I apologize for the long wait for this chapter, but my computer had a problem and deleted over half of my recently written work on the majority of my recently open works which led to a lot of rewrites on my documents. I am happy to say that the problem has been fixed and all except for one document has been rewritten. Now, please enjoy the chapter!
It was close to one o'clock in the morning when sleep deprivation finally claimed all of the Paladins huddled together in the Yellow Lion. Yellow had the most room, and after being separated like they had been, they all refused to be apart now.
It was three in the morning when Shiro woke up, darkness surrounded him both inside the Lion and out, the only sounds to be heard were the soft snores coming from the dog-pile positions the remaining Paladins were in. He slowly sat up, allowing his eyes to adjust, his mind wondered as they did. They were almost completely together again. Despite being apart, he had the peace of mind to know that all of the current Paladins of Voltron were alive and mostly well, but there was more to their little group. His mind now was consumed with worry for their remaining two members, his worry drowned out all of his other thoughts to the point that he could hardly think. They hadn't heard a single peep from Allura, Coran, or the Castle since this whole thing started. The Paladins had been far apart from each other, but had managed to remain in contact and not a single one of them was apart for long, even Hunk had been able to send them a message, but Allura, Coran, the Castle- radio silence from the whole lot of them!
"Shiro!" Pidge whisper yelled at the man, startling him out of his own head so badly that she almost jumped out of her skin at the speed of Shiro's neck spinning to look in the direction of her voice.
"Why are you up? What do you need?"
"You got in your own head again, didn't you?" Pidge eyed him closely, he was breathing too hard for someone who just recently woke up, his pupils were slightly dilated, and his hands had appeared to be on the verge of shaking just a moment ago.
"I'm fine Pidge, don't worry about it. Just get some sleep, okay? We have a lot to do in the morning." Shiro started to lay back down, forcing his body to relax once more. He remained in that position for ten minutes, sleep almost claiming him when he heard her soft voice.
"Shiro?" Pidge was lying to his right with her head down close to his feet, she was the furthest away from the others, but she gave off the vibe that she definitely didn't want them to hear this.
"Yeah?" Shiro answered mimicking her volume level.
"Are we going to get off of this planet?" Shiro squeezed his eyes shut, he knew that question was going to be asked at some point, despite being together, their situation had not improved. He wasn't really sure what he should say to her, the harsh reality that a group of teenagers were now forced to faced didn't seem very fair in the grand scheme of things, he knew that he needed to encourage her, and motivate her, but it's a hard thing to do when so many doubts plagued his own mind- still he would try.
"Of course we will. Now that we are together this planet doesn't stand a chance. I know this is scary, but we will pull through, as fellow Paladins, and as friends we will find a way."
"But everything I've tried doesn't work! The technology just doesn't exist!" Pidge sounded like she was on the verge of tears now, the pressure she put herself under to find a way for them off of this planet was starting to shine through.
"Then we'll invent new technology. We've employed crazy plans before, plans that no one in their right mind would ever try, even if they had the ability to come up with them in the first place. Besides if five mechanical lions can transform into what's basically a giant robot, I'm pretty sure they can get us off this planet, banged up or not."
"Yeah." Pidge didn't sound convinced, but she was relieved enough to roll over and try to sleep again; at least for a little longer until the sun angrily started to seep into the Yellow Lions cockpit, causing a wide variety of groans from the pile of bodies stacked practically on top of each other in different places then they had been just a few hours earlier.
"It can't possibly be true, right?" Kalabhiti mumbled from his spot leaning up against Methuselah. The majority of their group was asleep at this point, only a few remained awake to watch the Yellow and Blue One, those awake paid no mind to the two Elites slightly further away from the rest of the group. It was common knowledge that most Elites struggled to shut their minds up enough to be able to sleep while they were out in the field, and they knew that giving them a little bit of privacy would help them. Less common knowledge was the bad insomnia that Kalabhiti had, he struggled to sleep on a normal day, but now, it was pretty much hopeless. Methuselah allowed him to readjust his position, but when he tried to sit up to look him in the eyes, the grey haired man held him in place.
"Stop moving. You've gotta sleep at least a couple of hours or you're gonna crash tomorrow." Methuselah was reclining against a rock while Kalabhiti had his back to his chest with his head leaned back onto his shoulder.
"You didn't answer me."
"And I'm not going to. Can't sleep if you're talking."
"Meth, I'm serious." He smacked him in the leg then, it was true that sometimes being next to someone helped him sleep, but right now his mind was plagued with too many unwanted thoughts for him to possibly rest.
"I don't know what to tell ya, Greenie." Methuselah sighed, resigning himself to the one conversation he had been trying to avoid.
"Of all things, out of everything that could have happened, Galra? The Galra have returned." The fear in his voice was starting to show now. Kalabhiti was a few years younger than the man he was using as a pillow, but he still knew their history just as well.
"Hey, the Galra haven't returned. Command said it was just one person out of all of them." His comfort attempt didn't seem to work.
"One is all it takes, Meth! One is a scout, and where there's a scout, an army is sure to follow! Look at us! We won't survive that again!" There it was, the paralyzing fear that anything left living on Thrakzian still held. The Galra Empire had devastated the Universe, destroying so many lives and planets, the fact that even a few of them survived and that part of their culture and history was able to be passed on, was nothing short of a miracle.
"Look at me." Methuselah hooked his hand under the other man's chin and forced him to look into his activated eyes. Golden eyes pierced through the dark night sky and bore into his own deactivated eyes. "The Galra believe all of us are dead, and we have a plan for if they return. We can handle one scout. Besides, none of this technology, their appearance, anything even remotely lines up with what we know about the Galra. The Elders even admitted that something was off with what they were Sensing, this supposed scout is most likely a mixed-blood reject who has joined up with this group, alright?"
"I'm going to hold you to that."
"You know I have, and never will lie to you." The stealth agent released his chin and deactivated his eyes then.
"I know, that's why I'm going to believe the nonsense you just spewed."
"Good, now sleep. If you sleep soon, you can get three hours in before the sun rises." Kalabhiti nodded, and shifted against him once before closing his eyes. Methuselah secured his arm around his counter parts chest to keep him from falling, while he absentmindedly massaged the scar on his left shoulder to help lure him to sleep. Having already slept earlier, nothing stopped Methuselah's mind from racing as he began to fully process their situation and attempted to formulate a plan for every possible outcome.
"We have to land." Allura spoke firmly. It was the one thing they had been trying to avoid. On the negative side- landing meant that they would be more vulnerable to an attack or an infiltration attempt; but, on the positive side, it would allow them to transfer their minimal power reserves to their scanner and comms making finding the Paladins all the more likely. If the area was deemed safe, they could even start their full system reboot which would restore their power to normal levels.
"I don't like the idea Princess, but I'm going to have to agree that it is our best course of action given our situation." Coran regretfully stated.
"How long will the reboot take?"
"About 50 doboshes from start to finish."
"Alright, we need to quickly gauge our surroundings and then start that reboot. We have no idea what state the Lions or the Paladins are in. It would be best if they could come to us while we reboot, but if they can't move, we'll need to reboot before we have enough power to go and get them. However, when we reboot it'll leave us completely defenseless."
"What do you want to do?"
Allura racked her brain, there just had to be a solution to their current predicament. Being defenseless on an unknown, potentially hostile alien planet was clearly not ideal, but at the same time, if they didn't reboot they wouldn't be able to assist the Paladins or be able to take off from the planet's surface. If they didn't land, the dwindling power that they had couldn't possibly spread between the healing pods, engines, scanners, comms, and defenses. She quickly realize that there was no ideal situation; she could only pick and choose the lesser of multiple evils.
She checked her screens again, they weren't picking up any movement or life forms in their immediate surroundings, and the planet was bare for as far as the eye could see in the rising sun. If they landed it didn't seem that they would be in danger, and if they cut power to the engines they would certainly be able to delay the reboot for a lot longer than if they remained in the air. She had swapped the power between the short range scanners and comms multiple times, but the Lions and Paladins remained out of range for them both. Landing once again held a lot of appeal. Landing would allow them to broaden their search, if they could just contact or even locate one of them it would definitely help them figure out what to do by eliminating some of the variables.
Allura knew what she needed to do, but she was afraid to do it. What if she was wrong? If even one thing went wrong it could spell the end for Voltron, she couldn't bear the thought of the Universe being on its own once again. No, she couldn't think like that. This was the best, and quite frankly, the only plan that they had, it would have to work. Out of all of the hardships they had endured, she refused to believe that this would be how they went down, but if they really did go down on this planet, then she would ensure that they went down fighting and had exhausted every little, microscopic thing they could possibly do.
"Coran, prepare to land."
"Looks like they're going to land after all, Sir." Nirasha stated calmly to their Leader. She had been watching the absolute colossal of a ship for a while now, it had appeared to hesitate for a few minutes before it began its descent to the planet's surface.
"How could that thing possibly be called a ship?! It's massive! Almost ridiculously so. It's really more of a giant flying castle than a ship." Thanatos exclaimed as he looked at the biggest thing he had ever seen in his entire life.
"And that's why we didn't want to even attempt to use the Ion Cannon on that thing." Nirasha muttered loud enough for him to hear.
"Alright, can it. Ernesh?" Dearil growled out, he was in no mood for their infamous bickering.
"Yes, Sir?" Ernesh replied immediately. Dearil liked him, he was the second in command of Nirasha's squad and was extremely reliable himself. He trained himself and others every chance that he got, and he had a very curious mind by nature so he was constantly wanting to learn new things whether it was combat related, their own history, or whatever random fact the person talking to him felt like sharing. Due to all of this, it made him incredibly diverse and allowed him to perform any number of jobs with the majority of the agents under Dearil's command. Right now though, he was monitoring the few operating systems that they had to watch the ship.
"Are they in range to contact?"
"No, Sir. They'll be out of range until they actually land on the planet, that is, unless someone wants to go stand under that mammoth of a ship instead of remaining at a presumably safe distance."
"Contact? Since when was that the plan?" Morana questioned now.
"We don't possess the firepower to take that ship down, and we have no way of telling how many people are on board of that thing. Our best option is to hail them, and see what information we can get out of them before making our move." Dearil informed his present group.
"And what about our agents in the field?"
"Leave them to Persefoni. Figuring out everything we can about our new opponent takes priority."
The chorus of "Yes, Sir!" that followed didn't sound very enthusiastic, but he chose to blame that on the early morning hours then because of anything else.
"Ernesh?"
"Ma'am?" He really didn't like the look Nirasha had on her face. He knew that something was seriously bothering his Captain right now.
"Are the deployed teams in range of the comms?"
"No, Ma'am, they're not at the moment, but both team Captains have the emergency long range comms with them if something happens. Why? What's eatin' at ya?"
"First, Omisha goes rogue and stabs his target before flat out attacking them which put all of them on alert. Second, we're more spread apart than we normally are. Third, the Elders are Sensing Galra. And now finally, we're going to hail an enemy ship which we haven't done in, I can't even remember how long."
"I thought you didn't believe in what the Elders were Sensing?"
"There's a difference in not believing and being skeptical, Ernesh."
"I guess, but Dearil-Leader has led us well so far. These guys are by far the most unusual people to end up on our planet. We're already dealing with a lot of unknown variables, so it's probably a good thing that we're operating slightly outside of our usual protocols."
"Let's hope so."
Thank you once again for your patience. On a side note, I do have both a twitter and an Instagram that I post my chapter updates and other writing related things on, so please check those out if you are interested.
Twitter- Kiera540write
Instagram- kiera540writing
Chapter 15 is coming up. See you next time!
~Kiera540