"You made it!"

Lance frowned as he walked into the castle's control room, Hunk trailing a step behind him. Of course, Pidge, Keith and Shiro were already gathered around the Alteans, looking up at the holographic screens above them.

"Yeah, barely! That was a nightmare! I almost puked out there; I felt like Hunk!" Lance complained, though there was no heat to his words, followed by Hunk commenting about actually being Hunk. Pidge gave a little chuckle at their words, giving Shiro a side glance before smiling at the pair of them.

"Yeah. We had a hard time, too." She smiled, looking away form him to look at Shiro's small smirk and Keith's confusion, her quintessence bubbling in a mischievous way.

That little-

"Found him." The female Altean muttered, her aura feeling much more muted compared to the others in the room. Taking a step forward to come into line with the others, Lance glanced at the screen, taking a note of the Altean script that flashed on the top of a screen, an image of a Galran battleship flying ominously through space.

So this is where they had been keeping the Red Lion.

"Wait, this ship is orbiting Arus!" Pidge exclaimed, looking at the coordinates, causing Hunk to whimper.

"They're here already?" Shiro asked grimly, looking at the advisor, who looked slightly guilty at accidently providing the wrong information.

"Yes, well, I guess my calculations were a bit off. You see, finger counting is more of an art skill than a precise science. You see, I learned this skill from my great-uncle who- Oh?" the orange man stopped half way through his sentence when the screen flicked, going from the still image of what lay ahead to a live video of a grim looking Galra, who's eye had been replaced with one no doubt from the druids, if the yellow glare was anything to go by.

"Princess Allura. I am Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I speak on the behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known. I am here to collect the Lions of Voltron that you possess. Fail to comply and I will destroy your planet." There was no tick of hesitation before the image disappeared from the screen, leaving the room with a screaming silence that lasted just under a dobosh.

Then the reality of the situation set in, and chaos started.

"Oh, we're all going to die!"

"Alright, let's not panic-" Shiro started, before he was interrupted by a panicked Hunk.

"Not panic! Th-the scary purple alien cat thing is driving a battleship towards us! We only have four lio-"

"Three lions, get it right!" Pidge muttered under breath, making it a wonder how she was heard through Hunk's ramblings.

"yeah, three working lions, thanks Pidge. Three working lions and a 10,000-year-old castle. Real fighting odds." Hunk pointed out, and Lance agreed. Not that he didn't trust old Altean technology, but he didn't trust old Altean technology that hadn't been used in 10'000 decapheobs. The fact that they only had four Lions was also a problem, but it was more of a problem in the fact that having three that were working and one that wasn't on one easily targeted planet, rather than the fact that they had them at all. They each had Paladins, which was more than they had on Earth for decapheobs and they managed just fine.

Though, the circumstances were much, much different.

There's no one here trained enough to protect one dormant Lion, let alone one dormant and three very much awake Lions.

They couldn't stay here.

Lance put his hands in his pockets, feeling the small white crystal in his pocket and tried to let the quintessence wash over him, let it calm him down and make the panic go away.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't work that well.

"No. We've just got to figure out a plan of attack, and figure it out quickly." Shiro said strongly, looking from each of them.

"Well, I suggest we just jump through a wormhole and live to fight another day, preferably when we have all the Lions." Lance stated, using hand gestures demonstrating them going through said wormhole, leaving the white crystal to try and do its work through his jacket, not that it was working that well to begin with. Hunk nodded and agreed with what he said, starting to go on about snakes and worms and how to properly travel through the wormhole with the three Lions that they currently had.

If it meant that they got to their destination, preferably without any Galra there, then who was Lance to argue against the Lions forming worms and snakes instead of forming Voltron?

"We can't just abandon Arus! The Galra will keep destroying planets and taking prisoners until we stop them!" Pidge yelled, causing Hunk to step back from her and raise his hands in surrender.

"Okay, so we run and let him follow us, like we did back on Earth, and then we form the weird wormhole thing and get out of here."

"But he could destroy the planet and then come after us. Staying is our only option." Keith stated, arms crossed and facing away from the others, watching the screen in front of him, as if expecting it to turn back on the Galra Commander.

"Oh, finally joining in are you Keith?" Lance muttered, earning himself a turn in the head from Keith to look directly at him without blinking (which was so weird, did he need to ever blink?) and a death glare from Shiro. Lance only sighed before continuing.

"Well, it's not like we can stay here with a Galran Commander on our jzopakh!" Keith frowned at his use of Altean (which he shouldn't really know but quiznak it all at this point), before crossing his arms and looking away from him.

"We're staying."

"Leaving"

"Staying!"

"Snake!"

"Guys, stop." A single command from Shiro silenced the room. After a tick or so, Shiro nodded, and turned towards the Altean standing on the podium. "Princess Allura, these are your lions. You've dealt with threats like this before. You know more about what we're facing better than any of us combined. What do you think is the best course of action." Lance's eyes widened, before frowning.

Why was he asking for their advice? From the sound of it, they have had no experience with the war, and there was no evidence that they weren't going to send them to their doom or something. For all they knew, they were actually druids who just so happen to have a degree in acting.

Unlikely, but still an option at this point.

"I-I don't know." She whispered, and it seems that shock of the situation had finally settled in, even after her outburst earlier that day.

okay, so maybe they weren't spies, but that isn't to say that they should be trusted straight away. The other Altean stepped forward and talked about visiting her father, who was now an AI, leaving him and the rest of the humans behind in the control room in an awkward silence to go and speak to this weird AI, if it was an AI at all.

Oh god these people were just as trusting as Shiro.

If they survived after today, a very big if at this rate, he was to have to sit these people down and talk about not trusting alien species that they met five doboshes ago.

"So we're actually trusting these people?" Lance asked, breaking the silence of the room, his hands going back into his pockets, fiddling with the crystal again, using it as a focus point and to keep his anger in.

"And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?" Keith asked, staring at him with such intensity that, quite honestly, freaked him out. Did he not know how to blink?

"Well, we fly of into space, right? We've already has to run away from one hostile group, but it turns out that not only do they want to kill us, but take away these cool mystical Lions that we found, as if they haven't heard the phrase 'finders keepers' once in their lives. With that in mind, how likely is it that the next group of aliens we find is a nice alien species that wants to help us?" Lance pointed out, smiling slightly when he saw Hunk nod along with what he's said and Pidge fiddle with her glasses, while Keith just blinked and looked away towards Shiro, curious as to what he had to say for himself.

"Well, they haven't done anything to make us not trust them Lance, and they seemed to have more experience with-"

"More experience? Shiro, just because they know who we're are apparently fighting does not mean they have any experience with fighting at all! In fact, with that reaction, I doubt she's ever seen a battle, let alone fought in a war, as well as the fact that she apparently slept for 10'000 years, conveniently missing the entire war in the first place! Are you saying that that is even possible, even with all of this advance technology?" Lance exclaimed.

"Lance!" Shiro said loudly, but not to the point that he was shouting. "I know you're concerned, but trust me when I say that I've met many aliens in the past year who want to kill me. These Alteans are not one of them." Lance went silent at his words, looking away from the new Black Paladin, the tension in the room only growing at the reminder of what their new leader had been put through.

But, while Shiro did have a point, he didn't understand how bad it would be if they were in the hands of bad Alteans, rather than the rare good ones.

"Ah, Paladins, if you would like to follow me please! We have something to show you!" The elder Altean popped his head into the room, encouraging the others to follow him through the castle and to a lower level, where Allura was patiently waiting for them, dressed in something more appropriate for the situation.

"You five Paladins were brought here for a reason. The Lions of Voltron are meant to only be piloted by you and you alone. Thus, we must fight and keep fighting until we defeat Zarkon, and free the Known from his reign. We are the universe's only hopes." She stood tall and proud, in her battle gear that made her look more like a commander than the princess that she apparently was. Lance went to open his mouth to comment how she could always command him, but he stopped himself.

He was already on Shiro's bad side for saying the truth. Better not give him more reason to hate him.

She led them towards their armour, which they quickly got into, both Hunk and Pidge marvelled at when it fitted much better towards their size, which made Lance smile and wonder how they'd react to actual Altean technology rather than their clothing.

"The bayard is the traditional weapon of the paladins of Voltron. It takes a distinct shape for each Paladin, and can change depending on not only the situation you may find yourselves in but your very will, with enough training. Shiro, I'm afraid that your bayard was… Was lost with its last paladin." Lance frowned at her words.

But Zarkon was the last Black Paladin, and he would hardly call the Emperor of a universe wide Empire lost.

Why would she lie to them?

Frowning, he took the bayard out of the air, and gave out a small yelp of surprise at a small zap of quintessence from the circlar object, which then turned the round object into what looked like a sick ass gun, and his mind it quickly taken back to not two doboshes ago, when Allura mentioned it changed according to its Paladin, causing Lance to look around the room to see the rest of his new team admiring their weapon, with Keith having a sword, Hunk with a huge shoulder canon and Pidge-

"Aw, you have a cute little bayard." Lance cooed, and thought it was well worth the electric shock he received from her, leaving him gasping from a breath on the floor from his silent laughter and the aftershocks.

Time to go and collect a Lion.

x-x-x

"Uhh, Lance, how are we supposed to do this?" Hunk asked and Lance would have shrugged in reply if they could see each other, but it seems that they hadn't had the time to discover that function.

"I don't know, I've never done something like this before." Lance muttered, rolling his eyes at Blue's faint grumbling, hating the whole situation, making Lance frown, then sadly smile and pet one of the many panels inside of Blue's cockpit.

They were going to be okay.

They could do this.

"Attention, Galra Battleship. Do not fire, we're surrendering the Lions." Lance said clearly, his nerves tingling along his forearms and to the very tips of his fingers that clutched Blue like a life line.

God his family were gonna kill him when they find ou-

If.

If they find out.

If they ever see him ag-

"What is that thing!?" lance was torn from his thoughts at the sight of the tracker canon charging up a beam in front of them, getting ready to clutch its hands around their Lions and take them for their own.

Not in this lifetime.

"That's the signal to get out of here!" Lance screamed as he pushed for Blue to speed away, breathing in relief as he watched Hunk do the same, and they both started to dodge fighter ships as the Commander realised that he had been tricked, and so easily too. Smiling, Lance began to dance around them, laughing slightly at each explosion caused, at each laser hit its mark, sighing at Blue's muffled purring as she agreed with the actions that he took.

"Whoa-ho-ho! Go girl!" Lance screamed as he and his Lion began to take down fight after fighter after fighter, cheering loudly when Hunk managed to destroy their ion canon, and tension was able to leave his body when Hunk called out that Keith had been able to leave the ship with the Red Lion, smiling along with the other cheers of the paladins along the comm line.

Four down, one to go, and probably the easiest one to get out of all of them, none of them even having to get out of their own Lions except for Shiro, leaving the Green Lion along with other aliens that they seemed to have picked up, directing them over to Coran, alone, with Allura presumably still in the control room, who smiled and waved at them before taking them out of the hangers. Once they left, Lance could only lean back and grin like a mad man as all the Lion's roared with a ferocity that he had only heard of, deep and rumbling from their very quintessence, joining together with their siblings to wake up the eldest and their leader.

(They all had to wait for Shiro to wake up to find Voltron after all.)

x-x-x

It felt like hours later that he was walking into what Lance was now calling the lounge, that had a kitchen only down the hall and was obviously used for long term residents, after having finally formed Voltron despite how hard it seemed to be. Lance immediately jumped onto the floor couch, smiling when his bruises and the bruises on the bruises ached through the action, and grinned when he saw Keith do the same while the others sat down in a calmer fashion, landing not far from him, who gave a small smile in return, his quintessence seemingly pouring from his pores, similar to what the other Paladin's quintessence was doing, as if trying to reach out to the others and connect in the same way that forming Voltron gave them.

It was beautiful.

"You Paladins did wonderfully out there! It's a good thing that you know what your doing, as you're going to be doing that again and again!" Coran said as he walked in after Allura, who smiled thinly and walked over to the controls, inputting data that Lance could care less about.

"Wait what?!" Hunk shouted, making Pidge, who was leaning on his shoulder and nodding off, jump in surprise and blink in shock through her glasses. "We barely did it in the first place. How on Earth are we supposed to do it again?" Coran only smiled in return, before offering to show them to their rooms, spending the walk there going on about how the universe has changed since the last Paladins were here, talking about all the good changes that he's managed to find.

Nothing was raised over the bad.

When Lance got into his room, he couldn't help but rummage through the room, raiding through the clothes hung up in the closet, and wonder if trusting these Alteans would become the best thing or the worst thing that Voltron had ever done.