**I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender (duh)
Mari was sweating all over within an hour of training. Practicing against the holographic dummy system, working with her staff and honing her hand-to-hand combat skills, she punched, jabbed, and leapt through the air in a torrent of restless nerves. It had been a while since she'd pushed herself so hard. When her lower back began to ache, she forced herself to stop, her breath coming in short pants.
"Acxa's taught you a few things."
She turned to see Ezor standing by the entrance, watching her while Jia and Maggie and the gaggle of Galra cadets messed with the training system to generate more dummies for them to use.
"She had a lot to teach over the last couple years," Mari shrugged, swiping an arm across her damp forehead. "I'm not as nimble as her though. Can't quite make the daring flips and leaps you two can."
"We've been training since we were kids. And you're just a human. You'll always be leagues behind us," Ezor lightly scoffed, but her smirk was more teasing than it was mocking as she inched closer.
"Well, I can still practice, can't I?" Mari frowned at her, absentmindedly rubbing the sore spot on her back. "My mobility still needs some work."
Ezor hummed, but didn't respond. Her gaze trailed down to the scar beneath Mari's fingers, the site of the spinal implant just barely visible now that she was only wearing her cropped workout top. Realizing where she was staring, Mari scowled and snatched up her discarded jacket, tugging it on and hiding the mark from sight. Ezor's eye flicked back up to her, its curious light fading.
"Will the paladins really be fine with me being here?" she asked after a moment, tentative and small.
"Yes." Mari clicked her staff and it retracted with a soft SHWEEN. "No one minds that you're here."
"No one else here knows what I did to their beloved heroes," Ezor countered, watching as Maggie and half of the kids started to punch the pixel shards out of one dummy while Jia carefully instructed the others on how and where to hit. "Except for you, the Utearen, and the clone."
"He's not a clone. He's the original," Mari corrected her. "…In the clone's body."
"Whatever. It's basically the same thing," Ezor huffed. "I almost tortured them the last time we met. They're bound to remember that."
Mari sighed and turned to face her. "Okay, look. You've done a lot of bad things, there's no doubt about that," she began. "But clinging onto hate gets us nowhere. We can't expect to bring about change that way. You know that. And the paladins know that. They won't hurt you, so you don't have to be scared. They gave Acxa a second chance. I'm sure they'll do the same for you."
Ezor tsked. "I'm not scared."
Stifling the urge to roll her eyes, Mari hung her staff at her side. "Sure." She moved to the side of the room, giving the youngsters free range of the deck, and sat down against the wall, sipping from one of the water bottles she had brought with her. Ezor hesitated before following after her.
"Did you really see the Black Paladin kill Sendak?" she asked, plopping down next to the human. "Like, he's dead and gone, for sure?"
"I swear he is," Mari promised. "We burned his corpse to ash after the battle on Earth."
Ezor let out a soft sigh of relief. "Good."
She paused, observing as Penibrae punched a dummy in the face, reducing it to holographic pieces. The young girl threw her a satisfied grin, and Ezor tried for an encouraging smile. It didn't last long though as she drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest.
"The runts say they lost over half their original unit to him before I arrived on Thoh," she said, her voice quiet and full of bitterness. "I helped to free him. In a way, it's my fault they ended up this way."
"You were used by Honerva back then. It was Sendak's own decision to choose violence and destruction," Mari reminded her, her tone even but sure. She took another long swig of water before continuing, "Despite all of your past mistakes, you're doing right by them now. You helped them to survive. You showed them that their lives mean something, that they're more than just half-breeds of the Empire. They'll live to see brighter days. And now that they're here, they'll get to witness firsthand that the Galra can change and we can all get along peacefully."
Ezor stared at her long and hard through a bright and wide eye. "I can't tell if you're too forgiving, naive, or just plain stupid," she said after a moment, and Mari chuckled.
"I'm just speaking from experience and telling you as I see it."
"Ha. You're just too kind," Ezor drawled, but it didn't sound like an insult. She stretched out her legs and leaned back on her hands. "And honest. The Galra would've squashed that righteous attitude by now if you were a soldier."
Mari cast her a wry smirk. "Well, it's a good thing we're not living in an oppressive empire anymore, now isn't it?" she mused. "There's always time to change."
A small smile tugged at Ezor's lips and she didn't argue with her. They watched the cadets run and jump around the room, little hellions as they took out one holographic opponent after the other. Several minutes passed before they tired themselves out, their bodies still not quite up to snuff. The training system shut off and they regrouped with Maggie and Jia before approaching Ezor and Mari.
"Hey, hey. The kiddos want to see the bridge," Maggie said, her arm swinging back and forth as Beani practically hung off it.
"It's the only place we haven't seen yet," Penibrae explained.
"We wanna see the captain use his arm to turn the ship into a giant robot!" one of the younger kids demanded, and the others nodded vigorously in agreement.
"It's busy on the bridge. I can give you a brief tour, but I can't make him do that," Mari relented, pushing herself off the floor. "Big Bro Atlas mode is reserved for battle emergencies."
The young cadets frowned in disappointment, but she didn't let their puppy-dog looks sway her. Rules were rules, after all. There was no need to give the rest of the crew heart attacks with an unprompted Atlas transformation. The most she could offer was a real quick peek into the brain of the ship.
After washing off and donning her uniform, Mari took them up to the bridge deck. Curtis and Scarlett were quietly working away at their station while Iverson held down the fort. Veronica, returned from the shooting range, was already sitting at her controls with Acxa standing behind her chair. The kids huddled near the captain's vacant platform, gawking at everything they could lay their eyes on, while Ezor, Maggie, and Jia made sure none of them wandered deeper into the room.
"Okay guys, this is it," Maggie said. "Don't touch anything. Look only."
"Wow!"
"So cool!"
"The view's so pretty!" Beani gushed, her eyes sparking as she stared at the Baltuf Nebula outside the window.
"Can I fly it?" Zucksar asked, his attention zeroing in on the helm station up front. "I know how."
"No way. You can't even reach the pedals, shorty," Ezor said, patting his head.
He pouted, moving to cover his horns. "I can!"
"This ship doesn't have pedals," Scarlett huffed, briefly turning away from her screens to consider the group. "Why'd you bring the brats here?"
"They just wanted to check out the bridge. We're not doing anything else at the moment anyway, so I thought why not," Mari shrugged. "Where's Takashi? Have the paladins checked-in yet?"
"He's with Coran and Commander Holt in the engine room," Curtis provided.
"We were just about to reach out to the paladins again," Veronica chimed in.
The young cadets wilted. "Aww…no big robot," Penibrae muttered.
The tiniest of smiles graced Acxa's features as she regarded the kids. Maggie raised an eyebrow at her, glancing between her and the beaming Veronica.
"You look happier," she noted, unable to hide her grin. "What happened between you two?"
"We came to an understanding at the firing range," Acxa stated nonchalantly. "I've decided I can tolerate her constant advances of companionship."
"Aww. Thanks…I think," Veronica chuckled, throwing her a pleased look. Her displays beeped, reeling in her attention. "Oh! We finally reached them. Paladins, what's your ETA?"
"Apologies for the delay. We experienced a glitch in navigation," Keith replied. "I will have to get back to you."
Veronica hesitated. He sounded odd. Far too formal and flat and unconcerned considering they were taking so long to get here.
"Everything okay out there, Keith?" she asked. "Do you need help from the Atlas?"
"No assistance required, thank you," he said, almost a little too quickly. "Lance will figure it out."
Veronica snorted. "Right, Lance, the navigation genius."
"Affirmative," Keith deadpanned without a shadow of a doubt before the comms went silent.
Veronica's smile disappeared. She exchanged a worried look with Acxa before turning to Mari. "Does he…ever joke like that?"
Mari frowned, the dread beginning to pool in her stomach. "Never."
Veronica's eyes widened, her own fears escalating. "How long have they been delayed?"
"They should have arrived when we did," Iverson admitted, his face grim.
A wave of unease settled over the bridge, and Acxa's scowl deepened. "Something doesn't seem right," she murmured, just as Scarlett slammed her fists against her control panel, making everyone jump.
"Quiznaking mother of – We've been hacked!" she shouted.
"What?" Multiple heads snapped to her, alarmed. Scarlett refused to look at any of them, her gaze locked on her screens where several sections of code had been highlighted in an angry red.
"I knew something felt off!" she hissed through gritted teeth, furiously typing away. "I've been digging into our logging and communications systems and there's some sort of stealth jamming bug buried deep in here. It's been blocking our outgoing calls and feeding us false reports from the paladins."
"For how long?" Iverson barked, incredulous.
"We're not sure. It looks like their frequency has been pinging off a decoy for a while," Curtis admitted, moving just as quickly to bring up the messages that had been previously hindered by the bug. "I'm intercepting it now."
Instantly, a disconcerting mess of them popped up on their main displays. The messages had been from hours ago, all of them playing back the frantic screams of the paladins at once.
"Atlas!"
"This is an emergency!"
"Atlas, come in!"
"We're under attack!"
"It was a trap!"
Iverson nearly punched his fist through his controls as he activated the ship-wide comms. "We need all hands on deck immediately!"
"Can you pinpoint the lions' location?" Mari asked, her heart racing with her rising panic.
"I'm tracing the signal now," Curtis affirmed, and the image of a volcanic planet shrouded in dense gray clouds appeared on his screens. "Got it! They're on a planet called Fuigo."
"It's an hour from our current location," Veronica reported, her fingers flying. "Inputting the coordinates now."
The Atlas' engines promptly hummed to life. They peeled away from the Baltuf Nebula, moving as fast as they could towards the paladins and whatever trouble awaited them on Fuigo.
"Scarlett, are there any more of those bugs hiding in our systems?" Mari asked.
"There was only the one. I've alerted the rest of the engineering team and I'm sending out a modified kill protocol to wipe out any more there may be, just in case," she replied.
Iverson huffed, sitting back in his seat. "I can't believe they didn't notice it earlier," he ground out, understandably frustrated.
"It integrated almost perfectly within our systems. It was so advanced, I'm not surprised they didn't," Scarlett said, the red alerts on her displays beginning to disappear. She glanced at Mari, grimacing. "The only reason I found it was because it had a similar design pattern to the virus I made to disable Zarkon's central command ship. This bug showed significant traces of the Olkari programming style."
Ezor went rigid. "Are you saying an Olkari did this?" she asked, an unmistakable terror creeping into her voice.
Scarlett nodded. "Most likely."
"Oh no." Ezor swallowed thickly, her brow furrowing. "...I think I know who's behind this."
The cadets shifted uneasily, their smiles of admiration from mere moments ago long gone. They glanced back and forth between the human officers and Ezor, sensing their gradually rising distress. Beani's feathers stood on end and Zucksar hugged himself, squirming uncomfortably in the tense atmosphere.
"What's going on?" he mumbled, just loud enough to break the heavy silence.
"Are the paladins in trouble?" Penibrae piped up, tugging on her ears.
"Don't worry, they'll be fine. Our capable crew is on the case," Jia said, calm and collected as always, even in such emergency situations. She gestured towards the bridge door. "We have to let them work now. Let's go back to the training deck, okay?"
The young cadets hesitated before nodding and doing as she suggested. With Jia and Maggie guiding them, they slipped out of the room, leaving Ezor to work with the bridge crew.
Acxa's gaze was intense on her old comrade, alert and all business. "Who did this, Ezor?" she pressed, encouraging her to elaborate.
Ezor crossed her arms, steadying herself. "...Before I left for Thoh, an Olkari man joined our crew. He helped us upgrade our ships and weapons, developed new tech for us, all no questions asked," she slowly explained, her face darkening as she recalled. "He was dead set on helping us get revenge against Voltron. He was a genius. And a creep."
An Olkari with a grudge against Voltron. Maybe he was just a no-good rogue who wanted to stir up trouble for fun. Or maybe he wanted revenge for the destruction of his home planet. Maybe this was his own way of unleashing his unbridled anger towards Voltorn and the paladins who hadn't been there to help his people. Mari hated to admit she understood the sentiment to a degree. But it was clear that whatever was going on was a carefully planned and calculated attack by him and the rest of Ezor's old pirate crewmates.
"If he's attacking the Atlas now, then that means…" Acxa's voice trailed off, her eyes widening as the pieces clicked into place.
"It's Zethrid," Ezor said tightly, unable to conceal her increasing anxiety. "She's found the paladins."
**Check out my tumblr to see some cool art: pufftheninja