So.
Minor problem.
The people they were rescuing?
They were both hot as hell.
The girl (or he assumed she was a girl, but who knew, they were in space, after all) was yellow and she looked straight out of Star Wars, which was pretty cool. She smiled sweetly at them, hands at her hips. The guy (again, an assumption) was purple with white hair and a perfect rebellious look about him. He stood with arms crossed, but he also smiled to see them arrive.
Aliens were not supposed to be this attractive. It wasn't fair. What if humans were the ugly race of the universe? That would be even more unfair – well, the Galra didn't seem to be that hot. So maybe he was safe after all.
"You have no idea how glad we are to see some friendly faces," said the guy. "Most don't want to get tangled up with people who're on the run from the Galra."
"Oh, I'd get tangled up with you anytime," Lance said, shooting them a wink and his signature finger-guns. Hunk sighed in exasperation. The two aliens looked amused; the girl giggled – score!
"You guys are fighting the Galra?" asked Keith.
The guy scoffed. "I doubt Zarkon's really quaking in his boots at the three of us, but we do our best. I'm Rolo. This is Nyma, and this is our cyber-unit, Beezer."
Pidge had gone starry-eyed in an instant; she shot to the robot and began inspecting it – him? – her? "He's so beautiful, I love him."
Lance gave the two aliens his best flirty grin. "The name's Lance, but you can call me whatever you like."
Shiro (the spoilsport) sent him a disapproving look, then returned his attention to the hot aliens. "Was your ship damaged in a fight?"
Rolo nodded. "Yep. We've really been through it with the Galra lately. Parts are… hard to come by. We managed to limp to this moon about a week ago, but if you hadn't picked up our distress beacon…"
Lance winced. He could imagine what might have happened. He didn't know anything about the way these aliens worked, but chances were they would have run out of food or something. Starvation, to Lance, sounded like a horrible way to go.
"I'm glad we found you, then," said Lance sincerely.
"It is good that you did," agreed Nyma.
"We are happy to help you," said Allura. "I am Princess Allura from Planet Altea. From now on, you will not be alone in fighting the Galra. You shall have Voltron on your side."
Both blinked at them, completely uncomprehending.
"Okay," said Rolo slowly. "That's… great."
Yeah.
Okay.
That made sense.
Shiro laughed awkwardly. "I don't think they've heard of us."
Allura looked aghast. Lance got it – probably ten thousand years ago Voltron had been the talk of the town. Everyone knew about it, everyone loved it. Maybe there were even Voltron memes.
Holy quiznak, were there Voltron memes?
He was so going to have to ask Coran. If there were Voltron memes back in the day, Lance would have to learn them and use them endlessly and never stop teasing Alfor about them.
"It has been ten thousand years," Keith reminded the princess.
"Voltron?" said Shiro again. "It's, ah, it's these five robot lions that combine into a, uh, man?"
Neither alien seemed to get it.
"Robot lions?" said Rolo.
"What's a lion?" said Nyma, tilting her head.
That also made sense. Lions were an Earth animal, so there was no reason these two aliens would have any idea what they were.
Except Coran and Allura and Alfor all obviously knew what they were. Which made zero sense. What were the odds that two completely different planets both had creatures called lions that looked like lions?
"Well, sounds impressive," admitted Rolo. "I'd love to see it. Him. Them?"
Hunk had apparently had enough small talk, because he huffed and crossed his arms. "Don't we need to fix your ship? I'm sure all of us have places to be, so let's just get on that."
Lance raised his eyebrows. This level of impatience was really unlike Hunk; he was one of the friendliest guys Lance knew. There was only one real reason his best friend would be acting like this.
Hunk was so into that Shay girl.
"Yeah, of course," said Rolo amiably. He walked over to his ship and opened a panel to reveal a whole bunch of mechanics Lance knew absolutely nothing about. "Come on. Pretty much the whole flaxum assembly's shot. Don't know if your fancy ship's got one or any supplies for it."
"I'm sure we can get you back up and running," Allura assured them. "Give Hunk a list of what you need – Hunk, Coran can show you where to find the spare parts are located."
Hunk pouted. "Alright, fine."
"We can go with you," said Rolo. "Help carry–"
"Absolutely not!" said Hunk in alarm.
"Hunk!" reprimanded Allura in surprise.
Lance was also rather surprised, but he couldn't help but think that Hunk had a point. As attractive as these two aliens were, they couldn't necessarily trust them. Yet. Rolo was purple – who knew, maybe he was a Galra? If so, that meant Galra could be hot and weren't the ugly creatures of the universe, which might end up being a small problem for Lance in the long run – not that he'd get distracted in a fight, of course.
"Look, I'm sorry, but do we remember the last time we let our defences down?" said Hunk. "Someone set off a bomb. Lance almost died."
Lance winced. While he didn't actually remember it happening, he definitely didn't want to repeat the experience.
"Hunk's right," agreed Shiro. "We have to be careful. It's not you, it's just…"
"I get it," said Rolo. "Dangerous times. No worries. You have to look out for your own – you're doing a good job. Hunk, was it?"
"Thanks," muttered Hunk. "I'll go – check with Coran. I guess."
"You need any help?" offered Lance.
"I'm fine," said Hunk. "Don't worry – you just – no repeats of tenth grade!"
Lance gave him an insulted look. "I have grown from the incident, Hunk, there will be no repeats!"
Hunk didn't look like he believed him but left anyway; Lance shrugged off his friend's lack of faith. That was fairly normal. Sometimes Hunk seemed to think Lance would do something stupid whenever left alone, which was so not true.
Most of the time.
Sometimes.
Besides, he wasn't alone.
Rolo watched Hunk leave for a moment, a strange expression across his features (aw, no fair, the hot guy was into Hunk? Fine, Hunk could have Rolo, then, and Lance would focus on Nyma), before sitting back down at their little makeshift camp. The rest of them hesitantly migrated over as well.
"Gonna get dark soon," said Rolo. "We're lucky to be close enough to a star to have some light. And that this moon happens to have oxygen. Your kinds use oxygen? Ours do."
Lance, who had been completely taking for granted the fact he could actually breathe here, took a deep breath. The air was a little bit thin, which kind of explained his mild headache. Suddenly he found himself wondering if different aliens needed different levels of oxygen. Did some not need oxygen at all? What was the difference between Alteans and humans in the respect? Was Allura just like, yeah, this is living right here, or was she suffering, or was this just kind of mildly uncomfortable like it was for Lance?
He mentally filed away his questions for later and stood by Nyma on the outer edge of the little camp, while Allura and Shiro leaned up against a couple of containers. Pidge was still fawning over Beezer, which didn't surprise Lance. Girl or not, Pidge's first love would always be robots.
"My planet was destroyed by the Galra," said Rolo, face darkening. "I was captured, along with a lot of the rest of my family. I – I never saw them again. I managed to escape, but – well – not before I lost something."
He rolled up his pant leg to reveal a metal prosthesis in the place of what should have been normal flesh. Shiro winced and grabbed his own prosthetic arm. "Yeah. I know how you feel."
What was with the Galra and removing people's limbs? They even took their own limbs off!
Maybe he could ask Coran if it was a Galra cultural thing.
"What do you know about Zarkon's forces?" asked Allura, trying and failing to conceal how eager she was to know. "Where are they concentrated? How many in which parts of the universe?"
"Well," said Rolo. "Command ship's right in the centre of the Empire. Always found that weird, that it's not on whatever planet the Galra are from."
"We're not entirely sure what planet the Galra are from," said Nyma.
Allura's face had turned grave, which meant she probably knew and it probably wasn't good. Part of Lance wanted to guess that the planet was called Galra (like, Alteans came from Altea so wouldn't Galrans come from Galra?), but most of his intuition told him that wasn't even slightly right.
Before she ever got the chance to say anything, Hunk dragged out a large container from the Castle. It didn't look too heavy, but that may have been because it was floating on a thingamajig.
"Well, with any luck, this will have some parts in it," he said, sending Rolo a scowl. "You know. For your ship. That's broken."
"Of course," said Rolo. He returned his attention to Allura. "Well, anyway, Zarkon mostly calls the shots from there. He never does any of his dirty work. Has people in charge of different sectors – this one's under the control of a nasty bugger named Sendak."
"We've met," said Keith shortly.
"Are we close to the centre?" said Shiro.
Rolo shook his head. "Oh, no, we're way out on the fringes."
"Hey, so, sorry to interrupt, but Rolo and I have got to get his ship fixed," said Hunk. "We're – we're kind of in a hurry. There's this hero-rock named Shay and I promised we'd come rescue her and her people."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, sure," said Rolo. "Let's get to it."
Lance turned his attention away from them and shot Nyma a winning grin. "So, you see, there are only five of us in the entire universe. It's kind of a big deal."
"I'm not sure I understand," she admitted. "These… lions… they are ships? But are not normally?"
"Well, on my planet, they're animals," said Lance. "Like – cats? Feline? Lions are pretty cool. I used to love The Lion King."
"Your king is called a Lion King?" she asked.
Lance blinked. "Uh, no? It's a movie. About a lion named Simba who – you know, never mind. Yes, these lions are ships. They're magic, but also super scientific and really advanced – they fly super fast and have great weapons. The whole Castle is really amazing. I'd love to show you sometime, you know, maybe once this whole mess has cooled down some."
"It is too bad we cannot go inside," she said. "I'd love a tour from one of the knights! But I suppose the yellow one is in charge? You have to listen to him?"
"Hunk?" scoffed Lance. He didn't have to listen to Hunk. It was just generally more beneficial to his health if he did. He would readily admit that, of the two of them, his best friend had a lot more common sense. So if Hunk said they stayed out, it was probably a good idea.
Except that Nyma was looking at him with the most adorable face. How could Lance possibly say no to that? They seemed trustworthy. He wouldn't get blown up again.
"Well," he said carefully. "I'm sure a little tour wouldn't hurt."
Her face lit up and she grabbed his hand. "Let's go, then!"
Oh, yeah, so totally worth it.
A/N: Aaand Lance is a fool when it comes to attractive faces. Also hella bi, and I love him for it. So, hope you enjoyed this chapter! There's a couple more before I'm caught up posting (I am a mess, I admit it), and then it'll be back to iffy update schedule. Thanks for reading! 3