PIDGE-
We followed Coran out of the lounge, Keith and Shiro mummering about something right behind Coran, then Hunk and Lance talking about something right behind the red and black paladins. I was behind the latter pair, and Annalise behind me. I looked back at her to see her looking down at the ground with her arms crossed, still following close behind.
I have so many questions for her. Like did she know where my father could be located specifically? Did she ever go against my brother in the arena? I mean she went against Shiro. Did she know what specifically happens if you lose and you're not the daughter of Zarkon. Did she even know if they're even alive?
I looked back at her and decided that something must have her thinking hard since she seems to be glaring at the floor now. Whatever the princess said in that weird language, maybe her own home language, hit a nerve for Annalise.
I slow down my walking pace until I'm at her side, then keep up with her, "So," I start, and she looks up from the floor to me.
"Hey," she responds before she looks forward.
"Um, that was a weird language You and the princess were talking in, what was it?" I asked.
"It's Altean," she responds without even looking at me.
"That's what I thought. How did you know the language?" I asked as I put my hands behind my back.
"I learned different languages when I studied, and I wanted to know the language of my heritage, so one of the dead languages I learned was Altean," she shrugged.
"So you know English from Earth,"
"Yes, but I know way more than just English," she took a breath before she began, "On one of my 'missions' you could say, I was looking for the blue lion, and once I found it on Earth, I left it, but I stayed for like about another 11 months before I left, and I already knew about twenty languages, but I learned I think fifteen more, from my time in what you guys called Marines, then I learned another ten before I got capture to pass time, plus other things," she explained.
My jaw just dropped, and I know my eyes popped out, I was surprised I even kept walking. She knew about 45 languages, and I only knew two, and she was still only eighteen. I gulped loudly before I asked another question.
"How many languages you know from space,"
"Um," she closed her eyes for a second before she opened them again, and spoke, "When I was eight I was fluent in five languages plus common, I knew the basics of five modern languages, and I knew the basics of three dead languages, but I learned a lot more throughout my years, so I'm not entirely sure," she said.
"Wow, that's cool, I only know two languages from Earth, and I thought that was good," I replied as I looked down at the ground.
"That's pretty good, I only that many languages because of my studies and how I was being tested on how much knowledge I could hold considering my heritage," she gave another shrug, but it made me think what type of childhood she had if she was being tested at the age of eight.
We turned another hall, and I could see a big door that seemed to be all white except for some neon highlights of blue. Coran then turned around as he was twisting his moustache.
"Well, this is the training deck. Now I'm going to tell you what we will be training today," he straightens his back a little as he put his hands behind his back. "As paladins, you have to bond with your lions to make Voltron, but you don't just bond with your lions, you bond with each other, you make a telepathic link with each other," he states.
Wait. What? We are going to have a telepathic bond with each other. What does that even mean? Would we know each other thoughts? Will they figure out-
"Don't worry Pidge," I hear Annalise try to reassure me, "They can only get inside your head if you don't have your walls up," she shrugs like it's no big deal.
"Walls?" I asked as I looked up to her.
She looked down at me and spoke, "Yeah, they are the mental walls in your mind that blocks people from entering, but it all depends on how good they are built, but they do break at your weakest moments depending on how they are structured, so like a nightmare, or almost death experience," she explains before she looks back up.
I nod but wonder what she had to go through to know about this type of stuff with the mind.
"I had to explain the same thing to your brother, and you got the same face he did, but you don't have to worry about anything that happened," she attempted to reassure me, but it just made me ask another question.
"Did you know m-my brother well," I asked quietly.
"Knew him well enough to help him with his injuries and may have helped him not get taken by druids," she said quietly.
"We will be doing some bonding exercises today to strengthen your bond with your lion, and with each other," Coran continues, "The paladin code demands that you put your team's life above your own, so the first exercise goes along with that," Coran states, "To form Voltron, you must trust each other, so the-"
"We better not do trust falls, and if we do, I will not be partnered up with mullet," Lance states as he crosses his arms.
"What's wrong with my hair?" Keith asks as crosses his own arms.
"You stole that hair style from the 80's man, it's a disgrace to humanity," Lance finishes as he looks back at Coran, who just clears his throat and continues.
"As I was saying, Voltron is built on a bond of trust with one another, so you will have an exercise that makes you trust your teammate, but we will not be doing what you humans called 'trust falls'," he did quotation marks with his hands at the end, "the third exercise is mainly bonding with your lion, you must become one with your lion,"
"No problem, me and blue are best buds," Lance says with a wave of his hand.
"Well then you should have no problem with that training exercise," Coran says, "Then the next exercise is something to calm down, should hopefully be relaxing enough, you will be mind melding with each other," he says with a smile, but I could see the others look confused and scared, mostly Hunk on the latter one.
I look up to Annalise and see she looks normal. A little too normal. I see her arms over her chest tighten a little for a second before she dropped her hands to her sides. I looked back at Coran as he turned around and made a gesture with his hand for us to follow, and we did.
"Okay, I want all of you to get into a circle facing outwards, I'll be up there observing your progress from up there," he points toward what looks like another deck above us with a way for him to look down on us while we train.
He then left the room to go up there. I look up to Shiro, and once he catches my eye, he just gives me a small smile before he claps his hands together, "Well, you heard him, let's get in a circle," and with that command we did what we were told to do. I ended up being next to Annalise and Lance, while next to Annalise was Keith, who Shiro was next to, then Hunk was behind me next to Lance.
"Two, two, one two," Coran clears his throat before he continues, "Okay listen up guys, this exercise is the one I told you that will help you be able to enforce the paladin code, a swarm of drones are about to attack, you must protect your teammates," he says as a swarm of drones come falling from the ceiling.
I form a shield, following Keith's example when I hear Hunk, "wait, wait, wait, what's going on- whoa," Hunk gasps as his shield forms, "Did you guys get one of these?" he asked as he shook the arm with the shield.
Both Shiro and Lance forms a shield, then Annalise makes a purple shield as well from her suit, and stands guard, "Get ready," Shiro warns, and that's when the drones start to fire.
LANCE-
"Get ready," and that was all the warning we got before the swarm of drones start to fire at us. I quickly put my shield to block a shot aiming for my head. I hear a yelp from Hunk, then a shout from Pidge before I see from the corner of my eye that he falls into a hole that did not seem there, then a shot hits Hunk, and he dives into the hole with a shout.
Shiro, Keith, Annalise, and I huddle closer to where our backs were closer together when Coran shouts out, "Protect your teammates or there will be no one to protect you," I try to protect my teammates harder when Coran states that it was time to increase speed.
I hear Keith and Shiro grunt from impact, and I nearly lose my footing, luckily Annalise was behind me so I could lean more on her. She didn't make a sound, only keeping up with the blasts. Wow.
"You keeping up over there, Keith? I think Annalise is beating you easily," I say as I block Shiro from a blast.
"Just focus on keeping me safe, and I'm pretty sure she's beating all of us," he comments, but before I could respond, the drones fire at me, and I lift my foot instead of blocking it, and I hear Keith get hit.
I turn my head a little to see Keith fall, but before he completely disappears into the floor, I see a black hand quickly grabs his arm and lifts him up before the door closes. I quickly turn back around to see two shots aimed for Shiro's head, and tried to block, but I then get hit, and I see Shiro try to grab me, but he wasn't fast enough before I fell through the floor. I landed hard on my but on the floor.
"Ow," I murmur as I get up.
"Nice for you to join us," I hear Pidge say as he turns from the screen to look at me before he grins and looks back at the screen.
I turn to my right to see Hunk standing up from his position on the floor to give my shoulder a squeeze before he joins Pidge near the screen. I just follow. I stand by Pidge as I see the remaining three people block the blasts of the droids. They were incredible. They kept moving as they blocked each other from the droid's attack.
Then they seem to speed up, and because of that, I see Shiro slip and let's a shot get through his defenses, and Keith goes down, this time Annalise can't get him in time as she protects Shiro, but a shot from the side hits the black paladin in the side, and he goes down. I hear Shiro hit the floor as Keith comes over to us with his arms crossed, but I don't pay attention to him, but on the screen, on Annalise.
She loses her shield and now takes out a blade from her lower back, and I see it transform into a sword. She easily hits away the blasts with just a flick of her wrist. Then she attacks the droids. The first one she jumps on top of the one aiming for her head, and she slams the blade into the device as it falls, but before it crashes, she jumps off and rolls underneath the next one, and attacks it underneath.
It falls, but she catches it and throws it at the next one, making it crash, leaving seven left. The closest one tries to shoot her, but all she does is just does a jump round kick to the bot making it fall, she punches the next one, slamming it to the one next to it. The remaining four get closer to her, and all she does is just smirk before she jumps up, and the droids aim at her, but then she somehow disappears right before they aim and shoot.
Once the droids shoot, they shoot each other and they all crash onto the training room's floor. I look frantically in the room to where she is, then I see movement right underneath the observing glass, and right there is Annalise doing some light stretching.
My jaw just drops as the words, "What the cheese?" fumble out of my mouth.
Once she's done stretching, she puts her long, brown hair up in a bun before Coran starts talking in the intercoms.
"That was not supposed to happen," he states.
"I know, I know, but I was bored and I wanted some fun," she shrugs as she crosses her arms, "What's the next exercise, isn't it the one that we need to trust each other?" she asks with a tilt of her head.
"She was bored?" I hear Hunk questioned, "I was terrified, and I only just recently got my heartbeat back to normal," Hunk gasps. I just nod.
"Maybe aliens have different meaning of fun than humans do?" I hear Pidge ask.
"Coran didn't look like what she did was in his realm of 'fun'" I state as I see Coran start to talk to Annalise about the next exercise.
"Maybe it's a galra thing?" Hunk suggested, but I just shrugged my shoulders.
"We don't have any other galra to test this theory?" I hear Pidge question himself.
"I mean like I guess I could see the fun in it?" I hear Keith say behind me, but I just shake my head.
"Mullet, you honestly will do anything that seems dangerous, you are the definition of dare devil," I simply say with a wave of my hand in his direction.
"Well paladins," I hear Coran say through the speakers, "the next exercise needs to load since it's been about 10,000 years so you could come back up now," I hear his cheerily voice command.
I look back to the screen to see Annalise sitting down as she is stretching. I just shrug my shoulders to see where we exit, but the other paladins are already climbing up a ladder back to the training room, so I fall in line behind Hunk.
SHIRO-
I was the first one to climb the ladder, and as soon as I got my feet under me, I saw Annalise lying on the ground on her back throwing a knife over her head.
"Should you not be doing that?" I asked as I heard Keith coming up behind me.
She just shrugged her shoulders as she flipped her knife again, and caught the handle before it hit her face, "I do a lot of things I shouldn't do," she yawned as she did it again.
The knife was the same one she used to cut down the bots. I turn back around to see Pidge come up from the ladder. For some reason he looks really familiar, but I just can't remember. Turn around to see Annalise standing back up from her position on the floor as Coran starts to speak.
"Okay paladins, we are going to start doing the exercise that involves trust between your teammates," he strokes his mustache, "So I will make you guys into partners, one of you will be instructing the other around a maze"
I nod my head, and I see everyone else nod as well.
"Well then, hm," he puts his hands behind his back before he starts to speak, "Hunk and Pidge will work together, Lance and Keith will be partners, and I think Annalise and Shiro would also be partners," he nodded his head.
I looked over to Annalise and saw her look at me with a shrug of her shoulders. I looked over to the rest of the paladins and saw that Lance and Keith were glaring at each other, and saw Pidge giving Hunk the side eye. I just shook my head as I looked over to Coran who seems to be eyeing the group as well. With a nod of his head, he continued.
"We can start with Shiro and Annalise, then Hunk and Pidge, then we can finish off with Keith and Lance," the older man said as he nodded his head again to what he instructed, "You guys can choose who will be in command, and who will be in the maze, the rest of you will follow me to the observant deck as Shiro and Annalise chose their positions," and with that he and others followed him out the training deck.
I just looked over to Annalise and saw her roll her shoulders.
"I can be down here in the maze and you can give me instructions," she responds with a tilt of her head.
I just blinked at her because it seemed like she was someone who wanted to be in command because nobody knew anything. She just shrugged her shoulders, "You need practice in being able to lead when the stakes are high, this is just a little step into that direction," she spoke like she had experience in this type of thing.
"Okay, if you're fine with it," I made it out that if she wanted to back out, she could, but she just nodded her head as she crossed her arms, and with that I left the deck and followed the voices of the paladins to the observant deck to look down at Annalise.
"Okay Annalise, you will need to activate your mask so you can hear Shiro give you the instructions. Now activating it is a tricky th-" He stopped abruptly.
I looked out the window to see she now had a black mask with teel markings on it. Well, I guess it was easier to activate the mask than what Coran made it out to be.
"Well then, um, l-let's begin then," Coran said, and a map was shown in front of me, "you will need to lead Annalise out of the maze," he explained.
I just nodded my head as I looked at the map. There was a purple dot that was indicating where Annalise was in the maze. From the looks of it, she seems to be near the edge of it, but there was no easy way to get out though.
"Okay Annalise, take two steps to the left," she turns to her left and takes the two steps, "Okay, take three steps to your right, and from there take five steps forward," I command as she follows the instructions perfectly.
We continue this routine, me calling out orders as she followed them perfectly. She hasn't gotten shocked once, thankfully. It takes about ten minutes before we complete the maze. I hear the team behind us just hum as we switch places with Pidge taking my position and Hunk taking Annalise's position.
They start out okay, but somewhere along the line, Hunk started getting shocked. I don't know if it was because he was panicking and running into the walls, or if Pidge was still upset over him reading her journal and is purposefully running him into the walls. They take about twenty-eight minutes to pass the maze.
"Oh man, I'm going to feel that in the morning," Hunk exclaimed once Lance was by his side.
The blue paladin patted his shoulder, "It's okay man, hopefully mullet up there doesn't make me start walking into the walls," and with that, he shook his shoulders and got in position as Hunk left the room.
"Okay," and with that, Keith started directing Lance throughout the maze…
Well, he tried to at least. From what I could see, Lance wasn't following Keith's instructions and kept running into walls. Five minutes of this happening, Lance just threw his hands up in defeat.
"We're switching places right now," and they didn't continue the maze as Coran just sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"We can just move to the next training exercise," Coran said in his usual upbeat attitude as he turned around to us with a clap of his hands.
"What are we doing next?" Annalise asks.
"The paladins will be bonding with their lions. Annalise you will be in the control room with me monitoring the paladins," and with a nod of his head, he turned back around to turn off the maze's walls and told Lance what we will be doing next.
We walked down from the deck, down toward the training deck, and from there walked to the hangers where the lions were boarded. Coran wished them good luck as he took Annalise and left them.
"Okay guys let's go do what we have to do, maybe I can try to get us a break afterwards," and after that we departed to our lions' hangers.
I go to Black's and walk up to the large lion as her particle barrier powered down, and she lowered her head so I could get in. I walk up to her jaw as I give it a quick pat and head to the cockpit where I see the screen turn on with the normal purple color and sit on the chair. I grab onto the controls before I check into the paladins.
"You're guys ready?" I asked the team.
I got many confirmations, and with those, we left the castle hangers and flew into the Arusian sky.