Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays! Enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

"You summoned me, Lord High Elder?" Dearil questioned, careful to keep emotion out of his voice. In all honesty, getting summoned by the Elders was terrifying, getting summoned by the High Elder himself was even worse. The only time the Elders actually summoned one of the higher-ups was when something seriously bad was happening, there hadn't been a summons in years and the last time the High Elder wasn't seen at all.

The Elders were the oldest living creatures on Thrakzian, they are also the only surviving members of the old Thrakzian before the invasion nearly 400 years ago.

Now they lived deep underground of the main HQ, their location was so secret that even some of their own people did not know where to find them. Despite their vast knowledge, the Elders rarely revealed what they knew, choosing to remain silent unless in times of extreme crisis.

"They have returned." The High Elder's voice shook with fear, as he looked at the current leader of the Warriors of Thrakzian with regret.

They? Dearil thought as his head shot up from his kneeling position to stare disbelievingly at the High Elder, No, it can't be. He can't possibly mean them!

"Yes, them." His voice had stabilized slightly, but the regret was still present in his eyes, regret that he had to speak the dreaded words, regret that this generation which had not known the horror of the invasion was now going to witness it firsthand.

"Are you sure?! How could they be here?!" Dearil's breathing was growing ragged as more questioned swirled inside his head. How could they miss this!

"Let me finish. I am positive that they have returned, I sense their kind, but only faintly. I'd imagine that it's one or two scouts." Dearil took several breaths to calm himself again after receiving the slightly better news.

"Five creatures have recently crashed onto the planets surface, I currently have teams deployed, so far only one of us has been spotted. Are all of them invaders?" The current leader was back to his calm, analytical self, it was a good thing too; if they were all going to survive this, he couldn't break now.

"No, they could be working with others, but there is only two Galra at the most."

Galra? Right, that's what the invading race was called. No one even says their name anymore out of fear, I'd imagine that some of the younger ones have even forgotten their name by now.

"Who was seen?" The High Elders voice cut through his thoughts.

"Omisha was, my lord, but they believe that they killed him."

"Hmm, even with his believed death him being spotted changes things."

"What would you have us do, Lord High Elder?"

"Kill them."

"Yes, my lor-"

"Wait." A new voice entered from a private side entrance that Dearil did not use himself, despite not recognizing the voice he knew it had to be one of the Elders simply from the bold interruption and the location.

"What do you mean by 'wait'?" The first Elder questioned to the new Elder sounding almost annoyed.

"Exactly what I said. Wait. We have no information on these current unwelcomed residents, Dearil said he has teams deployed already, so wait for their reports before making such a drastic and important decision." A woman appeared at the High Elders side before sinking down to sit next to him.

"You and you're ways. Do you feel nothing for those deployed? They will be killed by the Galra, or worse." Countered the male Elder.

"And what's wrong with my ways? There are five unknowns, and you said yourself that only two of them could possibly be Galra. Now I don't dispute that claim, after all your sensing abilities are much better than my own, Brother, but trust me when I say that something doesn't feel right."

"How so?"

"Ah, curious now, are we? You could always sense people and locations, Brother, but I could always sense emotions, and what I sense definitely isn't Galra. Like I said, I don't think you're wrong, but this Galra isn't like the ones of old. We should do some recon first, then decide what to do; if they prove themselves to be dangerous then, by all means, kill them without hesitation; however, if they aren't, then forget about them." The last bit was aimed at Dearil as an order in her eyes, but being unable to do so with her elder brother present, it was a mere suggestion in her voice.

"Fine, do what you want. I have other matters to attend to." With that the High Elder rose, and with unexpected grace, flowed from the room through the door that the woman had entered through.

"What 'other matters' you sit on your ass all day, don't you?" She muttered under her breath loud enough for her brother to hear.

One might think that their almost childish banter would be out of character for people referred to as "Elders" except in Thrakzian's reality, they were younger than middle aged. The High Elder was the oldest being nearly 450 years old himself while his sister was only 350 years of age, but for Thrakzians, they were still considered to be young due to the average lifespan of their kind being 1,200 years. Some considered them to be cursed due to their longevity, but they never saw it that way, they were always thankful for their long life; cherishing their opportunity to continue to watch over their children, help their beloved world, pass on knowledge, tell stories, train to be better, anything really.

Of course, that was before the Galra invaded 400 years ago to experiment on their people and steal their planets resources, the Warriors of Thrakzian were overwhelmed by the sheer number of ships and soldiers alike, but they continued to fight for years, refusing to give up. They had managed to survive in hiding for even longer despite being forced to let up the fight on the surface, and once the Galra left they immediately began to scavenge and rebuild.

"Well you heard 'em." Once again, Dearil was torn out of his wondering mind by someone else's voice, "Dearil, gather all of the information that you can and act accordingly. Return to us if required, if not; operate at your own discretion, under the orders of the Elders."

"Yes, Lady Elder." Dearil rose, turned on his heel, and swiftly made his way back to the upper levels.

Persefoni and Morana were waiting for him on the first of the upper levels, clearly impatient.

"Well?! What are they like?!" Morana fired off the second Dearil came into view, more interested in what the mysterious Elders were like than what they actually said.

"What happened? What did they want? Did they actually speak to you?" Persefoni, on the other hand, didn't really care what they were like or what they looked like, he cared far more about why they chose to stay down there away from everyone and what they said.

"Call the Elites and the veteran Captains, I'll explain it then." Dearil pushed past them, ignoring them, he knew that there would be thousands of questions and he didn't feel like repeating himself, so he might as well do it when everyone was gathered to minimize hearing the same questions each time he spoke to someone.


Hunk was snoring in the Yellow Lion's cockpit seat when an alarm started blaring inside his lion, "What-what just happened? Are we under attack?!" He yelled falling from his seat.

"No wait! It was me! I was working on the scanner and...uh...long story short I might have accidently set off an alarm." Pidge rubbed the back of her head while looking back and forth between Hunk and Shiro who had both previously been sleeping. Despite having wide eyes, once Shiro realized that it was a false alarm, he sighed heavily before rolling over and going back to sleep.

"That was a terrible apology for giving me a FREAKING HEART ATTACK PIDGE!" Hunk yelled while holding his chest, that was almost more terrifying than getting attacked by food goo in the Castle of Lions. Almost. He was still mentally scarred from that.

"Yeah, sorry about that, but hey, now that your awake, you wanna help me out with this one part?" Pidge gave an adorable smile as she held out the scanning chip in her hand.

"No. Absolutely not." He replied grumpily, but snatched the chip anyways glaring at it as if it was going to make the alarm blare again.


Speaking of alarms...

Four different alarms were blaring inside the Castle of Lions as Coran started to transfer power around inside the ship again.

"You'd think that they'd put a mute button somewhere on this thing." Coran yelled over the alarms while attempting to cover both ears, at the same time with one arm, while his remaining hand worked on stopping the alarms.

"Other than right now, what use would a muted alarm hold?" Allura hollered covering both of her ears while the mice huddled against various parts of her to try to block the intruding sound.

"Got it!" Coran shouted as he slammed his hand down onto what shall now be referred to as the "holy button."

"Oh thank goodness, I've heard enough alarms recently." Allura sighed as she cautiously lowered her hands, worried that the penetrating sound would start up again if she moved too quickly.

"We really should label stuff like this. Oh well, I'm sure I'll remember to do it later. Sorry about that, Princess, but now that we're close to the planet I'm transferring some of the power from the engines to the weapons and shield systems. It'll make us slower, but we'll at least be able to defend ourselves."

"Excellent, but keep as much power as we can to the engines. We must reach the planet's surface and get the Paladins soon, I'm starting to lose track of how long it's been."

"Don't you worry Allura! The Castle has never failed any Altean!" Coran was back to his extravagant and cheerful self, so at least something good came of the alarms.

"Where's travel music when you need it?" Lance muttered, slumped down in his chair as far as he could be while still being able to pilot the Blue Lion.

"Don't even think about singing." Keith growled from above him while he hunched over the back of the pilot's chair.

"I wasn't, but now that you've said that!" Lance took a very dramatic deep breath, but before any noise of any kind could come out, Keith had whipped his hand out to cover his mouth, so Lance instead started giggling like a madman behind his hand.

"Can you just focus on flying, or well I guess, driving Blue, please?"

"Fine, just ruin all of my fun why don't you."

"How far until we reach the Red Lion?"

"Oh look, you do care about something!" Lance got punched in the arm for that one, "Red should be coming into view in a second, we're pretty close."

"Good. Remember recon only."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it mom."

"Oh come on! That's Shiro, and we all know it."

"No, he's more of a dad than a mom and we all know that."

"Eh, true."

True to Lance's words, the Red Lion had started to come into view, putting an end to what was, obviously, a very important conversation. Keith sighed in relief when he saw his lion again, it had been a while since he had seen it, much less been in it, and if he hadn't quite literally just told Lance that this was recon only, he would have been flying out of Blue to get back to Red.

"Well she looks okay, or at least as okay as possible given the circumstances." Lance said, sounding relieved himself, but he did seem to be keeping a careful eye on Keith to make sure he didn't go running off.

"It's true that Red looks to be exactly the same as when I first left."

"That makes it sound like there should be a 'but' at the end of that sentence. What's up?"

"To be fair, I didn't look at Red too hard before I left, I was more concerned with getting to the nearest person. The 'but' is, there are others here, we have proof of that, so why would they go through all of this trouble to get to us, but then leave the lions? Aren't they more important than we are?"

Lance thought about that for a moment, it was true, when they encountered the...well whatever it was, it did seem to be more interested in them than in the lions. Why was that?

"That's more of a Pidge question, you know."

"She has enough on her plate right now. Come on, let's get moving to Black next, we've still got a ways to go before we can meet up with everyone. You get us moving and I'll inform Shiro."

"Sounds like a plan." The Blue Lion's scanners were a little fuzzy, but they knew the general location of the famous Black Lion, once they got closer the scanners would clear up once again.

"Shiro, you hear me?" Keith said from a step behind Lance.

"Yeah I'm here. What's up?" If Keith was honest, Shiro sounded exhausted, he slowly started to remember that Shiro was the most hurt out of all of them and that he was probably second closely followed by Lance, then Pidge with minor stuff, then lastly, Hunk who wasn't hurt at all. Great, thought Keith, the two people who are supposed to be the leaders are the one's hurt the most.

"We're leaving Red now, everything looks as okay as it can get. How are you doing?"

"Hunk and Pidge are working on the scanner now, I think that they've almost got it completed."

"Good, but Shiro how are you, yourself, doing? You're hurt the most."

"I woke up a little bit ago from a nap, I'm fine, Keith."

Keith was ready to jump through the coms and strangle Shiro himself from that answer, but he knew that Shiro was trying to focus on the task at hand. They really needed to get off of this planet. The fact that Shiro was with both Pidge and Hunk was enough to force him to relax, getting worked up was the worst thing to do in a situation like this.

Shiro didn't bother to ask how he was doing, he knew Keith better than anyone else, and he knew from his voice that he felt like crap, but he's okay right now. Same as Shiro felt, and he knew that he would get the same, frustrating response. It was irritating to no end, but there really wasn't anything more that they could do for each other until they could get back to the Castle of Lions. So both men left it at that, both knowing that the other was hurt, but excepting that there was nothing to do except silently remind each other to just keep moving forward.


"They're stopping." Yamajit informed from a couple of steps behind Methuselah as he sensed the change of pace in the Blue One through his Marking.

"Alright, let's get closer and see what's going on from there. Keep me informed." Methuselah signaled to the rest of the squad members behind them, increasing their pace, he knew where they were and he was fairly certain that the Red One was in this area, but they needed to double check.

He was quickly proven correct as both the recently stopped Beast and the Red One came into view in front of them. Now the question was, what are they going to do? Were they going to exit the Beast that they were in and go into this new one, or were they planning something else? Once they figured that out, what should their move be? They were under orders to be recon only, but at the same time, Methuselah was curious as to why Omisha would break protocol and have contact with them.

Stopping his squad at what he thought was a safe distance away, he signaled to have Yamajit watch them while he started analyzing the information that they had. They knew pretty much nothing about these Beasts, they seemed to be robotic and sentient at the same time, and if you tried to work out how that was possible it would make your head spin. Second, those inside seemed to be very similar to them when they were in their humanoid form, but other than that, they knew nothing about them, their armor, or what kind of weapons they possessed.

The grey-haired Thrakzian groaned out loud and put his head into his hands, his whole life was stealth based, that was his area of expertise; he was used to having all of the information about his targets before he encountered them, now they had nothing, and he was expected to somehow figure it all out in the field.

"Sir, they're moving again."

"Already?" Methuselah snapped his head up and, sure enough, the Blue One was once again on the move, "I thought they would have stayed longer. Well time to get your steps in, let's go."

As everyone shot up and started to follow the Blue One again, a very unusual thing happened- a red blinking light and beeping sound suddenly started coming from Methuselah's leather-bound left wrist. Murmurs started to break out throughout their group, only the Elites had that particular communication technology, and it was only used in emergencies.

"Ah hell! Yamajit, you still getting a clear reading?" The Elite looked back over his shoulder to the slightly nervous Team Captain.

"Yes sir I am."

"Good, from now on, you're leading. Keep everyone further back out of sight and use your Marking to track them. I'll be right back." At that, Methuselah broke off from the group, he remained in sight, but he was out of earshot of everyone, trying to avoid a panic. They had sent off a messenger with a report not that long ago and she should have arrived by now, so why would they use the wrist commlink instead of just sending her back? Something big had to have happened. His mind drifted to Kalabhiti for a moment, had something happened to him?

"Methuselah here. Good to go." He waited impatiently as the rest of the Elites started checking in, after everyone had checked in and indicated that they were able to listen, then they would be told what this was about.


"I don't see a way in." Kalayavan informed Kalabhiti as he returned from circling around the Yellow One.

"I don't see a good way either. Why'd we get the boring one? We can't do recon unless we either get inside there or unless they move, and we can't get in there to do that or to collect the blood of the Yellow One for our Transformations." Kalabhiti was beyond irritated, what the hell did Command expect them to do! There's no way that it can be honestly said that they didn't know this was going to happen, and yet here they are, sitting on their asses with nothing to do except twiddle their thumps and count the sand around them.

"What are your orders, sir?" Kalayavan was at his wits end as well, but everyone knew that there was only one thing to do.

"What do you think? We sit on our asses until the situation changes or until we get new orders." Or until we go crazy. His mind helpfully added, but he wisely decided not to voice that thought.

For the Thrakzian Warriors, orders were absolute, anything that could be thought of doing would always be better than disobeying orders, regardless of what it was. It might sound cruel, but that was what had kept them alive all this time, after all, it was Command's job to know everything even if those in the field didn't; that's why you always just shut up and follow orders and everyone would live to see tomorrow.

A sudden, invasive beeping nearly scared his soul out of his body because Kalabhiti had his head propped on his left arm and his wrist happened to be right next to his ear. Once the ringing in his head had started to settle down, the flashing red light immediately put him on alert; something's seriously wrong.

"Dammit you've got to be kidding me! Kalayavan, hold position and take over. I'll be back." He shot up and raced off to an area devoid of his men, the majority of the Elites who weren't on a mission had already checked in at this point. He started to think of the other squads who were deployed, Don't tell me that stealth idiot got in over his head and caused this, his fears over said 'stealth idiot' were put down though when he heard him check in, but his mind was still racing in its attempt to figure out why they had called out the 'big guns' instead of using a messenger, that's why they had them after all.

"Kalabhiti. What happened?"

This is my longest chapter to date! I know it has some short sections, but I hope that the fact that we got everyone in and the length make up for that. I have to say it again; I am absolutely floored by the response that 'Stranded' has gotten and I want to sincerely thank everyone who has liked, commented, and read it! It really, truly does mean the world to me. So, once again, thank you!

Also, quick note, I am working on another Voltron story as well, the information that I can currently share is-

A friend of mine did help me with the groundwork and finalizing the story line, so it is a collab, but it is written by me.

It's set in a modern-day time era.

Lance and Adam are vigilantes while Keith and Shiro are cops.

I haven't named it yet, so if you have an idea- I'm all ears.

I don't have a release date quite yet, but I will keep y'all posted.

Sorry about the long notes, but thank you for taking the time to read them! Chapter 10 is in progress. See you next time!

~Kiera540