Allura cupped the juniberry flower in her hands, gazing at it under lights of various frequencies to see if it changed appearance in any way. Lotor had told her there was no hidden message, but Allura liked how the luminescence sparkled different colors under different frequencies, so she periodically ran the test again just to see it.

"Yes, yes, it's very pretty," Lance said with an annoyed look as he walked onto the bridge and sat down in his seat, propping his feet up on his diagnostics console. "I don't get why you like him more than me. I'm way better looking."

Allura rolled her eyes, tracing the edge of a petal with a reverent fingertip.

"Be that as it may," she said. "You have never personally handcrafted me my favorite flower and then given it to me on my birthday when everyone else forgot."

"A: You never told us it was your birthday, so it wasn't a question of forgetting. And B: What is it with girls and pretty doodads? I could be a jerk and still get all the girls if I had enough space money to buy them shiny things."

Allura turned off the light emitter and swiveled to face Lance. For the good of women everywhere, she couldn't let that stand.

"A: You are a jerk. And B: You've completely missed the point." She strode over to his chair, placed one hand on either side, and leaned menacingly over him. She may even have used her transformational abilities to loom a little larger and make her face a tiny bit sharper and shadowed. "Allow me to spell it out for you, sharp shooter. Women are people and prefer to be treated as such. In other words, the gift is immaterial compared with the time, effort, and thoughtfulness with which it was constructed. You could have all the money in the universe and still be hated by everyone alive. Just ask Zarkon."

For his part, Lance had retreated into his seat, huddling against the cushion with wide eyes and sweat dripping down his face.

"Um, what's going on here?" Pidge said as she walked in from the hall.

Allura pulled back, dropping the transformation with a satisfied smirk at Lance.

"Just giving our friend Lance a little relationship advice."

Pidge glanced over at the table where Allura had left the juniberry and adjusted her glasses. "Ah. I see what happened."

"Something happened?" Hunk said entering with a plate of fresh cookies.

Lance hopped out of his chair and snagged a cookie, his face already resuming its natural bored expression.

"Did you find anything new?" Pidge asked Allura, gesturing to the flower.

"No," she answered with a sigh. "I still feel like I'm missing something, though."

She walked back to the table, leaned against it, and picked up the flower. Pidge walked over to join her.

"Why didn't you ask him?"

To Pidge, the most exciting thing about the flower was that Lotor had made it from trans-reality ore. It killed her that Allura wouldn't ask about it. Allura wasn't even sure why she was reluctant to do so. She'd certainly laid bare all her other thoughts and feelings without reservation. She supposed, if she were being honest, that she was worried if she brought it up, he would regret the decision to give it to her, especially since she was the reason he had lost the rest of the comet in its entirety. She didn't like the idea of him regretting the gift, even for a moment, because, next to the castle, it was her most precious possession. It meant a lot to her that he'd given it to her.

"Earth to Allura. You still with us?"

"What? Oh, yes. Sorry."

"Were you just talking to you-know-who?" Pidge asked in a quieter voice.

"No," she said, wilting a little. "I haven't in a few qunitants. I was just staring off into space."

"Can't say I blame you. I still can't believe you saw him shirtless."

Allura blushed. She hadn't told Pidge everything about that interaction, but she couldn't resist sharing the first part.

"You know, it's too bad it doesn't have a fastener on one side. It would look really cool in your hair."

Allura turned it over to look for a likely place to attach a hair clip when, before her eyes, the petals shifted, and a clasp appeared on the body of the flower.

"What the…?" Pidge said. "It's engineering itself! Just like King Alfor said about the lions."

Allura quickly let down her hair, discarded the plain clip she'd used to hold it, then gathered the white cloud up again, and fastened it with the juniberry. It felt as weightless as the plain clip, despite being made of stone.

"That's pretty quiznaking cool, I gotta admit," Pidge said. "I wonder if it can turn into other things."

"Hey, we're getting a message from somebody in the Drxyl quadrant," Lance said, pointing at the blinking light on his dash.

"The Drxyl quadrant?" Pidge said. "There's not much there, and it's deep in the heart of Galra territory. Who would be calling us from there?"

"Telemarketers," Lance scoffed. "Should I send it to voicemail?"

"Could be Lotor," Hunk said.

"I was thinking the same," Allura agreed. "Put it up on screen."

"It's not encrypted," Lance said.

"Just do it, Lance."

Lance rolled his eyes as he tapped the message to open it.

"Acxa?" Allura said, confused, when the general's no-nonsense expression appeared on the screen.

"Princess Allura—"

"She actually answered?" Zethrid's voice came through from the background. "Ezor, you owe me 60 GAC."

"Shut up, both of you," Acxa hissed, aiming the order over her shoulder.

"I didn't say anything," Ezor said.

Allura hid her smile. It was nice to know she wasn't the only one with aggravating teammates.

"How can we help you, Acxa?" Allura said in her most congenial tone.

"Have you heard from Lotor?" she asked, worry behind her eyes.

Allura's blood ran instantly cold. "No. Not for a few quintants."

"He was supposed to meet us—"

Allura tuned her out, turning her thoughts inward.

"Lotor?" she projected. "Lotor, it is imperative that you respond."

Nothing.

Allura instantly pulled up the castle's map of the Drxyl quadrant. "What are your coordinates?" she asked Acxa.

"Why do you want to know?" Acxa asked sharply.

"He's not responding to my attempts to reach him telepathically. If we could retrace his steps, we might be able to locate him."

"He's not a set of lost keys, Allura," Lance said.

"Have you got a better idea?" she snapped at him.

"Actually, I think I might," said Pidge.

Which is how, three vargas later, Allura found herself standing in the castle's pilot circle, surrounded by the other paladins, Coran, and Acxa, with a map of the Galra empire displayed around her and Pidge's Galra tracker attached to her temple through an electrode.

"Brains run on frequencies just like transmission signals. If I can isolate the exact frequency Allura's brain is using to transmit signals to Lotor using the algorithms from the Galra tracker, and then feed that through the transimeter loop the teludav uses to calculate wormhole coordinates, I should be able to triangulate Lotor's location…more or less," said Pidge.

"What do you mean by 'more or less'?" Acxa demanded.

"It's not an exact science, seeing as how I'm literally making it up. I could be right on the nose, or a few lightyears off."

"A few lightyears?"

"It's our best shot at getting anywhere close without Zarkon just calling us up and telling us where he is."

"Let's do it," Allura said, loathe to waste any more time.

"If he's just gone on a mini break somewhere, he's going to be really embarrassed," Hunk said.

"He would never go off mission," Acxa said, though as she did, she cast a look at Allura and sounded somewhat less sure by the end of her statement.

"Everyone quiet. I need to concentrate." Then Allura pictured Lotor in her mind. From the crown of his ruthlessly tenacious head to the thump of his lion's heart to the strength of his dauntless limbs. Every detail, even the perfectly imperfect flaws. Then she reached outward until she felt him, and then brought him to her.

She had her eyes closed at first, so she didn't know she'd succeeded until she heard the gasps around her. Her eyes popped open, but she didn't see him until she looked down.

He was laying on a floor unconscious, his flight suit torn, glowing druid wounds crisscrossing the skin underneath. He was injured, maybe dying. Allura felt detached from reality, as if this were a show and she was merely a spectator who had wandered in late and had no context for the story.

But then he spoke, and somehow the Galra tracker, routed through the bridge's speakers, managed to project a synthetic, distorted version of his words for everyone to hear.

"I can feel you. Don't come for me. Tell Acxa. Mission first."

Allura stared at him, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe. There was no sound as he faded from view. She was frozen, crystallized. The edges of her sight narrowed to a pinpoint. She felt movement near her, a rush of air, and then someone slapped her hard across the face.

"—don't have time for this."

Allura blinked, coming back to the present. "What?" She reached a hand up to her cheek.

Acxa was glaring at her from inside the pilot circle.

"There is no need to get violent," Coran objected sternly.

"Congratulations," Acxa spat. "You've seen your first real casualty."

"I beg your pardon," Allura replied angrily. "My father, my entire world were casualties of this war long before you were even born."

"But this is the first casualty you've witnessed first hand. I've seen the shock it causes a hundred times. I've been through it myself. Until now, you've lived in a bloodless bubble, with sideshows and narrow victories. Lotor is the first person you've cared for that you saw fall with your own eyes. The only way to get past your first casualty is to accept it."

"You keep using the word 'casualty,'" Hunk said. "Doesn't casualty usually mean dead? 'Cause he didn't look that dead to me."

"He might as well be. If Haggar has realized the depths of his betrayal, it is a matter of doboshes before he is killed…or worse."

"Yeah, we don't exactly not rescue people," Lance said leaning cockily against the Galra tracker. "We aren't not rescuing him, right?"

"Pidge, did you get any coordinates?" Shiro asked.

"We got some coordinates," said Pidge. "The connection didn't last long, so I didn't have time to cross-check them."

"Where—" Allura started, but she was interrupted by a signal flashing on the castle's display.

"It's another call," Pidge said. "Wait…this can't be right."

"What?" Shiro asked, moving to read the display over Pidge's shoulder.

"It's from Zarkon's ship. It's a PSA."

"What's a PSA?" Acxa asked.

"It stands for 'public service announcement.' He couldn't call us directly, so he's spamming everyone with a communications satellite."

Shiro tapped the command to project the video feed. Honerva's hooded face appeared on every screen in the room.

"This message is for Allura of Altea. We wish to speak with you regarding a trade. By now, you must be aware of what we have to offer. In exchange, we wish a trifle. We are not asking for Voltron, nor any of the lions. What we ask will not harm any of your friends or require you to return any of the territories you stole from us. All we ask is for you, yourself, to surrender. You for him, even exchange. Rendevous at these coordinates within one varga or we will do something to Prince Lotor that he can never come back from."

Honerva's head faded into a star map with a point of space near the Hjule system highlighted.

"What did she mean 'something he can never come back from'?" Lance asked.

Acxa raised an eyebrow. "Don't you know what Haggar does to Galra commanders who fail Zarkon?"

"Uh, no. That's why I asked."

"She transforms them into destructive robotic monsters and sends them to…"

"Fight Voltron," Pidge finished, face pale.

"You really didn't know?" Acxa said.

Allura thought seeing him hurting and alone, refusing aid, was the worst she could ever feel. But the thought, the very idea, that she might have to kill him herself after he was turned into a mindless, slavish, deadly robeast was more than Allura could bear. She ripped the electrode off her temple by its wire and turned toward the exit that led to Blue.

"Wait, Allura. We should send a cloaked scouting party to scope it out, so we don't repeat the same mistake we made in the Zaleph system," Shiro said.

"That will take too long!" she shot back without stopping. "We must go while we know he is still alive."

"Allura, stop!" called Pidge. But Allura was nearly to the exit, and she wasn't asking for permission. "Wait!" Pidge called again as Allura reached for the door control.

Suddenly something wrapped around her ankles, pulling her legs out from under her. She fell heavily to the floor, all the breath whooshing out of her lungs. As she turned instinctively to engage her attacker, she saw Pidge's bayard fade back from its green whip form to its static handheld form.

"How dare you?" she seethed, getting to her feet.

"I thought you might be interested to know, Princess, that the coordinates Haggar gave us are not the same as the ones I pulled from the Galra tracker," she said, crossing her arms. "Or would you rather just go haring off in the wrong direction?"

o~o~o~o~o

Lotor, don't you dare give up on me. Stay yourself as long as you can. Remember the variables. I'm coming for you whether you like it or not.

Allura projected a steady litany of encouragement and occasional threats as she piloted Pidge's cloaked shuttle through open space toward the coordinates the Galra tracker had shown. Acxa was in a similar shuttle at the coordinates that Haggar had given with four of the five lions putting on a show nearby for Zarkon's benefit.

Honerva would of course figure out eventually that the Princess had no intention of showing up, but the goal was to give Allura or Acxa enough time to discover where Lotor was being held without Zarkon's entire fleet standing in the way.

For Allura's part, she wasn't sure Pidge's coordinates had any validity. She was floating in empty space without so much as an asteroid, a cloud of gas, or even a spec of dust to hide a ship or base that might or might not be holding Lotor.

"If I weren't cloaked, I'd be the only thing out here," she mumbled to herself.

Then it hit her.

"Quiznak!"

She hit the dash as she swore repeatedly. Pidge was going to lose her quiznaking mind.

"If you die, Lotor, it is all your fault!" she yelled, though she didn't project that.

She punched the dash to bring up a secure communication channel.

"Pidge!" she yelled. "How do I uncloak another ship that's cloaked?"

"Uh, you don't. Why are you asking that?"

"Lotor's trans-reality ship. The one that was supposedly destroyed during the Zaleph debacle. Could enough of it have survived that Zarkon could reverse engineer the cloaking device?"

"I don't know. I mean, I guess it's possible. They'd only need a fragment of the mainframe to… Oh, quiznak."

"What? What am I missing?" Lance broke in.

"We've been played," Hunk said.

"Worse," Shiro added. "Allura is sitting in a trap all by herself in a shuttle without any weapons."

"We're on our way to you, Princess!" Coran shouted from the castle. "I should have just enough of your energy stored to—"

But it was too late. Zarkon's massive ship and several full-complement fleets decloaked around Allura. The space was so thick with cruisers that it was a miracle Allura hadn't hit one accidentally. And as she watched, squadrons of fighters flew out from their hangars, shooting in strategic succession to flush her out.

Allura dodged one set of fighters only to immediately roll away from another set. It was the asteroid field only worse, because her shield was a joke and she had no guns to fend off attackers that were on collision courses with her without even knowing it themselves. Plus, much like the rebel ship she'd crashed on Sala, the shuttle wasn't meant to leap and dive and roll at the touch of her mind the way that Blue was.

Blue! she screamed in her mind. Blue, I need you!

And before she had even finished the thought, a lion-sized wormhole appeared in the sky, swallowing a few nearby fighters even as Blue sailed through, tearing a swath through the remaining fighters with the freeze ray. The lion must have left the moment Allura realized she was in danger. It might still be several doboshes before the rest of the lions could join her.

Allura aimed the shuttle directly at Blue, preparing for impact. Blue anticipated her and opened her powerful jaws, clamping down her teeth just behind the pilot's seat of the shuttle, effectively decloaking it.

Jarred but unharmed, Allura jumped out of the shuttle and scrambled into her seat in Blue's head.

"All right, Blue," she said. "Let's burn this witch to cinders."

Blue shook off the mangled shuttle even as Allura unleashed all her power, all her pent up rage, and zeroed in on the one thing she cared about right now more than any other: getting to Lotor.

At this thought, a brightly burning light, pink and bronze, appeared in one of the lower deck's in Zarkon's ship. Allura knew instinctively that it was her power showing her where she needed to go. She aimed Blue at the light, and as Blue turned about to follow her command, Allura felt her power build into a protective cocoon around the lion.

Her power consumed her from the inside out. It was a raging inferno of retribution that saw everything and destroyed all in her path. Fighters that swerved anywhere near Blue were instantly disintegrated with lightning bolts of power. Even Zarkon's shield was useless against the blasts. They tore through the ship's shield like electricity through paper.

I am coming for you, Allura projected. Only this time, she wasn't talking to Lotor, but to his mother. I am coming for you. And nothing will stand in my way.

Blue hit the deck below the bright light, punching through the hull and several hallways before sliding to a stop amidst the swath of destruction in their wake. Allura somehow appeared outside her lion without physically climbing out, encased in the same pink glow that surrounded Blue.

Sentries rushed her, but she flung them away with a wave of her hand. Her bayard formed itself into a staff, and she fought her way through a battalion of Galra soldiers, as Blue fought down-ship, guarding her back.

A druid appeared from a side corridor and knocked her off her feet with a bolt of dark magic. She rolled back up to standing, but in the process, lost her staff. During her attempt to recover the bayard, another druid appeared and knocked it too far out of reach, even as he forced her off her feet again with another bolt of magic.

Enraged, Allura ripped the juniberry from her hair. It transformed instantly into a weapon, its pistil lengthening into a curved blade, its stem into a well balanced staff. She twirled the weapon, adjusting to its heft even has she brought the blade down and through the second druid. The druid imploded in a ball of dark energy as he died, sending a shockwave through the corridor that knocked the other druid off his feet.

The juniberry blade glowed with reflected magic. Allura's hair floated around her as energy crackled through it. Part of her wondered what had happened to her helmet, but most of her didn't care. She seemed to be breathing fine without it, despite the hull breach behind her.

As she fought her way closer to the burning light that marked Lotor's location, she fed her rage with images of her father during the last battle for Altea, her friends suffering through one attack after another, the Balmera wounded and dying, the ruins of the Altean home world, and finally, Lotor, battered and close to death, begging her to leave him to his parents' nonexistent mercy.

Well, there would be no mercy, no quarter, from Allura either. Not this time. She felt a small measure of pity for the witch and the emperor. They had not intended what they became. But they made their choices, and Allura would be the force of justice that ended their empire.

When she reached Lotor's cell, he was strapped to an inclined table, hooked to machines, pale and unconscious and covered in electrical burns and gashes. After registering his presence, she took in the room's other occupants—no fewer than twelve druids in a circle around the edge of the room, and Honerva, head druid herself, come to meet her.

"Thank you, my dear, for so graciously accepting my invitation," said the witch. "My son is quite taken with you, you know. He won't stop talking about you, even in his sleep. Allura this, and Allura that. You've made quite the impression.

"And I can see why. The raw power that you wield is impressive. Not unheard-of, but adequate. With some training, you might be a competent addition to my druid circle."

"Don't be ridiculous," Allura scoffed. "You're not fooling me."

She jabbed at Honerva with the juniberry blade, but Honerva avoided the strike by teleporting to the left just in time. Allura had expected the feint, though, and used her momentum to swing the blade in a circle and through a druid standing along the room's rim. The druid, not expecting the attack, had no magical defense spooled and waiting, so he collapsed and died as any Galra would, in a heap of blood and bone, rather than imploding.

Honerva's expression turned sour. "Your manners could use some work as well, girl."

"I am a princess of Altea and a paladin of Voltron," she said as she whirled to face the witch again. "And I will take back what is mine."

"Over my dead body," said the witch.

"As you wish." Allura raised the blade to strike.

"Now!" the witch screamed.

Suddenly, Allura was hit with streams of the sucking, draining force that she remembered from being trapped in the komar web.

She screamed, dropping to a knee and leaning against the juniberry staff for support. Blue echoed her scream a few decks below, responding to her paladin's distress. But Blue would never make it in time to save her. She had to defeat the komar on her own.

Her heart quailed at the thought. She had barely survived it last time. Lotor had rescued her in Zaleph. How could she defeat it alone?

But then a thought caught her memory. A discussion she'd had with Lotor afterward about how he'd deactivated the net. What had Lotor told her? That it had been weakest at its attachment points? But there were no generators in the room.

The druids. They were channeling the komar's energy. That's why they were standing in a circle around her. She would have to stop them to stop the komar. But how could she defeat all twelve at once? Even at full power, she would struggle to defeat that many magic wielders on her own.

She cast desperately around in her mind for a tool she could use, something that wasn't dependent on her power to wield it. At least not completely.

Then the juniberry staff morphed again, growing a thorn that pierced the skin of her hand. She stared at the drop of blood as her life-forced drained away. She felt as if all color were draining from her body, all music, all joy. But in one last flash of insight, she realized what the juniberry was trying to tell her.

She bowed her head, both hands circling the juniberry staff, the trans-reality juniberry staff. She concentrated all her remaining energy on the image of what she needed the weapon to do. Then, at the last second, when static began coating her vision and cloth muffled her ears and her breathing grew increasingly labored, she let go, praying it was enough.

She fell to the floor, head ringing, but even as her body hit the cold metal, she felt the life-draining force dissipating, and then vanishing entirely.

"Nooooo!" the witch screamed, dropping to her knees, a barb the color of juniberry blooms on feast day bursting from chest. Her claw-like hand pulled it free, and it clanked to the floor covered in her blood as she teleported away from the room.

The other druids had crumpled to the floor as well, each with a juniberry barb protruding from his forehead, neck, or chest. Beyond exhausted and with little energy left, she crawled across the floor to the table Lotor was strapped to. She undid the clasps with shaky hands, sparks of her power zapping things occasionally, like snaps of static electricity.

"I'm going to get you out of here," she said to his still unconscious body.

Once free of the shackles, he curled forward over Allura's shoulder. But being weak as a newborn klotenseal, she collapsed under his weight and couldn't carry him. She waited until Blue showed up to move again. Then as she pulled Lotor across the floor toward the lion, whose massive head took up the entire corridor and the deck above besides, she saw something sparkling off to the right. Leaving Lotor for a moment to investigate, she discovered the juniberry in its original form waiting for her to scoop it up.

"Form hair clip," she croaked hoarsely. It obliged, and she pulled her hair haphazardly out of her face and fastened it. Feeling marginally more together, she crawled back to Lotor and began the long tugging process again.

When she finally got herself and Lotor back into Blue, both her helmet and bayard were present and accounted for. She plunked her helmet back on and winced immediately at the cacophony of noise erupting through the communicators.

"Six fighters on your six, Lance!"

"I'll cover you, Hunk. Pulverize that cruiser!"

Allura cleared her throat, almost too exhausted to speak.

"I've got Lotor," she said. "Let's get the quiznak out of here."

"Woohoo!" Lance crowed. "It's about time!"

"What did you do to the lower half of Zarkon's ship?" Hunk asked in an awed tone. "It's, like, completely gone."

"Debrief later," she said. "Lotor's injured."

"And it's not like we're not struggling to cut through all these fighters," Shiro said as the black lion blasted another two fighters into dust. "Coran, warm up the teludav. Pidge, cut us a path back to the castle."

"On it," Pidge said, just as Coran said, "It's all heated up and ready to go!"

Allura leaned back in her seat and let Blue take over, trusting the lion to get them safely back home. Then she rolled to the side and reached for Lotor, whom she'd dumped unceremoniously face down on the floor next to her chair. She curled her hand under his bicep and squeezed, more for her own reassurance than for his.

"Almost there, my heart," she said, and then she passed out.