance up. The tall Paladin grunted softly through the pain as he stood, leaning heavily on the smaller girl as the two made their way to the door. She commanded it to open with a single keystroke.

"So, did you actually have a plan?" He asked in a half-whisper.

"Well, not getting caught was the first step," Pidge answered, her ears alert for any sound other than the soft ones they were making. "Then finding you guys, finding your lions, and getting the hell out of here."

Suddenly, he frowned. "Put me down."

"What?"

Lance took his arm off her shoulders, leaning against a wall as he took out his bayard. "Pull up your map." She did as he instructed, watching him mull over the different points her bioscanner. "I couldn't hear much from my cell, but I heard them talking about 'the Champion' and 'the Abomination.'"

Pidge groaned. "Great. Shiro and Keith. Wait, how did they even know Keith was half-G-"

There was a dark look on his face that she had never seen before; it almost scared her as much as his next words did. "They have druids aboard this ship. The druids figured it out as soon as they saw him. That was right before they separated us."

Well, fu-

"Language," Lance automatically quipped without even looking at her, able to read her thoughts. "Here's an idea. I'm going to go ahead and assume that these-" he circled the cluster on the bridge with his finger. "Are whoever's in charge of running this place. And probably whoever's in command of this ship. These," he pointed to the cluster of five dots. "Are probably the druids since they tend to travel in packs. We'll pray that this is Shiro and Keith," he said as he gestured to the two dots. "And this one," he pointed to the lone dot just a few hallways down from him and Pidge. "Is probably Hunk. For the most part, they really just left me alone, so I would assume they did the same to him, if they had both Shiro and Keith for…" his face blanched at this last word. "Experimentation."

The Blue Paladin quickly recovered, shaking his head. "I think we need to split up."

"Split up?!" Pidge almost yelled in surprise. "Are you crazy?! You can barely stand up straight by yo-"

"Exactly," He shut her up by cutting her off, an indignant sqwak coming from the girl. "From the looks of things, Hunk should be unguarded. If we're careful, we could probably get down to our lions and give you distractions. Lay down some cover fire for you to get Shiro and Keith and get out. Where did you park Greenie?"

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 3: "Let's just wing it" is an appropriate response.

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"That's…actually not a bad plan," Pidge admitted thoughtfully. "And, uh…I didn't 'park' her anywhere," she continued with a sheepish expression on her face at his look of surprise. "I may have setheronautopilotbacktotheCastle." She didn't give him a chance to protest; as soon as he opened his mouth, she kept talking. "Okay. You get Hunk. I'll get the other two, and then I'll let you know when we're in the clear so we can head back to the Castle."

Lance closed his mouth, pressing his lips into a thin line and nodded, about to head down the corridor when she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Wait, check your comm. When we tried reaching you guys from the Castle, it was all static and nothing went through. We should make sure we have a clear line of communication before you leave."

She really should have seen what was coming- it was Lance she was talking to, and it was that glint in his eyes that caused unpleasant shivers to run down her spine. He grinned before speaking into his helmet. "Ey girl, are you tired? Because you've-"

Pidge hit his arm, not bothering to pull her punches even when he looked at her like a kicked puppy. With only a roll of her eyes, she pointed to the direction he was originally headed and watched him go before looking down at the schematic displayed from her gauntlet.

If she was really, really lucky, she would find Shiro and Keith together in that one holding area with two dots from her bioscanner. If she was really, really, really lucky, then she would find them completely unharmed. She decided not to dwell on that thought too much.

Quietly, she crept down the hallway, stopping at every corner like she did before to check for sentries until she got to the door where her bioscanner was telling her someone was being held, and a few mumbled choice words slipped from under her breath. The room she needed to get into was guarded by four sentries; two standing on opposite sides of the door, and two pacing in front of it in opposite directions.

Think, Katie.

This was in no way her toughest mission, but until Lance could get Hunk and Blue and Yellow and get here in time to give her backup, she was on her own.

"Pidge!" Allura said into her helmet. "We've received transmissions from Lance. Coran's working through the frequency to patch him back into the ship's comms."

She grinned, but then turned serious when she looked back at the pacing sentries. It wasn't that she couldn't take four of them at once thanks to all the training she did and the nightmare routine Keith put her through, but did she really want to give away her position so soon? Now wasn't the time to shoot first; she had to be strategic. Looking back at the screens on her gauntlet, her mind ran ten miles a minute, her fingers on her right hand flying over the small keyboard. Maybe if she could program a malfunction somewhere else in the ship, far from where she was without giving away Lance and Hunk's location…

Pidge thanked every star she could name when the dot on her bioscanner that was supposed to be Lance made it into Hunk's room, having a vocal confirmation just a moment later.

"Pidge?"

"Yeah?" she whispered back.

"I've got Hunk. He's a little worse for wear- come on, buddy- but we're both okay."

Hunk groaned in the background; that was good, that meant he was conscious. She breathed a small sigh of relief.

Pidge – 2, Galra – 2.

"Okay. Allura said Coran's going to fix up the frequencies so that we can all be linked with the Castle comms. I'm right outside the room where Shiro or Keith…hopefully both of them…are, and it's guarded. I'm going to try to set up a diversion, so take that time to get to Blue and Yellow, okay?"

She almost saw his signature smirk when he replied. "On your mark."

"Three…two…" Pidge muttered, hacking her way into the ship's mainframe. "Just a couple of buttons there, a swipe here…and…one."

Sirens began to blare obnoxiously loud as red lights flashed in place of the usual Galra purple. The sentries in the camera feeds on her mini screens and the ones pacing in front of the room did exactly as she hoped they would- they ran toward the false alarm, but to her surprise and frustration, the two standing guard in the doorway didn't budge. She sighed, closing the screens on her gauntlet and drew her bayard, the green tip flashing dangerously. They didn't have a moment's notice before the Green Paladin came out from her hiding place, releasing the hook on her bayard and lassoed it around both sentries. With a hard yank, the robots smashed into one another, and as Pidge retracted the hook, the sharp end sliced deeply into both machines, rendering them useless scrap metal.

"I'm in!" she called as the door slid open.

"And Lance is back online with the Castle's frequency!" Coran exclaimed back.

"Almost to Blue. We'll pick up Yellow and then head your way," the Blue Paladin crowed.

Pidge couldn't help but grin; things were going smoother than she had planned…until said grin dropped as she noticed an enormous Galra commander glaring at her from farther inside the guarded room she had just broken into.

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 4: Victory or victory, there is no other way (-Keith, probably).

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"Voltron Paladin!" he growled, turning fully to face her. Pidge took her attention off of him for just a tick as she saw a table behind him, and strapped down on the table…

"Shiro!" she yelled. He only seemed to be half-conscious, judging by the way his eyes weren't focusing on her. "What did you do to him?!"

"I did nothing," the commander replied, baring his fangs at her in what looked like an evil sort of grin. "The druids, however, I cannot account for."

Pidge threw him her best glare through her short brown bangs. She had a trick up her sleeve, of course, but with Shiro unprotected with his helmet off, she didn't have a choice. With a loud cry, she launched her bayard hook at him, but he swiftly dodged out of the way. A loud explosion rocked the ship, throwing them both off balance and ripping her bayard from her hands. Seeing that she was defenseless, the Galra launched himself toward her, his right claw slashing through the thin spandex right in between her armor on her side. Pidge stifled a scream as tears immediately blurred her eyes; she hurriedly blinked them away, continuously telling herself that she'd been through worse. Instead, like Keith and Shiro had taught her, she accepted the pain as part of her and continued with the fight, banking on her adrenaline, rolling out of the way just in time as another purple claw came down to shred her to ribbons. She dove for her bayard, barely managing to grab onto it before she rolled onto her back and saw the terrifying sight of the Galra in the air, ready to land on top of her and end her.

Instead, another explosion hit the ship, and he was thrown off-course to the side.

"We've got the lions!" Lance's voice sounded in Pidge's helmet in the precious second she had as the Galra recovered. "Pidge, send me your location!"

The Green Paladin barely had time to transmit her coordinates to him when the Galra came charging at her again. She gripped her bayard tightly before rushing forward head-first toward her enemy, who stopped for just a second in his surprise. That second, after training with Keith and with how hard he was on her when it came to hand-to-hand combat, was all she needed. Her bayard hit home on his shoulder, slashing deeply through muscle and nearly severing his arm. He dropped to his knees with a loud scream, holding his dangling appendix. There was her chance- Pidge ran up and smashed her bayard against his head, knocking him out.

She took a few breaths, trying to wind down from the fight before she approached Shiro, still strapped to the table, and cut through his restraints with her bayard.

"Shiro?" she asked tiredly, her hands moving his face toward her. "Shiro, can you hear me? Guys, I've got Shiro!"

A weak groan answered her, but he didn't show any other signs of having heard what she said. Pidge bit her tongue. She didn't want to resort to this, but if she needed to find Black and Red and Keith, she needed to hurry.

She quickly hooked his hand up to the tech in her gauntlet, accessing its software and typing in a single line of code. Before she hit 'enter', she braced herself and looked apologetically at her leader.

"Sorry, Shiro."

An electric shock tore through Shiro's modified arm, causing the Black Paladin's eyes to snap open and his mouth form an 'o' in pain. Pidge winced at the look on his face, immediately disconnecting his arm.

"Shiro, can you hear me? You there?"

Once he had calmed down from the initial shock, he finally registered her presence.

"Pidge?" he rasped. "What's with the wake-up call?"

"You weren't responsive," she murmured as she looked at the results of her med scanner.

"Well, you could have- wait. What are you doing here?" Shiro demanded weakly, stumbling off the table and leaning on Pidge like Lance had done just a few minutes before. "I thought I told you to-"

"Stay with the Castle, I know," she said, exasperated. She hooked her thumb underneath his belt, being careful to not drop him. The Black Paladin may have been physically incapacitated at the moment, but Pidge had already resigned herself to a Long Talk with him later about following orders- if they got out of there in one piece. "But it was an emergency. You know I can't turn down a good rescue mission."

Her sarcasm drew a breathy laugh out of him. They stumbled a couple of steps over to the shelf next to the table where Shiro picked up his helmet, and Pidge held up her other arm, screen up, for him to see. "Do you know where Black is?"

Like Lance, Shiro studied the ship's schematic, closing his eyes for a brief moment before he brought his hand up, pointing at a spot fairly close by. "He's there."

She nodded. "All right. We'll go get him, and then-"

"No time," he interrupted. "We need to get Keith first."

"…If they had both Shiro and Keith for…experimentation…"

Pidge felt as if someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water over her as Lance's words echoed in her ears. She didn't really want to know the answer, but she had to ask. "Shiro, what did they do to you? Lance told me…"

Her leader grimaced. "Well, the druids wanted to check up on my arm and see if any other enhancements could be made…they basically just electrocuted me a lot," Shiro said, making Pidge's stomach fall through the floor of the ship. She didn't want to have triggered anything when she was trying to shock him back into focus, but he shook his head at the horrified look on her face. "The shock you gave me was much, much more mellow than the ones they did."

Pidge's mouth pressed into a thin line. "That's because they literally just channeled dark magic into your arm," she replied. "I don't think they got to damage the hardware just yet, but I'll double check when we get back to the Castle."

The duo walked out the door after Pidge checked the camera feeds for any incoming sentries. Her heart immediately sank when she realized what, exactly, was going to happen next. Lance and Hunk were out, both alive and in their lions. Shiro was with her, weak, but conscious, and knowing exactly where his lion was. And Keith was right in the heart of enemy territory.