CHAPTER ONE: Saving Them

"...So as you can see, we can provide protection for you and your people from the Galra empire if you decide to join the Voltron alliance and agree to contribute to the growing resistance force in the galaxy," Shiro explained to the Scizonian king. He made a conscious effort to keep his voice steady and firm.

The king, whose name was a throaty rasp that Shiro would never be able to pronounce, brought his four spindly arms together and wrang his hands. "You make a convincing argument, h-however, I'm afraid I must decline at this time, young Paladin."

Shiro raised an inquiring eyebrow. "The Scizonians have always been vocal dissenters against the Galra. My team and our allies were sure that you, of all people, would jump at the chance to join a real resistance movement."

"I-I am aware of our, eh, reputation in the galaxy, but I regret to inform you that it is simply impossible for the Scizonians to involve ourselves in your conflict."

Shiro gazed steadily at the king, who seemed to have developed a twitch in his neck and whose eyes occasionally darted to the ornate door behind Shiro. Clearly the king was very uncomfortable with the whole conversation they were having. He thought back to what Allura and the other members of the Voltron alliance had told him about Scizonia before he and the other paladins had arrived on the planet, but nothing stuck out in his mind that would warrant this degree of discomfort from the king.

"How's it going in there?" whispered Pidge over the comm device planted in Shiro's ear.

"The king is acting freaky, like way more freaky than we thought." That was Lance, who was standing behind Shiro with Keith, trying to speak out of the corner of his mouth in a voice that was much louder than he probably realized. There was a slight scuffing noise behind Shiro, which was probably Keith punching Lance in the shoulder to shut him up.

"Ow! What the hell, man?"

"Well, just keep him talking a bit longer. Something's going on out here in the town square, me and Hunk are on our way to check it out."

Up on his throne, the king was still sweating bullets and shifting around nervously.

"Your highness, I can't help but feel like there's something you aren't telling us," Shiro said.

The king swallowed. "What? No, there's nothing…"

Shiro narrowed his eyes at the blatant lie and crossed his arms. If the king thought that he was going to let this slide, he had another thing coming. He could do this all day.

"Nothing, nothing at all…" The king visibly hesitated, and then sighed and let his four shoulders slump forward. "I see you cannot be fooled. Very well, I will tell you the true reason why I must decline your offer of allegiance. Scizonians are not the united force that we once were. For the past seven years, our planet has been divided by a civil war between those who want to rise up against the Galra and those who would prefer to cut our loses and join them in the hope that we may at least preserve some of our ways instead of being wiped completely clean by the Galran army."

This was completely unexpected news to Shiro, but he had to maintain his professional stance, so he carefully kept his face completely blank.

"Why didn't we hear about this from our sources?" Keith asked.

The king curled up a little in his seat, his limbs folding like an insect's. "Our civil war has been a carefully guarded secret. If the Galra knew that we were in such a vulnerable state, they would come and destroy us all without hesitation. We have enough problems from the rebels without trying to fight off entire fleets of Galran ships." He closed his eyes briefly and shuddered.

"So what you're saying is, we flew right into a war zone and we didn't even know it?" Lance asked incredulously. Shiro turned around to look at him. His eyes were wide in concern, and Shiro didn't miss how his hands were clenching and unclenching at his side.

"No, no, the rebels would not dare to attack our capital city." The king sounded more certain of this fact than he had during the entire meeting, but Shiro didn't share his confidence. Before he could respond, an incredibly loud noise from outside shook the ground beneath the palace and screams echoed from the hallways. Shiro had to throw his arms out and brace his legs to steady himself.

"What was that? An earthquake?" Keith's face showed a flicker of fear when the shaking stopped.

Lance sprinted to the window.

"Careful, Lance, we don't know what's going on out there!" Shiro said, forcing down the sense of alarm crawling its way up his throat.

"It's not an earthquake – it's a bomb in the town square! One of the buildings is on fire," Lance said quickly, his voice higher with mounting panic. "And there are Scizonians with guns…" He whipped around, one hand still grabbing the window sill. "Pidge and Hunk were out there!"

It felt like someone had just tried to shove a rock down Shiro's throat. "We have to them out of there. Now."

"But… what if they're not…" Lance's dark eyes misted over. His grip on the window sill was tight enough to make his wrists shake.

"Don't even say it, Lance, they're fine," Keith said harshly, but he was trembling slightly as well.

Shiro quickly walked over to Lance and planted his hands on his shoulders. "Keith is right, Lance, I'm sure Pidge and Hunk are fine, but we don't have time to sit here and worry. We have to get off Scizonia before this gets any worse. We're not prepared to fight off a whole army by ourselves." Lance took a deep breath and made a visible effort to relax his whole body.

"But – wait, you can't just leave!" The King finally rose from his chair and extended himself to his full height. He looked like a giant stick bug, with his four skinny arms and long body towering eight feet above the paladins.

Shiro grabbed Keith and Lance's arms and started pulling them out of the throne room, not even bothering to face the king when he spoke to him. "Sorry, your highness, but you should have told us what we were getting into when you agreed to this meeting." He opened a side door that led to the outdoors and motioned for Lance and Keith to go through.

The king clicked his large teeth together, either out of anger or fear for what was coming for him. Shiro didn't wait around to find out, and slammed the door shut behind him.

Outside, it was chaos. Fires raged in the town square as screaming civilian Scizonians scrambled away from the rebel Scizonians dressed entirely in black chasing them with large guns through the streets. Overhead, some of the rebel forces buzzed around on flying open pods at breakneck speeds, firing at people and buildings down below.

Keith and Lance instantly activated their bayards. "What's the plan, Shiro?" Keith asked. The worry from before was gone, replaced by a hardened gaze.

Shiro blocked out the terrified screams of the Scizonians and narrowed his focus onto what was directly in front of him. "The most important thing right now is getting Pidge and Hunk out of there. We don't have nearly enough firepower to take out an entire rebellion. We go in, find Pidge and Hunk – "

"...And get the hell outta Dodge," Lance finished with a nod.

"We'll split up, you and Keith taking the north end, and I'll take the south. Hunk and Pidge said they were headed towards some commotion in the center of the city, so we'll start at the outside and make our way in."

Lance hefted his bayard gun forward. "Sounds good to me," he said, more harshly than normal.

One of the Scizonian flying machines roared above them. Shiro barely had time to grab Keith and Lance by the back of the neck and force their heads down before a rocket streaked into the palace and exploded, sending the three of them flying through the air and crashing hard into the ground.

Shiro blinked from his new position on the ground and shook his head to try and clear the high pitched ringing in his ears. His arm ached from where he had landed on it, but otherwise he felt relatively whole and uninjured. The dust and smoke from the palace made it difficult to see clearly, but he could make out Lance and Keith laying beside him. All of them coughed and pushed themselves to their knees. Keith was bleeding from a cut above his eye and Lance had proximity burns running along his arm, but neither one indicated that they were more seriously hurt.

"Okay, time to go," Shiro said as he got himself back up to a standing position.

"We'll meet you in the middle," Keith said. He gave Shiro a quick nod, grabbed Lance by the arm, and the two of them ran off into the dust without looking back. Shiro watched them disappear, making sure they didn't get shot by rebels immediately, before sprinting in the opposite direction.

The city streets were dusty and filled with smoke from the collapsed burning buildings the rebels left in their wake. Only the rapid bangs and muzzle flashes of automatic weapons going off gave away where the attackers were headed. Shiro pressed himself against one of the standing walls he could find and covered his mouth with his hand to try and keep himself from choking on the smoke wafting everywhere. He mentally cursed the fact that his arm glowed brightly when activated, because it was sure to give away his position as he tried to find Pidge and Hunk in the chaos.

Shiro peeked his head around the corner to try and get a sense of where he could move safely. For the moment, the area seemed deserted, so he dared to take a step out into the open. When sniper fire didn't immediately shoot him down, he deemed the area clear enough and began to make his way down the street, looking into every window he passed to see if Pidge and Hunk were hiding inside.

The smoke that hid the Scizonian rebels from view fortunately did a good job of obscuring Shiro as well. He was able to sneak through the streets almost completely undetected, scouring the area for any sign of the other paladins.

Just as he was searching the fifth alley he turned onto, the comm unit that had been completely silent up until now stuttered back to life. Shiro was so startled by the unexpected noise that he almost gave away his position entirely to a squadron of passing rebel soldiers.

" – ello? Shiro? Lance? Does anyone copy? This is Pidge, over."

Shiro could have cried he was so relieved, and he bit down on his lip to keep from responding until the rebels were a safe distance away.

"Pidge! Pidge, it's Lance and Keith, we're all okay, is Hunk with you, are you okay?" Lance's rapidfire voice came through loud and clear over the comm.

"Yeah, Hunk is here with me, we've only got one earpiece working right now. We're holed up in that grocery store we passed earlier. You know, the one with the purple apples we wanted to try after we met with the king?"

Shiro sighed, the relief spreading through his body at hearing that Pidge and Hunk were okay nearly making him fall to his knees. "Yeah, we know where that is. You guys stay right where you are and Lance, Keith, and I will meet up with you."

"Roger that, Shiro. We'll see you soon."

The comm fell silent. Shiro gave himself a second to breathe through the relief of finding Pidge and Hunk before he started to pick his way through the ruined streets towards the grocery store.

Shiro thanked whatever god existed that must have cleared the path between his position in the south end of the city and Pidge and Hunk's location, because he made it to them without coming close to being seen by the packs of rebels roaming the streets.

The front of the store was completely destroyed, and a group of rebels holding large guns and wearing belts with explosive devices attached patrolled in front of it. Shiro silently maneuvered his way to the back entrance of the store, where he slipped inside and crouched on the floor beneath the windows.

Pidge, who was curled up underneath one of the display tables that now only displayed the pulpy remains of some sort of fruits, was the first to spot him. She held a finger to her lips and motioned for him to crawl over to where she, Hunk, Lance, and Keith were already waiting.

"Did you get a good look outside?" she whispered as Shiro joined her underneath the table.

"There's still a sizeable group of Scizonians with guns out there, if that's what you mean," Shiro said.

"Fuck," Pidge said fervently. "I was hoping they had left by now. They've been there for almost thirty minutes."

"What are they waiting for? Who do they think is coming?" Keith asked, daring to stick his head up a little to look out the window and catch a glimpse of the patrolling rebels.

"It doesn't really matter what they're doing. They're in the way of us getting out of here. They're blocking the only path out of town that leads towards the lions," Hunk whispered as he grabbed the neck of Keith's jacket and pulled him away from the window.

Shiro frowned. "And they haven't gone around to the other side of the store this whole time?"

"I don't think so." Pidge put her chin on her knees. "What we really need is some sort of distraction on the other side of the store."

"A distraction?" Shiro had a very stupid idea. "How long of a distraction do you need?"

Pidge scrunched up her face. "It's a long straight road that they can see all the way down. It would have to be a pretty long one to keep them all away for enough time to escape."

"Okay. All of you, stay here for now, and when I give the signal, make a run for it."

"Woah, woah, what are you talking about?" Lance said, his eyes wide. "What signal?"

Shiro sighed internally. "I think you'll know it when you hear it." Before any of the other paladins could protest, he jumped up and sprinted out of the store, pounding his feet into the ground to make as much noise as possible.

As soon as he ran out of the store and back into the open air, the group of Scizonian rebels spotted him and shouted at him to halt. Shiro didn't look back as he fled down an alley that led in the opposite direction of the road the paladins needed to escape. Heavy footsteps echoed off the wreckage around him, and he could hear one of the Scizonians, probably their squad leader, calling for them all to chase him.

"What are you doing?!" Hunk's concerned whisper was very loud over the comm in his ear.

"I'm taking care of the situation," Shiro said as he skidded to a halt in front of a collapsed building that had fallen across the road and completely cut off the road he had planned on leading the Scizonians down. The sound of gun safeties snapping off made him spin around to see that all the rebels had followed him, and now they were closing in.

The head Scizonian rasped into the comm unit attached to his ear, gesturing at Shiro with his gun and clicking menacingly. Shiro's eyes darted to the left and to the right, but he was surrounded on all sides. He dug his heels into the ground and settled into a fighting stance with his Galra arm up near his face.

"Nowhere to run, runt," one of the Scizonians said, pointing his gun at Shiro and taking a few steps closer to him.

Unfortunately, he was right. Shiro hadn't wanted to resort to fighting his way out completely, but the rebels left him no choice. A growl rumbled somewhere deep in his chest, and he activated his arm by slashing it violently through the air. The sudden ultraviolet glow and the sound of machinery humming to life made the Scizonians step back in surprise.

"What the fu– "

Shiro launched himself at the Scizonian that had called him a runt and punched his glowing arm through his body armor. With a shriek that was both surprised and pained, the Scizonian stumbled backwards, an arc of blood erupting from his chest. Shiro reached up and snatched the huge gun from his lower arms so he could whip around and spray bullets at the rebels' feet.

The other Scizonians scattered backwards, shouting in alarm as Shiro took off running. His arms ached from the strain of carrying such a heavy weapon, but he couldn't afford to drop it, not as he heard the lead Scizonian yelling into his comm to bring reinforcements to quadrant 7.

His own earpiece buzzed back to life. "Shiro, what's happening? What are you doing?!" Keith yelled in his ear.

"I told you, I'm taking care of the situation," Shiro said.

Bullets slammed into the wall beside him, forcing Shiro to duck for cover behind the twisted ruins of a bombed building. He whirled around and fired the gun randomly at the feet of the Scizonians, purposefully aiming to wound instead of kill his pursuers. He heard one or two screams behind him before he took off running again.

"Shiro – "

"Stop distracting me!"

More gunfire. Debris from the building flew through the air, and a jagged piece of metal caught him over the eye. He reeled backwards, one hand automatically coming up to grab his forehead and letting the gun clatter to the ground.

"Keep him pinned down, C squad, move in!"

Shiro blinked hard against the blood that streamed down his forehead and into his eye. He could hear the Scizonians closing in on him from both sides, and this time they wouldn't be surprised by his Galra arm. He looked around a little frantically for something, anything he could use to get away from the rebels, but the only things he could see were heaps of smoking wreckage and the body of a fallen rebel bleeding out a few yards away. Overhead, one of the flying pods streaked by, raining down gunfire that just barely missed his head and sent him scrambling towards the body. The pod flew away to circle around for another attack.

The ripe scent of the blood pouring out of the Scizonian body nearly made Shiro gag, but now that he was up close he could see that the rebel still had some sort of grenade attached to his belt. A terrible idea presented itself to Shiro in the few seconds of time he had left.

"Keith," he said into his comm, "make sure you get the rest of them out of here."

"Wait, Shiro!"

"There he is! Fire!"

Shiro snatched the explosive off the rebel's belt and flung it behind him before leaping to his feet and getting as far away as possible. He ran in a zigzag pattern, doing his best to avoid the spattering of gunfire that followed him.

"Grenade! Hit the – "

An enormous explosion blew apart the road. The ground underneath him seemed to fall away as the force of the grenade sent him sailing through the air. He smashed into a pile of burning wreckage with bruising force that drove the air out of his lungs completely. For a moment, everything around him seemed to fade to gray and a high pitched ringing tone overtook all his other senses.

Shiro blinked, and a few details of his surroundings swam back into focus. He was lying on his back on top of some crushed steel girders, a few feet in the air. Something was digging uncomfortably into his right side, and even when he waved his hand around to move it away, the pressure remained. It was hard to tell what it was around the clanging in his head and the way his whole body felt numb.

The first real sound he registered was the screaming engine of the flying machine passing above him, but without the gunfire this time. Despite his aching body that seemed to be getting worse and worse the more he moved, Shiro unsteadily pushed himself to his feet and climbed up higher on top of the wreckage.

"You still need that distraction, right?" he muttered into his comm. He heard some kind of response that he couldn't make out distinctly over the ringing in his ears, but he took that to mean that yes, the other paladins did still need a distraction so they could get out of the burning city.

The pod swooped around again, but this time Shiro was almost at the same height it was.

"Make sure you get out of the way," he warned Keith, who started to splutter something into his ear. Then, he pushed off the girder and jumped into the air to snag onto the bottom of the pod just as it passed by.

Instantly, the flying machine jolted to the side as Shiro weighed it down. The tall Scizonian pilot screeched in anger and pulled up on the controls sharply. If Shiro hadn't clamped his metal hand as tightly as he could around the pilot's metal seat he would have been thrown out to the ground that was now speeding by at a dizzying speed.

Shiro heaved himself up behind the pilot by swinging his legs around with as much force as he could and nailing him in the head with his boot. The pilot jerked the pod to the side at the same time. The combined momentum sent him spilling over the other side, but Shiro grabbed onto the pilot's spindly arms to keep from falling out completely.

The pod wasn't designed to support two people's weight, and now the pilot was having difficulty maneuvering around the burning buildings they were skimming by. He snarled and tried to shake Shiro off his arms.

Shiro activated his Galra arm and plunged it into the metal hull of the pod. The Scizonian's eyes widened at this new development. He reached around and drove his hands into Shiro's side.

Shiro didn't understand why he screamed out when the Scizonian pulled his fist away. The pain from one punch shouldn't have made him slump to the side and his vision short out. It didn't make sense until he saw blood dripping from the rebel's hand and he looked down at his side.

Oh. He had been shot. The digging pain in his side earlier had been a bullet that was now sitting somewhere in between his organs.

The numbness he hadn't realized he'd been enjoying up until then went away with the realization that he had been hit. Now all his senses were on high alert, and his side was positively screaming at him to let go of the Scizonian and just pass out until this was all over.

Shiro grit his teeth. This wasn't going to be over until he ended it.

It was a thousand times harder now than it had been just a few seconds ago, but Shiro heaved his legs back up onto the seat behind the Scizonian, who looked surprised he could even move. He yanked his Galra arm out of the metal of the hull where it had been anchoring him and carved it through the Scizonian's arms.

The pilot shrieked as his two right arms fell to the ground, and he let go of the steering mechanism to clutch at his bleeding stumps. Shiro wrapped his arms around his torso and heaved him to the side. With a howl, the pilot was yanked out of his seat and momentum did the rest of the work, throwing him into a passing building with a sickening crunch.

Shiro steeled himself against the nauseating pain now raging throughout his midsection and forced his body forward so he could grab the handles of the pod. Now that he was in control, he could see that the pod was very similar to the hoverbikes back on Earth. He pulled back on the steering handles, and the machine slowed to a speed that was less likely to break his neck if he fell off, which seemed like a much more distinct possibility now that his vision was starting to go gray and fuzzy around the edges.

Now to make sure the paladins got out of this warzone safely. He realized that he could hear someone talking in his ear.

"Keith?" he mumbled. The wind whipping around his side, which was now soaking wet, was almost to painful to think around.

"Shiro, please, tell me what's going on."

"Is everyone out of the grocery store?"

"Yeah, we're halfway out of the city."

Shiro closed his eyes for a moment. Everything was starting to fade away, and he could feel the numbness from before beginning to set in again. "That's good. I'm making sure that… no one can follow you."

"You fucking idiot, Shiro, what the hell do you think you're doing – "

Shiro didn't catch the end of Keith's sentence. He lined up the pod with the crumbling remains of a building that looked like it would topple over at any second, right across the only road that led out of the city. The road the others were escaping from, and that the rebels would follow them on.

All the building needed was the right push.

Shiro slipped off the side of the pod. For a split second, he was airborne and he could see the pod collide with the base of the building in a huge fiery explosion.

He crashed into the ground. Violent white lightning erupted in his eyes and drove out every other conscious thought besides pain, pain, pain. He might have cried out. Then he was gone.

What – ?

Shiro's eyelids were a thousand pounds each, but a nagging urge told him he had to open them, so he did.

It was very dark, wherever he was. No, there was a little light above him. It was too bright to look at, so he shut his eyes again.

Something trickled down onto his face. It felt gritty and made his nose itch. When he tried to raise an arm to brush it away, he realized his arm was pinned down. This didn't concern him much. Everything felt very, very far away. He was floating through space while his body waited for him somewhere else.

There was a whispering noise in his ear, like a fly was buzzing around it. It was annoying and it seemed to be trying to pull him back to wherever his body was.

Shiro had a feeling that going back to his body was a bad idea.

The buzzing began to sort itself out into words. "...Unresponsive. Allura, you have to get down here, like yesterday." The rest of it slipstreamed away, so Shiro stopped paying attention until he recognized one of the words.

"Shiro, goddamnit, where are you?"

That's his name. Shiro blinked his eyes again, working against the thick grimy coating that was stuck on his eyelashes. He didn't understand why he could hear voices talking about him. Unless there was another Shiro he didn't know.

His fingers and toes started buzzing like the voices in his ear. He twitched them experimentally. His fingers didn't move, but the toes of his left foot did. The movement seemed to move his mind closer back into his body, instead of far, far away in space.

"Shiro, if you can hear us, make a noise, kick a rock, do something, okay man? We're trying to find you…"

Shiro let the rest of the sentence trail off into meaningless noise again. Kick a rock? He could do that. His left leg worked. Without thinking, he shifted his leg against the ground.

There was a bang somewhere near his foot and high above his head.

"Did you hear that?"

Shiro moved again. There was another echoing bang. He must have kicked something important. That was probably enough kicking for now.

"I heard it too! It's coming from that direction – hold on, Shiro, we're coming – "

The buzzing spread all over his body, but especially on his right side, underneath his ribs. Also, what was wrong with his arms and his leg? Shiro was sure they usually could move. He considered the idea that it might be best if he didn't know why that fact had changed.

He sort of wanted his mind to be in control of his far away body again, but another part of his head told him to stay gone for a bit. The voices had said that they were coming. It would be okay if he spent some more time in space.

Shiro sighed, or at least huffed, since his chest felt very tight for some reason. Yeah, he was going to stay out here for a little longer. His eyelids fluttered all the way shut, and he drifted away once again.