DISCLAIMER: I have taken scenes and dialogue from Voltron: Legendary Defender and added in dialogue from my OC. Some of it purely from my imagination; some is from the show. I do not own scenes or dialogue from the show. Credit for that goes to the producers, actors, screenwriters, and anyone else involved in the making of Voltron.
Welcome back! Sorry for the wait, but I finally finished Chapter 2, which is definitely more closely aligned with dialogue/events from the show. Hopefully I'll have Chapter 3 out by the end of the week. Enjoy and please comment!
From the Ground Up
I snap to attention as red and yellow explode across the night sky. The bombs have been detonated and my window to get in the pod is closing. In a flash, I'm on my speeder and rocketing towards the escape pod. I creep up beside another speeder, but it has a home built and altered look rather than the uniformed build of military transportation. Odd, but there are more important matters to attend to.
Jumping off, I unsheathe my blades, ready to take out guards at the door. But they already lie on the ground, doors wide open. Faster, faster, I run down the hall, terrified of who could have known the pod crashed here, of who could know what was inside. I reach the deck of the pod, where it seems the Earthlings had set up to experiment. I see him, strapped to a table, unconscious, and for a brief moment, all I feel is relief. Then I notice the boy bending over him.
He draws back, noticing me. Before he can call out, my fist connects to his jaw and he flies backward and slumps against the wall. Hopefully, that will give me enough time to take Shiro and get out. I bend over the sleeping face of the one person I've trusted in over ten centuries. Without warning, the darkness hits me like a brick, and I grab his hand, anchoring me down, giving me strength, the one ally I've got in this impossible fight. I imagine everything good in Shiro, all his light, running from his hand to mine and spreading throughout my body, and slowly the darkness retreats. I've beat it back for now.
I pick up my knife to begin cutting his arms free of the table he's been strapped to when I'm body slammed. I skid back a few feet as I assume a crouched position, hand clutching my blade. I pick my head up and launch myself at my attacker, who was obviously not anticipating my skill. I tackle him and pin him to the ground. Locking my knees around his body, I rip off the mask he wears on the bottom half of his face. He has wide, dark almond-shaped eyes and long black hair that starts at the base of his neck and ends in bangs on his forehead. While he struggles to break my grip, he doesn't attempt any basic maneuvers even a Galra child would know. He's a rebel, a pariah, a loner. This is no trained assassin. Just as I reach this conclusion, a voice behind me teases,
"Keith's got a girlfriend." Without taking my gaze off Keith, I remove my other knife from its scabbard around my hips and throw it over my shoulder in the direction of the voice. An indignant "Hey!" lets me know I've hit my mark. I reach out with my mind to try to sense their intentions. I feel no anger, no threatening emotions. Since they seem to know and tease Keith, who is not a threat, I don't think they are either, but it can't hurt to err on the side of caution. I rest my remaining knife across my forearm and level it against Keith's neck, pressing into his trachea.
"Why have you come here? What do you want?" I demand to know. He looks up at me, almond eyes hard. Grudgingly, I feel some respect for him, remaining calm and brave in unknown territory.
"I came to get Shiro." I press harder, intensely curious. Father always said it would get me killed one day.
"How do you know Shiro?" He drops his eyes and swallows hard.
"He was my mentor before he went on the Kerberos mission." Kerberos. We found Shiro and two other Earthlings there a few years ago. All three were taken prisoner.
"Hate to break it to you guys, but if we don't get out of here soon, the Garrison's going to catch us, and then no one will be free!" comes a slightly whiny voice from behind me. I turn my head a few inches toward the voice, not totally taking my attention off Keith. The moment I do, he will unseat me. I see a dark-skinned boy in jeans and a ski jacket, hood pinned to the wall by my knife. A large boy with a round face with an orange bandanna in his hair, wearing a yellow jacket. Beside him stands a short girl with khaki shorts, a green shirt, glasses, and a backpack securely nestled on both shoulders. I look back at Keith, evaluating my options. With their help, I can get to a safe place and clear my head before I leave to continue my mission. But I sense if I join them, I will never leave them.
I stand and allow Keith to rise. I turn to the boy in the ski jacket. I raise my arm and flick my hand towards me, and my blade removes itself from the wall and jacket and returns to my outstretched palm. I incline my head towards the boy I had pinned to the wall.
"Sorry, but I didn't know if you were a threat that needed to be neutralized." He grins at me and says,
"Nah, I don't take it personally when a pretty girl tries to pin me down." He winks at me. "The name's Lance." I'm confused. Why would anybody be friendly to a stranger, let alone a stranger who pinned them to a wall with a knife? Humans are weirder than I imagined.
"Anyway, I'm rescuing Shiro, not Keith. He's always trying to one-up me!" I look back at Keith, who's staring at Lance blankly. Lance, a bit hurt, says, "Remember, at the Garrison? Keith and Lance, neck and neck?" Recognition blooms on Keith's face.
"Oh, I remember you," he says with a bit of contempt. "You're that cargo pilot."
"Well, I'm fighter class now thanks to you washing out." That seems to hit a nerve with Keith, so he says to me,
"He needs to be neutralized-but he's not a threat," to hide his hurt.
"Hey!" whines Lance. "You need to be neutralized!" Tired of their squabbling, I cut the straps around Shiro's arms and legs and place him on my back. I stand up, taking his full weight on my back. Luckily, my training forced me to carry loads much heavier than him. I turn back to Keith and Lance, who stare at me open-mouthed. I guess normal Earthlings are weaker than the Galra. I lead them out the doors and load Shiro onto the back of my speeder.
"Whoa! Cool ride!" says the yellow one.
"It's so much more technologically advanced than anything we have at the Garrison. How did you get it? Did you build it?" asks the small girl.
"I'm sorry, but we don't have time to answer questions. Keith, you take Lance and the big man on your speeder. The green one and I will take Shiro. You," I say, gesturing to the small girl, "Hold Shiro up and make sure he doesn't fall off." I see the Garrison cars coming back, and they're getting close. "Let's move!" Without further comment, I hop in my speeder as the green one scrambles in and grips Shiro tightly. Keith takes off, and I follow close behind. A few of the Garrison cars leave the pack to chase us down. I follow Keith, urging my vessel forward faster. Two are hot on his tail, and one trails behind me. I speed up past Keith, drawing the one that was tailing me forward, then take a sharp right and force it into the car next to it, feeling a sense of exhilaration before I return to the task at hand. I notice we're approaching a large drop off from one cliff to another. I drop back to Keith's side, and we lock eyes for a few seconds.
Understanding what he wants to do, I push the levers that control the acceleration of the speeder as far forward as they go, and Keith does the same. I whip my head around, shouting at the girl behind me. "Hold on tight!" I yell over the roaring wind. The cliffs vanish beneath us, and for a moment we hang in the air.
Then gravity takes back over and we plummet along the cliff side. We are soaring, flying, and I want to throw back my head and roar at the moon like a lion. I glance back over my shoulder and see the Garrison car has stopped at the edge. I fight the urge to destroy it, eliminate them for daring to follow me, but I beat back the darkness and follow Keith's speeder into the dawn of a new day.