A/N: this is 21 pages long in google docs enjoy this 7k dump update
as always, comments are Extra Hecka Appreciated.
The thing about language is that it evolved as a method to describe the world around you. There is a word for grass because there was a need to describe the green shoots that came out of the ground. There is a word for green because there was a need to describe the colour of the stuff that stained clothes and grew off trees. There weren't really words to describe whatever the fuck was standing over part of north San Francisco. Renowned author H.P. Lovecraft got close at one point. Close as in, incomprehensibly alien, slightly tentacled, and really fucking tall.
Before Lance even processed that there was a gigantic monster standing over the ruins of what was once a perfectly serviceable colonial storefront, the smell hit him. It reeked of the dead, the kind of smell so thick you swore it had color. Hunk threw up behind him, and honestly, Lance wasn't far from joining him.
It wasn't like he'd never seen a dead body before. For fuck's sake, he'd grown up in the middle of a revolution. It wasn't, it wasn't like he didn't know that people died . It was just-
It was too close. It was too real. Everything in the past few days had had a dreamlike quality to it, like maybe he would get up one morning and remember that he didn't really see Keith talk to an alien, he just daydreamed it because he was bored. This wasn't a daydream.
"Lance," Hunk said behind him in the kind of hushed and terrified voice you got when you really didn't want to draw any attention to yourself. "What do we do?"
Lance really wished he could answer that. Too bad he was busy having a bit of a breakdown.
The creature was at least thirty feet tall, casting its own shadow on the ground. It was metal and spikes and the same shade of grey-purple metal as the castle menacingly hovering to the south. Despite all the dull shine to its surface, it looked like it could pass for something that had been organic in origin. There were bits of something that could pass for flesh exposed through the flanks of metal armor, chinks of glowing purple light spilling out from between. It was holding a staff, the same metal as before, and hovering in it with an obligatory hum was a glowing orb of light. As the two boys watched, it reared back and swung the staff at another building.
The orb tore through City Lights Bookstore with a grace more like a wrecking ball and not an extraterrestrial ball of light. It was destructive, loud, and inefficient. Lance sunk down further behind the dumpster they were cowering behind and shut his eyes and prayed.
There wasn't anybody inside that store. Lance clung to the fact like it was the only thing he knew. There wasn't anybody inside, they were all safe for the moment, and if someone out there could maybe ensure it would stay this way, that would be gr-
Something was sniffing his hair. Holy shit, something was sniffing his hair. Lance's eyes snapped open and he almost screamed in a very undignified manner when he locked eyes with a… something . It had six legs, looked sort of like a super slimy seaweed insect that got too large, and Hunk was behind it with as wide eyes as he so Lance felt a little more solidarity in his freaked-outedness.
"Holy shit," he said.
"Holy shit," Hunk agreed.
"RAAAAAAAUUURRRHGHHHH," said the monster in the background.
Oh god. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
It started in the north. It came all so fast. Nobody knew what it was at first. An arrhythmic thud of splintering wood, the reverberating din of collapsing foundation, the deep, jarring, in-your-bones resonance of something larger than nature ever intended walking towards you. It cannot be stopped.
It should have been stopped. Keith should have stopped it. It was his job to know about these things before they happened. It was his job, and he failed, and he failed so spectacularly and utterly that the two hundred thousand people of San Francisco were going to pay for his mistakes.
The weapon was going to forge forward, no matter what. Nothing was going to stop it. Keith didn't even know where it was supposed to stop. Was it just San Francisco that was sentenced to execution? Would the weapon raze the entire seaboard? What were the Galra planning?
The Atlanteans were all dead and gone. Voltron didn't have a chance of rising, not with him firmly in the Galra ranks. They had no opposition. They expect no opposition.
They clearly didn't know humanity all that well. San Francisco saw its death sentence handed down from above and decided that if they were going down, they were taking everything down with them. They decided that they weren't dying today.
Humans lived. It's what they did. As a species, relentlessly survivalistic, hardwired to sacrifice for ensured continuity with utilitarian ruthlessness. He watched as people risked running into wreckage and pulled out strangers. He watched as they scurried around, disorganised and screaming and chaotic and human .
"Get the children-"
"-out of the houses-"
"-she needs a doctor!"
"Help us!"
He smelled smoke, thick and hazy in the air. The Galra didn't like to burn cities. It was a waste of resources - this fire was human in origin.
Keith watched as men and women took torches to a street, burning a misshapen ring of flame around the monster. He could have told them it wouldn't work, that the metal hammered to the thing's skin was seven inches too thick to hit a single nerve ending, but instead, he was watching from ground zero.
They lied, the older soldiers. The rush of blood in his ears did nothing to dull the screams from around, the cries of babies ( babies? jesus christ .), the shrieks of mothers and the howls of daughters and the cacophony of human defiance in the face of disaster. It was so loud it felt as if the noise was driving a spike clear through his skull. Like it was crushing him on all sides.
Focus, Keith. Think things through, for once.
The line between the world outside and the thoughts in Keith's head had become so blurred, he almost thought his father was really right next to him, reciting those words in his go to admonishment.
He wasn't. Keith was alone.
Keith was alone, at ground zero of the Galra invasion. Think things through . Why wasn't he told about this? Why was he still in the city, wandering around? The Galra had ten thousand years to plan this invasion - why leave loose ends now?
They didn't .
Oh.
Keith was a tool to gain access to the city and to prevent Voltron from ever forming but now - now, if San Francisco fell, North America would fall soon after, and without an entire continent, the world would crumble fast. Nobody, not even Voltron, would be able to stop the Galra then.
Keith had finally outlived his usefulness.
There was probably an event somewhere in Lance's life that lead to him hiding in an alleyway behind a monster the color of flaky blood, watching a much larger monster the color of dull metal tear through an entire city.
Something had to account for all the weird . There had to be a reason Lance was stuck in these situations.
"What the fuck is that ," Hunk whispered.
"Bukavac," Lance's mind supplied, and holy shit , he didn't even know he could pronounce that word. The bukavac turned to face him, or at least that's what Lance assumed. The thing didn't really have any eyes, but there was an end to its crescent shaped body that had two gnarled roots pointing up like horns, and something that looked like a jaw with very sharp teeth, and it was facing Lance. Now that he was looking, it did seem sort of streamlined. As tough-looking and spiky as the thing was, it wouldn't do horribly in the water.
Then, the much larger, more dangerous monster lurched and crashed its wrecking ball into the building next to them all and Lance screamed and-
They weren't dead.
Scrambling to his feet, he looked around him. The monster moved on, leaving behind the crumbled remains of the houses to either side of them and the wood, wickedly splintered into deadly stakes, should have skewered them but instead, it lay on the ground behind the bukavac.
"Hunk. Hunk, get up, we're alive!"
"What?" Hunk performed a quick pat down of himself. "Holy shit!"
"It saved us," Lance said, turning to the bukavac. "Thank you."
Hey, his mother taught him some manners.
Chaos came to the docks in waves. The first was the immediate aftermath of the explosion, the scrambling "what was that", the fearful unknown. Then came messengers, dockworkers taking leave in the city, running back with information and refugees in tow. The virus-like spread of the knowledge that "the city is under attack, take the citizens and go", the scrambling urge to pack as many people onto ships to safety as possible, the turmoil of masses of people trying to get something done with no organisation. It was desperate, furious motion, and in fifteen minutes, there was only one ship left on the pier.
By then, the four inhabitants had made it to ground zero, the center of the devastation. It wasn't hard to follow the trail of destruction. It was like a flat board sweeping over the city, leaving crumbling ruins of houses in its wake.
The closer they got, the thicker the smell of death pervaded. It was the smell of blood and sweat and shit and fear and it burrowed into every corner of the city. Shiro once thought all the water in the heavens would not scrub the smell of fish from the markets - it turned out all that was needed was a massacre.
"Holy shit," said Pidge, stumbling to a stop. Shiro felt a brief pang of regret for her- she looked hardly fourteen, and no fourteen year old ever signed up for this. It was a scene straight out of the most bizarre nightmares, a monster towering over the largest buildings in San Francisco systematically destroying each building in front of it. It moved at a shambling pace, almost lazily flicking its staff at each building and watching the orb swing around to crash through glass and wood like it was paper.
Then, the monster turned and Shiro felt himself stop too. He couldn't stop, he shouldn't stop and yet.
He knew those eyes .
Suddenly, Matt Holt's screams joined everyone else's, and behind his eyes, Shiro relived a year's worth of memories in the span of a few seconds. His nose burned along the scar, like strong fingers were digging into the bridge where it was caved in, and his fake arm burned with pain so white he couldn't tell if it was hot or cold.
Matt's eyes were in front of his again and he stumbled out an "I'm sorry," I'm sorry for attacking you (did you know?) I'm sorry for leaving you behind (are you alive?) I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
"Matt, I'm sorry," he said as Matt's face resolved itself back into a stranger's and Pidge's features won out over his memories. She looked at him with something in her face Shiro couldn't identify, and then looked back to Allura.
Allura. Allura, shit, he forgot, he can't do this here, something's attacking. Abruptly, he felt her hands on his arms, almost painfully grabbing him and holding him in place. "Breathe with me," she said, commanding and princess like, and he did.
The world filtered back in. The colors shifted back from black-grey-purple to the browns of the town, and the smell was still blood-smoke-death but there was the hint of San Francisco in it again, the sea air filtering back in. He was here. That was there.
"Are you okay?" Allura asked, leaning in. Shiro took one last breath and nodded, and together they stood back up. Shiro hadn't even noticed that he fell to his knees.
"What's the plan?" he asks instead of dwelling because emotional repression is the name of the game.
Coran pipes up from where he was silently observing. "It's too strong for just you two to deal with. We know the other three paladins are in the city, and Allura should be able to sense them."
Allura nodded. "You and Pidge, distract the monster with everything you have. Make it flashy and loud - we need a flexible meeting place visible from all points in the city. Coran and I will cast a spell and hopefully draw the paladins here."
Spells. Okay. Not weird enough to spend time thinking about. While they had been talking, the monster had managed to get down another street, and it didn't show any signs of planning on stopping.
"Pidge," he said, grabbing her attention. "Let's go."
The funny thing about fearing for your life is that it only really takes up the forefront of your mind for a few minutes. The brain gets bored of it after a while. Seriously. It's a wonder humanity has survived as long as it has.
So sure, Hunk was still utterly terrified. It was taking up about 60% of his current thoughts. Just not the surface ones, the ones that really mattered. Right now? They were just playing a waiting game. They were trapped in an alleyway between two houses, and the monster was just a street away, and they couldn't risk running away until they knew it wouldn't turn around and squash them underfoot.
"I think I figured it out," Lance said abruptly. "It has a pattern."
"What?" Hunk said, straightening up from his slouch against the bukavac 's back. It made a small ' mrp ' noise, which, weird.
"Look," Lance said, pulling Hunk in close and extending his finger out. Hunk looked and if he squinted, he-
Oh. There was a girl, sitting in the ruins of one of the houses not five feet away from the monster. Her right arm was hanging wrong and her left was curled around her clutching it to her side, and she was trapped in an iron maiden of glass shards and metal fence and she looked absolutely terrified.
The monster wasn't looking at her.
"We're not the goal," Lance whispered with all the excitement of solving a particularly hard riddle. "Destroying the houses- that's the goal! We're just collateral."
Then, the dumb beanpole tugged him forward . "Lance, Lance, Lance, no -oh god- no this is a bad idea -"
But did anyone ever listen to Hunk? No. Never. The greatest tragedy of his life. Here they were, running toward a giant destructive monster.
God, even the stupid thing Lance called down was running with them. Nobody was on the side of reason, it seemed.
As they neared the girl, Hunk started to slow down a bit. Something seemed off.
Unperturbed, Lance ran forward, picking his way through the wreckage of the young girl's house. "Lance," Hunk called out in warning. The girl still didn't say anything, watching them with sad eyes.
"Hunk, come on, help me get her out!" Lance called over his shoulder.
"Lance, she's see-through."
Lance stopped abruptly. "What?" He asked, furrowing his brows and looking back incredulously. "Did you hit your head? You okay, buddy?"
Hunk took a step forward. "Lance, look at her," and yep, he could see the outline of the still intact kitchen table behind her, "she's not alive."
Lance looked disbelievingly back at the girl. She met his eyes, then smiled sadly and slowly moved her left arm.
Right at her stomach, in sharp contrast to the white dress she was in, was the telltale brown-red of old blood.
Lance stumbled back.
"Oh."
Hunk grabbed and steadied him, struggling to keep the guy from fainting or something. "Hey, hey, come on," he said, then jerked his head to the bukavac . It clicked a little, maybe understanding exactly what Hunk intended to do with it. Glaring as sternly as he could manage, Hunk half dragged Lance to the thing's back and unceremoniously dumped the guy on the bukavac 's back. It wasn't too spiky, they'd both be fine.
If the thing had eyes, Hunk was sure it was glaring back at him. He ignored it and turned to the girl and leaned down.
"Can you talk?"
She nodded, then paused. "Yes," she said, and it was quiet.
"Can you move on?"
She shook her head, then paused. "No."
Well. That didn't make it easier.
"I'm gonna hold your hand, okay?" Hunk said, because that seemed like the thing to do. The girl nodded.
They all stood around unsure for a second before the boom of the monster destroying yet another house made them all flinch, ghost girl included. Hunk hurriedly grabbed her hand, squeezed his eyes shut, and hoped that maybe it would work.
Something warm touched his skin the way only light ever did. Cautiously, Hunk peeked up and almost screamed.
A crow was staring at them. It had three legs. It glowed slightly. One would think that wouldn't work, being, you know, and tar-black crow and all, but no. Light was spilling out of it, like a really dark colored paper lantern.
Lance was starting to feel like he hit his head and forgot about it.
The crow cocked its head, regarded Lance for a few seconds, then turned immediately back to Hunk. He wasn't sure if he was justified in feeling stung, but hey, rejection via weird three-legged crow hurt . At least he's always have his bukavac.
As Lance reflected on the pain of being rejected by something that didn't exist a minute ago, Hunk reached out a trembling finger and, Disney-princess style, the crow hopped off the debris strewn ground onto his hand. They stared at each other.
It was actually becoming sort of intense and Lance felt a little weird being in that moment, like an extra in a movie scene that really wasn't supposed to be there. He and the ghost girl exchanged stares of uncomfortable solidarity. In the background, the monster kept destroying stuff at its unpredictable pace, arrhythmic booms of brickwork foundation going up in smoke. His bukavac yelped each time, which made Lance feel just a bit better about being terrified.
" Yatagarasu ," Hunk whispered after an eternity. The word didn't mean shit to Lance, but okay.
The crow abruptly screeched and whirled on the young girl, and if it were possible, the girl would have paled. Lance didn't blame here. Thing glowed from within, and it was terrifying.
It hopped off Hunk's extended finger, and stalked to the ghost. There wasn't really another word for it. The glowing bird's gait was graceful and rolled like waves, which didn't seem like it would work, odd number of legs and all. It was admirable how smooth the weird little thing could be.
It stopped a few inches in front of the girl, and looked up at her. Then, with an actually temporarily blinding flash of light, the two disappeared.
Lance blinked the afterimages out from behind his eyelids and turned to look at the slightly-less-stunned Hunk.
"That was anticlimactic," he said.
"Lance," said Hunk, looking real freaked out. "Lance, the bird spoke to me."
"Uh, Hunk? I was right there. It didn't talk."
"No, no, not talk-speak. Mind speak. It spoke in my head."
Hunk's eyes were wide in what Lance hoped was the terrified and scared way, and not the "I've actually lost my mind in the wake of a horrifying attack" way.
"Hunk," Lance said, grabbing the guy's shoulders. Maybe it would ground him? "That's not normal."
"Lance you," Hunk gestured with the frantic emphaticness that came from not having the words to emphasise, and instead being forced to make do with hand gestures. " summoned that thing! That's not normal either!"
"Bessie didn't talk to me!" Lance cried in response, glancing back at the bukavac. The bukavac, now named Bessie, solemnly nodded to him. At least someone was backing him up here.
Then, he looked further behind Bessie. And saw an army of three legged crows, staring patiently at the kid who summoned them.
"Uh, Hunk? We have a bigger problem."
Allura absolutely hated her skirt. Obeying the traditional gender roles of the host country was good and all, but God , a monster was attacking uptown San Francisco. She needed to run.
"Coran," she huffed, "do you remember the boy from before? The one who attacked us?"
"Yes," he said, floating alongside her with ease. Allura kind of hated that.
"I think he's the red paladin. We need to find him."
It's the messiest thing he's ever done, but somehow, Shiro got himself an army of zombies.
He doesn't really want to think about who the zombies were before. It less than ideal, ethics-wise, and thinking too hard about it just made him feel more unclean than usual, but anyways, it didn't even really matter too much what his opinion of using suspiciously fresh corpses to fight was. There was no time to think.
There was a sharp crackle and yet another flare of bright green energy, this time fireworking across the immediate vicinity of sky to crater into the road immediately in front of him. The tendrils of whatever dissipated into the ground, and something suitably woody came running out of the cracks, running headlong into the fray.
The fray currently consisted solely of Shiro's clumsily reanimated corpses throwing themselves at the ankles and feet of the rampaging monster, only to occasionally get crushed by the staff when the thing deemed to notice them. They were awkward, shambling fresh-dead, and the only real plus was that Shiro just gave them one directive and then could leave them alone. Still, it was something. It let him concentrate.
As a child, he loved stories. As he got older, he thought them silly distractions.
Now, his life depended on them.
Allura had told him, either two days or a lifetime ago, that he was the black paladin. Everything dark and dead, the blackest things people told each other in their stories, those were his. They listened to him. And Shiro knew exactly who he wanted to talk to.
Trouble was, they weren't picking up.
Pidge knelt down suddenly, slamming her palms down onto the torn up street. Little geometric bursts of green came out, connecting into circles and expanding, over and over again. Shiro caught the murmur of " ajatar" , over and over again, each repetition making the green glow just a little brighter. Then, with a flick of her wrists, she hurled the two circles down the street like disks.
Mid-flight, they spat out twin serpents, red and demonic and angry. Without skipping a beat or even checking on them, Pidge moved again to yet another summoning. She was machinelike in how she moved, pulling tricks out of her bag as fast as she could get it open.
Watching her, Shiro got an idea. He knelt down, similarly, and started a conversation.
Like every conversation, it began with calling someone's name.
" Gashadokuro ," he called, ignoring every warning he ever got as a child. "Gashadokuro."
It wasn't like the zombies. Shiro just thought about it, and the zombies happened. This was a real story though, something with a mythos behind it. There was a power that came with naming it.
How did the legend go?
It was a skeleton, fifteen times the size of a man. It was hungry, forever, because it was built from bones of those who died starved. You would never see it coming, but it announced itself with the ringing of the bells, entirely in your head.
There was a ringing of bells.
Shiro's eyes opened and he immediately looked directly into the bare grin on a skull.
It straightened up into its fifteen times man hungry forever glory, bones of those who died starved. It straightened up, and looked at Shiro in askance.
"Please," said Shiro.
"Yes," said the Gashadokuro.
"You see it too, right?"
Lance nodded. It was sort of a dumb question. He was staring in such wide-eyes shock that there was a ring of white entirely around his pupils.
There was a really giant skeleton that wasn't there before. There was an army of birds that banished dead people ghosts that wasn't there before. There was a fucking slime-cow-with-six-legs that Lance named Bessie that wasn't there before.
Hunk really wished he could go back to the before.
"Hunk, you know what this means?"
"What?" He knew what Lance meant. "No, no, no. Don't do it."
"We have to!" Noble idiot. "That thing is going to destroy our city!"
"Let it!"
"Hunk, you live here ."
"I live! In general! I want to keep it that way!"
Lance was already running. Hunk cursed and ran after him.
It was like a goddamn homing beacon. If Keith didn't know the Black Paladin was in this city, he knew now.
It was one of the people from the ship. He didn't stick around long enough to know exactly what killed his vulcanus , but the aftertaste of their deaths stunk of black magic. Was it the man or the woman? Did he even care?
He shouldn't. He should be getting the hell out of there. He had to stay alive, maybe find the Blade of Marmora somehow, get past this and continue. The Black Paladin was fighting a losing battle, and Keith had no intention of sticking around to watch the fallout. Keith was going to fucking run-
That was Lance. He just saw Lance from the street across him. That was Lance and Hunk, and they were running.
Running towards the massive eldritch monster.
They were such fucking idiots - and they were being followed by mythic creatures.
Keith turned around and cursed the universe.
They weren't going to keep this up for long.
Yeah okay, Pidge could concede that the giant skeleton was really cool, but it wasn't very useful. It was impervious to all blows, with, useful, but it was also a skeleton. It couldn't hit with much force, and it was too thin to block anything. They needed something big, soon. Trouble was, there wasn't anything they could summon alone that would do it.
Then a six-legged sea monster burst through Shiro's skeleton's legs and fucking screeched before tackling the monster by its ankles.
By screech, Pidge meant screech . Blood-curdling, decently long, and pitched far too high to be comfortable for anyone. It was awful.
"Bessie!" Someone screamed. Pidge tore her eyes away from the valiant but far tinier monster to check.
Two boys had run up between the skeleton's legs, both suitably out of breath and tired. One had yelled, and the other was surrounded by glowing birds.
They made eye contact between the legs of giant mythical beings, and suddenly, with a yanking sensation in her chest, Pidge saw shit .
"You saw that too, right!"
"Is that a lion ?"
"What was that?"
"I have a plan!"
There was the horrifying feeling of thoughts in Lance's head that were not Lance's thoughts , a kind of intrusive voice in his head yelling things into his ear. It took him a second to place the voices.
Also, he was fifteen feet up in the air.
The world was enshrined in a sort of blue haze, darker and lighter in some places. Lance thought he was stuck on the inside of something, but he couldn't tell what.
A lion. Voltron.
Right. The images. Wait. The monster.
Figuring things out could wait.
Standing on the ground, looking up at the beast was terrifying. Looking at it at eye level was just horrifying. Mismatched eyes glared out at Lance from behind a metal mask that seemed almost nailed onto its face, slit and spiked all along its jaw. Crackling lines of energy, an unnatural purple, seemed to attach its head to its wide metal shoulders.
Wires jutted out of its shoulders and fed into a pack on the creature's back, and through his terror, Lance wondered what would happen if he hit it. Would it stop? Power down? Was it just decorative? There wasn't any time to keep wondering, because someone was shouting in his head.
"Get it away from the city! Back to the docks!" said The Voice, which was wholly and utterly unfamiliar to Lance. It was good advice though, so he decided to follow it.
Go forward, he thought. Forward he went.
Apparently this weird lion thing listened to him. Well, at least that was a modicum of control over the situation.
"What the hell?"
That was Hunk.
"Hunk!" Lance yelled, head swiveling around. Where was he? He could barely see anything through the haze but the creature's face, focused on something in the distance to Lance's left.
"Hunk, are you there?" Lance shouted.
"Lance?" That was definitely Hunk's voice.
"We don't have time for this! Clear the civilians, " someone new shouted. Lance's head was getting way too full.
He didn't have time to further reflect. Something hit him - the monster's purple orb.
He went spinning, head over heels, uncontrollable. Nothing would move - not his arms, legs, or heart. The panic came back full force.
Stop! Stop! Get up!
He felt the shudder of breaking houses as his lion plowed through rows of them, a thin line of destruction, made that much messier by limbs flailing everywhere. In a move that, if it was executed with less frantic scrabbling, could have been called graceful, he managed to right himself. In the back of his head, he heard a hiss.
Great. Now the cat was talking to him too.
He was further from the action now, a spectator. From the distance, he could now clearly make out three other shapes, conveniently color-coded. Lance figured that if he wasn't so busy blinking the dust out of his eyes, he would be able to tell that they were lions. For now though, they were large translucent blobs.
He watched as the green one flung itself at the monster, only to get bashed off with the orb the same way he had. It righted itself mid air and landed back next to the black lion. Meanwhile, Lance's bukavac was raining down hell on the thing's ankles. He felt a surge of pride.
"Everyone, regroup!" It was the voice again. Was it one of the other lions?
Lance felt his lion get up and start bounding over to the others. It sprung over streets of destroyed town - they really did manage to push the thing to the docks - and stopped right in front of the black one.
"We can't get near it, " someone new chimed in. They sounded… young? Their voice was high-ish in tone, and also very worried. "Its got too good of a defense!"
"There's only one way to beat it," said the original voice. "We need to form Voltron. "
"That thing we saw! In the visions!" Lance yelled on a hunch. Maybe the mystery voices heard him that way?
The black lion turned bodily in Lance's direction. "We need the red paladin. There is someone in the city right now looking for them. Until then, we need to keep it distracted."
"How!" Hunk's voice broke in. "I didn't sign up for this!"
"None of us did," the younger person said grimly. "Just hurry and keep it away from the city. We have to protect those people."
Lance suddenly had the dumbest idea.
"Guys, I'm gonna power kick that orb thing!"
His head was suddenly filled with loud protests from multiple sources, but whatever. Carpe diem.
Hit the orb , he urged his magic lion. He saw the world bounce up and down as his lion bounded forward with him suspended inside, before it pounced, legs first, and-
Missed the fucking orb. Instead it hit his lion in the face, sending them both spinning. "Fuck!" He yelled eloquently, and felt it echo against everyone else's mind. It felt invasive and freaky and he was really sure he didn't like it.
He felt the cat doing - what was it cats did with their throats? Lance didn't spend enough time with cats. Whatever it was, his space lion was making a noise pointedly at him. Suddenly, he felt the flash of ill-defined images in the back of his head. The monster - it's face - it's pack- it's pack! The pack!
"Hit the monster in the pack on its back!" Lance yelled.
"How?" The younger voice said sarcastically.
"Lance, everytime we get close, either the orb hits us or the monster!" Hunk yelled.
"Yeah, Lance." Lance didn't think he appreciated the sarcastic asshole knowing his name. "We need a better strategy."
"Like wha- ORB!"
Everyone tumbled out of the way of the orb, scattering yet again. Except the black lion. Luckily, whoever that was wasn't hit.
"Shiro, we need to move!" Sarcasm-guy said. "Shiro!"
"Why isn't he responding?" Hunk asked, hovering behind the monster.
"He did this before! I don't know what's wrong," yelled the person Lance assumed must be in the green lion. They'd never sounded younger.
Suddenly, with a crackle, Lance heard the original person -Shiro- speak up. "I recognise this monster from my time in Zarkon's prison. I know how to beat him!"
Which was good, because Lance didn't know what those words meant. Prison? This guy was in prison?
Suddenly, both the black lion and Shiro charged forward at once, and Lance felt everything around him shift and vanish as four other people truly invaded his mind.
Alright, everyone here needs to appreciate exactly what the fuck this looked like to everyone around the scene of the fight. Because - holy shit. This looked weird.
Imagine a giant metal pod crash landing in your city. Now imagine it spitting out a monster that begins to stomp its way through the city, wielding technology that even in two hundred years wouldn't be reality. And then, as it continues on its reign of terror, glowing magic lions come to fight it. That would be weird enough if one remembered that these are color-coded and semi-transparent and contained teenagers and one man in his late twenties floating in the center, but then. Then they all merge together. They merge together and the people in the centre fucking disappear and so do the lions and it's just one gigantic man-thing with separately colored limbs facing off against a terrifying cyborg monstrosity.
Also, most likely, your home has been destroyed.
God, these poor people.
"Allura, look! Look up!" Coran yelled, frantically tapping her shoulder.
"Coran, not now, we need to find-"
" They formed Voltron. "
Allura stopped suddenly, eliciting glares from the crowd she had just been pushing her way through. "What?" She asked to what looked like thin air. "That's not possible."
But nope. Every single head in the crowd was craned toward the most powerful weapon on Earth, currently doing battle with Galra demons.
The red paladin found them. Allura's job was over. Now, she had to wait and watch.
She stood there as Voltron was hit one - two times. At some point, Coran found her hand and gripped it, grounding her. She was so powerless. There wasn't anything to do but watch, watch Voltron stand there and do nothing but put up a shield, and pray that these people wouldn't die today.
Distantly, as if through walls, she registered the world around her. The tense, grim buzz of people who may be about to die. The whispered half-words of Coran praying. The iron tang-smell of blood, mingling with the dusty air.
The faint metallic bloom that promised rain.
She watched, mute, as one last time, Voltron was hit with the orb. The shield fractured apart on impact, and somewhere, someone screamed.
And then, with abrupt finality, energy came streaming out of Voltron and killed the monster.
There was a pregnant pause, a stuttered stop to all noise as everyone held their breath. Was it over? Was it done?
It was not. The monster rose again, and Allura felt something closing in on her, hollowing her chest out or pressing down on it or something - something was happening. Her heart sank. There was no noise as the orb crashed down again, one, two, three times. It returned back to it's staff yet again, and Allura's knees shook. Voltron fell back with each blow, teetering closer and closer into the ocean.
The monster advanced for its killing blow, and the sounds of prayers started up again and then -
The red paladin's sword. Allura had seen it before, sharp and wicked ten thousand years ago, and sharp and wicked today. It was unceremoniously summoned, hilt deep into the monster's chest, before Voltron turned and slid the creature's body down into ocean. A massive wave rose from it, pushing back all the refugee ships.
Now, Allura hoped. Now it was over.
She was the first to break the silence, running as fast as she could to the docks.
Pidge wasn't sure how to describe de-Voltronising. The feeling didn't return to her body. Her body returned to her body. For the brief few minutes they had spent fighting, she hadn't been a corporeal person anymore. Just one of five consciousnesses, controlling the arm of a glowing man. It was terrifying, being so completely enmeshed with the others, not knowing anymore where she ended and someone else began.
There were honestly a few second she wasn't even sure if she was going to survive to be a person again. There were memories in her head now - a woman she'd never seen before smiling down at her, the inside of an unfamiliar ship's cabin, a forest with foreign foliage - that she hadn't had before. She wondered if anybody else got something of hers.
She coughed again, just because she could, and patted herself down.
"Pidge?" Shiro asked, concerned. "Are you okay?"
She shook her head. "Is it over?" she asked.
"It's over," someone else said, and Pidge refocused on him. He was tall and fat and dark and looked like he was going to throw up. She recognised his voice- he was the yellow one.
Shiro straightened up, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I'm Shiro," he said, holding out his metal hand. "I guess if we just shared minds, we should know each other's names."
"Hunk," he said, taking it cautiously. "And that's- where's Lance?"
This was the second time this week Lance was chasing Keith. It was getting to be a habit. (He really hoped Keith threatening him when he found out wasn't going to be one though.)
Keith was moving fast. Lance was struggling to keep up, and he was the one with longer legs, dammit! He was just way too good and navigating the wreckage.
"Keith!" Lance wheezed when he finally got close enough, "Wait up!"
Keith whirled around, then narrowed his eyes. "You!" he shouted, complete with stabby finger.
"Me," Lance confirmed. He gingerly picked his way through the splinter-heavy street to Keith.
"What do you want? " Keith said in a tone that just barely missed 'whine', gesturing wildly.
"You're the red paladin," Lance said with zero subtlety or preamble. Keith froze.
"You can't tell anyone! Especially not the Atlantian-"
"Who? What the fuck? Keith, you need to come with us. You're- you're like me! And Hunk! And the green and black lions- Keith, you're like us!"
"I- I can't. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not a paladin."
"Keith," Lance said sternly, "I have no fucking idea what the hell your deal is, but you need to come with us because something tells me that's not the only monster here to destroy civilization, and the exposition visions we all got say that we need five paladins to make that weapon. Voltron. Whatever. Anyways, you're number five."
"Lance, I have to go."
"Well," Lance sighed, "I guess this is for the good of humanity." Then he punched Keith in the head.
Allura was running faster than she ever had in her life. She probably set a record, too. It could only have been half a mile to the crash site, but it felt so, so far away. Her feet were scratched and bleeding from running across torn apart wreckage, and she couldn't even feel it, and there was a goddamn lead weight crushing her chest, and they had to be alive, they had to . Coran's expression mirrored hers.
When she turned the street and caught site of the only standing figures she'd seen in four minutes, she almost cried in relief.
"Shiro!" She called. He swiveled around immediately.
"Allura!" He called back, running towards her. The people near him followed.
"Allura, Coran," Pidge said. "Thank you for finding the red paladin."
Allura stopped. "We didn't find them. I thought you did?"
The young man Allura didn't know, presumably the yellow paladin, spoke up then. "No, I didn't even see his lion."
At that convenient moment, another young man came strolling in, dragging the unconscious thief from the ship by his armpits. "Hey Hunk, guess who was the red paladin!" He yelled over his shoulder before turning around to face them. "Oh. Strangers," he said, suddenly realising he wasn't alone with the yellow paladin. "This was not a good first impression."
"Is that Keith?" The yellow paladin asked incredulously.
"Yeah," said the blue one. "Who're they?"
"I'm Allura," Allura said because she was diplomatic. "And that is-"
"The thief from the ship. He was a paladin?" Shiro asked, looking at Allura in askance, as if he thought she would know what was going on. Allura was flattered but also just as confused as him.
"Well, I'm Pidge," said Pidge. She waved awkwardly from her position further away from the rest of the group. "The ghost is Coran."
"Lance," said the blue paladin. "He's a ghost? "
"Yeah, you can tell because he's, you know, transparent?" Pidge said sarcastically, ignoring Coran's bright 'yup!' .
"Pidge, don't be mean," Shiro broke in. "I'm sorry, this is a terrible introduction. I'm Shiro, the black paladin of Voltron. Well, you're all paladins of Voltron."
"Yeah, about that. What the fuck?" Lance asked.
"I think," Allura said, trying to stave off the beginnings of what might be a new headache, "we should sort this out elsewhere."
"two hundred thousand people" in SF during the year 1872 is a number courtesy of sfgenealogy.
Bukavac! It's a slavic monster that lives in lakes and pools. Its name comes from the word buka, meaning noise, because it would jump onto people with a yell and strangle them. There is a. reason i picked this as Lance's first summon. (dw someday he will Unleash The Kraken.) btw, shiro can summon its sister spirit, the drekavac.
Yagaterasu! The eponymous mythical creature. (i would make up some bullshit here abt why it's the title creature but tbh i just liked that line.) Three-legged crows are found in the mythology of all the Big Three East Asian countries but i specifically chose the Japanese ones bc in China and Korea, the three legged crow only symoblises the sun. In Japan, however, it was considered a sign of divine intervention (!), and guidance (!), which historically "cleaned up after great battles" (!). so, duh, i chose this for Hunk.
Ajatar! It's a Finnish demon who haunts the woods. She has some serpentine elements to her design, but looks nothing like what i described her as here. I'm just gonna claim that she was busy so she just sent some snake daughters to do Pidge's bidding.
Gashadokuro! I kinda,,,, already told u all u need to know abt him in the text. I love Japanese myth, it has SO MUCH to draw from. Anyways, other stuff: power of inivisibility and indestructibility, 15x taller than the average person, a living skeleton (amassed from the bones of those who died without being buried), drinks blood. Yeah. ur fave will never be this metal.
The Voltron lions are just the normal voltron lions, but more mystical than they already were.
(im sorry for constantly ending on cliffhangers i just. am like this as a person.)