Author's Note: Continuing on… I own nothing.
4. Morning Flight
Kathy looked up at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Glancing back down she realized that the purple tone of her skin had begun to bleed through again. She focused and the purple receded again. She didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. It took focus to look more like them though. She did look like them though and that confused her. She'd never known her father but he had been the non Galra parent that made her the mostly shunned Half breed that she was. The Blades hadn't minded, she would run around the compounds in her middle shift form because it was more comfortable for her, she didn't have to focus to keep the halfway form. But the one she was wearing now, purple only in her ears tail fingers and toes took focus. But she knew that the Altean Princess didn't trust her, she could smell it. And Shiro had been a prisoner of the Galra Empire, there was no need for her to scare anyone. Pidge Lance and Hunk seemed more at ease around her than the others. Coran was funny, that wasn't something she encountered often. There was a tentative knock on the door. Kathy stood and made her way to the door and opened it. Shiro stood on the other side a small smile on his face and a bundle of cloth under his mechanical arm.
"Hi. I figured you didn't really have anything to change into other than your armor." Kathy nodded.
"My armor was damaged, so not even that anymore." Shiro nodded slightly and held out the bundle of cloth. It turned out to be a black t shirt and pants a belt with pouches sat on top of all of it. Shiro smiled slightly.
"Allura let me raid the clothes on the ship. I hope I guessed the size right." Keith smiled slightly, her fangs glinting slightly. She took the clothes from him.
"Thank you Shiro." He smiled.
"Least I could do. You saved lives, I remember that much." Kathy frowned slightly.
"You don't remember things?" Shiro nodded.
"I don't even remember how I escaped, anything you could share would be helpful." Kathy shrugged.
"I don't really know much about you. You got moved off the freighter I was liberating before I could finish the plan. I don't know where to, but I got a message a few weeks later that you had been freed. I don't know more than that." Shiro nodded.
"Thank you anyway. I appreciate what you did back there, and I'm glad the Red Lion picked you." Kathy sighed.
"Thank you Sir." Shiro shook his head.
"Just call me Shiro, please." Kathy frowned.
"I hope you don't take offence but you guys are weird." Shiro smiled.
"No offence taken. Truth be told this is all a bit weird for us too. I mean yesterday I was back on Earth for the first time in what feels like forever, now here I am, leading a team." Kathy nodded. Yesterday I was on a vitaly important sabotage mission and now my whole fam… organization probably thinks I'm dead. She didn't say that. She couldn't, she'd have to explain what she meant by organization, she couldn't reveal anything about the blades no matter how much something in the back of her head told her to trust these people, that she was now and forever connected to them. She felt like she knew where that was coming from too, the Red Lion.
"I understand how you feel. And thank you. I appreciate it." Shiro nodded and stepped back.
"Get some sleep. We have to see about actually forming Voltron in the morning." Kathy nodded and stepped back into her room letting the door slide closed. She set the clothes on her bed and began to change out of the healing pod suit.
She awoke a few hours later and began to prowl, she was accustomed to not sleeping for more than a few hours at a time when she could. She'd been doing it practically all her life. Somehow she found her way down to the hangers and smiled slightly as the red lion knelt down to allow her access. No one had bothered to clean up the mess she'd caused by coughing up blood in the cockpit the day before, so she found a rag and began to do it herself listening to the lion purr at the back of her mind as she did. It took her a few hours to clean up the blood and all the dust in the cockpit and out into the muzzle of the lion. She heard someone moving around outside the lion as she was scrubbing at a stubborn stain in front of the pilots chair. She was about to get up and check when the screen right behind where the lions eyes would be cleared and showed her what was going on in the room beyond. Coran was pulling a panel off the wall and messing with some of the wiring just beyond it. He was muttering to himself.
"Must make sure all the Lions can launch from here, wouldn't want anything bad happening and not be able to respond." Kathy frowned slightly, how old was the castle that he might be worried that it wouldn't work properly. Then she saw something move on Coran's shoulder and spotted a tiny thing she hadn't seen before. It looked sort of like a cuter version of the rats that often infested more remote Blade bases and Kathy smiled. Coran was talking again.
"I wish number four was awake, the red lion's door is one of the two we haven't tested yet." Number four, that was her. Kathy stood and easily kept her balance as red moved and Coran jumped slightly. Kathy held in a laugh as he waved his arms around as she exited the lion. He smiled slightly and twirled his moustache.
"Ah number four! I was just hoping you were awake." Kathy nodded.
"I heard. Well red showed me." Coran smiled slightly then the Altean frowned.
"Couldn't sleep?" He asked fixing the panel back into place. Kathy shook her head.
"Don't sleep much. Force of habit." Coran nodded.
"How do you feel about a brisk morning flight? I need to test the red lion's hanger and make sure everything is operational, and that includes the doors heading out of the castle." Kathy shrugged.
"Sure." Coran grinned wide and grabbed something from his belt. He pushed a button and spoke into the device.
"Allura, I'm sending Kathy out of the castle with the red lion to test the doors on the red lions hanger." There was a pause before Allura's voice came back over the device.
"Are you certain that's a good idea Coran?" Kathy rolled her eyes, she was used to people outside the Blades treating her with suspicion or outright contempt. Coran's next words surprised her.
"Absolutely! A morning flight can do wonders to clear a troubled mind and I need to check out the hanger. She'll be fine." He smiled at Kathy's slightly confused expression as a sigh sounded over Coran's device.
"Alright Coran." Kathy nodded to him and he stepped in front of her as she made to get back in the lion.
"Hold it number four. You aren't properly outfitted." Kathy frowned slightly but followed the eccentric Altean into a room just off the hangers. There were five pods holding five different sets of armor in different colors and a case in front of them that held what looked like five handles each in the colors of the lions just like the armors. He motioned to the red one.
"So this set of armor is yours as the Red Paladin, as is the red Bayard. Each Bayard takes a unique form depending on the Paladin." Kathy picked up the red handle, Bayard, and it morphed in her hand into a long sword that felt like it had been made to fit her hand, much like her blade felt. She smiled slightly and thanked Coran who left her alone to change into her armor. Soon she was reentering the red lion and asking if she would open the doors so they could take a flight. The lion obliged and soon Kathy was flying through the sky around the castle. It was good to be in the air again. She hadn't had a chance to actually pilot anything in a good long while as she'd been stuck posing as an engineer for the past six months to get onto Sendak's ship. She watched as the sky slowly began to brighten. Something on the ground caught her eye and she frowned. Something down there was moving.