They did not end up forming Voltron.

Instead, the particle barrier went down, and one after another everyone just kind of quit. Hunk was the first to go, complaining about grabbing some food goo. Pidge followed shortly, deeming the exercises both boring and useless and he had some actual important work to do. Lance didn't much want to quit, but by that point even Blue was kind of exhausted and dejected, so he gave up too.

"It's no use," grumbled Keith from his spot on the couch-like thing that Lance was just going to call a couch. "At this rate, we'll never form Voltron."

Shiro gave Keith a disapproving look. "We have to keep trying. The universe depends on us."

"The universe should pin its hopes on people who can vote," grumbled Lance.

"I can vote," said Keith.

"You would vote Bigfoot or something, you don't count," Lance said, waving a hand.

Keith gave him an indignant pout. "I would not. Bigfoot would make a terrible president."

"But you don't deny that you would vote some conspiracy-cryptid," Lance shot back.

Keith opened his mouth to argue, then must have realised he couldn't, because he scowled and muttered, "No."

"Lance is kind of right, Shiro is like the only responsible adult here," Hunk said.

They all glanced at Shiro, who had gave them a deer-in-the-headlights wide-eyed stare.

"Um," he said.

"He's right," said Keith solemnly, even though Shiro hadn't said anything. "Shiro can't even make ramen, there are no responsible adults here."

"Betrayal," muttered Shiro.

"How are we ever going to defeat a ten-thousand-year-old megalomaniac with basically five kids?" Hunk despaired, throwing his hands up in defeat. "We're complete disasters at this! We can't even make the super space robot guy out of our lions!"

"Come on, Hunk, it's like our second day on the job," Lance encouraged. "We'll get the hang of it eventually. Remember our second day on the job at our first job ever- that coffee shop-"

Hunk perked up. "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. We're doing much better than we did there."

"How could you possibly do worse than we've done today?" asked Pidge dubiously, narrowing his eyes at them.

Hunk and Lance exchanged looks. Lance momentarily flashed back to the old coffee shop, complete with hot coffee spewing out of almost all the machines and whip cream everywhere-

"We don't talk about the Coffee Shop Incident," said Lance primly. Hunk nodded solemnly, shuddering in remembrance of the horrors of that day.

The smaller boy glared at both of them suspiciously. "I will find out."

"You don't wanna find out, little dude," Hunk said, giving him a wide-eyed look. "You don't wanna."

"We should probably get out there again before Princess Allura finds us," Shiro said uneasily. The rest of them gave him incredulous looks. Lance was pleased to see that even Keith didn't want to leave the comfortable living room area. Shiro nodded as if to confirm his idea to himself. "I'll see you out there."

They watched as he left the room. Keith glanced to the rest of them. "Are we going to-"

"No," Lance, Hunk, and Pidge chorused. Lance flopped over on his couch and laid down, making himself as comfortable as he would have been at home. Being a defender of the universe- which had actually been his childhood dream, come to think of it- was turning out to be a lot harder than he'd originally thought.

Keith crossed his arms broodily but didn't seem inclined to disagree or go after Shiro. The guy would probably realise in a few minutes they hadn't followed and come back to yell at them, but he seemed pretty cool so far, so the yelling would be minimal at most.

And then in walked Allura and Coran, and Lance was pretty sure Allura wouldn't keep her yelling to a minimum.

"Are we at full power on condenser number five?" she was asking Coran.

He grimaced at the little device he was holding. "Still only eighty-four percent, I'm afraid."

Allura scowled, but then she caught sight of them and her face lit up- not the reaction Lance had been expecting, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

"You did it!" she exclaimed. "You formed Voltron!"

"No," said Keith sullenly. "The shooting stopped and the barrier shut down, so we just flew in."

Allura's face fell back into a scowl. "What?"

Oh, boy, now she was going to yell.

"Oh, right," said Coran. "Sorry, Princess, I had to turn off the defences to test the fire suppressors. Very important, fire safety."

"Very important," Lance concurred, nodding and thinking back with a mental wince to how his parents were fairly connived his birth parents had died in some sort of fire. "Good decisions on Coran's part, really."

Allura looked thoroughly unamused.

Shiro chose this moment to power-walk back into the room. He caught sight of Allura, floundered for a split second in panic, then put on his best disappointed dad face. It was a very good disappointed dad face, too.

"What are you four doing?" he demanded. "We're not taking a break."

Oh, so now he was going to pretend he had nothing to do with them. Typical.

"Shiro is right," said Allura. "You should be training."

"We've been training," Hunk complained. "When can we go home?"

Pidge shot up. "I'm not going back until I find my family!"

"Sorry, but, like, my family is on Earth?" said Hunk awkwardly.

"There won't be an Earth if we can't fight and defeat Zarkon," Shiro said almost disapprovingly.

"How? How are we going to do that?" Lance bit out. "We can't even figure out Voltron!"

Coran smiled sadly. "It isn't surprising. The paladins of old had been friends long before Voltron, and fought hundreds of battles together. They were like a pack of yalmors linked at the ears!"

Lance sighed and slumped back in defeat. "Yeah, well. That's definitely not us."

"During the last attack, your survival instincts forced you to work as a team," said Coran. "But that will only get you so far. You'll need to learn to work as a real team to have any chance of forming Voltron and defeating Zarkon. Perhaps you should try the training deck."

"Wait," said Hunk hesitantly. "There's a training deck?"

Coran led them to the training deck, explaining jovially along the way about he had been able to use it in his youth due to his friendship with Alfor. He continued to explain that the paladins of old spent many days training on the very deck they'd be using.

Lance wondered if he could convince either Coran or Alfor to give him cheats to use on the training deck or something. It wasn't actually cheating. It would just be using his network to his advantage. Work smarter not harder, right?

"Alright!" exclaimed Coran as the paladins clustered together in the centre of the deck. "The paladin code demands that you put your team members' safety above your own! A swarm of drones is about to attack, and each of you need to do everything you can to protect the others."

That didn't seem too difficult. Lance could protect his teammates, no problem. He held up his arm and a shield appeared, which was definitely a good thing. Beside him, Hunk did the same and yelped in alarm.

"What the- does everyone have one of these?" he asked, looking around nervously.

"Don't worry, buddy, I got your back," Lance assured him.

"That's good," said Hunk. "I'm not even sure I've got my own back."

And then the drones actually started attacking them. Hunk nearly screamed and ducked, leaving poor Pidge's back open. Hunk made a noise that sounded kind of like an apology as he stood back up.

"Protect your teammates or they won't be able to protect you!" Coran warned.

It definitely sounded a lot easier than it was. Lance, Keith, and Shiro formed a tight triangle as Hunk (rather majestically in Lance's somewhat biased opinion) dived into the floor, which had opened up beneath him somehow. Pidge, too, had disappeared, which must have meant that whenever you were hit, the ground would open up and swallow you.

You know, to save you from the embarrassment.

"Alright, paladins, increasing intensity!" declared Coran.

The drones sped up their shooting. Lance, Shiro, and Keith continuously moved their shields to block the shots- they made a pretty good team, if you asked Lance.

"Keeping up alright, Keith?" Lance needled, shooting Keith a grin as he blocked a shot.

Keith made a noise of irritation. "Just concentrate on keeping me safe."

"Me? No problem, I'm the boss of this drill!" he shot back.

The drones dropped to the floor and continued shooting. Momentarily distracted, Lance moved his foot to avoid a shot and ended up letting Keith get hit instead, leaving him with only Shiro.

Lance was the next one to be hit, but he was silently proud that'd he'd at least managed to protect Shiro. He fell through the floor to where the other paladins were. Hunk was groaning and rubbing his head.

"That was not fun," he moaned.

"Same, bro, same," Lance muttered.

Shiro fell through the floor. Keith and Lance exchanged looks, shook their heads, and moved out of the way, letting their leader hit the ground like the rest of them had instead of giving him the cushion of themselves.

Shiro gave Keith a betrayed look, then turned to Lance with the same expression. He looked kind of like a puppy who'd been kicked, or maybe his nephew when Ricky was denied candy.

"You're much larger than both of us and like, all muscle," Keith shrugged.

Lance nodded. "Don't give us the sad puppy face!"

"What? Shiro can do the sad puppy face?" Hunk exclaimed, crawling over to observe. The sad puppy face quickly vanished to be replaced by confusion, but Hunk had seen enough to be impressed. "Wow. Wow, he's as good as Ricky."

"I know, right?" said Lance. He gave Shiro a sceptical look. "Are you secretly a six-year-old?"

"Wha- no," said Shiro, putting on his disapproving dad face again.

"Yes," said Keith with a triumphant grin, the grin that a brother might give before revealing something supremely embarrassing about their older sibling (Lance had that look down to a science, he was the youngest sibling and had plenty to reveal). "He's a leap-"

Shiro gave him the dirtiest glare Lance had ever seen. Keith shut his mouth.

The damage had been done.

"Wait, really?" Pidge exclaimed, leaning forward on his hands. He looked ready to ask a million questions, even though Lance wasn't completely sure what he needed to know about being a leap year baby.

"No way, dude!" Hunk laughed.

Coran chose this moment to walk in. "Alright, paladins! Time for the next training sequence!"

They exchanged looks.

"Shiro's only six and I have to babysit so I should sit out," Lance volunteered before anyone else had the chance to take the glorious opportunity that had been afforded to them.

"Six? Six what?" asked Coran, before his eyes widened in horror. "Goodness, only six deca-phoebs, you mean? I assumed Earth children would look more like Altean children!"

"No, I'll babysit Shiro," Keith cut in.

"Ha! You'd make a terrible babysitter, Mullet," Lance scoffed.

"Who would trust you with kids?"

"Excuse you, my brother and sister trust me with their kids all the time!"

"I am not only six," Shiro gritted out, standing and brushing off his pants. "I am a full-grown adult, unlike my teammates here."

Lance and Keith might have continued arguing, but at Shiro's glare they made a silent pact of brotherhood and both grinned innocently at the leader.

"Well, that's a relief," said Coran, still eying Shiro worriedly. "The next activity is a partner maze!"

Shiro smiled rather evilly. "Wonderful. Lance and Keith can go first."

Lance turned to glare at Keith.

This is your fault, he tried to tell him silently.

Keith seemed to silently respond, screw you.

Lance was very offended.

A/N: Sorry this one took so long, guys!

I kind of let it carry me away... I enjoy writing the team's interactions, so this chapter was a lot of that. I hope you guys enjoyed! Thank you so much for reading, and for all the favourites and reviews and follows! I love you guys so much! 3